I’d saved up over my two years of working in Taiwan in order to support myself for my first year in London, studying for my ‘A’ levels to get into university.
The advice I’d been given was not to work at all during my ‘A’ levels but to focus completely on my studies and get good grades for getting into a good university, because once in, I’d be fine until the end of the course, barring failing my Year 1 end-of-year exams. That was the practice at the time: once you passed that Year 1 end-of-year exam to confirm that you’d be able to last the course, there were no more exams until the final year.
Knowing how strongly I felt about taking money from my mother, ex-RI (Raffles Institution) schoolmate Wilson wrote from Australia and said that he’d send me money if I was ever in need.
This was only a schoolmate, not even a distant relative, yet he offered to help me financially for living in London which wasn’t cheap even in the 1970s.
As far as I know, he wasn’t that well off himself either in Australia, so if I’d appealed to him, it might’ve meant a bit of deprivation in his own life, all alone in Australia, just to help me out.
I didn’t have to turn to him after all, because I found a part-time job as a telex operator with British Monomarks, which saw me through my university years, but it was a godsend to have that offer on tap should I ever need it, settling any panic that might surface.
Thank you, Wilson, for being such a supportive friend. I’m very grateful and feel very blessed to have a friend like you. God bless you.
(London, 1977–81)
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