Chen-01
I did not meet Chen Yi Quan through a grand introduction. I met him the way people meet now—through the small, casual openings of modern life: a smiley face, a missed call, a short message that carried no prophecy. Looking back, what haunts me is how ordinary it all was. In August 2019, he appeared in my WhatsApp thread with a simple 🙂. The sort of message that means: I exist, I’m here, I’m thinking of you. A missed voice call followed, then nothing for a while. That, too, was normal. Friends drift. Life interrupts. Silence does not necessarily mean anything. Then September arrived, and the thread began to speak with the busy warmth of real collaboration. I was organising an art auction and fundraiser, the kind of effort that always begins with idealism and ends with logistics. Frames needed sponsors. People needed reminding. Links needed sending. I joked—half amused, half genuinely grateful—that the “lovely lady classmates” had stepped forward, while the “man philanthropist” seem...