In these days we asked our gardener to pave and lay new lawn in our front yard, and some other work.  Sometimes in the weekends the gardener took with him his five-years-old son, an adorable Latin-American boy.  He could not help anything, but quietly accompanied his father, sitting there and watching.  Every time when he came my wife would give him coke and cookie, and he just slyly and silently received the stuff without saying anything.

The little boy reminded me of a classmate and a good friend of mine in grade five of an elementary school in Taipei county.  He was from a relatively poorer family: his father was a contracted achitecture worker (a carpenter or a mason, or both), and his mother had to be a partime clean lady in addition to doing chores and taking care several kids.  But he was smart and was always one of the top academic achivers in the class.  Once, for whatever reason, I accompanied him to go with his father to a construction site.  Unlike the kid I mentioned above, as a bigger boy of 11 or 12, he did help a lot to his father.  No wonder besides his better schooling, he was much stronger than the average boys of our age as well. 

When we entered into grade six, I was transferred to another school in Taipei city for a better chance to get higher scores in the coming joint examination of junior high schools.  How about him?  He, or his father, decided that he dicontinued taking any more non-compulsory education after elementary school,  and so he was arranged to a "grazing class" in grade six.  What a shame!  (Though the economic situation of my family was just a little bit better than his, still my father wanted to assisted him if he could enter a public junior high.  But he declined.  We have lost contact with each since then.) 

Wishing you all the best, Wu.