Amanda had just come home from school. Exhausted but looking forward to receiving an email from her friend in New Zealand, she turned on her computer and waited impatiently for it to start up. As she waited, she began thinking about the times she spent with Bridget, her best friend, since primary one. Just then, an envelop popped out on her screen. Amanda sat up and clicked on the “Inbox” bar, expecting to see her friend's usual email.

Amanda was surprised to see the email address belonging to Bridget's brother in bold at the top of a row of emails in her inbox. He seldom wrote to her because he was much older and they had nothing in common. A feeling of dread passed through her but she ignored it.

“It was probably nothing,” she said as she clicked on the email. What she saw was totally unexpected. It was a short email. He simply said that Bridget had been in a serious car accident and was hospitalized in the intensive care unit. He would write again later. Amanda's jaw dropped and her fingers that had been so busy clicking the mouse buttons earlier slid off the computer table.

At a loss as to what to do, Amanda hurriedly typed an email in response. She asked Bridget's brother for more information about the accident and Bridget's condition. Amanda's eyes brimmed with tears that threatened to flow down her cheeks. She could not help remembering that Bridget had told her of her plans to return to Singapore to visit her. She wanted to call Bridget’s brother immediately but it was only then that she realized she did not have his number.

Sitting up, she clicked on the 'Inbox' bar to check her incoming message again. However, the sign 'No New Message' flashed at the bottom of her screen.

I was born on the 17th of November 1828, in the village of Nam Ping, which is about four miles southwest of the Portuguese Colony (殖民地) of Macao, and is located on Pedro Island lying west of Macao, from which it is separated by a channel of half a mile wide.

As early as 1834, an English lady, Mrs. Gutzlaff, wife of a missionary to China, came to Macao. Supported by the Ladies’ Association in London for the promotion of female education in India and the East, she immediately took up the work of starting a girls’ school for Chinese girls, which was soon followed by the opening of a boys’ school.

Mrs. Gutzlaff’s comprador(买办) happened to come from my village and was actually my father’s friend and neighbor. It was through him that my parents heard about Mrs. Gutzlaff’s school and it was doubtlessly through his influence and means that my father got me admitted into the school. It has always been a mystery to me why my parents should put me into a foreign school, instead of a traditional Confucian school, where my big brother was placed. Most certainly such a step would have been more suitable for Chinese public opinion, taste, and the wants of the country, than to allow me to attend an English school. Moreover, a Chinese belief is the only avenue in China that leads to political promotion, influence, power and wealth. I can only guess that as foreign communication with China was just beginning to grow, my parents hoped that it might be worthwhile to put one of their sons to learning English. In this way he might become an interpreter and have a more advantageous position to enter the business and diplomatic world. I am wondering if that influenced my parents to put me into Mrs. Gutzlaff’s School. As to what other sequences it has eventually brought about in my later life, they were entirely left in the hands of God.