A close friend's leaving

After the Burns Supper last night, with the tunes of Auld Lang Syne still ringing in my ears, I saw Masood off this morning.

He's my flatmate at Cooperage Place. The eldest son of an Iranian physician, Mas has been studying dentistry for 3 years at Glasgow. I guess he doesn't like here too much, as he had told me he was quite satisfied with the curriculum here. And after Christmas he told me he had applied for a transfer of study to Sheffield. I was a bit surprised, as I thought that was a bit too remote. He told me that Sheffield is closer to his home at Doncaster, and he could see his family, and his girl friend Victoria, more often. Moreover, Sheffied is glad to take him on, although this is already the second week into the second semester.

Mas had his car fully filled with his stuff. I saw him dismantle his bicycle, which had already taken up almost the entire back seat of his red sedan. The trunk was full of his dentistry textbooks, cookery items, TV set and clothings. On his passenger seat, there were so many other miscellaneous stuff that it reminded me of the trip that I took at Lancaster when I joined another flatmate to visit Paul, yet another Lancaster flatmate from Liverpool, after the term end. The car was full of our stuffs and it was so heavily loaded that it could only run at an agonizing speed on M6. We were soon stopped by a traffic policeman. I guessed he either suspected that we were thugs having stolen a full carload of booty, or he was very annoyed at our slow speed on a highway. I could still remember my flatmate driver (eeeek! I forgot his name now) explaining to the Boby:

"Well, officer, I'm just a poor student and this is a used car. It isn't a Ferrari and is carrying two adult students' stuff. It can't run fast and if we can arrive Liverpool safely before sunset that's already a blessing for us. "

As Mas had finished filling his stuffs in, I asked him to take a photo with me in front of the gate. He gladly agreed. And I got the moment freezed in my digital camera. When I watched the photo on my laptop later on, I realised a good friend of mine was leaving here but I looked forward to seeing a successful Midland dentist in years further down the road.