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Picture: Khai Loon (on my left)

Lee Khai Loon celebrated his 28th birthday on 29 March last night. On Wednesday, we celebrated his birthday at Suaram office at midnight. I joined to have cake for supper.

Khai Loon returned from Hong Kong last year; another alumnus of Asian Students Association (ASA). He is still part of the secretariat, except he is now based in Malaysia.

When back in Malaysia, Khai Loon and a few others young people have launched an initiative known as Youth for Change (Y4C). Their aim is to create consciousness and activism among young people who want to fight for change. In the last one year, Y4C had organized many programs such as public talks, dialogues and so on.

Tonight (29 March) we went out again with Khai Loon to an organic restaurant in Bangsar Village to have dinner. Pai Chee just had a surgery and only discharged from hospital a few days ago. I have not had organic meal for a while now. We all feel very healthy after the meal—it was a rare treat for birthday.

During the meal, we spoke about Machap. For the generation of Khai Loon (Kai Ping, Pai Chee, etc.), Machap was the place of their political baptism. They witnessed and experienced election campaign in 1999 when I contested in Selandar.

We were amazed it has been nearly 10 years since our first campaign to conquer the area. Y4C planned to organize a debate during the by-election inviting MCA, DAP and KeADILan. All the youngsters got excited and decided to hold a reunion in Machap next week.