PETALING JAYA, February 2013 - That afternoon of 3 February was a day filled with anticipation for the sixty-odd alumni who graduated from Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) in the seventies (1970-1979) when they converged at PJ Club here.
Some of whom had not met for decades and the first forty-five minutes of mingling did wonders as the participants ‘found’ long lost friends.
The reunion was actually the effort of T. Balasubramaniam (B. Soc. Sc. ‘75) and his wife K. Sarasvathy who organised the much awaited event. He contacted the USM Alumni Liaison Office (ALO) as a partner in reaching out to as many alumni as possible via e-mail.
“Gone are the snail-mail days as a RSVP (Répondez s'il vous plait, French for ‘Please reply’) would take at least a week to receive and with a tight deadline before the enthusiasm turns cold, e-mail is still the best option,” he said.
After batches of e-mails were sent, replies trickled into the ‘In Box’. The response was encouraging and to distinguish the alumni by the year of graduation, Bala prepared name tags of different colours: yellow (1973), green (1974), orange (1975), dark blue (1976), light blue (1978), and white (1979). Guests had them in pink.
After the mingling and catching up with ‘old times’, the buffet lunch started at 12.45 pm and by then the alumni had settled in with much catching up to do with their friends.
