This GANG will be together forever

Well, complete with an exco line-up led by the first Datuk in our clan, a group of old buddies of mine got together and formed what, scary as it may seem, they wished to call the Gang of Subang (GoS).
We've even got a website HERE.
In keeping up with the hectic runabout (not exactly jet-set) type of life as a budding sports writer, I sort of veered off course the past nine years or so and forgot the joys of having this bunch alongside me as we faced everything life threw at us growing up together in Subang Jaya.
Reconnecting with the clan was good. It began about two months ago. Anis Syahrein, Jeffree Shahrizal, Muzaffar Muhammad, Saiful Azmi Khalid and Azhar Halim all have the same faces as those 10-year olds I first got to know.
Thanks to information from best buddy Azlin Mazhar, that tea session in SS15 I joined in October immediately reminded me of the days we'd meet every morning for hockey training, after which we'd agree with the likes of R. Letchumanan and Shamsul Azeri to head for the then still popular Taman Subang Ria watersports centre, where we'd go canoeing and stuff like that.
Jeffree, who was very popular with the girls, was also a legend as early as when we were in Standard Five, as some of us witnessed him creating history with his hands. I shall stop at that.
When we had football training, the likes of future stars such as Asmawi Bakiri would come over to my home to shower before we went to school in the afternoon when we were in Standard Six. So you imagine the pride in all of us when he walked up to collect his first Malaysia Cup winners medal in 1997, playing for OUR team Selangor, who beat Pahang 1-0 through a dramatic extra-time goal kneed in from the brink of going out by David Mitchell.
Each and every day of our childhood was an adventure. And we were a mischievous bunch.
The holy month of Ramadhan would bring us all out at night. Back then Subang Jaya was a peaceful neighbourhood, unlike the madness it symbolises today. Roads were so clear, you might even have considered the place rural. We could ride our bicycles all over town, without our parents even having the slightest fear in allowing us to do so.
Well, if only they knew what we were up to. I'm sure all would remember those police-and-thief games on bicycles that covered the whole of Subang Jaya, with one of the arched entries at the Masjid Darul Ehsan being the 'jail'. The 'thieves' would be riding like crazy with 'police' in hot pursuit. There were easily more than 30 of us involved in these nightly Ramadhan games. And if some thought they could disappear in the crowds at the pasar malam... Well, let's just say the havoc we created with 'thieves' frantically whizzing through crowds with 'police' on tow, helped the crowds at the pasar malams disappear.
The town was an enclave surrounded by oil palms, rubber trees and tin mines. Subang Jaya was an oasis. Our oasis. And who could forget that oasis in the middle of the oil palm estate that served as our river resort. Haha... We enjoyed many a splash there, I can tell you.
We would gather at the school padang each evening to play football, sometimes hockey, which were the favourite games of most of our clan. Lee How Seng, Jason Chua and Jason Tan would often be found at the SMSJ basketball court, a stone's throw away from my home. Walk down the road, I'd find the plump figure of Marcus Choy in his BBP14, the old Toyota Starlet he drove around when he was just 15. Fadhil Manan was a son of a policeman and also our classmate, so he was our contact in case we got into too much trouble.
Walk the other way any evening, you'd likely find Sheikh Shahril, Nazri Mokhtar, Ritesh Singh and the clan that lived closer to SRK Subang Jaya, charting mischief from the meeting point we all commonly termed as "Bridge".
You see, everywhere we turned, around every corner, we'd more than likely bump into friends. That was the close-knit community that Subang Jaya was in those days.
From the video games arcade age, to the age of the snooker parlours, then internet cafes, the tea dances at Picadilly, we went through it all together.
So, having so many of those faces I never forget all around me at the National Press Club for our reunion last Saturday (Jan 9), brought about this overwhelming feeling of pride in having so many who actually cared to come and at least look up each other although all have more than their hands full with crazy mind-boggling jobs, even crazier kids and the old spouse things. I'm just having the first of the three for now, thanks. But these friends, I want to keep.
A promise we made to each other was that we'd stay in touch. I think we meant forever.