It was literally a news that he had decided to quit radio and sold all equipments for now. He has been annoyed by heavy noise from the surrounding. He often mentioned of that before and told me he could barely enjoy chatting on CW.
I know what person he is and what he has been pursuing in ham radio. In a moment, I fully understood why he had made such a decision. He told me he enjoyed Thai tea, listening to music, constructing hifi system and doing volunteer work for the area etc. It seemed worthwhile for him to spend time with those things but not listening to noisy bands without anyone to converse. Recently, there were, as he said, only two exceptions like Jim W6YA and Happy W7SW strong enough to talk with. I was smiling at those call signs because they also used to be regulars for me to talk on 40m. Anyway, John has made up his mind and has stepped out into no-radio life now.
It was around 2007 when I ran across with John for the very first time. He was running with a hand key and later a bug key using an electrical keyer. He had worked as R/O for years and got ashore when the traditional work of R/O was extinct, I guess. However, he used to tell me he was unconsciously converting the words on signs or advertisements along the streets into Morse code. Realizing that, he wanted to come back to the world of Morse code communication. I believe it won't take too long before he applied for a ham ticket in Singapore and prepared the radio gear and antenna, possibly, a wire antenna.
In our first contacts, I knew he had belonged to the old generation of CW operator. I felt close to him with that his intention. In addition, we shared classical music as hobby. whenever we meet on the air, we scarecely miss the chance to talk about music with him. I have also learned a lot on that subject from him. Something like the yiddish melody in Mahler's 9th.
He has visited me at our home back in 2008, a year later from our 1st contact on the radio. On that weekend, we had one of the important rehearsal of the local orchestra. I was sorry but asked him to go for the rehearsal with me. I have written about his visit on a post in this blog. Here.
It has been a pleasant journey together on our loving mode in ham radio. He will be missed badly by a lot of his friends in ham radio including myself. But he has made up his mind to go off to another voyage of post-radio life. We could get in touch through the internet. It is not the end of our friendship but just another chapter of new voyage. Wishing him very good health and meaningful life.
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