Last year I lost my favourite English teacher, Ms Unnlucky.

Ms Unnlucky was not my regular teacher at my regular middle school. Instead, she ran a language training centre, kind of a cram school. The centre, Little Dolphin, enjoys a good reputation in town among parents of school-age kids. Actually, it has been so celebrated that a lot of kids get sent to study English there in afterschool hours.

Ms Unnlucky was not only the boss of the training centre, but taught classes herself as well. She was my father’s good friend, so I was able to learn English in her class. We often hung around after class. She loved laughing.

Successful as Ms Unnlucky was in her business, she was unlucky otherwise. One year her family went on a tour around the country. Her husband was the driver of the family car. One day the weather was freezing while they were on the road. The vehicle the family were in skidded off the icy highway into a ravine, killing both Ms Unnlucky’s parents. Her husband survived. So did Ms Unnlucky, with a disability, though. On crutches, she could no longer walk normally after the accident.

After she was released from hospital, Ms Unnlucky resumed teaching us. Despite what she had gone through, she still conducted her lessons as enthusiastically as before. In class, the teacher was a perfect picture of optimism and strength. The classroom ringing with peals of her signature laughter, we enjoyed her lessons none the less.

One day last year, Father broke the bad news. He said that Ms Unnlucky had perished at home of a stroke. She had been working in her home office very late into the wee small hours of the morning, when unluckily, Ms Unnlucky fell off her chair onto the floor, dead. By the time the ambulance arrived, no vital signs were detected in her.

The world is always as strange as that. One day it is running as boringly normally as any other day. Next day, it changes without warning, and you are left with a totally different environment.

Ms Unnlucky is no longer there, but her optimism and her bravery against the odds will be my inspiration forever.