In Memory of Shipeng Li

Shipeng, my dear friend and colleague, we are here to say good bye and celebrate your life. You were a truly talented gentleman whose kindness would always melt my heart.

 

At Cisco, You and I were best neighbors; every day we greeted each other with “Good morning,” and the one who left earlier would stop by to say “See you tomorrow.”  It was very convenient to have you around. You were my Cisco Engineering Tech Support personnel, and whenever I had problem with my laptop, you always did trouble shooting first.  Did you remember that one day you came back from the meeting and your chair disappeared? I shouted over from my cubicle, “It is here, you have to fix my chair in order to get yours back.  I messed up my arm rests, and it was very uncomfortable to sit on.”   You fixed it within a minute. Also, I converted my recycle bin to store my high heels and used yours instead.  I have created many inconveniences for you, but you were never upset.

 

Even though we didn’t work on the same projects most of time, we still discussed technical issues very often and many good solutions came from you. I felt very relaxed and could ask any question without hesitation. Recently you became the Orange team architecture, the best fitting job for you.  You worked long hours each day, and I could tell you were very tired, but very happy. That was the reason that you let your PTO overflow and came to work the next day after long exhausted trips.

 

You were a very humble and private person and rarely talked about non-job related topics. I knew you were very smart, you could catch new technology quickly, you led projects very well, and you wrote best documentations. However, I didn’t know you were a MIT PhD until now.

 

You should be proud of yourself. Your friends and your colleagues love you very much. They prayed for miracle all the time. Any small progress from you would become excited news that flew around in WeChat. We visited you and took rotations to stay with you at hospital.  And some ladies came to see you daily. You really owed an explanation to your wife on girlfriends No.1, No.2, No.3….

 

Although friends come and go in our lives, they never leave our hearts. And best friends always get to stay in the best places in our hearts. You are one of them.