In Memory of Shipeng Li

(This is the speech given at Shipeng’s Memorial)

Our life is full of surprises. Some surprises are nice and pleasants, some are simply challenging. Today we celebrate Shipeng’s life.  I will share some of the surprises related to him.

Surprise #1: It is true he spent 6 year at MIT. But he is not a nerd. 

Shipeng has broad interests in life.

He enjoyed sports his whole life: He has done ski (in Boston), Wind-surf, skate (with me in Montreal),  and biking. He ran daily with one of his classmate from West Point Military College while at MIT. When we moved to US, he watches Superbowl, Tour de France, all major Tennis Open, and he took us to Baseball games and taught me rules about baseball.

He has always like and has good taste in music; He likes Beatles, U2, Pink Floyd, Coldplay, and R.E.M. He continue to show interest to new singers and often share discussion on music with Aurea.

He read intersting books: When I was in France, I read books by French writers such as Jean Paul Sartre, Albert Camus. Simone de Beauvoir. These writers are not as well-known in US than in Europe. But Shipeng surprised me a bit as he knew what these writes are about.

He is a romantics at heart: A book that he gave me, when we were dating, was “Love Story” By Erich Segal. The book is special to him because it uses Boston and Cambridge as story’s background; he was very fond of these two cities and was familiar with many locations descried by the book.

He had humor and was funny. At home we trade jokes at each other’s expense.

One day I told him I get complements on new outfit from a lady. His response was “Well, She is a Lesbian!

Of course I will not let him get away with that.

So when he was arranging his trip to Wichita fall for “Hotter’N hell” race, he was telling me he was gonna share a hotel room with his bike buddie. I said “Wow, hang on Shipeng.  I don’t know you are gay! You should have told me that many years ago!”

Surprise #2: I never expected that I married to so many accidents when I married him

When I was his girlfriend. He had his first biking accident. One day he and his friend Haoshi took a bike ride, the two somehow crashed into each other. Shipeng was taken to hospital by ambulance. He had long cut on his face and eye brow. He had many stitches on face and swollen eyes. He had a horror movie face.

And he was very arrogant! He asked his roommate to take a close-up picture of his face and mailed the picture to me, essentially asked me point-blank “You still want me or not?”

His Second accident is well-known among friends: in 1995 I took an international assignment from Ericsson to move from Montreal Canada to work here (Dallas) so we can live the American dream. Shipeng took a job from Tim. He worked in Oklahoma city and come home every weekend.

One weekeend on end of April 1996, when he drove passing Norman Oklahoma on his way to Dallas,  he had a head-on collision with a lady who drove her car to the opposite direction of the highway. She did not wear seatbelt and was killed instantly. Shipeng broke both arm and both legs, but was spared a life thanks to the seatbelt and airbag.

Aurea was still a baby. Xiaohong and Yi (her husband Yi Zhao) were the only friends I knew and I called her.  I left Aurea to her and asked Yi to drive me in the middle of night to Norman. Shipeng would be in coma for nearly a week before he wake up. That accident took him 2 years to recover.

His accident #3 happend around 2009. When Shipeng starts to ride bike again. His legs and arms have limited motion range because of the car accident.  So he would fall from bike once in a while. One of the fall scratched his arm and he suffered infection. Being an arrogant man who never like to visit doctors, he took Motrin for fever, but the fever kept coming back.

I remember it was his birthday 9/7. I drove him to Medical Center of Plano emergency, where doctor find out he had massive infection of lung and heart. It took him 4 months medical leave, 24/7 antibiotics by IV to recover from the infection. The infection has left one of his heart valve permanently damaged.

Surprise #3: He always, always surprise his doctors

Shipeng has consistently surprised his doctors and he was very proud of doing that.

After his car accident, his doctors had predicted that he would soon need artificial hip and artificial joint on left elbow.

After the heart infection in 2009, his doctor told him that his heart valve is leaking severely and he would soon need an open heart surgery to replace the leaking valve.

20 years has gone by since his car accident. He did not need hip replacement. He did not need artificial joint on his left elbow. And he did not need replace his heart valve.

In 2013, one day before he went to “Texas hotter’N Hell” race, I have accompanied him to his cardiologist to review his heart condition. I told the doctor about his plan to race in “Texas Hotter’N Hell” and asked doctor to stop him. The doctor tried his best to let him know that he did not think Hotter’N Hell is for healthy man, much less a guy with heart condition.

Shipeng went to the race the next day and finished Hotter’N Hell 60 mile ride.

Surprise #4: His own surprise relationship with Cisco

Cisco has some surprises for Shipeng too.

Shipeng worked for Nortel after his car accident. At that time, He very much wished he could work for Cisco. So around year 2000. He took us to San Jose for a job interviewwith Cisco. When I refuse to move to San Jose. He had to take an offer to work for a start-up company called IP mobile.

Here is the Surprise: only a few weeks later after his join IP mobile, the company was bought by Cisco.

Pretty soon the dot net bubble bursted, Cisco started laying off people. At that time, I have lost my job at Ericsson and I was worried about losing his pay-check.

Initially, he was quite confident that he was OK. Until one day, after he had a good-bye lunch with a co-worker, who was just got laid-off, he went back to his cubical and he received a voice mail from his manager (it was not Tony at the time). It says “Shipeng, please come to my office when you get a chance. I need to discuss your work with you”. Shipeng told me his heart sank when he got the message. He thought the manager would tell him that he was let go. So he walked to his boss’s office saying with a butterfly in his stomach.

Can you guess what happen afterward?

To  his HUGE surprise, not only was he NOT let go by Cisco, but also the manager informed him that he was given a special award for exceptional job performance. As a result of the award, he received a BIG pay raise while the pay raise was freeze across board in Cisco.

Surprise #5: “The opportunities” are in China.

Shipeng and I sometimes joked about “the opportunities” in China. By that joke we refer to a Chinese guy goes back to China to work, he could be easily surrounded by many pretty, much younger women.

As far as Shipeng was concern, Ladies at Cisco were all too busy to pay attention to him. And there is a lack of “opportunities”.

Boy he was wrong!

Having stayed in hospital ICU for two weeks, he could not be more surprised!  He and I had NO idea he could be such a “Lady-magnet” in Cisco.

Every day in ICU room, I would meet, face to face, with some of his lady friends. Many ladies are completely unknown to me.

These ladies are not shy about expressing their feeling to him in front of me. They touch his face, they hold his hands, and they massage his feet. They sweet-talk to him. And they don’t care if his was married or not.

And Shipeng was not shy either to show me who was his favorite. One day I was holding his hand, the data on the monitor are totally mess-up and irregular. The alarm sounds off. The ICU nurse walked in and told me to stop holding his hand because it has the connectors to the monitor. After I moved away, one of his girlfriend walk in, she went right next to him, holding the same hand, and Shipeng was fine with her.

By now all of shipeng’s girlfriends are no longer secret to me, I have to accept and live with the reality. For example, I have to let Shipeng wear the new boxer that his Cisco girlfriend bought for him. (Thank you Joanna!)

So I think Shipeng should stop complaining by now, he had so many “Opportunities” in Cisco it is more than he can handle!

Thank you very much!