LWE Chapter 13: Sibling Birthdays - April

We Cheongs are a stubborn lot. My siblings and I exhibit this trait to varying degrees with there being no true ‘zero’. We are all a little set in our ways and can take enormous amounts of persuasion to push us off our chosen course.

If there was a joke about Cheongs it would go something like:
‘Q: How do you tell a Cheong?
A: You can’t. You can’t tell a Cheong anything. He’ll just do what he wants.’
In our family though, Gerard would be the apex. On a scale of 1 - 10, with 1 being a little certain of our course and 10 being immutable steadfastness, Gerard would rank somewhere between 12 and 13.

He would not get dressed.

Mum would speak of how stubborn Gerard could be as a child, often recounting the story of getting him ready for church on Sunday as an example of this. It seems that when he was young, Gerard would refuse to get changed to go to church for Sunday Mass. Cajoling, then scolding and the inevitable swish of the cane (this was the 70s, mind, so don’t judge) would be necessary before he’d change into Sunday best.
Then he’d refuse to get into the car. Repeat, scolding, cane, etc.
Then once we’d all arrived at church, he’d refuse to get out of the car…
I’m not sure, but I believe he has heard the sermon from the back seat of our family car more than once.

As he grew up though, Dad had another take on this streak and proclaimed that Gerard’s stubbornness was actually a strength he could make use of, to keep plodding on even when things got tough.

Gerard (with Mum in background) in SIngapore, visiting the kids and playing with Michael. c 2003.

Things did get tough sometimes and plod on Gerard always did. After graduation from University of New South Wales with a BSc in Botany, he returned to Malaysia and started a job with The Lion Group. He was posted to Lahad Datu in Sabah, supposedly to do research. He flew in to Lahad Datu on 24 September 1985. And if you don’t know that date, check it out.

The day before, a bunch of pirates had landed at the main jetty in town, set up a mortar, rained mortar shells on the police station a little down the road, then walked up the main street firing with their M16s and eventually held up the bank and tried to escape with some loot.

He arrived after the pirates had left.

The Marine Police gave chase as they tried to flee and there are reports the Air Force were called in too. All that was on the 23rd. On the 24th, one Gerard Cheong arrived in a town that was mostly shuttered and closed, still reeling in shock from the carnage and death of the day before.

Gerard was taken out of town to the estate he was to live in for the next year, and he plodded on. The double-storey estate home had problems with the water pump which sometimes worked and sometimes did not, so Gerard really had a rural experience which he dealt with comfortably.

When we were much younger, we didn’t get on. Well, I didn’t think much about it and had no problem with my older brothers and sisters but of course Gerard, in his late teens and with a girlfriend as well, found me, in my very early teens, to be a pesky kid, frequently in his way. So we didn’t do anything much together unlike when we were very much younger. In fact he was often moody and surly when I was around.

All that changed when he went to Australia though. We started corresponding and when I got into cycling, he even sent me a book on cycling from Australia. He’d been very much into cycling before he left Malaysia and continued to cycle around in his university days and so often encouraged me in my pursuit of this pastime.

When he was in Lahad Datu and I got my Australian PR and was readying myself to go, he contacted me and invited me over to stay with him for a couple of weeks so he could see me before I left. He paid for my trip and so it was that my very first time on an aeroplane was to fly to Kota Kinabalu and then to take a connecting flight 6 hours later to Lahad Datu.

We had a good time while in Lahad Datu and I got to see and do some amazing things including seeing whole mountains being cleared for agriculture, or Gerard’s boss driving around with a shotgun in the boot, or accompanying a few staff as they delivered payroll in the estates - all in cash and protected by armed soldiers. And one night when he was busy and had asked a colleague to take me out for a drink or something, we ended up being tailed by her ex boyfriend. Lahad Datu is a small town and so there was no point in trying to lose him so she just drove around pointing out sights (not many of them in that small place, to be honest) while her ex drove about 100 metres behind. Quite an adventure.

Talking of adventure, I also got my first experience of 4-wheel-drive off-roading and of us getting stuck in ankle deep mud and walking through that slippery stuff - one step forward and slide half a step back - to rouse the tractor driver in the middle of the night so he could come and pull our Nissan Patrol out. Even with diff locks and low range, we could not escape the clutches of that goo, but the tractor yanked us out with disdain.

It was on that night that Gerard got into one of his ‘I’m going quiet and just plodding along’ moods. It wasn’t a big deal but I could tell he was frustrated he’d gotten us stuck and preferred not to talk about it, while we plodded on sorting it all out.

With Mum and Theresa in Penang.

Stubborn. And Moody. That's a combination for you...

I was to see this mood off an on over the years. It was never alarming and we learnt to just ignore him until it passed. He was just plodding on and sorting things out. In his own way, in his own time.

A couple of years later, Gerard and his wife, Kitt, moved to Australia. He became a citizen and eventually began a masters programme in Uni of Sydney. He also worked part time at the Immigration Department and some years after I’d returned to Malaysia, he left Australia - now divorced and diving into research for his masters - and went to live in Indo China to continue researching his subject matter: Resource Management along the Mekong.

The good thing about this was that we saw more of him as he was much nearer our family home. On one of those trips back, we decided to take Mum and her very dear friend, Theresa Soh, up to Penang to visit their friends Johnny Cardosa and his wife Yee Hah. I’ve mentioned them before when talking about my father’s death.

Anyway, the two ladies had a great time as did Gerard and I. They stayed with Johnny and Yee Hah while Gerard and I stayed at a hotel in Gurney. We drove around Penang and explored and did stuff. On the trip back to KL a few days later, Theresa said this was one of the best holidays she’d ever had.
She passed away a few years later, and Mum said she had often spoken of that wonderful holiday she’d had in Penang with us.

We've been on adventures.

Thinking back now, I realise I’ve actually gone away on trips with Gerard quite a few times. We went to Endau Rompin in 1999 when older brother Francis was starting on his job with the Malaysian Nature Society, building what was to become the Nature Education and Research Centre in Endau Rompin National Park.

We also went on a drive around northern Malaysia in 2003. We borrowed Francis’ Suzuki Jeep and drove up north, staying a night in Fraser’s Hill, then across and spent a couple of days in Gua Musang before coming back via a new highway that went from Gua Musang to Camerons. We went elsewhere as well but these 3 places are significant because each location had a special event.

We had decided to take turns at driving and I’d driven up Fraser’s so Gerard drove down. Traffic then was one way, at alternating hours and you are warned not to stop along the way. We stopped along the way.

We had to… As we set off, Gerard had slid the seat back to accommodate the 5-inch difference in our heights. A few minutes on and he still felt it was too cramped, not like when he had previously driven that same car. So he leant down, pulled up on the seat lever and with his long legs pushed hard against the seat in an attempt to force it back.

We heard this strange whooshing noise then suddenly the inside of the car filled with a white cloud. I thought at first that something had caught on fire then just as quickly realised that wasn’t it. It took us both 3 seconds then we both blurted out ‘Fire Extinguisher!’

The fire extinguisher had slipped down behind the driver’s seat and when Gerard pushed hard back against it, the rail of the seat punctured the canister and sent a kilogram of fine white dust swooshing into the cabin.

We pulled over and examined the car. The interior was coated in fine white powder, as were our bags and clothes, and as we resumed our journey with windows down, some blew out, leaving a trail of white dust in our wake. Someone following us would have thought we were in serious trouble. We weren’t really, of course, and we both had a good laugh about it. We eventually found a car wash with a makeshift vacuum cleaner and they sucked out most of the stuff.

In Gua Musang, we took a walk to the edge of town and climbed up a limestone hill, looking for a cave we’d heard about. A Malay gentleman and two young Orang Asli boys caught up with us then said we could follow them on up as they were going there too. And so we clambered up, me with my heavy camera backpack. At one point we strugg… no wait, make that ‘I’ struggled up and over a huge slippery rock. The Orang Asli boys had no trouble in their slippers while I slid and hung on to the rope with much difficulty. We even squeezed between two large rock faces so close together I had to take my back pack off. Eventually though, we arrived in a huge cavern which, to this day, I rate as one of the coolest things I’ve seen and done on my trips.

From Gua Musang, we set off on a highway we’d heard about. We found the highway alright and then realised two things - we didn’t know if it was the right one, and it had better be the right one as we only had fuel enough for about 120kms…

It was the right one. But it wasn’t completed and while cruising at about 100 km/h for some time, I spied the first speed limit sign along this road - 50 km/h! - and then had to slam on the brakes as the road ended. For the next few kms we struggled on bumpy gravel and traversed 3 or 4 streams/rivers as the bridges that would eventually ford them were gradually taking shape above us.

The highway traversed some beautiful scenery but this was sobering as we realised it was cutting through Orang Asli land and also maybe the pathways of wild animals.

On a trip to Singapore with Mum some time later, Gerard arrived looking a bit under the weather. Mum was OK and the trip down by bus had done her no harm but Gerard reckoned (after some persuasion and prodding) he’d eaten too much watermelon.

I tried asking if he wanted anything, doctor, medicine, water, hot tea… but he’d gone into that space and merely smiled softly. A smile that said ‘leave me alone’ so I did. And amazingly, by the next morning he was right as rain.

A Government man. A family man.

Gerard returned to Australia after his stint in Indo China then got involved with the United Nations and did some work for them back in Indo China and East Timor before accepting a job with the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs, handling their development fund in Jakarta then East Timor. On his first stint in Timor, he met Leoniza and they eventually got married in 2004, around the time of the Asian Tsunami… He certainly has a knack for picking dates of life changing events.

After Mum passed away in 2016, we’ve seen much less of Gerard and don’t chat with him on WhatsApp much either. At first I thought he had simply gone into one of his ‘leave me alone’ moods but this one persisted. He’d moved back to Canberra after some years in Jakarta then East Timor with Leoniza and their son David.

I met Gerard again in February when we were in Australia for our niece’s wedding. He looked much the same though now with a bit more grey hair. And despite the longer ‘leave me alone’ phase, he was reasonably chatty and funny like he always had been.

He’s got a lot more on his shoulders now what with the pressures of work and of parenthood in his 50s. He just turned 59 on the 2nd of April, actually so I can understand how dealing with all that can be tough at this age. Still, like he always has, Gerard plods on, unwaveringly, steadfast and stubborn.

You remember what I said about the gap in our ages? Maybe it wasn’t that I was an accident, or that there was another in between. Maybe Mum just knew he would be a handful and thought they’d need a breather…

Whatever it was, when I look back at the adventures we’ve had, the trips we’ve taken and the drives we’ve enjoyed together, I know that despite all else, we could easily now just hop in a car and take off for a week away somewhere again. Together. And be perfectly happy doing that.

Cos we’re brothers, Gerard and I.
Happy 59th, Gerard.