LWE Chapter 16: Sibling Birthdays - September

It was 1988. I had deferred my course in Australia and had already been in KL a few weeks to spend time with family while I continued to process Dad’s passing a few months earlier. My friend Andrew suggested that I could get some freelance work in Singapore through his contacts. Andrew and I both used Mac computers, a skill that was rare in those days, and Andrew reckoned I could use his Mac SE to do some stuff.

So I went down to Singapore to explore this opportunity. And I did actually find some work with a PR firm and a typesetting company (remember them?) and while working on the projects they gave me, I stayed with Andrew, Gan and Irene, all old schoolmates who were sharing a flat.

I would meet up with Tony every now and then and during one of those meetups, he asked about my plans and if I needed anything. I explained what I was doing, and talking through it made us realise I might have a slight cash flow issue so when he asked, I said yeah, 50 bucks would be good and would tide me over until I got some payments in.

He said he would sort that out but ‘give me a couple of days to cash a cheque’.

Many years later, we were chatting about some stuff and Tony made a comment about how tight he used to be in those days what with buying a flat and all that. And it was then I suddenly remembered that ‘give me a few days’ comment and the realisation dawned on me that he must have been quite tight indeed to need a few days to sort out $50. But he never said no, and readily set me up a couple of days later. He never hesitated to give, something he’s not stopped until now.

Chick Magnet. But not who you think it is.

When I was much younger, the sibling I spent the most time with was Tony. I never thought much about it in those days. I knew all his school friends, especially his closest friend, Hillary. ‘Hill’ who’d transferred from La Salle Klang to La Salle PJ for his 6th Form years, became a regular fixture in our house as they studied for their HSC.

Mum would sometimes try to open the door to Tony’s room early in the morning to wake him up for school or whatever, only to find the door blocked by the feet of a sleeping Hillary Fredericks who’d simply stayed overnight and slept on the floor.

Tony supporting me in everything I did... while keeping an eye on the chicks. This was taken in 1967 in Taman Jaya and sitting on the see-saw with me was my eldest sister Margaret. 

That's me with Tony. Big and Strong he said...

Tony is standing in between Dad and Margaret in the back row. Tony would soon shoot up to 6' and overshadow Dad.

For reasons I did not know or care about then, Tony and Hill would often bring 7-year old me along wherever they went. I think sometimes even they were not sure where they were going because I have a very clear recollection of once being in the back seat of Hill’s mini as he and Tony got to the Section 16 roundabout (which no longer exists) with no clear idea of where they wanted to go next so while trying to decide, Hill simply went around and around the roundabout. 7 times. I counted.

Tony would sometimes take me out on his own as well, and I guess that was partly so Mum wouldn’t have to worry about me. Maybe she should have because on one of those drives Tony was not 400 metres from our house, going around a corner when a guy on a scooter turned pit unexpectedly with the result Tony had his first crash, knocking the poor fellow into the drain.

Another time, I was kicking up a big fuss about a movie - was it Chitty Chitty Bang Bang? - as I knew it would have a preview and I wanted to watch it. Mum said I could wait until the movie had its actual airing a little later (this was the practice in those days) but I of course could not wait and kicked up a fuss ‘What if it never gets shown again?’ so in exasperation, she told Tony to bring me to the cinema. Which he did seemingly without complaint.

Some years later, I found out another reason why I was always tagging along with Tony and Hill. We were going through some old stuff left behind in the family home and came across a large birthday card Tony’s 6th Form schoolmates had made for him.

The card opened out to a page full of goodwill and congratulatory messages and in amongst them was a message from one of the girls. ‘Bring your cute little brother along again next time…’
It turns out I was being used as a chick magnet… I still feel so used… ha ha

Tony being stylish in a much-too-small jacket, standing next to a much more debonair long-time friend, Patrick Augustin. I know I have a few pictures of Tony with Hill, but could not find one.

Tony did his 6th Form in the early 70s and seemed to have such an exciting life. Besides being able to drive Dad’s car and take us around, he was always surrounded by friends, some of whom I know he keeps in touch with until today. And he was also always getting up to all sorts of mischief and nonsense.

The Trouble Magnet

In his teenage years, he may have attracted many friends - and with my help, some girls as well -  but when he was very young, Tony attracted trouble instead. Once, running around our garden, either chasing or being chased by our neighbour Sunny, he took a tumble and broke a flower pot. With his forehead. A deep gash saw my Mum rushing him to the hospital where the doctor announced he needed to put in a few stitches. A frightened young Tony grabbed Mum’s hand and said ‘Mummy, don’t look away - look at me, OK?’ So Mum did. She saw the needle go in once. Twice. On the third insertion, blackness descended and poor Mum fainted. So the doctor had suddenly to deal with both a frightened bleeding young boy as well as his unconscious mother.

Another time, he was cycling furiously down the road in front of our house one day, racing some of the neighbours. He was in the lead and at one point excitedly looked back to see how far ahead he was… and immediately crashed straight into a neighbour’s rubbish bin, upsetting it, and landing up in the drain with the bin and its contents all over him. The neighbour’s gardener came rushing over to extricate him. The neighbour was none other than Kee Huat of Kee Huat Radio fame and this is one fantastic fact we have to cherish...

Tony trying out my Foldie and not crashing.

In school, Tony must have maintained that habit of making a nuisance of himself and getting up to no good. Mum once said that Brother Lawrence, the headmaster of La Salle and a family friend, had a word with her and warned her that Tony needed to focus and if he continued to hang around with that Fredericks boy, he would surely do badly in his HSC exams.
I think he didn’t do too badly because after his HSC, Tony went to London where he did his articleship as he worked towards his Chartered Accountancy qualifications.

On one of the first days after I got to upper secondary in 1980, many years after Tony had left the school, I walked into the staff room to speak with my class teacher, Puan Basariah. Sitting opposite her was this buck-toothed Chinese lady teacher with horn rimmed glasses. She stared at me for a full minute then interrupted my dealings with Pn Basariah and interjected with ‘Here, boy… are you a Cheong?’
A little astonished, I replied ‘Yes I am.’
To which she asked ‘Are you Anthony Cheong’s brother?’
‘Yes, I am.’
‘Are you the last of your brothers?’
‘Yes, I am’ I said for the third time. and with a hugely exaggerated sweep of her right arm across her forehead she exclaimed ‘Well, thank God for THAT!’

That lady was Mrs Wong Boon Chong and she had taught Tony, and would later teach me too, much to her dismay. The story goes that one day in her class, Tony, leaning back in his chair at the back of the classroom (where a few of us Cheongs liked to place ourselves), called out loudly to her as she taught ‘What did you say?’
Mrs Wong replied ‘I said “Shirt”. S-H-I-R-T, Shirt’
To which Tony responded with ‘Ohhhh I thought you’d said Shit. S-H-I-T, Shit…’ Unbeknownst to him, Bro Lawrence had sneaked into the classroom via the back door and was standing directly behind him, a wooden ruler in his hand. The moment Tony finished that last sentence, WHACK! that ruler smacked down hard on Tony’s head…

I had a lot to live up to in school, though truth be told, for all the mischief he got up to, all the teachers who’d known him were actually rather fond of him. He was especially close to Mr Subra, chemistry teacher and the head of the prefectorial board in which Tony had served. He had in fact run for Head Prefect and I remember a bunch of them… OK maybe Hill and him… making elections posters. Out of a field of 4, I think Tony finished third behind eventual winner Raymond Szetho and another friend Philip Ho. See? I told you I knew his friends.

Warwick Road, London, calling... errr... writing.

During his years in the UK, he was a much better correspondent than either Gerard or Joe were and we would regularly receive multi-page letters written on onion skin paper, sent from Warwick Rd, London SW5.

I used to read these and eventually Tony and I corresponded too. He was away quite a few years before his one holiday home.  On that trip, he found that we both shared an interest in photography and when he returned to London, he subscribed to a photography magazine and had the issues sent on to me. I learned a lot from those magazines and they were instrumental in giving me a good foundation in photography. See what I mean about giving?

Tony was eventually joined in London by Francis who also lived with him, until Tony qualified and returned, to work for Ernst & Whinney (now Ernst & Young) in Singapore.

This was in 1982 as I was preparing for my SPM exams. We still wrote, amazingly, as calls were expensive then. In one letter in May 1982, he urged me to do better than my trial exam results were suggesting I would do. ‘Even I didn’t do so badly in Form 5’ he said. As incentive to do better, he promised to subsidise the cost of a camera flash unit for me, if I got at least a credit in Malay (BM). My trial results were not encouraging in that respect, shall we say.

When the SPM results came out, I was one of the 3 best in La Salle for BM, scoring the highest grade the examiners saw fit to award a student of La Salle PJ, a C3, just below the Distinction grades of A1 and A2.

Tony, besides being someone I spent a lot of time with, was also sometimes my go-to guy if I needed to find out something. He always struck me as being knowledgeable and wise. I would even sometimes find myself using him as a benchmark when trying to do something new. And so I’d ask him everything from working out how to pronounce ‘resource’ (is it re-source or re-zaws?), to stuff about cars, or even emulating his sometimes sarcastic sense of humour. I looked up to him and tried to model myself a little after him in many ways.

Only Tony could pull this off...making three nephews kowtow for Angpows during Chinese New Year.

That would seem strange as Tony and I are very different people, generally. We do share a wicked Cheong sense of humour and we both reach out to help people, albeit in different ways according to our own resources - or re-zawses… But essentially we are quite different characters. I am flighty and a little reactionary, Tony is more measured and considerate. I can sometimes be harsh on people who don’t do the right thing, Tony is altogether more forgiving. I must admit that I have gratefully been on the receiving end of his generosity and non-judgement.

Tony’s birthday is on the 22nd of September and this was the date of my first wedding too. Tony and Seow Miang were there for the wedding and he was also a natural choice as godfather to my first son, Mark, 2 years after that.

10 years later, as I celebrated a decade of marriage with a divorce, Tony was there too. It was a very tough time for me as I was dealing with the tail end of the Asian Financial Crisis hitting us hard (I had to downsize the office and staffing) as well at that time. Kind of a double whammy.

Tony took his godfather role rather seriously and would take 8-year old Mark out every other week or so. On one of those outings, he asked Mark what he would like to eat and Mark said Pizza Hut. So off they went. They returned later and Tony, still wide-eyed with astonishment, told me Mark had polished off a whole pizza AND a lasagna all on his own…

I'll always be grateful for the effort made by Tony in keeping in touch with my kids.

Mopping around Boxes and Noodles by Cab.

In 2002, I had begun to move away from the Brand Communications work I had been doing and set up my own home office to do various choice projects and explore new things. I closed my regular office and with the divorce finalised, also finally moved some furniture from the jointly-owned flat to my new home in Siglap. The move was tiring. I had to sort out furniture and paraphernalia from both the office as well as flat, and ever the emotional one, was also struggling to deal with the changes in my life.

Tony rang one day and asked how things were. I told him the house was dusty and boxes were still piled up in the living room downstairs. He said he would come over to mop. I said it was pointless as it would get dusty again and anyway I could just continue to wear shoes downstairs, but he insisted and turned up the next day.

And we swept and mopped around the boxes. And it did make a difference. I could unpack in comfort and that was the day my new house began to be my home.

One event that sticks in my memory from around this time is how, after also disposing of my car and trying to make do without one for a few months, I got a bit worn out and fell ill a few times. I had known my fitness was deteriorating and in an attempt to keep active, both for my fitness as well as to stave off the effects of my Ankylosing Spondylitis, I had bought an Elliptical - a kind of a treadmill-cum-stairmaster. I was putting in some regular time on that and found out that before you get fitter, you will probably tire yourself out first. Which I did. All the walking and rushing about as well as the exercise had worn me out and I promptly fell ill a couple of times. Quite seriously too. On one occasion I even needed to get my doctor to come on a housecall.

It was one day during that bout that Tony rang - as he regularly did - to find out how things were. I found to my surprise that I was close to tears when I told him I was I was very ill again and could hardly get out. I hadn’t realised how frustrated I was until he called. He asked if I had anything for dinner and when I said not much, he said he was busy at work but he’d take care of that and buy me some soupy noodles and bring them over later.

As things turned out, Tony didn’t make it over. But the noodles did. Delivered by a very concerned taxi driver who made sure I got the noodles OK. Tony had booked a cab to send me the noodles he’d promised when he realised he was going to be late at work.

I took the packet from the taxi driver and got back in the house then almost burst into tears again. I was touched then, and recounting this story again after so many years, I am still touched by his kindness and his reaching out. As he always has.

Mei and I were in JB and Tony came over to meet us and Francis for lunch.

Tony examining his leech bites on our trip to Endau in 1998.

There are countless other instances when Tony’s generosity was in evidence. Besides being generous though, what I always found most admirable is how he combines that with an acceptance and non-judgement, offering advice and asking questions in the best mentoring and coaching tradition.
I think the best friends are those who make themselves available, who support you whether you’re up or down, and who don’t judge you on the choices you make but instead help you hone your ideas and refine your decisions so you can be as good as you can. You know you can always rely on them and you know too that you would readily do the same in return.

In this sense, I would think that my 3rd Brother is one of the best friends I’ve ever had.

Happy 65th birthday, Tony.

LWE Chapter 12: Sibling Birthdays - March

When Mum and Dad were still alive, the birthdays of my parents and my siblings spanned each month from February through October. Both Mum and Dad are gone now so we start the chain off a little later, in March, with eldest brother Joe’s birthday, and have a little gap in July when Dad’s is. I thought it would be nice to pay a little tribute to my 6 brothers and sisters so here’s the first in the series.

Two Snakes in the Family

Joseph Cheong is my eldest brother and the second in the family. He is exactly a Chinese zodiac cycle older than me and I guess as Snakes we should share some common characteristics but I would be hard pressed to pinpoint many.

Mum and Dad, despite their rather restricted budget, packed him off to Sydney in 1971, to do his HSC and then Uni. He managed the first well enough, but struggled through the second, eventually changing from a BSc to B Optom, and in this new field finally made progress and qualified as an Optometrist some years later.

He remains, in my experience and opinion, the best Optometrist I have ever visited. Joe is thorough and exacting and every single pair of glasses he’s ever made for me were perfect right out of the case.

Early in 1971, Mum and Dad decided I should attend the Methodist Kindergarten next door to the EPF where Dad worked. Have you ever seen kids who wail continuously at school, crying out for their parents?

Well, I was one of them it seems. Short bursts of calm punctuated a general cacophonous desire to be back at home. One of my few memories of my 3 or 4 days spent at that kindergarten was of Joe accompanying me. He must have been waiting to go to Australia then and got tasked by my parents to take care of the pesky, spoilt, youngest one. I remember playing with some blocks or something one day and making a nuisance of myself and when a teacher leaned over to help and asked me what I wanted, I pointed at the figure of my brother who was casually sitting with his back against the wall at the side of the building and said, in between sobs, that I wanted to go home with my brother.

The One who Hardly Wrote Back

Eventually Mum and Dad took me out of kindy, and Joe had some respite before he left for Sydney.

In those days international phone calls were very expensive and had to be booked through an operator. They were very rare occurrences and instead we communicated with our overseas family by letter, often those blue single-page aerogrammes. Margaret wrote regularly from London and eventually when Tony went in 1974, he did too. Joe was the exception and hardly wrote.

I was then in Primary school and I remember Mum and Dad sometimes complaining that they hadn’t heard from him. It’s not easy being a parent separated from your kids - I know this intimately. And so I have some inkling as to how they must have worried and fretted though they hardly showed it.

Joe graduated from the University of New South Wales with a B Optom and has practiced as a very good Optometrist since then.

In time though, Joe graduated, got a job then married Hong Kong-born Hilda Chan. Mum and Dad flew over for the wedding and my father was completely smitten by his first daughter in law. At the wedding, Dad was given a carafe of wine all to himself, and suitably lubricated, he became a star. As the groom gave his speech, someone in the crowd yelled out ‘Kiss the bride!’ and before Joe could even respond, Dad called out ‘Any time!’. All recorded on video and laughed at by all of us for years.

After my Form 5, we applied for me to go to Australia to do my 6th Form at the school that Joe had attended in Ashfield. I got in to the school, partly by virtue of having had a sibling there, but I did not have enough points to qualify for a student visa so we shelved those plans.

The Younger Snake Joins the Elder One

A few years later, my Mum had the bright idea to apply for me to go to Australia again, but this time as a migrant. I was then studying at the Malaysian Institute of Art and generally bumbling my way along as I did for about 40 of my earlier years…

Joe sponsored me under the family reunification programme and despite what I thought was a disastrous interview, I somehow qualified in double quick time and before I knew what was happening, I was in Sydney, being picked up by Joe in his gold Mazda 626, whizzing our way past unfamiliar red brick houses to 83 Thomson Street, Drummoyne where I was to live for the next year.

Joe and Hilda were then expecting their first child, Ashley, who would come into the world in May 1986. Before that though, much was to happen.

I was too late for entry to Uni so Hilda somehow got me a job at the company she worked for, Charge Card Services Ltd which managed the Bankcard Credit Card system. That system was eventually to be taken over by the banks and CCSL was to be wound up but that was some time away yet so until the end of 1986 I worked first in the basement where I helped to shred computer printouts and microfilm and microfiche, then in the Computer-Output-to-Microfilm Department which generated all that stuff that I had been destroying in my first months there. The first was a tedious job with some mild drama every now and then. My colleagues were Norm, an old English bloke, Phil, a young Aussie and eventually also Theo, a Greek guy who never felt cold even as the rest of us shivered with our cups of hot chocolate in that bare basement in the middle of winter.

My pay was a little over A$200 per week - minimum wage - and Joe told me to save it all. I would stay with him free and need not worry about a roof over my head, nor the meals we had together. Instead I should save my money and put it towards Uni/College the following year.

Authority, Diplomacy and Firmness

During Easter of 1986, I went with Joe and Hilda to Bateman’s Bay. A holiday by the sea, this was cut short when Hilda’s grandmother had a stroke and eventually passed away. We rushed back to Sydney. And then shortly after that, Hilda’s father, who had been battling cancer, also passed on, leaving her mother to live alone in a large house in Day St a few minutes away.

It was a double whammy which would knock the sails out of anybody but that was when I first saw how Joe would calmly weather a storm and sort things out. Joe had been well liked by the old man who had seen the young Malaysian change from a long haired cigarette-smoking suitor weak in Cantonese, to a responsible business owner husband who could play Mahjong with the best of them. Joe had gained the old man’s respect and affection and during the family meetings that took place over the next few weeks, I saw my brother navigate potentially stormy waters with some authority, a little diplomacy and more than a smidgen of firmness.

He gained a lot of my respect then too.

Hilda and Joe moved to Day St to be with her Mum, something that Rosemary and Yap would mirror a few years later when my Dad passed away. I was left alone in Thomson St and managed, even trying my hand at cooking.

By this time I was working in a different department and working shift hours. My pay had gone up to around A$270 per week and I had thought that my relatively solitary life might be enhanced with a set of wheels to take me around and let me see more of the city I had adopted.

It was Joe and Hilda who sat me down one day, listened to my thoughts on the matter then casually suggested a Datsun 240Z might not be the best decision at that point. ‘Save your money’ they said. And so I did. They were wise words indeed.

Drama In My New Home and A Number That Saved My Gear

In February 1987 I entered the Graphic Design Certificate programme at Randwick College of TAFE. Joe had prodded me to check out courses and I eventually applied for Industrial Design at Sydney Uni and this one. Although just a certificate, it was a highly regarded institute and I was one of 75 successful applicants out of many hundreds who apply each year.

Joe rang around and found me a room with a friend who lived in Coogee, not far from Randwick. And so I moved in with Mark Jong and started college. I had, by then, begun receiving the Austudy grant which paid the $50 per week rent and my savings, now quite some thousands and spread out between cash accounts and fixed deposits, paid for my school bills, food and so on.

Design was hard work but I had a comfortable place at Mark's

The year of free accommodation at Joe and Hilda’s essentially gave me the resources to pay for college and I am proud of the fact my parents did not have to send me money for my tertiary education. I am grateful too of course to my brother who had made it possible for to save that money in the first place.
As for Mark, he was and remains a lovely man. Staying with him was not without incident though…
He had previously offered to let the room out to a troubled young lady who borrowed some cash then disappeared, so some time later the room was mine instead.

What was very nearly no longer mine though was all my camera gear. The young lady broke in on the first Saturday after I moved in. Joe had earlier helped by giving me some furniture and a radio. On my first Saturday living on my own, he’d invited me to lunch in Chinatown just to make sure I was OK then later gave me a ride home.

It was the radio that saved my stuff. I came back to broken glass on the balcony and all my gear - and that radio - stolen. Wandering around in a daze, I started cleaning up and wondering what to do next when the phone rang. It was Joe asking if everything was OK. It turned out that the thief had taken all the stuff to a pawn shop to dispose of. The radio had Joe’s driver’s licence number engraved on the back, and the suspicious pawn shop owner called the cops who traced the licence number to Joe and called him. He’d just gotten back and told the cops the radio was his, had been given to his brother and was likely stolen.

The girl was arrested and I got all my gear back.

The second weekend was a repeat of the first. Lunch with Joe then back home to broken glass and worse - bloody hand prints on the stairwell and in the flat. The young lady had come back for revenge, smashed her arm through the thick balcony window and trashed the place. The cops had been called though, and she was arrested. Real drama… though thankfully, it all settled down soon enough.

Always Keeping An Eye On Me

Many months later, I was going through a bout of circumspection brought on by a case of unrequited love. Not especially depressed, I nevertheless began to contemplate life in general and my own life in particular. On a whim I called my cousin and casually asked if she knew anything about wills. Like I said, I wasn’t about to do anything drastic, but my cousin, in some alarm, immediately rang Joe and told him to check on me. Which he did and in his calm manner, he didn’t ask me directly but instead invited me to dinner that weekend.

And other meals and meetups thereafter where he could quietly and furtively determine my mental and emotional state. All this was oblivious to me - I have, and remain, often unaware of these secretive moves. I only realised it some time later but will always be grateful that the same calm, collected and diplomatic manner Joe had employed during the bereavements of the previous years had been his approach with me.

Although my financial situation was OK, Joe decided he would like to make sure I got a little pocket money so asked if I’d like to pop in to his shop once a week or so and do some cleaning. And so it came to pass that John Cheong, who at the time did have some resemblance to Joseph Cheong, would drop by Joseph Cheong Optometrists early on Monday morning, open up the shop and set about vacuuming the floor, wiping the counter and shelves and dusting the frames on display. I don’t think I did a fantastic job but this was Joe making sure I was OK again. I did manage to confuse the postman though, who popped in to drop mail off as I was cleaning and called out ‘G’day Joe!’ to my back as I busied myself. This happened two weeks in a row before he paused on the third week and said ‘You’re not Joe, are you?’ I still remember that quizzical look on his face as he asked me that. Hilarious!

We were in Malaysia at the end of 1987 for Rosemary and Yap’s wedding and in January of 1988 we discovered Dad had terminal cancer. I made plans to move back for a few months to spend time with him, but I was too late.

Our last family picture before Dad passed away. I'm on the far left next to Joe.

The Younger One Leaves

On the morning of 30 April 1988, Joe rang me and said we’d best go back home as Dad was not doing well. I told him I’d put some things together, get a haircut then come over. He said no problem and so a couple of hours later I arrived at Day St where they were still staying. I rang the bell, greeted them and walked in. Hilda discreetly left us alone and Joe sat me down and told me Dad had passed away that morning.

He said it calmly and quietly then gave me some space to gather my thoughts.

I sat there for a few minutes. Tears did not come. Just a sense of paralysis and a weird stillness. This moment was not unexpected but was still quite jarring on my being. The man I had wanted so much to be able to relate to as an adult had not waited for me.

We drove back to Coogee, got my things, went to the airport and spent the next few days among grieving family and friends in PJ.

I left Australia in August 1988, taking that deferment I had applied for. My mind and my heart were not on my course and I needed to be back in PJ. It was only supposed to be for 6 months and I moved my stuff to Joe’s for the time being.

I never returned to live in Sydney. One thing led to another and I found my heart was still very much in Malaysia so I stayed on, then made my way to Singapore. Joe did help me dispose of the stuff I told him to throw out but I just found out a few weeks ago, he still has my LPs and some other stuff in a garage.

So maybe there is something we share, after all. A propensity to keep some stuff. He’s not quite the pack rat I am but he definitely has that element in his makeup.

Joe a few days before his daughter's wedding in February of this year

He gave an amusing, witty and captivating speech at the wedding.

Yes, he's my brother alright...

In all other respects, the man I once had a passing resemblance to, the Snake 12 years older than me, the man who in many ways had taken on fatherly duties to me a few times in my life, we weren’t the same. And still aren’t. I’m flighty, reactionary and more than a little passionate about things.

Joe is steady, calming, and reassuring. He quietly goes about making things work, can cook pretty well and is a responsible and trustworthy man. In recent times he and Hilda have become successful real estate developers. Joe still goes in to his shop 3 days a week and to me he seems not to have changed much since that day in March 1986 when he picked me up at the airport.

And for that I am eternally grateful.

Thank you for being big brother, and in some ways, quite like a Dad, and happy 66th birthday, Joe.