Of foreign sounds, supermarket shopping and tiny freezers.

 5/366 - Project 366 2024

We do a lot of our shopping at Tesco. Yes, yes, I know it’s now called Lotus’s but I cannot bear to vocalise that grammatical abomination nor even type it out. Actually I think I know why the Thai Lotus chain ended up with this solecism when they took over Tesco in Malaysia. I’m pretty sure it’s because ’Lotus Stores’ has already been registered locally, forcing the Thai company to adopt this misnamed version here instead. 

Whatever the reason, I find it very difficult to use the new name so for this essay I shall just use Tesco.

As I was saying, we often shop at Tesco, specifically the store at Sungai Dua not far from Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM). The new academic year started not too long ago and the Tesco customer demographic has changed dramatically as a result.

There’s been a sudden rise in the number of younger customers: men and women in their early 20s dragging or pushing their carts up and down the aisles. The next thing you notice is that there is something a little out of place with these young people. That they’re Chinese is not too surprising considering we are in Penang where Chinese-Malaysians outnumber the other races. However, these young adults aren’t Chinese Malaysians. They’re Chinese. Full-stop. They speak a foreign Mandarin with more rolling sounds, and they speak it at a volume just that little bit higher than locals do. They dress more flamboyantly than locals do. Errr I think you can guess that ‘flamboyant’ is probably being a little kind in some instances.

And they’re not just buying food stuff or snacks, but cleaning implements and concoctions as well - brooms, mops, dishwashing liquid, laundry detergent… I can’t recall the last time I saw a local 20-something walk into Tesco and browse around the toilet brush section.

Seeing them huddled in small groups trying to decide between Glo and Sunlight Dishwashing liquid, or discussing what size of rubbish bin to get for their room, and whether a big bag of Ruffles is a justifiable expense in their budget, my mind is cast back to 1987 and my student life in Australia.

It was my mother’s idea to try and get me Australian Permanent Residence. ‘Your brother can sponsor you’, she’d said and I just went along with it. Filled in the forms, went for what I thought was a disastrous interview at the Australian High Commission in Yap Kwan Seng Road in KL, came home and said to Mum that I was probably staying put in KL. 

It was quite a surprise then that a letter came not a month later, saying that I had been granted provisional residence, subject to a medical exam and asking me to present myself at a doctor’s on a particular date and time, which I did.

A few months later, I was picked up at Kingsford Smith Airport by my brother Joe and my life in Sydney, Australia had begun.

I worked for a year in the western suburb of Auburn and saved enough money to put myself through college for the next 2 years. Joe had kindly refused to accept money for my staying with him and his wife, Hilda, and as I had no friends to go out with, my savings at the end of the year amounted to quite a tidy sum. This, along with my Austudy government allowance of A$50 a week, meant I could enroll in the much-respected Graphic Design course at Randwick College of TAFE, and get by without assistance from my family.

And so it was that in late January 1987, I moved from the by-then familiar comforts of a single-storey house in Thomson Street, Drummoyne, to a small room in a 2-bedroom apartment in Oberon St, Coogee.

I could of course, pronounce Coogee properly and with a few hints from Joe and my other brother Gerard, both of whom had attended the nearby University of New South Wales, could navigate my way around the area without much trouble too.

The subsequent 2 years are so full of incident I could fill a book with them. Instead I’ll just stick a few stories in here and maybe save some for later.

There were two supermarkets along Belmore Road in Randwick,  Coles and Franklins. Joe had suggested Franklins as the prices were lower and for the first couple of weeks I did indeed shop there. Later on I switched to Coles as the shopping experience was better. It was a tiny bit more pricey but that wasn’t so much of an issue. I remember Coles had an Asian cashier on some days, not that meant anything - it was just something I noticed.

The apartment I moved into was on the 1st floor of a block of walk-up apartments perpendicular to the main road, Oberon St. Down the driveway, up a staircase serving 2 apartments on each floor and our door was on the left as you came up to the landing.

Mark Jong, who owned the apartment was a friend of Hilda’s brother and that’s how the introduction was made. He was a bachelor about 10-15 years my senior and a really nice guy. The thing about Mark was that he worked in his family business - manufacturing frozen dimsims - and thus did not need to dress up for work. This casualness  extended to his attitude to keeping the apartment clean too as it turned out.

On my first shopping trip, I went the whole hog. I did the thing I saw those Chinese university students do. I got the toilet brush, the dishwashing liquid, the laundry detergent, a bottle of Jif scouring liquid, sponges, scouring pads… the whole cleaning company spread. But wait. I bought groceries too of course. Vegetables, a 2-litre cask of white wine, a variety of meats, a bottle of Baileys, a tub of ice-cream and a small bottle of Dewars. OK I think you can see where my priorities lay… Of course I got the grog from a bottle shop, but the rest was from Franklins and I heaved the bags onto a bus and excitedly carried it all upstairs to my new home.

Mark wasn’t around much. When he wasn’t working, he often was mucking around with some Brine Shrimp project he was trying to get off the ground with a friend, so I pretty much had the place to myself. As part of his casual approach to setting up home, he didn’t have a big fridge. In fact it was a little single-door unit with the freezer a compartment within the main body of the fridge.

I set the bags down, opened the fridge and started putting things away. The veggies went in the crisper, the wine thankfully fit in the fridge. But oops… the ice cream did not… I had opened the freezer door and stuffed the paper tub in. Or rather I had tried to. It was too tall… I managed to somehow press the sides together a bit and crush it sideways into the freezer but it was then taking up too much space…

That night, after a dinner I had cooked for myself, I had a very large dessert. I don’t think I have eaten so much ice cream in one sitting since. No, I didn’t finish the tub. Just enough to be able to scrunch down the top of the tub by about an inch and thus force it in the freezer.

Spying cleaning up stuff in the Uni students’ carts, I recalled how I cleaned up the kitchen. It was just a few days after I’d moved in. The tiny kitchen was comfortable enough. Grey cabinets above and below, light grey vinyl floor tiles, a gas stove, sink - it was plenty for a young uni student to cook meals in. 

Mark obviously had not done much cleaning so I started with the cabinets. Took stuff out (there wasn’t much to take out, really), cleaned it all up with some Jif, wiped it and put stuff back in. It was starting to look and smell rather nice.

The next day I attacked the grey floor tiles. I got myself a basin of water, a scouring pad and squirted some Jif on the first tile and scrubbed. It was then that I realised the tiles were not actually light grey. They were originally white…

“Damn…’ I muttered. OK I think I didn’t actually say ‘Damn’ but I’m pretty sure it was a four letter utterance. Now that I had revealed one white tile, I could not very well stop, or even do a casual (lacklustre) job. So there I sat for an hour, scrubbing away.

I ust admit it looked pretty good after all that effort and Mark even walked in later and went ‘Wow! The place looks great!’

My new routine was shaping up. College in the day, trundle back home by bus, then cook dinner. On the cooking front, I was making up stuff as I went along. Only once in two years did I cook something I could not eat. Most times liberal quantities of wine in preparation meant the kitchen smelled great and the food was palatable. 

Talking about wine… In the first few weeks of living there, I wondered why I was so tired out at night. I really struggled to do my homework at night. Then one night I worked out what the problem was. 

I’d come home, take some meat out and slice it up and season it. I’d cut up the veggies, chop some ginger and garlic and then marinate the meat. At this point I’d pour myself a glass of wine to accompany the exertions as it were. I’d also pour some into whatever meat dish I was preparing.

As I cooked I’d finish my glass of wine then when I sat down to eat, would pour myself another little glass. After dinner I’d get out the Baileys and pour myself a small glass of it before I cleaned everything up.

Washing done, TV on, Baileys downed, I’d then settle down for a few minutes of the news or whatever, accompanied by a wee dram of the Dewars. I wasn’t so much tired as bordering on being drunk!

Let me just save some of the other college-life stories for later and fast-forward things a bit to 2015. I was by then running Pedal Cafe in Balik Pulau and one of my friends was a lady, YM, who ran a BnB place nearby. One day I posted some pictures on Facebook of my time at Randwick College and she messaged me and asked ‘You went to Randwick? I did too!’

‘Wow! What year were you there?’ I asked.

’88-89’ she replied.

I was there from 87-88…

Turns out that YM studied Accounting and they were in a different building. Still, it was a bit of a pleasant coincidence and we chatted briefly about life in Randwick. Then she said she had worked part time. As a cashier at Coles.

‘Hang on a bit…’ I said. ‘You worked at Coles in ’88?’

‘Yes.’

‘As a cashier?’

‘Yes.’

‘There was ONE Asian cashier at Coles. I remember. I used to shop there all the time.’

‘That was me’ she said.

Setting up home away from home was fun. My 1 1/2 years in Coogee was transformational. I made friends, learnt new things not least of all about myself, picked up new skills, did things I had not thought I could or would do, and even endured two break-ins a week apart. More on that later… I hope these Chinese students enjoy their time in Penang. OK, leave out the break-ins bit. If I could I would tell them to live fully, explore, enjoy, experience. Oh, and if the floor tiles are light grey, do test one little corner first before you scrub away with the Cif. 

 Of Death and Numbers

4/366

Ah the fourth instalment. On the fourth day of the twenty-fourth year. There are those who’d have us write this year as 2023A, avoiding the malediction of reciting the unlucky number 4. The sequence, in fact, is even more diabolical: 2-0-2-4 can be read in Cantonese as Easy Come, Easy Die.

And indeed death is on my mind. 

Just this afternoon I was sent a message announcing that one of my former classmates had passed on. Details emerged over the next couple of hours - a heart attack, a peaceful passing, gone at 58. He and I have not been close in the last 15 - 20 years but even so, he was my friend and his passing is a sharp reminder of my own mortality.

I think the first time I witnessed human life being snatched away was when I was perhaps 4 or 5 years old. I remember my father driving our family car and I think my mother sat with me in the back. We were stopped at a busy junction - well, as busy as traffic could get in the late 60s - a dusty road in front of us. There was a sudden commotion, a large lorry flashed across my field of view, going from right to left along the road, its image framed by the front windscreen. An unusual crashing noise I had never heard before, then a collective gasp of sorts, doors of neighbouring cars flung open, men rushing forward, my mum going ‘Oh!’, then an image of a young man’s body being carried past us - he wore a white shirt, I recall. Then a second body. 

‘What’s happened?’ I asked.

‘Don’t look’ my Mum said to me and as I lowered my head, I heard my Dad say ‘the lorry hit the bicycle…’

The hubbub settled and we were soon on our way again. But I shall never forget that vision of the white-shirted body of a young man, limp arms and legs dangling, being borne away by another man.

At about the same age, I was responsible for the death of one of our puppies. Our dog Rombo had given birth to a litter of pups and we’d kept one. One afternoon as I was watching the world go by from the front door of the house, I spied a cat sitting on a low concrete wall across the quiet road our house was on. ‘Ooosh, Rombo!’ I went, making the noise our dogs had come to learn to mean ‘Look! Something to chase!’. In an instant she too saw the cat and dashed down our driveway and across the road. The little puppy ran after her just as a car came up the road and the pup had no chance. Its life snatched away in an instant.

Some years later, I was reading the newspaper and came across a small article that caught my eye. Just a single paragraph, it said a young child had been electrocuted on a coin-operated kiddie-ride. The parents had placed him on it, put a coin in and a moment later, faulty wiring sent a charge through the machine and the body of the child, taking away his life instantly. 

I’ve thought about this many times over the years. Being a father of 3 and having also stuffed coins in countless kiddie rides over the years, I’ve often thought about those parents and how they came to terms with what had happened. One moment it was smiles and laughter and the next… darkness, despair?

When you’re young you feel immune from death. Youth is your vaccination against fear. And the absence of fear is the foundation of your sense of immortality. Life is laid out far ahead of you, its ending obscured by opportunities, challenges, experiences. Sure, we’ll all go someday. But not today. Not soon. And meanwhile I have stuff to do.

Then we age and we start losing friends and family and suddenly you realise that at some point it’ll be your turn.

I picked up Joan Didion’s book ‘The Year of Magical Thinking’ in 2005. It is a book of mourning, written after the sudden passing of her husband, John Dunne. His death was as unexpected as it was traumatic. 'Life changes in the instant. The ordinary instant.’ she starts her book. Over the course of the year, she mourned, she grieved, she regretted  imagined scenarios. And she documented it all. Then just before the book was published in 2005, their daughter who had been unwell, passed on.

My Dad was diagnosed with cancer in January of 1988. Treatment was not possible and he died at home in April of the same year. Shortly before he left us all, he told the family priest ‘I can go any time. I am at peace.’ I was living in Australia at that time, making plans to come back and spend time with him. He couldn’t wait.  It took me many years to get over that.

Death is indeed on my mind. But so is Living. So let’s do more of that, I think.

Of Journeys.

 3/366

Was listening to a podcast on the way to the workshop this morning and liked it so much I played it again on the way back this evening. In fact during lunch I even surfed the net to find out more about the comedian on the show, Henry Normal. He’s a writer and poet of some repute though I must admit that that reputation had eluded me until today. Though I appreciate a good poem, I don’t really read that much poetry, so had not heard of him as poet. And the fact I don’t really watch TV explains why I’m not familiar with his role as a writer or producer of many TV series.

The podcast episode of Radio 4’s Comedy of The Week had quite a few standout poems and I will probably visit some of them in future essays but for today I’d like to home in on one line - not actually in any poem - which reached out to me.

Now I love the idea of journeys - physical as well as figurative ones. And I have often told people to just ‘enjoy the journey’ when it comes to their life. So whether it’s changing jobs and careers (and haven’t I done that so many times!), or dealing with a crisis or an unexpected situation, or even navigating a challenging relationship, I have often suggested just relaxing and enjoying the ride. Don’t focus too hard on the destination and trust that the process is for the better.

It is this aspect that Henry Normal’s declaration touches on:

‘The Nature of Journey is Change’

When I heard this line I paused for a moment. I should say I was driving at the time and my pause was in my head not on the road. I then had to hit the rewind button to hear it again.

Every journey changes you. It’s not the destination that does this - it’s the path you take to get there. It’s not your degree that changes you but the courses you attended, the friends you made, the insights you gained. It’s not the job you take on that changes you but the daily grind, the challenges, the successes. 

It’s a very subtle distinction and I realise that though I’ve always told people to enjoy the journey, the implication has always been that one day you’ll ‘get there’. Understanding that the nature of the journey is change removes this intention and focusses instead on the little steps along the way, allowing you to value, savour and draw as much as possible from each one.

I like this idea. But now it is late and the nature of the night is sleep. I shall think about this more tomorrow.

Of Roti, Leong Fun and Yong Tau Fu

 2/366

‘Just half today. Setengah saja…’ The Roti Man had come by our house, blowing his air horn and I’d gone out to get our order of bread. The rotund Indian man swung his leg over his motorbike, and lifted the lid of the large metal box bolted onto a frame that sat atop the rear half of his seat. He pulled out a loaf of Sunshine bread, wrapped in pristine waxed paper adorned with that bright yellow sunburst logo, placed it on a wooden chopping board at the back of the box, then with a swift draw of a long knife, sliced through the waxed paper, cleaving the loaf into two symmetrical halves. 

Handing it to me, he took the coins I was holding out in exchange, pocketed them then asked me ‘Mana abang kamu? Where’s your brother?’

‘Abang yang mana? Which brother?’ I asked.

‘Yang gemuk tu… The fat one…’

‘Dia sudah pergi England. He’s gone to England.’, I replied.

‘Oh…’

‘Belajar. Universiti. Study. University.’

‘Ah… baik… Ah… Good…’

‘OK Thank you’ I said then went back up the driveway and into the house. He hitched up the left leg of his pants, swung his leg over the frame of the bike, kick-started it back into life with his right and in a a few moments was tooting his airhorn a hundred metres down the road.

Some months later, a younger, leaner man on a second motorcycle sans metal box, tailed our usual Roti Man on his rounds for a couple of days. The chubbier gentleman disappeared after a couple of days of this, and the younger man now had the metal box on his bike, and tooted his own airhorn.

‘Mana yang dulu tu? Where is the other guy?’ I asked him one day.

‘Siapa? Who?’

‘Yang gemuk tu… The fat one…’

‘Oh. Dia balik India. 6 bulan. Oh he’s gone back to India for 6 months.’

‘Ah… Baik…’ and I went back up the driveway and into the house.

Six months later, almost to the day, the round figure was back, smiling at us as he familiarised himself with the rounds, tailing the younger, leaner guy.

-

La Salle School. Where I spent 13 years from the age of 7 right through to 19. I was a thoroughbred Lasallian, a term reserved for those who went through every grade at this fiercely proud institution.

It was a hot afternoon as we trundled out of school one day. I was with my cousin and for some reason that day we were headed out the front gate rather than the back gate which was a shorter walk home.

The familiar toot of an airhorn signalled that the Soya Bean and Leong Fun man was eagerly waiting for customers just outside the gate. Hot Bean Curd, cold Soya Bean Drink and cold Grass Jelly or Leong Fun Drink was always very welcome at a little past 1 in the afternoon. This time, as I sometimes did, I chose to delay my gratification and told the hawker through the throng of thirsty schoolmates ‘Later come to my house OK?.

OK, he nodded, and my cousin and I wandered off.

An hour later, I heard the familiar tooting of his airhorn outside our gate and rushed to the kitchen to grab a few enamelware jugs. I proffered them to him and instructed in my very poor Cantonese ‘This one Tau Fu Fa, this one Tau Cheong Soi and this one Leong Fun’, indicating I wanted all three of his offerings in 3 separate containers.

My parents were not the traditional ones who insisted it was harmful to our health to consume cold drinks or food so I happily stuffed the Hot Bean Curd into the fridge alongside the cold drinks. Cold Bean Curd (as it became), blended with an adequate quantity of syrup is delicious consumed later that day when the fridge had had time to do its work.

I loved Leong Fun then and still do to this day. Some even have a mix of Soya Bean and Leong Fun but I much preferred it as it was, slightly sweetened and properly iced.

The Leong Fun man would ride around our neighbourhood on his rounds and so if we wanted some on a weekend or much later in the day after returning from school, we’d lay out the enamelware jugs in anticipation and listen out for the tooting of his airhorn. He’d hear our shout from inside our house as he went past, swing into our lane and stop outside our gate to wait for us to rush down the driveway.

-

There was a line of single-story shops near our school, comprising two blocks of linked units. In between the two blocks was a little lane and in that lane, in the afternoons would be a man by his sidecar-equipped motorbike. The sidecar was his mobile stall form which he sold a dish that KL people loved - our version of Yong Tau Fu.

His was a simple stall offering simple fare - the usual rolls of rice noodle ’Chee Cheong Fun’ (loosely translated as Pig Intestine Noodles not because of their ingredients but of their resemblance to that part of the pig’s anatomy) accompanied by meat balls, pig skin, bean curd sheets and more. We almost always had it with a mix of sweet bean sauce and chilli sauce and we would pick what we wanted from the steel bins where they sat in boiling soup, then pass him the plate with our choice for him to fill with our order of Chee Cheong Fun and whatever sauce we wanted. A sprinkle of sesame seeds on top and he would pass the plate back to us and we would wolf the dish down, standing right there by his bike.

That bike would appear between the morning and afternoon sessions at our school and early arrivals for the afternoon session would enjoy it as much as the much larger and older lunch crowd from the morning session.

His was a captive crowd and he didn’t have to ride far and wide looking for customers. In fact, I don’t even recall him blowing his airhorn.

We all knew where he would be and he knew when we would turn up. 

-

I sometimes wonder about these hawkers of old. Did the Roti Man return to India for good? Did he have a family and did he tell them stories of the family with the larger son who’d gone off to England to study? And did the Leong Fun man bemoan the poor standard of Cantonese of the younger generation when he sat and chatted with his friends about that boy whose house he would go to to fill 3 enamelware jugs with his dessert and drink offerings? And Yong Tau Fu… although I was not a frequent customer of his, I loved it whenever I had it and the very thought of this dish brings me right back to that lane between the two blocks of shops along Jalan Chantek, and of us standing in a group beside the dhoby shop, eating from plastic plates next to a motorbike.

Image produced by Sunshine Breads Malaysia and taken from the webpage https://cilisos.my/sunshine-bread-why-this-iconic-malaysian-bread-suddenly-disappeared-in-the-90s/?fbclid=IwAR22zPABRuljuAinJUhAX_xXT5VKhIcDziunDYUy7vwmUg6aYa_YiCKA7J4

Project 366 2024 

1/366

One of the nice things about living in the hills and near a small pond full of catfish is that we have quite a few White Bellied Sea Eagles in the neighbourhood. They’ve even nested in a tree about 200 metres away, in clear sight through my apartment windows and we used to hear their distinctive call quite often.

I did once see an Eagle take a large catfish. He had been circling overhead for some time, and had made a few attempts, each time coming close to and almost rippling the surface before pulling up and away again. Finally though, he swooped down, slashed his talons through the surface, grabbed his prey then effortlessly pulled up, a large fish gripped tightly beneath him.

The Eagle may well have been satisfied with his catch of the day but the pictures I caught did less for me and I’ve been meaning to address that.

My schedule at the workshop has meant I have not often been around during the day which is when the Eagles come out to fish. The year-end holidays changed my schedule, however, and as we were on the way out to lunch together today, Mei and I spotted one fella circling low above the pond. Our hungry stomachs had priority though so we just drove out. Returning, we spotted the Eagle still circling so I rushed upstairs, grabbed a couple of cameras and scurried down to the pond.

Only to see an ever-diminishing speck in the sky. I sat under a tree for half an hour, my cameras in my lap, hoping he would come back. But he didn’t.

So no pictures of Eagles today.

But sitting there, in the shade of a palm tree and watching the few human anglers scattered along the circumference of the pond, I spied another set of predators. A species that has the highest success rate among all predators. These chaps chomp over 90% of the prey they seek. Nothing in the animal kingdom comes close… So I sat there and took a few pictures of a smaller fella: dragonflies. 

As with the Eagles I could not get too close but I did have an enjoyable time watching them flit from twig to leaf doing the things dragonflies do. 

In the last few weeks since Suet Fun’s latest book came out, complete with an essay by me, the idea of writing more has burbled away in my mind. Writing is one of those things I’ve done with varying frequency over the last 15 - 20 years. It has filled me with pleasure and satisfaction and on a few occasions people who’ve read my words have told me how it had impacted them.

Suet Fun’s endorsement and her encouragement have also  lit the fire beneath the pot and taking pictures of these dragonflies today served up an idea. In 2020, desiring to be more disciplined in my approach to My Photography, I embarked upon my second attempt at a picture-a-day routine. My first one in 2015 sank without being completed. Five years later though, I managed to post 366 pictures, and I felt pretty good about it.

So, just as I had come for Eagles and walked away with Dragonflies, maybe I should adapt my Project 366 and make words instead of making images. Short paragraphs, long rants, incoherent mumblings… it doesn’t matter.

So let’s do this.

This is number 1/366.

Wish me luck.

LWE 18: Sibling Birthdays: October

LWE 18: Sibling Birthdays - October 

In 2019 I did a series of blog posts on my siblings, coinciding with their birthdays. I wrote about each in turn from March through September. I did miss one out though, my eldest sibling, my sister Margaret whose birthday it is today as I write this. 

To be honest, I got a little stuck with getting some words down and eventually I gave up altogether, leaving in the draft of this post a few scribbled lines and nothing very much else. Many months later, Margaret and I were chatting and the series was mentioned and it was Margaret who made the comment that when she left for England I was only 4 and thus we didn’t have so many years of shared memories together on which to write.

Or do we?

In a way, Margaret was the sibling I perhaps knew the least about, and yet felt the most connected to in many ways. We’re the farthest apart in age, and yet in many ways we’re the most similar.

Margaret left to do nursing in London when I wasn’t even yet 5. I have a smattering of memories from that time - of her long hair, a laughing voice, some singing. You know how it is when you are just a little more than a toddler and there is a seemingly larger-than-life character in the house, someone whose energy you somehow feel even if you don’t understand it?

Margaret was that. It was the 60s after all, bell bottoms and miniskirts, floral prints, music… and though I didn’t know anything about it all, even then there was something about my eldest sister that I found enthralling. 

International travel in those days was expensive and my parents sent their kids off to study, paid their fees and some of their living expenses and didn’t have any left over for their holidays home, so it was unusual that I got to see Margaret again about 3 years later when she returned for a holiday. My poor sister was terribly homesick and Dad and Mum scraped together the money for a ticket back and this turned out to be a good thing too for Margaret could see our grandmother one last time before Ma-ma passed away a few months later.

This was 1972 and I had just started schooling and although I have a few pictures of us from that time, the memories I carry in my head remain vague. 

Margaret before she left for London in 1969.

Margaret and I in 1972.

A couple of years later, and our world had changed dramatically. Margaret was now married to Ruedi Grünenfelder and living in Switzerland. The first of our siblings to be married, and to a charming chap who melted all our hearts. Not long after, I had my first niece, Meilian who is only 9 years younger than me.

As I grew older, my connection to Margaret grew closer. She wrote copiously and I know I replied though probably at a lesser rate. Being a pack rat, I have kept many of the letters, cards and postcards she sent and in this picture you can see that wherever I was - Drummoyne or Coogee in Sydney, Clementi, Geylang, Siglap or Bedok in Singapore or at home in PJ, and more recently here in Penang - my big sister kept in touch.

The more eagle-eyed among you will spot the myriad of addresses I have had in 3 countries.

I have kept many letters from family and friends and most share some space in little folders in a shelf. Margaret’s, though, share with no one - they fill a whole folder on her own and sometimes I dig up one or two and remind myself of the person I was then.

Letters are that, aren’t they? Little compact time capsules from the past which you can open and relive any time you want. And they don’t just remind you of the correspondent who wrote to you, but also of the person you were that was worthy of a missive, handwritten, sealed in an envelope and posted from miles away. 

Beyond letters though, Margaret also sent things. One of the earliest things she sent me was a colourful paper advent calendar whose windows I opened without really understanding what they were, knowing only that this multicolour, patterned and illustrated piece was fascinating.

We also used to get parcels shipped from Switzerland, loaded with goodies among which were Swiss Torte which we all loved. She also sent books. At one point she asked me what I was reading and though I was only 12 or 13, I remember replying that I was reading Solzhenitsyn - I had just read and enjoyed One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch. So in the next parcel I received copies of Cancer Ward, Stories and Prose Poems and The Gulag Archipelago all of which I devoured. Indeed these parcels were magical brown cardboard packages containing valuable gifts, sealed with tape and bearing the notices, stamps and marks of a foreign land. 

Margaret was always a very creative person. She’d studied the piano when young and over the years turned to art and craft. She painted, sewed and quilted. And as I moved into the commercial arts, our paths grew even closer and we had more to share.

The most beautiful and amazing gift I have ever received. This quilt was made by Margaret and our Aunt Marianne and it is made from clothes and other material worn by people in our lives including my father.

It has a nice personal touch too.

And when she and Ruedi went their separate ways some years ago, our life journeys converged even more.  And this is when I began to realise that we were after all, very similar people. Strongly motivated to help others, a little set in our ways, very supportive of friends and family, and also led by our emotions. Both of us have kept to the Cheong tradition of not being able to keep quiet when we see that things are not right. Age may have taken the edge off that last attribute though I think… thankfully.

Divorce is not an easy process. One can divorce oneself of the encumbrance of an energy-sapping relationship but it is not so easy to divest of the emotional investment we have put in and it was because of this that Margaret and I had many conversations and exchanges. We almost always climb out of the holes we find ourselves in and often this process is helped by caring friends and family so as I had done, so too did Margaret.

Not long after I got married again, Margaret, Mei and I went on holiday to Hanoi where my good friend Ray lives. It was the first time in a long time that my eldest sister and I had been on a holiday at the same time and place and the first time we had actually gone together. It was a completely enjoyable holiday, one where we both discovered that despite our apparent intractable personalities, we were both rather easy going in many ways. 

Margaret and Mei shopping in Hanoi.

Braving the chaotic traffic to cross the street in Hanoi.

Sitting down to dinner.

Walking down past one of the many lakes in Hanoi.

More shopping in Hanoi.

Mei and I visited Margaret in Switzerland a few years after that and we did a whirlwind few days where we did or saw all the stereotypes. On one particular day, we took a bus, a train and a ferry, walked up a mountain, heard and saw alphorns and cows with bells and generally just had a lovely time with family we loved and felt completely and utterly comfortable spending time with. 

With my nieces Melanie and Meilian.

On our hike up a mountain, with Maurus (Melanie's then boyfriend) and Meilian.

Don't ask me why we were all pulling faces - it seemed like a good idea at the time.

In 2015, Margaret did the reverse and visited me in my new home here in Penang. I was going through a bit of a funk and though we had a lovely time, she also was a listening ear just as she had been 15 years earlier, though under different circumstances.

In between those trips, we did see each other very often, even in Singapore. Our mother’s health was deteriorating, her body and mind ravaged by Parkinson’s and Dementia, even as her spirit remained strong. Margaret made frequent trips to KL where she brought her nursing and geriatric care experience to bear, helping take some of the pressure off our sister Rosemary and her family who were Mum’s primary healthcare providers.

With Rosemary and Mum in PJ.

Visiting us in Singapore. This is in the Bussorah Street area.

Tucking into a hearty Big Breakfast at my Pedal Cafe in Penang.

Chinese New Year in PJ.

With Tessie and our sister in law, Hilda. Again, I have no idea why Margaret was pulling a funny face. Her Cheong blood I guess...

My eldest sister recently became a grandmother and we get videos and pictures of her and little Ines. And this is probably where she and I differ the most - I must admit I am hopeless with babies and toddlers. Yes I know I have 3 kids… Margaret, on the other hand is the doting grandmother through and through, with oodles of patience and love. 

Thinking about it, this is Margaret. Though often sociable and loud in that very Cheong way, she can also be quiet and pensive. She is caring for others yet also protective of her own wellbeing. Creative yet also happy to indulge in the creativity of others. Through it all though, Margaret has always been there for all of us. All of us in the family have a story of how Margaret has reached out to us and smoothened our rough waters, none more so than me.

And it is on this note that I wish my sister a truly Happy Birthday. If each day of her coming year were filled with even a tiny bit of the love and care she has heaped on us through the years, it will be a very happy year indeed.

LWE 17: 2020 Hindsight Pt 1

It was to be a landmark year and it started off well enough then it all came crashing down and years from now we will look back and say ‘I survived 2020’. At least those of us who did survive it will say so.

Many haven’t. As I write this, over 1.8 million didn’t make it past the year, 500 of whom were Malaysians. The vaccines are still months away for most so these counters won’t stop ticking over for some time yet. Perhaps at this time next year there will be quite a few people still who will say ‘I survived 2021’. 

Casting my eyes back though, and ignoring for a moment the metaphorical mass of the pandemic continuing to gallop along in a deadly chase, I do see that collectively as a people we have actually progressed. If nothing else, the crisis has exposed many flaws, lies and misconceptions, and stripped bare many images we have had of ourselves and the people around us.

America has probably been the most surprising - oh how the mighty have fallen!. That shining beacon of freedom and liberation denuded to reveal a framework of insatiable greed and shameless selfishness. Decades of Hollywood-fed images of bravado and derring-do cast aside as people could not only not survive a nuclear holocaust in their personal bunkers, they could not even handle breathing through a few thin layers of fabric.

OK, others much more eloquent than I have written about all that, so let me not walk in the shadow of those giants but instead trudge through a field of my own memories and pick out some of the things I have learnt, highlight some of the events that were significant, and mention some of the people who have made an impact on me in the last 12 months.

Here are some of my more significant memories of 2020.

A Different Chinese New Year

We decided to go down to Singapore for this new year. Mei’s dad was getting on and we thought it would be good if we spent this one with him. And we did, and had a great time. Mark, Megan and Michael were with us too - Megan being the big and very happy surprise as I had not seen my daughter in 2 or 3 years. 

The first day of Chinese New Year was unforgettable. Not only were we, and Mei’s siblings and their families there, but for the first time in many years other relatives turned up all at the same time so we could even grab a huge family picture.

The old guy was visibly happy and that was very nice to see.

It was the last time we saw him in person as he became very ill just a few months later, had an operation, failed to recover well, and then was gone.

We could not travel down due to the travel restrictions. At the time both countries required a 14-day home quarantine and we had no suitable place in Singapore, and Mei would not have been given permission to return to Malaysia anyway. So we could not be near as he went for his op, and could not even attend the wake and funeral. We instead had to make do with pictures sent by Mark and Michael who attended and were kind enough to think of us and to send us our only visual link with the proceedings.

The last holiday of the year, at the beginning of the year.

Well, OK maybe it wasn’t quite the last one but it was a big one. My Australian nephew Ashley got himself married in February and they had a Malaysian do as well as their Aussie one, as his wife CY had some family connections here. So the whole lot of them turned up in KL just as some of us did in Sydney the year before for niece Charmaine’s wedding. 

My brother Joe and his wife Hilda also trooped up to Penang to spend a few days here afterwards, as did my aunt Marianne (we call her Lai Koo as she’s the youngest sister of my late father) and my sister Margaret. Mei and I were thus busy running around taking them to see some sights, eat various local dishes and generally have a good time.

Mei and I had been in KL for the wedding and we drove back to Penang with Lai Koo and Margaret. The two ladies were pretty excited at the prospect of a ‘Road Trip’ even if it only took a few hours. And of course Mei and I were happy to play host in Penang. 

I’ve always been rather fond of my father’s youngest sister, and also of my own eldest sibling of course. The two are separated in years by just a little more than Margaret and I are, actually. And we all 3 share an artistic streak. Lai Koo and Margaret are both into quilting and were responsible for the beautiful and meaningful quilt I received in KL. This amazing piece was made from clothes worn by, or just material used by, my father, my mother, my aunts Marianne (Lai Koo) and Helene, my nieces Meilian and Melanie and Margaret herself too. The batik backing is from Lai Koo and the binding (the trimming piece) bicycle pattern was a brilliant personal touch. 

It’s not often that I receive such a deeply meaningful and personal gift and I was - and still am - very grateful indeed for the many hours of work that went into this. 

Taking family around, on the other hand, has never been hard work. Indeed it was an immense pleasure and I enjoyed not just taking Lai Koo and Margaret around but also getting to know my aunt a little better.

A few short weeks later, the Movement Control Order came into play and we were all stuck at our respective homes and Margaret had gone back to hers in Switzerland. Lai Koo was back in KL and at one point stressed out because her grandson was suspected of having contracted Covid-19. An anxious few days followed before it turned out the test had returned a false positive and the young man was cleared. During those few days though, Lai Koo and I were exchanging messages regularly and it was nice to be able to offer some comfort in difficult times.

Isn’t that one of the things family is supposed to be there for?

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.