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.

Here Lies Greatness

What makes a man great? And what makes a great man?

I guess we could say the answer to the first would be his words, his thoughts, his deeds, the effect he had on the people around him and more. The answer to the second could encompass background, education, mentors, faith… the list goes on.

I could think and write a little about all these but I would prefer to write a little instead about a great man I knew. One whose life embraced all of the above. And then some.

He would understand too that I now choose not so much to write investigatively, but to write anecdotally instead. For here was a man whose life was a rich tapestry of stories. And if the measure of a man were the stories he left behind on the lips, in the minds and in the hearts of those whose paths crossed his own, then Mr Sebastian Vincent would be a giant among men.

Indeed to us, he seemed that way - a towering personality who struck terror and humour into our souls at the very same moment. A no-nonsense Physics teacher who took his work seriously and would just as readily take the mickey out of his students. There were those who made fun of him just as he made fun of us. In either direction the gentle mocking remained just that - good humour that never even so much as glanced in the direction of aggression, vitriol, or anger.

In the great play of life that was the lot of the Physics student in La Salle PJ, Mr Vincent was the murder prop - a glinting shining axe that looked menacing and added an edge of fear while being just that little bit incongruously comical. An axe that bound the play together, gave it direction and purpose.

My mother, who made up for lacking the better judgement not to stop at 6 children in the first place, decided that I needed to attend tuition at Mr Vincent’s in preparation for my Form 5 exams. One bad decision balanced out by one brilliant one and so I found myself cramped into this rickety add-on room in No 1 Jalan 5/9B. A room we all thought was partly a stubborn personal DIY project at best (for certainly a qualified carpenter/builder worth his salt would dare not leave this job in this parlous state!), and a physics experiment gone seriously awry at worst.

Still, we trusted the man and figured if the whole shebang collapsed, we would at least get some free Physics lessons while we awaited extrication.

And this would have been, despite the stories we can all tell, a pleasure and a great help.

I had, of course, known Mr Vincent for some years as our families were friends, his wife was my mother’s colleague, friend and church-mate (and my Standard 4 class teacher) and his children were part of my limited social circle every Sunday when we had the SFX Church Children’s Group gathering and mass.

He had never taught me, however, until that moment I stepped into that re-creation of a Black Hole. The immense gravitational pull of his knowledge, personality and sheer presence sucked us all helplessly in. Either that or we had paid good money and there was air-conditioning.

Mr Vincent was a teacher like no other I have ever met. He seemed always to be thinking of something else. A mathematics problem perhaps. Or the mystery of faster-than-light travel. Even maybe when my ancestors actually came down from the trees. This last one was quite likely as really, I sometimes displayed a particularly painful disinclination to comprehending Physics.

When talking to me, I noticed he often failed to make eye contact, preferring instead to look at a point just below my left knee, or a little off my right shoulder. I took this to be a result of being preoccupied with my ancestry of course and never once doubted that though his eyes may not have been fixed on mine, his mind was always probing my own severely lacking version of the same.

And when I opened my mouth to answer a question (usually rather badly) I think now his mind was in hyperdrive, thinking of ways to accelerate to light speed my evolution from chimp to Champ.

One day when the reason I was not making eye contact with him was simply because I was facing the wrong direction and clearly not paying attention in class, I heard my name being called ‘John Cheong’ with the chilling follow-through ‘answer the question’…

I turned to where the voice had emanated and mumbled ‘Me, Sir?’ I had of course just the tiniest idea what the question was, and probably an infinitesimally smaller idea of the correct answer. I think I felt at that moment like a moth caught in a flame… Still, I had to plunge headlong and so when he said ‘Yes - you’ I rattled off a 20-second answer ‘bla bla bla bla bla….’

At the end of which Mr Vincent went ‘Good.’ and I beamed a little crazily at all who had doubted me. Until I heard his voice go ‘More.’
‘More, Sir?’ I stammered amidst the chuckles of the others in class.
‘Yes, more.’
So I plunged further into the abyss… ‘bla bla bla bla…’ I went on for another 30 seconds.
‘Good!’ My relief must surely have been visible despite the almost maniacal edge to my smile then.
‘More.’
My relief fell to earth like a meteor in all its flaming glory, arcing across the night sky. Roarrrrr, boom, crash, pow….
I sucked in a deep breath and ‘bla bla bla bla bla…’ 20 more seconds of sheer agony, fear, imagination, make-believe, prayer, and utter undeniable plain-for-all-to-see complete nonsense and bullshit.
‘Ah.’ he went.
‘Ah? I thought.
‘Good!’ he went.
‘Good?’ I thought incredulously.
….
‘But all wrong’ he added as his final masterstroke, the last nail on my cross of suffering, hammered in with particular glee right smack OUCH! in the middle of my uhm… intellect. It had been wrong from the very first second and he knew it. He knew I would have no hope in hell of rescuing myself in the 3 opportunities he gave me. He was cunning, devious, wicked.

Wickedly funny that is. We laughed. I laughed.

And now, almost 30 years later, I still laugh.

And the funniest thing is that I did learn. And I actually did rather well. For a student not predisposed to the Sciences (well, OK to studies in general) and one who eventually only barely scraped through with passes in Chemistry and Biology, I got the highest Credit pass for Physics - a C3 - and I still wonder about the gravitational pull of Black Holes.

I did Arts in Form 6 and thus missed him. I didn’t miss the stories though and I’d like to recount another here which involves my cousin, Carol Rozario. She attended La Salle for Form 6 and did Physics and it seems Mr Vincent chose to widen his aim to include my extended family too for he wickedly (and deliciously) took the mickey out of her too.

It was just after the first Physics exams of Form 6 and he came in to class with the results. He declared that he would announce all the results out loud by calling each student’s name and their mark out of 100 and should any student not wish to have their marks revealed publicly, they should raise their hands, come up to him and he would whisper it in their ear instead.

Now, I do believe that Carol had her challenges when it came to Physics too - perhaps it had something to do with our common ancestors having only been recently enticed down from trees and introduced to walking upright. Whatever, Carol knew she had done badly so when her name was called out, she waved frantically and rushed up to have her mark quietly revealed in her ear.

Mr Vincent was true to his word and whispered her mark to her, then as she sheepishly made her way back to her seat, he turned to the class and announced in a booming voice ‘Carol Rozario got 29 upon 100 for Physics.’

I wasn’t there but I can just see and hear it in my mind. Utterly, completely, uncompromisingly devilish. And 100% Mr Vincent.

I recently reconnected with an old schoolmate whom I have not seen since 1982 nor communicated with since the late 80s. As early as our second email to each other we wrote about Mr Vincent. We had both attended his tuition class and both felt he had been such a big part of our 16-17 year old lives that now, three decades later, the memory lived on.

When he retired from teaching in our school, we organised a farewell like no other. He arrived in school flanked by schoolboy outriders, in a car with dragging cans and a sign that read ‘Just Retired’, rode in an open jeep through the school field trailed by pretty girls bearing Bunga Manggar and was even garlanded. It was a grand affair befitting of a grand man.

A little later in the year another much-loved teacher retired with much less of an event to which a younger student remarked it didn’t seem fair.

He didn’t know, you see. Didn’t know the enlightenment a truly inspired teacher can bring to even the dimmest minds. Didn’t know that sarcasm could be wielded so effectively and efficaciously. Didn’t know that love can take many forms including patient and dedicated nurturing. Didn’t know that when you’ve endured 2 years of tuition in a ramshackle construction that could also be your tomb, you’d be so glad to see the last of the man who taught there that you’d send him off in the grandest possible style.
He didn’t know.

And I didn’t really know something else too. I didn’t know what Mr Vincent’s life was like these last few years. Well, not directly at any rate.

Some years ago he suffered a stroke while returning from India and eventually came down to Singapore where I live. My brother, Tony, and I went to visit him at the hospital. Tony went up first to his former Physics teacher, now lying in a hospital bed flanked by some of his family. Tony looked down and said ‘Hello, Mr Vincent, it’s Anthony Cheong.’

And Mr Vincent reached out and grabbed Tony’s arm tight. He tried to pull himself up and to say something. The words didn’t come out. They couldn’t. The stroke had taken that from him. As he struggled to tell Tony something, it was instead tears that came. Tears of frustration and struggle.
This man who’d communicated so effortlessly, clearly, lovingly, effectively now couldn’t get a few words out. And cried not from the effort but the failure.

I’m ashamed to say I hung back. I couldn’t. This wasn’t the Mr Vincent I knew. I didn’t want him to struggle for words and to cry. I just couldn’t bring myself to cause him more tears. And I’m ashamed to say that in the following years I failed to make the gesture of a visit to No 1 Jalan 5/9B. I thought of him and asked after him often but at the end I didn’t want to see how he had changed. I wanted to remember him as he had been in the 80s.

I was stupid.

He hadn’t changed at all. Sure he couldn’t talk, or walk or swallow even. But that wasn’t the point you see. The measure of a great man is not just what he is in the present, but also what he was in the past, and more importantly, what he brings to the future. Above and beyond the wonderful stories we all have of him, we have something else too. A mark, a standard, a guide which says ‘Here lies the point at which we know we are on the right track. Here lies dedication and commitment beyond which we discover excellence. Here lies greatness.’

Thank you Mr Vincent for helping me understand Newton’s 3 laws of motion for which I received a C3; and for so many other life lessons for which the rewards are far greater.

RIP Mr Sebastian Vincent (1929 - 2011)

cross posted on http://john-budakkampung.blogspot.com/