Archive for the 'Family Memoirs' Category

My father has recently been inspired into a spate of creative activity. He submitted a Fusion Story a little while back, about his first experience of coming to study in England. He is of that generation of men - particularly in the Chinese tradition - who were never encouraged to share personal moments publicly. And he has never been known to write much creatively. So I am really touched that recently, he has been sharing his personal reminiscences with us in writing - and really proud of him.

This piece about his grandmother also gives us a flavour of a Malaya of a different time - before the freeways and high rise buildings and Starbucks.

He writes:

My earliest memory of Grandmother was when I was four or five when we moved to Cheras. I had gone with her to clean the house before the family moved in. Some day she would buy durians from the Malay vendors who came with a huge basket of the fruits stacked on the back of his bicycle. We would eat them squatting at the front door. She was very fond of durians.

In the little garden in the front of the Cheras house there was a pomegranate tree to which she seemed very attached. She would water it with water which had been used to clean fish and would hang empty crab-shells on the branches because they would help the tree. It seldom bore fruit and when it did she was very pleased with it.

She doted on his grandsons and I think particularly me. She would make sure to buy Nyonya kuih from the Indian vendor who would come around with his 2 huge baskets on a pole across his shoulder hawking his wares. And very often he had a pot containing assam curry with a charcoal stove underneath it - for making assam laksa. A word about this Indian gentleman. He was already quite old then, I would say at a guess about 50 years. He would carry these two baskets and the pot and walked many miles a day to sell his food. It must really be a very hard life. I still remember his gaunt but cheerful face wearing a brown felt hat like an inverted flower pot. He would disappear every now and then for 3 months or so and then he would appear again saying that he had gone back to India.

There are two things which Grandmother wanted me to do which caused me some pain - as little boys would have when they are asked to do things which caused them to stand out amongst their peers. The first was to part my hair on the right side because she said that if I used the left side all the time, the hair along the line would drop out. The second was to wear braces to hold up my shorts. It was, of course, a sensible thing to do but little boys did not do sensible things when the others do not do it. I can’t remember how I got her to allow me to revert back to normal. May be I complained to Mother who must have stepped in.

She would tell very earthy stories to AHC and I heard some of them which I can still remember but it is not suitable for re-telling as my secretary types all my letters.

When Mother went out with Father she would bring back Hokkien mee about 11.00 at night and Grandmother would eat the mee with me in the bedroom. As far as I can remember my brother BT never joined in the eating. Was it because of my known greedy nature that I was that she woke me up. Grandmother was full of common sense and it was she who told us that Queen Victoria had lots of children whom she married off to all the royal houses in Europe and thus she was related to them making the likelihood of disputes or war less likely. (Although it did not prevent the First World War.)

I had always thought she had a noble face with good cheekbones and bone structure. She did not chew betel nut but she smoked self-rolled cigarettes but did not have the dirty habits of the smoker. I remember using up my savings of Japanese paper money to buy her, just before the Japanese surrender, tobacco in packets and the cigarette paper.

Later on when we were in secondary school she lived in the Imbi Road temple and we would see her when we visited the temple on the first and fifteenth day of the Chinese month and other feast days of the Gods. Still later on when she lived on top of the dispensary we would see her on Friday evenings after going to the Rex and Madras cinemas.

She was so effacing that she would not stay with anyone of us for fear of disturbing our lives. I remember saying to myself on her death which occurred on a Saturday that she is so understanding that she would not want to inconvenience anyone and have them to take leave to come to her funeral.

Written by Guestblogger: Ooi Boon-Leong

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We end the current Fusion Stories series with a post from my father, Ooi Boon-Leong, about his first experience of England in the 1950s as a young, naive student from the colonies. Dad will be 70 next April and still busy with his law practice. I am really pleased and touched that he has taken the time to write this piece for me and to share his perspective of a different time in a country that was foreign to him then but home to me now.

He writes:

There were 3 of us from the same secondary school who had gained admissions to different universities in England, I to Cambridge University and the other two to London University. Two of us were 18 years old and the third a little older than 19. We lived in Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaya (then) and none of us had travelled further than Singapore by rail, a city about 300 miles south. The three of us were “village yokels” really, although we spoke fluent English and had all completed the Cambridge Overseas School Certificate Examination. This examination was conducted for all English schools in the Empire with some local variations.

In those days you could go to England either mainly by boat or, more rarely, by air. By air, if you are very rich for it was very expensive and even then you had to spend a night in Bombay or another Indian city and a night or a long lay over somewhere in the Middle East for the plane to refuel. Most people travelled by boat and the most famous of the various lines was the P & O. We could not get a booking and so instead we booked a berth for the three of us in an Italian boat that sailed from somewhere in Australia, stopping in Singapore where we boarded it and the journey ended at Naples, its home port. We had to finish the journey from Naples to London by train.

Being on an Italian boat with lots of Italians going to Naples from Australia, it served Italian food. For the first evening I had my first experience of salami. When I put a slice in my mouth and turned it about, it spread around my mouth and it gummed up all my salivary glands and my mouth dried-up. It was not a pleasant feeling.

The spaghetti was alright because it looked like Chinese noodles but it was strange to eat it with tomato sauce instead of it being fried.

Except for going through the Straits of Malacca and the Suez Canal I was seasick all the way.

We arrived in Naples and went on to Rome. Then we went on by train to Paris where, because we had not booked a hotel we spent the night in the railway station, and went on to catch the boat train and then the ferry to go across to England. We duly arrived on the English side of the Channel and this was my first experience on English soil.

A porter helped each of us with our luggage on to the train. Each of us was in charge of tipping his porter. I was too tired and frustrated and was so relieved to have arrived and to be able to speak to someone without any effort that I happily tipped my potter one pound for carrying my two suitcases. He then said “Sir, this is too much. It’s not that much,” and handed back the pound note. I did not know how much it should be so I tipped him ten shillings anyway.

I was very impressed and still am impressed by his act. He definitely could do with the extra money – buy something for his kids or wife or stand his mates drinks in the pub. This has coloured my view of the English but I also remind myself that it was in 1955 when people all over the world, despite going through a terrible war not so long ago, were gentler, kinder and less greedy.

Another incident also shows the kindness and consideration of the English (or British.) I had settled down in my University and during one of the holidays I bought a ticket for a concert in the Royal Festival Hall in the south bank. It was not a pricey ticket but one in the middle range. When I went into the hall I was shown by the usher to a seat which I suspected was in the more expensive section. I mentioned to the usher that I thought that that could not be the correct seat. He insisted that it was and not to argue with him I took my seat. Sure enough before the concert started the person with the correct ticket came to claim his seat and I had to vacate it. I was, of course, very embarrassed and doubly so because I was a foreigner. I did not want the people who were seating behind and beside me to think that here was a foreigner who was trying to cheat by taking a more expensive seat than what he was entitled to. As I was slowly edging out of my row of seats someone, a man, said loud enough for me to hear “Don’t worry, it can happen to any of us.” I was somewhat relieved because there is at least one person who did not think that I had tried to cheat. Only a people who have a deep consideration for others can fathom without being told the discomfort and embarrassment what a person is undergoing and is kind enough to want to reassure him.

Another incident that deserves mention is this. A college friend had invited me to his home for a few days during the vacation. The first night when I went to bed, I found on my bed side table a pile of four or five books ranging from novels to essays for my night reading. Although I had not brought any reading materials I had not asked for any books. It was a gesture I thought very civilized. Another act prompted by their consideration.

These were not the only kindness I received when in England but they stood out. The others were ones one usually meets with in daily life: the “pleases” and “thank yous,” the holding of doors for one to pass. I think it was Orwell who wrote in an essay that only in England can you push an Englishman off the pavement when you two meet going in the opposite direction.