KTemoc Kongsamkok

Bananas - the story, schooling, school sweetheart & sorrowful separation

2012-01-19T21:42:00.008+08:00

Parts of this article was written sometime ago in two posts in my other blog Ktemoc Konsiders, but in keeping with the fun or nostalgic story telling theme of this blog, KTemoc Kongsamkok, I’ve deleted most of the political aspects as well as specific references to certain people in the socio-political blogging world. I’ve also used this opportunity to include new episodes of my experience.

Penangites like to start off their stories with 'oo chit jeet nee’, which means ‘once upon a time’.

Well then, 'oo chit jeet nee’ there were three boys - two brothers and their cousin. For the purpose of this story about ‘bananas’, I shall name the brothers Chooi and Beng. Their cousin was me, moi, kaytee wakakaka.

Chooi was educated at a vernacular school, Kong Min, while Beng and I attended Pykett Methodist. Their father, my uncle-in-law, was a hardcore Teochew-nang who wanted all his children (3 boys, but the youngest doesn’t feature in this story) to be Chinese educated, but fate in the name of Poverty intervened. Thus Beng’s education at an English medium Methodist institution was financed and decided by a relative.

Chooi was very much into wuxia (Chinese fiction on martial arts), hence he devotedly read episodes of mysterious swordsmen-heroes flying like a low-altitude-only Superman in the middle of the nights across rooftops to rescue sweet damsels in distress.

Fascinated or enamoured by the chivalrous-romantic tales of those sword slashing super dukes, he obviously wanted to re-enact some of his favourite episodes. Each time I visited his family and after making the obligatory respectful greetings to the elders, he would drag me to the side for a wee bit of Chinese wushu sparring, but always with him deciding or making up the rules as the bouts went along.

I received more than a few bruises and black eyes from those encounters, most of which were caused, in my mind, by his ad hoc and inconsistent ‘rules’. Finally Beng, his younger brother advised me, though too late, of Chooi's propensity towards extemporaneous rules making in our wushu sparring. Apparently, Beng was also a victim of his brother’s convenient 'creativity'.

One day after Chooi hit me particularly hard on my face when I wasn’t even aware we were to spar, I asked him whether he was prepared for the joust to be for real, with no rule (most certainly not those of his creative formulation). From the black look on my face, Chooi knew he had crossed the line with his Pearl Harbour-like sneak attack, and that his normally placid cousin (moi) was as furious as any Chinese would be after reading about the Nanjing massacre. So he cowardly, but I suppose wisely, turned down my challenge.

But apart from being a coward he was also kniasu (don't like losing, especially 'face'), thus he had to, for his 'face', dismiss my challenge with these words: “You eaters of ar-mor-sai* can play among yourselves” where he included his younger brother in his cultural-chauvinistic insult.

* ar-mor-sai means “white men’s shit”, a pejorative accusation against English educated Chinese for their alleged preference for western ways, culture, values and/or morals - am not sure why, but Penangites pronounce ang-mor ('red hair' or Europeans) as ar-mor

That was when I first realized some (mind you, not all) Chinese educated people were either chauvinistic or more likely, plain jealous and under confident of their English educated counterparts, more likely the latter as they love to resort to childish insults like “chea* ar-mor sai”.

* chnea = eat

That cowardly disparaging abuse continues till today, but I notice that the traditional “chea ar-mor sai” has been transformed into the modern euphemistic ‘bananas’.

Why ‘banana’?

Well, a banana, as we know of it, usually has yellow skin which when peeled would show its white flesh. Thus, an English-educated Chinese would be, to those Chinese language-cultural chauvinists, a 'banana', someone who is yellow on the outside like a Chinese, but white on the inside, a culturally treasonous Chinese who speaks in English instead of Chinese, and also is suspected of possessing western values and even western habits, thus one who is the “chea ar-mor sai” type.

Today some Mandarin-Nazis have extended the insult to include even those Chinese who can converse fluently in Teochew or Hokkien or Canto or Hakka or other non-Mandarin Chinese language-dialect (eg. Hainan, Toisan/Sinning, etc) like moi, but who aren’t formally educated in Mandarin. Thus we are still ‘bananas’.

Apparently, to these Mandarin-Nazis, the ‘sin’ seems to lie more in being educated in English. It’s the same aged-old socio-cultural chauvinistic insult for those who don’t conform to the practices of the accusers, with perhaps an element of jealousy lurking in their dark subconscious, hence the consequential spate of ugly insults and pejorative name calling.

I seek comfort in what the great Chinese sage, Confucius, said: “The nobler sort of man emphasizes the good qualities in others, and does not accentuate the bad. The inferior does”, wakakaka.

Anyway, to continue my story of ‘bananas’, as a Teochew nang (Teochew person) where both sides of the family are Teochew (with a few drops of spicy Tom Yum blood on my dad's side, wakakaka), my dear late mum decided during my tender years that I should be formally educated in the Teochew language in addition to the Methodist schooling I was already receiving.

If you are not familiar with the Teochew language, this is what Wikipedia says about it:

… this dialect of Chinese is one of the most difficult ones to master, as it has 8 tones compared to the 4 tones found in Mandarin. Music, opera, and food are further characteristics that distinguish Chaoshan [Teochew] people from the rest of Guangdong.

Now you know why kaytee isn’t a Canto-speaking man lah - my excuse anyway wakakaka, but wait, come to think of it, blast and double blast, apart from my initial sweetheart being a Penang Hokkien – she broke my heart twice - most of the sweeties I know have been Canto babes, so my lack of Canto-linguistic skills had been to my disadvantage, especially when they talked with their friends about me, right in front of clueless moi (sigh).

Mind, I did understand when I heard “Ngo ker sor-chai mm hieu Kongfu wah keh”

Sor-chai*?

* ‘stupid boy’ or, if in an affectionate manner, ‘darling silly boy’

How outrageous, how undignified, but that’s how my ex(es) saw me (sigh again). Maybe that’s how I allowed a Penang Hokkien babe to break my heart twice, as if once wasn’t quite enough.

Anyway, if you want to know more about the Teochew language or operas, please check it in my earlier post The 'rich' char koay teow boy.

Now, why did my dearly departed mum want me to learn Teochew? Maybe she dreamed of me singing Teochew opera songs along with her. Yes, when she was happy, which, alas, was seldom, she’d croon those, with the lyrics narrating bits and pieces of China’s classical history.

Amazingly enough, as a kid, I could follow the story in most of those songs though of course I couldn’t claim to have understood each and every word of the lyrics. My two faves were the stories of Sih Jeen Kooi and Teik Cheng.

Apparently the saga of the former, Sih Jeen Kooi, was set in the Tang Dynasty, prior to and during the reign of Wǔ Zétiān.

Wǔ Zétiān

Wǔ Zétiān was the only female emperor in China's recorded history spanning more than 4,500 years - we aren't talking about Empresses Dowagers or Regents, those powers behind the thrones, but an Emperor, THE Emperor, who sat on the Dragon Throne in her own rights.

Though gifted with exceptional wisdom and great talent, Wǔ Zétiān was like most of my former sweethearts, very cruel, merciless and ruthless wakakaka.

Wǔ Zétiān as played by Alyssa Chia

She (Wǔ Zétiān, not any of my sweeties wakakaka), initially a mere junior palace concubine, reached the pinnacle of China's absolute power by means both fair and foul, though more of the latter. In her struggles, schemings and manipulations to the top, she didn’t hesitate to unscrupulously sabotage her rivals (the original Empress and imperial concubines) and even kill off her husband and a couple of sons. She inhumanely slaughtered thousands of innocents without blinking an eye, and placed cruel harsh officials in high positions who in turn abetted her killings.

But on the other side of the coin, once she was in de facto and eventually de jure power, she made great political achievements, such as selecting a large number of officials on merit, and introduced good economic measures which gave the Chinese society at that time the desired prosperity and stability. Even today, movies and TV plays featuring her controversial life and reign are drawing great attention and research interests, with the modern scholars being more favourable to her reign.

Ignoring the prejudices of the male Confucian chauvinistic historians, Wǔ Zétiān was in fact a very competent ruler. She was also a ... gulp ... lusty woman, not afraid of open dalliances with several captains in the Royal Palace Guards, right all the way to her late age - sigh, regrettably this hot imperial babe existed way way too early for me.

Back to the story of Sih Jeen Kooi - His family, with only two exceptions, was massacred by Wǔ Zétiān because of incorrectly perceived treason. The two were rescued by different saviours on separate occasions, and became spin-off folklores.

The cruel punishment for alleged treason dealt out to Sih's family was total, where every man, woman, child, servant, and domestic animal (belonging to Sih) were executed/killed. Then their corpses were dumped into a pit which was then sealed with tar and covered with dirt. The entire Sih village was then razed and every evidence of human existence, including the post-inferno debris erased from sight. Such was the demonstration of total power by an absolute monarch, obviously to deter acts of treason.

Incidentally, Sih Jeen Kooi became a household name among the Chinese during my kiddie days. Bloke was a Chinese hero famous for his gargantuan appetite and Herculean strength. Thus, whenever my late dad or I ate a wee too much, mum would label us as Sih Jeen Kooi(s), or when relatives questioned her on why she cooked so much for a particular festival, she would humourously reply that she had a few Sih Jeen Kooi's in the house.

My other favourite Teochew operatic hero, Teck Cheng, was apparently a historical figure in a slightly earlier era, during the Sui Dynasty.

Sui Emperor Wen

According to mum's sing-song story, Teck Cheng and Bao Zheng, who was more popularly known as Bao Gong, China's most respected judge ever, were heavenly ‘stars’ or divinities instructed by Heaven to be born as mortal beings to help China at different periods of the nation's history. These divinities to be born as humans to save mankind (at least those in China) were not unlike Rama of the Ramayana saga who had to be born a mortal in order to destroy Ravana so as to save the Indian universe.

Teck Cheng was to be a military saviour of the Sui period while the more famous Bao Gong, as every Chinese know, was the judicial-administrative hero 350 years later during the Song period, an exemplary model par excellence of the judiciary whose name is still today referred to by Chinese as the gold standard.

I hesitate to relate that part of the folklore of how Teck Cheng exchanged faces with Bao Gong before being born as mortals, because I would be accused of being a racist. But alas, I’ve opened my big mouth, so well, let me be damned, here goes ... (bear in mind please, it's just a operatic story of yonder years).

As the story goes, Teck Cheng was reluctant to be born a human because he was destined as a mortal to have a black face. When he divined that, he appealed to the Jade Emperor (Lord of heaven) to be excused from his earthly duties. But the Jade Emperor rejected his silly entreaty, stating that China needed him.

Fortunately for all, Bao Gong came to the rescue. The divinity to be born as a judge in a later dynastic period was destined to be a very handsome mortal, but he reckoned that as an earthly judge he didn’t need a pretty face so offered to exchange his with Teck Cheng’s. The latter naturally accepted with gratitude.

Bao Zheng or Bao Gong

Thus Teck Cheng was born an Adonis who, with just his looks, won over China’s most powerful and potent enemy during the Sui period, a Korean princess-general. Ah, if only wars were won like so.

The Korean sweetie is known in Chinese story books as Peih Poe Kong Chu (Princess with Eight Magical Wonders). I have to confess as a kid I did fantasize being Teck Cheng while HRH the Korean hottie made guli eyes at me wakakaka.

But you know, today I do wonder about Teck Cheng's role as the military saviour of the Sui Dynasty in the war against Goguryeo (then a northen kingdom, one of 3, in the Korean peninsula), because the Chinese army and navy were badly trounced by the Goguryeons due to poor logistic support, particularly food supplies, for the army in the wintry cold northern campaign (shades of Operation Barbarossa) and lousy amphibious operations by the navy-marine force (a la the Gallipoli campaign?). Maybe Teck Cheng became a hero for conducting a Chinese 'Dunkirk' wakakaka.

[Sigh] Back to Mum’s preference for my Teochew education - perhaps she wanted me to learn Teochew in order to reply letters from one of her cousins who was always appealing for money, yes, from my Mum, a widow as poor as a church mouse after my father’s sudden demise.

Whatever her reason was, she soon discovered there was no Teochew school in Penang, though she vaguely recalled there was a Hokkien one, but which had been closed for eons. There were private tutors but we couldn’t afford their fees. I was thus spared a possible career as an actor in Teochew operas, in a role which one of my ex’s told me with malicious delight that I was most suited for … er … as the villain who was eventually executed by the Emperor (or Empress) … gulp.

Informed by one of my uncles that one could still learn to read and write Chinese in a Mandarin school, Mum packed me off to one (a private establishment) after my Unc offered to pay the fees, though she did still try to push for the Teochew private tuition. But Unc told her private tuition wasn’t as good as regular schooling. Besides, he was paying the bill so the matter was settled. As usual, my mum couldn’t resist giving me a final blistering glare as if I was the cause of her losing out in the Teochew vs Mandarin bout.

If anyone was born to be an arch-scapegoat, c’est moi!

So in the morning I went to Pykett Methodist, while immediately after that I rushed off to the private Chinese school. Of course, given the travelling time between schools, I was always late for the afternoon session, and without lunch too, other than a hastily gobbled cheap pow (dumpling) or a cheaper eu char koay (fried dough stick).

Being late for class didn’t go well with any headmistress of Chinese schools, let alone the one I had acquired. She already hated people like me, a Chinese sent by his parents to a national type school in preference to a vernacular type, which incidentally was not my mum’s decision but my late dad’s.

She demanded to know why I hadn’t abandoned my national type schooling so as to be on time and full time at her school. Being a wimp (not forgetting I was just a kid), I remained silent during her relentless inquisition which of course infuriated her even more.

My sin as a student in a national type school cum my stoic demeanour earned for poor kiddy kaytee scarey piercing gamma-ray-ed evil eyes from my new headmistress, obviously for what she perceived as my insouciant treachery to Chinese education. To her, it was ... gulp ... cultural treason.

I didn’t really enjoy Chinese classes, mainly because the school put me in a very junior standard to enable me to learn ab initio Mandarin, where I then had to sit through English, Maths and Malay, etc, lessons that were some years behind my standard in Pykett Methodist. ‘Twas not only humiliating but very boring.

However, I sat next to a cute dimpled sweetie who took pains during any spare time to tutor me in Mandarin while I helped her with Maths and English and of course some Malay.

Gigi Lai with her fantastic sweet dimpled smile

Alas, this was unfortunately at a time when I wasn’t yet keen on the fairer gender – that’s the story of my life, wrong place at the wrong time ... sigh ... just like I wasn’t a stud of a captain in the Royal Palace Guards protecting Empress Regnant Wǔ Zétiān, or a heroic Chinese general in a military-romantic encounter with the Korean Princess Peih Poe Kong Chu ... sigh again.

I have often been told, in fact repetitively by some of my ex’es, that the female person matures faster than her male counterpart, so it was only natural that on one fine day several months later, during Chinese class, spoilt somewhat by the lesson being taken by the headmistress herself (who still laser-ed me regularly with her accusative looks), Dimpled Sweetie decided to advance my Mandarin lessons, emulating Chairman Mao’s Great Leap Forward, so to speak.

Dimpled Cheeks quietly pushed a piece of paper into my hands, on which I saw three Chinese characters. I recognized two, mind you, not that I could write them yet.

The first one looked like a J combined with several crisscrossed strokes slashing the J horizontally and slantwise a la Zaitochi – it was a wo or I (saya).

The second one looked rather complicated so I skipped it for a while.

The third was easy, a T with a sloping top plus some other strokes, which I worked out to be ni or you (kau or anda).

So it was "wo something(?) ni". I looked at her to see whether she was offering any helpful hints but she merely smiled at me in that sweet mysterious Mona Lisa manner - oh, those dimples of hers.

OK then, I glanced back at the middle character again and after a while thought it looked like what my Unc had once taught me. Er ..... could it just be ..... but no, surely not ..... gasp!

Wrapped in deep thoughts on the meaning of the mysterious Chinese character I didn’t observe that the headmistress was coming my way like a runaway steam engine. She had spied Sweetie smiling at me while I was doing a Rodin.

I was rudely brought back to earth when she snatched the piece of paper from my hands, on which were the three characters which doomed me virtually like a member of Sih Jeen Kooi's family.

When I looked up into her eyes, I realized how those crypto-Jews and crypto-Muslims in Spain must have felt when confronted by Tomás de Torquemada, the Catholic Church’s Grand Inquisitor in Spain and notorious Architect of Torture.

During the auto-da-fé, she accused me, a national school degenerate ... gulp ... of writing love words to an innocent young Chinese-educated lassie. It’s a miracle Jiang Qing ... er ... I mean ... the prejudiced headmistress didn’t succumb to the temptation of insulting me with a “chea ar-mor sai kooi” (where kooi means devil, or to be more precise, non-Chinese barbarian) or told to balik (go home to) England wakakaka.

Jiang Qing, 2nd wife of Mao

I decided to remain silent as I could see she was all worked up and determined to punish me, and any explanation would have been futile. Besides, I did like Dimpled Cheeks, mind you, just platonically, so I wasn’t going to dob on her by saying she was the author. And of course there was that rebellious streak in me ;-)

I thus found myself in a classic (but for me, terribly awkward) trap where the sins of a Chinese who hadn’t received Mandarin language education were to be exposed and punished, not unlike what Jiang Qing's Red Guards had iniquitously done to China’s academicians and top professionals during the bad old days of Mao’s Cultural Revolution. We degenerates must be flogged (literally or figuratively) into admittance of our un-socialist or un-Chinese crimes to society.

In Peninsula Malaysia, the perceived sins or treachery of a Chinese Malaysian who wasn’t educated in Mandarin would be so unforgiving to the Chinese language Nazis that he/she would be described derogatorily as a ‘banana’ if not as a “chea ar-mor sai kooi”.

It doesn’t matter whether the one accused by those Mandarin Nazis speaks perfect Canto, Teochew, Hokkien, Hakka, Hainanese, etc, but the inability to speak Mandarin would condemn him/her, as I was, to being a ‘banana’ forever.

Truly a “t’a mah ter, wang pah tan” situation – sorry lah, no can translate as it’s very rude! But one digressing note here - strangely, unlike saucy Canto or versatile Teochew, Mandarin has very few obscene phrases. Probably those northern bastards must have led a bloody dull life, stupified into blasé tedium by the severe Arctic winters, wakakaka.

Some extreme haters of ‘bananas’ have gone further, even to extreme and outrageous accusations alleging that 'bananas' are all too ready to disown their Chinese heritage. They even employed the term ‘charm ch’ow tnooi keen’ (chop/rid the grass, break/eliminate the roots) to accuse the victim of severing all ties with one’s cultural-ethnic roots, but funnily enough for all their claimed cultural superiority, an aphorism incorrectly* applied.

* The Chinese maxim literally translates into ‘cut the grass by severing its roots’, advising that to rid the grass forever, so that they’ll sprout no more; one must destroy the roots. Thus the saying means destroying something totally and thoroughly by eliminating any of its potential for comeback, which (the underlined phrase) is the essential element. Thus this Chinese saying is usually used in connection with genocidal intent, as in eliminating all members of an enemy family to prevent future vendetta, or to thoroughly kill off a disease or illness to avoid recurrence.

The mentioned Chinese proverb in full is as follows:

斩草不除根，春风吹又生

(pinyin: zhǎn cǎo bù chú gēn, chūn fēng chuī yòu shēng)

Literally: If the roots are not removed during weeding, the weeds will grow again when the winds of Spring blows.

Moral:
1) It is essential to finish a task thoroughly or the effort would be wasted
2) To solve any problems, the source of the problem must also be dealt with.

So much for the cultural superiority of some psychopathic Mandarin-Nazis wakakaka.

Thus, to the Chinese headmistress who hates with a vengeance any Chinese kids attending national-school, a ‘banana’ like me must have my ‘yellow’ skin peeled back to expose my decadent non-Chinese ‘white’ core.

It was hardly surprising then that the prejudiced Jiang Qing-ish headmistress ignored the possibility that I was innocent, which I was and which I bet she knew. She wrote a damning letter to my mum about my alleged ‘sins’, for which I was given a severe belting plus an earful of how undedicated and ungrateful I was to waste good Unc’s financial support.

Much as Unc continued to have confidence in me and urged me not to give up, I decided I had enough of the Chinese Ilse Koch and left my Chinese education behind, which has been why I remain a ‘banana’.

While it was unlikely that I would have turned out to be an amazing Teochew (Chaozhou) opera star, it was possible that I could have become a world renowned Chinese (Mandarin) scholar famous for his love poems wakakaka. But thanks to that inquisitorial Malaysian Jiang Qing, I missed that opportunity to be the greatest Chinese muse, on par with Li Bai [sigh].

One morning, a few years after I left for good that private Chinese school because of the unjust headmistress, I met sweet Dimpled Cheeks in Paya Terubong, Ayer Itam, Penang. She was then thirteen, 2 years younger than me. More gorgeous than ever, she was unfortunately accompanied by her parents, obviously on a Sunday family outing at the Ayer Itam village market.

I thought her dimpled cheeks had grown rosier, probably flushing on seeing me, the dungu (dumbo) for whom she wrote those sweet innocent words, mind you, just to improve my Mandarin ;-).

Ariel Lin's sweet dimpled smile

I wonder whether she blushed because she regretted her sweet innocent impetuosity, or she was secretly excited to see me. Ah well, I pretended it was the latter wakakaka.

At that particular moment three short lines from Li Bai’s Changgan Song sprang to my mind:

At fifteen, my face lit up
in your company. I was willing
to have my ashes mixed with yours

Li Bai was China’s greatest poet and a Godzilla boozer. For years, under the influence of one of my uncles, I tried to imitate Li Bai’s lifestyle ... er ... I mean the boozing part, wakakaka, until I found out he drowned in a vat of wine, sob. Mind you, it was not a bad way to go ;-).

Back to Dimpled Cheeks - After I left the Chinese school, while growing up as a teenager (and becoming more aware of girls), I would sometimes think of her in the night before I slept, which would then bring to mind a poem of the late Tang, that of Wei Zhuang’s Last Night:

In the depths of last night
I saw you in the dream.
We murmured on and on -
your face flushing again like a peach blossom,
your eyebrows arching like long graceful willow leaves.

Half shy, ecstatic,
you tarried at parting -
Waking up
overwhelms me in sadness.

Hmmm, I wonder whether she did tarry at our parting on that morning, wakakaka. Hah, perhaps something from Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet (Act 1, scene 5, 44 - 54) would not have been out of order:

O, she doth teach the torches to burn bright!
It seems she hands upon the cheek of night
Like a rich jewel in an Ethiop’s ear;
Beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear!
So shows a snowy dove trooping with crows,
As yonder lady o’er her fellow shows.
The measure done, I’ll watch her place of stand,
And, touching hers, make blessed my rude hand.
Did my heart love till now? Forswear it, sight!
For I ne’er saw true beauty till this night

Sadly, I haven’t seen her again since that occasion, in which case another of Wei Zhuang’s poem, Thousands of Knots at Heart, would be appropriate:

No letter has come from you
for half a year: One inch
of separation grief,
thousands of knots in the heart.
It’s easy to part but not easy
to meet. Again,
the jade abode is covered
in the willow catkins like snow.

There’s no describing how I miss you.
Melancholy comes with the mist and the moon
in the evening. Overwhelmed
at the thought of you, I raise
my red sleeves soaked in tears.

Of course I couldn’t read much Chinese save a few words, like those three which Dimpled Cheeks wrote for me ;-), but I did learn/absorb Chinese tradition, culture, myths and folklore and history from my elders. Being a ‘banana’ was never a socio-cultural disadvantage though, like most pursuits, we can always do better.

Romance of the 3 Kingdoms

And Unc was good enough to buy me the English versions of the 300 Poems of Tang Dynasty and various other classics, including the Big Four – Romance of the 3 Kingdoms, Water Margin, Journey to the West and Dreams of the Red Chamber. But damn, Unc refused to let me have a copy of the Plum in the Golden Vase because I was then not yet an adult :(

108 heroes of Water Margin

So, if am the 'banana' those Mandarin Nazis insulted me as, has that diminish the Chinese identity in me? Well, readers, you tell me.

Dreams of the Red Chamber

Now, I do observe Chinese festivals, and at mum’s insistence (just to please her when she was alive) religious or traditional rites.

For example, I celebrate mid Autumn festival, Chinese New Year, Chap Goh Meh, and all the festivals that Penangites love, and even (for moi, an atheist) religious ones like 7th Moon (Ghost) festival and its saucy Koe Tai (Ge Dai) wakakaka.

Journey to the West

When I was in Malaya, I enjoyed participating in the very stern Kew Ong Eah (9 Emperor Gods) birthday rites and the trek up Cheng Jee Chan (1,200 steps) to the 9 Emperor Gods’ temple on a Paya Terubong hill, various Tua Peh Kong birthday celebrations in Penang and the inevitable Teochew operas.

I observed (together with my mum while she was alive) the Cheng Beng rites of visiting and cleaning my grandparents’ and father’s graves.

In Penang, one cannot but help know when Cheng Beng arrives because the angsana blooms would be scattered all along Scotland Road and Western Road. The Angsana trees (Pterocarpus indicus) are known as pokok sena in Malay.

Penangites called the magnificent golden blooms Cheng Beng Hwa, which means ‘flowers of Cheng Beng’. The name also carries an ominous significance as the blooms on the roads during or after rain can prove to be perilously slippery to motorcyclists, as kaytee had discovered in his younger days.

Hey, before I conclude, let’s return to my memories of sweet Dimpled Cheeks. As I thought of her at the market, then a sweet 13, I dedicated 3 of Du Mu’s lines on Parting to her:

Slender, supple, she’s just thirteen,
the tip of a cardamom bud
in early spring

And perhaps, nostalgically, the second and third stanzas of Yan Jidao’s Florid Sleeves as my everlasting dedication to my childhood school friend, sweet Dimpled Cheeks:

How I have since missed you,
dreaming of meeting you again and again.

Tonight, I keep turning the silver lamp
to your face. Oh, we are really together,
yet I’m afraid we’re meeting
in a recurring dream.

Religious divisions or divisive religions

2012-01-10T15:03:00.003+08:00

During the last couple of decades, there has been a far greater religious consciousness in Malaysia. In using the word ‘consciousness’, I have been more than generous. I find it difficult to describe it as a religious ‘renaissance’ or even an ‘awakening’ for the simple reason the acute ‘consciousness’ has more to do with ethnic polarization than spiritual enlightenment – promoting the rise and rise of ‘we & them’.

For example, on meeting each other, Malays would address Muslims friends and Muslims strangers with Assalamu alaikum, which in Arabic means 'peace be upon you'. It’s really a beautiful greeting. We all could do with such wishes. The appropriate reciprocation is of course Walaikum assalam.

This Arabic originated greeting is not new, and has been used in Malaya/Malaysia for hundreds of years by Muslims as well as some non-Muslims. In the Middle-East, it's used on an everyday basis by Arabic speaking people, even those of the Christian faith.

Today, unfortunately one can sense and observe the users treating it as a greeting exclusive only to Muslims, like a membership gold card of a very special and segregated club.

One day I saluted my favourite bank teller, a sweet and charming Malay lady, with this Arabic felicitation. Having a keen eye for her, I had preferred to see her in person for my bank withdrawals rather than use the faceless ATM. On hearing my Arabic greetings, she showed her surprise though she swiftly reciprocated.

While working out the paltry sum of my withdrawal, she said – and I still recall this most vividly - "Sir, it's so sweet of you to wish me that but you really shouldn't because you aren't a Muslim. Just a Selamat Pagi or Good Morning would do." Then she smiled dazzlingly at me as if to take away any sting of her sweet and gentle rebuke.

Aaah, my heart did a magic somersault, and for the 15th time that morning, I fell deeply in love. Her dark doe eyes seemed to sparkle and smile too, so much so that I was quite tempted to leap over the counter to be beside her, except that a big burly bank guard (Big, Strong & Most Unfriendly) was eyeing me all along, with suspicion on his face – blast, I am just that sort of bloke who always invites the wrong kind of attention.

However, back to the issue - I didn't have the heart to remind her it's just an Arabic salutation and not a Quranic phrase, or that it meant 'Muslims of the world, unite' or 'Saladin was a jolly good bloke with a nifty slash, thrust and parry!'

Why didn't she accept that I was entitled to wish her Assalamu alaikum? I thought I did say it rather smartly and sincerely ;-)

Subsequently I discovered that it's not only the Malaysian Muslims who indulge or perhaps fantasize in exclusive greetings, arcane societies and secret handshakes.

photo from yah-meh blog

Incidentally, I am an expert on secret handshakes. Besides being a former scout (left hand straight to-from the heart), I fraternized with people in the Boys’ Brigade who, according to their codes (undoubtedly copying the Scouts in having a unique-styled handshakes) would only shake hands with their little pinkies naughtily intertwined with the other parties – yeeech, as you can guess, those Boys Brigade duckies were either sissies or gays, wakakaka.

I am familiar too with the African American '15 slap-knuckle-point-pound-grip secret Kunta Kinte bruther-shake', taught to me by an inebriated African American military officer I met in a Berlin bar. We became friends after his team lost to my Malaysian team in several bouts of 'schooner racing' (outside Malaysia/Singapore, it's called 'boat racing'). Poor Yanks didn't realize Malaysians make the best 'schooner racing' teams thanks to a couple of generations of Tiger and Anchor beer sponsorships, wakakaka.

Now on to the non-Muslims - to my great shock, I realized that the greater religious 'consciousness' has permeated into Chinese Buddhist society as well.

My neighbour, a sweet Chinese lady (let's call her Angel-eyes) would greet her friends with a Namo Omitofo, a greeting calling upon the Amitabha Buddha.

This mantra is used as a greeting by monks of the Chinese Pure Land Sect of Buddhism, and also chanted by lay disciples as part of their daily prayers.

In the past, lay Buddhists hadn’t or rarely used it among themselves, though they respectfully did when they greeted a monk. Believe me, my late mum was a devotee of this sect since she was a small girl, but she didn’t go around sprouting Namo Omitofo except during prayers or when she met a monk.

Chinese traditionally greet each other with the usual “Are you doing well" and "Have you eaten?”, the latter perhaps indicating their origin from a harsh and sometimes famine-stricken land.

I did wonder whether this use of Namo Omitofo among laypeople had been a response to the Muslim exclusive Assalamu alaikum? Perhaps it’s one of those “anything you can do, I can do better” thingy to promote a sense of exclusive belonging, which since time immemorial have seen various groups (especially secret societies) establishing secret callsigns, hand signals and exclusive greetings among fellow members.

The most secret or notorious (depending on one's outlook) secret society in Western countries, and even in Malaysia/Singapore and other Western colonised places, has been the Freemasonry whose members are reputed to reveal themselves to one another by secret hand signals.

At the local Penang scene, my best friend used to lift his eyebrows in a special way when he wanted me to talk his wife into allowing him out with me, to the pub of course, but without revealing our intended destination - bastard virtually made a liar out of me. But dear Iris broke our Da Vinci code rather easily, with a threat of bodily harm to her husband and a non-welcome to me if we persisted in secret signs.

Being rebellious but alas, terribly timid, we quietly changed our covert signalling to head and ears and nose scratching - Iris is still suspicious till today.

I wonder how Christians would do their 'exclusive' greetings? Would it be a simple 'Hallelujah' or 'Hi, Jesus loves you!' or a more verbose 'I shaketh thy Christian hand but nevereth thy faith in our Lord, Jesus Christ'?

What about Hindus then? Perhaps a terse but all powerful Om, or a more verbal-diarrheic 'May shimmering Shiva smite thy enemies and pleasing Parvati bless thee'?

Anyway, I soon heard my neighbour Angel-eyes and her Buddhist friends using that Namo Omitofo greeting in a delightful manner, though not unlike full fledged members of the White Lotus secret society.

In a way, it confirmed my point about the greater religious ‘consciousness’ nowadays, that we have arrived at such a segregated situation because of the centrifugal forces of ethno-centric divisiveness.

Anway then, I decided that I wanted to be included among Angel-eyes' coterie as well, but not because of ethnicity. I was ... eh ... just friendly!

So when I saw Angel-eyes next, I greeted her with what I felt was a dignified voiced Namo Omitofo, and just to make sure I really impressed her, did so with a solemn face besides adding on a little graceful bow - mind you, nothing ostentatious, you know, but just that teeny weeny itsy bitsy nod.

So carried away by the solemnity of the occasion, I had to restrain myself from flicking both my palms up together a la the Thai 'wai', what Thais do respectfully with both hands when they greet each other ( see images above, & below where my sweetest Yingluck wakakaka performs the wai). I though that would have very gone well with the mantra, the solemn face and the bow, but I thought I won’t overdo it the first time.

Angel-eyes gave me a very suspicious look and a most reluctant and hesitant response, being not sure whether I was pulling her leg - hmmm, yum yum.

Crumbs, can she even trust my sincerity? ;-)

No, obviously not because, unbeknownst to me she must have discussed my unprecedented and most unexpected Namo Omitofo with my sister - yes, those women discussed behind my back my most dignified Dalai-Lama-ish greeting with the solemn face and very dignified bow, because before long, good olde Sis warned me to cease and desist using that greeting on Angel-eyes.

WHAT? But but but but but why?

I demanded to know, in the most un-solemn and undignified manner – hey man, she’s just a sister!

Sis told me that Angel-eyes felt extremely uncomfortable when I greeted her with Namo Omitofo, more so when she knew my most unreligious character. I protested vehemently that it’s just a mantra of peace.

It seems I have put Her Most Sweetness in a quandary - torn between her good Buddhist nature to respond appropriately, and her deep suspicion of me, knowing me being me wakakaka, who’s quite likely to tweak her cute lovely nose while leading her up the garden path onto a naughty merry-go-around.

Me? Really, the suspicion of some people – how most un-Buddhist-like! ;-)

Hmmm, I have since wondered whether I ought to have taken out the graceful bow? That might be just a little over the top. But obviously, it's not easy to penetrate the ranks of the exclusive Ayer Itam 'White Lotus Society' wakakaka.

Namo Omitofo!

What's in a name!

2012-01-07T14:41:00.003+08:00

What's in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.

- Shakespeare - Romeo & Juliet (II, ii, 1-2)

Scene: An overseas government employment agency

Actors:
(1) Chinese Malaysian – Tan Ah Kow
(2) Agency officer – Bob
(3) Agency officer – John

Bob: “G'day mate, what’s your name?”

Tan: “Tan Ah Kow”.

Bob: “Please take a seat, Mr Kow”.

Tan {{Hmmm, Mr Kow eh?}} [slightly irritated]: “Thanks”.

Bob: “Now, Mr Kow, what was your first name again?”

Tan knew exactly what first name meant in a Western country, but given the dissimilarity with his Chinese name, pondered for a significant while before deciding to provide the equivalent to what Bob had in mind.

Tan [very reluctantly]: “Kow”.

Bob [slightly confused but pressed on bravely]: “Er … so your full name would be Kow Kow. or would that be Kow Ah Kow?”, remembering there was an 'AH' somewhere.

Tan felt his blood pressure rising steadily and pounding up a lovely Hiroshima-ish migraine, but he hung on, reminding himself the officer has been very polite and he should reciprocate.

Tan [exasperated, but still maintaining a calm voice but stated with exaggerated emphasis]: “No! My full name is Tan Ah Kow!”

Not surprisingly, by now, Bob became even more confused but valiantly attempted to salvage control of the conversation.

Bob [with dazzling smile]: “Got you, Mr Kow, your first name is Tan.”

Tan silently moaned {{karn neen nar, limpeh th’or hu-oih*, th’or hu-oih, TH'OR HU-IOH LAAAAAH!}}

* vomit blood (meaning, utterly frustrated)

Bob was of course right insofar as he perceived the sequence of Tan's name, but Tan knew that wasn't what Bob meant. By now, his frustration was on countdown to zero, but he exerted a supreme effort to avoid going ballistic, and to continue appearing polite and calm. However, he couldn’t help but grimaced, showing a pained look, and at the same time unconsciously clenched his fists until his knuckles turned white (not sure whether in prayer of desperation or suppressed anger); he was obviously losing the battle to control his frustrations when his trembling voice squeaked out a soft though near-hysterical rejection of Bob’s mangling of his name:

“NO, NO, Noooooooo! My name is Tan Ah Kow; my surname is Tan, my personal name is Ah Kow or Kow!”

Bob, by now alarmed by the client's sudden mood change into a state of near-amok, decided to abandon the Mother-Ship by the one-man escape-pod without warning the crew (Captain first, and women and children after me), replied swiftly:

“Yes sir, of course, I got you this time! Er … John, my colleague here, will attend to your registration. He’s the expert”.

And turning to John, who had been relaxing and drinking expresso café while casually listening to Bob’s struggle with Ah Kow’s moniker, said:

“Mate, help Mr … er … the nice gentleman … fill in the registration form”.

He slapped the form on John’s and immediately scooted off to another desk to bury himself with 101% attention in a blank piece of paper, pretending it was the United Nation Security Council Resolution 1441 that needed immediate translation from ancient Sumerian into very very simplified (kindergarten standard) American English for President Bush.

John, caught by Bob’s Pearl Harbour-ish sneak attack, nearly choke on his café but after some spluttering, sat up straight immediately while avoiding eye contact with a visibly annoyed Tan, and decided on the strategy of minimum dialogue interaction as the safest course.

John: “Mr … er … sir, just fill in those blank fields – here’s where you put your … er … first name, and here’s the space for your last name … er … and I’ll do the rest for you”.

Tan [with blistering look and voice dripping with sarcasm]: “You don’t want my address?”

John [embarrassed by his over-hasty omission] {{Oh f**k me dead! f**k! f**k!}}: “That too of course, plus any personal details… (weak smile) … that’s standard.”

Tan debated with himself whether it would be worthwhile spending some time explaining to the two officers the more than 4,500 year old structure of a Chinese name – surname, generation name and personal name – before proceeding with the form, but decided that would be too hard a task. He resigned himself to further sufferings.

On the other side of the service counter, John noted very carefully that Tan had no problem filling in the 'last name' as TAN, but hesitated for maybe more than 20 seconds before he penned AH KOW in as the 'first name'.

John thought: {{WTF, if he’s TAN AH KOW as he bloody claimed, and KOW being the bloody obvious surname, why did he bloody put TAN as his last or family name?}}

{{Doesn’t he bloody understand the meaning of the words 'first' and 'last'? And why did he bloody hesitate when filling in his first name? Well, obviously it couldn’t be bloody KOW - that’s his bloody family name, and what kind of bloody first name was AH anyway?}}

{{Hmmm, Maybe those poor pathetic pitiful Chinese Malays or, WTF matey, should it be Malay Chinese, don’t have first names? Maybe they just have numbers like those poor Jews in the Nazi concentration camps – you know, 12345 Ching and 67890 Chong, Ching Chong, hehehe … whoops}}

{{if this bloke can read my thoughts I am deader than a Chinese roast dick … I mean … duck in a rancid laksa!}} … struggling his utmost not to burst into uncontrolled giggles at his humorous reverie right in front of the client.

Tan [suddenly speaking up]: “What’s this 'mother’s maiden name'?”

John [startled from his day dreaming about Ching Chong and Suzy Wong]: “Er .. that’s your mother’s name before she married your … er … father”.

Tan [signed] thought {{WTF is my double-first at Oxford of any use here?}}: “I know what maiden name is! But why my mum’s and not my dad’s?”

This time it was John who debated with himself whether it would be worthwhile explaining to the Asian that dad’s name would be as bloody useless as an empty stubbie* on a Sunday BBQ because mums here change hubbies (and last names) faster than the colours on the side of a Rubic Cube in the hands of an over-energetic hyperactive primary school kid. The only name unlikely to change would be mum’s maiden name. {{Nah, f**k it … not worth the trouble}}.

* small (375 ml) bottle of beer

John: “Er … it’s the local culture … er … (weak grin) ... woman first and all that jazz”.

Tan didn’t believe a single word of what he said but decided: {{WTF, I’ll just fill this form and get the f**k out of here}}.

Meanwhile, Bob seeing that Tan was quietly filling in the form, sneaked a peep at the details entered, and smiled as he saw an opportunity to repair the initial damage that had occurred.

Bob: “Hi AH, hope you don’t mind me calling you by your first name. We are all mates down here in Oz, and everyone's usually on first name basis”.

Before Tan could recover from his shock at being addressed as ‘AH’, John chipped in.

John: “Yeah AH matey, none of those Pommie class conscious poppycock nonsense. Welcome to Oz, AH KOW TAN!”

By now, a frustrated and exasperated Tan decided to do a ‘Japanese’, namely, unconditional surrender to Aussie (lack of) understanding of Chinese name structure.

Tan: “Thank you”

... handed the form over, shook their hands and hurried off before further mutilations of his name caused his blood pressure to geyser.

Bob: "Phew, that was nicely handled by you, mate. What a bloody cock-up of a name, TAN AH KOW, and he’s denying KOW's his family name, and wanting to claim TAN as that!"

"Language barrier, that's what it was! John Howard certainly has a point in putting an English language test in the citizenship requirement, though I've always doubted the need to test the migrants' knowledge on cricket, which has no relevancy to citizenship other than it's Howard's personal obsession”.

John: “Mate, I am not too sure by now. F**k if I am not confused. What shall I file AH KOW TAN’s form under?”

Bob: “Why, as 'TAN, AH KOW' of course! And anyway, that’s how his name will appear in the phone directory”.

Related:
(1) Who is an Asian?

Village ghost busters

2011-12-11T14:10:00.006+08:00

An old one posted in June 2009 at my other blog KTemoc Konsiders but now added to the collection here. I have also taken the liberty of adding some comments by visitors to the original post - thanks to them.

***

I refer to the Star Online’s ‘Mysterious spirit’ haunting housing estate.

The article reported:

Residents of Taman Helang Jaya, Nibong Tebal*, have been living in fear over the appearance of a “mysterious spirit” in the area for the past month, Malaysia Nanban reported.

* presumably that’s the one in my home state of Penang

Residents claim they have heard of the sighting of a headless body** dressed in white, usually appearing around midnight and making noises like a crying baby.

There were occasions when iron gates of the houses were shaken during the night. One resident said he heard this mysterious spirit had knocked on doors and bitten the hands of the house owners.

There has also been an increase in the number of soothsayers in the area hoping to appease the spirit.

** Sounds as if it’s the other component of a hantu penanggalan, though supposedly in a hantu penanggalan, the headless body would be lying inert at home while the head roam or fly around on its hungry but ghoulish mission. I wonder how the headless ghost could wail like a crying baby or bite anyone as reported by the newspaper, but trust most ghost stories to not allow inconvenient facts to detract from the sensation of telling them?

The Thais call such a occult creature a krasue, while the Cambodians refer to it as an ap. It's quite a common occult belief in most south-east Asian countries as the Filipinos have their own manananggal, the Vietnamese tribes of the Western Highlands ma lai, and the Laotians phi-kasu or kasu.

In Penang we call it hantu tengelong. Apparently the Penang Chinese call it si low baan. The hantu tengelong is not so much a 'ghost' in the western meaning of this word, but rather a woman dabbling in the occult who could, through black magic, detach her head from her body to go flying around for blood, especially those of women who had just delivered. It particularly relishes the placenta and the blood of childbirth, hence village women in our part of worldly beliefs, would ensure the post-birth placentas would be buried deep in the ground at unrevealed locations.

The typical hantu tengelong has a slight baggage problem. Her inner organs (including and especially the intestines) would still be attached to her head as she goes hunting.

When she returns to her body, belief has it that she has to dip her entire appendages (except for the head) into a vat of special fluid, usually jampi-ed vinegar (vinegar subjected to occult incantations), in order to shrink them so she could re-insert her innates into her body.

‘Twas often claimed, if one was able to remove or obstruct the vat of vinegar, the hantu wouldn’t be able to shrink her inner organs and thus would fail to reunite with her human body, and by sunrise she would suffer incredible pains and possible death, not unlike the western vampire.

Apparently there is also another tactic to screw up its 're-union' with its body, by flipping the headless body over (face down instead of face up?). But all these would only only possible if you know the witch. I have to say I knew a few when I grew up but they were all too pretty and hot for me to bother about their intestinal aspects, when I was far more interested in their other anatomical properties.

I recall as a small boy, around 10 - 12, that whenever there were claims of a hantu tengelong around our village, I would join the local 'vigilante corps' in a hantu-tengelong-hunting exercise. Unsurprisingly, the mob would be a dozen youngsters of my age group.

Come dusk, we would arm ourselves with bamboo poles which would be adorned with barbed wire strands at the attacking ends. The logic then was that we could snarl up the hantu’s intestines with the barbed wires. What we proposed to do after that wasn’t very clear – I bet no one thought through on that possibility, wakakaka.

Those who could ‘borrow’ their fathers’ torch lights became instant heroes. Others brought along pathetic oil lamps. Some silly ones (like moi) even equipped themselves with their mothers' votive candles wakakaka. We patrolled the village throughout the night (coincidentally a Saturday) and while away our time speculating wildly on who the witch could be - our suspicion would usually fall upon the meanest woman in our village, the one who seemed to be able to successfully catch us raiding her rambutan or papaya trees wakakaka.

The only damage we inflicted was that on the following morning many adult neighbours would wonder why some parts of their barbed wire fencing were cut ;-)

Hmmm, I wonder whether the headless hantu in Taman Helang Jaya, Nibong Tebal could be the hantu tengelong sending out its other half to confuse the ‘enemy’, no doubt boys like I once was, and who would be armed with barbed wired bamboo poles.

Village memories 1 - ducks

2011-10-19T17:39:00.036+08:00

We all know that we human beings make different cooing sounds to attract pets or domesticated animals or fowls. For example, we would say ‘mee mee mee‘ ;-) to cats though sometimes calling out ‘kitty kitty kitty’, presumably to cats which understand English wakakaka.

However we would whistle to dogs or make human statements like ‘come here, boy’ (even to bitches). Maybe that’s why we whistle also at life’s real bitches, the ones who wear 4-inch high heels wakakaka.

But one of life’s greatest mysteries, at least from a Chinese Penangite's perspective, is the different sounds we make when calling out to fowls, for example, chicken and ducks.

We would say ‘koo koo koo …’ to the former but instead utter ‘lee lee lee …’ to ducks.

Why?

Could it be that in some distant past, perhaps back during China’s mythical era, that an ancient Chinese in Fujian or Chaozhou region (then not yet an official state province) was told by the gods to do so as specific calls appealed to different species of the fowl kingdom.

Considering that the stories in the ‘Creation of the Gods’, a Chinese book authored by Xu Zhonglin (Chinese title is Fengshan Bang or sometimes Fengshen Yanyi), we are told of the existence of demon-spirits of pheasants, peacocks, chicken, trees and even inanimate items such as a pipa or an oil lamp, and of course ...

... vixens, the No 1 favourite female animal-spirit for Chinese, Koreans, Vietnamese and Japanese - oh, those hot sexy foxy (excuse the deliberate pun) demons.

There was a TV series based on the stories in ‘Creation of the Gods’, called The legend and the hero. In the first season, Empress Daji, the main foxy villain, a beautiful vixen demon ordered by an angry goddess to seduce and ruin a lustful disrespectful Emperor Zhou, so that he became the last of his Shang Dynastic line, was played by scrumptious succulent sweetie Fan Bing Bing.

Fan Bing Bing

Alas for me, Fan Bing Bing is an exquisite sweet doll who looked so very much like someone I once knew in Penang, sob sob sob.

Fan Bing Bing

In another Chinese story ‘The White Maiden Locked for Eternity in the Leifeng Pagoda’ (more commonly known as Madam White Snake), one of several stories in Feng Menglong trilogy of vernacular story collections from the Ming Dynastic period, we learned of romantic human dalliance with white and green snake demons who of course had transformed into gorgeous hot babes.

Cute and so yummy Eva Huang played Madam White Snake in the recent film release of The Sorcerer & the White Snake, ...

... while some 10 years ago, sexy Maggie Cheung played the green snake in Tsui Hark's Green Snake, ...

... which was adapted from Lilian Lee's* book of same title, a tale told from the junior demon's perspective. In that movie, utterly gorgeous Joey Wong played the role of Madam White Snake.

Joey Wong

* Lilian Lee is the famous author of such books as 'Farewell my concubine', 'Rouge' (adapted into a film of same title, starring the late Anita Mui), 'Temptations of a monk', etc.

Thus, it would not be too difficult to imagine there was once a secret language for communication with these animals which, according to Chinese myths, could develop into demon-spirits after thousands of years of meditative spiritual cultivation.

Even from Sumatra, we receive tales of their legendary tiger people or were-tigers. It was said that these ‘beings’ could be recognised by the absence of their philtrum (sometimes called uurrrrrgh the infranasal depression). Apparently it has no function … though perhaps to indicate the person is a were-tiger wakakaka.

However, Wikipedia tells us that “A flattened or smooth philtrum can be a symptom of Fetal alcohol syndrome or Prader-Willi syndrome”.

Bloody spoilsport – should have left the flattened philtrum as more interestingly a romantic-mythical symbol of a person being a were-tiger wakakaka.

Anyway, back to the ‘koo koo koo …’ for chooks and ‘lee lee lee …’ for ducks, can anyone tell me why there is such a marked difference in audio calls for these two domesticated fowls?

Mind you, there are varying calls for other bird species. For example, as a young village lad, I used to make gobbling sounds to trigger off guaranteed angry responses from my neighbour’s male (tom) turkeys as I walked by her house. This would bring a sarong-ed Auntie Lai with rollers still in her hair rushing out to admonish me, and sometimes even threatening angrily to inform my mum that I deliberately upset her fowls wakakaka.

Hmmmm, I wonder what would be the sound to attract geese?

My maternal Granddad, being the Teochew (Chaozhou) nang he was, loved rearing ducks. He was the one who would call out ‘lee lee lee …’ regularly to his fowls.

Since domesticated ducks are descended from mallards I wonder whether we ought to call a flock of ducks a ‘sord’, as we would for mallards?

OK, 'sord' shall it be then - my Granddad kept a sord of ducks. Each morning, before I rushed off to school, my job was to feed those ducks, open the backyard gate, and allow them to troop off by themselves, single file, to a nearby stream where they would folic for the whole day. Strangely, though I didn’t question it in those days, the leader of the single-filed waddling to the stream was a brown duck and not the sole colourful drake we had. Wimp!

By evening, smart as dogs, the sord would return home, again in single file led by the lady, but when they found I hadn’t opened the backyard gate, would make mucho quacking. My Granddad would then be very annoyed that my forgetfulness prevented his precious ducks from entering our backyard – that usually earned me a rebuke though he was very forgiving, especially to me the apple of his eye ;-).

Despite the freedom we permitted them, to wander by themselves to the stream (about 200 metres away through several dozen neighbouring yards) we never lost one. They were wonderful birds though today I would consider ducks too yucky to keep in my garden.

The ducks were very productive. For a sord of 6 including that wimp of a drake, we received at least 4 eggs daily. I used those huge duck eggs in fried rice or onion-omelettes that I fried myself when Granddad allowed me to, and sometimes in the char koay teow my hawker matey Tan did for me.

Of course half boiled duck eggs were unheard of, presumably because their taste and odour were too ‘strong’. But hard boiled eggs were great. Once I went to KL by (bloody slow) train, I had only two hard boiled duck eggs and a bottle of ‘JKR gin’ (water) as my meal for the entire journey.

But it needs to be pointed out that until I left my village for the city to work, I had never taken chook eggs (free range of course, the only type in ulu kampungs) as those were then far too expensive for my family. Today it’s the other way around where chook eggs (by battery hens) are cheap while duck eggs have become a rarer commodity and thus far more expensive.

I wonder whether today, Penangites still call out ‘lee lee lee ...’ to their ducks ;-)

Monkey

2011-06-12T21:15:00.007+08:00

As a young laddie I heard this story from Ginny’s dad whom I mentioned briefly in an earlier post Dream No 2 – the God spoke, very precisely! It’s a tale of a man from China who came to work in one of the Malay States in the Peninsula (not yet Malaya, let alone Malaysia), and his friendship with a monkey.

Though the story is centred around opium, it is not an exposition of the evils of opium or the far more loathsome iniquitous British drug traders, ranging from British Parliament, British merchants/traders in China, the oppressive and punitive Royal Navy gunboat tactics in China, and the British authorities’ licensing of opium dens throughout British colonies in Asia including the Malay Peninsula.

The story has to start with a non-judgemental understanding that it was quite normal for a Chinese in the earlier colonial days in the Malay Peninsula, especially an expatriate, to smoke opium.

While there are the rich who indulged in the drug, many opium smokers were the coolie class who nightly ‘chased the dragon’ to both ease the pains and aches in their body and to forget their unfortunate personal circumstances. Opium was to the Chinese coolies of early British colonial days in Malaya what toddy is to the poorer Indian Malaysians today, an analgesic or tranquilizer.

Let’s provide the man from China a name so as to render the story-telling easier – let’s call him Lee.

Like most, Lee came to the Malay Peninsula to seek his fortune. It could have been the allure of rumoured silver here, but which turned out to be tin. Thus the hope of finding wealth in distant land persuaded him to leave his family (parents, siblings, wife, perhaps even children) back in China and come to the Nanyang*.

* ‘Southern Ocean’ or South-East Asia, but sometimes referring more to the ethnic Chinese migrant population in Vietnam, Malaya, Singapore, Philippines, Thailand, & Indonesia

It could have been the opportunity for profitable trading, or to offer his service as a specialist to the local Chinese community, as a teacher, traditional (herbal) doctor, mason, blacksmith, etc, or even just as a coolie (labourer).

After years of toiling in Nanyang, Lee was still alone, unlike some immigrants who married either local Chinese belles or native women. There was also a suspicion that he like many Chinese who ventured into the world outside China to seek their fortune, had abandoned their original dreams of returning ‘home’ with wealth (maybe because they didn’t make it?) and just wanted to live out their remaining years in his new found land.

He resided in a small but comfortable little hut near the fringe of the jungle, where at the end of the day, after dinner and a nice bowl of either tea or rice wine, he would relax in his chair on the veranda and puffed serenely at his opium pipe.

It was a lovely tropical rustic scene - an attap hut by a small bubbling brook which meandered by the edge of a largely virgin jungle that was teeming with birds, monkeys, butterflies and various types of insects. Their cries, whistles, screeches and humming underscored their presence. The stream was abundant with fishes, turtles, otters, eels and other aquatic creatures.

Sometimes Lee would see wild pigs, deer and tapirs grazing nearby. There were of course the obligatory slithery ones, while at night the occasional roars of panthers or even tigers could be heard alongside the more pathetic calls of wild cats, musangs (civet cats) or owls. In the twilight the bountiful swarms of glorious fireflies competed with his hurricane lamp to provide illumination during the evenings.

And as Lee puffed away, the rich fragrant odour of the smoked candu (opium) wafted away into the nearby jungle. One day, a more curious monkey, probably a long-tailed Macaque, caught its scent by the grace of a shifting evening breeze, and attracted, curiously approached the hut in anticipation of finding delectable food.

He sat on a mango tree next to the hut, watching Lee as he puffed away at his pipe. Lee was of course watching him at the same time as the monkey didn’t exactly arrive with stealth, swinging from rustling branch to rustling branch until he was comfortably perched on the tree.

After several minutes of curious observations by both sides, Lee got up, went into his hut and re-emerged with a handful of groundnuts (peanuts), probably imported from China as this was before 1940. Even though Menglembu is one of the oldest towns in Perak, existing as far back as the mid 19th Century (1850’s), Mr Lee Kit Yin, the founder of the famous Pagoda brand roasted groundnuts, only began producing Menglembu’s best known product in 1940.

I am not sure whether groundnuts, especially the baked or roasted kind, would be a staple food of monkeys, but Chinese Malayans have, for some reasons or other, believed that it was so, though today we know that monkeys feed on a diet of grubs, insects, bird eggs, reptiles (even small snakes) fruits, flowers, leaves and roots (groundnuts?).

Anyway, Lee left the nuts on a tree stump near the mango tree, about 3 to 4 metres away from where he sat. Monkey (let’s call him that, and he was a mature male) carefully descended from the tree to take the groundnuts. The offer and acceptance of groundnuts, with the occasional substitution of bananas, fruits, bread, rice, etc, continued for weeks.

Each time Lee left the food, he would straightaway walk straight back to his chair, and once seated, puffed away at his opium pipe, while Monkey would cautiously approached the offerings. Initially the simian would snatch at the gift and swiftly scamper back to the safety of the tree before eating it, but soon he was bold enough to enjoy the food at the tree stump.

It was only a natural development of their daily social interactions that one day Monkey was waiting on the veranda for Lee to return from work in the evenings, showing no signs of animal hostility. Lee was cautious enough not to take the relationship for granted, fully aware Monkey was an untamed creature of the Wilds. Then weeks later, Monkey was taking the food directly from the hands of Lee, and eating same while sitting on the veranda beside Lee in his chair.

Inevitably Monkey showed great curiosity in Lee’s opium smoking, even climbing up on to Lee’s shoulders to have a closer look and smell. As would have it, Lee, perhaps lonely and bored, decided to both experiment and satisfy Monkey’s curiosity by gently puffing out smoke into Monkey’s face.

The simian must have liked it as he continued jumping onto Lee’s shoulders when the latter was smoking. Eventually Lee offered the curious simian the pipe, still glowing with the smouldering candu. As they say, Monkey saw, Monkey did. After some initial coughing starts, Monkey joined Lee in their evening puffs. The man-monkey partnership in ‘chasing the dragon’ in the evenings went on for years.

One day Lee received sad news in a letter from China. An earthquake (subsequently claimed by the Chinese as being greater than 8 on the Richter Scale) had hit Ningxia province in Gansu region in December in the previous year, with aftershocks continuing since then. Nearly 250,000 people perished due to collapsing buildings and landslides. More than half of Lee’s family including his parents, all seven uncles and four of his elder brothers died. He was the remaining eldest of that unfortunate family. The remaining family members urged him to return to take charge.

It was by then late June, a lengthy 6 months after the tragedy before the letter reached him. It was not an unusual interval given the confusion in the aftermath of the earthquake and at a time when letters arrived in the Nanyang by the proverbial/paraphrased ‘slow boat from China’.

Once he got over the shock of the tragic news, he knew that the decimation of his family required him to revise his original plan to remain in the Malay Peninsula, so he made inquiries as to the earliest boat to China. He booked a passage on the first available one (a Chinese junk) which would set sail from Penang in September, two months away.

While he was finalizing his affairs for his departure he realized with enormous sadness that he couldn’t possibly take his companion, Monkey, along with him to China. Monkey was a denizen of the Wilds; for a start, how could the creature even survive the several weeks on a boat at sea? Lee spent hours pondering on what he could do for the by-now opium-addicted creature, knowing that he would never ever return to the Nanyang because of both his family requirements and his age.

Once he decided on a plan, the best under the circumstances, he did two things: first, he bought a fairly large quantity of opium, and second, he stopped smoking the drug but instead converted the method of consumption into taking opium pellets, one on each evening. His changed his drug habits purely to train Monkey into taking the opium by daily pellet rather than smoking it, because Monkey would not be able to handle the pipe by itself. He had two months to do so.

In the meantime he set about rolling the huge chunk of opium into pellets. Working furiously each night, he set a final target by end of September of at least 1,000 pellets (about 3 years supply) besides those to be consumed daily by him and Monkey until he left.

Each night as he rolled the opium into pellets and stored them in a container, he would guide Monkey into taking only one from the container for its daily needs.

They say a creature can sense what’s going on with a companion, as most dog lovers would swear. Somehow Monkey, by then converted to daily pellet taking, sensed Lee’s despondent mood and knew that the happy times were about to end.

It could also have been the fact that each night as he went about making the pellets, Lee talked sadly about the necessity of himself returning to China, and his apologies for being unable to take Monkey along. The lugubrious mono dialogue, its melancholic tones and the disconsolate tears from Lee’s eyes as he whispered wistfully to Monkey were perhaps sufficient telegraphic messages that something sorrowful would happen.

Or there was already a bond between man and beast, so much so that Monkey could feel or read Lee's mood in ways that we could never fathom.

On the fateful eve of Lee’s departure, he gave the entire stash of more than a thousand pellets in a container to Monkey with advice, and told the simian that he was leaving the following morning. Did Monkey understand the Chinese speaking human? Who knows, but Lee later recalled that he observed tears in Monkey’s eyes. The creature understood their relationship was to end. That night Monkey disappeared into the jungle with the supply of opium pellets.

Next morning as Lee with a very heavy heart was about to leave the hut for the last time, he saw Monkey up in the mango tree. It broke his heart as he realized the simian was waiting for him, because Monkey had never arrived at the hut in the morning.

Monkey then leapt down and approached him, and that was when he saw it was carrying a short stick about half a metre in length. It was knobbly and of some indeterminate wood species. Monkey handed the stick to him (actually pressed the item into his hands), and with a heart-wrenching last look, disappeared into the Malayan jungle. He never ever saw Monkey again.

Obviously it was a farewell gift from his erstwhile companion. Lee was touched by the almost human gesture and vowed to respect Monkey’s gift by bestowing upon it an honoured position in his house in China.

And a couple weeks later, we have Lee in the junk sailing between the Philippines and what today is Vietnam. It was September, the horrendous month for typhoons. That year, there was to be no exception to the seasonal climatology for the South China Sea region as a frighteningly ferocious typhoon hit the junk.

‘Twas much later, after the junk had escaped the wrath of the typhoon and just before it made land at Hong Kong, that the junk captain sent his crew to inquire from the two dozen or so passengers which of them had any unusual artefact, of amuletic or talismanic properties, and that he was prepared to pay a large sum for it.

When a few curious passengers asked why he inquired into the presence of such an item he revealed that he thought they would perish in the storm as the typhoon was the strongest he had seen in the 30 years he sailed the seas; but he was amazed with stunned wonderment when the junk sailed through it as if it was shielded by some strange divine force. The vessel appeared completely unaffected by the fury of the surrounding raging typhoon, its mountainous waves and fierce winds, indeed as if it was sailing on calm waters in an isolated bubble totally divorced from the storm raging just outside the apparent sphere.

The captain could not explain the strange but beneficial phenomenon which had kept his junk and all on board safe, except to attribute it to some unknown divine or magical intervention. He wanted whatever it was that protected the ship from nature’s fury.

Lee wisely remained silent, thinking to himself that the staff was what his village required to protect it from the devastating earthquake. At that moment he thought of Monkey and murmured a silent word of thanks to his old friend for gifting him with such a wonderful talisman.

Like us, he wondered about the strange forces of Nature still unknown to us, and the wisdom and knowledge of creatures like Monkey, which we puny humans dismissed so arrogantly. Years later, he wondered too, with tears in his eyes, how his erstwhile companion, Monkey, had fared. His story came back through relatives to Malaya and thus Ginny's dad.

Today, somewhere in China there is a family with such a talismanic tongkat (walking cane), though we do not know whether Monkey still exists or there is another monkey such as the one which gave the tongkat to Lee.

Memory Lane, Penang (1)

2011-06-05T11:30:00.009+08:00

use of photo with kind permission of kbp Internet Services

This was Penang Road in 1932, before any of us was born.

OK, some features existing currently and/or in the more recent past may not be present in this '32-era photo, but let's see whether we Penangites or those who are students of Penang history can work out what should be on this special road that lies in the heart of Penang.

Where possible, let's factor in features that we are or have been familiar with. I suspect our task may take a few postings. Please correct me when/where I am wrong as I take you along with me on a stroll down Memory Lane (excuse the pun)!

The photo shows Penang Road going towards the Jalan Prangin-Burma Road intersection and thereafter ending at the roundabout with spokes into Jalan MacAlister, Jalan Dato Keramat, Jalan Bricklin (Jalan Gurdwara?) and Jalan Magazine.

The Malays called the roundabout Simpang Enam (6 'cross' roads) while the Chinese (Hokkien) called it (I wonder whether they still do) gor-p'ar-teng, where the gor means 'five', and if my translation of the full term is correct, '5 Lanterns', perhaps referring to the street lights (lanterns in the old days?) spoking out into five ways?

I suspect the difference between the Malays' 6 and the Chinese 5 could be Lebuh Noordin or in Chinese, Jee Tiow Lor (2nd street), squeezed in between Jalan Magazine and Jalan Bricklin (Gurdwara). Originally Lebuh Noordin was a not-so-obvious minor spoke of that roundabout, and the expansion of an old hawker site between Jalan Magazine and Lebuh Noordin might have perhaps displaced Lebuh Noordin further away from being part of the Simpang Enam.

The hawkers site there was mainly occupied in those days by Chinese hawkers who sold typically traditional Chinese (not nyonya type) stuff. 'Twas not on my list of favourite place for food. But I recall vaguely I might have once bought pickled crabs (yukky) for my grandmother from one of the stalls. I wonder whether the old amusement park, Great World(?) was located somewhere there?

At the roundabout (I wonder whether this still exists?), if my memory still serves me right, there is that timeless feature, the Craven-A [aw ngiow] restaurant.

Thus the photographer in snapping this shot was standing at the northern part of Penang Road, on where there used to be a spit of land jutting out to the circle or roundabout [obviously not yet built in 1932], just in front of the Odean Cinema, which should be just to the right [outside the photo frame].

Chulia Street [or now Lebuh Chulia] - I've lost touch with all the renaming - would be on our left, while there was a lane between Chulia Street [Lebuh Leith?] and the spit of land we just mentioned - I think there was a Bai Mosque, not that the Bais - meaning 'elder brothers' in the Punjabi language, and therfore referring to Sikh Malaysians- are Muslims.

The misuse of the term Bengali by Chinese Penangites in referring to Sikhs had let to the mosque being called the Bai mosque, when it's no doubt being attended by Pakistanis or Bengalis, or more correctly today, Bangladeshis*.

* Bengalis would be people whose ancestors came from the Indian state of Bengal or across the border, from the adjoining province in Bangladesh, hence they're Bengalis or Bangladeshis, while Sikhs should be Punjabis with their ancestors originating from Punjab in India - there's also a part of the original Punjab in Pakistan but the Pakistani Punjabis would be Muslims rather than Sikhs.

A side note - when Malaysians talk about Malay women falling for Bengalis or Bangladeshis, they really mean Pakistanis who could be (Muslim) Punjabis, Sinds or Pathans (Pashthuns), blokes like Shah Rukh Khan wakaka

Initially I racked my rusty memory of Penang to obtain a name for that lane and somehow both Argyll and Leith jumped up - simce then, blogger friends have advised that it's Lebuh Leith while Jalan Argyll is on the other (right) side, next to the Odean Cinema. You can just see the beginning of Jalan Argyll in front of the 'something-Min' Dispensary (see photo) on the right side.

Incidentally, the Odean Cinema holds terrible memories for me. But before I go into that, a few years ago I heard that the cinema was closed down on 30 April 2001. There were moans of sadness, including mine, as the historical building seemingly was allowed to deteriorate.

A bit of history about the name Odeon. This very popular cinema name had been based on the ancient Greek 'Odeion', as the huge open air theatre at the foot of the Acropolis in Athens was called. But other popular amphitheatres of ancient Greece were similarly titled.

Our colonial connections with the British saw this name reached Malaya (later Malaysia). In Britain, Odeon was used as a name for cinemas by Oscar Deutsch, founder of the Odeon Theatres circuit, who adopted it, allegedly on the recommendation of a friend who first saw this appellation in Tunis. His friends teased him that the name 'Odeon' stood for ‘Oscar Deutsch Entertains Our Nation’.

After he died in 1941, his widow sold all his cinemas to J. Arthur Rank of the famous Rank Organisation, who also bought, but managed separately, Gaumont-British Cinemas, making his chain the largest cinema circuit in Britain.

Apparently by 1937, there were 250 Odeons in Britain. When I went to UK for studies, I heard from a British friend that there was a Odeon cinema near Marble Arch, which apparently had the largest cinema screen in London. A Malaysian matey also informed me then that Malaysia Hall was located in Edgeware Road, near Marble Arch, but to be frank, my memories of Malaysian institutions in Britain or London are rather dodgy today. While in Britain, I first started learning how to drink (warm) beer so most of my time were spent in alcoholic mist.

I do not know when the Penang Odeon was built, but since then, I heard it has been re-opened as a Bollywood speciality cinema with a new name of Veenai Odeon. Those of you still in current touch perhaps could be kind enough to update yours truly.

photo by Lilian Chan from www.flickr.com

OK, so on to my terrible memories.

There, at this cinema on Penang Road, I was dumped not once, but twice on movie dates by girlfriends - different bitches, if that's any face-saving consolation for poor ole kaytee wakakaka.

The first experience was very hurting as I was then still young and tender, with a naive innocent 'virgin' heart. Sweetie was my first love, who went to KL immediately after school to fill a temporary job that her uncle arranged for her. By the time she returned 3 months later, freshly sophisticated and KL-exposed, she decided she was too good for an ulu-punya (rustic bumpkin) Penang hick like me, sob!

So my sweetheart dropped me like a radioactive bomb without warning, by not turning up on our first (supposedly) date after her return. She informed a mutual friend (who naturally told me) she did that deliberately to make me cheen-sim ('lose heart' is too weak a word for this Chinese term but it'll have to do), so that I could forget her.

Alas, I couldn't and didn't. In fact I was utterly devastated. I went home rejected and dejected with two unused tickets which, for some masochistic reasons, I kept for several years, together with her photo, to torment myself. She obviously didn't want to have anything to do with one lovesick forlorn ulu-punya Penang bloke and must have taken measures to erase any tracks or leads to her new life.

It was several years later that she attempted to re-enter my life after I had moved to KL, but suffice to say, it was not to be, wakakaka (sob, sob, sob too!).

The second 'dumped' incident wasn't too bad. I met a girl at a bar, got on rather well, agreed to meet the following day at Odeon for the evening movie. She didn't turn up, apologised later that she forgot our date, claimed she had too many beers the previous night, blah blah blah!

Apart from my hey-ho attitude towards her, which as a result of the first incident I grew on much thicker skin. I was also smart enough that time not to buy the tickets until the date showed up. The only annoying thing was that I missed about 5 minutes of the film in waiting for her. Oh yes, I did date her subsequently but I kept clear of the Odeon cinema when I was on dates with the girls, much as I loved the place. The cinema was really bad (love) feng shui for poor kaytee wakakaka.

To continue soon further down Penang Road ........

Dream No 2 – the God spoke, very precisely!

2011-01-23T19:40:00.028+08:00

I mentioned in my previous post Dream No 1 – the God couldn’t speak! that I would be writing on three very strange dreams. This is the second one.

I remember that during my teens the dreams most Chinese Penangites would only bother to relate to their family and friends would be those about gods or dear departed ones and their blessings of a choon-choon* 4-ekor (4 digits) wakakaka.

* a Penang Hokkien term meaning ‘very accurately’ but contextually implying ‘very accurate forecast of the No 1 winner for the next/pending 4-digit lottery’

As they say, these choon choon see ay jee* would be stuff that dreams are made of (pun intended).

* see ay jee in Penang Hokkien means 4 numbers (digit) or empat (4) ekor

While Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, Sikhs and Hindus undoubtedly would prefer to have dreams about pious matters, the non-Christian and non-Buddhist Chinese were, like the CIA, FBI and our dear SB, more interested in practical ‘intelligence’ than theological or holy issues, or to be more precise, which 4 numerical digits would emerge as the next prize-winning numbers for the 4-ekor lottery.

* note I am writing this post in the past tense as I’m recalling what happened in my youth

I’m not too sure whether those 4-ekor kakis (enthusiasts) were adherents of Confucianism or Taoism? Hmmm, probably not!

Maybe I’d be daring and classify those 4-ekor kakis as animists as they would not hesitate to consult the local Oracles, any Delphic nook, rock or ghost wakakaka, for the choon choon see ay jee.

Gods or ghosts, immortals or inanimate objects – Malaysian gamblers of all ethnicity aren’t discriminating so long as the supernatural/occult forecast matches the 1st prize draw in the equine stakes.

However, the story I am about to tell you is a bit unusual as it involved a very pious Buddhist sweetie who naturally would not be an 4-ekor kaki as Buddhism discourages gambling or any shortcut and illegal activity towards accumulating material rewards.

The tale of how a divine being spoke very precisely to Ginny, the pious Buddhist sweetie, has to begin with a man who I shall refer to (for convenience in this tale) as Thor ;-), and why not a Norse nickname, just in case you ask? You’re lucky I haven’t assign him a moniker like Heimdall or Mundilfara wakakaka.

Thor was well past his mid-20’s and could possibly be in his late twenties or even early thirties, but he was that sort of bloke who not only had an unknown background but a rather mysterious persona. One wasn’t quite sure what his real name was, how old he could be, who were his family and where he came from, etc?

But what we did know was that he was a jobless drifter without any personal property save the clothing on his back (plus probably a spare somewhere), a rusty bicycle and a religious icon in the form of a small porcelain statuette, the last of which I will come to eventually in the story.

However he possessed the gift of the gab, a smooth talker so to speak, full of humour and irrelevant information. But not once in his conversations with us did we ever get to know his future plans or learn about a relative, lover or close friend. I had never heard him mention any female friends, not even once. No, he was definitely not gay, as this was to be made abundantly clear a couple of years later.

Most unusual for a drifter, a man on the wild side of the street, he wasn’t a smoker, drinker or womaniser. But his one weakness was his addiction to village-style* gambling.

* village-style gambling consists of, but not restricted to just, mahjong at the back of a kopitiam (Malaysian Chinese coffee shop), p’arh-kau, jeegor-t’iap, charp-aw and various other Chinese card games, belangkas** and blackjack. A typical village-style gambling in say, blackjack, would be played by around 50 people in a secluded bamboo grove beside the Ayer Itam River – the dealer used 3, 4 or 5 decks of cards at the same time in order to accommodate the number of participants.

** to know what belankas is, refer to my previous post Makcik Puteh & Belangkas

Being the homeless drifter, Thor would stay anywhere he was accepted, sleeping in the corridor or lobby or even in the kitchen of someone’s house.

His only source of income (he mostly lost in his gambling) was being hired as a casual ‘medium’. If you still aren’t too sure what a ‘medium’ is, especially in the Penang context, please refer to one of my previous posts Encounter with a God.

A ‘casual’ medium is one who did not practise the trade or profession with regularity. Normally, believers or devotees who wanted to ‘consult a spirit’ could easily engage the ‘regular’ medium at a temple, shrine or even private chapels, but not so with a ‘casual’. Another term to describe a ‘casual’ in the trade would be ‘free lance’ (but not ‘part time’) medium; the term ’part-time’ would still imply a degree of professional regularity and thus certainty for a client to engage the medium. With a ‘casual’ medium, prior arrangement was essential.

Thor was a ‘casual’ medium for the simple reason he preferred it that way, either because of his intrinsic easy-going nature or intention, being the born drifter without any commitment to whoever, whenever, wherever, whatever or whichever.

Unfortunately, as a jobless drifter of semi-vagrant status, he projected a mien of thuggish toughness, when in reality he was a friendly, humorous and happy-go-lucky bloke. But one mustn’t commit the mistake of believing he was an angel or a male version of Margery Meanwell, the original goody two-shoes – nay, far from that, though one would realize he wasn’t a bad chap once one got to know him.

But yes, Thor wasn’t the sort of bloke a sweetie would want to take home to see dad and mum, though in this, fate played an ironical role to prove me wrong - well, that was what I eventually gathered before I left the village after completing my secondary schooling, and which was to confirm he wasn’t in the least gay at all … but that’s another story.

Now, each village medium usually, though not always, engaged with a particular deity when he/she went into a state of ‘trance’. In Thor’s case, his ‘special’ deity or speciality was Sun Wukong*, also known by the very disrespectful name of Kau Tay T’ian (Monkey God).

* Wukong means 'aware of voidness' where in Buddhism, it implies achieving spiritual insight leading to inner peace and wisdom. Sun Wukong is a member of the Buddhahood and not, as incorrectly believed, a Chinese 'god' per se though I use the term 'god' or 'deity' here loosely (for convenient flow of the writing)

Even today the latter name is considered to be very very rude, and only tolerated, just barely, when used by little naughty boys, like kaytee once was, wakakaka.

In fact, Sun Wukong’s official divine title is an awesome Qítiān Dàshèng or ‘Great Sage, Equal of Heaven’ (Chay T’ian Tai Seng in Penang Hokkien). There’s an interesting story behind the exalted title of ‘Equal to Heaven’ but I don’t intend to be diverted from the story here into narrating it.

Well, when Thor stayed at someone’s house on and off in his nomadic ways, he would also place his personal statuette of Sun Wukong on the devotional altar of his host’s residence*.

* I know of some Chinese families (outside Penang) who would not permit any boarding of strange divinities on their family altar as they consider that highly intrusive and even offensive, but Penang Taoists and Buddhists were and presumably still are fairly liberal on matters religious

The icon was a small porcelain figurine some 25 cm high, depicting Sun Wukong in all his glory, dressed impressively in colourful ancient Chinese martial garb and carrying his powerful rúyì-jīngū-bàng or ‘will-following golden-banded staff’, a magical fighting staff plucked (or rather, stolen) from the watery world of the Chinese Poseidon, the Dragon Lord of the Eastern Ocean.

Sun Wukong’s fighting staff has a famous pedigree. In the famous Chinese classic, Journey to the West, we are told how Sun Wukong obtained (seized without so much as a ‘please, may I’) this magic staff from the Dragon King of the Eastern Sea.

Apparently, one of China’s semi-mythical characters, Da Yu, who was renowned for flood controls in China during the Xia Dynasty more than 4,000 years ago, created the staff for measuring sea water depth as part of his flood control efforts. Either arcane fact or popular myth endowed the ancient staff with magical properties where it was able to vary its shape and length to keep track of the rise and ebb of floods.

After Da Yu passed away, it was said he left it in the sea, where it became the 'Pillar holding down the sea', and by default, the property of the Dragon King of the Eastern Sea.

Trust Sun Wukong to (mis)appropriate the 'Pillar holding down the sea' for his personal use. When he seized it, he actually removed the only thing controlling the ebb and flow of the ocean's tides. I wonder whether that has any connection with the existence of today’s tsunamis, tidal waves and whatnots? Anyway, enough of digressions from the main story. Let’s get back to Ginny and her family.

The man of the house was of course Ginny’s dad. He was a wonderful, kind and compassionate elderly man (60+), friendly, tolerant and accommodating to everyone. Though virtually a near impoverished taxi driver, his generosity and compassion towards all was renowned, which resulted in Thor staying at his humble village shack for an unprecedented (for Thor) 20 months.

I had written briefly on Uncle in an earlier post Makcik Puteh & Belangkas where I related: ..... just another 50 metres away from Pakcik Daud’s house there lived a family with almost exactly the same 'hero-rescue-damsel-from-drowning' drama. The only difference was the couple were Chinese. Ah Ee (Auntie) was married to a brute of a farmer who too abused her in the most horrific manner. [...]

Following the same script she went to the pier to drown herself but was rescued by another hero, Ah Chek (Uncle), who happened upon the almost-tragic scene when he was cruising around in his taxi looking for passengers. He certainly picked up one that late night who became his life partner. They lived together in de facto but very happy life. [...]

Looks like my village was full of such compassionate and wonderful heroes.

To be fair to Thor, he didn’t sponge on Uncle for any meals nor did he abuse any other facilities. Each morning on waking up he would tidy up his spot and disappear for the day until night returned, no doubt engaged during the day in village gambling, bullsh*tting or if we want to be kind, telling amusing stories, or being consulted as a medium.

Occasionally, on stormy days when the rain and wind were particularly severe, he was forced to remain in Ginny’s house when he would then regale everyone with his experience, encounters and episodes. He was a born story teller. And what made his stories all that more appealing was his background as a drifter, supposedly a man of the backstreets with the kind of experience mainstream society would not be familiar with.

So when Thor squatted (lodged) in Ginny’s house, his Sun Wukong figurine was there too, on the devotional altar. Ginny, as the only daughter of the house, was expected to conduct the daily prayers and offerings, in the mornings and evenings. Very seldom did/do Chinese males pray at home nor were they expected to. I suppose they must be considered as either hopeless on devotional matters or just plain unreliable in ensuring regular votive offerings were offered to the household gods with faithful regularity. I can speak with some authority on this issue wakakaka.

Thor was no different in this regard, perhaps further encouraged into nonchalant neglect of regular prayers to Sun Wukong when he saw how devoted Ginny was and thus dependable in conducting the necessary daily religious rites.

She quietly embraced reverential responsibility for the new member of the divine fraternity ‘residing’ at her dad’s house. As the months passed, Sun Wukong gradually became her favourite deity. Who but only Ginny knew how this happened, but one day she revealed a glimpse of why she was so devoted to the deity, telling me she felt as if Sun Wukong had been with her family for eons.

Now, if you recall my episode in

Dream No 1 - the God couldn't speak!, I wrote: In the Chinese folk pantheon, some gods are the serious types, either philosophical pontificating pious immortals or those with stern and ferocious don’t-f*ck-around-with-me attitude – don’t ever ask for any 4-D number from this group; they are more for blessings, healing and exorcism.

Well, much as the pre-deified Sun Wukong was notorious for his maverick, mischievous and monkeying ways ;-), once he was revered as a god he turned out to be one of those immortals with stern and ferocious don’t-f*ck-around-with-me attitude. Some blokes just take their divine positions too seriously wakakaka.

Yes, Sun Wukong has never tolerated the frivolous, and gambling would certainly be humongously frivolous to him. No villager has ever been known to ask Sun Wukong for 4-ekor (4 numbers), at least those know what would be in store for them if they were so foolish as to ask.

And Ginny was the ideal worshipper as she was a sweet simple lady, a devout Buddhist with no avarice in her heart. Poor as her family was, she lived a simple but happy life, devoting herself to her father, brothers and of course the worship of the gods in her house, including Sun Wukong.

Now it would appear that all then was honky dory for Thor and Ginny's family at her house for the nearly two years he parked himself there, until fickle Fate decided to stir things up a bit. Ironically, it all started with a friendly mah-jong game.

On one lazy Saturday afternoon - sun shining mildly through the protective shield of benevolent drifting stratocumulus clouds, gentle breeze to mitigate against the humidity and heat, birds chirping, kaytee quaffing iced kopi-aw provided by sister Ginny - Thor, two of Ginny’s brothers and yours truly were fooling around with a friendly mah-jong game al fresco beneath the canopy of a beautiful jambu air tree (wax apple - syzygium samarangense) just beside her house, with honey bees buzzing around the cottony jambu blooms.

No money was involved in our game. With two of the players being Ginny’s younger brother and moi, just kids in their early teens, the no-real-money-for-fun stake was only natural. Where would we find money to gamble, nor could we, if we had money, afford to waste/chance money on gambling. The game was just a means of whiling away the time while indulging in kongsamkok* (idle talk).

* literally, talking about the ‘Romance of the 3 Kingdoms’, one of the four Chinese Classics – its episodes being favourite past time discussions for the more senior Chinese

Playing mah-jong with strangers without any agreed rules or rule book (usually available at all Chinese kong-kuan or social clubs) to govern the conduct of the game can be perilous as ‘rules’ of the game would vary from place to place, or more correctly, from ‘club’ to ‘club’. Though Thor was acknowledged by our group as the ‘expert’ on rules of mah-jong, somehow the elder of Ginny’s male siblings differed with him on a technical point during the course of the friendly game.

To cut the story short, their differences turned into such a heated argument so much so that the normally placid easy-going tidakapa (apathetic) Thor went ballistic. Over such small issues were friendship destroyed.

Needless to say, by that time the game was already long abandoned, with Thor then rushing into the house to pack up his meagre possessions. He left with a huff and puff, jumping on his bicycle to peddle away. Just as he was about to leave the garden gate, he stopped and returned to the house – he remembered his Sun Wukong. He retrieved the statuette from the altar.

But what he did next shocked everyone. After more than 20 over years I still recall that scene vividly. Just outside the house Thor, in an inexplicable fit of rage, hurled the porcelain figurine with enormous force on to the ground.

It shattered – well, what do you expect - and so did Ginny’s heart. She was totally devoted to Sun Wukong but Thor’s unexpected and senseless act of desecration brought home the painful truth that she wasn’t the owner.

We never saw Thor again though we heard about (not ‘from’) him from time to time. Why did Thor do such a crazy thing? Perhaps he knew his act of desecration would hurt a family member of the house he had stayed with for 20 over months and wanted to cause such a hurt, perhaps he was just unstable - as they say, only the gods knew.

That night Ginny went to bed with a heavy heart, sad that Thor would smash a scared icon, one she was personally devoted to. Eventually she fell asleep.

Though I wasn’t related to her family I was accepted as a member, and of course she had a soft spot for naïve kaytee wakakaka, a kind of favourite kid brother, one to whom she would from time to time confide her most inner secrets, frustrations and aspirations. Guess I was a good listener ;-).

Now what I am about to tell you next was told to me by Ginny herself. That night following Thor's act of desecration, she dreamed of Sun Wokong appearing before her. I had and still have no reason to disbelieve her as I know Ginny to be a very pious Buddhist. She wasn’t and isn’t the type to ever tell a lie.

As I said, Sun Wokong was a very stern god who wasn’t given to joking or teasing mere mortals. He came straight to the point on why he had come to Ginny in her dreams, with very precise instructions for her, as per the following:

(1) On the following Saturday Ginny was to punt on a 3-D number* given by him - according to Ginny, Sun Wukong stated the three numbers to her in a very clear voice, in her dream of course

* just for the purpose of rendering Ginny’s story easier for me to narrate, let’s give that 3-D number a notional ‘678’

(2) The bet was to be NOT MORE than 5 sens & Ginny was NOT to cover for eventualities of the number coming up in other than the 1st prize*

* I’m not sure about this but I believe in those days (some 20 years or more ago) 10 sens on a 3-D number would receive a dividend of RM65 if it was the top prize. Punters could also insure against their favourite number coming up in the 2nd or 3rd placing (in horse racing parlance, ‘place’ as different from ‘win’) by tripling up the bets. This meant that if Ginny was to cover all three bases (for the 1st, 2nd or 3rd prize winning number), she would have to pay 15 sens for a 5 sens bet. Anyway, in her case, for a 5 sens bet her dividend would be RM32.50 provided of course the notional ‘678’ came up as the top prize. If ‘678’ is drawn as 2nd or 3rd placing she won’t win, since Sun Wukong's very precise instruction was for her NOT to insure for a ‘place’

(3) The next day after the race day, with her winnings (RM32.50), she was to go to Pitt Street (now Jalan Masjid Kapitan Kling; Hokkien is Kuan-Im-Teng-Cheng) to a specifically named shop dealing in religious icons and other paraphernalia of worship.

(4) In that shop there would be an icon of Sun Wukong identical to the one Thor had smashed. The price for the icon would be RM25 – Ginny was to pay that price without bargaining.

(5) Then Ginny was to take the icon to the nearby Kuan Yin Temple for the ‘tiam gnan’ ceremony*

* for an explanation of what tiam gnan means see my post Dream No 1 - the God couldn't speak!

(6) The ang pow for the ‘tiam gnan’ ceremony was to be RM7.50, or what was left of the RM32.50 winnings after paying for the icon (note: the fee for the ‘tiam gnan’ rites was informal because there was no set fee for the service; it was up to the patron)

(7) The icon was to be taken back home and placed exactly on Sun Wukong’s previous position on the family devotional altar.

We can deduce from above that Sun Wukong, as mentioned, didn’t like gambling, and had only reluctantly provided Ginny with his ’numbers’ to gamble and win a fixed small sum to achieve a singular objective, for her to regain a Sun Wukong statuette to pray to. There was neither flexibility nor extra winnings permitted in her 3-ekor punt.

We also can note that the above divine instructions (as told to me by Ginny) were clear and unambiguously precise as to what Ginny had to do. These were in stark contrast to the way the humorous and quite mischievous Tua Peh Kong had toyed around with lil’ Hamlet in my previous post Dream No 1 - the God couldn't speak!

Well, to end the story, Ginny punted 5 sens on ‘678’. That evening ‘678’ was the top winning number. She never had any doubts that she would win the bet. Needless to say she went on to complete the rest of Sun Wukong's instructions.

When I visit Ginny’s house, as I did when I came back to Penang in March 2008 to vote in the general election, I couldn’t help but look up at her devotional altar. I saw Sun Wukong in all his splendour, and staring down sternly (wryly smiling?) at me, perhaps mocking me to ask him for a lucky 4-D number?

Wakakaka, I decline to accept his challenge!

As I never tire of quoting Shakespeare in his play, Hamlet, Act I, Scene V:

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

The 'rich' char koay teow boy

2010-10-13T12:33:00.035+08:00

Here is a story of a very ‘rich’ Chinese Malaysian.

He is most certainly rich in experience at striving to survive at the bottom end of the socio-economic ladder. A PhD post graduate from the University of Hard Knocks, his doctoral thesis was “The liminal universe of ‘what-ifs’ in the paradigmatic manifestations of adversity and its unambiguous correlation with forgone opportunities.”

My friend, Knocked-tor Tan Ah Kow PhD, was born into a ‘football-team’ family, where he and 10 siblings could make up a full soccer team, though alas, without any to sit on the reserve bench. There were 7 boys and 4 girls covering an extensive range of age which, if possible to translate into two dimensional length, would have easily spanned a distance from Kangar to Tawau. Such was the fantastic fecundity of Mr and Mrs Tan, their parents.

His dad was a manager of a pre-1950 type of Chinese hotel in Penang, the kind once found in the town area bordered roughly by Cintra Street, Chulia Street, Beach Street and Prangin Road (is it true that it has been re-named Jalan Dr Lim Chwee Leong?).

The hotel’s typical clientele would be struggling Chinese fishermen and farmers from Kedah and the rural hinterland and their families, assorted salesmen, visiting mechanics and bay-kor-eoh sinseh (Chinese medicine man).

In its more ‘luxurious’ rooms, antiquated ceiling fans rotated reluctantly, groaning out their creaks and whines as they stirred the hot humid fetid air around in the room, unless the sole window was opened, whence then it would mix the fetid air within with whatever the outside offered, sometimes the garlic-heavy aroma of koay teow th’ng, sometimes the strong oily fume of fried eu char koay and sometimes the stench of stuff best not mentioned.

40 x 20 cm ‘Good Morning’ towels hung on the aluminium support of brown stained basins. They were once white, with only the letterings of its ‘Good Morning’ brand printed in red. Years of usage and laundry made them assume various hues, shades and textures, hinting at untold and perhaps even salacious stories.

The clients weren’t the discriminating types; they merely wanted the first half of the normal Malaysian expectation for purchased goods, namely the ‘cheapest’ – the other half of the expectation, ‘the best’ would of course be a bonus but not a critical requirement.

Mosquitoes were ignored in the night or combated with personal supplies of ‘Goldfish’ repellent coils, whilst bed bugs were cursed at in the morning. Checkout times were flexible, negotiable and late exits tolerated. Cigarette burn marks even on the mattresses were usually ignored by the established customers, but creatively masked by worried inexperienced guests. The only taboo was filching the ‘Good Morning’ towels.

As the years went by, with our society in general blessed by growing affluence and, consequently, increasing sophisticated expectations, even the traditional customers of these Chinese hotels harboured desires for modernity in their homes away from home. ‘Good Morning’ towels were no longer de rigueur, viewed derisively as good only for swiping the sweaty armpits of labourers. The creaking and whining ceiling fans surrendered their roles to individual units of humming Carrier air-conditioning.

Ironically, modern palatial hotels such as the Singapore Raffles Hotel have since resurrected ceiling fans but more as decorative pieces to capture the nostalgia of the British colonial era for their mainly western guests than as functional ones, as evident by the centralised air-conditioning in these hotels.

Alas, in the face of the invasion of modern amenities, the pre-1950 era Chinese hotels were left far far behind, unable or unwilling to innovate and adapt to compete with the new style boarding. Gradually but inevitably they lost their customers, becoming obsolete as accommodation for travellers who wanted cheap but modern lodging. But trust the ever enterprising owners to find other ‘use’ for the rooms – let’s not go there!

The end result rendered many of their staff and indeed managers redundant by the early 70’s. It spelt the end of an era for such Chinese institutions.

In those days when modern industrial relations and the associated management's spins were yet unknown, there was no politically correct euphemism for redundant employees such as ‘manning rationalisation’, ‘increased productivity gains’, or even the harsh ‘retrenchment’. Redundant staffs were just sacked, full stop!

And so Ah Kow’s dad, our dear Ah Chek (Uncle), who until then was provided with free accommodation by the hotel for years, suddenly found himself homeless and jobless but with a large family to look after. The needs to assuage (football team size) hunger, address basic clothing requirements, meet schooling expenses and of course accommodate his cheroot-smoking habits stared frighteningly at Ah Chek’s stoic face.

A scholarly gentleman - and he did look like a scholar - though aware earlier that his career as a manager in a faltering Chinese hotel industry wasn’t as rosy as it could comfortably be, had persisted in his unrealistic belief, an unfounded faith, that he lived in an unchanging and stable world of refined civilities and guaranteed life-long tenure in his job. He was thus woefully unprepared for the ugly reality of unemployment which he found himself rudely thrust into.

“Hmmm …,” he would probably have pontificated as he puffed furiously at a foul smelling cheroot, perhaps with just that teeny weeny tinge of perceptible concern, “what do I do now?”

Well, he did nothing because he was totally clueless.

Born into a middle class Teochew (Chaozhou or in Cantonese, Chiuchow) family, he unfortunately lacked the blessings of primogeniture to enjoy any significant inheritance from his family. Well educated in the classical tradition and thus trained to wield a scholar’s brush rather than a hoe, axe or hammer, he was more suited to an academic life or some genteel professions.

But alas, it was an era where there was no academic position nor any vacancy in a genteel profession nor indeed much use for a 55 year old Chinese man with classical education, and in the Teochew dialect too! If you are not familiar with the Teochew language, consider what Wikipedia has to say about it:

It is said that this dialect of Chinese is one of the most difficult ones to master, as it has 8 tones compared to the 4 tones found in Mandarin. Music, opera, and food are further characteristics that distinguish Chaoshan [Teochew] people from the rest of Guangdong.

Hahaha, now you know why kaytee ain’t no Canto-speaking man lah - my excuse anyway wakakaka.

Chaozhou dialect (潮州話), by which the Chaozhou culture conveys, is considered as one of the oldest Chinese dialects for it preserves many elegant and refined features* from ancient Chinese that have been lost in some of the other modern dialects of Chinese.

* Hmmm, I doubt the naughty Teochew words and phrases which I picked up from the conversations my grandpa had with his brothers and cousins (of course without their knowing) would fall under the category of ‘elegant and refined features’ wakakaka.

Though Teochew is significantly different from other Chinese languages, it’s still classified as a dialect (variety of a language) because of political reason, namely China's national unity. China wants to maintain Mandarin as the official language and all Chinese languages as mere dialects. In Singapore's earlier days of independence, the government went out of its way to discourage use of the predominantly Hokkien and Teochew languages in order to promote Mandarin as the ‘unifying’ Chinese language for its citizens.

Some suspect Antoine Meillet as the person who said “A language is a dialect with an army and a navy”, which means the classification of a dialect into a language (or vice versa) is a reflection of politics. An excellent example of political power making a dialect of British English into a language would be the classification of ‘standard American English’ as the language of the USA.

But elegant and refined as the Teochew language may be, it didn’t help Ah Chek find alternative employment. But wait, couldn’t something be done to harness the potentials of his classical education? Couldn’t that skill be used to participate in, say, the Teochew classical opera, on which Wikipedia has this to say:

Chaozhou opera (潮劇) is a traditional art form which has a history of more than 500 years and is now loved by 20 million Chaozhou natives in over 20 countries and regions. Based on the local folk dances and ballads, Chaozhou opera has formed its own style under the influence of Nanxi Opera. Nanxi is one of the oldest Chinese operas that originated in the Song Dynasty. Its tunes are graceful and pleasant, full of local colour. The old form of choral accompaniment still remains its special features.

Clowns and females are the most distinctive characters in a Chaozhou opera, and fan-playing and acrobatic skills are more prominent than in other types of performances.

Acrobatic skills? But Ah Chek’s major physical exertion (in public of course wakakaka) consisted of puffing his cheroot vigorously to prevent its flameout and walking aimlessly around in the hotel he once managed.

As I mentioned, he was a genteel scholar rapidly left behind in an aggressive modernising world, even one in the languid environment of tranquil Penang. Thus it was not just a job he lost. As an individual, husband and father he was well and truly lost!

It was left to his mild mannered wife to take over. In that moment of dire crisis for the family, now forced to leave the relative comfort of private accommodation of a hotel manager, Kow’s mum (Ah Ee), short, chubby and always smiling but beneath that sweet exterior obviously a Teochew matriarch with steeled determination, one of Thomas Carlyle’s ‘mailed fist(s) in a velvet glove’, made the decision to take her entire family to an affordable rented house in a slum area near the Ayer Itam market.

Perhaps the word ‘house’ in describing their new residence deserved the oxymoronic label of ‘gross euphemism’. It was more of a hovel, one in a row of ramshackle attap (thatched) shacks, owned by an absentee landlord who leased them out to mostly market stall owners to be used as storehouses for their goods. But there were the odd few which were actually inhabited by families like Kow’s.

Save for Ah Chek, the young men and boys slept in every nook and corner, even in the little space of the porch outside the attap shed where the thatched roof sheltered them as best as possible from the elements.

For beds, they used por ee, Chinese camp beds of foldable wooden frame within which a sheet of either canvas or gunny sack material stretched out as the bed. During the day, the por ee’s would be folded up and stashed away to await nightfall. The two available ‘rooms’, basically walled but not ceiling-ed enclosures, were allocated respectively to the parents and the four sweeties.

I could tell you more about their accommodation but suffice to say, it was a hovel of the grubbiest kind that one would expect in a slum area.

Despite a complete lack of experience, Ah Ee decided that the family had to survive by being hawkers. I am not sure whether she employed Albert Humphrey’s SWOT analysis to develop her strategic business plans, but the Tan family started humbly in their food business by selling fried battered fruit fritters, such as pisang (bananas) goreng, ubi keledek (sweet potatos) goreng and sometimes the more expensive chempedak (artocarpus integer) goreng.

Overturning one of the many fish crates lying around the wet market to use as a cooking platform, they muddled their goreng pisang way through, surviving for months and even managing to save enough to invest in a hawker cart, the four wheeled type with a glass case for displaying what the hawker was selling.

Ah Ee had decided that goreng this and that was well and good but the revenue wasn’t enough to sustain a growing family with ever growing needs. Besides, the goreng pisang business didn’t sit well with the mainly Chinese taste of the people in my village. So, being Teochew, she thought of two alternative possibilities – char koay teow or moi (rice porridge), both quintessentially Teochew fares.

Teochew moi is obviously a speciality of the Teochew people, where there were and still are several approaches or levels to making and selling the product. Once I was taken by a Hong Hong millionaire to a Teochew restaurant for no other reason than him finding out about the Teochew DNA in me. Yes, he was that generous.

When I was a laddie, my entire experience of Teochew moi was limited to that of my mum’s Spartan version, basically rice gruel with only kiam ch’ai (pickled choy sum) and taujoo (fermented red bean curd). I believe the Canto term for red fermented bean curd is namyee. Some purists insisted that taujoo (Canto = fooyee) is the white fermented bean curd while the red version should be taujee (namyee). Well, taujoo or taujee, I only had the red version at home.

When I began my working career in Kuala Lumpur, a friend took me to a Teochew restaurant in Jalan Bandar. Compared to mum’s commando version of moi, I then thought that its moi was for me the ultimate culinary experience, bespeaking all that was indulgently high class in Teochew gourmet cuisine. Thus I was totally stunned by that sumptuous out-of-this-world Teochew dinner in Hong Kong hosted by my very generous benefactor.

It was very telling on the pathetically impoverished world I had grew up in, where by virtue of poverty and deprivation of experience, I was a culinary katak dibawah tempurung which literally means a frog underneath a coconut shell, or more idiomatically, the outlook and/or experience of a frog in a well.

For a start the Hongkie restaurant were palatial in its size and décor. Lovely elegant lissom hostesses attended promptly to our every nod, gesture and glance, to such an extent that I was afraid to scratch my head or some other less dignified parts of my body for fear of those sweeties rushing to my side – mind you, not that I didn’t want their sweet proximity but I was too embarrassed to tell them I didn’t want anything and was only scratching my … never mind!

Anyway, back to our Ah Ee – yes, as she was the wife of a man from a reasonably well off family, and thus familiar with the higher class Teochew fare, she did consider doing a gourmet version but her sanity prevailed as she realized sadly, surely not from a hawker cart. So after some wistful thinking, she decided that the Tan family would sell char koay teow.

As all things with Ah Ee, once she made a decision she was 101% in driving the project forward to operational implementation, and woe betide any member of the family who stood in her way.

Without much ado, she got into the swing of the trade and went about organizing and managing the purchases of essential goods from the market and preparation of same, such as de-shelling the raw haam (blood cockles or kerang) and lala or siput lala (orbicularia orbiculata) and prawns, and the cooking of fat into lard (cooking oil) and crackling crusts, a principal ingredient in char koay teow.

siput lala

Probably the most difficult task of all was the de-shelling of the raw haam. I saw how those sharp shells resulted in cuts (sometimes deep ones) to the fingers of her daughters, all gorgeous Teochew belles.

Then there were other stuff to consider, such as charcoal, larp cheong (Chinese sausages), taugeh (bean sprouts), koo ch’ai (chives), various sauces, pepper, salt, and the grinding of chillies and mincing of garlic, etc. She had to ensure that the wholesaler of koay teow noodles and hoo pniah (fried fish cake) delivered their goods promptly and to the ordered quantities.

But this story is not so much about the recipe and preparation of char koay teow nor about the vital family effort in managing the entire operations of planning, buying and preparing the ingredients (the most difficult part), frying and serving, and general support (washing dishes, post business cleaning, replacement of broken plates & lost chopsticks, etc) including securing the agreement of a coffee shop to locate their stall and extended use of its electrical, water and toilet facilities - as with all village contracts of this nature, all were by word of mouth and thus completely at the discretion (mercy) of the coffee shop owner but the Tan’s were lucky to have a kopi-tiam boss who proved to be a good bloke.

No, this story is more about the boys’ missed opportunities as they became (each in turn) the washer, wrapper-server and chef.

The Tan's char koay teow business required a minimum of 3 persons during peak periods – one to fry, one to wrap for take-aways and/or serve those eating on site, and perform the periodic cutting of fresh batches of chives, Chinese sausages, fish cakes and washing of taugeh, and (vital during peak periods) one to collect back the plates, chopsticks and wash/dry them up.

Two of them, the chef and his assistant, the wrapper-server, were full time jobs, starting from pushing the cart out from their shack at 11:30 am to the coffee shop front to commence serving the customers at noon and only finishing at 1:30 am, 14 solid hours of non-stop hawking in front of a blazing charcoal stove and a hot smoky frying pan, followed by another 45 minutes of post-operations cleaning up of both the cart and themselves, each and every day except for Chinese New Year eve.

On festive occasions such as the Chinese Seventh Moon month-long rituals and the also month-long Tua Peh Kong’s birthday celebrations, their tour of duty would be extended by another 3 to 4 hours, from an early 10:00 am till 2:30 to even 3 am to exploit the custom of the flood of hungry devotees. Though the Tans increased their revenue during these occasions, fortunately for the health of the two principal workers, these Chinese festivals was each only once a year.

Thus, whenever I read of some ‘far more fortunate’ people in recent times accusing the Chinese of being rich, avaricious and wanting more, I would immediately think of the Tan’s and many hundreds of thousands of Chinese Malaysians like (or even worse than) them who survived by the Churchillan phrase of sheer 'blood, toil, tears and sweat'.

The third member-helper was only required during peak periods (lunch period and evenings during non-festive season). However he was permitted to continue with his primary school education as he was only required in the evenings – the two principal players somehow managed during the short lunchbreak peak period.

But then, during the festive seasons, No 3 had no choice but to play truant to support the business. Many were the times during the festive seasons (usually) in August and September that the local Chinese primary school headmaster would pay a courtesy visit to Mr & Mrs Tan to persuade them not to involve the laddie and disrupt his education, but alas, to no avail for the simple reason the family’s business and thus survival also depended on his participation.

But when the chef decided to quit for another profession (because there’s just so much, and thus a finite period, a teenager could tolerate being a char koay teow hawker), his assistant, the No 2 person (the wrapper-server) would be 'promoted' to the No 1 role at the cart. This in turn meant that No 3, the auxiliary dish washer, had to take on the full time job as the new No 2 (wrapper-server) and was thus forced to leave school only after 3 to 4 years of primary school education, usually around the age of 9 or 10.

The next brother in line would then be designated as the new No 3, with the fate of his education then hanging in the balance, totally dependent on how long the new No 1 was prepared to remain as chef.

Each of the boys was in turn bummed upwards* to immediate adulthood and a life as a professional char koay teow chef-hawker, at least for a certain term, whether he liked it or not. Such was the precarious fickle nature of the Tan boys’ education and thus their lives and future.

* or downwards, depending on how you view their fate

Ah Kow was 7 when he became the No 3 in the family frontline team, 10 when 'promoted' to No 2 and thus signalling the end of his primary education (he told me in confidence that both his teacher and him shed more than a few tears, for he was a promising student, and occasioned several visits by the headmaster to appeal to his parents for him to continue his education, but sadly, the headmaster's efforts were all in vain), and only 13 years old when he became the pivotal actor, the chef of his family’s char koay teow business, on which revenue rested the very survival of his entire family (by then minus a couple of the elder boys who left and two sisters who married).

He was seldom paid for his role because for him to expect, let alone demand, payment for what was considered as the rightful duty of a son for his parents, would have been the ultimate anti-Confucian effrontery to them. Yes, he did receive the occasional pocket money from his mum as Ah Ee saw fit to give, which was seldom, not that she was mean but because there was barely enough to keep the family above the level of basic survival.

Needless to say, he had no social life other than the odd past-2 am or pre-11 am brief chitchats and kopi-aw sessions with me and a couple of other village mates. But like any normal teenager (not that he was ever given the opportunity to be one) he fell in love with the daughter of another hawker, but alas, given his all-work-&-no-play life-style even at his very young age, he was never ever in the running for that sweetie’s heart.

Out of filial obligation to his mum and family, and because the next brother in line was far too young, he bravely stayed on at his much detested role until he was past 18, the longest serving chef among his brothers and obviously the apple of his mum’s eye. But in the end he too had to leave his 14-hours-a-day-seven-days-a-week job to seek a new life in another less stressful profession.

Indeed, those who claimed Chinese Malaysians are filthy rich may in some ways be correct because, to recapitulate what I wrote at the very beginning, Ah Kow’s story would be that of a Chinese Malaysian who's very ‘rich’, but only in experience at striving to survive at the bottom end of the socio-economic ladder, effectively a PhD post graduate from the University of Hard Knocks.

As one who lived in a hovel with his parents and 10 siblings, was forced to terminate his education prematurely at the primary level due to the need to survive, not only for himself but for his parents, brothers and sisters, worked for years in a 14-hour-per-day and seldom paid job, every day, he no doubt has earned the right to ask ‘what if’s?’ and a lot on ‘what could have been my future had I been allowed to complete my education?’. And he did so frequently to me, his village matey. Sadly, I found no answer to his wistful philosophical questions; I still haven't!

But certainly he would have more than enough material for a doctoral thesis on "The liminal universe of ‘what-ifs’ in the paradigmatic manifestations of adversity and its unambiguous correlation with forgone opportunities."

Makcik Puteh & Belangkas

2010-06-13T17:22:00.017+08:00

Makcik Puteh came from southern Thai. I am not sure whether she was Thai, Chinese or Malay though she had a very fair complexion. Her daughter Min (derived from 'Yasmin', I suppose) was also very fair and looked more Chinese than Malay or Thai.

Makcik Puteh was around 50 or so. Note the spelling of her name as Puteh instead of Putih as that was what her IC told us. Obviously she hailed from a time prior to the spelling reform and standardisation of the Indonesian-Malay languages.

The story of Makcik Puteh has been one of a few minor tragedies and heroic saga. I knew her very well for a number of reasons. For a start she was my neighbour, with her house just 50 metres from my place; secondly as (originally) a Thai she felt a very close kinship with my great grandma who like Makcik Puteh came from Yala in southern Thailand.

Whenever Makcik Puteh came to my house, which was often, she would always pay respect first to my great grandma with a "Sawutdee ka mair", where ‘mair’ means ‘mother’. Then they would both chitchat in Thai all the way. I wonder whether they talked about the Thai hunks of their days in their respective village wakakaka.

Pakcik Daud was her hubby – a gentle, kind and very quiet man in his 60’s who was always seen pushing his bike rather than riding it – well, that’s my memory of him. He looked very dignified, perhaps because he was always quiet, not blabbering or bragging away like some other men. He also possessed a dignified smile.

As one of two Malay families living for years in my sector of the Ayer Itam village (at one time deemed the largest Chinese village in Malaysia) he and his family were naturally fluent in Penang Hokkien. The kids in the neighbourhood addressed him as either Ah Chek (uncle who's younger than father) or Ah Peh (uncle who's elder to father), depending on their age. He would smile benignly and respond "Ah bah cheen chnea kuai" (laddie, you are well mannered).

The only time I remember hearing him speak in Malay was with a young Malay constable who was just posted to my village. Bloke was a bachelor and thus not entitled to official quarters in the village police station complex. He was looking for a room to rent and sought out Pakcik Daud for help.

The story of how Pakcik Daud and Makcik Puteh came together could be written up as a romantic novel full of dramatic turns, of sufferings, tragedy, despair, redemption, and a happy ending … well, almost.

Makcik Puteh was originally married to a bastard in Yala. The man was a violent drunk who used to thrash the hell out of her whenever he felt like it. Her sufferings were so great and unbearable that she decided the only way to stop her misery was to end her own life.

Kismet, nasib, karma, mialee, thnee choo tnea, destiny. As Fate decreed, her husband brought her to Penang on a business trip, probably for her to continue serving him like a personal servant. Realizing that she was now in a foreign land, and that killing herself here would not bring shame on her own family in Yala, she made the ultimate decision to commit suicide in Penang.

Thus when her husband left her alone in a hotel room, she plucked up enough courage to run away to a nearby deserted pier that she spied upon earlier. She intended to die by drowning.

In those days, poor women committed suicide by mainly two means, hanging or drowning. Poison was hard to come by while cutting one’s wrists requires a wee understanding of biological functions or one would end up with messy painful cuts but no death. Any other methods would be too complex, expensively unattainable or demanded the unwitting participation of innocents, like walking in front of a truck, to the horror of the poor unsuspecting driver.

Of the two most convenient means, hanging also demanded some equipment and technical improvisation – rope into a noose, overhanging house beam or branch of a tree of the right height, stool, chair or crate to stand off while preparing for the hanging.

Thus drowning was by far the simplest, unless of course you were living in the middle of the Sahara where there wouldn't also be any overhanging beam or tree with convenient branches around. Maybe that could explain why in ancient times there were more suicides among Chinese women than Arab ones, as evident by the many Chinese stories on the watery type of unhappy ghost who wanted to drag any unfortunate passerby down into the water to drown.

Drowning requires the wannabe suicide to just jump into deep water! But she mustn’t be a good swimmer – alamak, obviously it was not easy to commit suicide. Some piers around Penang harbour provided easy access to the required deep water, preferably in the late night without busybody do-gooders around to interfere.

So there was Makcik Puteh (or whatever she was then called in Thai) standing at the edge of the secluded pier, reciting her last prayer, when in the nick of time, along came our hero, Pakcik Daud – I cannot but help visualizing him then pushing his trusty bike along as well wakakaka.

Chancing upon the forlorn woman and realizing what she was about to do, Pakcik Daud ‘slow talked’ (gently coaxed) her into abandoning her drastic decision. The kind gentleman that he was, he took her home to recover from that traumatic experience. To cut the story short, he and Makcik eventually became an item, a de facto happy couple who lived reasonably happy lives together for perhaps the next 30 to 40 years.

If JAIPP had existed in those days with its current imprimatur to hunt down and seek out 'sinners', what would its officers have said or done with the loving couple’s de facto relationship ;-)

Now, I wonder whether it was a coincidence that just another 50 metres away from Pakcik Daud’s house there lived a family with almost exactly the same 'hero-rescue-damsel-from-drowning' drama. The only difference was the couple were Chinese. Ah Ee (Auntie) was married to a brute of a farmer who too abused her in the most horrific manner.

Just as an inkling of that bastard’s horrendous brutality, one day Ah Ee had just given birth to a child (his child) when the brute rushed into the bedroom to beat her up for not immediately going out to hoe the field – yes that's right, just immediately after she delivered their baby all by herself. He was the ultimate bastard.

To stop the horrific beatings and kicking, she was forced to immediately crawl out with her newborn baby wrapped in a sarong tied to her, to till her husband’s field.

Following the same script she went to the pier to drown herself but was rescued by another hero, Ah Chek (Uncle), who happened upon the almost-tragic scene when he was cruising around in his taxi looking for passengers. He certainly picked up one that late night who became his life partner. They lived together in de facto but very happy life. Ah Ee also was eventually joined by two of her daughters from the previous unhappy union.

Looks like my village was full of such compassionate and wonderful heroes.

Back to the main story - Pakcik Daud was married before he met Makcik Puteh, though I didn't know anything about his wife, whether she passed away or was separated from him. I would find it hard to believe the latter. He had a son by that wife. And he had one more with Makcik Puteh which unfortunately turned out to be a tragic case. Their son died in his teens.

Makcik Puteh had some children in Thailand and was subsequently reunited with only a daughter, Min or as we call her Min Chee Chee (sister). She looked more Chinese than Thai and turned out to be one of the two tale tattlers in our corner of the village. I was caned on numerous occasions by my mum because of Min Chee Chee’s tattling about my naughtiness. Bitch! ;-)

But Min Chee Chee had one sole redeeming feature - she has a very sweet beautiful daughter Aminah wakakaka. Fortunately, Aminah was not like her KPC (kay poh chnee or busybody) mum but more like Pakcik Daud although she wasn’t his biological granddaughter.

Though I know Aminah's family like my own, the strange thing is I had neither seen nor knew (still don't) who was Aminah's father, and of course as a young kid in those days, didn't bother to find out who he was.

During the days when we were kampung playmates we knew nothing of boyfriend-girlfriend stuff despite Pakcik Daud teasing us mercilessly whenever he (pushing his bicycle) passed by us gambolling in the village. But we soon grew up and became conscious that we had evolved into more than just innocent playmates. As the sad situation in such cases, we gradually drifted apart though we were still friends.

For years, whenever I returned to Penang from Kuala Lumpur I looked forward to seeing her, and I believe she me too, but alas, there was already a very distinct religious barrier between us – obviously she wasn’t someone I could invite out for a date, though I knew her family would not have objected. But I was mindful that had I dated a Muslim sweetie like Aminah, her family would expect ‘commitment’ from me gulp [kaytee squeezing thighs tightly together wakakaka]!

Thus we would only meet in a very respectable non-khalwat-ish manner in our respective homes, just to update each other on our lives. Mind you, when we did so we couldn't help telegraphing each other with eye messages that only young people could do effortlessly ;-)

I haven’t been back to that part of the village for many many years and thus haven’t seen her for eons, and wonder whether she has married. I would be very surprised if a lovely sweetheart like her wasn’t.

Anyway back to Makcik Puteh - Ah Ee was an ace in making kuih (Malay cakes) which she sold in our village 3 or 4 times a week. As a kid Aminah would accompany her ‘Tuk (granny) on their rounds. Each would carry a bamboo basket containing around 200 kuih’s each. At around 10 sens each they earned RM40 of which the profit would be about 40%, a solid RM16 or so.

One of their stops would be at my house where Makcik was more interested in gossiping with my great granny, mum and the neighbouring womenfolk. Incidentally Makcik Puteh suffered from what Malays call latah, which the dictionary has it as ‘a nervous paroxysmal disease aroused by suggestions and often taking the form of hysterical mimicry’ – huh?

There are of course many forms or degrees of latah. In Makcik Puteh’s case, to make her ‘melatah’ all you need to do is merely to startle her or even tickle her, and she would go slightly hysterical and let loose a string of #&^%$#*@^ (profanities) in the Malay, Chinese and Thai languages. Unfortunately the village women thought it was fun to see Makcik let loose so they would startle her at least once whenever she came by.

Mind you, she’s a bit of a joker herself. If she arrived when my mum was cooking she would loudly proclaim that she wanted lunch and demanded “Lai, toobah hair tee wah ay bincheng” (C’mon, put the pork dish right in front of me). Of course she was only joking. And sweet Aminah would giggle at her 'Tuk's witty pretend-demand.

Only on one rare occasion did she eat in my house. One day, after her cakes were all sold out, she came back to my house just to sembang (gossip) with my mum when there was suddenly a heavy and quite prolonged downpour which prevented her from going home.

As she and Aminah was rather famished my mum insisted that they ate at our place, and provided them with plain rice, terung panggang (grilled brinjal or egg plant) with soya sauce and chilli padi (birdeye chilli, or as we Penangites call it, chabai burung), exactly what mum and I had that day. ;-) yes, in those days I did live a Spartan life, mind you, not by choice but because we were very poor and rarely could afford meat or seafood.

Apart from the tragedy of her son’s early death, Makcik Puteh had another tragedy in her life, or rather, a tragic habit – which has been why I wrote that she and Pakcik Daud lived almost but not a completely happy life together.

Her tragic habit was her gambling addiction, but only for the game of belangkas. Unfortunately for her, the game of belangkas was quite popular in Ayer Itam village and thus provided her with plenty of opportunities to participate. And as she was a devotee of belangkas, she knew where to go in the village during her kuih-selling rounds to ‘stumble’ upon an ongoing game.

Belangkas is a game of chance determined by the toss or rather, spin of a die (singular of ‘dice’).

There are at least two versions of this game – the more common one is a kind of Chinese die which has a wooden pick through two of its 6 faces to serve as a spinning axis for the cube, or to put it simply, a four-sided top.

Each of the four remaining faces is decorated respectively with the image of a belangkas (horseshoe crab), prawn, fish and (to break up the marine pattern?) a flower - on the other hand, it could of course be a marine flower; sometimes a star is shown instead of the flower (starfish?).

The other less known version uses 3 dice with 6 faces each, showing respectively a belangkas, prawn, fish, flower (or star), butterfly and a beautiful lady (now, that’s more like it for kaytee wakakaka).

According to the Malaysian Act 289 (Common Gaming House) of 1953 describing illegal public gambling gulp, the second version (with 3 dice) is called ‘hoo hey how’ which translates into ‘fish, prawn & horseshoe crab’. It’s exactly the same description that could be given to the 4-sided top version or belangkas, but that’s how the law technically differentiates between the two versions.

Both would have a staking board. I am only familiar with the belangkas version where the board would be marked out in four rectangles to correspond with the four images of the top. Punters place their bets on the symbol they favour. The top is spun in a saucer or small dish, following which a small bowl is placed over the spinning top. The concealment provided by the small bowl enables betting to continue even after the spinning has stop.

I wonder how the staking board for the second version ‘hoo hey haw’ would be like, considering there are almost 200 possible combinations which could eventuate.

Anyway, the chances for the simpler belangkas version are obviously in the banker’s favour, as all games would be, as he* would enjoy 75% advantage (despite the payout of 3 to 1) while the gambler has only 1 in 4 chances of winning.

* haven’t seen a woman belangkas banker yet

Poor Makcik Puteh frequently lost her entire kuih revenue on belangkas. After her loss she would come to my house to sob out the sad news to my mum on how foolish she had been, but alas, she couldn't but help continuing to punt as she was a belangkas addict. When my mum had a few ringgit to spare she would give Makcik Puteh those; as Makcik was very well liked, other neighbours would also chip in to ameliorate her financial predicament.

Aminah would confide to me that her grandpa was very sweet and tolerant, never scolding the errant wife but only advising her gently against gambling her earnings away – indeed he was the fine soft-spoken gentleman I had always considered him to be. But the tragedy of Makcik Puteh was that she was hooked on the game of belangkas, throwing caution to the wind to stake on the hoo, hey, how or hwa (flower).

I think by today, both Pakcik and Makcik would have long left us, unless they are still living to the ripe old age of 90-ish and 80-ish respectively. Other than their lost boy and Makcik’s problem with belangkas, both had a wonderful de facto relationship.

Perhaps in that iffy place called ‘heaven’ some immortal would probably be mischievously startling Makcik to set off her latah-ing where she would then enliven the place with her #&^%$#*@^ wakakaka, while Pakcik Daud would smile on benignly as he pushes his bike around ;-).

I have no doubt at all that both would make 'heaven' a far better and more lively place with their presence.

Abang Tapai

2010-05-16T11:18:00.012+08:00

Tapai is a marvellous Malay dessert which doesn’t necessarily have to be taken only as a dish after the main meal – like any other sweet pulut (rice cakes) eat it whenever you feel like having it.

It's made from glutinous rice added with yeast, and allowed to slightly ferment. The dish is not unique to Malay cuisine but exists in other ethnic food cultures in East and South-East Asia, but I love the Malay version.

One day I organized a dinner for two families, very close friends of my uncles. They were Malay and Mamak respectively so the food has to be halal (kosher) of course. The dietary requirement was easily taken care of by another family friend, a Malay caterer.

Being the person who was footing the bill - one of my uncles insisted that I should begin my contribution to family responsibilities with this dinner :( - I had the prerogative of determining what dishes were to be prepared.

I decided that while we were to have halal Malay dishes they would be served a la western style, starting off with a hors d'oeuvre, followed by soup, and then the main meal, after which was to be the dessert, and then rounding up the meal with coffee/tea. I intended to dazzle my uncles – gosh, they still treated me like a kid so I was out to show them I was then a ‘man of the world’.

The dinner menu was as follows:

Hors d’oeuvre – grilled otak otak - fish in curry custard-like paste & daun kaduk or wild pepper leaf (piper sarmentosum), a herbal vine-like leaf, with the lot wrapped in banana leaf and then grilled.

daun kaduk

I personally preferred the Penang style of steamed otak otak but the caterer advised me that the southern Malaysian grilled version was better. Mana adalah? How could any food style be possibly better than Penang cuisine but anyway, I deferred to him.

otak-otak - photo from Madam Kwong.com

Soup – I mulled over a few options until the contractor persuaded me that tom yam was a perfectly authentic Malay dish, well, at least in Kelantan – and since one of the pak ciks (uncles, or peers in age to one's own father) was a Kelantanese, this dish would be gnam gnam (perfect fit) for him.

Le Plat Principal (just showing off one of the very few French words I know wakakaka) – the main course was to be de-boned briyani chicken plus plus (all the accompaniments).

Dessert – you guess it, tapai. This was more for kaytee’s personal taste rather than my guests' or uncles'. The contractor was taken aback for a while before he smiled and nodded in approval.

Needless to say, the dinner was a success and my uncles beamed their pleasure that the ‘kid’ in the house could throw a party - at last, long overdue acknowledgement!

During the dessert, the Malay pak cik looked at me with a grin and joked: “kaytee my boy, we Muslims would usually be taking a walk on the edge of sin whenever we have tapai because just that extra iota of percentage proof would tilt us over into haram* land”.

* not kosher

Then, he not only polished off his dish but asked for a second helping – his missus rolled her eyes and gave me a Mona Lisa smile.

Now, talking about tapai, I recall in my kiddy days a Malay hawker whom we call Abang Tapai or more often than not, Tapai Koe. At that time when I was around 7 or 8 years old, he was in his late 20’s or very early 30’s. Too young to be addressed as pak cik, and without ever revealing his name to us, he automatically became known Tapai Ah Koe or shortened to Tapai Koe (Tapai elder Bro) or Abang Tapai.

Penangites had a common habit of addressing their hawkers, tradesmen and vendors by their wares, eg. Too Bah Chek (Uncle Pork Seller), Koay Teow Peh (Elder Uncle Koay Teow), Laksa* Ee (Auntie Laksa) so Tapai Koe was a natural moniker for the abang.

* when Penangites refer to laksa they mean the real original laksa, not the curried imposter that southerners brazenly and blasphemously believe as laksa

People in my village were mainly Chinese with some Indians and a couple of Malay families, but only the Chinese were his customers.

However, to us he was more than just a hawker selling tapai – more of this later.

He peddled his wares on a bicycle which has a tradesman type carrier and stand; these two bicycle accessories usually come together for obvious reason. I had described the former briefly in a previous post Lustful Fantasies as big and broad and could carry either two 30 kg bags of rice or, if kaytee had his ‘rathers’, two sweeties at the same time, though in my unfortunate case, the latter didn’t ever occur [sob].

The tradesman type stand allows the bicycle to stand erect to ensure heavy loads do not topple over due to their displaced centres of gravity, which would occur if the bicycle rested on a leaning stand. It also enabled hawkers to prepare their food stuff, especially those including liquid form, without spilling any.

But for youngsters it didn’t look ‘cool’ especially when together with the tradesman type carrier it would look exactly like what it was/is, a tradesman bicycle, daggy adult stuff.

Thus most 'cool' youngsters in my days would rather be dead than be seen on such an adult type of bike, and worse, an adult tradesman bicycle, but [sob] poor kaytee didn’t have any choice as I was required to cycle one to school all the way from Ayer Itam market to the Methodist Boys’ School and then at 1:30 pm, all the way back home, this time with the road challenging me with a rising gradient.

In the blazing post-noon sun it was really hard work. But on rainy days, though there were increased dangers from buses and trucks, the drizzle or downpour (depending on your luck) provided cooler temperatures to make pedalling back home less of an ordeal.

Mind you, at times I did wonder whether the bus and truck drivers were sadists, hitting puddles at tremendous speed exactly at the point when they barrelled past me, virtually drowning me in ‘recycled’ water. Surprisingly my el cheapo plastic raincoat provided formidable protection for me though my face, hands and canvas shoes and grotty socks would be as drenched as Noah’s neighbours.

Sometimes I even cycled all the way to the Penang Public Library but alas, never ever to Light Street Convent – for the sole reason that even kaytee would prefer to die than be seen by the Convent sweeties pedalling such a horrible beast to their school. Don’t know why MBS blokes like me and my best pal Michael preferred sweethearts from Convent Light Street rather than MGS? Were we traitors to the Methodist Church for desiring Catholic babes, wakakaka!

Ooops, as usual I digress.

So … Abang Tapai would make his rounds in our village, visiting each lane and corner of the kampung (village) once a week or sometimes only in a fortnight. As Ayer Itam at one time was reputed to be the largest village in Malaysia, it took a cycling hawker some considerable time to go around all the traps. Like all tradesmen of those days, he announced his arrival with calls of his particular ware, ‘tapai, tapai’, to the delight of kids like me.

Sometimes I would have to sit out his offer with a glum face when I was p’okkai (broke), but when I did have some money (earned it by running errant for a gambling den near my house) I too joined in the rush to buy his marvellous tapai.

Each child would carry a bowl of sorts with a hope that Abang Tapai would give that extra tapai ‘juice’ which tasted like nectar. We would appeal “Ah Koe, th’ng* hor kar chnay” (Elder bro, more of the juice) – yes, like most Penangites, Tapai Koe spoke perfect Penang Hokkien.

* Penang Hokkien note: th’ng can mean either ‘soup’ or ‘sugar’ (or in that tapai context, its ‘syrupy juice’), depending on the tone. The 1st tone is ‘soup’, while the 2nd is ‘sugar’, and to confuse you mainlanders (except Kedahans and those as far south as Taiping) the 3rd tone means ‘to scald’ wakakaka

His bicycle carried a huge bamboo basket with a cone-shape lid on the tradesman type carrier. The cone-shape lid is similar to the one we Malaysians used to cover dishes of food on the table to protect them from flies. But when he inverted and rested it on the space between the bicycle handlebars and seat, the overturned lid revealed in it two fixed short planks which together represented his work table.

He would then serve each of the customers – he delved into the basket and produced the tapai pulut, each semi-cylindrically shaped and approximately 8 cm by 2 cm in size, nicely wrapped in a banana-leaf cutting. He then removed at one end of the wrapping a lidi* (twig made from the rib of a coconut frond), thus unlocking the tapai pulut inside, and allowing it to slide out (with the help of gravity) into the customer’s bowl.

* usually (mis)pronounced by Chinese Penangites as 'lili'

Then from one of several bottles secured to the internal side of the basket he would add the tapai ‘nectar’ to the pulut.

Now I've come to the other aspect of Abang Tapai (recall I mentioned earlier that he was more than just a tapai hawker to us kids)

While he was serving us kids (but never when an adult was around) he would say in his beautiful Hokkien “Kar lu ay mama korng, ki mare snar gor lark jee ay k’ee t'au pio” (tell your mum the 1st prize for tonight’s 4-D lottery draw will be 3562*).

* his forecast 4 digits would naturally change from week to week

We kids would then jeer and, totally without any diplomacy, accuse him of being a police spy. Mind you, there was no malice in our naughty responses, nor did Abang Tapai take any offence for he would smile and continue to offer his free-but-unwanted forecast of the 4-D numbers each and every week.

It didn't help that Abang Tapai was known to have an elder brother who was a policeman with the local station. Hence Tapai Koe automatically became a police spy regardless of whether that was a fact or just popular suspicion. Naturally the rumours had it that he was laying traps for any overly enthusiastic kid who might rush off to inform mum of Abang Tapai’s 4-D forecast, and for his elder brother to subsequently nab.

In those years as we were growing up the village kids enjoyed both the tapai and the friendly bantering we had with the kindly Ah Koe. There was never an unkind word from him nor any malicious ones from us.

But one day, just immediately after I completed my final school year, Abang Tapai didn’t turn up on his usual schedule – one week went by without any sight of him, then two weeks, four weeks, 2 months etc, but we never saw him ever again. By then I was about to migrate to Kuala Lumpur to seek a new life, as a working man.

Years later when I returned to my kampung I would ask about him but no one knew what had happened to Ah Koe. We all missed his marvellous tapai and his cheeky but cheerful weekly 4-D forecast. Had he passed away, perhaps as a victim of a road accident, or from some drastic illness? At that time of his non-appearance he would have been only around 40-ish.

Of course as an adult I came to realize (or at least believe strongly) that Abang Tapai was teasing us kids with his 4-D forecast and even enjoyed his undeserved notoriety as a police spy.

Abang Tapai was one of those unforgettable features in the landscape of our youthful psyche, and naturally we wish him well. Thus I like to imagine that perhaps he was the eventual beneficiary of his own 4-D forecast and amply rewarded, retired unannounced to a wonderful life style on some lovely kampung beach front in Penang, where the only tapai he had to make would be for his family and himself.

Wherever he had gone to, I wish Abang Tapai:

Whenever there is happiness
Hope you'll be there too,
Wherever there are friendly smiles
Hope they'll smile on you,
Whenever there is sunshine,
Hope it shine especially for you to make each day
for you as bright as it can be.

(extracted from an Irish blessing)

Related: The Lost Breed

My Day of Infamy (1)

2010-04-30T19:05:00.017+08:00

I recall reading an article where Japanese executives, suffering from highly stressed work load, were encouraged to go to a gym regularly, at least once a week if not more often, to de-stress themselves. The recommended technique was to use a wooden sword, the type favoured by kendo enthusiasts, to thrash the hell out of a straw dummy.

Banzai, Bagero and 擬似 (Bastard) - they hammered away at their respective straw man with their kendo cane swords, no doubt imagining or visualizing the targets as their superiors, who had either demanded some impossible sales quota for the US market, or humiliated them to no ends by sending them home early at 5 pm* wakakaka.

* In Japanese business circle, it’s virtually a scandal (and a great shame) for a white collared bloke to return home earlier than 11 pm.

Well, just imagine some of my former girlfriends as those highly stressed Japanese executives with nasty samurai swords and poor shivering kaytee as the straw dummy - gulp!

Yes, those cruel aggressive Elizabeth Bathory's somehow saw in me not only a boyfriend but a convenient de-stressing agent. And I have the quals or qualifications to be one (the de-stressing agent, not the boyfriend).

They knew I was pretty timid, passive and under-confident, and had that kind of personality that somehow worked their anger up real fast like a chemical catalyst – see my previous post Lustful fantasies to understand why I was such a wimp.

Did I say ‘catalyst’? Aha! That immediately transports me back to the days of my school chemistry lessons. Incidentally I was once banned from the school lab for a month after causing an explosion with an unauthorized (private) experiment.

My crime then was not so much in causing the unexpected explosion but failing to provide dear (and come to think of it now, very sexy) Mrs Lim with a detailed record of the process of the experiment, including what lab chemicals I had used, leading to the minor incident.

Being the dedicated teacher, she was not so much angry with the mishap per se but more with my lack of scholarly discipline when I failed to pen down the process that would have permitted a tracing of where I had gone wrong.

I didn’t or more correctly, couldn’t for the simple reason there wasn’t a proper process – I didn't plan (what plan?) any articulated steps nor deliberate what material I used in my private chemistry experiment.

You see, after finishing Mrs Lim's assigned experiment with 10 minutes to spare and feeling mighty bored, I was just mindlessly mixing this and that acids and various unnamed unremembered agents, all temptingly available on the shelves right in front of my bench - yes, a kind of chemical rojak.

It didn't help when I was egged on by my encouraging buddy Michael. He loved to see the mixture in the test tube changed colours as I added on various stuff, until suddenly the mini-explosion occurred.

Fortunately, other than a broken flask and an awful fright, Michael and I weren’t hurt. Now, surely you’d understand why I didn’t write it up for Mrs Lim as:

Aim: To examine what light spectrum and audio frequency would be produced through the interactive process when H2SO4 is brought into contact with HCL (or was it HNO3?) and agent X and Y (and probably Z too).

In less than 10 minutes two bored schoolboys conducted one sweet but unauthorized experiment that brilliantly exceeded the boundaries of chemistry and (light & sound) physics, resulting in an explosion which would have made Alfred Nobel, the inventor of TNT proud. No doubt the experiment was the genesis of a potential Nobel Prize (in Chemistry, Physics or Peace) but I opted for the one-month’s ban as a lesser evil. Bloody Michael got away scot-free as usual.

Ooops, I have digressed from the affairs of the heart. Yes, I was talking about those former girlfriends of mine who saw in my timidity, passiveness and under-confidence, and annoying (catalytic) personality as the ideal combination for them to vent their pent-up frustration on. Yes sir (or yes, ma’am), I wasn’t completely useless.

But as I mentioned in Right Wing Bitch (2) I did and still do have one non-negotiable principle, my socialist beliefs. My left wing proclivity is wide ranging, covering not only the political aspects but ecological stuff as well, like protecting whales, dolphins and orioles. And it was an issue about those mammals that irked one of them.

Sweetie had gone to Japan for holidays with her parents, and there they partook of whale meat. On returning, after giving me the standard boyfriend present of a little samurai sword (maybe to cut my own throat when she's angry?), she crooned to me how great the whale meat dish was, expecting me to gasp in wonder and envy. But all she obtained from me was a stoic look, kaytee at his most disdainful.

I was absolutely certain I didn’t curl my lips into a sneer, but somehow my expressionless face and silence sent her into a conniption fit of tearful ravings and ranting, at me of course.

Poor me – I could only protest (feebly I have to admit) I didn’t and haven’t uttered a single word. But she sobbingly cried out, crushing my heart like a concertina: “You don’t have to. Your face told me you disapprove of me. You look at me like dirt”, and then she gravitated into self-pity.

Before she could accuse me of not wanting to kiss her anymore (well, certainly not if there was still whale meat, or any meat in her teeth) I ended up apologizing for something I didn’t do. What a wimp I had been, so utterly devoid of self esteem and confidence.

Oh no, she wasn’t going to let me get away so easily as that – besides, moi, not unlike the Japanese straw man, was providing for her a great therapeutic de-stressing session to ameliorate her post-holiday downs. She accused me of pretentious portrayal of myself as above her moral/intellectual standards.

Intellectual standards? It was obvious by then she had escalated from self-pity to carpet bombing.

Don’t ask me how I ended up that way with each (succeeding) girlfriend. Years later, I had the nagging suspicion those babes, most of whom knew each other because Penang was (still is) a small island and they were generally from the same Convent school, were passing me from one to another. Each successive one was more aggressive and demanding than her predecessor, making me believe the word must have gotten around (among them) that kaytee was an easy … no, not an easy lay, though I wasn’t as principled in this department as I was in my socialist beliefs … boyfriend to boss around.

The same old accusation from each of them was that I had put on high moral airs, even though they knew on occasions I could be highly immoral (sorry, Privacy Act legislation prevents me from expanding on this).

But it was my left wing principles that got their goat. They would exclaim, individually and on separate occasions of course: “Oh, kaytee, you just have to be always morally right, pristinely pure without a single fault or ever committing an act of shame” (and they had daggers in their beautiful eyes when they said all these).

Leaving aside the provocative issue of whale meat cuisine, they blasted those accusations at poor olde me whenever they became bloody mad over some petty points over which I got the better of them – you know, sore losers, made worse for them by losing to a wimp like kaytee.

Now, I had to accept that part of the fault was my character. Though I knew ... in general ... their accusations were neither true nor correct I was usually too passive or just lacked the will or energy to fight it out with them, especially when they were angry or tearful or both. Perhaps that encouraged them on, like sharks sensing blood in the water.

Incidentally, when I write ‘they’ or ‘them’, I must clarify that they were never simultaneously mad at me, for the obvious reason I didn’t possess the luck to have more than one girlfriend at any one time, unlike some more daring blokes like my best mate Michael. Guess I was not only timid but lacking in multi-dimensional management competency. So do treat those plural 3rd person pronouns as a generalization of the behaviour and conduct of each individual girlfriend at different stages in my pathetic love life.

Yup, those sweetie sharks would crowd me menacingly and ignore my efforts to mollify or placate them. And precisely because of my meek self, I usually ended up nodding my head to their acerbic criticism and crooning pathetically “Yes dear, I am sorry.”

Somehow my admittance of error (more to placate them than a true confessional) seemed to agitate them even more, leading them to scream at me “You think you’re bloody perfect, don’t you?”

And when I repeat my apology (just in case they didn’t hear me correctly the first time) “Yes, dear, I am sorry”, it would without fail sent them into a frenzy. Most would throw both their hands up in sheer exasperation, as if beseeching the heavens for help or perhaps querying why the gods had allowed me to be born to torment them so, and screamed-sighed “Aiyaaah kaytee, you’re driving me crazy!”

But one day one of them didn’t – she merely walked out in silence and refused to talk to me for 3 days, until her dad told her a lie that I was completely and devastatingly broken-hearted, which I actually wasn’t (I even went fishing during that 3 days) but alas, a lie to which I had to admit as genuine (to her immense delight), to protect her dad’s integrity – Aiyaaah, the things I did for that old man - but that’s another story.

However, they were very wrong in saying I was perfect or that I hadn’t ever commit an act of shame. I remember one shameful occasion, and I cringed whenever I do, that day ... my day of infamy.

To be continued ........

Dreaming of Tiger Lily

2010-01-28T19:14:00.017+08:00

As we approach the Chinese New Year which begins on 14 February 2010 we are reminded by Chinese astrologers and feng shui masters that it will be the year of the Tiger with all its attendant nasty ferocious characteristics. My accompanying post over at KTemoc Konsiders discusses these characteristics, and some historical events and incidents associated with Year of the Tiger.

Though the post here is inspired by the Tiger year, it is on a totally different topic.

It is a very human story, one of relationship, love and sorrow. It is in particular about the unthinking and unthoughtful idealism of youth, which brought about an inconsiderate immutable separation of a daughter from family members, the consequential heart-wrenching sufferings of her parents and their constant burning but never realized hopes. And it is about the hypocritical selfishness of propagandist recruiting agents.

As a wee child I learnt, or rather heard of the story from my mum when she told my aunts the sad tale. Much later I came to know more of it myself.

This heartbroken story of disconsolation is about a neighbour, who grieved ceaselessly over one of his daughters until the day he died. Let us call him Uncle X - no, he wasn’t my blood relative but I have addressed him in the traditional Malaysian way with a honorific title given to elders, even those who aren’t related to them.

Uncle X was an English language teacher in a Chinese school. He had five children. The elder three were very beautiful girls. However, I have to confess I had never seen the eldest, but based on Uncle X’s very gorgeous No 2 and No 3 daughters, I reckon No 1 would have been just as beautiful, if not more. There was quite an age gap between the sweeties and the two boys.

Let’s give them some names to help with the story telling and for you to follow.

The girls were respectively Lily (No 1), Anna (No 2) and Betty (No 3), while the boys were Paul (No 4) and Harry (No 5). Yes, their names in real life were pretty similar but I have tweaked them just a tad (not much) to protect their identities.

Through our years of friendship I came to learn that Uncle X’s favourites were Lily, the No 1 sweetie being his first child I suppose, and naturally Paul, the male heir he and his missus wanted and finally succeeded in having after a considerable period of desperate but unsuccessful tries, interrupted in no small way by the advent of WWII and the draconian Japanese occupation. Both boys were born some years after the war.

Uncle X told me that Lily was born in the year of the Tiger. From the events surrounding her which led to Uncle X’s lugubrious state of mind, I deduced that the particular Tiger year in which she was born had to be 1938.

An earlier Tiger year, 1926 would have make her too old to fit into the storyline, while 1950, the Tiger year after 1938 would see her as too young for the sorrowful tale to happen.

The early to mid-50’s was a time of fervent Chinese nationalism. Japan was by then defeated, the corrupt gangster-linked warlords of the Kuomintang were driven out to Taiwan, and China as a nation was once again under Chinese rule, after a long period of indescribable humiliation and sufferings. The jubilant political emotion was shared by many Chinese, particularly those educated in the Chinese language with its curriculum on Chinese history, literature/culture, geography and language.

One needs to remember at that time that there was no independent Malaya yet, let alone Malaysia. One can use euphemistic terms to describe the government of the day to salvage nationalistic pride, but the ugly reality though was the country came under British colonial rule. Penang in fact was a British Crown colony.

Thus, while a few (mainly English-educated upper middle class) Chinese considered themselves British citizens, the majority of Chinese in Malaya at that time looked at China as their homeland. Mandarin was then termed as Zhongguohua (the language of China) or the 'national language'.

The nationalistic Chinese propaganda being promoted at that time reminded Chinese throughout the world, including and especially those in South-East Asia, that a China devastated by recent wars would have to undergo massive infrastructural, social, economic, agricultural and industrial reconstruction.

Resources for the reconstruction were badly needed, and these could be in terms of money, material or human resource – of course the word ‘human resource’ in its form today didn’t exist in those days, but the recruiting agent for the ‘new’ China wanted young overseas Chinese to help in the reconstruction of the Motherland.

The propaganda was not so much about the communist ideology per se but rather the well-being of China as a proud nation again.

In Penang and probably other Chinese-majority areas in British Malaya and Singapore, the other British Crown colony, there were recruiting agents who collected money, clothing, and material for China’s reconstruction; and as mentioned, they also persuaded young Chinese to ‘return home’ to China where they were badly needed.

Now, it so happened that Lily and Anna were educated in Chinese while the other siblings went to English medium schools. Anna was still too young to understand or know what was going on so let us leave her out of the main storyline.

Though Lily was still a teenager, probably in her sweet 16, as a Chinese educated student she was undoubtedly influenced by events in China and its dire needs, and would have been naïvely idealistic, impressionable and probably adventurous, or perhaps even under immense peer pressure to help China reconstruct.

Tiger lily

She was one of many hundreds, if not thousands of young Chinese in Malaya and Singapore who fell for the recruiting propaganda and volunteered to go to China to help rebuild a war torn nation, which was still reeling from the devastation of a series of recent wars (both against the Japanese and the civil war between the Communists and Kuomintang).

Naturally she kept her family in the dark as to her intention, knowing her parents would never permit her to go. Secretly packing her bags or whatever little she had, she slipped away quietly on a fateful night in one of those earlier years of the 1950’s, to embark on a journey which would be only one way without any prospect of ever returning.

Whether she realized the implications of her commitment, we wouldn't know for she left without a single word to her family.

When her family eventually discovered she was missing, Uncle X went through a couple of days of frantic search for his favourite daughter before finding out where and why Lily had gone.

He made desperate appeals to the British authority to stop her ship at Singapore before it left that island for China, but of course this was way back early 1950’s when communication was still very inaccessible and slow, and the colonial authority wasn’t exactly sympathetic to the personal problems of one of its local Chinese citizens. Perhaps the ship on which she was on board had already left Singapore, and the authority couldn’t do anything.

Whatever the reason was, Uncle X was left in utter helplessness and despair. Imagine his agony and tears as his Lily sailed farther and farther away.

Tiger lily

As I said, Lily must have been born in the Tiger year of 1938 to be able to leave Penang for China as a teenager in those earlier years of the 1950’s. And frighteningly for our thoughts, this teenager, if still alive a couple of years after reaching China, could have been a possible victim of Mao Zedong’s unforgiveable mismanaged economic scheme, blasphemously called the Great Leap Forward.

The period most affected by the ordeal was from 1958 to 1962. Lily would have been in China for around 3 years before the nationwide suffering started. It was one of China’s major catastrophic disasters where some 36 million Chinese died, mainly from starvation. There were even hints of cannibalism in some rural parts of China which were most affected by starvation.

Did Lily perish in that human calamity created by the so-called Great Helmsman? Had Uncle X considered this possibility?

A propaganda poster during the Great Leap Forward era which showed giant melons being harvested

News in those days weren’t exactly brilliant as they are today, and in that, perhaps it proved to be a blessing in disguise for Uncle X, for in all likelihood he would not have been able to survive the anguish of knowing or even imagining his beloved Lily had starved to death in China. But such a sad ending for Lily was undeniably a strong possibility.

If somehow she had survived the lack of food, she would have to cope with other natural disasters and communist party purges in the years that followed. For example, as a reaction to the Hundred Flowers campaign, the Anti-Rightist campaign took place which saw severe persecutions of more than half a million people. Was she among those persecuted, and perhaps died as a result of punishment and torture?

How would Uncle X have handled this? In those days we were oblivious of what was really going on inside China but now I dread to imagine her father being handed information telling she was a victim in the Anti Rightist campaign.

In 1959 the Yellow River flooded East China and killed 2 million people through either drowning or starvation because of crop failures. Was she in the region and fatally affected? Or did she survive until 1976, when at the age of 38 she became a victim of the Tangshan earthquake, which has been described as the largest earthquake of the 20th century by death toll.

If I shudder at these possibilities even now, consider how Uncle X would have felt.

A propaganda poster during the Great Leap Forward era, showing golden harvests of crops shooting up like rockets

Could she have died from sickness or other causes in a China which as a teenager she had viewed through rose tinted glasses, and was obviously unprepared for? The conditions in that country would have been horrendously different for a young girl brought up in the comfortable environment of a Penang family, in a relatively benign climate. She might not have been able to cope, both physically and mentally.

Maybe she was ravished by immoral people who wouldn't hesitate to take advantage of a beautiful teenager from the Nanyang (Southern Ocean or South-East Asia) and worse, kept as a sex slave or killed after being raped? After all, Mao himself was notorious for his voracious sexual appetites for young impressionable young female socialists, and some of his officials in the huge country were known to be corrupt and lecherous. China was and still is a huge country, where anything could have happened without most people or even the authorities knowing.

The sparrow campaign where Mao ordered the killing of sparrows to minimise loss of rice harvests to these birds. In reality the loss of rice and other cereal to sparrows were insignicant. But the campaign upset the balance of nature, where with the massive killing of the sparrows which were the natural predators of locust, there was a consequential population explosion of hungry locusts. These insects severely ravaged the harvests.

Uncle X would have gone mad thinking about the possibility of such dire consequences for Lily.

One may be forgiven for believing that the saddest part of her story must be her immutable separation from her family, where they never ever saw her again, but there was worse!

Yes, her family had no contact whatsoever with her – they just did not hear from or about her since her departure for China. It was as if she disappeared into an alien world. Surely this was far more terrible than just her physical absence.

The communication void was probably due to either her incapacitation or death, perhaps as a result of one of the above calamitous reasons or periodic political purges and upheavals.

We have to ask ourselves why she didn’t write a single letter to her family, for correspondence from Communist China, while restricted, censored and controlled, was still permitted. In all likelihood, dear sweet teenage Lily perished at sometime and somewhere in China.

If by a miracle she didn't die, she would have been around 37 years old in 1975. This was one year after Tun Razak visited China and established diplomatic relations with the communist nation. Surely the desire for a mature woman to contact her family in Penang after a separation of 20 years would have been strong, especially when the political climate became even more congenial and convenient for her to send a letter. And I recall there were many villagers in my kampung who corresponded with their relative in China, usually to send money to them to help ease their sufferings.

But Uncle X and family did not ever hear from her again.

Her departure left Uncle X totally devastated, demoralised and defeated. He couldn’t accept that he would never ever see her again, and succumbed to fantasies of Lily’s return.

Basically he was mad with grief and became delusional. When I was growing up together with his sons, I personally witnessed him every couple of years expressing such fantasies of reuniting with Lily.

A typical sad scenario would have him seeking out and joining his sons while beaming happily and telling them that he dreamt of a tiger. The girls weren’t involved as Anna was already married and living with her husband, while Betty didn’t get along well with her father and stayed clear of him.

The first time I heard him say that, I noticed Paul and Harry ignoring him and remaining silent.

Puzzled and curious as well, I asked Uncle X what was the significance of his dream? I saw Paul glaring at me. But my innocent question was a wonderful invitation for Uncle X to let me know that the tiger represented his beloved Lily - "Kaytee, Lily was born in the year of the Tiger" - and the dream signified her imminent return to the family. His impossible hopes had been transformed by his unceasing grief into wistful dreams.

Of course Lily never did return but that didn’t stop Uncle X from ‘revealing’ his dream fantasy every other year, which explained why his children were embarrassed into silence whenever he broached the subject.

With each narration of his dream story he would initially smile with joy before he eventually realize himself it was only a fantasy, and cry. And when he was crying he would curse the recruiting agent for that man’s evil in persuading the children of many local families to go to China, while keeping his own children safely back in Penang.

I certainly agreed with Uncle X’s denunciation of the agent for the latter’s hypocrisy in protecting his own children against the ‘call of the Motherland’, a clarion call which he propagated to the children of other families. In destroying the happiness and hopes of those families who lost their sons and daughters, through his propagandist machinations, to a harsh China from which none had returned, he was truly evil.

Then one day I stumbled across a dark side of Uncle X’s earlier life when he was still teaching English at the Chung Ling High School, at that time Malaya’s premier Chinese secondary school. I was told this by a mate of mine who was his relative, also a graduate of the same school. Let’s call him Ah Hai.

When I mentioned to Ah Hai that I was puzzled by Uncle X teaching at an unknown primary school when he should have continued at renowned Chung Ling, Ah Hai snorted in disgust, initially not wanting to explain why he sneered at Uncle X. But eventually he told me very briefly that Uncle was booted out in disgrace from Chung Ling after the Japanese occupation was over.

Could it be that Uncle X had collaborated with the Japanese, and perhaps under duress? But Ah Hai refused to say anything more.

Since then, I have always wondered whether Lily’s decision to embark on that journey of no return was in any way influenced by this possibility, that she took it upon herself to return to help in the reconstruction of China as a form of repentance for her father’s disgrace during the Japanese occupation? In those days no one hated the Japanese more than the Chinese, and no one was more despised than a Chinese who collaborated with or obsequiously served the Japanese.

But for whatever reason she had based her decision to go to China, she was selfish, unthinking and unthoughtful of her parent’s feelings and the insurmountable sorrow she had visited upon them for the rest of their lives.

Though the lyrics of the song ‘The carnival is over’, sung hauntingly by the Seekers, is meant for two lovers, I see some extracts which could apply as a dirge by a father for his beloved daughter as she sailed away forever, never to be seen or heard from again.

High above the dawn is waiting
And my tears are falling rain
For the carnival is over
We may never meet again

Now the harbour light is calling
This will be our last goodbye
Though the carnival is over
I will love you till I die

And then, as if God was not already cruel enough to Uncle X, he lost his favourite son Paul in a road accident when the lad just turned 21. Paul was killed by a car while crossing a road in heavy thunderstorm.

As Kedar Joshi said “Philosophy is the only excuse God has for his cruelty and vanity”.

As I left Penang just before Paul was killed, I didn't know how Uncle X had fared in the second tragedy. But he would have passed away by now, totally broken hearted, punished by a very cruel god who sent him to his grave with unfathomable, indescribable and inconsolable sorrow.

On 14 February 2010, six cycles of the Chinese calendar would have passed since 1938, where we'll once again see a Tiger year. If Lily is still around, she would be 72 years old. I just wonder, when she was still around, whether she had ever thought of her parents, and considered a return to Penang? Even if she is still alive today, and visits Penang as a citizen of a new prosperous China, alas, her father won't be here to realize his dream of reuniting with his beloved Tiger Lily.

She was truly beautiful!

2009-09-27T20:21:00.000+08:00

She was a real beauty, a girl blessed by genes and the vagaries of fate to be born with exquisite striking features that made her one of the most beautiful teenagers, if not the most beautiful teenager in Penang during the days of my youth.

She was not just attractive or good looking or mere pretty, but truly truly beautiful.

We lived in the same village. I remember her residence as one of two blue (or was it green?) painted houses by a particular road, sited on dominating high grounds.

Each time my village mates and I passed by her house we would look up at the house in the hope of catching a glimpse of the local Aphrodite. She was a joy to behold, her exquisite features so pleasant to drink in, her youth so daintily sweet, and her smile wonderfully enchanting.

Even now, one can't help recalling Shelley's ode to Aphrodite when one thinks of her:

Her silky ringlets float above her breast,
Veiling its fairy loveliness, while her eye,
Is soft and deep as the blue heaven is high.
The beautiful is born, and sea and earth
May well revere the hour of that mysterious birth

Hmmm, maybe her beauty was what inspired me to take an interest in the muse?

For many of us unsophisticated village teenagers, she was just too perfect, more of Olympian status, for us to 'reach', especially in those days when parents were ultra strict with the movements of daughters, what more with an angelic 'immortal' like her.

No, we weren't those smooth party-going guys about town who had the airs, ways and stuff that teenage girls could be impressed with; we had no flashy powerful bikes or cars to impress her (if she could even be impressed); besides wakakaka we were too young to even have a driving licence for a motorbike, let alone own any car.

We were nothing more than greenhorns where girls were concerned - hardly a fitting match for Her Most Majestic Beauty.

While we village bumpkins were great at raiding the rambutan trees at the local Buddhist monastery or the orchard owned by the village Taoist temple ;-), we were hopelessly unknowledgeable about girls :(

The sad or fortunate truth (depending on your views) was our socially backward group had been absolutely clueless on how to go about knowing her.

Besides, the Chinese has a saying sai goo mai barng guoik or the rhinoceros shouldn’t dream of having the moon, i.e. any attempt to befriend her would be just an impossible dream, at least in our young perception.

In mitigation I need to point out that we were then only in the earliest stage of our teens ;-)

Were we in love with her? The honest answer had to be a surprisingly 'No', because we were still too young to have any firm idea of what love was.

But we certainly enjoyed looking at her, as wakakaka budding connoisseurs of artistic beauty (or beautiful art). And we did that with every little opportunity that presented itself to us, but always from a well defined distance.

Perhaps that ‘distanced admiration’ saved our very young tender, innocent and vulnerable hearts from a futile emotional trip.

However, there was one village boy who was rather good looking and reasonably well to do. He certainly knew what he had but (perhaps because of that) possessed an over inflated impression of himself. He was very conceited about his prowess with the fairer gender.

Naturally he tried to ‘hit’ on her, but alas for our local Don Juan, he didn’t get beyond first base. Why, we haven’t the faintest, but it could well be that our local Goddess was just like us, too young and innocent to know about boys. Or, perhaps she was constantly escorted by a very protective father and many fierce looking brothers.

Later, there were some scurrilous rumours about her, a very distressing scandal about her maidenly virtues. Her family moving to another house around that time added fuel to the rumours, suggesting salaciously that perhaps they were running away to hide her from the fallout of the alleged unpleasant experience. But Penang was then well-known for all sorts of nasty rumour-mongering, especially when/if it involved a beautiful girl.

Was the obnoxious sad tale about her bad 'experience' a case of badmouthing by some very sour grapes, boys who couldn’t score on her?

Well, her family had actually moved residence within the same village which ought to have immediately discounted the story of them attempting to shelter her because of the alleged scandal. In fact, they moved into the very heart of the village. But, as always with such a case, why let inconvenient facts stand in the way of juicy scandalous gossip about the most beautiful girl in the village.

Inevitably we all grew up ... perhaps just a wee too soon. I left Penang after school to begin my adult life. Years later, on leave back in my village, I asked curiously about our Aphrodite who seemed to have vanished from the local scene. A friend heard she married a Midas-rich Taiwanese businessman, and left with him when he returned to his island-state.

Blast! There I was with all my new found city-developed confidence and experience and even some money to fling around, and she had to marry and leave our village ;-). Well, I guess that's the story of my life - late as always!

As the years slipped by, and I met and became acquainted with some beautiful women, and ... gasp ... even miraculously managed to date a couple or more of the sweeties [kaytee gazing upwards and hands held palms up in grateful supplication to the Lord above ;-) ], I often wondered how they would have compared to that once-upon-a-time village beauty.

But that impressionable vision I possess of her, first gained through my young innocent eyes, has still not weakened through the years. Au contraire, the kind generosity of time may have even softened or removed any small imperfections in my memories, if at all any imperfection had ever existed. Yes, time has made that vision even far more enchanting and alluring.

Of course I have to confess, I harbour a secret fantasy, just an impossible crazy dream of wishing to be able travel back in time to meet her, but on the condition that I could do so as my 'today' self. Yessiree, no way would I want to relive a life around Aphrodite as the country hick that I was wakakaka [and perhaps still am :( ]

I wonder what would have been my odds then, if that were to be possible. Please ignore my science fiction silliness - 'tis just the 'male hunter' in me awoken, but alas, as usual, more than two decades too late.

I guess I just have to be satisfied with my memory of the village Aphrodite that I have retained over the years.

Whenever my kampung (village) friends and I meet for a beer or two, and would invariably stroll back in time to our very young days, and remember her as we would, we still agree that she was indeed a Queen in those very distant years, a very photogenic pristinely perfect Queen of our then very very young innocent hearts.

Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not - Ralph Waldo Emerson

The secret brook

2009-09-18T10:30:00.004+08:00

There was a place at the lower reaches of Penang Hill - Bukit Bendera in Bahasa (Malay) - where a mountain stream of clean, cool and crystal clear water coursed its way through Hye Keat Estate in the village of Ayer Itam. Its water was refreshingly sweet - yes, many of us had drunk gratefully from it on many hot days.

Its whereabouts was so secluded that even when one caught a glimpse of this brook one wouldn’t even realise it was a wonderful and near magical mountain stream.

If one travelled up the hill by the funicular railway, one would cross over a large drain-like canal approximately halfway between Bottom Station and the station for the Chinese Temple of the Heavenly Jade Emperor.

That was the brook, channelled from its source - a cave going deep into the heart of the hill - via a man-made course until it reached the Hye Keat Estate River, one of the tributaries of the Ayer Itam River. Thus one would merely see from the rail coach a drain-like structure between two bricked and very steep embankments, but there would be no mistaking the pristine quality of the water that rushed down the uncovered aqueduct.

That’s the subtle demeanor of the brook’s presence, appearing as a large drain, a sluice-way or at best an open aqueduct. That kept its existence relatively unknown in those early years when Penang’s natural environment wasn’t yet raped and ravished by poor political management.

But from its passage under the railway, it was only a short distance before the brook reached the foot of the hill to cascade as a lovely waterfall into a shallow pool, as the beginning of the lowland river.

The pool was equally enchanting and a popular picnic location. But the waterfall and its formidable-looking jungle surroundings discouraged picnickers from venturing upstream of the picnic spot.

Thus the brook was in those days a secret that only the initiated and the truly curious would ever discover.

Returning to the brook before it crossed the railway, one noted that its water sprang forth from a cave, to flow down the steep incline of the hill over a series of stone-brick steps within the aqueduct, about two metres across from one walled embankment to the other.

Why the steps were in place, no one knew, though we were aware that they were built during British colonial days. Because of the steep slope of the hill, they were probably easier to construct as steps rather than as a typical canal or drain, and no doubt to better facilitate its maintenance.

If one were to lie down in the brook at the bottom of those steps and looked upwards the aqueduct with one’s eye level at as near the bottom step's level as possible, one would see a wondrous sight, that of the water tumbling in orderly yet bubbling fashion down the hundreds of steps. It was even more magical when sunlight reflected back from the water as twinkling dancing lights.

As the water giggled gently and flirtatiously down each step, its merry bubbling gave birth to invigorating sprays of cool mist. Sometimes, when we were lucky, we saw lovely mini rainbows arching themselves from the brook. Yes, there was gold at each end of those rainbows – the gold of caught sunbeams.

The murmuring music of the bubbling stream was a soothing bonus to our youthful ears – many were the times we snoozed off to its sweet lullaby.

The surroundings were the cool tropical forest of the hill, rich in all sorts of exotic flora, like the carnivorous pitcher plants, known affectionately by Penangites as monkey cups – many believed, and perhaps still do, that the delightful simians which inhabited the forests of the hills quenched their thirst from the vessels of the plants.

pitcher plant (nepenthes) or monkey cup

Two years after we discovered the brook, someone built a shrine to Lord Ganesha next to the entrance of the source-cave. The shrine consisted of a simple cement floor, with its overhead shelter provided by large hanging rocks. On the cement floor the divine icon sat sagely on a raised stone dais. It was obviously a very private endeavour as the only pilgrims were the few who erected the shrine.

Lord Ganesha

My mates and I often made full use of its two-by-two-metre wide cement floor to rest, at times sharing with Lord Ganesha the offerings of bananas and sweets. He didn’t seem to mind, seeing that he continued to smile at us.

Once I daringly tried from the votive offering, a beeda (paan, or sireh in Bahasa), a betel leaf wrap filled with areca nut shaving, lime paste and spices such as cloves, cardoman, etc.

beeda or paan or sireh

My mates thought I was fantastic, being able to tolerate the sharp acidic taste, though I suspect their admiration was more for my ability to squirt a jet of red-blood beeda juice accurately at a nominated target, usually a poor unsuspecting insect. But years later I found out that the areca nut had carcinogenic properties and indentified as a major cause of oral cancer, gulp!

A couple of us even stayed overnight there. Naturally we made full use of the candles and oil lamps in the shrine. Lord Ganesha was privy to many of our secret childhood conversations, where we confided to each other our ambitions, frustrations, happiness, likes and dislikes, etc. Naturally we trusted Lord Ganesha’s understanding for confidentiality. And I suspect too, He loved, and has blessed and looked after us all these years.

Yes, my friends and I would delight in sneaking away from home after school to refresh ourselves at this place, that the locals called lao chooi, which in Penang Hokkien means ‘flowing water’. But in our minds, and then with our limited command of the English language, we saw the very essence and spirit of that wondrous place as ‘running water’, our very secret brook.

Yes, it was our secret paradise, a hideout away from the presence of parents and adults where we could cool ourselves from the hot humid tropical heat, and to bathe in the mountain spring, soak in the silent aura of the magnificent forest all around us, yarn about all sorts of things, dream stuff that kids dreamed of, and maybe steal a puff or two of that forbidden adult item called a cigarette.

Sometimes we even did the unexpected, like - gasp - studying. The solitude and congenial atmosphere of the shrine supported my frantic boning up, usually on the eve of an exam. I did wonder what Lord Ganesha would have thought of me perusing the New Testament at His shrine - wakakaka.

‘Running water’ remained in our hearts all these years, and whenever our select group met, we would recollect and reminisce those innocent, simple and wonderful days. Hence I dedicate this post of personal memories, to my childhood friends with whom I once shared our private Shangrila.

Alas, ‘running water’ is but no more, as you would have noted from my use of the past tense in my writing above.

In my last visit to Ayer Itam several years ago, I saw to my utter shock that the aqueduct was as dry as the river which it fed. I heard something to the effect that the development of a new housing estate or an industry had diverted the water for its construction or commercial needs.

This might explain why Ayer Itam river, once so bountiful with fishes, turtles, eels, shrimps and even (I heard) river otters, is now a huge unsightly drain with isolated puddles of stagnant brackish water, good only for mosquito breeding.

Kid you not, I did shed a tear or two for our lost paradise. The environmental tragedy is all the more reason why ‘running water’ must live, at least in our memories, if not in nature.

‘Running water’ would also be an apt description of life’s journey – at its start, not unlike our youth, it rushed pell-mell forward, excited and eager with sweet innocence, but as it trekked its riverine way like we have done through the years, it accumulated debris just as we gathered experience, without the option of selecting only the pleasant and avoiding the nasty – sweet and sour would come together, as would yang and yin.

Each step or year takes us further from the original naivety towards the muddier banks of adult reality and responsibility.

But even as we move further and further from our youthful innocence, we yearn more and more for it, but like running water, there's no turning back. That’s the unfortunate reality and paradox of life.

Related: Damn those dams

Dream No 1 - the God couldn't speak!

2009-09-16T20:05:00.007+08:00

Dear olde Sigmund Freud said that dreams and the symbols ‘perceived’ in them by the dreamer would be mostly sexual in meaning – wow!

And this is the first of 3 dreams that I plan to post.

Remember my childhood adventure as a medium in an earlier posting Encounter with a God?

I might just refresh your memory on who the God was that kaytee was supposed to ‘connect’ with - Tua Peh Kong, the God of Prosperity.

I had then written (extracts):

Tua Peh Kong was (still is) the immortal’s popular name but his formal title goes by the rather stern appellation of Hock Teik Guan Suoi.

Guan Suoi means ‘General’. But the god wasn’t martial looking at all like Kuan Kong (of the 3 Kingdoms' fame) ….. but rather resembles a Chinese Father Christmas, with long white beard, jolly countenance and a benign smile. I dare say, after the incomparable Kuan Yin, the Goddess of Mercy, Tua Peh Kong would be the next most popular deity in my village.

The first dream that I am penning involved the above immortal. It wasn’t a dream I had personally experienced – well, for the obvious reason that part of my brain dealing with dreams, may I call it my 'subconscious', has been fairly preoccupied with more delectable beings ever since I started noticing those sweet witches.

Anyway, let me start off this tale with my neighbour, a teacher in his late middle age who taught English in Chinese medium primary schools. At the time of this story, he was new in my village, having moved into it just a couple of months back. Much later I was to find out that he and family had difficulties settling down in a place, and been changing residence rather regularly. In fact in another two years they would once again move, to another but nearby area. But that’s another story.

Let’s get back on track, as the story is about the dream of their youngest son, a rather good looking bloke even at a tender age of ten. We became great mates after the ritual sizing up of each other as new neighbours. Let’s call him Hamlet for ease of reference.

Being Taoist, Hamlet’s father, on moving in, erected an altar in the living room of his house to the worship of the Chinese ‘Father Christmas’ or our very popular Tua Peh Kong. A portrait-icon of the God was purchased from ye olde village shoppe selling religious paraphernalia and then consecrated.

The consecration process is known in Penang Hokkien as tiam gnan. Basically it involves the ‘bringing to life’ of the God’s physical senses, like sight, hearing, smell, speech, and (also various vital parts of his body like arms, legs, etc for) touch.

The word tiam means either 'a point' or 'to mark a point', thus the consecration ceremony of tiam-ing symbolizes the spiritual ‘activation’ of the God’s bodily senses represented by those points.

Tiam gnan is vital because it’s no point (pun not intended) praying to an inanimate (‘wooden dead’) God. An icon is just that, a wooden (or metallic, porcelain, earthen, canvas, fabric, paper, etc) ‘dead/inanimate’ image if not consecrated and brought to ‘life’, divine as that may be.

Indeed, without tiam gnan, how in the world would the God or Goddess be able to hear one’s prayers and implorations, and to lend a helping hand, especially when the supplicant is in trouble, distress or beseeching for a hopeful windfall (the last being usually on the eve of a Race Day) - wakakaka!

Yes, Chinese Taoists tend to regard their Gods as some sort of benevolent grandfathers, grandmothers, uncles or aunties – close ‘family members’ that they could call upon (frequently too) for very personal help. And why should one fear or be terrified of God or the Gods?

It’s a reflection of the Chinese pragmatic approach and easy going attitude towards religion. One can still be religious without invoking threats of, or dreading the End of the World. There’s no Armageddon in Taoist belief.

To the Chinese, God is not a fearful retributive heavenly ‘internal revenue officer’ who would, at your death, audit the credits and debits of your life’s performance, like the Egyptian Goddess Ma’at weighing your heart (representing the collective worth of your life’s good deeds and bad deeds) against the weight of her single ostrich feather (see image below - the feather is worn on her head), to decide whether you go upstairs to 1st class and enjoy all the attendant benefits and perks, or downstairs to the kitchen to be bar-b-qued.

Egyptian goddess Ma'at

The Chinese God is more like a 24/7 Service Help Desk. Of course like the typical Help Desk you may often find that you might not get the desired help wakakaka!

The complexity and elaborateness of the tiam gnan ceremony vary, depending on the patron’s desires and the expenses he/she is prepared to outlay. Most would settle for a simple one, where a priest or monk ‘activates’ the icon attributes with vermillion ink and prayers – a mere 10 to 15 minutes job. But a rare number of fussy conservative-minded Taoists would replace the vermillion ink with the blood of a white pigeon and provide lavish offerings and God knows what else (pun also not intended).

So, as they would say in a Chinese story, “... one dark tropical night … while the innocent slept and kaytee and gang were out raiding the neighbourhood rambutan (or was it mango?) trees, lil’ Hamlet had a dream.”

In his dream (which he recounted to his family and me a day later) he saw the Chinese ‘Father Christmas’ with His renowned smile. But strangely Tua Peh Kong didn’t say a word. Instead He pointed to His mouth and gave the universal sign of not being able to speak.

While Tua Peh Kong continued to make the gesture of not being able to speak, suddenly (according to Hamlet) 4 large cards appeared in the air beside the immortal.

Hamlet saw a number on each of the first three cards (counting from left to right). But the last card was blank.

The immortal pointed slowly and deliberately to each of the three cards having a number. The numbers were* 6, 3, and 9 respectively.

* I can’t recall the real numbers after so many years but I’ve given notional figures above to just help tell the story smoothly.

When He, the smiling One, came to the last card (remember it was blank) He sort of pointed at it casually with a kind of tidak apa (couldn't care less) attitude and shrugged His shoulders, as if (according to Hamlet) He was suggesting “Who cares about this one”, or “What is it?”, or “What do you think?”, or “I don’t know”, etc.

Hamlet admitted (in his rendition of the dream) he wasn’t quite sure what the last card was supposed to indicate or represent, but decided to interpret it as the first possibility, that Tua Peh Kong must have been stating “Who cares about this one!”

Hamlet recalled the dream ended with Tua Peh Kong repeating his signalling of not being able to speak.

As would have it ;-) the following day was a Race Day, and sneaky lil’ Hamlet, at his glorious age of just ten, without telling anyone including his loving mum about his strange dream, went to the local village bookie with his total savings of RM5 and punted on the 3-D number of 639. He lied to the bookie that he was instructed to do so by his mum.

That evening when the 4-D results were announced ..... guess what? ;-)

Do you remember what I had also written in Encounter with a God?

Here are the relevant paragraphs (extracts):

… I was given a thorough briefing by the medium master who obviously possessed an impressive range of experience in dealing with tricky gods. For example, he said that sometimes a guileful god would enter the medium’s body but would not talk to the waiting audience - instead the Wily One would conduct a conversation ‘internally’ with the medium; in other words, while ‘externally’ the audience saw only a silent medium, 'internally' the god could be giving private instructions to the medium on, say, the 929 chapters of the Old Testament, unbeknownst to the bystanders. […]

Another favourite trick of a mischievous god would be ... […]

... my admiration for the Crafty Ones began to grow as the medium master related all he knew, which was probably only a mere fraction of what the gods could and would do if they feel like frustrating or teasing the punters.

You got the idea?

Well, that evening the top winning set of numbers for the draw was 6390.

;-) Good olde Tua Peh Kong, wakakaka, as humorously tricky as he looks.

Apart from berating poor lil’ Hamlet for not telling dad and mum about his dream (of course by then, with the advantage of hindsight, everyone in his family was absolutely brilliant in interpreting what the blank card had meant), his family inspected the Tua Peh Kong portrait-icon in the living room and discovered to their amazement that there was no vermillion ink marking on His mouth. The priest had missed that spot in his tiam gnan, for unknown reason.

A new portrait-icon was swiftly ordered and consecrated, this time very carefully, but alas, no one in that family was ‘visited’ by the Grand Olde Man again.

In my first post on this blogsite Senjakala I quoted a Shakespearean line in Hamlet (Act I, Scene V), which states:

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

Broken Hearted at Six Years Old

2009-09-15T11:28:00.007+08:00

When my cousin left for studies overseas, he gave his dog to me. Well, technically it was a bitch. She was a beautiful black & light-coloured German Shepherd cross – in those days in Penang, German Shepherds were known as Alsatians.

A wonderful and very affectionate doggy, she trailed my movements everywhere. We decided from the very start that we loved each other.

Each weekday when I was about to leave for school, I had trouble restraining her from following me. I truly love her - note the ‘present tense’! - yes, even her memory till today.

Once I was home from school we were constantly together, until I had to leave for school again the following morning. I fed, bathed, combed, walked, tickled, talked and played with her. When I wasn’t doing any of that, say during studies or at meals, she would lie at my feet, waiting patiently for me to finish.

My father disliked her for the reason she was a bitch. Bitches would go into seasonal heat. That’s just nature, but for my father (and most Chinese in those days), it was an embarrassment when the neighbourhood canine Romeos congregated in passionate hope outside our fenced garden. There was no such thought as de-sexing a bitch in those days. My old man decided to give her away.

As fate conspired against me, there was a farmer, a friend of one of my cousins, who wanted a dog. My cousin had extolled her (my dog’s) wonderful qualities. So it was all decided, except for one vital item – I wasn’t consulted.

Oh no! I was just a mere kid and no one, least of all my father, ever consulted a kid. Worse, I wasn’t even informed of my father’s cruel decision.

Unaware of the tragedy about to unfold, I came home from school one afternoon (I think it was a Friday) to find my cousin and my father waiting for me. The old man didn’t waste time – he instructed me to have a quick lunch, then get my dog and hop into my cousin’s car, for she was to be given to a friend in Balik Pulau.

I was shell-shocked. My lips trembled as I tried very bravely to hold back my tears. My father was completely oblivious to my feelings. What feelings? I was just a kid!

To him, kids weren’t entitled to feelings but rather, firm parental control and instructions. Kids must do what parents required of them - my father required me to escort the dog to the recipient of the gift, and I must obey.

In those days, interaction between parents and children were fairly simple and straightforward. Based on filial piety, family duty and son'ly discipline, the operative words were complete and total obedience.

How could I eat under those emotionally wretched circumstances, but nonetheless, eat I must, because my father had so decreed. Alone in the seclusion of the kitchen I lost control and wept shamelessly as any frightened and traumatised child would, sobbing spasmodically even as I performed my duty - yes, I cried for myself, but I had to eat for my father.

Did my abundant falling tears mask the tastelessness of the food? I can't remember, for I was then utterly heart broken.

The trip took around 40 minutes, but it was a terrible 40 minutes for I knew that at the end of the journey I would lose my dog forever.

I was in a daze, battered by my own helplessness, hopelessness and growing sorrow. My cousin, sensing my unusual quiet self, and perhaps even realising my feelings, tried to cheer me up but he might as well try reversing his car all the way to Balik Pulau.

The dog was obviously going to be in good hands for the farmer’s children took to her immediately, but that was of small comfort to me. When I left with my cousin after the mandatory polite interval, I made the mistake of looking back. She was frantically pulling at the leash to come after me, barking-calling to me. My broken heart shattered even further into a zillion pieces. It was the most heart-wrenching moment for a 6-year old boy.

I never saw her again, for Balik Pulau to a kid was as far away as the moon was from Ayer Itam.

From time to time, my cousin would relate news of how well she got along with the farmer’s children and how much they loved her. He meant well, intending to show that the dog was properly looked after. But each word was like a piercing sharp knife in my already broken heart.

When she had puppies, we were given one of them – male of course, for my father wasn’t going to have a bitch again. It was a magnificent specimen, but to me, he wasn’t like his mother. Three months later, my father decided that keeping a German Shepherd was too expensive and gave him away to another cousin. Though I hadn’t yet developed the same degree of love I have for my first dog, I was made to suffer the same sad process of escorting the dog to the new owner.

After my father passed away and I grew up, I became more and more conscious of what had happened, especially about his total callousness towards my 6-year-old feelings on those sad events. I may well be wrong in this unfortunate perception, for he was probably conducting himself under the mores of yesteryears, but nonetheless it’s a perception I have harboured for years.

Till today I still cannot forget what had been done to me on a sad Friday afternoon. Each time I remember my first dog, a bitter tear would fall silently in my heart.

We two parted
In silence and tears,
Half broken-hearted
To sever for years - Lord Byron

Frightening conversation with a boy

2009-09-10T11:00:00.007+08:00

One day, at a friend’s house, I was relaxing on the backyard decking with a glass of chilled Riesling, watching the birds - real feathered types - pecking away at the seeds thrown to them by a little boy. Let's call the young lad Tee-tee.

Tee-tee suddenly turned to me and asked, "Do you know who Lilith was?"

A little stunned at Tee-tee's knowledge of Lilith, I asked curiously where he learnt about her. He answered rather nonchalantly "In school, during Bible class."

I must say that hadn't been the case when I was in Bible class eons ago, where my mates and I made do with just Eve. Seeing that Tee-tee was still waiting for my answer to his query, I nodded.

He then shot another question at me, whence by then I had an ominous feeling I was been driven slowly into quicksand. I saw all these in by his bright, piercing and very curious eyes.

"Who was she?"

I riposted, "I thought you learnt that in school?", an evasive attempt to avoid awkward explanations. I was rather pleased with my brilliant verbal manoeuvre.

"I like to learn a bit more from you." Oh oh oh! Young Napoleonic Tee-tee has seized the military initiative with this offensive – nope, he sure wasn't going to let me get away.

He then twisted his psychological knife in my side a little bit more by adding: “I saw you reading a book called Lilith’s Dream – A Tale of the Vampire Life.”

Lilith (1892) by John Collier - from Wikipedia

How in the bloody world did the wee brat know that?

Moral of the story – be careful around kids, 'cause they pick up minute details that you aren’t even aware of.

I knew I was approaching a veritable mine field, thus I hesitated for a while to regroup my thoughts 'ere I answered. I had to choose my words very carefully.

According to Jewish beliefs or legend (in which case why was Tee-tee learning this in a Catholic school?), Adam the first man had another wife before Eve. Like Adam, she was made from earth too. No sirree, she wasn't a mere rib material. Now, would that have made her equal to Adam?

The No 1 Lady was called Lilith, but she didn't get along well with old Adam, so she was expelled from the Garden.

Of course it was gross simplification. OK, I was a coward for skirting around the juicier and occult bits, but hey, we are dealing with a kid in his very tender years.

Well, that’s it then! I began to congratulate myself for handling a tricky situation rather well, and indulged straightaway with a huge gulp of wine. That was when he caught by surprise that nearly left me choking on my Riesling.

"She was rebellious, wasn't she?" Tee-tee fired off that terrifying information like a Rumsfeld's cruise missile. Shattered by his 'shock and awe' statement-query, I turned slowly to look at him, trying to discern whether he understood that biblical misogynistic euphemism.

Simultaneously (in a mere fraction of a sub-second) the following thoughts ran through my mind: ‘My God! Was Lilith 'rebellious'? She most certainly was. She was the mother of them 'rebellious' women – vroom and wow and oh la la! And that’s why those ancient religious misogynists hated her’
.

I must confess then, my most un-Biblical-like mind zoomed to images of a wild wanton Lilith straddling and riding a startled and confused Adam lying on his back in the Garden of Eden while unicorns, griffins and the phoenix cheered them on.

But looking at Tee-tee's solemn face and innocent eyes I felt ashamed at my quick diversion to X-rated Garden. To avoid my voice giving away my naughty thoughts, I gave a non-committal quick nod to him.

By then, I was very wary of his inquisitive, inquiring and inquisitorial probing, which went on for a while. After a fairly long discussion - more like a Kempetai interrogation - I felt safe enough to take a large swallow of my wine.

That's when he, with solemn face and innocence, dropped the 1000-megaton GPS-guided GBU-37 GAM bunker-buster question that had me spluttering the Riesling all over the decking.

"Was Lilith a virgin when she left Eden?"

Praise be to the Lord, who is One, for my startled spluttering. It saved me from answering that. I exploited that cover to make a hasty retreat to the toilet where I locked myself away from further grilling by a one-boy Gestapo-like Royal Commission of Inquiry.

Correspondence with a Sardarji

2009-09-10T08:10:00.007+08:00

12 December 2006

My dear Lakhbir,

I refer to the BBC news article on Condoms 'too big' for Indian men, alas, basically a wretched survey report on the … er … long & short of Indian 'tambis'.

I am sorry to learn that you’re somewhat … er … diminished. I understand how you believed you have been short-changed … er … I mean … cheated by that survey. Don’t let that information ~~cut you down to size~~ … er … disappoint you. It’s a small … ooops ... tiny … er (fuck!) … puny ... sorry .. I mean ... inconsequential revelation.

Indeed I question the 2-year survey by the Indian Council of Medical Research involving a sampling of some 1,200 men in India which found that condoms made according to international sizes have been too large for a majority of Indian men.

Yes, I realize that you are depressed because the study found more than half of the men measured had penises that were shorter than international standards for condoms. Hey, cheer up Bhai, the other 50% are still OK and could well be still ... er ... maharaja-ish!

OK, some practical recommendations have come up, including a call for condoms of mixed sizes to be made more widely available in India.

Damn the scientists for even checking that their meagre sampling (er …btw, I meant for the word ’meagre’ to apply to the sampling, and not your 'tambi') was representative of India as a whole in terms of class, religion and urban and rural dwellers, which means the brothers in Punjab were not excluded from the … er … stunted status.

Hmmm, I wonder whether the gradual switch by the countrymen from a diet of milk, vegetable masala, paratha, desi ghee, Mah Di Dal and Saron Da Saag to modern cholesterol-conscious petite diet of Italian olive oil, salmon and Thai jasmine rice had brought about the … er … contracted state? Or would it be the whiskeys, beers and bah-kut-teh?

The Indian Council of Medical Research had been cruelly ruthless in declaring, what you would have considered as, its trifling finding that 60% of Indian men have penises which are between three and five centimetres shorter than international standards used in condom manufacture.

This is not only outrageous but embarrassing when Bhais, especially in Malaysia, are supposed to be Big, Strong and … well, you know what. But Lakhbir, do tell me, your best pal, confidentially whether the reputed size of Bhai's ding-a-ling had been an exaggerated and inflated fable all this while?

I read that Doctor Chander Puri, a specialist in reproductive health at the Indian Council of Medical Research, said there was an obvious need in India for custom-made condoms, as most of those currently on sale are too large.

The worrying and very serious aspect in this ... er ... downsizing consideration is that one in every five condoms used in India either slips off (oops) or tears (due to loose fitting), with an extremely high failure rate. And the country already has the highest number of HIV infections of any nation.

But hey Lakhbir, no worries mate, Sunil Mehra, the former editor of the Indian version of the men's magazine Maxim, has encouraging news. He said Indian men need not be concerned about measuring up internationally.

He stated: "It's not size, it's what you do with it that matters. From our population*, the evidence is Indians are doing pretty well.”

* wow, does this mean that the Chinese must be monsters in the erotic department

But what about the Godzilla philosophy you've often quoted, that "size matters"?

Maybe for an improvement to your 'tambi' you need a dietary reversion from jasmine rice to chapati!

See you shortly … er … I mean … soon.

Regards,

kt

p/s You have known me, your childhood pal, for years as kt (Kay-Tee) but in your depressed, dejected and … er … diminished frame of mind, my signing off as 'KT' may be insensitive on my part as you may come to believe I'm ribbing you by suggesting it stands for King-size Tongkat. Sorry.

***

Lakhbir Singh replies!

05 January 2007

My dear Kaytee,

Ji, you bloody rotten ar$*h()le. You will never change, will you? My father warned me years ago to watch out for that naughty 12-year old Chinese boy, namely you! Then you had the bloody cheek to inform the old man you wanted to marry his 19-year old daughter – hehehe!

Mum and Saroj thought you were sweet and cute in your infatuation with sis. KNN, you didn't even have pubic hair and you wanted to marry Saroj; and boy, was the old man pissed off with you – I told you my dad wasn’t one to take jokes but mind you, you weren't joking as well.

Anyway, what the f**k is this blogging bullsh*t on the long & short of 'tambis', where you questioned the countrymen’s size. The moment I landed in Penang, my brother (with a bloody grin) told me to read Kaytee’s posting.

That writeup has been an insult to your blood brother, moi.

Remember when we were kids and we sneaked unauthorized into the quarry for a dip in their pool. Yeah, trust you to drag me into your illegal forays in the village (as dad warned me), and of course you had to bring along two ah moi's. I can't even recall their faces but one did look rather sweet. Weren't they the farmer's teen daughters, you know the one whose rambutan trees we raided every year until we left school for KL?

Many people thought (and probably still do) you were shy but only I know the devil you were and undoubtedly are. And there we were by the pool where none of us had any swimmers, and it had to be you to suggest we skinny dipped.

I knew you manipulated the two lassies into that situation, angling to get them to strip. I have to admit I was highly embarrassed, mind you, not that I was worried about my … er … size.

I knew those girls were curious about how big the ‘Bengali’ one would be, and while they were staring unabashedly at me, waiting for me to remove my undies (no bloody way), you exploited the opportunity to quietly strip to your birthday suit behind their back and jumped into the pool – you bloody cheat.

Remember when the girls complained that they won’t strip unless I did, you bullsh*tted them I couldn’t because I might terrify them – very tua tiau lah, and by golly for the first time you weren't exaggerating, so I am a bit pissed off with your long & short of 'tambis'.

Till today I wonder how you managed to chong those ah moi's into the pool with you, you rascal. Oh, their sweet pearly white moons as they porpoised and gambolled with you, you lucky bastard. There were moments when I was prepared to discard my katchera and leap in as well, if my katchera then wasn’t in full operation to hide my 'full salute’.

But I don’t want to hear anymore bullsh*t about the countrymen’s size. As my family (save dad) and I have always treated you as an honorary countryman, I feel I can share with you the most inner secret of the Sikhs.

Some people think we only subscribe to the 5-K’s of kesh, kangha, katchera, kara and kirpan. But just for your ears only, we Bhais have a sixth K, and it's related to your posting. I want you to think of what it may be … hint … it starts with ko…

You work it out, Ji, you have always been naughty-smart.

By the way, Saroj sends you her love from London. She asked whether you’re still up to mischief, which I answered in advance with a 'yes'!

When you come to my house next week, please bring (I know you'd steal or help yourself) a bottle of your granddad’s VSOP Hennessey and we’ll talk the usual sam kok.

F**k you buddy – oh, don’t forget the ginger ale as well.

Lakhbir

p/s don't you bloody dare post my reply - my brother warned me you will.

Visiting Michael (2)

2008-11-30T19:51:00.004+08:00

Continuing from Visiting Michael (1)

If I was dramatic I could described the trip to Michael’s house as a ride into unknown terror … no, not because I was his pillion rider (then as a teenager, I had no fear of riding on bikes, au contraire), but being a natural worrier, I was already regretting my acceptance of his invitation …

… for two reasons, one of which was the matter of the bus fare home (as discussed in Visiting Michael (1)), and the other, the far bigger cause of my anxiety … meeting members of his family.

I was the quintessentially shy bloke, the very opposite of Michael, which could explain our close friendship for as they say, opposite attracts … and f* you if you think for an instant that we were gay ;-)

Fortunately for bashful me, his parents weren’t in as his dad worked in another state. That was a gi-normous relief for me.

Soon we arrived at his house in Fettes Park. I marvelled at his semi-D house, which spelt wealth with a capital $ to me, the kampong boy who lived in a corrugated zinc shanty.

Of course I removed my studded 2-size-2-big ‘charity’ shoes before entering his house, taking great care that the old newspaper padding won’t be inadvertently extracted to everyone’s view and my great embarrassment – besides the headlines would be out-of-date. I carefully curled my toes away from the padding before tentatively withdrawing my foot out from each shoe.

Realizing that no one was watching for strange booty or magician's rabbit to emerge from my shoes, I relaxed a bit ... but then, I did wonder whether I could have survived the shame of being discovered with old newspapers padding my shoes, and good lord, with out-dated headlines too?

The anticipated feared moment occurred when I was introduced to Michael’s three sisters. Two of them were in the mid thirties, each of whom I addressed most politely as ‘Ah Chee’ (elder sister).

I had to refrain from executing a slight bow to them to demonstrate my humble respect, assessing that perhaps that might just be over the top. Much as I wanted to impress my best friend’s family I didn’t want to appear as an obsequious sycophantic mate of their brother.

But I did put on my best smile which Michael often described as terrifying and more of a leer. I took the chance that his sisters were less cruel ... and had better taste. The two Ah Chee’s reciprocated though I thought they looked fairly serious – it added to my trepidation.

Then Michael introduced me to Sulin, his third sister who was only a year our senior. There and then I fell in love with her, while cursing Michael for not telling me earlier that he had such a beautiful sister.

I wasn’t prepared for my best mate to introduce me to such a ravishing beauty. But Michael spoilt it, as usual, by adding into the introduction that she should watch out for the big Romeo in me.

Romeo? Moi? The bashful, blushing, backward bloke? Sheeesh!

I valiantly restrained myself from protesting vociferously against his mischievous fabrication as it would have made me look even worse in Sulin’s (gorgeously beautiful) eyes, so I put on a wistful smile to indicate my disdainful dismissal of his lie, but silently promised myself I would kill Michael at the earliest opportunity.

Naturally I offered my hand to Sulin which I hadn’t to the two Ah Chee’s. Oh, what a thrill to hold her dainty hand as we shook on our new friendship. Thank God for Western decadent culture or I would have been restricted to just a bow with a Shaolin style hand gesture.

Looking into her eyes, I felt the sensation of diving or falling into a deep deep deep bottomless pool of wondrously cool ether.

To be continued …

Visiting Michael (1)

2008-07-13T10:07:00.003+08:00

The adjective ‘best’ signifies that it’s the ‘most favourable’, of the ‘highest quality’, ‘most excellent’, or have the ‘highest standing’, thus ‘best friend’ would mean, in the simplest term, the ‘closest or most favoured friend’.

In other words, one can have only one best friend.

But it's fairly difficult to identify who was one's best friend in one's younger days, because more likely than not, one would have a best friend at school and then another one in the neighbourhood or in a circle of friends outside school but not from one’s kampong (village).

It’s not unusual that in our younger days, depending on where we were (at school or back in the kampong), we would be moving from one circle of friends to another, each sometimes totally alien from the other.

Sometimes, when one was lucky (and life simpler), it could well be the same guy in the various circles of friends.

In those days, I didn't extend my school social circle into my private life for the reason they were vastly different, comprising friends from different segments of society and activities.

In school I was in a class which had scions of very well to do Penang families, the crème de la crème of the Chinese community on the Island. A number of us (about a fourth of the school’s top class) were from the other end of society, where most of us dwelled in shacks dispersed among the shanty towns of Ayer Itam, the low cost housing in Rifle Range flats and the slums of the Weld Quay district, etc.

Our better-off classmates resided in mansions located in the rich well-manicured green urban areas like Jesselton Garden, Scotland Road, Ayer Rajah Road, or along Peel Avenue, etc, where beautiful leafy angsanas, flame of the forests or majestic palms lined the quiet roads since British colonial days, with some of these exclusive avenues ending in secluded cul de sac.

Then, some of my schoolmates were from middle class residential areas in between these two extremes of economically positioned schoolchildren.

Michael was my best friend in school - we sat together only in the last two years of our schooling which meant that we became good pals at a crucial stage of our mischievous teens. Bad news ;-)

He came from a reasonable well to do middle class family. The only boy in his family, he was pampered left and right by his parents and sisters. He was a very handsome devil, and extremely popular with girls.

On top of looks and ample supply of pocket money, he had an additional and most wondrous possession - a scooter! And his very own too!

It was just ... well, in those days we didn't call it cool ... bloody marvellous. Needless to say, as a teenage boy I was green with envy, though Michael being the generous bloke he was, allowed me to ride on it as the driver even when I didn’t yet have a licence – no money to get one, and perhaps I was still underage … and somehow we always managed to stay one step ahead of the cops, though there were a couple of close calls.

Each weekend we would, generally without fail, attend the Saturday matinee, not so much for the movie but more because it was then the 'in' thing for teenagers – mind you, we hadn’t gotten around to using words like ‘in’ thing yet.

The Saturday matinee and (for the adults) Saturday midnight show had cult followings. Teenagers attended the former perhaps to meet up with teenage girls or some pals, and even make new friends (hopefully girls). Besides, the fees for the matinee specially catered for teenagers.

Michael and I were no different from other teenagers, though for me personally I had a small but significant problem. I had to scrape together by each Saturday enough money to buy the matinee ticket and a few extra coins for drinks, and even a small bowl of Penang laksa or koay teow t’ng.

Michael was a very generous friend and had often offered to foot my part of the bill, but I was too embarrassed and shy to accept his kind considerate gesture, so I earned a few odd sen here and there during the week, especially on Sunday.

I ran errands for our local grocery shop, assisted another friend with his hawker business, and was odd job boy for one of the village’s several gambling dens, buying takeaway food (ta pau hawker food), cigarettes and whatever I was ordered to purchase.

All were of course part time jobs. The tips varied, and when an uncle or auntie was winning, he/she would slip me a nice ringgit. Woohoo!

On Saturdays my best mate and I would meet up at the selected cinema, purchased our tickets and then adjoined to a kopitiam for a drink of kopi-O-peng, char koay teow, koay teow t’ng or laksa, before we joined the movie crowd. We would be looking for friends or hoping to make new ones.

There were a few (very rare) occasions when we met up with a hostile mob, either going for the same group of sweeties or one that Michael (who was a bit of a mischievous bloke) had previously offended. But we managed to survive such encounters.

After the matinee, Michael with me riding pillion would zoom off to his favourite music shop where without fail he would purchase his favourite tapes (later CDs) for that week.

He would ask for my opinion as to which would add better to his considerable collection, as if I was an expert. I am not sure whether it was Michael’s way of being inclusive or he really needed my advice. Well, as his best friend, I gave him my best shot.

I would be a liar if I don’t admit I envied his financial standing, especially when he opened his wallet to extract the necessary ringgit to pay for the tapes/CDs. But strangely I wasn’t driven to say silly things like “One day I’ll have that sort of money as well.” I suppose I was pretty relaxed or just plain unambitious – I think the term applicable then would be ‘pretty laid back’ ;-).

Because we lived in different areas, immediately after the music shop, we would part company and go our separate ways, at least until Monday when we resumed class. He would see me off at the bus stop before he rode off.

However, there came that one occasion, after he purchased a particular special CD which he loved and was eagerly looking forward to playing same, that he insisted I went along with him to his home to listen to the music together.

I lived in Ayer Itam while Michael lived in the further reaches of Fettes Park.

To describe our relative locations, say with a mud map, try and visualize the letter ‘V’, one that’s open very wide.

Where the V’s two slanting strokes meet at the bottom would be Penang Road/Prangin Road, the heart of Georgetown where most of the major cinemas were in those days. Ayer Itam is at the top or beginning of the letter’s left stroke while, as you would guess by now, Fettes Park is at the other extremity.

Yes, we weren’t exactly neighbours, indeed in more than one sense of the word.

Do you know what was the first thing that popped into my mind, and forced me to think very carefully before I mumbled an ‘aye’ or ‘nay’ to his invitation?

I suppose you would never ever be able to guess correctly ;-) and I don’t blame you.

I was wondering whether I had the fare for the return journey because I didn’t expect Michael to take me home or to drop me back at Prangin Road. Yes, ‘twas just a simple matter of the extra bus fare for one trip from Fettes Park back to Prangin Road.

So, if I accepted Michael’s offer to visit his house, I had to plan on taking the bus from his place to Prangin Road, back to where I was then, in position to catch the bus back to Ayer Itam, because even if Michael were to offer to take me home on his bike or to drop me off at Prangin Road, I definitely wouldn’t have accepted his offer. It wouldn't be fair to him.

OK, I had the fare from Prangin Road to Ayer Itam, but did I have enough from Fettes Park to Prangin Road? I didn’t even know how much the fare would be – though I had taken that bus service a couple of times those were rare and isolated occasions, hence I wasn’t familiar with the fare nor its schedule.

Very furtively I checked what were in my pockets, specifically feeling for and totalling the few coins I possessed to assess whether I could chance such a trip. The game of gues-timating the required minimum amount was made more difficult by my embarrassment in asking Michael about the nature of the fare from his place to town, thus revealing the cause of my hesitation.

Apart from my embarrassment I doubted he would know as he wouldn’t have needed to travel by bus, using either his own motorbike or be chauffeured around by one of his sisters on a car his dad bought for their use. Secondly, he would then have insisted on dropping me back at my place, and I was too proud to impose on my mate.

Or worse, offered me the fare - I would have died of unmitigated shame!

After the furtive prospecting, I reckoned I might just have the bare minimum required, but nonetheless I worked out a contingency plan. The total I had would ensure I would be able to reach Prangin Road, but after that fare, would the remainder be sufficient to take me all the way back to Ayer Itam?

If not, I decided I would go as far as possible towards Ayer Itam as the rest of my money would take me, before disembarking to walk the rest of the way home – that shouldn’t be too bad, and more importantly, a final resort that wouldn’t be known to Michael (I felt my face flushing slightly at that very embarrassing thought).

But a drastic thought then hit me – unlike Nancy Sinatra's, my shoes weren’t made for walking.

I had a pair of (what I termed silently to myself) ‘charity shoes’, given to me by a distant uncle. They were used but good quality shoes, though 2 sizes too big for me (I padded it up with old newspapers to make them fit) but really, for a teenager they were real daggy stuff (chin chnea lau beh one), not ‘cool’ or appropriate for a schoolboy like me.

But even more terrible than fashion, because they weren’t of the correct size, they rubbed abrasively against my heel. Short strolls were okay but long walks would be murderous to my feet.

Additionally, they were studded and made those telltale ‘adult’ clip-clop sounds as I strolled along, much as I tried my best to be like a ninja crossing the nightingale floor in a Japanese daimyou’s castle.

Man, I sure as hell didn’t want to be walking along Ayer Itam Road sounding like a Nazi SS sturmtrooper or a shoed horse.

I could of course fall back on a contingency to the contingency plan, namely remove the shoes if I were to sense blisters forming and walk barefooted as all kampong boys in my days were capable of doing.

But alas, I decided it was all too complicated and lied to Michael I couldn’t join him because I had work waiting for me at home.

Now, Michael wasn’t a bloke who would take ‘no’ as an answer when he was quite convinced I was not being fair dinkum with him. He wasn’t quite sure what raced through my head (how could he when he didn’t have my ‘problems’) but somehow he knew I wasn’t telling him the truth.

So he threatened me in a way that, as adults today we would both undoubtedly laugh at as silly or childish, but in those wonderful teenage years long long ago, which meant the world to us. He said: “kaytee, we are best friends, aren’t we? Or are we? If you don’t come, that means you don’t consider me as your best buddy!”

Oh, such intimidating threats! I succumbed to his wishes. I got on to the pillion seat reluctantly.

To be continued ……..

First Contact

2008-06-06T12:42:00.003+08:00

Let me tell you about my ‘First Contact’.

On a walk down 'memory lane', one would invariably come across the topic of the fairer sex. My incipient interest in girls began from an action by my friend Richard, a village bloke who also taught me how to smoke.

Being older, obviously Richard was more attuned to the yang-yin philosophy. He set the social pace for our group by daringly writing to a girl in my kampong (village) and introducing himself to her. He even did the unthinkable as well, asking her for a date ... gulp.

Now, I had known that very girl since we were toddlers. In fact we were playmates for a number of years. Let’s just called her Girl, shall we!

To me, Girl was just an ordinary neighbour, a casual kampong friend who sort of fitted in my everyday background without being too obvious. We may say that she was more or less always there yet most times I wasn't even conscious of her presence. But to Richard who lived in another suburb and who looked at her with fresh (and certainly more mature) eyes, she was absolutely gorgeous.

Richard proudly informed the gang that Girl had replied to his letter. This was the age of pre-email correspondence between pen-pals, so I was rather miffed that I hadn’t thought of it, that was, writing to Girl. It was the correspondence per se rather than Girl as a female that I was interested at this stage.

Well, I mulled over Richard’s success, with silly me then thinking it might be a good idea to join in with a bit of corresponding too.

So I emulated Richard and wrote a letter to Girl, ridiculously introducing myself to her as if I didn’t even know her, whom I played with and saw virtually every day over the years. In fact, Girl came to my house regularly because her mum and mine were friends.

Well, what do you expect? I was only 12 and that was my first letter to someone, anyone and not just a girl.

Bad idea – ‘cause Girl was so shocked when she received my letter, she dobbed me straightaway to her mum. Perhaps she was under the impression my perception of her had changed from mere platonic to new passionate.

Girl’s mum, whom I addressed as Ah Ee (Auntie), had a reputation in my kampong for her caustic blistering sarcasm, and she certainly let me have some of it a few days later when she passed by my house. I so happened to be in the garden hitting a few shuttles with my badminton kaki (member).

“Kaytee”, she mocked in her shrill voice, “Looks like you have become an excellent writer of letters.”

I didn’t know where to put my face – my guilt fell suddenly and swiftly on my conscience like a very hungry reticulated python, knocking out my breath while constricting out what little I had left in my body, with the full realisation of Ah Ee’s piercing remarks - all within 0.025 of a second.

Hmmm, strategise, strategise, quick! I decided the optimum, nay, the ‘only’ avenue left for me under those immediately threatening circumstances (to my dignity) was to brazen out her sarcasm, by pretending I didn’t hear her biting comments.

So I did the Oscar winning act and demonstrated village courtesy by responding sweetly, “Ah Ee, cheah par ar boey?” in traditional Penang greeting ('Auntie, have you had your lunch/dinner?'), hoping to put her off balance, and then continued “Ah Ee korng har mmee ah?” meaning ‘what did Auntie say?’

Oh, you should have seen my innocent angelic eyes, and I can tell you ;-), at that moment butter wouldn't have melted in my mouth.

Maybe my tactic worked or she wasn’t all that worked up as to blast me out of the water – actually she did like me very much before and even after that incident. She just smiled wryly and kept going.

Phew! I was so embarrassed, with the realization dawning on me then that I made one hell of a boo-boo. Since that day, Girl and I avoided each other like the plague. I was so embarrassed that she thought I made a pass at her, and she too must have felt that way, besides dobbing me to her mum.

In terms of a real interest in girls per se, that was just a spurious warning for me, but nevertheless for a 12-year old kid it was First Contact with an 'alien' force, where I was zapped real good for my insipience!

Postscript:
Years later Girl grew up and married a local boy, the son of the village grocer. Damn it, Richard had been right all along. She was absolutely gorgeous (to my by-then grownup eyes), a beautiful pony-tailed angel.

All of us losers consoled ourselves by suggesting that perhaps she had BO, and she probably married her husband - nah, we never did like him, the wimp - out of pity.

... sob sob ...

The Lost Breed

2008-05-25T10:42:00.002+08:00

P’ai Tang P’ai Siah
The cry rang through our street – p’ai tang p’ai siah ('broken copper, broken tin') - signalling the arrival of the roving tinsmith. This was Mum's story of a time way before my existence.

She would hail the old man, for two of her pails and one pot suffered leaks. Yes, those were the days when pails were made up of aluminium, for then ‘plastic’, even the term, hadn’t existed in Malaya (before Malaysia) yet.

Aluminium pails were far too expensive to throw away just because of a leak (or two), hence the p'ai tang p'ai siah man played an important role in keeping household expenses down.

After assessing the conditions of the leaks he made a quote which gave rise to some hard bargaining with my mother. Usually the cost for sealing up a small leak was about 10 cents - this was the cents of the Straits dollar, and not yet the sen of today. Where more than a tiny hole was involved, there would invariably be a discount.

It would have been the rare trader who could out-bargain a determined Penang housewife. Kiamsiap (‘thriftiness’ or you want to be more critical of Penangites and literal, ‘stinginess’) was not only a characteristic of, but an art form practised by Penangites of yester-years.

Once the negotiation was satisfactorily concluded, he began his repair work by filing off the leaking spots before he soldered up the holes. The pails and pots would be good for a few more years.

Having completed his task, he packed up his tools and left, immediately resuming his trade cry - p’ai tang p’ai siah - a tradesman who played an important role in the lives of village housewives, though not quite like but still not unlike the archetypical (Chinese) heroic 'wandering swordsman', a sort of saviour to the leaking pails and pots of Penang poorer class ladies.

Bua Kar-Toh
Bua kar-toh ('sharpen scissors') was the trade call of the man who, like the p’ai tang p’ai siah man, travelled around the villages, offering his service of sharpening scissors and knives. My mother had her knives sharpened once every six months and the scissors annually.

The poor old tradesman carried on his back a rather heavy looking rotating disc-shaped whetstone with its stand, as he ventured around the village, from village to village and in some cases, even into urban areas.

The contraption had a foot pedal like those of typical old sewing machines. To rotate the whetstone, the trader applied gentle but firm rhythmic rocking action on the pedal with one foot – down, up, down, up, down, up ........

Once the whetstone was rotating, he wetted it with water from a small glass bottle (remember, no plastic was yet available in Malaya), and proceeded to sharpen the cutting implements. It was very seldom he would receive more than a dollar for doing up a couple of knives and a pair of scissors. But he enabled housewives to have effective tools to perform their domestic cutting needs.

Por Kau Ee
This was another wandering tradesman, whose skills were the repair of damaged cane chairs. Where the back and seats or even arms and legs of cane chairs had torn or worn cane webbing, he would choose the correct matching cane strip to mend the tears so skilfully one could hardly see the original damage. Once his task was completed, he heaved the basket carrying his tools and cane material of all descriptions onto his back, and continued his wandering, offering his service by crying out por kau ee ('mend chairs').

The Lost Breed
These tradesmen were all elderly people who thrived in an earlier era, but by the time I was a kid, they were already a dying breed, made extinct by the discovery and introduction of new material and technology. The only one that had some relevance for a while longer was probably the por kau ee man but I doubt any still ply this trade today.

When I hear such stories from my mum, I feel as if we have, through progress and modernity, torn a few pages from the history book of our cultural heritage. I bemoan the 'lost breed' of tradesmen.

Request: if any reader has photos of these or other traditional tradesmen, I would appreciate a copy which I will proudly publish here with full acknowledgement. Thanks

Siamese Legend of the Durian, Petai & Jering

2008-02-17T20:19:00.008+08:00

This is a Siamese legend told to me by a Thai friend.

As a number of Siamese tales go, it revolves around the personality of Buddha. I am not sure whether it constitutes one of the Jatakas but the story unfolds as follows:

The Theravada Buddhist monk lives a strict life without any attachment to worldly possession, including ownership (and thus procurement and preparation) of food. Hence they have to seek alms (food) from lay Buddhists.

This would not be practical for such monks in a country like Malaysia where the lay Buddhists are the minority. This is apart from the fact that daily provision of food to Buddhist monks is a protocol practised mainly by Theravadans. Malaysian Buddhists are generally Mahayanans, belonging to the other principal School of Buddhism (subscribed to by Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, etc).

The mainly Theravada Buddhist Thais (and Myanmar-ians, Cambodians, Laotians, Sri Lankans) would perform tambun to Buddhist monks in various forms – food, drink, clothing, etc. In the Thai language, tambun means ‘act of charity’; I believe the Pali (language during time and region of Buddha) word is danna.

When a monk is thus provided food (through tambun), he could not and would not refuse any donations on the basis of quality, quantity or preference.

Now, on to the story - In one of his reincarnations (prior to his Enlightenment) Buddha was such a monk seeking food in a remote area next to a jungle. There, a leper had been banished from the village to live alone in a shack in the jungle, eking out a harsh and meagre living from Mother Nature.

When he saw the monk approaching his shack, he decided to tambun his entire lunch (just rice but basically his whole meal for that day) to the perambulating cleric. Because he had no utensils, he used his fingers to scoop out his own meal into the alms-bowl that the monk carried.

Three of his leprous-ridden fingers dropped off into the bowl together with the rice. The monk accepted the donation with thanks and continued his way into the jungle.

On reaching a clearing, he wrapped each finger in a ball of rice, and then planted all three in the ground. He said a prayer, intending for the good-hearted donor to be blessed in his future reincarnations as someone or something highly desirable, unlike his current life, where as a leper he was cruelly shunned and banished.

According to the story, the 3 planted fingers grew into 3 trees. One was a durian tree; another was a petai tree and the last a jering tree – all 3 trees providing much desired fruits, thus fulfilling the blessing of the monk (the future Buddha) for the generous leper.

durian

petai

Moral of the story?

An act of charity straight from the heart, no matter how small or plain, is the most treasured gift and something to be cherished.

jering

Hokkien salvation in sugar cane fields

2008-02-14T23:30:00.020+08:00

In Penang tonight, hundreds of thousands of Chinese have been trooping up to the foot of Bukit Bendera, since early evening, to pay homage to Yu Huang (Jade Emperor), the Supreme Ruler of Heaven, or as Penangite call Him, Th’nee Kong (Lord of Heaven), long before I publish this post.

The deity’s birthday is on the 9th day of the Chinese New Year, but Penang tradition calls for worshippers to begin their pilgrimage to the shrine once evening sets in on the night before. The Temple, Th’nee Kong Thnua, lies just above the Hill Railway Lower Station.

Th’nee Kong Thnua

It is also a time for the congregation of hundreds of beggars. They would line the stone steps leading up to the temple. Chinese Penangites are particularly charitable tonight and tomorrow.

The 9th Day of the Chinese New Year is the MOST important day for the Hokkiens who constitute the majority of the Chinese Malaysians in Penang. In fact, to them, the 9th Day is even more important than New Year’s Day itself or, for that matter, any other day of the year.

No, I am not Hokkien but growing up in beautiful (once) Paradise, Penang lah, one couldn’t help but pick up Hokkien traditions.

Grandpa told me that during the Chinese Ming Dynasty, the Hokkiens, having suffered a terrible defeat during a regional war, had to flee their villages. A few written articles diplomatically identified the aggressors as foreign troops from the north, perhaps insinuating they were Manchus.

Unfortunately for the Manchus, they have been the usual/convenient whipping boy for the Han Chinese. But my grandpa was far more blunt. He said the invaders were Cantonese from the South.

Anyway, the Hokkiens fled their burnt villages and hid in some sugar cane fields for several days when the Cantonese fighters were hunting for them. Needless to say, those Hokkiens prayed to Th’nee Kong plus company for salvation. Eventually the Cantonese grew tired of their unsuccessful seek-and-destroy operations and return to their own region. A Hokkien Rwanda was avoided.

wiki photo

The Hokkiens then emerged from the sugar cane fields, relieved that they had been spared a terrible death by divine grace. Realizing that it was the 9th Day of the Chinese New Year and coincidentally the birthday of Th’nee Kong, they decided to make votive offerings and prayers to the Jade Emperor for their salvation.

But they were last-minute war refugees on the run with only the clothing on their backs, so what was there to offer as sacrifice to Yu Huang, the Supreme Ruler of Heaven?

Well, as they were in the sugar cane fields, each of them grabbed a couple of sugar cane stalks, uprooting the plants from the earth, and fell on their knees in homage to the Lord of Heaven, offering the only edible item they were able to procure there and then.

Since that fateful day, the Hokkiens have celebrated Chinese New Year with a pair of sugar cane plants, which must be complete stalks from roots to shoots to commemorate their ancestors’ votive offerings on that historical day.

Naturally being Chinese, they would select the yellow specie rather than the deep purplish or greenish-brown type. Yellow is akin to gold (kim or kam), an auspicious colour for an auspicious period in the lunar calendar.

Today (during the 15 days of the 1st lunar month), if you were to drive past houses of the more traditional Hokkien Penangites, you would be able to see two yellow sugar cane plants, one secured on each side of the main front door - and remember, with roots and all.

And obviously Day No. 9 of the New Year has become the MOST important day in the year for them. Their race was saved by God.

When the Hokkiens pray to their saviour, they would invariably offer, among many delicacies, cut and skinned sugar canes arranged as tiers on trays (I have always termed that as 'piles of mini sweet logs'), as offerings of gratitude to Yu Huang for that memorable day of salvation. The various forms of sugar cane offering also symbolize sweetness and growing prosperity.

Maybe this history lesson does in a way explain why I, with a sweet tooth, have always been partial towards Hokkien babes ;-)

Secrets of Ang Pow's

2008-02-07T06:00:00.001+08:00

I wrote the ‘Secrets of Angpow’ two years ago after I read an article by Clara Chooi in the Star Online. This is an updated version to celebrate the Chinese New Year (of the Rat) in 2008.

Then Clara has written an informative piece on ang pows (red packets) - or as Americans termed them lucky money - that Chinese give on Chinese New Years. I expanded on that practice to include other auspicious occasions like weddings, birthdays, loved ones or close friends departing on a trip, even passing an important examination, etc.

On those other auspicious occasions, only the principal actors - namely the bride & groom, or birthday girl/boy, parents, uncles/aunties, elders, friends, or those who may be departing overseas for studies, or successful graduates, or those getting a (new) job, etc - get the red packets.

However, on Chinese New Year, everyone who isn’t married gets one or more from parents, married (even widowed) relatives and friends. The gift of an ang pow, whether on Chinese New Year or other occasions, symbolises the wishing (or blessing) of good luck, well-being and prosperity for the recipient.

On Chinese New Year, as long as one isn’t married, one may expect to receive ang pows regardless of age. Bachelor uncles are also entitled, even from married nephews or nieces.

Mind you, some Chinese community like the Sin-Nins (or T'oi Sarn) would still give ang pows to recently married couples but just for their 1st year of marriage. I suspect it may be a form of easing them into the frighteningly 'expensive' world of Chinese New Year ang pows ;-)

The valid period for giving and receiving Chinese New Year ang pows is, fortunately for the delighted kids but terrifying for the givers, a lengthy 15 days, starting from the New Moon to the Full Moon of the new lunar calendar. Newly married couples would find themselves propelled, either willingly or otherwise, into playing financial Santa Claus’s.

The rather lengthy period for giving ang pows will set them financially back somewhat, well, at least until they have children of their own to ‘retaliate’ and recoup back the financial outflow. But alas, when their children grow up and at the same time wise-up not to let mum ‘keep the money for them’ anymore, those pitiful couples would again be at the losing end, becoming (when they are alone together, and no 'face' would then be lost) grumpy Chinese Santa’s.

Usually the women would be the ones giving out the ang pows while their husbands look as if they don’t have any clue what’s going on, or more probably, how much cash to put in the red packets.

Deciding how much to place in an ang pow is an arcane art that only a woman with kids of her own can work out. Whether someone's kids deserve x, y or z dollars are either pre-planned or worked out ad hoc by the Cray supercomputer inside her head.

She would factor in considerations such as how well she likes the recipients (eg. like lovable kaytee), how much that kid's parents had given to her own children, the importance or family hierarchical position of the kid's parents, 'face', and various secrets that most men would have absolutely no idea about or prefer not to know.

There’s favouritism involved too because as a kid I discovered I received less than my sister from one auntie – yeah, that meanie, I never did like her anyway. As those ladies dole out the gifts, they would wish the recipients 'good luck', or 'study well and get good grades’, or just 'be prosperous', etc.

As a kid, I naturally love ang pows, but when I passed the age of 20 I was terribly reluctant to accept them anymore, and in fact attempted to avoid situations where I would most likely receive them, not because I wasn’t needy of the extra cash (hey, who doesn’t need cash) but I truly dread the wishes that accompanied the ang pows.

For poor kaytee, my aunties and Mum’s close friends would push ang pows into my reluctant hands or shirt pocket, look at me mischievously and then wish for me to marry a good wife.

‘Twas a bloody hint too because they would follow that up smoothly with some recommendations of so-and-so’s daughters, who were all damn beautiful, excellent cooks, quiet and demure (didn't they realise I wanted hot wild babes?), all with a BA 1st Class Honours - aiyah from Cambridge University lah - or MSc from University of NSW etc, with cars of their own, blah blah blah – meat market advertising stuff.

I would usually keep very still and silent so as not to encourage them but wear a weak smile in order not to appear rude, while Mum would look on hopefully and egg on those busybody aunties who just couldn’t stand the thought of kaytee being a carefree bachelor.

Oh, those women! To them, a bachelor is a challenge to overcome, maybe a blasphemous sight, a ‘victim’ to be assigned to a lucky woman, an incomplete man, someone they want to sink their match-making claws into!

While I would sit very still in the hope I won’t attract any more attention, and that maybe they would go away and play their mahjong, they would, immediately after giving the ang pows and their life-style threatening wishes, start to dissect and discuss me, right in my presence as if I wasn’t around.

They would trash open my characteristics and qualities into minute details, analyse my needs (for and of a suitable wife) into micron-ic specifications, etc, but with mum providing the counter-balancing yin to their yang, namely all my bad points (me? bad points? sheesh, mum!).

Terrifying! And once I even received an ang pow with a name plus a phone number written on a red piece of paper - oh, those devious aunties! But I did keep the details in case of a rainy day.

Clara Chooi said “It is considered rude to open an ang pow publicly to check or reveal its contents, because the recipient would appear greedy for money, and secondly, it may embarrass the giver if the sum is small.”

It’s true that Chinese consider it really bad form (and of great embarrassment) to open a gift right in front of the giver, unlike Westerners who expect you to open their gifts in their presence so that you may express your delight with appropriate ooohs and aaahs. Samuel P. Huntingdon's 'Clash of civilisations'?

But my dear Clara, nowadays there’s no necessity to open the packets. Kids will do what I and several million other kids did – we would just feel the packets and silently categorise the giver as either a cheap skate or an AOK type of lady!

Hmmm, maybe we acquire that super-sensitive feel through mahjong ‘exercises’ where we were required to develop an acute sense of touch in order to keep or discard tiles we drew during the game without even looking at them, let alone examine each and every one with painful time-wasting scrutiny – the ‘bong’ (Penang Hokien) or ‘mor’ (Cantonese) technique.

But Clara was incorrect to say that an odd figure in the red packet is to be avoided as it is taboo. That might have been the case in earlier years, but the trend for the last twenty years has been to give an odd figure like, say 10 ringgit plus 10 sen or, another typical combination, RM 11.

Go ahead and make that RM101 if you like, but you better hope you don’t have 50 nephews and nieces ;-)

The extra 10 sen or 1 ringgit on top of the round figure of, say RM 10, in the ang pows symbolises ch’oot t’au, a Penang Hokkien term literally meaning to ‘protrude’, or more correctly, to ‘exceed'.

The implied wish is for the recipient to have assets, achievements, luck, fortune, cash, whatever, that 'exceed' his or her needs. In other words, it's like wishing someone "Here's wishing you will have everything you want and more."

My favourite auntie frowned half-heartedly before she broke into a wicked mischievous smile when I teased her whether her ch’oot t’au wish for me applied to how many girlfriends I could have (at the same time)?

Alas, on this last ch’oot t’au issue, so far for kaytee it has all been wishful fantasies rather than a wish fulfilled!

Anyway, Gong Xi Fa Cai or in Penang Hokkien, Keong Hee Huat Chye.

ang pow pictures from Chinese Cuisine and Party America

Encounter with a God

2008-01-14T05:40:00.001+08:00

So much talk lately about God and his 99 other names ..... hmmm ..... perhaps this post may be timely.

In the village where I lived, and in many villages throughout the length and breadth of Malaysia, people, especially but not exclusively the Chinese, ‘consult’ the gods on a daily basis on all sorts of problems – health, malevolent spirits, marriage or career prospects, unfaithful husbands, lazy sons who prefer to play Nintendo than look at their maths books, business, love, luck, etc and yes, even politics.

Last year Malaysiakini published a news item titled Politics of spells and shamans. Malaysiakini talked to Awang Mohd Yahya, a famous ‘bomoh politik’, who claimed that his services were often sought by UMNO politician, including its Youth and Puteri Wings, when party elections or general elections approached. Awang said even leaders from opposition PAS and Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR), as well as non-Malays, seek his services. Pity he declined to reveal names.

The practice is also common in neighbouring countries. According to Malaysiakini article Politicians seek foreign supernatural boost our UMNO politicans would travel to Thailand, Asahan in Sumatra (apparently the most popular), Surabaya and Pekalongan in Jawa to meet the far superior Indonesian bomohs just prior to any elections.

Unlike the Greeks and Romans who depended on interpretation by the Oracles (which were usually so cryptic that at best, each offered 1,001 possible meanings, with usually the right one asserted as the true interpretation only with hindsight) the Chinese expect straightforward answers from the divine ones.

To speak to the gods and sometimes even dear departed ones, they used, not bomohs but ‘mediums’, who would usually be men though sometimes we get to meet the rare female ones as well. Chinese believe in speaking 'directly' to the gods or ghosts.

As the good olde dictionary describes, a medium is ‘an intervening agency, means, or instrument by which something is conveyed or accomplished.’ Thus the medium acts as the link for oral communication between mortals and immortals or ghosts.

This post is not about the latter, namely speaking to departed relatives, an eerie ritual known in Penang (Hokkien) as karng-bong. I have always wondered why in such ‘connecting’ ceremonies, the dead (through the mediums of course) would without fail, on successful ‘arrival’ after the ritualistic summons, invariably moan spine-chillingly and cry wretchedly to their living relatives?

I have yet to witness a joyous soul from across the Styx who would whistle Rasa Sayange or say something hearty like a humorous ‘Karn-Neen-Nare, where’s my bloody Aw-Kau (Guinness Stout), man?’

Admittedly I had only witnessed less than half a dozen of these events so my lamentation on the absence of happy ghosts, supposedly from the Happy Hunting Grounds, has to be qualified.

The last time I went to a karn-bong was several years ago on the persuasion of a sweetie who actually shed tears when her favourite late auntie gave or rather moaned to dear sweetie her blessings. To be frank, the ghost or medium’s moan was so bloody bloodcurdling that it put all me olde goose pimples on alert; I immediately disliked her for scaring poor me. But I brightened up after dear ‘auntie’ commended me to sweetie as a potential good husband – hell (no pun intended), what did she know about me ;-)

When sweetie saw my wicked grin, knowing that I was about to engage her dear ‘auntie’ in a light hearted banter she gave me a stern stare that chilled me to my very ~~skeleton~~ bones. I wisely shut up or I would have been dead (again, no pun intended). Alas, today our relationship has long been buried ;-)

Anyway, talking about ghosts gives me the creeps so let’s return to the gods. Now, I did mention that the Chinese expect straightforward and not cryptic answers from the divine ones. How straightforward the god’s answers can be would depend on the immortals’ craftiness or cunning, or perhaps the ‘cleverness’ of the mediums. Yes, ye olde gods can at times be cagey, as the ancient Greeks had long been telling us in their myths.

In the Chinese folk pantheon, some gods are the serious types (either philosophical pontificating pious immortals or those with stern don’t-f*ck-around-with-me ferocious attitude – don’t ever ask for any 4-D number from this group; they are more for blessings, healing and exorcism) while some can be quite humorous (and thus cunning, cagey or crafty).

Now, as a young laddie, kaytee was rather mischievous, and naturally keen to try the unusual and even bizarre. A senior neighbour, whom I respectfully addressed in traditional Chinese way as 'uncle' though he wasn’t a blood relative, wanted to 'consult' the ... well ... a ... god for 4-D purpose.

The immortal he had in mind was the popular Tua Peh Kong, the God of Luck – you can see where this was leading!

Tua Peh Kong was (still is) the immortal’s popular name but his formal title goes by the rather stern appellation of Hock Teik Guan Suoi.

Guan Suoi means ‘General’. But the god wasn’t martial looking at all like Kuan Kong (of the 3 Kingdoms' fame) or Loh Chia Kong (Na Cha), but rather resembles a Chinese Father Christmas, with long white beard, jolly countenance and a benign smile. I dare say, after the incomparable Kuan Yin, the Goddess of Mercy, Tua Peh Kong would be the next most popular deity in my village.

To ensure he obtained a good ‘connection’ with the divine one, uncle wanted a 'fresh' or 'virgin' medium, 'virgin in both the sexual and experience sense. Then I was eleven and ... blush ... still a virgin.

So after hearing him expounded on why a virgin was necessary to secure a kosher ‘arrival’, and out of curiosity and wishing to experience the supernatural, I recklessly volunteered. Much later I realized I was cunningly 'manoeuvred' into volunteering by uncle, who obviously knew something about my kuai-larng* nature.

* let’s translate this village term as ‘mischievous’

He went to the extent of engaging a well-known 'medium master' to chant special Taoist conjuration that would petition Hock Teik Guan Suoi, the God of Luck, to use my body as a medium to communicate with the mortal world, specifically in the matter of 4 useful numbers for a Saturday lottery draw.

A highly experienced medium master was an added ‘safety factor’ as his special incantation and knowing eye would detect and guarantee against any malevolent spirit, which happened to pass by at the time of the invocation, from ‘entering’ my body - no casual hijacking of body please. There were frightening tales of accidental ‘invasion’ by alien supernatural forces and their subsequent refusal to leave the mediums' bodies. Yes, a good medium master possesses incantations to ward off uninvited and undesired entries.

Apparently the medium master was already in retirement but when he heard that the candidate for the medium was an untested novice, gulp namely yours truly, he agreed to come out of retirement to perform the ceremony.

The auspicious day was chosen after the ad hoc committee - uncle, medium master and a couple of other wannabe rich uncles - consulted the Chinese almanac with a senior Taoist priest, who incidentally attempted to dissuade the group from such an impertinent invocation, but in vain.

For my part, I insisted on being accompanied by a couple of my village mates, much against the wishes of uncle who wanted to keep the group small and tight for security (or selfish) reasons. But I had my way as there wasn't going to be any ceremony without me, thus who I then wanted I got. Hey, I wasn’t going to leave my soul and body at the hands of some old punters – I wanted to know my mates would be there to ensure I wasn’t abandoned when things went wrong. My friends were just as curious as I was.

Prior to the actual invocation ceremony I was given a thorough briefing by the medium master who obviously possessed an impressive range of experience in dealing with tricky gods. For example, he said that sometimes a guileful god would enter the medium’s body but would not talk to the waiting audience - instead the Wily One would conduct a conversation ‘internally’ with the medium; in other words, while ‘externally’ the audience saw only a silent medium, 'internally' the god could be giving private instructions to the medium on, say, the 929 chapters of the Old Testament, unbeknownst to the bystanders. I was urged to remember the ‘conversation’ from such an ‘internal’ dialogue should it occur, and to relate all when I woke up from the trance.

Another favourite trick of a mischievous god would be not to conduct any dialogue even with the medium but to whisk him (the medium) on a private trip to see the winning 4-D numbers while ‘externally’ the audience would again only see a medium sitting quietly. Needless to say, I was instructed to ‘record’ all and ‘play’ back everything. So on so forth ... my admiration for the Crafty Ones began to grow as the medium master related all he knew, which was probably only a mere fraction of what the gods could and would do if they feel like frustrating or teasing the punters.

The moment came for me to prepare myself. After the obligatory cleansing shower, as if my mischievous nature could be washed away, I was seated on a wooden stool in front of the god icon. Up to then I thought it was all good fun, suppressing a boyish giggle as the chant master started his votive offerings and appeals to the god.

He started the ceremony with a special prayer and offerings of joss sticks and lighted oil lamps to Tua Peh Kong, with the standard plates of fruits, sweets, cakes and three cups of wine and another three cups of Chinese tea on the altar. I must say I eyed the cups hopefully, wishing for my first taste of alcohol.

After the preliminaries, he switched to the invocation incantation. As he recited the Taoist chanting (I heard the title Hock Teik Guan Suoi being recited several times) he burned joss papers continuously as votive offerings in a furnace for that purpose. As in Chinese religious symbology, the joss paper was in gold colour for gods (and silver for departed ones). After I was sure it was gold (and not silver) joss papers that were offered, I closed my eyes in the way I had observed other mediums do.

Around 10 minutes of impatient waiting passed by, during which time I secretly attempted to follow and memorise his invocation incantation. 'Twas then I suddenly ‘saw’ (with my eyes still closed) a bright shining light far away in the middle of an emerging black vortex that appeared before me.

Initially that distant light stayed still, with the black vortex swirling round and round. To tell you the truth, I was quite frightened, but more out of curiosity than discipline, sat very still to see what would happen next.

Then the light began to approach me slowly. Later I was told by my mates standing with the older men around me that I started to shake and sway rather vigorously, though throughout the session I personally thought I was just sitting still on the stool.

I was beginning to fall deep into the trance that I wanted to experience but without realising or noticing the supernatural 'transition'. I didn't experience (as I had anticipated) any physical body sensation other than the sighting of the bright approaching light in the middle of a swirling black vortex.

The light came slowly closer and closer to me, when suddenly it sped up like a hurling comet ... sh*t man ... right towards by-now-terrified me.

Instinctively I made a mighty effort to ward off that almost impacting light, and in that defensive movement ‘woke’ up from the trance, much to the disappointment of wannabe rich 'uncle' and everyone there. I can you I wasn’t at all disappointed. Au contraire I was very much relieved.

But the medium master commented to uncle that I was ‘good genuine material’. By ‘genuine’ he meant I was not faking because being an old hand and a wily olde fox, he had, when I started to sway and shake, deliberately dropped a big bundle of hot burning joss papers on my bare feet to test whether I was really in a real trance. Bastard!

According to my mates I didn’t even twitch; on being told that, with great horror I immediately checked my feet for burnt marks but strangely neither saw/felt any nor experienced any painful sensation/discomfort.

The medium master debriefed me that the next time I shouldn't be scared but allow the light to 'enter' me as that was the god approaching my mortal body. He advised 'uncle' to try me again on the next auspicious night. Of course by then I declined. I decided that the experience was sufficient to last me a lifetime. ‘Twas my brief encounter with a god.

In an earlier posting Senjakala I had quoted William Shakespeare in his Hamlet (Act I, Scene V): "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

Indeed, and kaytee can say today that he personally knows that.

Killer Instinct

2007-12-22T14:50:00.000+08:00

One upon a time in a Penang village there was a small boy of just ten going on to eleven. He lived with his mum and two nonagenarians (grandparents). They were poor and of course badly in need of money – hey, who in the village, other than the sole richest landowner, didn’t?

His dad had passed away leaving them in severe financial disadvantage, but fortunately with their own attap roof over their worried heads.

Mind you, the laddie was still too small to hold grave concerns over their financially perilous circumstances. His mum was already in her mid 60’s so hardly likely to be a viable member of the workforce. The bottom-line was that they were in financial straits – certainly at the bottom of the social line (pun not intended).

But mum was a damn good cook, able to conjure up magnificent nyonya and traditional Chinese dishes. So when August of one particular year arrived for the village to hold the annual Hungry Ghosts festival and immediately after that, the celebration of the birthday of Tua Peh Kong, the local deity, she thought that she would sell ‘oh-knua-moi’ (dried oyster rice porridge) during the religious events to earn some badly needed money.

She was a modest woman and not given to wild and extraordinary expectations – a few ringgit was all she was hoping for. That was just putting it mildly as in reality she was a very timid, passive and underconfident housewife who was driven into a state of pitiful inferiority complex after her husband-provider passed away.

So the religious festival arrived and she rustled up a big pot of the ‘oh-knua moi’ complete with ‘eu-char-kueh’ (yau-char-kuai or deep fried dough ‘sticks’), 'eu ch'ang' (fried chopped shallots), and fresh chopped spring onions, 'suan t'au eu' (oil flavoured with sautéed garlic), basically the works, in the way her husband liked and expected when he was alive.

Was her first commercial venture also a personal celebration of his memory? Well, who could tell!

As she was advanced in her years she depended on her young son to carry the food stuff plus the necessary equipment – crockery, a couple of tables and several chairs (for the customers), washing pails, etc, down to village field where the Chinese (teochew or chiuchow) opera was staged.

Yes, not only was he in charge of the transportation of the ‘moi’ and all sundry by bicycle between the house and the field, he also had to do the waiting (serving) and washing of used crockery and utensils, and the packing up after the food had been sold.

Though the young lad was required to help his mum with most of the chores - he was responsible for almost everything, except for the cooking and handling of the money - he could do that only after his school hours. Thus the stall only opened in the late afternoon after he had returned from class when we witnessed him struggling to discharge his huge responsibility.

So at the ripe old age of 10 going on to 11, the laddie became the ‘man of the house’, unless of course you wish to be pedantic and insist on considering his nonagenarian granddad.

The ‘oh-knua moi’ proved to be very popular and before two hours had passed, the porridge was all sold out.

The owner of the neighbouring ice-drink stall was so taken by the woman's ‘oh-knua-moi’ that at the end of the first day, he made an advance booking for the last five bowls. Of course she thought he was joking, merely teasing her with that ridiculous request, so she ignored or forgot about his ‘advance booking’, very much to his disappointment and perhaps (quiet) chagrin when on the following day he came to collect his five bowls in vain. He then entreated her to consider his request seriously; he wanted at least (and not necessarily the 'last') five bowls of her most wondrous porridge reserved for him.

On the third day of the month’s long festival, the mum was very mindful of his earnest request, and as to be expected, the ice-drink hawker wasn’t disappointed with the expected quality of the dried oyster porridge.

Each day she made a modest net income of around five ringgit, which in her limited expectation was rather good money for around two to three hours of hawking. She was rapt as the five ringgit would see them in good stead for at least a couple of days.

A week passed by quickly; by then the uncle from the ice-drink stall became very friendly with and quite fond of the lad. Each evening, after the boy had sold off all the ‘moi’, the uncle would treat him to a free ice ball, smothered with ‘half sarsi half rose’ syrup. Gasp, gawd, omigosh ;-) what indulgent luxury. And the best part of it was it was FREE.

He sucked and sucked on that thirst quencher cum cooler, changing hands as each became numb from holding the ice ball. And when his lips became numb as well, he placed the remaining ice ball in a bowl, allowing it to melt down for subsequent quaffing, while he packed up the stall’s equipment.

That was when he overheard the ice-drink uncle asking his mum why she was grossly undercharging for her ‘moi’, when in fact she ought to set a higher and more appropriate price for such quality stuff. He inquired how much she was netting each day, and on discovering it was only five ringgit, shook his head sadly, either in disapproval or disappointment, or both.

Seeing his frown of disapproval, she went into her usual passive-defensive mode, mumbling something about not wishing to gouge her customers ... mar see bay sai t'an ar nay chay* ... blah blah blah ...

* one shouldn't make excessive profits

Then the uncle advised her to factor in adverse weather, labour cost, cooking fuel, and accidents, etc. He asked her to consider the loss if her son experienced an accident during the transportation to-fro the village field, or in setting up the stall, where the entire pot of ‘moi’ was spilled. Therefore she ought to work those non-earning days, unseen cost and loss due to mishaps into her business plans and pricing.

Instead of considering the uncle's advice on business risk factors, she turned around to glare at her son as if he had indeed dropped the pot of ‘moi’. He knew from experience that she was compensating for her embarrassment and underconfidence by directing her annoyance at him.

But even sadder, he knew she won’t change the price of the ‘moi’ as the uncle advised. Apart from a fear of imagined disapproval from the customers because of her timidity and lack of confidence, she had neither the business acumen (to consider all the factors the uncle raised) nor ... most important of all ... the ‘killer instinct’ so vital in business to make the best (and appropriate) profits.

Yes, sadly she lacked the necessary ‘killer instinct’.

To be continued ...

Lustful fantasies

2007-11-18T19:52:00.002+08:00

I am going to 'fess up to one of my secret fantasies. But I better start at the very beginning, when I was still at school.

One day – or as Penangites would say, 'oo chit jeet nee’ - while in Keat Seng coffee shop with my classmate and best friend, Michael, I foolishly revealed to him that I had the hots for the teenage daughter of the koay teow stall man.

She was standing just 5 metres away from our table talking with another girl behind the shop cash counter. Oh, she just had the sweetest demeanor.

Michael turned to me with a sneer on his face, and proclaimed - I thought rather too loudly for 5 metres - "She's just a kid, you cradle snatcher!" And there we were, two teenagers ourselves.

I cringed in embarrassment - at his booming revelation of my secret passion in such a crowded place - and protested, in a lowered voice, that she must be at least 15-ish, almost our age. Michael crushed me with an incredulous look.

The bastard had this amazing ability to convey his disdain of my taste in girls with his versatile facial expressions, which at that moment, I did consider sinking my fists into. He tautologized: "That baby-face baby 15? Sheesh!" and added with a terrifying (for me) "I'll ask her."

Before I could act to prevent him from walking towards my dream girl and - knowing his teasing propensity to embarrass me - revealing my secret admiration to her, he had already reached the counter.

Ever so confidently he slid into easy conversation with the two sweeties. After what I assessed to be a lengthy conversation, during which I noted with increasing trepidation that the girl was smiling so sweetly at him, he returned to our table looking like the cat that had licked the cream.

"Yeah, OK, she's 15! I've her name!"

"And ..." I said excitedly and with full expectation he'd pass that vital info to me.

"I've a date with her tomorrow."

KNN*, the bastard potong jalan me [stole my dream girl from me].

*KNN = Karn Nee Nare - a Penang Hokkien expression that's best translated, in the presence of ladies, as 'Dash it!"

You need to understand, my best pal Michael was good looking with the most devilish handsome smile, smartly dressed, tall and slim, confident and well spoken, owned a snazzy motorbike, had plenty of cash in his pocket [upper middle class family - dad's a Chartered accountant], possessed a terrific collection of the latest pop songs, played the guitar, danced like Fred Astaire, yes indeed, a bloke with many charming talents. Teenage girls were easily attracted to his easy going Adonis ways.

Me? Well, the class called us the 'beauty & the beast' and may I just clarify that that name calling was unnecessarily spiteful by immature classmates who were jealous of our close friendship - we had always worked as a tight team.

As for my own bike, my late grandfather did leave me his rusty vintage bicycle with a tradesman-type rear goods rack - the type that could hold several 30 kg sacks of rice, which granddad delivered for a grocery shop.

No one in my family wanted the daggy bike, and neither did I, but I was told to use it to cycle to school. I knew that if rice was not transported, it could easily carry two girls on the rear carrier, which regretfully for me, never did ever eventuate.

What about dressing? I must say that day in Keat Seng coffee shop I had on my feet a pair of blue and brand new Japanese slippers [thongs to Aussies].

I was also damn shy which may explain why I didn't have the guts to strike up a chitty-chat with the sweeties. Mind you, my favourite aunt did always say my shyness was charming - oh, how I clung on to her opinion like the proverbial straw. And I wasn't exactly without talent, as I could fold an origami sampan rather well.

They say 'opposite attracts' which could well sum up my relationship with Michael. Despite our contrasting nature Michael and I were best buddies. I remember our times at school as halcyon days.

After we left school, I didn't see nor hear from Michael who went overseas for university. Being him, he was probably too busy enjoying himself with the ladies to write to me as he had vowed. The years passed by swiftly and sadly we lost contact completely.

From time to time I did hear from mutual friends how he was getting on. Then I heard he married a real stunner, a Miss this-or-that, which wasn't surprising for our Adonis. I also learnt that his wife turned out to be a real nasty domineering bitch, which might have been a karmic outcome for Michael's teenage Casanova flings.

But my regular defeats by Michael in the 'faint heart never wins the fair lady' contests during our school days did, I must confess, leave me unconfident, psychologically scarred, and competitively cringing. Battered badly in the self-esteem department, I upheld Nature's tactics and evolved to survive in the game of the hearts.

I knew Michael didn't particularly like older women so I decided that it might be a sensible and sound move to shift my targeting of the fairer gender to 'types' that Michael didn't have any interest in, the more 'mature' women.

At this juncture, I thought I would remind you too of my innate weakness for strong minded, power-inclined, good looking but bitchy women, as you would have gathered from my stories of Rightwing bitch (1) and Rightwing bitch (2).

And it wouldn't be too hard at all for those women to be considered strong-minded, power inclined or bitchy where I was concerned. Just to give you an idea, most of my girlfriends called me a passive wimp. Oh, how those ‘Amazons’ bullied poor me. Only in one area did I remain resolute and defiant - my leftwing principles!

But in the end, my developed interest for … er … the more ‘mature’ women, overlaid by an ass-whipped, sexually neurotic and troubled subconscious - blame Michael for this - and my inherent shyness, I took instead to fantasizing about such women rather than having real affairs.

Yes, I indulged in a fantasized lust list, of powerful, good looking, 'mature', bossy and 'baby-face' women - the last characteristic was not always a criterion but probably a token resistance against the awful memory of my loss to Michael of the 'baby-face' koay teow belle.

Carrying forward my fantasized hit list to recent times, and I want to be truly honest here, I have developed an erotic fantasy to 'involve' myself with - 'involve'? Why the hell do I use words like this - you would never have guessed, our neighbour’s President, yes, none other than Her Excellency President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.

President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo has been one hell of a … er …'mature', powerful and bitchy woman. As the Philippines head of state she had easily neutralized the political opposition and a military coup, and even survived an impeachment. At one stage she didn’t even think twice about declaring a state of emergency in the Philippines .

Oooooh, her strong and confident political manoeuvring sent me into near orgasmic delight. Hey, did you know that in 2005 she was placed as the World’s 4th most powerful woman? My knees felt weak as I witnessed her taking on a bitchy stance. I want, nay, need a woman like that to control and manage my somewhat messy and chaotic life.

Now, now, if you are attempting to demoralize me by suggesting she’s 60, mate, that’s discriminating against age. I am an equal opportunity lover, so cease and desist! Also, knowing a bloke like Michael wouldn't have any interest in such a 'mature' woman, I feel somewhat comforted. Besides, a Pommie friend once wisely advised me: “Many a fine tune have been played on an old fiddle”.

She’s great looking (yum), sexily baby-faced (oooooh!), powerful (just crush me, sweetie) and obviously highly intelligent (gasp). She holds a PhD in economics. Here’s a picture of her - gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous!

So excuse me as I fantasize of a wishful tryst with Gloria. It’s kaytee’s contribution to ASEAN solidarity. God knows in today's ugly world, we could do with better neighbourliness ;-)

Does an 'Asian' eat 'Asian' food at home? (2)

2007-10-22T21:35:00.000+08:00

Continuing from Does an ‘Asian’ eat ‘Asian’ food at home? (1)

Talking about Indonesian food, there’s one of my favourites, the incredible gado-gado. It’s the magnificent Indon salad with quartered hard-boiled eggs, fried or steamed tofu, salady stuff like cucumber, barng kuang (jicama*), tau geh (bean sprouts), kacang panjang** and anything that fancies one, even the rich avocado - all smothered with generous helpings of rich thick slightly spicy (satay-ish) peanut sauce - yummmm.

* for years I (and I wouldn’t be surprised if most Malaysians still do) called barng kuang turnip or Chinese turnip, the latter term having gained local recognition through incorrect naming. Then I saw in a couple of highly reliable cookbooks that it’s actually jicama (pronounced in the Spanish manner as hecama) or yam bean (pachyrhizus erosus) or Mexican turnip. It’s only in the root that jicama is edible as the rest of the plant is very poisonous - its seeds contain the toxin rotenone, which is used to poison insects and fish.

** directly translated from Malay, many Malaysians call this veggie (or fruit) long beans or Chinese long beans. In Penang Hokkien it’s of course ch’ai tau; in Cantonese I learnt it’s tau gok. But when I was in Australia I found out that it’s called snake beans, with the origin of that appellation rather obvious. Then the cookbook tut-tut-ed my mistake by advising that it’s asparagus beans (vigna unguiculata ssp sesquipedalis) or yardlong bean or long-podded cowpea. But I am sure all the above have names been accepted by now.

Kacang panjang is one of my favourite ulam, a Malaysian veggie that one eats as a raw accompaniment to, say, steam rice and fried fish or nasi padang. Traditionally it forms part of a salad the Malays called ulam - it's usually taken after being dipped into sambal belacan. I'll describe what ulam comprises of in a subsequent paragraph.

Then of course there’s satay and, indeed ... why not, nasi padang as well.

But I have to say, having eaten satay all around, nothing beats a Malaysian satay. We are still the best, and I am not being just patriotic (scary word this ‘patriotic’).

But look, there’s something special about Indonesian nasi padang. There is a fantastic warung (stall) in Jakarta that serves up the most wondrous Sumatran-style curry of various dishes including babat or perut (beef tripe), grilled terung (brinjal or egg plant) smothered with ground (from fresh) red chillies sautéed in oil, and fragrant rice, accompanied by sambal terasi or as we Malaysians call it, sambal belacan - a side-dish of fresh pounded chillies mixed with grilled belacan (prawn condiment) and lemon juice with just a wee sprinkling of salt, and if one is from Penang, a dollop of the incredible hare-koh, a prawn paste but different from the belacan/terasi.

By the way, I discovered that if beer has to be avoided, nasi padang would be wonderfully accompanied by a refreshing iced makisa (passion fruit) juice or just plain ais kosong (ice water).

The only way to do justice to the sambal terasi (sambal belacan) is of course to have ulam with it.

Now, earlier I did promise to elaborate on what ulam is - hey, not meant for you SE-Asians lah ;-). This salad, with of course its regional variation, seems to be common in SE Asia (Malaysia, Indon, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, Kampuchea or Cambodia, yes Brunei of course – I would assume Burma has the same stuff, but forget about Singapore - those Sings eat McDonalds only).

So it's a SE-Asian salad, with plenty of cashew tree shoots (pucuk ménté or pucuk monyet, or in Malaysian, pucuk janggus), cucumber (timun), kacang panjang (Chinese longbeans), 4-angle beans (kacang botol, winged beans princess beans, Goa beans, Psophocarpus tetragonolobus), slices of cabbage, green mango, carrots, onions and any raw crunchy veggie and zillions of other delectable herbs like mint. The mix depends on the regional availability and use, and of course the diner's preference.

There is a restaurant in Bogor (near Jakarta, Indonesia) that does an incredible grilled sweet-sauce-coated carp dish served with rice, ulam and sambal terasi.

When I was last there, I saw a particular hugh fat golden carp swimming around happily in the pond under part of the restaurant (yes, it was on stilt).

Cheryl (btw, that’s the name of the carp – all carps have names starting with ‘C’) swam hopefully in circles beneath me expecting that I would throw some food to it. There and then, I was reminded of the Malay fairytale of Bawang Merah & Bawang Putih, where the evil but gorgeous stepmother turned the poor mum into a carp and imprisoned her in a well – maybe some other time for this fairytale.

Before long, after a couple of refreshing drinks, I walked up to the dining table and discovered to my horror that Cheryl had ended up on a plate before me. I pretended not to recognise her, and in fact had to rotate the plate around so that her accusing eyes weren’t fixed on guilty me. But in honour of Cheryl I partook of her body with great relevance, with the regular pinch of sambal terasi, jasmine rice and ulam. I celebrated her by respectful mouthfuls.

I am sure by now you would have realised kaytee just love ulam. Yoohoo ladies, that's the green way to my eco-friendly heart ;-)

‘Ere I completed my recollection of the (slightly sad, because of Cheryl, but mostly enjoyable, because of Cheryl also) piscatorial feast, I once again allowed my gluttonous imagination to …

To be continued …

Secret soup (4)

2007-10-02T21:08:00.000+08:00

As I last posted in Secret Soup (3), the terminology of kay moi also carries a cryptic (Da Vinci-ish) social code for Penangites.

When Penangites spot their relatives, neighbours or friends all dressed up as if for Sunday church, they would casually ask: “Cheah kay moi ar baa moi?” (are you going to partake of chicken or pork porridge?)

Though the word baa just means meat, common usage in Penang makes the terminology pork rather than beef or lamb.

Going for the former, that is, kay moi or chicken porridge, means attending a wedding, while taking pork porridge implies attending a funeral.

Certainly chicken porridge was traditionally served as a breakfast meal at Penang Chinese weddings. I am not sure whether this is still being practised because I haven't attended a Penang Chinese wedding for eons - I keep clear of such occasions because of busybody aunties and female neighbours who consider it their sacred mission to marry off any available kampong (village) bachelors. These women can be so bloody mercilessly unrelenting in their KPC*-cupid mission.

* KPC = kay poh chnee = busybody

Anyway, I am not so confident on the reason for pork porridge being associated with funerals, other than to guess along the same lines for kay moi – that it was (perhaps still is) served at wakes.

In Penang, when a Chinese passed away, friends and relatives would maintain a 24-hour wake during the deceased’s lying-in-state until the burial. The bereaving family in turn has to look after these supporters or voluntary wake attendants, feeding them and ensuring they have a regular supply of light refreshments and cigarettes.

The obligatory mahjong games to ensure a festive atmosphere (and also, to keep the attendants awake) would spring up on their own. The scene would only be completed with pots of coffee and tea, and jars of water kept full while packets of cigarettes would be guaranteed available. Apart from the four meals of breakfast, lunch, afternoon tea and dinner, extra late night suppers and early morning snacks such as pork porridge would be served. I guess that’s probably how the link between pork porridge and funerals started.

Well, that’s the Penang culinary version of 4 weddings and a funeral.

I don’t have much success at cooking kay moi the way Mum has been doing because I couldn’t come up with the moi, but instead usually end up with chok.

When I don’t put enough water it becomes steam rice, but when I add on extra water, it turns out as a milky paste-like concoction, basically chok. Somehow Mum produces the perfect state of white micro submarines lying at the bottom of the crockery lagoon.

One notable characteristic about Penang chicken porridge served at wedding breakfast – it’s provided in a rather comel (pronounced chor mal meaning 'cute' or 'dainty') china bowl (fine porcelain) complete with also a china spoon, and maybe even placed on a comel china saucer, the types that Straits nyonya* use.

* Chinese Malaysians born/living in Penang and Malacca who have adopted Malay culture – eg. wearing sarong kebaya, cooking Malay dishes and delicacies, using a combination of Malay and Hokkien languages, etc. Penang, Malacca & Singapore were once known collectively as the British Straits Settlement

So someone with a hearty appetite like my friend Bruce would require at least a dozen bowls or more if such dainty crockery was used – no, we didn’t serve Bruce with the comel-size bowl – he might swallow that as well.

But eventually I developed my kaytee-style. Basically I cheat – well, I have to if I want to achieve the moi rather than the chok.

I would cook the rice first, just as normal steamed rice. Then I allow it to cool off. Meanwhile I’d heat up chicken stock in a different pot, toss in de-boned chicken thigh fillets, fish out the cooked chook meat to dice it into cubes, chuck them back into the stock, flavour to taste, and then allow the soup to cool. I loosen the cooled rice into loose grains and add the lot into the cooled soup.

The cooling is important because if one part is still hot, somehow the rice would keep absorbing the soup, and consequently either dries up the mixture, making the whole combination into steamed rice again, or disintegrates into a chok-like paste, either of which would piss me off.

When ready to eat, I zap the content in a microwave for a minute or so, add in chopped kiin chai or even uan sooi, and a tablespoonful of sautéed garlic plus the oil, then sprinkled a bit of pepper and tau yew, and Bob’s your uncle.

And before the rice grains start to absorb the soup, it's already submerged in my tummy. One can even add slivers of chicken liver or giblets into the soup if one likes them.

Best of all, it’s also halal*-possible with sembelih** chicken , hence a truly Malaysian dish.

* kosher
** properly slaughtered i.a.w Islamic rites

There you are – the soup is not a Germanic secret as outrageously and falsely claimed, but a Penang nyonya treasure, as it has always been for hundreds of years. Mind you, I prefer the way they serve it in Berlin, by a Vanir Goddess.

Related:
(1) Scary soup!
(2) The not-so-humble Basil

Secret soup (3)

2007-09-21T19:18:00.000+08:00

Continuing from Secret soup (2) .....

Porridge, congee, gruel, broth – they’re basically the same, cereal cooked as a soupy concoction, in some cases with some meat, fish or veggie added in.

The last two, gruel and broth, would suggest a thinner or lighter fare, while the former two convey a picture of more substantial bodies.

Porridge is of course a breakfast cereal of Scottish origin, while congee is more related to a Chinese meal, though strangely the latter is of Tamil origin.

Mind you, porridge also carries a naughty meaning, where the phrase ‘stirring the porridge’ implies taking one’s turn late in a group bonking session.

For some reason, perhaps because of the British influence (and hopefully not because of the group sex), English educated Penangites have preferred the word porridge more than congee.

It’s a choice not unlike that for either moi or chok. But then, one can understand the preference for the Chinese words because the former is Penang Hokkien whilst the other is Cantonese.

While my Penang mind perceives moi as rice porridge with the grains of rice intact and separated, and submerged in clear soup like micro submarines remaining quietly still at the sea bottom when sub-hunters prowl above - the claustrophic world of U-571 or Das Bot - good lord, just imagine Jürgen Prochnow in my kay moi, yuck! - it visualises chok as a sticky mixture of white grain-less rice paste not unlike the glue that political party faithful used to stick up their campaign posters.

I am of course not knocking the latter as it’s certainly great with pei-tan (century old eggs but made in 100 days - well, there's a 'century' of sorts!), or grilled chicken intestines, as in chee cheong chok.

I introduced Bruce to the latter, but strangely for a Scot he seemed put off by offal, such as heart, liver, kidneys, intestines, brains, giblets and tripe, all yummy stuff. He’s obviously one of those Scots who hadn’t eaten haggis.

But back to the issue, when it’s Penang style chicken porridge, it’s kay moi and never kay chok, thank you!

Oh, by the way, many people, even some Penangites, don’t know that the terminology of kay moi also carries a cryptic (Da Vinci-ish) social code for Penangites.

To be continued …

Secret soup (2)

2007-09-12T21:02:00.000+08:00

Continuing from Secret soup (1) …

So on my ~~persuasion~~ pleading, and for the honour of Penang, Mum prepared and served Bruce a bowl of what he had termed as the Berlin ‘secret soup’.

Instead of celery Mum used the traditional kiin chai. Now, a bit of Penang Hokkien linguistic pedantry here – and from me, a Teochew nang, heh heh heh - the word kiin has to be pronounced without the upper and bottom rows of teeth touching each other, but with the tip of the tongue flicking up to touch the roof of the mouth next to the upper denture, and in a positive manner.

Kiin chai is Chinese parsley, a confused veggie lost somewhere between the better known uan sooi (Chinese coriander) and European celery. It has a stronger scent and more fibrous body than uan sooi, and looks like coriander on steroids. But it’s the perfect dressing for Mum’s or the Penang style of kay moi (chicken porridge) - Berlin ‘secret soup’ my foot!

Mum also laced the dish with garlic sautéed in oil. Bruce’s first mouthful sent him varoom to FTL (faster-than-light) speed. Oh, before too long, he was waxing eloquent over Mum’s offering, acknowledging it’s the best Berlin chicken soup he has ever taken, a standard of culinary delight that we Penangites would term as ‘Heaven-sent-come’, or less colloquially, ‘a gift from Heaven’.

While I wouldn't go as far as to accord Mum’s soup that 'heavenly' status I was satisfied I had convinced Bruce of the superiority of Penang’s soup. I couldn’t help rubbing it: “Bruce me laddie, Penang chicken soup, Penang, Penang OK, and not Berlin. Remember I told you it originated from here?”

That shameless glut asked Mum for a second, which was then followed by a third bowl. It was post-Auschwitz all over again. He even imitated my example by sprinkling his soup with tau yew (soya sauce). An astonished Mum remarked: “Wah, chi-leh Ar-Moh ay cheah loh!” *

* wow, this Westerner sure can eat! BTW, southern Hokkien Malaysians would say Ang Moh, while Penangites just Ar-Moh

When Bruce asked me to translate Mum’s comments, I did so, but judiciously omitting the Ar-Moh* part. But I was glad Mum didn’t add in the kui* word.

* literally 'red-hair' = Westerner; ‘kui’ = devil

To be continued …