What kind of bank?

I had taken an overdraft facility with one of the local banks many years ago in early 90s. I tested what an overdraft facility was all about and it was useful. Subsequently when I purchased one of the houses in Kulim of Kedah state, I applied through another bank, instead of giving me a term loan, they suggested me some sort of an overdraft housing loan. With my prior experience of an overdraft facility, I thought it was a good idea because if I have sufficient fund later on, then I could settle the borrowing much earlier. Only problem was that, EPF at that time would not allow anyone to withdraw and settle an overdraft housing loan, EPF will only permit settling of housing term loan only. That was the disadvantage!

One fine day, someone in the bank from the earlier overdraft facility account had given me a "windfall", they had by mistake credited my account in the region of RM10-11K, and I happily consumed most of the extra fund to furnish my new Kulim home. Then they later found out and admitted that they had made a mistake and charged me exorbitant interest rate for over the pre-set limit. How unreasonable banks could be!

My old school mate happened to be a EON bank manager, and I wanted to refinance my Kulim house to get cheaper interest rate at that time when the banks were engaging in this low interest financing war. When I took up the matter to the officer, and this lady oficer Ms Ho was very professional and she had convincingly persuaded me to stay on with the same bank and gave me an additional house renovation loan of RM30K instead. It happened that the overdraft housing loan bank and my earlier overdraft facility bank merged, and this RM30K was used to settle the mistakenly deposited money given to me and also there was some extra cash left for me to spend on. That seemed to be a good deal and I therefore decided to stay with the same bank without swapping the loan to EON bank.

Since it was an additional renovation loan through the same bank, therefore every month the instalment is settled through the account of the original overdraft housing loan by a standing instruction. That is to say, I deposit my money into one account, and the account will auto-debit to settle both the original housing loan and also the renovation loan at the same time. Was it not a brilliant idea?

Over the years, I had faithfully serviced all my loans regardless of good time or recession. And at the later part, when I worked overseas I managed to deposit a lot of cash into the housing loan account, and the outstanding was set to zero prior to its maturity date with positive balance.

The trouble started when the auto-debit action stopped, re-started and stopped again. And also my overdraft housing loan LIMIT suddenly became zero pre-maturely without any reason. It was before the expiry date of the housing loan agreement! How could a principal loan account finished off earlier before the renovation loan is fully settled, which is an additional and integral part of the package? The collection centers called me and I explained the matter many times to them, telling them it is their computer system problem that the auto-debit stopped. And the calls came from Prai and then KL offices etc over and over again for a few years. The bank utilized my extra fund from my overdraft and regularized the account in 2007 for all the mistake that they had made. Unfortuntely the trouble started again with their computerized auto-debit system even after that.

Because of their incompetency in this, they are going to charge me an accumulative interest of RM15K instead of the total amount of RM12K as stated in the agreement for a principal sum of RM30K to be settled over a period of 10 years. Adding to my anger is that, this is none of my problem. How could a bank did this at their whim and mercy? Nobody knows why a computerized standing instruction could start and stop, as a consumer we could probably guess or suspicious of some insider siphoning out the money to somewhere else without our knowledge!

Now I have to trace back all the old transactions to find out the truth by writing to the bank! If things do not turn out well after all that I had done, I might have no choice but to refer the matter to Bank Negara or the Bureau of Complaint.

The name of the bank is intentionally withheld to give them time to settle the matter.

When Malaysia runs out of petroleum and gas

It was at least almost 10 years ago that my friend from Shell had told us that the reserve of oil and gas in Malaysia will run out within the next 15-20 years. I did not take it seriously as at that time it was still quite early for us to think about the problem. But right now, it means to say for the next 5-10 years to come, we will be depleted with this non-recoverable resource that Malaysia is so much dependent on all this while. My insider friends from Petronas also confirm this threat subtlely!

Our government really has to think hard on how to generate the kind of revenue that could fund our country in terms of policies as well as our future plans on how to run this country more efficiently. We could not afford to blunder as before that much money was wasted and dumped to the drain because of corruption and poor governance.

Petronas has to work extra hard to find alternative ways to survive and they could not enjoy the same high growth and profit as before, top management could not sit on laurels and wait for things to happen while the odds are obviously against them. They have to diversify and also to explore oil somewhere else within a very short time frame. If Kelantan or Terengganu state was to get oil royalty money, then they have to get it fast before there is no more oil left.

Malaysia and its "rakyat" at large will be at a cross road, as we are no more competitive in manufacturing compared to China, we have almost given up agriculture and we even have to import rice from Thailand. We are also no good at IT and the Multimedia Super Corridor does not seem to score any mark to make any real progress. The time will come very soon, we all will have to pay a high price for gasoline because we will have to import petroleum, few would be able to afford to drive any vehicle bigger than 1500cc!

My God, what are we going to do with Malaysia if we do not start to think hard and work hard now? How could we ever achieve our vision 2020?

Home in Kemaman

After 5 months and 7 days stay in Homestay hotel of Jalan Jakar Cukai, finally the house rented by the company is in place for me to stay in. It is located at Taman Baiduri Geliga Besar, which is only walking distance from the Monica beach (Pantai Mak Nik). I find this place convenient as one could find Esso station and also mini market Samamaju nearby. It is away from the busy Cukai town and there is a lot of space that I could walk or cycle to the beach, exercise and jog. I think this is a great place to stay!

The place is easy to find, coming from Cherating direction, after reaching the border between the Pahang and Terengganu states, marked by an arch with "God bless the Sultan and Sultanah of Terengganu", upon reaching the 1st traffic light, turn right, where the Esso station is located, the house is stone throw distance away!

My wife and the children came for the visit, they cleaned and decorated the house for me. It looks more like a home for me now. There are 3 rooms and that could easily accomodate a number of friends and visitors who wanted accomodation for a stop-over, leisure or fishing trips.

How to come to Cukai Kemaman from KL

I attempt to write on how to get to Cukai if you do not have a GPS to guide you and I highlighted those dangerous stretches of roads and also those confusing cross roads in bold letters, where you have to exercise extra careful or make decision to make the right turn to get to your destiny:

If you are travelling along the Federal highway to KL city center direction, just at the end of the yellow lane specially reserved for taxi and buses, you have to turn immediately left up to Ipoh and Kuantan or KL Sentral direction, and this road will pass by the Muzium Negara. All the way keeping to the left on this road, you will cut in to Jalan Duta. If you miss this junction, drive straight on, you will go into Jalan Kuching instead. At the end of Jalan Kuching, there is also a side road where one could turn into DUKE again.

On the left of Jalan Duta, roughly in the direction opposite the Indian embassy, just after a traffic light for turning to the Damansara direction, there is a road leading to NKVE to Ipoh, that is the normal way whenever I head back home to Kampar; just follow that towards the NKVE toll direction. Just about reaching the NKVE toll but on the left hand side, there is a sign board on DUKE (Not very obvious as it always gives the impression that the road will only lead you to the NKVE toll and you get a little bit panic whether you are on the right direction to Kuantan).

Once you enter into the DUKE highway and I suppose you will travel along the Sri Hartamas and also the nearby Mont Kiara areas, and drive towards Kuantan direction. Just after Sentul along the way, you have to keep to the left to turn to Kuantan direction, if not that road will take you all the way to Zoo Negara. Pay Rm2 for the toll and go straight and you will pass by Batu Caves and then drive pass a flyover and join back into the normal road which lead you to Genting and Kuantan. You will see some petrol kiosks on your left hand side. Very soon you will be at the RM5 toll to Genting.

After that toll, you will head straight to Genting Sempah, after climbing a stretch of hill before reaching to the uphill road to Genting Highland. Just keep to the right to Kuantan (Do not go up the Genting road). After that you will pass by a tunnel, and then the Genting Sempah rest area with Petrol Kiosk and Mc Donald on your right hand side of the road, I normally do not stop there unless on the way back to KL. If you are not stopping over, before long you will be heading a downward slope, very steep and dangerous for 1st time driving to east coast. Just keep to the left and put on low gear to slow down the vehicle if you are driving a manuel vehicle.

You are about to pay another Rm3 toll before reaching Karak after passing Bentong. If there is no traffic jam, I normally reach this toll roughly within an hour or slightly more. This stretch of road is very winding especially after the 70.o Km milestone mark before reaching Kampung Sungai Dua. Be extra careful as this is an accident prone area especially on rainy days. Very soon after that you will be approaching the East Timur highway toll, and the road then is in much better condition to drive. Within 30 minutes of driving you will probably be reaching Temerloh rest area, where you could take a break or fill up your tank in the Shell station. And the next available gas station is Gambang, which is roughly about 60-70Km away from Temerloh. Gambang rest area is famous for its "nasi lemak" and in this place Petronas gas station is the last fueling station before you hit Jabor toll. From Gambang to Jabor toll, is roughly about 30 minutes and you have to pay RM21 for this east coast highway travel. Vehicles are few and it is nice to travel on this highway. This highway is supposed to connect all the way to Kuala Terengganu but is yet to be completed. Therefore there is a slight detour near to the toll but with clear direction indication for you to reach the Jabor toll, you will never miss!

Getting out from Jabor toll, short distance away, there will be a flyover, just go below the flyover and take the "Kuala Trengganu & Kemaman" direction on the right side of the lane. And you travel about 15 minutes after passing a small inverted U shape arch, and then climb onto a bridge and within 5 minutes, you will reach a direction pointing you to Kuantan or Kemaman. Just take the extreme left lane and turn slowly into the trunk road to Kemaman as this is almost a 90 degrees turn. From here, you will take 15 minutes to reach Cherating and also the famous Club Med. Another 15 minutes more you will reach Cukai town.


Have a safe journey and God bless.

Malaysians in common

Most of the Malaysians at large are not so keen on politics as they are just common citizens who would just like to feed and raise their families, earn a descent living and be happy with life. It really does not matter which party rules the country as long as their livelihood and basic needs or necessities are taken care of. Malaysia has a very small population of 26 millions and with rich natural resources, all of us should be well blessed enough to have a reasonable good life compared to other countries. Malaysians of different ethnic groups in general are friendly and nice people and we could mingle well with each other without much problem. Only some self interest unscrupulous politicians try to stir things up and inevitably polarize the situation and feeling towards other groups in order for them to gain their political ground. That is a very unfortunate thing that happens too rampant in this country.

Human beings always like to have something in common, they like to stick to people of same interest, same background, same language and same religion etc. It is a matter of convenience without having to go through the hassle of the process to learn, adjust and the necessity to explain at length to others of your peculiar hehavior and habits. And this is the common trait of all human beings. When I went into the university, most of my coursemates are speaking Hokkien dialect, and when I met someone from the Cantonese speaking group, I felt very much at ease and automatically joined them for more conversation and activities. It is not a discrimination of any sort, as we just want to choose the easier way out of doing things.

It is also important for Malaysians to live in this country to stress more on the common points rather than the differences. Differences always give the impression of unpredictable, exercise extra care to deal with someone you do not know thinking that you could unintentionally offend them. That has added to most of us the extra burden of having to put in the effort of getting to know the others, and unfortunately many of us are NOT that adventurous by nature!

In our daily life, we must always stress that we are all Malaysians regardless of our race, for any ill fate that befalls any of the ethnic groups, it will not do the others any good. We wish all of them to earn well, eat well and live well, then we will have a peaceful and harmonious society that we all enjoy together. We must even stress that the Muslims and the Christians are within the same category of Abrahamic faith, sharing a major portion of the common Holy Books. And they worship the same God of Abraham though with different interpretations! All the differences and interpretations should not deter us, instead that should further reinforce the fact that, such "rival" religious belief did not collaborate but rather collectively, and also not by mere coincidence that, they relate themselves to the same and common historical background and the God they worship.

May God bless us all!

Selection of DSLR

I had finally made a decision to purchase the Canon EOS 450D or XSi DSLR after reading much of the reviews in the internet. Basically it is a 12 mega pixels camera with superb photo quality at high ISO of 1600 without much noise. There are a lot of technical terms to describe the various parameters and characteristics of a camera and photos, which I am still trying to learn on them. Some of the salient selling points are the CMOS sensors, 3" live view, 3.5 fps, light weight and also the availability of a wide range of image stabilization lenses, 9 auto focus points etc. Basically the deal making deciding factor is because both my brother and sister own Canon brand DSLRs. It would be easier for us subsequently to swap lenses and exchange views. My younger brother KM Lee has been in this DSLR thing for a long long time, he is an avid photographer with great passion on nature and animals. I had chosen the convenient way of taking photos in the past without any thought that I will ever own one of these entry level DSLR; it was simply too bulky and also messy to play with those complicated parameters of light and optics.

For a long time, I had not been interested in knowing about the apertures, the ISO sensitivity, white balance, under exposure, shutter speed, raw files, focus lengths, dynamic range etc. Suddenly I started to dwell in reading this kind of details about those terms in the internet. Fortunately my mechanical engineering technical training background had given me much advantage in understanding those terms and their implication fast within a short period of time.

I do believe in the kind of peer influence after I had gone on a trip with some of my school mates and Singaporean friends to the Sichuan Jiuzhaigou resort; some had brought in the best in class equipment for the shooting and I envied at their expensive camera equipment. Also partly because in the past, thousand of photos were taken by the point & shoot cameras which I own and there seem to be no break through in the sharpness and quality after viewing them on the bigger LCD monitor screen. Perhaps it is time for me to go one step up for better and more professional photos quality.

I would also like to thank the Senheng store sales girl for telling me that I could redeem all my points gathered for years from the past usage of my Citibank credit cards and also Maybank credit card combined to get a total discount in the region of RM600. I am not in the habit of going through the messy procedure of redeeming points for those gifts. This time I had managed to clear all the points other than those forfeited because of expiry. This had quickened my decision and closed the deal in this particular store for the much desired and thought about DSLR !

Open the car door carefully!

Last week I went out together with Azman, the production executive of the factory to take a look at the new Alza MPV model. As there were many cars parked along the available space in front of the car show room, and I managed to squeeze in at a corner located at, after a slight bend from the service road. It was a rainy day and the road was muddy. When I got out from the car and opened the door to step out, suddently a motor cyclist carrying his wife and kid zoom passed me from behind and knocked on my door and he almost fell. He was screaming for pain because his eye hit the sharp part of the door and was bleeding. Azman and I quickly went over to check his condition, fortunately only his left eye corner was slightly scratched. And his motorbike plastic front panel and one of the front lights was broken. I had apologized to him and also because of our quick action to comfort him instead of looking at how badly damage my car door was, that had pacified him somehow. Azman was quick to use a tissue to rub off the blood from the side of his eye. And eventually we negotiated and compensated him by spending RM70 for the repair of the motorbike and RM30 for him to see a doctor in the clinic. That settled the whole accident amicably.

This accident had taught me good lesson that I must always be careful to look behind before opening any of the car doors. It is simply too dangerous just to open the door abruptly without watching behind whether there is any oncoming vehicle. In this particular case, it could cause severe injury to the oncoming motorist because the sharp part of the door could pierce his eye if not because of the protection of his helmet that had cushioned off part of the impact. Assuming that if this was not a motorbike but a lorry, one could imagine the entire door might just fly off by the knocking force. Was it not scary?

Another thing we have to remember is that if we are in the wrong, make sure to be humble, apologize and also show your concern to the opposite party instead of to your beloved vehicle.

I thank God for this and also the door of the car only suffered some slight dent and scratched paint work.

Pampeing Children is a bad idea

Parents always want to give the best to their children because children are God given asset and are usually few in number at this time compared to big families our parents used to have before. During my time, children of 6 was considered as few and most have 10 or a dozen especially in the village. Nowadays children are brought up in such a way that they are materialistically rich, pampered and living in great comfort zone. They are so used to spending money and also enjoying a lavish life style that does not seem to match with their potential future earning, I would say, at least the first few years when they graduate, come out to work and face the real world. This parental pampering act will not benefit them at all, but also to spoil them and reduce their competitivenss in the society. Young people nowadays yet to experience what real life is all about, already developed the bad habit to buy high end products and don on branded costumes and apparels, be selective on food and want to dine on reputable and high class restaurants. They do not realize how difficult it is to earn money in the real working world! Subsquently when they are so used to what they already have presently, they simply could not take a step backward to lead a more inferior and simple life. If there is any happening that turns against them in the future such as an economic recession, thus forcing them into a more humble and modest life style, they will suffer and will feel extremely miserable. Under such circumstances, they might attempt all kinds of method, both legal or illegal, just to satisfy their insatiable appetite on materialistic things that they are already so used to. How dangerous this could be, they could end up doing all kind of things in their pursuit of monetary gain or even go to jail!

When we were young, because of our parents had more children and therefore resources were thin, and every sibling was having only the bare minimum in order to make our ends meet. We started to grow and taste what poverty was all about, we appreciate life more as we work hard to achieve what we are today, earn and spend only what we can afford to spend. For that, we learned to be thrifty and respect our parents because they toiled for us so that we could have enough food and education. Just imagine how tough life was for our not so highly-educated parents in the setting of a village background to earn and support 6 children. Young people of this time tends to take thing for granted and they would not be able to appreciate how much their parents had done and sacrified for them.

The bible had taught us to "seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, all these things shall be added unto you". We, as parents have not heeded this and done our part enough and set the right examples for them. We work hard for material gain so that our children can enjoy lot of things but do not emphasize enough to them on this spiritual aspect of biblical teaching. We are at fault and this is really our big mistake!

I pray that God to help us all to become better parents and give us the wisdom to teach our children to be better persons in the future. We want our children to have discipline and work hard to gain what is proper and not to take any short cut and easy way out for their life in the future to come. Life is not meaned to be easy, and God uses the process of going through life to train us to be tough and be dependent on Him instead of blindly seeking material gain. May God bless us all!

Old age predicament

I met a new friend and he is 62, he is a friendly and also a very well educated person as he was once an English language teacher and also an editor in a famous newspaper. He is well exposed and had raised good children who got scholarships to study in UK. He loves his family and he taught them well when the children were young and they exceled in their studies with strings of distinctions in public examination results. It is a pity that with his son as medical doctor, and daughter as some high flying investment company senior officer, he is left alone to stay in Malaysia for the past 8 years. The wife left him to UK to take care of the sick mother-in-law of his daughter. Money is never a problem for him as he owns properties all over.

He told me that it was a mistake for him to teach his children too well, otherwise they would have remained in Malaysia. One could imagine his frustration when he uttered such words! He wanted his doctor son to marry a local but the son married a British girl instead. And he wanted him to become a specialist doctor in Kuantan hospital, even to the extent of buying a house nearby the hospital just for him, but the son opted to be a British and resides in UK and never wanted to come back. It seems all odds are against him!

Maybe his wife was right, son and daughter should have their own lives, and it is their lives! And they have choosen their destiny the way they wanted it, and parents should not interfere at all. Whatever the wish of parents to remain as wish only. Now he is a frustrated old man living in solitude. Thinking that all his good friends and buddies are in Kuantan and he shifted from Kemaman to live there. Unfortunately at the later part, most of his friends moved to Kuala Lumpur, probably just to follow their sons and daughters now working and staying in the capital city. This old man simply just has no one in Kuala Lumpur to go to. Should there be any one of his family members staying there, he might have followed suit and shifted there as well to be with his buddies.

It is definitely not the wish of parents having their children far away from home when they grow up. It is hard for a man after living many years in Malaysia and then is forced by circumstances to uproot himself and settle in another country or place. They might feel proud to have children capable of residing in advanced countries like US and UK, but this proudness is short-lived, and the yearning to see their children by their side becomes a more dominating factor as they grow older each day. It is not a question of selfishness that parents want to keep their children around, it is the kind of "lost and emptiness" feeling that cripple them after they had strived for the most part of their life to raise children, and eventually they are too remote to be seen. It is a sadness but sometime it is a fact of life that we all probably have to accept it one day.

It is only when our sons and daughters, they themselves become parents at later part, reaching a stage some day when their own children grow up and they would be able to feel and taste the same bitter medicine. Probably then they will realize how bitter life could be at that age.

Come to think of it, could I come to the same predicament like this friend of mine when I reach that stage? Well, I do not think of such problem when I was just a few years younger, is this really a sign of getting old now?

New hobbies - Bicycle and DSLR

One has to continue to explore new interests especially when you are getting old and living alone. You really have to do something you find it interesting and also enjoy doing it. The good thing about engineer is that he or she could easily understand all the technical stuff that is written in books or from the internet. It is really wonderful at this modern age of IT that one could easily google a lot of articles regarding a certain topic with just one click of your mouse.

I recently read about bicycles and came to understand how different high quality and reputable components of bicycle could cost a lot more than one could ever imagine. It surprises many people how a good bicycle could cost somewhere in the region of RM3-4K as against the China made unknown brands at just RM100-200. The use of Shimano gears and other pricy components could cost one a fortune! I finally decided to buy a used Scott bike at RM1K, hardly used by previous owner and the original price was RM2700.

Recently I also read more about DSLR. This comes to my mind after the trip to Jiuzhaigou because most of my friends are carrying along DSLR as they could shoot better pictures compared to my point-and-shoot Nikon Coolpix camera. It is hard to discern the quality of pictures taken by using a normal camera and DSLR at the first glance, but the experts would be able to tell. There are a lot more one could do and play with a DSLR compared to the normal digital camera.

I read through the top brands such as Nikon and Canon, their market share and also the availability of their lenses, support etc. Also learn about ISO 1600 and ISO 3200 etc which are to be used in low light condition without using a flash. And how the various sizes of CMOS or CCD sensors affect the quality of photos at high ISO. Understood the term "noise" is used to describe the grainy effect of those photos taken at high ISO numbers. There are other factors such as image stabilization built-in in the camera or lens so that one will not get blurr image without a tripod. Plus the so called Four-third size form factor which reduces weight and size of lenses used so that the camera could be easily carried to anywhere without feeling its bulkiness and weight.

I always have a budget in my mind as I could not afford the luxury that I had before when I worked overseas. I also anticipate the possibility of a new hobby could die of natural death or fade over time after investing a lot of money on the gears. For those reasons, choosing the entry level models and to read about all the reviews seem to be the right move. Currently for these entry level DSLR, Sony Alpha A230, Olympus E-450 or even a Pentax Kx are the choices in my mind. Sony is not so established in the DSLR business compared to Nikon and Canon, but they have Minolta/Konica as their backing and it is also easy for me to review photos taken in the Sony 40" Bravia LCD TV at my Kuala Lumpur home. As for Olympus, the lightest camera available in the market, its weight factor is something that intrigued me, nobody other than the professionals would like to carry a heavy camera with its protruding lens hanging on the neck for sightseeing and touring. Pentax is also very well known brand but Pentax Kx model is using AA batteries, heard that battery draining out problem is a big issue though AA batteries are supposed to be for convenience and they readily available everywhere.

Sometimes I just immerse myself in the quest of such new hobbies without actually making a decision to own them or going into it. Perhaps the fun of it is to go through the process of finding out. A typical example would be buying and reading the Motor Trader magazines, looking at some of the favorite Volvo and Mercedes cars which I intended to buy, but eventually ended up buying a Proton Exora.

Jiuzhaigou - Paradise on earth, a place not to be missed

Recently a group of my classmates and schoolmates organized a trekking trip all the way to the snow mountains of the Sichuan province in China this late autumn season. They had planned the trip about 3 months ahead. They bought all the gears and the necessary apparels and did some tall building climbing training before they embarked on the challenge. While I was taking on a new assignment here in Kemaman, I hesitated quite a while on whether to join them because it is a new job for me here and also the days to be away was about 15 days, a bit too long. It was really a "not to be missed" opportunity that after so many years we left school and we were able to gather so many of them and to do sight-seeing in a foreign land and have fun together.

Coincidently Air Asia airline announced the inaugural flight on 20th October 2009 to Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan. And the online booking of Air Asia was easy and quick, and most of all, to and fro air ticket was only Rm559. That was really a good deal and I finally made a compromise and firmed up my mind to join them only for the last 3 days of their trekking journey at the renowned resort of Jiuzhaigou.

Their trekking trip included camping in snowing mountains and also the need to go very natural as there are no amenities, toilets and hotels whatsoever along the most part of the track. They had to climb hills and wade through snow covered track, scaled up and down above 4000 m of high altitude snow mountains, experienced mountain sickness etc. The only consolation they had, should there be any emergency, was the presence of a medical specialist doctor as one of the team members. They probably entered the Jiuzhaigou resort through trekking in from the back entrance while I flew in and went in from the main entrance by taxi. One of our classmates opted to give up the trip and went home alone as the journey was proven to be just too much for him to endure. Surprisingly there were 3 Singaporean women and 1 Malaysian lady participated in the adventure. They managed to persevere through the entire gruesome journey, though the team had actually decided to deviate and cut short the last trekking portion and went straight in to the resort one day earlier than scheduled. I arrived at the right timing to catch up with them otherwise I would have to wait one whole day alone in the hotel for their arrival if they sticked on to the original schedule. This made the trip more interesting and we had more time to tour Jiuzhaigou more thoroughly.

Jiuzhaigou is almost a paradise on earth and is beyond words to describe its beauty. Photographs taken are so beautiful that one could think that they are just paintings, a place too good to be true. I had posed in some of the photos just to convince myself and others to look at those shots taken are real, and not some manipulation of the digital images.

This was really a wonderful trip and I enjoyed it very much!

Pictures paint a thousand words, these are the web albums for your viewing:

http://picasaweb.google.com/martinleefh/mltvTE02#

http://picasaweb.google.com/martinleefh/mltvTE#

Dangerous places and fire in the village

While I was staying in the village as small kid, there were some dangerous zones that our parents would never allow us to venture any nearer to those places. Kampar and Mambang Diawan, being in the Kinta valley where we were having one of the richest tin ore resources in the world, were filled with used tin mines, once discarded and started to form natural ponds of various sizes and depths. Those ponds were usually deep and blue in color, therefore they were enticing to the kids as most of us were attracted to the water, either to cool ourselves by taking a dip or try to catch some fishes. There was one place near to the northern entrance of the village, a place by the name of "Lingutik" and it means "the tip of the breast" because of its dome shape that became a favorite spot for children taking a jump from that high tip portion and splash into the crystal clear deep part of the pond. There was another pond near to the Indian settlement on the eastern side of the village, we called that the "shorty pond" because of its smaller in size, shallower water and also a big tree truck near to the middle of it that swimmers could swim all the way and then cling on to it to take a break or a rest and chat with the other swimmers. A few of us always told our tuition teacher that we went to see the Chinese opera but actually sneaked out for a dip and headed to the shorty pond! Thinking of it, if any one of us get drown, I wonder how the tuition teacher could ever answer to the parents. How dangerous it could be when children are not properly supervised!

Malaysia does not have any kind of mines buried in war zone ground in countries such as Cambodia or the former Yugoslavakia states etc., but the used mining ponds are equally dangerous that stole the lives of many young children.

There were many incidents that young children were drown that caused so much sorrow to the village folks and parents would not hesitate to mete our severe caning if children were found to swim in any of the ponds or rivers. Children being children, always like to sneak out of the house and take a dip in those rivers or ponds. One of the tricks was to quickly clean our bodies in the running tap water so as to clear any muddy mark on the skin in order to avoid detection. In those days, tap water was not tapped directly into the house but rather at public places where young and old were to carry pails of water back home for consumption or even taking their bath. Those public taps became convenient places for us to erase those traces of mud.

Waterfalls and those natural ponds right after the falling water were another dangerous places. Even many adults were drown by the under current of these pools. There was one famous Chinese opera singer that came to perform in the area and was drown in the Bidor waterfall while he visited the place when taking a break during his performance. Expert swimmers were sometimes stucked in the roots or rocks that they were strangled and could not surface and therefore drowned. A few times in the Kampar waterfall, the heavy rain at the upper stream of the waterfall, somewhere deep inside the tropical jungle near the source or from the remote area of Kampar hill had caused the sudden accumulation of strong current that swept away picnickers and swimmers down stream. All Utar students not familiar with the background and the danger of waterfalls should be fore-warned of such danger. The slippery rock is another dangerous part, I got my forehead stitches in the Kampar hospital done because of my hand slipped while swiming from one end of the pool to the other when trying to cling and pull myself up onto a rock.

One fire that I observed that destroyed a house and killed a baby, that was the greatest tragedy that I knew of while I was still a young kid. That happened to the house next to my grandpa's cousin brother's home some 20 minutes walking distance away. The mother of that killed baby was one of the friends of my mum, I remember visited her together with my mum and saw the big egg of a long stick insect, which was kept as a pet in a glass tank, supposed to be German breed. I still remember this very vividly as I was really fascinated by the insect. It was a tragic ending for this woman, after losing her baby and after some time the husband took a second wife and she left the village and since then I have never seen her anymore.

Kuala Dipang Kampar Tragedy

It saddens me to read the incident on the collapse of a hanging bridge in Kuala Dipang that caused the drowning of 1 and the missing of 2 young school children. The missing 2 were from Mambang Diawan Tamil school, the village that I come from. The place of the incident is only a short distance up north from my home town Kampar near to the Malim Nawar junction. Kuala Dipang is famous for durian and also its crystal clear river. Used to be a place where we collected sands and small stones for aquariums and also a source of fresh water when the drinking of mineral water from nature became popular as a health tonic.

It was supposed to be a well intented "One Malaysia" education camp for selected children from school of different streams and ethnic groups. And it turned out to be a tragedy for the town and the country! Parents of the victims are heart broken. The public is angry and wandering why a brand new hanging bridge just built about a month ago could just collapse so easily! I had just returned from a China trip of Dujiangyan in Sichuan province, there are a few hanging bridges that swing and sway by the multitude of Chinese tourists that visited the place and yet they could withstand the load without any problem. Why this could happen in country like Malaysia, which is supposed to be a more well developed country?

I am glad to see Tan Sri Muhyiddeen, our deputy PM had quickly moved in and inspected the site to show his concern. His concern will definitely touch the hearts of many Malaysians. From this small incident, and also how he had dealt with the Sultan of Johore state in the past, he is destined to be one of the PMs of Malaysia for sure. There were incidents of disaster happened all over the world when a country leader did not react in time and caused great outcry from the public. If we could remember, that happened to President Bush and President Ma Ying Jiu of Taiwan, it was such a strong contrast when compared with how Premier Wen Jia Bao of China had done and handled the Sichuan earthquake. All leaders must put well beings of "rakyat" or citizens and not their self interest as their top priority, in that way they will get support in return.

I pray that God has mercy on the families of those victims, let your spirit move and console them and heal the pains in their hearts. Also bless our leaders so that they could have the wisdom to govern this country well!

Contemporary VIPs

Some of the famous people in Malaysia that we crossed path with, during certain part of our lives worth mentioning here just for the record.

During university days, I met briefly with some of these very ordinary guys but today they are the very successful people in the country:

Datuk Ong Tee Keat, President MCA and Transport minister - UM Engineering faculty

Datuk Mohamed Zaini Amran, Founder and CEO of BumiHiway - UM Engineering faculty. He was the senior doing the orientation in the 2nd college

Tan Sri Dr. Lim Wee Chai, Founder and CEO of Top Gloves - UM Science faculty and he told me about his MBA program in the US long long time ago

Mr. Voon Seng Chuan, CEO of IBM - UM Science faculty and we have common friends

At one time in 2nd college of University Malaya, I happened to get acquaintance with a Sains Asasi student, perhaps he was my room mate just for a couple of days during the orientatio week that I could not remember him so well. It was after many years while I tried to apply for a permit to run a small factory in a shop-lot that I bumped into him again. It is not easy to get the approval for even a few months as it was near to the residential area. He is a medical doctor and is also the Director of the environmental department of Majlis Perbandaran(City Council). I went to his office and he recognized me right away and gave me the approval for 2 years. From this we learned a good lesson that we have to be friendly to everyone and we would not know how in future certain people somehow does us a favor with just a stroke of his pen.

PMR examination for my daughter

Today the PMR examination is finally over for my daughter! I am happy for her because whenever she takes examination, my wife and I feel the pressure as well because she always takes examination seriously. Whether it is just a trial examination in school, or piano, violin and ballet examination, looking at the way she studies and practises, the pressure imposes on herself seems to be contagious and passes onto us! We all are so relieved that today all the examinations for year 2009 were finally over for her. Hurray! she would be able to enjoy a wonderful long holidays playing computer games, watching TV programs, reading her favorite magazines, and sleep late and wake up late!

On the other hand, my son is a very relaxing person and he does not seem to worry about examinations that much! In the same way, because of his attitude towards examination, in return we do not feel the pressure that much. Only my wife pushes him to study more and grumbles on him for being too relax, it is such a strong contrast to my daughter!

To me, I think my son and daughter are at two extreme ends, and their opposing attitudes toward examinations should be "mixed" thoroughly and then divided by two, and that would be the ideal, if this is something mathematically possible!

Examinations were night mares for me for many years. Even when I graduated and started to work for quite some time, the dark shadow of examination haunted me for years. I used to wake up at mid-night, still thinking that I had not studied enough and finished covering all the syllabus for a coming examination! In this respect, I admire my son, and he could sleep equally well with or without examination!

Boys usually do not do too well in examinations before form 5 compared to girls in general. For higher secondary school syllabus, especially coming to science and math subjects, the boys start to catch up. I remember during my time, girls did their form 3 LCE examination quite well, but when came to form 5, the science stream boys fared better in the MCE examination.

I want to reiterate, it is important to choose the right subjects to study, and do not be misled into going into science stream just because your examination results qualify you for that. If a student is not cut to take on technical subjects, it is better to take on the art stream. This is just my personal advice!

Will stay in Kemaman Terengganu

Today I received an official letter from the headquarter of my company that I shall be officially based in Kemaman Terengganu after a 3 months trial period. God willing, I shall stay on to this place till my retirement and then call it a day for my working career. I do not like the idea of leaving the country for too long, somehow Malaysia is the place that I am so used to and I feel comfortable and cosy! It really does not matter whether I am in the east coast, Sabah or Sarawak, or Kuala Lumpur near to my family, as long as it is in Malaysia, it is just fine for me. Being Malaysian always a Malaysian!

I have been looking around places that I could rent a house. From Geliga Pantai, Geliga Baiduri, Taman Jakar, Taman Cukai Indah, Bukit Kuang, Samudera Timur, Kijal etc. If I opt to stay in Bukit Kuang area then I do not have to wake up early to beat the traffic jam on the Sungai Cukai bridge. But the 15 minutes traffic congestion is accceptable to me compared to that in Kuala Lumpur, because this Cukai bridge congestion is too minor a jam to be considered as serious. The short distance going to the Teluk Kalung factory could save me some gasoline though. Bukit Kuang is not so conducive an area, partly because it is near to the bitumen factory and also there seems to be a place of drug addicts in nearby Kampung, with occasional petty theft and breaking in. Furthermore one normally does not feel like seeing the same place after spending a whole day working in the same area. You just want to be away from the workplace as far as you could after work!

Near the town area would be convenient for me to get food especially at night after work but I do not like the busy traffic and noise. Samudera Timur going to Binjai area is a bit remote along the road leading to Air Putih. Look like a house near to the Pantai Mak Nik (Monica Beach) with open field, sea breeze and venue for outdoor exercise would be a more suitable and tranquil place for me. I have to make myself a choice and an alternative, first choice would be Geliga area and 2nd Choice is near the Police station or hospital area, close to the Cukai town.

I also consider that my family will come to visit me during the holidays. Convenience of getting food might be a main consideration, but going to beaches would be once a while thing for them. Since they are only coming here mainly for holidays occasionally, therefore the consideration would be either a choice of relaxation or a place where they could get food easily. Either one would be okay for them, I think.

I am at the same time looking at the option of buying a mountain bike. Recently I have acquired some knowledge about brands such as Santa Cruz, Kona, Trek, Scott, T-Bolts, Giant, Cannondale, Fuji, KHS, Specialized, Polygon etc. through the internet. Hope to acquire either one of these entry level or mid-level machines for my training and exercise.

Well, let us see how it goes!

Aging - A natural process

God had created human beings for a purpose then why must man has to go through the process of birth, aging, falling sick and finally die? Imagine what would happen if man never dies, the immediate problems I could think of are as follows though the list is not meant to be exhaustive:

1. The world would be over crowded, resources would be stressed by the consumption of food, waste disposal, housing , health care etc. Famine, environment and ecological problems, global warming, deforestation etc would drive the world crazy, nations against nations waging war to snatch the already thinned and limited resources.

2. Top positions of all organization, governments or private sectors would be held by the oldest guys around. Imagine what would be the political situation, if an immortal leader continues to over stay his welcome for another 100 -200 years or even longer!

3. There would be no fair and natural re-distribution of wealth because the smartest and the richest would continue to live and strive to keep their wealth for their clans and descendants.

4. All younger generations would not get a chance or a place, be it in career, social or even private life. All the pretty young women would go for the immortal, rich, experienced and elderly but healthy old men ( I am sure you young men would not like this idea!)

As we age, certain signs are obvious even though we could exercise, eat food supplements, dye our hairs, inject all kinds of hormones to slow down the aging process etc. We tend to feel we have lost the agility, forget things easily, and unexplainable pains or discomfort appear in different parts of our body, bones organs etc. A person could not hide his real age after some time, because the folds or wrinkles and contour of the face, shrinking of muscles, skin and the dulling of complexion plus greying of hairs betray us all. We have to accept the fact that God had created us to age and subsequently to make way for the younger generations to take over.

As we approach our retirement age, we have to change our plans and focus ourselves in the direction of educating the young, doing work that contributes to the well being of the country and serving the community. This kind of meaningful deeds could be made possible by virtue of our experience and knowledge that we gathered and learned over the years. We have to advise the younger generation on avoiding certain pitfalls that had taught us hard and painful lessons so that they would not repeat the same mistakes like us.

At one time when I was still having some grey hairs, I used to ask my wife and daughter to pull them out one by one. And now the greying is too rampant that I just have to accept for what thing is. Sometimes we have to be gladful because God has preserved us till this age and showered us with all His countless blessings big or small over the years. We hope to age gracefully before we meet Him face to face one day.

Wild Betta Imbellis

The first time I saw wild Betta Imbellis was in the house of one of my primary school mates who happened to live a walking distance across the tarmac road and then a path follows along a drain leading to his house in front of a pond. His mum then owned a piece of sweet potato land adjacent to our house. My grandma and mum used to talk to her while she toiled on the land and they were extremely friendly to each other. One of his eldest brother was notorious and got involved in gangsterism and always went in and out of the prison, that was the story told to me by my mum. But the rest of the brothers were friendly and gentle, they were very nice persons to get along with. At the later part, one of the other brothers lost the lower portion of his leg, did not remember exactly what had happened to him, perhaps due to an accident. And I still occasionally bumped into his brother whenever I return to my home village.

The house was displayed with many wild fighting fishes in Horlick bottles. And they were extremely attractive to look at, and I fell in love at first sight with them. One fine day I went to the house trying to locate this friend of mine for play just like any other kids, but nobody was at home except those fishes, being not able to withstand the temptation of owning one and I took the liberty to scoop up one of them and put inside my pocket and brought home. The wild Betta was a very tough and hardy fish, it survived the distance which was probably about 8-10 minutes walk in my dry pocket without water. Once placed into a bottle of fresh water drawn from the well, it started to swim as if nothing could hurt and disturb it at all. Only Bettas could survive in a very narrow and constricted space or area as they always pop up to blow a bubble at the water surface and have a fresh gulp of air in return, instead of dependent and breathe on the dissolved oxygen in the water.

Since that uncalled for illegal acquisition of my first fighting fish, I started my hobby of keeping this " ikan laga" without looking back. I had been going around drains and ponds infested with leeches catching those wild fighting fishes during my teenage years and also even after I had got married and started a family. We rubbed salts on our limbs and sprayed insecticide on boots just to deter those blood sucking eerie creatures from sticking onto our bodies.

That pilfered fish was raised by me and I diligently dug up worms from behind the house and fed it. I suppose the worms were nutritious enough and it grew healthily to a bigger size than the wild ones over time. It always gave a splended display of colors whenever I placed a mirror for the fish to simulate a fight. The colors of the body and its gill covers were shining in iridescent blueish green color, its scales and eyes sparkle like little blue diamonds. The caudal fin and the pectoral fins were bright red while the dorsal and anal fins are feather like and blue. It was just so incredible to look at especially when it was aroused and ready to fight with a splendid display of fins and tail flapping. God created such wonderful creature, I just could not believe it!

One of the newspaper vendor who used to send daily newspaper to our home, occasionally also sell illegal lottery (Empat ekor) to my grandparents, using newspaper vendoring as a disguise. He saw my well kept fighting fish and liked it so much and offered 50 cents for me to part with it. At that time, it was a real big sum of money for a kid of standard 1 or 2 in the 60's. I hesitated for a while but after some pestering by him, I eventually sold it to him.

At one stage when I was in the secondary school, I had bought a female white Siamese specie so as to cross breed with the wild Betta Imbellis, and the hybrid offsprings were so unique and beautiful, and I never had a chance to breed the same kind after that. In preparing for the breeding ground, I half squashed some "Kangkong" plants to be immersed in a vase, waited a week or so for the crushed leaves and stems to rot a little bit as food for the fishes. Some larvaes of mosquitos had also found their ways into the container before placing the pair inside for the mating to take place. The bigger size Siamese female laid a lot of eggs, fertilized and picked up by the male and were placed onto a pool of bubbles on the water surface. When the small fries were hatched, they were too small and sometimes were eaten by the mosquito larvaes. With leaves and weeds as hiding places for the fries, they grew up real fast and they started to devour on the larvaes as their favorite food in no time. They had eventually eaten up all the larvaes and I had to feed them with small earth worms as they grew bigger in size.

I still like very much to keep wild Bettas Imbellis and I am always on the look out for any aquarium shops that I could acquire them or to places that I could catch them in the drains or puddles in the wild.

An accident

My son drives a new Proton Saga which was bought 1 year ago for his college going from the house so as to save my wife the hassle of sending both him and my daughter to school.

The intrinsic value of buying a car for him serves multiple purposes. In my mind is that he should be trained and learns how to drive safely as early as possible. And he must shoulder the responsibility to fetch the sister and the mother to places while I am not close at home. The parents will feel more at ease if our son and daughter could gather the experience of driving a vehicle well and safely by virtue of their number of years of experience being on the road.

I had driven car before when I was younger and therefore could understand that certain skill of driving could not be taught or told, but only through experience that one could drive better. A lot of people could drive well in the sense that not hitting on some other people's vehicle, but the higher level of skillful driving demands a driver to anticipate and to avoid your vehicle being hit by other drivers proactively! My wife is one example, and she could drive really well, even she could handle a Rusa van without any difficulty!

I rode a scrambler motorbike during my varsity days and thought it was a brilliant idea to beat the traffic light was to start the acceleration and release the clutch when the light turns yellow. Thinking that by the time the bike moves out to its full speed, the traffic light would have turned green and stayed ahead of the other riders. Little did I realize that other drivers from the opposite side of the traffic light would think the same by beating the traffic light while the red light just turns red. How dangerous it could be, to assume and to rationalize our supposedly a smart move by theory! Now I told my son that do not trust even the signal light of the oncoming vehicles because sometimes the drivers simply forget to switch off their turning signals! I repeated this many times and he probably thought I was just long winded!

Yesterday my son and wife phoned me about an accident involving the car. To me, since it was called accident, nobody wanted it to happen. It is fairly common for us when we were young to get our cars dented here and there because we are all here to learn. Only through years of driving then such frequency of bumping into other vehicles or getting hit by others could be reduced.

My son really treasures his car and he cleans and wipes it almost everyday. And I could understand the heartache of getting his car hit. But in my mind, one must drive a used car first, get enough driving experience then only attempt on buying a new car. Anyway it was a good lesson to learn from a minor accident. When they called me for the advice, I told them that in such a case, firstly is to find out how much it costs to repair the damage in the workshop, if it costs not more than RM500, calculating the loss in NCB (No Claim Bonus) for insurance, the hassle of getting the police report etc, just compensate the other party if you are in the wrong and settle the case. It is simple mathematics!

Finally the repair cost is RM280 and that of my son's car is RM80. To me, the valuable lesson learned by him is worth more than the amount!

Happy driving son! Just drive safely!

Moon Cake Festival

Moon cake festival was a very important celebration during the earlier days especially when I was still a kid. There are a lot of fairy tales, myths or folklore stories told about this Mid-Autumn festival. My mum told me one of this, that was during the time around 1368 AD of the Yuan dynasty where China was conquered by the Mongolian, and the Ming dynasty founder emperor Chu organized his rebellion against the Mongolian regime by putting a piece of paper into the moon cake and informed all the Chinese to fight against them. And the date set on this particular day of rebellion was using this Mid-Autumn festival as a pretext for the attack. Since then, the moon cake tradition was passed on and even brought to Malaysia and south east Asia by the Chinese immigrants. Of course, there are many other versions on the origin of moon cake festival and nobody knows which is the most exact and true fact to trace the root of this particular tradition.

The mainland Chinese government had gazetted Chinese New Year, Qing Ming or Tomb sweeping festival, and Mid-Autumn moon cake festival as the 3 most important traditional holidays for Chinese as a whole. In Malaysia the Chinese do not observe moon cake festival in such a grand scale as before.

For this auspicious day, a full moon with clear sky in autumn signifies perfection, reunion, peace and harmony. Chinese from far away places would come home to meet up with their parents and friends, marking another day of reunion and celebration after the Chinese lunar new year passed about 8 months ago. Exchanging gifts and visiting were common in those days. We used to have pamelo, yam, water caltrops, water chestnut, ground nuts for the celebration. Those first 3 items were specially prepared just for the occasion besides moon cakes.

For the children, the "Tanglong" or lanterns are must have for the festival. My mum would always brought me and my siblings to the shops at least one or two weeks before the festival and picked for our lanterns. Lanterns come with all kinds of shapes, in the form of animals and other animated creatures. My favorites were always the dragon and "Kirin", and I chose on a few occasions the gold fish or fighting fish while my sisters preferred the rabbit, star, flower etc. We would gather ourselves as a group, holding the lighted lanterns and parading ourselves along the lanes and side roads of the village. It was really wonderful time we had, and I like it so much and remember it so well even until these days!

The tradition of having lanterns for celebration is a little different from China. As far as the mainland Chinese is concerned, the last day of the Chinese New Year celebration always goes with lanterns, and they hardly have any lanterns for the moon cake festival celebration. But in Malaysia, we will have lanterns only during moon cake festival. And I do not know why there is such difference!

Due to the distance and also we are having Friday off in Terengganu state, I did not go home to my family while I wrote this on the night of the Moon Cake Festival in the Homestay hotel in Cukai Kemaman.

Chin Peng

My mum told me the story about Chin Peng when I was still a little kid. She told me about the Baling meeting of Chin Peng, the head of Communist Party Malaya, with our 1st prime minister Tunku Abdul Rahman. Though as a kid I did not understand much about politics, but the story just gave me the rough idea of how the two leaders discussed privately in a place where it was supposed to be easy for Chin Peng to flee mysteriously without being caught after the meeting was over. I suppose Chin Peng must have planned his escape route priorhand and his confidence of getting away would be high enough for him to agree on choosing Baling as the venue for the talk. As a kid, I would never be able to guess their topic of discussion and what deal had they evenutally struck. It was a story well told with excitement especially on the part where Chin Peng could penetrate layers of secret police, combing of the jungle by army forces and he just disappeared himself in thin air like magic!


It is difficult to mention who is right or wrong in politics. Is Mahatir correct and Anwar Ibrahim is wrong? Politic is something about idealogy, and because of leaders having this so-called differences in idealogies, the common people suffered. This happened in many parts of the world, the mainland Chinese and the Taiwanese, the East and West Germans, the North and South Koreans etc. Because of the differences, people of the same root and family background were divided by civil wars. Some Chinese solders fled with Mr. Chiang Kai Sek to Taiwan and never had a chance to return to their homeland, they left behind parents, wife and children, brothers and sisters and all their friends and relatives. It was a real tragedy that was caused by simple difference in ideology of the leaders and power struggle of the same kind to wrest control of the land. Many of our grandparents did not live to go back to China to visit their families because of the cut in diplomatic ties with Communist China and also the strict control of Malaysian government to limit Malaysian Chinese to visit Communist mainland China. My mum was lucky when Malaysian government at the later part relaxed the age limit for people above 50 to visit China. In her case, we had to submit letters of correspondence with my aunt in China as proof to the local police station for the vetting, it took months before the permit was finally approved. The she decided to postpone the trip and I went with her to the immigration office in Ipoh to speak with a lady officer on the possible postponement, quoting cold weather as the reason but she refused and insisted that it was a good time to visit China. She went finally and stayed about 2-3 months in Guangzhou. That was the first time she met her sister in China since she was brought to Malaya while she was just 3 years old. The story was that at that time, if someone carried a kid at the back, the ticket was free, so my mum came to Malaya. My aunt, the elder sister had to be left behind to live in the communist regime for years without seeing her mum and sister. She never had a chance to see her own mum before my grandmother died. Until in early 90s, the entire family had eventually migrated to USA.


It is always a sad thing to die in a foreign land! And I would say, never been able to return to your own land or home country is a form of punishment that is so traumatic that would torture a person mentally for the rest of his/her life. In the case of Chin Peng, he is probably now in that predicament, on humanitarian ground, he should be allowed to come home at this old age of 85.

I happened to have coursemate and lecturer who are related to Chin Peng as their uncle, his real name is Ong Boon Hua. The Ong family in Sitiawan consists of very bright and smart people, PHD holder, Consultant and pilot etc.

God bless Malaysia so that we would never have any civil war and any act of terrorism.

Proper way of speaking a language

I am always drawn to radios such as Lite FM. lite and easy etc. with Simon, Sarah and PK as DJs who could speak well and proper English. Patrick Teoh is always my favorite English DJ during my school days. For Mandarin is Mr. Meng Run Rong while Cantonese is Chan Fong. For Bahasa, I like to listen to Anwar Ibrahim way of speaking and expressing himself. The same goes for all other languages as well because it is really an enjoyment just to listen to people who speak well with a good command of the language and voice. If TV personnel or presenters go on air, whether on TVs or radios and they do not speak the standard language, it really irks me.

Jokes and making fun is common for some of my friends and family members whenever we hear how the Hongkong movies stars try to speak Mandarin but with inaccurate pronunciation and a very heavy Cantonese accent. I used to comment on the Malaysian Chinese teachers who try to test and teach students on the phoenetic scripts of speaking Mandarin while they themselves do not speak correctly with the proper intonation! You know it is really awkful to hear someone speak Mandarin with the wrong intonation by way of their habitual Cantonese or Hokkien style of speaking!

I have high regards for politicians like Dr. Koh Tsu Koon, Ong Tee Keat and Dr. Tan Seng Giaw, they could command their languages very well and I think it is important for their idealogies to be heard and understood well by their supporters. Similarly, Professor Ungku Aziz also could speak very good English and I heard him speaking while he was in University Malaya!

I am not trying to discriminate because speaking a language is really a tricky thing to learn, not to mention about to speak it well and correctly. Using words such as " lah" and "meh" would make it even worst for the ears. Some people might want to argue that this is a very unique way for the Malaysians to speak as a culture or be different from others. To me, this is alright for day to day usage, but not for occasions such as business discussion, official functions and socialising or public speeches. Not speaking well is not a sin, because we have an inherent way of speaking our mother tongue or dialect, so habitual and so entrenched that, which makes us hard to twist our tongue or clear our throat to pronounce the proper way of a foreign language. But constantly improving one's skill of speaking a language well will secure a better social place in the society and gain the respect from others.

To excel in speaking, one has to listen attentively as to how and which portion of the syllabus is stressed correctly and also how certain "r" sound is heavily or distinctly pronounced. Sometimes it is not possible to learn it in a quick and easy way, and probably one needs to reside in a foreign land for years before they could get the speaking done correctly! If you have attained a certain level of proficiency in English language, you would be able to differentiate on how the American, the British and Australian way of speaking it.

I had stayed and worked in Taiwan for 4 years and mainland China for 3 years, I would say I speak and write better Chinese language than most Malaysians. But yet when I speak to the real Chinese, they are able to tell I am from the southern part of China, that is the Cantonese speaking province of Guangzhou, where my ancestors came from.

I am still learning to speak better English though I had improved quite a fair bit when I joined toastmaster club many many years ago and also listen to news broadcasting from TV channels such as CNN, BBC, or even National Geography, Animal Planet etc.

Negara ku - Our National Anthem

I like to remember our national anthem "Negara Ku" as what it was when I first entered to school even though we did not know the exact meaning of " Tanah tumpah nya darah ku". Yes, this is the appropriate verse to describe our beloved country that every Malaysian should do to defense the well being of this country.

When I traveled to Germany many years ago and there were already many slotting machines where one could insert coins to purchase drinks and other kinds of petty items. Such coin inserting machines were common since many years ago in Germany. Malaysia was probably at least 30-50 years behind Germany then. Germany is also the country where I first tasted Mc Donald. At that time we only had KFC but yet to have any MC Donald on our shore. And Deutschland is also the first country that I sat on an electric tram. The Deutsch Mark coins were having much higher value than some similar sizes Indonesian coins then. A group of Indonesian Chinese and I were having an industrial training in the Mercedes Benz headquarter in Stuttgart, a chance made possible while I was taking the German language proficiency course in University Malaya. One of the Indonesian friends told me that they did not want to insert any Indonesian coins to those machines because it would spoil the reputation of his country and that could result in the Germans in return to despise Indonesians as a whole. Just look at how these patriotic Indonesian Chinese defended their country! And I respect them for what they had held such high regard and consideration for their own country despite being the younger generation of Indonesians, decendants from their immigrant parents!

One thing good about Malaysians is that they could quarrel day in and day out in the parliament over differences in opinions, but when come to facing a common threat or harassment from any external nation, they quickly align themselves together and be united to form a common stand on the same issue regardless of BN or opposition parties. That is the true Malaysian spirit!

I like to remember the national anthem of "Negara Ku" as a melodious song that always draws affection from the young and old of Malaysians regardless of races. Whenever the national anthem was played and sung in my primary school on every Monday, my too young for school sister Yoke Sim and her friends would gather themselves standing on the high ground of the opposite house, that was overlooking the school football field where we gathered for school assembly, and they happily and faithfully joined in the singing without fail! They sang their heart out with their not so well polished imitated version , learned to sing only by ears. Not knowing when was the exact ending portion of the anthem, even after the song ended and they continued with such loud singing that drew laughters even from the school teachers!

Simplified Chinese Characters

The Chinese writing characters are fairly complicated and one has to memorize and practise writing them frequently before they become so foreign and easily forgotton. Many times when I tried to write them after long years of switching to English and Malay languages, I tend to forget portion of it, whether missing of a stroke or the combination of them, only had a very faint idea as to how the character should look like, one just simply could not get it written right!

Before China became the super power, most of the Chinese characters were written in its traditional form for many many years and this has been adopted by Taiwan and Hongkong as the de facto standard way of writing the Chinese characters internationally.

Communist Chinese regiment or educationists thought that by simplifying the strokes and the shape, thinking that it would serve to save a lot of time and effort in writing those characters in greater speed and also facilitate easier learning for the younger generations to come. The decision was made with good intention and also from the point of view on efficiency consideration was really a praiseworthy effort. Other than that I am not sure whether mainland Chinese government wanted this to be perceived as something different or just for any political agenda as a superior sovereign state to differentiate themselves from Taiwan and Hongkong. And I had jumped into conclusion mainly because many Japanese and Korean characters were originally in the same form as those of Chinese but were subsequently changed and invented their very own way of writing just to differentiate themselves. I see this as something done driven perhaps by egoistic patriotism because they just wanted their very own writing so as to dissociate themselves from others, without regard to any historical development and ethnic evolution from similar cultural background over time. Though the Chinese, Korean and Japanese pronounce those words differently, a lot of the characters or words actually possess the same original meaning. Imagine, how helpful it is if the Chinese, Korean and Japanese have almost the same writing characters that could commnunicate with each other through writing, emails etc. We used to write in Chinese characters when certain meanings could not be expressed well enough in English to some of our Japanese friends and business associates! How amazing it is that most of the time they could grasp the meaning of what we tried to convey!

As Malaysian we could travel to Indonesia and Brunei without any problem, thanks to our common language and cultural background! Imagine again one day, if we Malaysians wanted something on their own just to differentiate ourselves from Indonesia and Brunei, what would be the situation? Given the current situation where Indonesians claim that our national anthem is a plagiarized version of their "Terang Bulan", some of our patriotic educationists someday might just decide to change our very own version of Bahasa Malaysia language.

Because of the pride of humans that wanted to build the tower of Babel to reach the sky, symbolic of the dwelling place of our Most High God, that God had dispersed them by confusing the humans through different ways of speaking languages so that they could not communicate amongst each other. They could not accomplish the task simply because of without a common language. Come to think of it, what had happened just for the past few decades, we were just doing the reverse, instead of promoting something common, we make ourselves unique, embracing so-called egoistic patriotism and putting ourselves a thick wall and creating obstacle between us to communicate and understand each other. What a pity!

The emperor Qin of ancient China had such farsighted view and wisdom that he standardized all the Chinese writings. And because of his wise decision, the entire China with 1.3 billion population from a vast diverse ethnic origins are now able to communicate and understand each other well through this common language. This is made possible by one wise man despite the fact that they are still having their very own dialects and different ways of pronouncing the same Chinese characters.

You will be surprised to notice when coming to the art of Chinese caligraphy, all Chinese regardless they are from mainland China, Taiwan, Hongkong or any other overseas Chinese destinations, they have to use the same traditional Chinese form of writing! This is probably from aesthetic and cultural consideration that Chinese all over the world had unanimously adopted this practice without any dispute. Without the traditional Chinese characters, one could safely say that Chinese caligraphy done in simplified Chinese characters would have lost its richness in the value of art and culture forever!

With the advent of computers and all the powerful word processing software packages, the writing of Chinese characters has become so simple and easy. When mainland Chinese took on the task of simplifying the form of Chinese characters, they did not expect all the effort and good intention would be going down to drain just within a matter of 5 - 10 years. To the computer, simplified and traditional Chinese makes no difference when the more common "pinyin" input method is adopted for all the printing and typing works!

Some funny stories and hard lessons

I had a few incidents when I was in primary school, even after so many years, it always makes me laugh on how I made a fool of myself:

1. I remember when I was in standard one, I only did average in my study but I did get position 10 in the class, and a gift was given to me during the sport day prize giving ceremony. The gift was a brylcreem in soft transparent plastic tube. When one received a gift, he or she must accept it with both hand upright and then to bow one's head as a gesture of respect to the teacher handing out the gift. I did exactly as the protocol demanded, but then I was too short and when I bowed and my head knocked against the gift table. It drew a big laugh from the panel of the teachers sitting behind the table and I was deeply embarrassed by the event!

2. During the school holidays, I saw some of my friends who were doing a thriving business selling ice creams in the village. I always thought it was just an easy means of earning some extra income for my school expenditure. I asked around on the possibility of I myself getting involved in the same kind of business and they told me that I had to go to talk to the boss of the shop so as to allow me to sell his ice creams. The boss looked at me and said I was too young for the job, he doubted my ability to sell. And after some pestering and he was kind enough to let me giving it a try. The boss gave me a thermo-insulated container together with a ringing bell as tools for the ice creams business. A few friends of mine from the houses next door joined me for the job, and we walked around the more familiar places where we had our relatives and friends because they were our better chance and more likely potential customers. And we rang the bell as loud as we could as we walked through the lanes and paths of the village. After a hard day work, we ended up selling half the ice creams but we had eaten the other half at our own expense because of the tiresome walking and the hot weather, of course at a discounted price minus the profit!

This always taught me a lesson that things might seem easy when we see other people doing them, until we try that on our own, then only we realise it is not really that easy as we always thought!

3. This was not a very funny incident and it had taught me life-long lesson. During that time, it was common for village folks to gather some gunny sacks or just used flour sacks made from a very tough kind of cloth, together with some scooping tools and went to the tin mines nearby to scoop up some tin rich soils. Tin mines were dug by excavators and then high pressure jets were used to shoot at those ore bearing soils so as to be washed down and then sucked up by powerful pumps to the "Palong" where the heavier tin ores were deposited over an array of trapping troughs as the ore bearing soil flew over them. Near to the end of the "Palong", some of these sands still have some remnants of tin ores and therefore villagers usually salvage them. Occasionally they stole some from the nearby areas where tin ores rich bearing soils were only exposed and made available after great depth of layers of sand were dug out. It was not legal and outsiders were prohibited to enter the mine areas and usually guards were posted to safe guard from such petty theft of tin ore bearing soils.

I joined the group one day on this endeavour and the guard on duty was alerted and I was caught as I was the youngest and ran too slow while all the rest fled the area in no time. My mum "bailed" me out after negotiating with the mining "Kongsi" chief clerk because I was too young to be considered as an offender!

After that particular incident, I always bear in mind that I have to be very careful not to follow the crowd instint, doing what other guys are doing without considering the consequences.

A few years later, there was a case that involved the beating to death of a guard in one of the tin mines around that village. Greediness reared its ugly head and theft of tin ore became conspiracy of insiders and the smuggling out of tin ores from mines was rampant. Somehow when money was involved, sad to say, human life had become worthless to the perpetrators!

Academic excellence

In those school days, achievement was very much measured by academic excellence rather than performance in extra-curriculum activities. One has to perform relatively well in examination before he or she could secure a social place in the school. Doing well in examination of course needs not only some intelligence, and I believe hard work, perseverence, patience and discipline do count a lot. In my own opinion, the academic inclination of individual students plays an important role in separating the better performing and below performing students. If students are totally not inclined to studying, no matter how smart they are, they would not be able to do well, therefore this has nothing to do with intelligence. Amongst the better performing students, the difference in intelligence level, I would say is only marginal. Of course there are very few extraordinary and outstanding students that they are just one class above the rest. The point I want to make here is that if you happen to be in the A class, the majority of the students would not differ that much by level of intelligence, differences in scoring are only made possible by hours of hardwork putting in more than the others!

When I entered into University Malaya, a few of the students from other states were just extremely bright and I realized that they were cut to perform well in academic studies. They could score a string of A+ but I had never achieved that level of excellence and until now I still would not know what is the threshold in order to score an A+ in a subject in the engineering faculty. That is the real difference between good students and genius!

Doing well academically does not promise anyone that they will eventually become successful in career or wealthy at the later part of their life. The wealthiest of my coursemates were not the 1st class honor students, most of the rich ones were the 3rd class holders!

Most of the comparison done for academic excellence is based on science stream students that take on courses such as medicine, engineering, dentistry etc, this is especially so in Malaysia. We always forget about the academic excellence for the art stream students. This is because during my time, students did well in government examination were automatically placed into science stream. After so many years, I only realize that I was actually driven on by this wave of so called science subjects excellence mindset! If I were to take on art subjects, I would have performed even much better!

I have never regretted for taking mechanical engineering as it has given me distinct advantages over the years when I assume various capacities in different industries during my career life. But I do believe, I could have been a very outstanding art student!

The small river

The small river that used to separate the land and the ponds over the other side of my grandpa's home reminds me many of my childhood stories. The stretch of flat land before the river was flat and planted with sweet potatoes leaves for the consumption of pigs. In the early 60s, every household in the village used to keep some pigs, it was not just another source of income for the family and it was also a past time for the older folks. One could see far away from the house the bamboos trees near the ponds, and also the tall white stem trees that eagles like to build their nests above. The bamboo was useful for the villagers especially the time during the lantern festival, they used that to build the frame of lanterns. The colorful lantern with its rotating images were displayed like the " Wayang Kulit" driven by rising hot air of a burning candle was fascinating for a kid like me then. For the children, bamboo was an indispensable material for making kites and then fly them and launching them from the sweet potatoes fields, it was great fun that I really miss so much! They also used long bamboo sticks for plucking the rambutan fruits by tying a hook or a cutting knife at the tip during the fruit harvesting season. Sometimes the thinner and more flexible bamboo sticks were also used to beat snakes.

Just imagine a scene like this:

A neighbor suddenly shouted " Snake! Snake!" and everyone from the neighborhood will take out their own bamboo sticks, rush to the scene and be ready for the kill. From my memory, I could still recall the beating sound of the sticks landed flatly on the ground, a crowd of adults surrounded the poor creature, usually cobra, was beaten to its death.

The winding road passing through the sweet potatoes fields leading to the small river was no more in existence now. Squatters of wooden houses were built on them and the view and its landscape were forever changed. That river was the first place when my brother and I tried on fishing using some wires to make fishing hooks without putting any bait. As kids, we could not reason out fishing needed to use baits, thinking that the fishing rods and hooks could just do the magic of catching fishes!

That small river nearly costed the life of my brother as we tried to cross them after the rain when the current was swift, otherwise the water was usually shallow and safe. We crossed the river to bring food to my mum as at that time the villagers inclusive my mum were doing "dulang washing", a method used to sieve out tin ores from sand and mud, the location of which was situated near some mining sand dunes on the other side of the river, about an hour walk from our home. Tin ore was fetching a good price then and it was a lucrative means of supporting the economy and the livelihood of many families. My brother was drifted some distance by the strong current and then managed to cling on to some weeds near the river side and he was safe, much to my relief! (I still remember this vividly till this day!)

The small river was running with crystal clear water and we used to catch a lot of small fishes, prawns in it. My grandpa used to wheel us down with his wheelbarrow and scooped up some clean sands and then wheeled us back all the way to our home! We made multiple to and fro trips as he used those sands to build the grass road leading from the main tar road to the house that we were staying. Once a while we got to bath and swim in that river with the watchful eyes of my grandpa on our safety, since the swimming was condoned by grandpa, there was no scolding and punishment from my mum (Though we knew that she was not too happy about the whole idea). At that time children were forbidden to swim in ponds and rivers as there were many drowning cases.

This same river, my grandpa and grandma caught a big softshell turtle (labi-labi) and it was so big that we could not keep it in the house and was eventially sold to a fishmonger friend in the wet market.

We used to see eagles circling in the sky and suddently swooped down to the fields and how the mother hens defended the chicks by making a lot of noises. My grandma was always on alert and would rush out from the house and gave a loud shout to scare the eagles away!

Those were the days and the small river !

My early Sport

When I was in my primary school, I did not try much on sport probably because of my smaller physique. Because of my size and height I was always seated the 2nd row from the teacher. That always made me feel less inferior as I was still not the shortest in class! During sport day I remember participating one time in tying a handkerchief over one leg with another leg of my classmate of almost the same height and ran the event. It needed some leg work coordination but it was not that difficult, it was a team event though we did not emerge as the first and yet we were not the losers either.

One year, we had one special race of using the stilt, and I was very adept and skillful at it because every morning I arrived at the school the earliest and the limited stock of stilts was made available on first come first serve basis. Walking with the stilt around the school compound everyday was a great past time while waiting for the teacher to come into the class. Racing by walking on stilt was supposed to be an event that I had the greatest confidence because I practised the use of it day in and day out. I was selected for the race but my over eagerness to win and making too wide a stride had made me fallen off from the stilt at the early part of the race that forfeited my chance to win. I was greatly disappointed because I was supposed to be the best in stilt walking!

My mum had bought me a badminton racket and the net after Malaysia had won the world championship of Thomas cup in 1963. The winning team of Ng Boon Bee, Tan Yee Khan, Tan Aik Huang etc was driven on an open roof coupe on parade in the village. If I remember correctly, the brand of the racket bought was Champion, with a red winning gold cup logo as the brand. At that time we were yet to have Yonex or Dunlop rackets in the market. The racket was so precious that a special double wooden frame with 4 screws on the 4 corners of it were used to sandwich the racket such that the pulling tension of the string would not warp or distort the racket. I did practise a few times and brought the racket and net to the courts near to the school to play with some of my more senior village folks. However I did not manage to grasp the skill of playing it well mainly because the shuttlecock was just too expensive. It was then 50 cents per shuttlecock and that was my one week budget. My parents only gave 5-10 cents per day for my expenditure to go to school.

I had tried table tennis because some of my seniors could play very well and one of them at later part even emerged as the Perak state player. Again I found that table tennis was not my cup of tea!

Subsequently the village caught a craze on basket ball and everybody inclusive myself were playing basket ball. It was probably the cheapest sport and most popular game for the Chinese schools in those days. I started playing since standard 5 and became fairly skillful at it after playing for many years and I attained my peak in higher secondary school. It is a game I like very much till this day. I gracefully gave up basket ball again because I know that this game would not take me very far because of my physique and I later switched to playing squash when I graduated from university and started to work.

By far, the greatest sport achievement for myself in school was the ACS Kampar school open cross-country event, and I managed to win the 3rd placing representing the Kampar district.

Postural hypertension - A health problem?

For the past 1 week while I was trying to look at the factory guys repairing some of the parts of the machinery, I squatted down to take a closer look and then to stand up again, I felt dizziness and my vision felt like blackening out.

I was trying to figure out why I have this symptom of postural hypertension and I am thinking that it could be due to:

(1)Age is catching up as I have never had such problem before
(2)My gum bleeding had caused me loss of too much blood? I was wondering wehther this is the real cause as I have this problem for a long long time
(3)My habit of drinking English tea in the morning continuosly almost for the past 3 months since I came home from China. And my father used to tell my wife that drinking too much English tea might be too cooling for the body according to the Chinese medical way of diagnosing this problem. This might now apply to my body condition at this juncture of time.
(4)Other unknown health problems I might have developed.

Anyway, today I was not feeling too well after my breakfast, probably after my cup of English tea. I decided that from tomorrow onwards I will stop drinking it for a period of time to see the effect. I took a rest in the afternoon today because of the public holiday and about 6 pm I went for a short trekking in the Taman Jakar Bukit Sayur mountain just to sweat out a little bit. It was almost 7 pm and half way through the trekking, I cut short my journey by reversing back to the down hill direction, just to be on the safe side.

After the exercise, I felt better though my limbs were feeble after the climbing and I told myself that I must have a good full meal for the dinner to replenish my energy before I go to bed.

I had my dinner with a lot of raw garlic as I had acquired this habit of eating garlic while I was serving in Shangdong province China, it made my stomach bloating problem better. I begin to like eating garlic very much though it smells a little on my breath! Anyway, it is good for health.

I have never thought of writing in a blog about my physical condition, it seems that when age is catching up, our body parts start to malfunction a little bit here and there and this topic on health becomes something which I could not avoid to mention about somehow.

May God always bless me with a strong and healthy body, to me a healthy body is the biggest "wealth" that I possess on earth!

How our parents affected us

When we were young, we looked at and looked up to our parents. Certain times we did not like the way our parents treated us and that experience sticked with us for the rest of our life. There is no doubt that most of the time our parents had treated us well!

As young kid, my father was then a very stern person and always spoke to me in harsh words and he is hot-tempered until this day. He did not talk to me much and always wanted to position himself in such an authoritative manner that he is the father and he could do what he likes to do. My mother was equally hot tempered and scolded me a lot, though things changed for the better when I became older.

I could understand no parents are perfect, and perhaps that was the way the society hierachy was all about on how parents should behave as authority over their children during that era of time. In those early days, teachers from school were unquestionable authorities, and when teachers complained about students, the parents will punish their children without further investigation on the whole truth. Nowadays, things had changed with time, so much so that parents will sue teacher for any punishment received from teacher who might have accidentally hurt the students physically. For that reason, we as present day parents also need to change along side and be in sync with this new generation, we have to be more friendly and use kind and encouraging words to speak to our children. I had decided long time ago to treat my son and daughter as friends!

What and how parents had treated us in the past, little did they know that the way they handle and behave themselves as parents has a profound effect on their children later on. My siblings and I somehow inherited the bad temper of my parents.

I always keep in my mind those weaknesses of my parents and never want to do the same to my children. Because of my mum was hot-tempered and therefore I would never wanted to marry a wife who is of the same nature! My wife is mild in temper though nagging is her weakness! We are all no perfect human beings, if we could know our weaknesses and correct them over time, we shall become better individuals and our children will also appreciate and remember us as good parents.

Life is so good and time is so short, let us all have a good and happy family through our concerted effort in playing our roles as responsible parents and children. May God bless us and guide us to become better parents for our children!