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.
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
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.
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.
Sunday, September 27, 2009
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!
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!
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
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!
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!
Monday, September 21, 2009
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!
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!
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
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!
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 !
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 !
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
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.
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.
Monday, September 7, 2009
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!
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!
Saturday, September 5, 2009
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!
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!
Friday, September 4, 2009
Buying an Exora
I was calculating the years while I was overseas that I could save the depreciation cost of owning a vehicle. During those years, company provided me with company cars and therefore the saving of each year of RM10K in depreciation would be a hefty saving sum of RM50K in my bank account. For any vehicle, if you take a calculation based on the resale value of a used car, RM5K-10K per year of value depreciation is common. That is to say, a RM100K car after 5 years could only be sold for RM50K-75K.
When I lived overseas, the vehicles in Malaysia appear to me just ridiculously expensive. We cannot compare that with the US, even comparing the same model in China, we are about 25% more expensive. Well, that extra portion goes to the coffer of the Malaysian government. I always thankful to what we have in Malaysia, especially for our children who could get free education all the way except tertiary education. Whenver I pay for a Malaysian vehicle, I always rationalize it in such a way that with the high price of the vehicle I am paying back to the government of Malaysia for all the free education given to my children. Of course I did pay for my income tax except when working overseas I am entitled to the double taxation exemption.
My wife and children like the Exora very much. As a professional in Malaysia, I would say I belong to the medium income group and comparing to so many people in Malaysia, the argument is that I should be able to afford a RM75K MPV without much consideration(It is just a peer to peer comparison). I had told myself that I wanted to clear all my liabilities before I retire so that I could take up something else debt free, I want to do something to impact the life of others and serve the community. I am a careful and conservative person and always think about the future of my family and the education of my son and daughter, and that is all I could do for them as a father. Buying a brand new vehicle with a monthly instalment of more than RM1K is really a burden that will interrupt my early retirement plan and also caused me some sleepless nights!
If I so decide to purchase this Exora, the main reason is because I feel sorry for my wife and children that I had left them in Malaysia on their own while I was away from home for so many years. The Exora is, no doubt about it, a beautiful made in Malaysia MPV and safer vehicle to drive with a RM75K price tag.
When I lived overseas, the vehicles in Malaysia appear to me just ridiculously expensive. We cannot compare that with the US, even comparing the same model in China, we are about 25% more expensive. Well, that extra portion goes to the coffer of the Malaysian government. I always thankful to what we have in Malaysia, especially for our children who could get free education all the way except tertiary education. Whenver I pay for a Malaysian vehicle, I always rationalize it in such a way that with the high price of the vehicle I am paying back to the government of Malaysia for all the free education given to my children. Of course I did pay for my income tax except when working overseas I am entitled to the double taxation exemption.
My wife and children like the Exora very much. As a professional in Malaysia, I would say I belong to the medium income group and comparing to so many people in Malaysia, the argument is that I should be able to afford a RM75K MPV without much consideration(It is just a peer to peer comparison). I had told myself that I wanted to clear all my liabilities before I retire so that I could take up something else debt free, I want to do something to impact the life of others and serve the community. I am a careful and conservative person and always think about the future of my family and the education of my son and daughter, and that is all I could do for them as a father. Buying a brand new vehicle with a monthly instalment of more than RM1K is really a burden that will interrupt my early retirement plan and also caused me some sleepless nights!
If I so decide to purchase this Exora, the main reason is because I feel sorry for my wife and children that I had left them in Malaysia on their own while I was away from home for so many years. The Exora is, no doubt about it, a beautiful made in Malaysia MPV and safer vehicle to drive with a RM75K price tag.
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
Remove Class - Language switching !
I remember the day I changed my academic language from Chinese to English, it was really a very tough experience. After studying 6 years in Chinese primary school and then entered the remove class to start off everything afresh in English was a great challenge. To this day, I am still puzzled why this is called "remove class"? Perhaps it is a class specially designed and prepared to remove the old language habit that we had been learning and using in order that a brand new language could be substituted or "stuffed in", and use this to study and comprehend all the subjects and its terminologies to prepare ourselves for future higher learning experience?
Many of my school mates were having a lot of problem to adjust and cope with this change in medium of instruction! This is because English language is totally a very different language compared to Chinese. With my own experience in going through this abrupt change, I could understand and well imagine the frustration of our fellow Malaysians of other races face, on this switching of their mother tongue language either from Malay or Tamil to English. The casualties or fall-outs from schools at my time was high;the number of students eventually could not make it to the higher secondary schools was probably in the region of more than 50%. They had to drop from school after our form 3 or LCE examination, command of English language was definitely one of the obstacles though examination was also meant to be a necessary screening process to filter out the under peforming students. Some dropped out permanently and joined the workforce early while some more persistent ones went to study in independent Chinese schools and eventually managed to further their higher level studies in Taiwan. That was the scenario during the late 60's and early 70's of my time!
In the world of the Chinese and Malay stream students, there is no such thing as past tense or present tense, because when we talk about things of yesterday, it is automatically something already in the past and one does not need to change the forms of the verbs! We also do not differentiate the passive and active voices in such an elaborate manner. The past participle form of the verb in passive voice always confuses us though the action actually does not happen in the past and we could not understand why that it has to take on a past participle form!
It took almost half if not a full genius to change from one language that is so entrenched in our every day life and usage, and then take on another totally foreign, and be proficient in it. Once we had gone through that stage of overcoming this language change barrier, and we never look back because English language has become an integral part of our life that we have to use it day in and day out in the business world, worship service, writing emails and blogs, internet surfing, at home etc.
We never had " Bla Bla black sheep" kind of songs during our childhood school days and there is a clear distinction in the way we do things, the behavior and thoughts, between the 100% English educated students and those joining in half way from other medium of instruction. In fact, English educated students discriminate or even despise the other students from other schools mainly because of their poor command and handicap in English language!
Knowing learning language is a tricky thing, my wife and I used English as our home language to speak to our children since they were kids. Only their grandparents practised with them the usage of our own dialect, in our case, Cantonese! We sent them to Chinese primary schools for 6 years so that they could get a basic command of the Chinese language. Because of the environment we intentionally created for them to grow up in, they managed to pick up English at ease and they had not encountered any of the kind of problem or hardship that we had before, in mastering and acquiring the English language skill.
Many of my school mates were having a lot of problem to adjust and cope with this change in medium of instruction! This is because English language is totally a very different language compared to Chinese. With my own experience in going through this abrupt change, I could understand and well imagine the frustration of our fellow Malaysians of other races face, on this switching of their mother tongue language either from Malay or Tamil to English. The casualties or fall-outs from schools at my time was high;the number of students eventually could not make it to the higher secondary schools was probably in the region of more than 50%. They had to drop from school after our form 3 or LCE examination, command of English language was definitely one of the obstacles though examination was also meant to be a necessary screening process to filter out the under peforming students. Some dropped out permanently and joined the workforce early while some more persistent ones went to study in independent Chinese schools and eventually managed to further their higher level studies in Taiwan. That was the scenario during the late 60's and early 70's of my time!
In the world of the Chinese and Malay stream students, there is no such thing as past tense or present tense, because when we talk about things of yesterday, it is automatically something already in the past and one does not need to change the forms of the verbs! We also do not differentiate the passive and active voices in such an elaborate manner. The past participle form of the verb in passive voice always confuses us though the action actually does not happen in the past and we could not understand why that it has to take on a past participle form!
It took almost half if not a full genius to change from one language that is so entrenched in our every day life and usage, and then take on another totally foreign, and be proficient in it. Once we had gone through that stage of overcoming this language change barrier, and we never look back because English language has become an integral part of our life that we have to use it day in and day out in the business world, worship service, writing emails and blogs, internet surfing, at home etc.
We never had " Bla Bla black sheep" kind of songs during our childhood school days and there is a clear distinction in the way we do things, the behavior and thoughts, between the 100% English educated students and those joining in half way from other medium of instruction. In fact, English educated students discriminate or even despise the other students from other schools mainly because of their poor command and handicap in English language!
Knowing learning language is a tricky thing, my wife and I used English as our home language to speak to our children since they were kids. Only their grandparents practised with them the usage of our own dialect, in our case, Cantonese! We sent them to Chinese primary schools for 6 years so that they could get a basic command of the Chinese language. Because of the environment we intentionally created for them to grow up in, they managed to pick up English at ease and they had not encountered any of the kind of problem or hardship that we had before, in mastering and acquiring the English language skill.
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