A Glimpse at the Land of Lightning

Talks had been going on over the past six years to visit the ‘Land of Lightning’, Kelantan Darul Naim, but to no avail until the last Deepavali holidays.

Believe it or not, the trip has its origin associated with Pantai Cahaya Bulan [Beach of Moonlight], formerly known as Pantai Cinta Berahi, literally meant to be the Beach of Passionate Love. Twenty over years ago, two young girls were strolling along the golden beach of Pantai Cinta Berahi one evening during the sunset hours. They were met with their white horse princes and fell in love at the first sight. They got married within months and later came back to Penang. Both ladies ended up as teachers at the Berapit Secondary School. Every now and then, during the festive seasons, they would go back to visit their relatives in Kelantan. We, as the colleagues of theirs, were half jokingly wanted to follow them back to Kelantan hoping to have a free food, free accommodation vacation. We proposed to go in a bus load year after year. The proposals only ended on the lips service. It did not materialize until recently on October 25, 2008 when we organized a 3 Days 2 nights trip to Kota Bharu.

This time we were determined to make the trip a success. As soon as Mr.Chee Choo Beng had worked up the cost of bus fare and accommodation for each person to be in the range of RM160, he was appointed unanimously as treasurer to start collecting a minimum sum of RM 100 per head as deposit. At first we intended to cater a luxurious bus with 26 seats. The response turned out to be overwhelming that 39 people were in the booking list. Hence, we had to get a bus with 42 seats. The members were all from colleagues and ex-colleagues of Berapit Secondary School, the friends of the teachers of the school and their family members. The group members comprised young and old, with the majority of them ladies. The afternoon supervisor of the school could not join us as his hands and legs were tied to his junior. However, he gave us his moral support by sending his father as his representative.

Two weeks before the trip, Madam Lim Gim Seok, who was a local resident of Kota Bharu with a good networking there, had to do all the contacts to arrange for the places of interest for us to visit. She mobilized her extended family members to do the necessary arrangement like the booking of apartments, checking of places to be visited and drawing of maps leading to those places. Finally, Madam Lim herself had to make numerous phone calls to those persons in charge to confirm the dates and times for our visits. It was due to her diligent and untiring efforts that made the trip a fruitful and enjoyable one.

We started our journey from Bukit Mertajam at around 5.30 am on October 25, 2008. God was with us all the while as the weather was fine throughout our journey to the Islamic city of Kota Bharu. The whole journey took us less than 6 hours. On the way we stopped at Grik to have our breakfast at around 8 am. By the time we reached Kota Bharu, it was almost 1 pm in the afternoon.

After lunch we went to visit a batik craft industry. Most members in the group were very keen to have a hand on in the painting of batik. Each individual or group paid RM20 to paint on a piece of cloth which could be brought back as a souvenir.

Among other handicraft cottage industries that we had visited were kite making and silver craft. A thin, elderly Malay man did a demonstration to show us the art of making kites. He had won the third place in the national kite making competition held last year during the Visit Malaysia Year of 2007. At the silver craft centre the ladies were fascinated with the silverware that they overstayed the time allocated for the visit. They were more interested in buying silver crafts like ear-rings, necklaces and other ornaments than learning the trade itself. Most of the gentlemen were merely the onlookers; they either had their purses shrinking to pay the bills for their wives or their backs pain after prolong standing while waiting for the ladies to strike their best deals. Besides visiting the handicraft industries, we visited a few temples at Tumpat and Bachok. It was a surprise for us as well as the other visitors to note that there were many huge and magnificent Buddhist statues being built on the land of the Islamic state of Kelantan. Apparently there was no restriction or hindrance on the part of the state government of Kelantan for the non-Muslims to practice the religions of their own choices. According to a young Malay trader we met at Siti Khadijah Market at Kota Bharu the following day; he was of the opinion that he too had no objection to the practices of non-Muslims as he believed that all religions share the universal values and advocate the practice of good virtues. Another prominent change in the Siamese temples that we visited was its non-sectarian feature. It has become a hybrid of Theravada and Mahayana Buddhism. This was evidently shown in the building of 102 metre tall Amitabha Buddha statue erected in the compound of a Siamese temple at Bachok. Food and drinks at Kota Bharu were generally more expensive than that at Bukit Mertajam. However, for a change it was worthwhile to try out the specialties of Kelantan like nasi lauk, nasi dagang, nasi kerabu, nasi tumpang, ayam percik, laksa and laksam, kuih akok, buah tanjung, jala emas, cendol pulut tupai and many other mouth-watering dishes.

On the morning before we departed Kota Bharu, we stopped at Siti Khadijah Market to have a shopping spree. Visitors could find everything from vegetables, local snacks to fresh tropical fruits. A unique feature here was that the majority of traders were women. Bukit Bunga was the final stop for us to buy the local products from Kelantan and Southern Thailand. We arrived home safe and sound at about 8.00 pm in the evening. Everybody was tired but happy to be home after this fascinating and memorable trip.

“When do you want to put my hands back for me?”


This story is adapted from a story written in Chinese emailed by a primary school classmate of mine, Khor Boon Seah. The story written in Chinese is shown at the foot note below.


On a remote outskirt of a town in California, there was a four year old girl with the name of Anna. Her father was a truck driver. He had bought a new truck which he liked very much. Everyday he would spend some time to do anything and everything to make sure that it was always clean, shiny and beautiful.

One day, Anna sneaked into the garage to play without her father’s knowledge. On the floor laid a screw driver. She used it as a pen to draw a picture of her own imagination on the truck body, thus adding scratches to the shining metallic painted surface.

At that moment her father happened to pass by. He was very furious to see his truck being tempered with. He gave Anna a few tight slaps and then tied her hands with a wire which he found in the garage. The other end of the wire was then hung to a beam on the roof of the garage. Anna was left to stand in the garage as a punishment.

Anna’s father had totally forgotten the matter until he came back from town four hours later. When he saw the girl, it was found that her hands had already become stiff and numb due to prolong hours of poor blood circulation. Her father got panic.
He quickly rushed her to the nearest hospital for treatment. Unfortunately her hands had to be amputated to save her life.

Anna was too young to be aware of what had happened to her hands then. She cried as she could not endure the pain due to the surgery. It never crossed her mind regarding the repercussions of not having a pair of normal hands when she was going to grow up as a young lady. Her father was extremely sorry for the misstep of punishment he had taken on her child.

Half a year later, Anna’s father sent his truck to a workshop for re-spray. The truck looked entirely new when it came back from the workshop. Anna was overjoyed to see the seemingly new truck. She said to her father, “Daddy! Daddy! Your truck looks pretty; it’s the same as a new one!”

In the next minute, she raised both her arms to show her father, while at the same time she asked, “But, when do you want to put my hands back for me?”

Anna’s question came as a fatal blow to her father. It was as if a big hammer was striking at his head, coupling with a dagger pierced through his heart. He could not bear the guilt that had persistently haunted him for the past few months. Instantly and without hesitation, he committed suicide with a pistol shot directly at his own head. Bang! He died in front of his poor child.

Many people seem to get their priorities wrongly set. Just like Anna’s father who was so engrossed with his treasured truck even at the expense of his child’s hands. He could use money to buy back a new truck if he wanted,but he knew fully well that he could never buy back Anna’s hands with any amount of money.

Whatever money that one can buy can never be comparable to things that money cannot acquire. Love is a typical example that money cannot buy. It has to be nurtured tenderly and cultivated perpetually over a long period of time. So, each and every one of us should not be stingy to show our love to our dear ones.



Foot note:

在美國的加州有一個小女孩大約是 4 歲
她的父親有一台大卡車，她的父親非常喜歡那台卡車
總是為那台車做全套的保養，以保持卡車的美觀
一天，小女孩拿著硬物在他父親的卡車鈑金上劃下了無數的刮痕 !!
她的父親盛怒之下，用鐵絲把小女孩的手綁起來
然後吊著小女孩的手，讓她站在車庫罰站
當父親想起小女兒在車庫罰站時，已經是 4個小時過後了！
趕到車庫時，小女孩的手已經被鐵絲綁的血液不通!
父親送她到急診室時，已經需要截去小女孩的手掌了
因為，手掌部分的組織已經都壞死，如不截去手掌 ...
她生命是非常危險，甚至可能會危害到小女孩的生命 ...
所以小女孩就這樣失去了她的一雙手掌了 !
但是她不懂..... 她不懂到底是發生了什麼事在她的身上 ....
而她的父親也因為這樣感到萬分的愧疚 !
過了約半年後
小女孩的父親的卡車進廠重新烤漆，又像全新的一樣!!
當他把卡車開回家後，小女孩看著重新烤漆過的卡車
對著她的父親說
“爸爸! 你的卡車好漂亮唷！看起來就像是新卡車”
這時小女孩無邪的伸出了她那截斷的雙手，對她的父親說
“ 但是你什麼時候要把我的手還給我?”
你們知道當那位父親聽到小女孩問他的問題時，發生了什麼事嗎 ?
那位父親在小女孩的面前 ..... 舉槍自殺 .......
很多人分不清 .....到底什麼是重要的？
只會無知迷失在自我的喜好當中 ........
就如有些人會去 慈濟幫忙掃街，但家事從來不管 .......
有些人會花很多錢去建廟，但對自己的親人如鐵公雞 .....
有些人在外面和言悅色，但對自己的卻家人暴躁如雷 ......
這就是說 那個父親不知是車子重要，或是女兒重要呢？
而遺憾的事..... 世間到處充滿了這些事 .....
而且就在你我之間 ....
只要是金錢可以買到的；
都比不上無價的可貴，
請不要吝嗇，多給家人一點愛！

An Excellent Perodua Automobile Technician


On the morning of December 21, 2005, I met with a minor accident.

On that day I was driving to Penang Island using my daughter’s Myvi car. After squeezing through the bottled neck of Penang Bridge Toll, a lorry suddenly emerged from behind to knock off the right hand side-mirror of our car. The plastic support holding the mirror casing broke. The mirror casing was left dangling, knocking against the door intermittently as the car moved. As a car without a side mirror made driving unsafe, I had to get it replaced as soon as possible.

I made a phone call to my brother- in- law who was in the automobile spare parts business in Kuala Lumpur to send me a set of mirror .The set of mirror was sent to a spare parts shop at Butterworth which I collected on December 24, 2005. After picking up the mirror, my daughter and I rushed to the Perodua Automobile Service Centre at Seberang Jaya. By the time we reached there, it was already 1.36 pm. We thought we could get the mirror fixed after 2.00 pm when the technicians resumed work. We did not realize until much later that it was a Saturday afternoon and the working hours for the day had ended at 12.30 noon. If we could not get the mirror fixed on that day itself we would have to wait for a few more days until the following Tuesday on December 27, 2005, when the Christmas holidays were over. Luckily, at that time there remained a few technicians at the service centre. They were busy with their stock checking. A technician by the name of Mohamad approached us. We told him our problem. He studied our case carefully and offered to help. He fixed our old mirror in silver paint casing to a new black plastic support. In this way it had saved us RM 50 for the cost of repainting the new mirror casing, from black colour to silver. Of course, it was more tedious and time consuming to do that than to fix an entirely new set of mirror. It took him almost one and a half hours to complete the task.

After the job was done, I tried to show my appreciation of his work by giving him a token sum of money. He refused to accept the money by reiterating in Malay language that “saya hanya mahu tolong sahaja.” [“I just wanted to help you”].

It was very kind of Mr. Mohamad to help us at that very appropriate moment. Otherwise, we had to wait for a few more days to make another trip all the way from Bukit Mertajam to Seberang Jaya to get the job done.

Mr. Mohamad is an exemplar to be laudable by many others including myself, for his work ethics which is very rare, and which I would say is on the brink of extinction in this very century. The fact that he was willing to attend to our car readily and voluntarily was a clear-cut testimony that he performed his work professionally and he treated his clients compassionately and equally irrespective of race, colour or creed. Rarely could one find a subordinate like him who would stretch extra hours on his own free will without being supervised. By trying to fix the old mirror with silver body paint to a new mirror support of black in colour, he helped us to save the cost of additional paint work by RM 50. In order to do that he needed extra effort, extra time. This showed that he would rather sacrifice his time so as to provide the best service he could render to his client. Frankly speaking and sorry to acknowledge that I cannot recall how he looks like now. Nevertheless, his good deeds and attitude will forever be treasured deep in my heart. The only way I can show my heartfelt thank to him is to post it on my blog to show the world that in Malaysia we still have a proud son whose name is Mr. Mohamad.

Email, email, I ‘write’ you

All along I did not want to cash-deposit using ATM machine as I did not trust its reliability. I usually did it over the bank counter. But, on one fine afternoon of 1st February of 2001, at around 3.45 pm, I decided to give it a try with the sum of RM 625 which I was supposed to bank in for my school. This money was the special fees collected by the school from the afternoon session and had to be banked in to the Maybank branch at Jalan Danby, Bukit Mertajam on the same day itself.

Half way through the transaction, after I had slotted in 3 pieces of 50 dollar notes, the machine was suddenly off line; dark clouds surged through the screen with the visibility of all facts and figures came to a naught. This could be due to electricity temporary cut off for a while or for other reasons which I could not comprehend. Immediately, I checked with a cashier over the counter. It was shown to me that the money I slotted into the machine to be off record, that was to say, no record of the RM 150 being deposited into my school account.

I lodged a report with a bank officer, Madam Faridah Osman, who promised me verbally to pursue the matter with the authority concerned in Penang. According to her, the machine would only be opened for collection and verification of cash transacted once a week by the officers from Penang Island. That was to say I had to keep my fingers crossed for at least another week to know whether the money would come back to my pocket or not.

On returning to school I reported the matter to my headmistress at Convent School, Miss Patima, who upon hearing it, just kept quiet with expressionless look, without suggesting any remedy to compensate me in case I could not refund the money that I lost through my dispensing of the official duty. I was quite disheartened with her non-committal silence.


That evening I decided to document my complaint via an email to Madam Siti Khadijah Talip, the Customer Service Officer of the Maybank Credit & Customer Services Section, to inform her about the happening that I underwent that afternoon. I printed out two copies of the email I sent out; one copy I kept while the other one I gave to Madam Faridah Osman the following day to make her aware that I had informed an officer at Maybank headquarters. It seemed to be a good idea to let a third party know about this matter; just like a referee is so vital during a boxing match for the execution of fair judgements. Her initial reaction, after going through the print out of my email, was to deny that she had promised me to pursue the matter. I refuted that it was exactly what she meant when I reported the matter to her. If the officer to whom I lodged the complaint would not take up the case, I could not imagine who else under the sun would do it for me under similar circumstance. To my argument, she kept mum.

In the meantime, Madam Siti Khadijah bt Talip replied my email, assuring me that she would look into the matter and would try to resolve it in the soonest possible time.

True enough, within a few days, the school received a phone call to collect a cheque of RM 150 from the bank which was later refunded to me. I did not have to wait for a week as mentioned by Madam Faridah Osman. The email could have done the magic. It might have compelled Madam Faridah Osman to take up my case seriously and swiftly as she was aware that she might be monitored by a CCTV from Kuala Lumpur.

Another good example which I like to cite about the efficiency of email writing was the Income Tax Refund. In the year 2005, the tax payers in general were informed through the media by the Income Tax Department that one month after the date due for the submitting of the self assessment of Income Tax Returns, they would be able to get the refund for the tax that they had overpaid for that particular assessment year. Having waited for one full year, there was still no indication at all that I would be refunded. As I did not wish to wait for another millennium to get the money back, I wrote an email on April 25, 2006, to the Income Tax Department. In the email reply by the Income Tax Department on June 15, 2006, I was informed to see Madam Zabaidah bt Mohamed Said at the branch office of the Income Tax Department at Bukit Mertajam. After going through my files, Madam Zabaidah noted that I would get the refund within a week or two. On July 11, 2006, I finally got a cheque for the refund, not for one year, but for two consecutive years, that is, the Assessment Years of 2003 and 2004. If I had not written the email, I would not know how long it would take for the money to find its way back to my bank account.

There was another instance that email did help me to recover my money from an insurance company which double charged me the annual premium on the health care plan for one particular year. I was charged twice on my credit card for two successive months. I emailed the bank issuing the credit card and the carbon copy forwarded to the insurance company. The matter was rectified.

Email writing has worked wonders for me. It will do the same for others. It is more efficient to email than to send postal mails. One can send the instant message to any person at any corner of the world within a split second. The same message can also be emailed to many others with just a click on the mouse.


As I am not good at conversing with people, email writing will do the talking for me instead. It helped me to solve many of my problems. In particular, it had assisted me to recover the money that was due to me. I would say email writing was my ‘money saver’.

That was the marvels of email writing which I always like to employ time and again to make things worked in my favour.


Emails, emails, I like you.

Emails, emails, I ‘write’ you. I like to write out the goodness of email writing to share with more people hoping that many will join me in the use of email writing as a tool to settle daily problems, be it complex or trivial.

Email will not fail you if you don’t fail to use email.