A Letter from a ‘Brother’

Brother Lim Poh Keng is my former colleague at Air Hitam Secondary School in the outskirts of Alor Setar, Kedah. We were in the same school for about 5 years since my first posting in the year 1976.

Brother Lim graduated from the prestigious University of Malaya(UM) in the year 1970 and he was posted to the school to teach the English language as his major subject.

He was a well-disciplined perfectionist. Whatever task he did he would perform it to the best of his ability. Teaching was no exception to him.

It was very hard for me to keep up with his pace and standard in terms of work or learning ability whether in quality or in quantity.

To me, he was a scholar living the life of a hermit. Even if you confined him in a prison within four walls, he would still find it a heaven as he could 'bury himself in the mountain of books' and 'surf in the ocean of music' for days without seeing people.

We maintained a sincere and cordial relationship as we were both colleagues in school and committee members in the Kedah Buddhist Association Youth Circle(English Section). Together we had participated in a number of Buddhist retreats at Petaling Jaya and Malacca.

Twice a week in the evenings prior to the Malay Language Papers of the Malaysian Certificate of Education (MCE) July Paper Examination, I used to ferry him on my motorbike to a tuition class at Alor Setar to brush up our command of the language to prepare us to obtain a credit at the MCE level as it was a requisite for the confirmation of our posts in the teaching profession of the Government Service.

After I had left the school in 1981, we seldom met each other again.

Recently, I met him and Brother Yeap Tor Hor at the MPH Bookstore at Gurney Plaza in Penang.

Days later, I sent him a write-up on my blog to get his comments. Not long after that, I got back from him by mail the corrected script of my write-up with an accompanying letter as follows:

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8 May 2009



Dear Bro. Sin Kong,
Greetings.
Thank you for sending me your blog for my perusal.
On the whole it was quite interesting and it was a very good effort on your part.
However, I decided to edit it to make it more readable since you requested for my comments. Except for some grammatical errors, I have taken the liberty to improve on the choice of certain words used. Overall, there is really little open for criticism. Keep up the good work. Continue writing. On the other hand I must say that my usage of the English language has ‘eroded’ as I have not taught English for over twelve years or thereabouts ever since I retired. Do pardon me should I misread you or inadvertently commit errors myself in my appraisal of your piece of creative writing.

I do not write much meaning composing new works such as essays, poems, short stories and so on. I do a lot of transcribing rather, especially diary entries; making notes from various reading materials, e.g. health, religion. Presently I am still doing my Sanskrit script exercises from the Bhagavad Gita. I can now read and write the Sanskrit(Devanagari) script. Given the opportunity I would like to teach the writing of the Sanskrit script as well. It is a very complicating script and very challenging to learn it. I learned to write it by myself. Are you game to learn to write it? It is excellent to activate your brain(mind), especially for elderly people like us.
Stopping here for the present. Do keep in touch.

Metta,



………….
(Bro.Lim Poh Keng)


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