My Infamous ‘Gettysburg Address’

On 9 March,2002, I was invited to attend a farewell gathering at Convent Secondary School,Bukit Mertajam.In my farewell speech I was hoping to emulate President Abraham Lincon’s famous Gettysburg Address by making it short and to the point.

Gettysburg Address:"Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."
But, when I took over the rostrum, I could not help but to speak like General Lee, the defeated commander in the decisive Battle of Gettysburg, as I was among the sacrificed lambs in the transfer exercise manipulated by an inner circle of the Education Department where cronyism and nepotism took the realm of the day. In that particular exercise I had to vacate my post as the Senior Assistant to “beri laluan”[give way] for the wife of the District Educational Officer.
My speech was addressed in Malay language, the gist of which was as follows:
“Thank you for organizing this farewell gathering.
The news of my transfer came as a shock to me and a surprise to all of you. Nobody expected it to happen. Yet, it happened, too soon,and too sudden.
All the while I thought I would retire in this school as I did not anticipate change. Change did happen. I was wrong in my past perception which contradicts the Buddhist teaching of Impermanence; things or events keep on changing all the while. Realizing this is very crucial and useful. It will put us in a better footing to face any uncertainties and irregularities ahead. We should always remind ourselves to accept and accommodate changes. Once we can do that, there is no sea of turbulence that we cannot sail through.
I accepted my transfer,though not without pain, as just another phenomenon of the reality of life.
As a Chinese adage says, ‘Any feast under the sky will eventually come to an end’(天下无不散的筵席),implying that no matter for how long we gather, in the end, we still have to say good bye to one another. To me, feast can end, but our friendship will prevail.
Thank you.”

Customers’ Satisfaction

At around 10 o’clock in the morning on 3 August , 2009, I went to a local bank at Bandar Perda, Bukit Mertajam to collect a new Visa credit card. I was told to see a Malay officer who was not wearing a name tag at Counter No.3 on the ground floor. After collecting the card, I produced my old credit card for cancellation and to give him a letter of standing order to request the bank to transfer all the unsettled bills and reward points from the old Visa credit card to the newly acquired card. In addition, I wished to make a standing order for my utility bills to be auto debited.

The Malay officer told me it was not within his scope of work and it had to be handled by another officer, Miss Jeya, on the First Floor of the building. I followed instruction to climb up the staircase to the first floor to look for Miss Jeya who again referred me to another officer, Encik. Fausir, on the ground floor. Again, I walked down the steps to see Encik.Fausir who brought me to see the officer-in-charge who was “none other than the very same Malay officer at Counter 3”.

Knowing that I was back to the square one; I was very disgusted and my temper nearly exploded to see the officer who had just fooled me and ‘had taken me for a ride up and down the building’. My blood was boiling. To avoid things blowing out of proportion, I took deep breaths to regain my composure so as to keep my emotion under control and to queue up afresh behind two other “valued customers”.

Eventually,it took me more than one hour to get my things settled. In fact it could have taken me at the most half an hour if I was not made a damn old fool to walk up and down the building.

Walking out from the bank, a thought flashed through my mind:

“If the bank officers like to kick me like a football, I would recommend them to play ‘TOTAL FOOTBALL’ like what the Dutch players had employed with great success in the early seventies. It was a tactical theory of association football in which any outfield player can take over the role of any other player in a team.

In Total Football, a player who moves out of his position is replaced by another from his team, thus retaining the team's intended organisational structure. In this fluid system, no outfield player is fixed in a nominal role; anyone can be successively an attacker, a midfielder and a defender. The only player fixed in a nominal position is the goalkeeper.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OK3RUt7BZWI

If each bank officer could adapt comfortably in multiple roles,like the tactics employed in Total Football,then the customers would be better served with higher efficiency.”

I have yet another experience of customers’ satisfaction to share.

On 31 May, 2008, I bought a Japanese imported model of Panasonic refrigerator from Seng Hock, a dealer at Queensbay Mall in Penang with a two-year extended warranty expiring on 20 July , 2013.

Unfortunately, one year later after the purchase, on 17 August 2009, the refrigerator started to give trouble. One compartment failed to function and the fruit kept in it became rotten.

Immediately I called to the dealer to complain and at the same time I wrote an email to Panasonic (M) Sdn. Bhd. Customers’ Care Centre. A technician was summoned that evening ‘to troubleshoot’ the fridge. He checked and made some minor adjustment on the refrigerator. The refrigerator functioned as normal after that but the problem recurred four days later. In addition, the motor of the fridge became very noisy the day after.Mr.Danny, the service manager of Panasonic Sdn. Bhd. in Penang, was informed of this problem and he sent a technician to fit a specially acquired new timer which was sent from Kuala Lumpur.

Three years later, on 19 April,2011, we complaint to the dealer at Queensbay Mall about yet another defect to the refrigerator. This time around, my wife noticed that there was an unusual patch of bubbled-like flaw of paint work on the lower middle portion of the front door of the Bottom Case of the fridge.

The dealer said that in his opinion under normal circumstances paint work was not covered in any extended warranty and he was not sure Panasonic Malaysia would entertain my complaint. Nevertheless he promised to bring up this case to the attention of Panasonic Malaysia.

Meanwhile, I emailed a similar complaint to the Customers’ Care Centre of Panasonic Malaysia for due attention.

Within a few days,a technician was sent by Panasonic Malaysia to check the flaw of the paint work and to take a photograph which was sent back to the Customers’ Care Centre.

Panasonic Malaysia did not respond for a long time after that.

I started to remind myself that I had no grounds to pursue the matter any further as my extended warranty did not extend to warranty the defect on the paint work of my fridge.

Surprisingly, after a lapse of three months, I was overwhelmed with joy and excitement when the familiar technician appeared at my doorsteps in the evening of 18 July, 2011. He came to replace the front door cover of the Bottom Case of my fredge. According to the technician, the new set of the cover was specially ordered and imported from Taiwan.

My wife and I were very grateful and thankful to Panasonic Malaysia for their excellent after-sale service. I had specially emailed to thank Panasonic Malaysia and to assure them that I would not turn to other brands for my future purchases when it comes to home appliances as the Panasonic brand name would be choice.

‘裕昌’这幅招牌

一个褪色的老字号
曾经不离不弃地
在我家店门口挂了数十年
见证了
家族历史`事业的起`伏`兴`衰。


当年
父亲东筹西借
高渊开店卖洋货`布匹
从兴到衰
坐吃山空
失败告终。


长兄接手
"改道扬帆" 打白铁
克苦耐劳
辛勤工作
无怨无悔
双手养活一家三代人。


如今
‘裕昌’这块招牌
随着父`兄的离去
被置放于门后角落
孤灯只影
残度馀生。


"裕昌啊! 裕昌!
难道
你还有丝毫的妄想
期待刘氏后代子孙
再让你这块招牌
东山再起
重战江湖?"

The Success Story of My Primary Schoolmate On 23 February,2011, we drove up Cameron Highlands, in a “Black Maria”, for a scenic tour of the highlands vegetable farm. Our drive up the highlands was one laced with mixed feelings of excitement and anxiousness as we trod gingerly along the bumpy and narrow winding road up the mountain. Helen, Leon’s wife, lamented regretfully that she should have stayed behind at a coffee shop, instead of coming along with us in a Land Rover and suffer the torment of the intense heat under the blazing sun and not to mention the bumpy ride.

True enough, Leon and I were thrown off our seats several times as the vehicle swayed from side to side as it made its way up the mountain. Our backs and buttocks ached. Kim Boon remarked jokingly that we should go for “alignment and tuning” at a massage parlour at the Brinchang town.

Our driver,Deng Zhang Quan[邓长权], was used to driving along the narrow stretch of the mountain trail as he had to go up the mountain daily to attend to his chores in his farm. He had little time to entertain our anxieties over our safety on the road. As an experienced driver, he could maneuver the blind corners and avoid oncoming vehicles with utmost skill and precision. The breathtaking journey to the vegetable farm took more than an hour. The farm was as vast as the eye could see. Cash crops liked tomatoes, spring onions and cabbage were grown in the farm. A number of Bangladeshi farmhands were seen working there. According to Deng, he had invested more than a million dollars over the years on this farming project. The expenditure includes: license to clear certain acreage of the virgin jungle, piping and generators for irrigation purposes, infrastructure for the green house and storeroom, immigrant labour cost and vehicles for transportation of the agricultural produce.

Deng’s success did not come easily. It took him over thirty years of blood, sweat and tears, to build up his agricultural business to what it is today.

Deng was born to a big family of fourteen siblings. His parents had to slog in a sugar cane plantation to feed all of them. They worked a hired plot of land just behind the Pai Teik Chinese Primary School of Nibong Tebal.

Deng did not pursue his secondary school education as he had to help his parents in the plantation. Later, he went to Pulau Pangkor to seek his fortune as an apprentice on a fishing boat. In the end he decided to settle down as a vegetable farmer in Cameron Highlands.

During the seventies and eighties, there were no such thing as immigrant workers to be hired to help at the farms. Well-to-do farmers could employ local Indians but not so for Deng. He had to toil the field all by himself with the help of his immediate family members.

Life as a vegetable farmer in Cameron Highlands in those days was not pleasant at all. The farmers had to toil from dawn to dusk,to clear the virgin jungles for farming. All their daily meals had to be taken in the farm on the mountain range. They only went home after sunset; it was a mundane lifestyle.

Entertainment for the inhabitants in Cameron Highlands at that time was rare and far in between. The number of Indians in Cameron Highlands who committed suicide was the highest in the country every year during that period. Although it was not proven, it could be attributed to boredom. The cheapest and most common form of entertainment for the Chinese farmers at that time was watching video tapes from Hong Kong production.

But Deng was no ordinary person like his counterparts in the neighbourhood. He did not waste his time watching video tapes. He wisely utilised much of his spare time reading Chinese literature to his command of the Chinese language. He wrote many short essays over the years and they were frequently featured in local Chinese newspapers. A collection of 100 poetry written by him for the Children were compiled and published in a book entitled ‘Paper Bird’ [纸鸟: 邓长权童诗100首]. Through sheer hard work and perseverance Deng has overcome his financial and academic shortcomings to become a successful entrepreneur in the agricultural industry as well as a renowned writer for the local Chinese media. Everyone especially the young can take a leaf out of Deng's book.

Old Town Snake-King
The Hakka people used to label lazy bums who tried to evade work or their duty at all cost as “sa-wong”[蛇王,Snake-King] whereas in other communities the title “Snake-King” was a recognition bestowed on an expert snake catcher, especially if he could catch poisonous king cobras.

Recently I was shocked to hear from a good friend of mine, Mr.Henderson Tan, who is my ‘online encyclopedia’ regarding the history of my Old Town, Nibong Tebal. I was told that the ancestors of the King Cobras in the vicinity of my town were specially imported from India by the local British estate managers more than fifty years ago to hunt for rats at oil palm estates. They were thought to be effective pest control in the estates.
If what my friend had told me is true, I am rather curious as well as wonder whether the local species of cobra would ever ask the Indian species of cobra to “Pooh-lah! Hang balik India!” whenever they meet each other to argue over the matter of “cobra immigrants” or “pendatang Ular Tedung” in Malay. The Old Town of Nibong Tebal was surrounded by rubber estates, where some of them were later converted into oil palm estates. These estates were naturally infested with snakes, so these estates gave rise to a new occupation, snake catching ‘specialists’.These expert catchers would earn the tittle of ‘Snake Kings’. In the sixties and early seventies of the last century, Snake Kings of all races were found in abundance everywhere in Peninsular Malaysia. Newspapers at that time were never short of news of one snake king challenging another to see who would emerge as the ‘ultimate king of the kings’.

Hong Lim was our Old Town Snake King during that period. He was a resident of Old Market Road, Nibong Tebal. He caught snakes for his clients’ consumption. He would also sell the skin to be used as leather for making shoes, handbags, belts or outfits. He even made ointment with his own concoction to cure snake bites and skin diseases.

Believe it or not, the raw blood of cobra mixed with a liquor was served to men as a tonic drink. It claimed to be an aphrodisiac similar to Viagra. The flesh of poisonous snakes were kept in bottles filled with liquor for a period of time before it was used as a herbal tonic to cure rheumatism. I learned from another friend in Bukit Mertajam that an elderly lady who habitually ate a slice of raw gall bladder of a snake to preserve her youthful complexion. For Hong Lim,he would go out in the evenings with his assistant from one town to another with a police permit to set up a roadside stall to promote his home-made ointment and herbal tonic of liquor made of snakes. As if to attest to potency of his homemade brew, he displayed it along with live snakes. Being a devoted Buddhist ,his mother was very much against Hong Lim’s job of catching and killing snakes as a livelihood. Her advice “fell into deaf ears” as Hong Lim had had no other means to earn better money than catching snakes.

One evening the residence of the District Officer of Parit Buntar by the River Krian was disturbed by the presence of a cobra measuring twelve to fifteen foot long. All the occupants in the house were frightened and screaming hysterically ‘like fans at a Michael Jackson’s concert’. The District Officer, Mr. Abraham Lingkun, quickly summoned for a Police Inspector to catch the snake. The inspector duly arrived but declined to follow orders. He explained that he was trained like any other Police officers to maintain law and order, and definately not “to catch snakes!”

As luck would have it Hong Lim was busy selling his products near the bus station of Parit Buntar. The District Officer quickly ordered his driver to fetch Hong Lim to catch the cobra. Hong Lim, with the help of some others, wrestled with the snake for half an hour or so before they finally captured the beast.

The District Officer was very pleased and thankful to Hong Lim,and instantly he wrote him a letter of appreciation. Whether the District Officer rewarded Hong Lim monetarily, it was still as good as every body's guess.

However, Hong Lim was proud to possess this precious letter. He framed it and used it to promote his business. He would place it in a prominent place so that even a casual onlooker would not miss it. To a certain extent it did help to boost his sales. For all its worth the letter did considerably ward off harassment from the corrupt police officers (“mata-mata” for “duit kopi”).

As a Chinese adage states, “No one can be well and healthy for over a thousand days.”[人无千日好]. A minor mishap did happen to him while he was doing his business in Alor Setar. He was invited to catch a pair of king cobras in a rice mill. Although he was successful in his mission, one of his fingers was bitten by one of the beasts. He immediately cut off the poison-infected finger and asked his assistant to take him to the General Hospital for treatment.

A newspaper reporter from the Penang based English daily,The Straits Echo, came to know about it and published the news on the following day mentioning that “A renowned Snake King from the Old Town was bitten by a cobra but his own ointment did not help and he had to seek treatment at the General Hospital in Alor Setar.”

Hong Lim furious after reading the report. He went straight to Penang to see a famous lawyer, Mr. KS Lim, for legal advice whether he should sue the reporter for defamation.

Before the lawyer answered his question, Hong Lim was asked to produce a fifty-dollar note on the table. After keeping the note in the drawer, the lawyer answered briefly, “Sue? Of course, you can! But then, you wouldn’t be compensated much even if you won the case as the reporter didn’t mention your name.”

With the reply given, Hong Lim took heed of the hint from the lawyer and he did not pursue the matter any further. He went home ‘like a defeated dog with its tail tucked between its legs’. Nevertheless,he vowed he would try to catch more snakes within the shortest period to ‘redeem’ the fee that he had paid to the lawyer.

An Annual Get-together Lunch On 5 February 2011, we had an annual get-together lunch for the ex-pupils of the Class of ’69 of the Technical Institute of Penang at Goh Swee Kee Restaurant 5, Sri Bahari Road, Off Penang Road.

This was the first time I took part in this lunch gathering although Tick Lay had told me about it without fail for the past two years. Seventeen of us who attended had two tables to ourselves. Many among us did not meet one another since we left the Technical Institute more than forty years ago. However, we shared the same yearning of catching up with one another with news after all these decades. As Kim Piaw puts it, “Even though we might have changed in physically, our friendship remains intact.”

The attendees of this function were deeply indebted to Herman Teoh and Lye Choon Sheng for their enthusiastic and untiring effort in organising this annual gathering and to the others who tried to contact and canvass for the rest of school mates to grace the event.

At the gathering,when I was initially introduced to some of the gentlemen, I couldn’t recognise who they were as they definitely looked nothing like what they did forty years ago! It was only after I dug down deep into the recesses of my memory and during our conversations that I was able to piece together who was who. If all of us who had not met before for a long time were to bump into one another in Penang Road, we would have most likely treated one another as total strangers. Even though Tick Lay and Seen Moun were room mates in the school hostel when they were in Form Five, could not recognise each other when they met at the gathering.

I supposed it was the same with Soek King who could not make out who I was although we were in the same class during our Sixth Form years. It could be that her busy working life had resulted her ‘memory card’ being re-formatted many times over the years that ‘some of the older files might have been deleted or chucked into the trash bin’.

One particular file which Soek King still retained had aroused the interest of everybody at the gathering. It was a love story that is worth mentioning here.

This love story started during our school year in 1968. The main actor, the ‘Romeo’ of our school, was staying in the hostel - in the room next to mine. At that time some of us were already aware that he had to take his medication to help him sleep. But then no one would have suspected that he had fallen in love unilaterally with his classmate, Juliet.

Persistently Romeo would find every opportunity to stick around Juliet in school just like ‘bees swarming around a hive’. But Juliet did not want to have any affair with Romeo then . She got very annoyed and upset to the extent that she told her friends that one day she would not hesitate to give Romeo a huge mirror for him “to take a long look at himself in the mirror”.

Whether one would consider it lucky for Romeo, or otherwise for Juliet, fate had charted the destiny of this love affair. As if with the divine intervention, both Romeo and Juliet went to the “same” university, took up the “same” course, attended the “same” church, taught in the “same” town in a Northern state of Peninsular Malaysia and finally got married and lived happily as a family. The story definitely had a fairy tale ending.

Our conversation hovered around topics such as ways of maintaining a healthy lifestyle; means of reducing stress; recommended reading and selected places of interest worthy of visit.

The two hours of lunch together was hardly enough for us to catch up with one another. So we adjourned to Coffee Island at Gurney Drive, for another round of conversation and a free flow of beer and coffee. We lingered for another couple of hours. All of us enjoyed the companionship, especially when we had a few “jokers” among us.

Before we bid farewell to one another, Lye Choon Sheng had made a proposal to have our next annual Chinese New Year gathering at Chiang Mai. Hopefully it would materialize with a better response from our school mates and their family members.