I came to know Christopher Michael Forrest during in the infancy of my career with Texas Instrument (S) Pte Ltd in Singapore in 1989. We were told to address him as Kit Forrest or in short, Kit. He was a fine English gentleman living in Bedford, England.
We were in the department known as Singapore Process Automation Center (SPAC) where all research, design, manufacturing and production of high technology automation machines were developed for manufacturing of integrated circuits for all eighty Texas Instrument’s plants worldwide.
I was starting as a manufacturing engineer which happened to take over the operation of the engineering section in Bedford, England due to business closure. Kit Forrest was assigned and contracted to continue thereafter for two years to be the information technology manager to assist and train us in our Singapore research branch during our initial setup cum taking over.
In my manufacturing operation, he had supported me and trained me on the software which had a systematic withdrawal of manufacturing parts from the warehouse.
He had developed this material flow software in Bedford, England and transferred it to SPAC.
In the course of developing the software, he termed a basket of items collected by any of our colleagues as “Kit” which was his short name. His name would always be in the legacy of this software and he was very proud of it.
In my work, I made a lot of mistakes during the usage of his software and he was always supportive and forgiving. When I explained to him that I need a higher level of authorization, he gave me willingly despite the strong objection from his superior. At one point, I was having the highest authorization in his software that I could remedy my own mistakes on the system. That prevented him from clearing my mess which meaned that I was doing part of his job. So wonderful guy!
We had our happy times together. I remembered the moment when I had to entertain his wife and him when she came to Singapore to visit him. I recommended dinner at Bugis Street hawker centre which provided a very good local cuisine. His wife and him were bold enough to try and he graciously picked me up at my residence that day. We had a sumptuous dinner and he was very grateful for showing him this great place to dine although the environment was just mediocre.
When he left SPAC after the 2 year contact, his superior wanted to extend his stay but he chose to go back to England. He settled down back home and continued to work in Bedford. We communicated using email when he was back home. Whenever he came to Singapore, he would take some time out to call me and I will always enjoy his company.
The last time I met him was around October 2005. I came to know recently that he had passed on about 3 month after I last met him.
He is enjoying himself in heaven now. So long, my friend.
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