I just like to learn and as there were always choices, priority and limited times for what to learn, I chose wisely to avoid missing any opportunities.
When I was small during childhood, I leave in a kampong in Lorong Koo Chye and my neighbours were Teochiew. I played with them daily and as I needed to converse with them in their dialect, I took up the opportunity to learn from them. I remember their 84 year old grandmother was kind, gentle and willingly to guide and teach me patiently. Presently, my ability in speaking Teochiew has diminished but whenever opportunities arises to revise and practice, I will be able to at least converse well again.
I learned the bargaining technique from my mother. For the first few encounters during those bargaining session, I felt a kind of awkward and shy but she can be insistent, persuasive, patience and even endure sarcastic remarks thrown at her. All her bargaining effort was to save as much possible given the very poor financial situation when I was young. Currently, I still used those techniques whenever there is opportunity and I also used these skills for corporate encounters.
Being born into a traditional Hokkien family, mum’s skill of making of rice dumpling was passed down from her parents. I was fascinated how she could make such delicious rice dumpling and made my commitment to learn from her. One of the most difficult skill of making rice dumpling is the tying of the dumpling. A beautiful rice dumpling must be tied well to contain the rice and ingredients and looks well. My skill in tying rice dumpling had often passed her litmus test and would often help her when opportunities arises.
My dad had a bicycle that he used to ride all he way from Lorong Koo Chye in Upper Paya Lebar Road to his company in Telok Ayer Street in Shenton Way just to save on bus fare. After he had met with the accident at his workplace, resulted in his left leg being amputated at the knee, the bicycle was left to idle. I wanted to learn cycling at that time of age 10, but Dad was reluctant. I had to persuade him to allow me to use his bicycle. The bicycle was huge, meant for adult but I just wanted to try. Obviously, Dad was concerned of injuries while learning and being disabled, he was not in the capacity to teach me. I had to convince him time and again and he reluctantly allowed me but not without worrying for me. I promised him to be very careful with my practice and learned the skill with just minor bruises. This experience had served me well later in life when I had the opportunity to teach my two sons in cycling.
In my previous entry to my blog, I have a detail account of how I came to learn swimming. Through National Service and self improvement pressures, I pushed myself to learn. Every opportunity was hardness to practice and learned. After attaining a certain competency in swimming, I starting teaching my siblings and close friends to swim and the lack in life saving skills was haunting me during those lessons. I felt incompetent and when I had the opportunity to take up life saving skills in swimming during my undergraduate days in university , I jumped at it. After the life saving course, I felt very confident when teaching swimming to those who wanted to learn.
I was working 3 rotating shift regardless of the day in Pasir Panjang Power Station after National Service. This means that I may be off during weekdays with no activities as most of friends were working. To fulfill my learning appetite, I began to search for courses to attend. At that moment, I had class 3 driving license which qualifies me to drive a car but I did not own one and had not been driving. I was contemplating to rent a car to practice driving and for leisure but another idea hit me when I had a chat with my colleague.
He challenged me to take up class 4 & 5 driving license test. This means that I will have my driving practice and earned two more licenses but the challenge was to drive bigger vehicles on lorry and crane. For class 4, testing was on an air-con, hydraulic steering lorry which was quite comfortable. As for the class 5, it was in a crane. Not only it was without hydraulic steering, no air-con and yet you had to maneuver the heavy vehicle using double clutching. Most of the time, I was always sweating during training and sometimes you had to steer until you were force to stand up as the weight of the vehicle and turning situation of the maneuver caused the steering wheel to be tight and heavy.
I took up the challenge in 1984 and passed the class 4 driving in two attempts and class 5 in three attempts.
I will still keep on learning whenever opportunities arise. Sometimes, several opportunities can appear at the same time. In those instances, one has to prioritize and choose the best one to learn. For some who are able to cope well, they can learn several skills or lessons at the same time. One has to determine the best combination for learning.
