When I was poor......

When I know that I had existed in this world, poverty had not visited me and I don’t even recognize it. It was until when my father had a very serious accident which resulted in the amputation of his left leg. That year, I was just 11 year old, trying to get through my education at primary five.

All of a sudden, visits to the Singapore General Hospital were frequent, just to see my Dad lying on the bed of the ward, groaning initially and later in recuperation. Memories in the ward included busy nurses and doctors, prevented from visitation during non visiting hours and the medical smell of antiseptic solution “dettol” used as a cleaning agent.

As life continues on, I could not understand and comprehend my mother’s emotional state, concerns and worries. At times, I did not understand why she would cry more easily and often.

The only different I noticed was the changes in the dishes for our meals. The dishes started to get lesser and simpler. Simply porridge with peanuts and soya source as dressing served as very common lunches or dinners thereafter.

When I followed my mum to the market, she would always buy the leftover vegetables which were drastically cheaper but needed to slice away the rotten parts for consumption. Meat, fishes and chickens were luxuries reserved for ancestral worship before we could partake.

Poverty then started to sink into my young mind. All my past fond memories of Dad’s returning home late from work with a packet of noodles and enjoying happily with my parents and my sisters had never repeated since then.

To save expenses on fuel, my sisters and I spent our spare times collecting leftover woods from a timber factory down the road. The fire that cooked our meals from these woods made our kettle, pots and pans darkened with soot to the rim. Although it may looked very pathetic at times, nevertheless, it provided us some good and warm meals.

Next action of filling our stomach was to get as many clean newspapers as possible to make into paper bags for barter trade with the provision shops. The owners of these shops would reward us with a few kilograms of flour. With flour, we could make them into pancakes and served us well for breakfast.

In order to find some household income as Dad was out of job due to the handicap, my mother would sew jeans everyday till midnight using the only oil lamp in the house and children like my sisters and me, would help to sew umbrellas during our free time to supplement income. We even worked on firecrackers which were not banned in Singapore then.

There was always no problem when we do not have the money to buy toys. As children, we created our own fun for leisure. Hop scotch was a simple game with no expense needed. Five stones were made from torn clothing with sand from nature and used milk cans into lanterns. Spiders were caught among the bushes and used match boxes as their homes. Fighting with spiders was the most interesting games enjoyed by the kids then. Fishes were caught in big drains and happily shown to others in used bottles. Kites were made from bamboo taken from nature with newspapers and flying kites in a windy afternoon always end up in a high.

Though as children, with the given situation, you may feel that I am very deprived but I felt I was not. I felt that poverty had a big lesson for me. I learned to be thrifty, understood hunger better and was able to be easily satisfied with just simple things. This was my simplest and biggest lesson on character building for just being poor.

Gardening

The front door of my house is facing west. As the sunlight is fearful in the afternoon, it gets a lot of deterioration due to the strong sun ray. Ever since the completion of my house's renovation, I decided to make sure that the front door of my house is not been badly affected again.

Many ideas came and went but eventually, I settled to establish a mini garden in front of my house. When the idea was settled in my mind, I announced it to my family members, there is no strong objection but had also left all the works to me.

I started with the money plant and today it had grown into a beauty as below:


Simple daily maintenance and care of about 15 minutes like watering the plants, spraying the leaves with water to make them looks lively and clearing dried leaves are necessary routine to keep the plants at tip top condition. The good feeling during these times especially among the green and seeing them growing day by day can only be experienced.

Monthly feeding of fertilizers, plants trimming, transferring plants to bigger pots can sometimes consume up to an hour or two. During my shopping trips, the flora departments or flower shops are additional stops that had been included. In these places, I can learn more ways of planting from the florists or other plants lovers. I also regularly served the internet for more planting tips.

Socially, gardening had allowed me to broaden my green circle of friends who likes plants. We talk about these green plants, procedures of care and handling, how to procreate them, exchange pots of plants among us and enjoy our fruits of labour together.

After I had started this mini garden, my visit to the Singapore Botanical Garden takes a new perspective and dimension. I looked out for and started to enjoy nice views of plants and flowers in the nature. The nature of these different plants and flowers are so amazing and pleasing to look at.

For me, the appreciation of the beauty of gardening had started with just trying to shield my front door from damage to admiring nature and their beauties. Precisely, as my front door is facing west, the plants gets a lot of strong sunlight and grew rapidly. As these plants grew, they created a shade for my front door.

It is just so amazing to be able to live to appreciate the green natural environment right at your door step resulted from time spent on manual hands work, determination, commitment and perseverance. I am also extremely happy and glad to be able to see the plants growing day by day from my patience care and touch. The process of witnessing their daily growth had been fulfilling and had lightened up my whole life. I am always looking forward to see them every morning before I set off to work.

Some of the plants that I am admiring daily:

Life Long Learning

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.

Excuses

Quote:

Excuses are the nails used to build a house of failure. ~Don Wilder and Bill Rechin

Excuses are what we tell ourselves to avoid dealing with unpleasant truths. As long as we keep entertaining these excuses, we will never face and deal with the real issues or problems. An important step in personal growth is to uproot excuse-making with consciousness and courage and confront the real issues.
We tend to make excuses to avoid appropriate and good suggestions and more often than not, ending the route of our impending success.

Most excuses use negative ideas, thoughts, words or phrases to degrade or degenerate oneself which resulted in not moving forward. Excuses are getaway one tells oneself for not good enough to do the task and therefore there is no need even to try. The fact is that if one did not even tried, how does one knows that he/she is competent? Prolong negative thoughts and actions always lead to disastrous outcomes.

Some of the most common excuses and their underlying truths:

Don’t have enough time.

We often heard this excuse but the actual truth is that there is always time for activities you want to do or must do. These activities can includes going for exercise, built better relationships with your siblings or children, taking up community service etc.

Many other people are happily doing all these activities and the difference is that they have made no excuses but have given priority, commitment and leverage a high level of importance to these activities. Needless to predict, they will face success in their endeavor.

People using excuses for not exercising are really saying that exercise simply isn’t important to them. It’s easier to give the excuse of lack of time, but the real problem is a lack of will.

I don’t know how.

This is the easier excuse to give because if one does not know how to do, then one does not have to do. The truth behind “I don’t know how” is “I’m unwilling to learn.” In other words, you have to admit that you’re lazy.

Don’t let excuses run your life. If you catch yourself using excuses, immediately replace it with a statement of the real truth. At first, that truth may seem uncomfortable and excuses seem to be tempting, but when you start facing the truth, you’ll have the opportunity to grow. For example, if you face your unwillingness to learn, you may decide that even though it would be a lot of hard work to learn a new skill, you still insisted on doing it as you wanted it badly enough to commit yourself to learning it.

Using excuses on external, uncontrollable factors such as lack of time, information, or resources on our failure always lead to not solving our underlying problems because those factors aren’t under our direct control. We need to put aside our excuses and look for genuine causes that we can control. What we can control, we can improve.

We can’t control time, but we can control how we prioritize the actions that fill that time. We can’t control information, but we can choose what to learn as well as how much effort we devote to learning. So by controlling the factors that are within our control, we can have time used wisely, gather information and all the resources we desire.

Classical example: Waking up in the morning….

We always give ourselves excuse especially early in the morning when it is cooling to carry on sleeping instead of waking up immediately to go for exercise. It takes a steel of discipline to push oneself out of bed. Most of the time, when the alarm clock rings, we usually tends just to slap it down and thought that we will wake up five minutes later. The five minutes delayed usually ended up half to one hour later. The trick is to wake up immediately after the alarm rings and there will be no more excuse or issue of not waking up on time. Studies have indicated that it will take 21 days to form a habit and if it is your choice to wake up on time, start practicing today!

Counselling

I was born into a normal family with Dad, Mum, 3 sisters and younger brother. Life was normal and ordinary until my Dad met with an accident at his workplace, resulted in his left leg being amputated at the knee. I was eleven years old then and in Primary 5.

Thereafter, life was hard. With the condition running into my teenage life, I chose to study in the Polytechnic instead of the junior college as I felt that my industrial and economical worth would be better even if I could not make it to the university.

Being introvert during the secondary school days, I began to open up when I entered the Polytechnic and participated as a member of the Engineering Society. The society was managed all by students in the Polytechnic. I was well recognized for my effort and contributions towards the society and was sponsored by the society for a leadership course at the National Youth Leadership Institute.

During that 25 days’ course, my whole life began to open up. Not only I was trained on self confident, leadership and motivation, counseling was also part of course.

After the course, I started to apply what I had learned to organize activities for members of the Engineering Society. One of the activities organized was a hike in Pulau Tekong over the weekend for 200 freshmen in 1977. The knowledge of leadership and counseling came into play as I started to motivate, encourage and support my fellow schoolmates to join us in our self believed goals and direction. It was very fun thing to do then and I was very pleased, contended and satisfied when all the freshmen gave good feedbacks about how they had enjoyed the trip.

During my national service, I was posted as an instructor to the School of Basic Military Training. Even though in the military, discipline is the key factor to drive whatever needs to be done, occasionally, motivation techniques came in very handy when situations demanded.

One of the most recent encountered of counselling was with my final year students at the Polytechnic doing their final year project. Students with underlining problems exhibit behavioural pattern namely apathy, lateness, ill discipline, no respect for authority etc

Motivating them was a bigger task than the project itself. I could safely state that I saw their motivation came back after 17 weeks of hard work and counselling. Currently, they have the highest respect for me not because I am their supervisor or lecturer but I have earned them.

Real cases but students’ names were changed to keep confidentiality:

Student Ken was appointed the project leader by the team. As usual, he did not performed well in the first few weeks. He even acknowledged that he had been slacking given the fact that all his team members were slacking.

Being the first student in my target for motivation, he began to confide to me about his problems after weeks of small talks with him to gain his confidence. He had problems communicate with his parents and was very bothered. We spent hours together talking about his problems and develop solutions together for him using some of my previous experiences. Combining his effort, he had since been able to communicate well with his mother and will be working on his father. He also displayed a very positive attitude after that.

Another student, Levin was totally not interested in his work in the beginning and would come for the weekly project meetings, treating it as a pastime. I noticed that he was very quiet, kept to himself and had not been socializing with his team mates. He always had no confident in his work and always need confirmation to affirm his decisions. He had been behaving in this way until his group members started to protest against him after 16 weeks together.

From then, he was assigned to set up the Programmable Logic Control (PLC) circuits but he did not know how to do it and had no initiative to seek help. I had given him countless times of verbal warning and two email warning letters. My last stroke of patient ran out and I gave him an official warning.

At that time, I realised from his Care Person that he was actually a reinstated student and his bad academic performance had been related to his mother’s passing on due to cancer in 2005. He had been wondering why these things had to happen to him and had always in denial and depression.

Upon realizing, I immediately talked to him to try to get him out the situation and he was crying during our discussion. I knew that after my emotional talk to him, he had come to terms with his mother’s death and he will continue to move on in life positively. He had even promised me to tell his mother that he will start his life anew at her grave.

The next day, when he came to the Polytechnic, I knew that he was a change man with his cheerful expression and positive attitude. What a relief!

I want to give thanks to the opportunities given to me to be able to use my acquired counselling skills to help others having problems or in distress.

Discipline

Discipline is always needed in a successful life.

Discipline drives the way you live your life, directs your emotions, regulate your relationship with others and maintain your mental and physical health.

If you are discipline enough to wake up an hour early every morning, then this extra one hour can be used for many gains in your life eg exercising to improve your health, execute planning for the day etc. Similarly, you must be disciplined enough to do the right requirement of physical exercise and not to over do it.

In financial aspect of your life, one must be disciplined enough to spend within one’s means. You can always be disciplined enough to encourage yourself to be happy with just simple things around you without letting envy of high value products disturb your simple taste.

Good discipline also involves regular fixed time for food, sleep, relaxation and enjoyment.

It is well known that an average person needs 8 hours of sleep per night. It is also known that the liver starts to recuperate and release toxin between 11pm to 2am and so our body should be disciplined and scheduled to sleep 2 hours before that. Of cause, those with health problems should be disciplined enough to have a good and longer rest to allow the body to recuperate. Allowing the body to rest is a basic discipline everyone must adopt daily so that the body can perform well for the day and the rest of our lives.

Plain water serves the best liquid to quench our thirst. Every body should drink an average of 8 glasses daily and the volume of water can included other forms of liquid intake eg soup, juice from fruits like water melon, beverages etc.

For food, I have recently discovered that fruits should be eaten 1/2 hour prior to soup and the main meals ie rice and dishes. In such practice, fruits will dissolve first as solid food take longer to dissolve.

Although discipline do wonder for everyone, over discipline can result in self damaging, destruction and lead to poor stage of health. When over disciplined, it may lead to deprivation, restriction and pushing too hard on ourselves. One should maintain balance on discipline and enjoy to live life to the fullest.

In the market

The market is a place full of vibrant activities. From stalls selling fruits, vegetables, flowers, seafood, meat, etc, all this activities resulted from happy transactions between willing seller and buyer.

Normally, the events in the market start as early as 5 am in the morning. Stall holders will begin to start laying out their merchandises and prepares for a day of selling their products. Early bird consumers normally housewives, will start to stroll in as early as 6 am because they want to get their first fresh product available. I have realized this phenomenon as fruits and vegetables are at their best freshness and big in size to choose from early in the morning. You can also smell the lovely fragrant of the raw vegetables and fruits.

Having discovered this phenomenon which I had totally ignored in the past, I begin to wake up early in the morning to go down to the market to enjoy this precious moment almost every morning.

Another aspect waiting for me every morning is the friendly greeting and smiles from the stall holders when you passed by them. I will readily acknowledged them and reciprocated with similar wishes and greeting with a friendly smile. All this activities lights you up early in the morning and leads you to a good start for the day.

As the buying and selling takes place, bargaining is often heard. Careful observation among these bargain hunters can teach you lessons in bargaining, communication and persuasion. At the end of the bargaining, you can see happy buyers’ and sellers’ faces as one had bought his/her requirement and the other had sold his/her goods.

Another lesson to learn is how to choose fresh and good products. I was ignorant in the past but when I discovered this beautiful activity in the market, I began to learn how to select fresh products for my family consumption. This decision was welcoming with my wife as not only I had an extra fulfilling activities, I also helped her in marketing.

In the beginning, I tend to observe how these experience housewives chose their products. At times, I do not comprehend how they do their selection. After a while, I felt that it was not the right way to learn and began another approach. I began to ask politely from these housewives how they chose their fresh products. Most of the time, they were very willing to share. I benefited tremendously during these conversation and they became my early morning greeting partners. We met most of the mornings, smile and wished each other well to kick off and start our day.

I really enjoyed my morning walk in the market. I will always go there every morning unless my schedule does not permit me to do so. I hope that you will also enjoy as much as I do with this simple activity.

Swimming

I was forced to learn swimming. Being a citizen of Singapore, boys at the age of 18 must serve National Service ie trained as a soldier. This training and service process normally would change a teenage boy to a responsible man with a fighting spirit for the country.

One of the criteria for a combat fit soldier is to be able to swim especially in this tiny island like Singapore which is surrounded by the sea. Being brought up in a kampong, there was no pond, canal or other facilities to learn swimming and for many years before reaching 18 of age, I had no opportunity to learn swimming.

When I was 2 month from enlistment, I began to feel inadequate and pestered my friend, Michael Ong to teach me swimming. Michael, definitely just an amateur in swim, tries his best to coach me. I had 4 sessions of swimming lessons from him before I was enlisted into the army.

In the first lesson of swimming in the army, I declared that I was not a swimmer and was put in the non swimmer category. Later did I realize what I was in for. The swimming instructors, some of them are younger that me, march us to do the confidence test. This required the new, non swimmers to jump into the deep end of the pool which was about more than 2 meters deep and accesses our ability to cope in that situation! Wow – too much for non swimmers to handle – I thought.

When it was my turn, I did not have a choice but to jump into the pool. I found myself sinking and froze in the deep pool. Suddenly, someone picked me up from behind and shoved me safely to the side of the pool. He was one of the swimming instructor, who is younger than me, and had pick me up gracefully and lead me to safety.

My mind began to wonder as I felt embarrassed but I promised myself to learn swimming to the level of his standard. That was the driving force towards my attainment of my lifeguard certificate later in life.

When I passed out from my basic military training and instructor course, I was still not competence in my swimming skills. It was my posting as an instructor in School of Basic Military Camp that I had the opportunity to train further in swimming. As an instructor, I had the other colleagues who are trained as swimming instructors and that's where my swimming skills began to improve with leaps and bounce.

With the swimming skills, I went on to teach other friends of mine who like to learn swimming. Deep in my heart, I know that I was still inadequate, as I did not know life saving skills which was necessary as a safety precaution for carrying out good swimming lessons.

The opportunity finally arrived during my undergraduate days in Nanyang Technological Institute. I was admitted to the second year degree course and being a host élite, I have the spare time in the evening to take up the training as a lifeguard. I jump at the opportunity and never looked back since.

The training was every Monday and Wednesday nights for 3 months with each lasting three hours into the night. At the end of this journey, I was certified a trained lifeguard by the Royal Life Saving Society (UK).

Till today, swimming had given me a lot of benefits. I had trained 8 ladies and 6 gentlemen on swimming based on goodwill of personal friendship. One of them even represented the constituency in swimming competition. Nowadays, I would rather encourage my friends to take up swimming as a healthy exercise. I had also continued to use swimming as my aerobic exercise on a weekly basics.

My second sister

I am sure before I pen this down she knows what I am going to write about her. That’s my sister. Once you start describing something, she can foresee what you want to do. Ooh no!

She is the workhorse of my family. Since young, my mother, being the old tradition lady, had the inking that only male heir will carry the family name and must be treated with extra special care like endanger species. With this situation and given that I am the only son during my first twelve years in my life, before my younger brother was born, she indulges in me religiously.

I was the one who was always given the chicken drumstick since young. When I started to realize it, my conscious made me reject her offer of the drumsticks and began to pretend to get sick of it so that my other sisters had their chance of tasting them.

Needless to say, she and my elder sister had to help my mother in handling all the household chores while I was always excused with lame reasons of guys must study harder in order to be able to run and make a name for the family. Being put in this type of pressure since young, my sister’s culinary skills have been super since young and her methods of handling household chores were consistently executed with lightning speed even till today.

In my humble opinion, she is the brightest child in the family. Given all the circumstances that she was in since young, she had developed good organizing and coping skills and it can be reflected well even till today when she faces difficulties or challenges. Her attitude and character are also solidly molded from these situations.

She is helpful in nature. Having known that my elder son was just mediocre in his studies, she volunteered to guide him along his studies during his “Primary School Leaving Examination (PSLE)” period in 2003. She took great pain, commitment and troubles to relearn all the current new techniques and syllabus of the primary school system before she had the competency to guide. Having this experience, she forward her help again towards the guiding of her niece at the point of this writing.

On the hind side, with her strong attitude, determination and tough character, she could always assumed the role of a leader in any household but somehow may have hindered her process in term of relationship and marriage opportunities. Her future partner or spouse should be able to bear her dominance or she must tone down to compromise if any future relationship is to happen and develop.

Presently, she is staying with my mother and helping her intensively in all aspect. Being her brother, I am very grateful to her in undertaking this role as she has somewhat also extended in fulfilling my part of responsibilities towards my mother.

I wish her well in all future endeavors and I recommend that she probably have to tone down a bit for the sake of her health and social life.

Professor Adhityan Appan – my most admire benefactor and confidant.

He is the benefactor of my life. Presently at 72 years of age, he is always humble and active. He does consulting works and lectures part time at the Asia Pacific Centre for Enviromental Law (APCEL).

Recalling my first encounter with him jolted my memory back in 1986. I was working in a statutory board when I received an admission for a course in Mechanical Engineering at Nanyang Technological Institute (today known as Nanyang Technology University) with the degree to be conferred by National University of Singapore.

I took the initiative of asking my company for sponsorship well in advance but the company only replied me 3 weeks before the academic term starts. Given the situation, I resigned from the board giving only 3 weeks of notice instead of the required one month notice. The board accepted my resignation but slapped me with a liquidated damages of one month of my salary which means that I had to pay $1600 back to the board. Sincerely, I was furious.

My colleague introduced Prof Appan to me and I met him at his office in Nanyang Technological Institute for the first time in my life. I related my incident to him and immediately he assured me that he could resolved it for me. My simple mind can’t imagined how he could carry out but one week later, I got a letter from the board stating that my liquidated damages was being waived. Up to today, I still do not know how he managed to do it but I know whatever he had done, it’s all the way out to help me coming from a kind hearted, concerned teacher and mentor.

From that time onwards, my respect for him grew by the days. We had long talks at his office during my stay as a student in the university and he was always encouraging, forward looking and always made time for me no matter how busy he was. From all these talks, I learned a lot about his past works and his family and he understood all my past encounters and my ambitions for my passage of life.

He even wrote a supporting letter for my application of scholarship in the university. I went back to thanks him sincerely for all his help and since then we began to start our teacher-student relationship. I was invited to his house for Deepavali celebration during my final year as a student and I was very glad to be there.

Upon graduation, my first testimony was from him among my final year project supervisor and other professors. One year after graduation, I got married and he attended my wedding dinner happily with his wife even though my dinner reception was just mediocre. Thereafter, there was a lapse of the relationship as I fought for my path and financial stability in my life.

It was in 1991 when my youngest brother was doing his accountancy course in Nanyang Technological University (renamed from Nanyang Technological Institute and issuing its own certificate). I referred him to Prof Appan and he was advising and guiding him all along during the years as a student there.

Even till now, we always keep in contact. Courtesy calls are common and Deepavali blessing for him will always keep him lively. He will always keep in touch with me through his courteous, well wishing card during Chinese New Year.

I am very blessed to have such a benefactor and confidant.

My elder son

When I describe my elder son and if he is reading now, he knows that I am referring to him.

I am very pleased with him as he had tried his very best for his GCE ‘O” Level examination in 2007 and had obtained remarkable results.

My son has shown that he is capable of making it when he put his heart, soul and passion on doing it. Keep going!

It was not long ago that he had obtained mediocre results for his Primary School Leaving Examination (PSLE). I understand that he was not satisfied with his result but he has preserved and proven himself.

All along, he had been the nice child, always tried hard to follow his parents’ concerned instructions after taking into consideration that they are beneficial for him.

He had also developed upon himself in term of leadership especially planning, organizing, directing and even socially through the community services and NPCC activities participated in his secondary school. At this point of writing, he is moving on to take up courses in his selected junior college.

I have only one slight concern for him. I like him to take good care of himself physically, doing more exercises and taking the right food in appropriate quantity. He will be serving the nation for 2 years from 2010 through national service.

I am proud of him. I like to encourage him to carry on with his good work and enjoy every of his moment.

From a proud Dad’s - humble observation and opinion

A tribute to my dear friend and ex colleague

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.

My younger son

When I describe my younger son and if he is reading now, he knows that I am referring to him.

Since birth, he is the challenging type. I was taken by surprise when he started banging his baby cot strongly immediately after his birth in the hospital. That's my first impression of him.

As he led his life, he continues to show his grit, bravery and determination.

About a year and half old, he accidentally tripped over his brother feet and landed on his left hand. He cried in pain but when he was seen by the Chinese physician in the clinic, he displayed indifferent although the injured part was swollen. Being overcome by his confidence, I treated the incident as minor.

Three week later, when the swell subsided, I noticed his left arm is not straight! I immediately rushed him to hospital to get an X-ray and it was confirmed that he had a 70% greenstick fracture on his left arm. The doctor noted that his fracture had started to heal and displaced my fear of a crooked hand as the hand will straighten back. What a relief!

I also remembered he hurt his teeth on the toy car at the age of 2 + and hold his pain throughout his night in his sleep. The next morning, his pillow was full of blood but his injured gum and teeth had recovered. He had managed to get through on his own!

For his studies and education, he had done well. He had been constantly topping in the 5% of every cohort. He does his homework well and in detail. His also enjoy his present CCA in National Police Cadet Corp (NPCC).

One concern is his procrastination of work in term of content. He like to stretch his decision on the content of his work to the last minute to obtain perfection which obviously will built up his anxiety and had to work late into the night. I hope he will do better in his time management with his heavy workload and CCA activities.

He should also take care of himself physically with good nutritional choice. I hope he will take up the challenge to build himself up in this direction as well so that he can enjoy and withstand all the activities that NPCC offered.


From a proud Dad’s - humble observation and opinion.

My aunt

I have known my aunt ever since I was told to address her. My family was poor when I was young and could only afford to visit her during Chinese New Year. In those occasions, my sisters and I paid our respect to her and were always very glad when the time comes as we can go for another outing.

Aunt is my father’s cousin. She is 88 years old today – a living legend. From my mother account, she has been into her husband’s family in her tender age to be the child bride and had since given birth to six daughters and two sons. For a record, from her confession recently, she has seventeen grandchildren and fourteen great grandchildren. Although she is not well educated, she always takes her opportunity to learn anything new.

She is gusty lady who is quick at learning skills. She had good culinary skills. I remember on a meal served by her in 1977 that gave me a lasting impression of her culinary skills. I happened to pass by her house to borrow textbook for my pre university classes and she retained me for lunch and her food make me recognized her as a family food expert.

She has a very positive attitude and outlook. She advocated that human are made to work and she live by example taking care of her children and most of her grandchildren. At the age of 88, she is still looking after her grandchildren bearing her suffering of glaucoma which is insignificant to her. She has always enjoyed her responsibilities and takes her charges in stride.

She has also been very gracious and understanding. Over my busy schedule, I have not visited her for the past few years but she is satisfied with just a simple phone call to her. She understood that I have my busy schedules and always ready to excuse me graciously.

I like to recognize that she is one of the amazing ladies that I have encountered before. Only regret is that I am unable to learn from her given all my constraints. Anyway, all benefits have been passed down to her children and descendents. That’s a blessing.

******** The above accounts are my personal views and opinions ********

(The mandarin version will be up shortly. Let me have some time as I am still learning and struggling with mandarin – Thanks)

Learning and change 学习与改变

Recently, I begin to discover the beauty of continuous learning and change and have been enjoying it.

One of them that I discovered is the blog. This blog will spur me in writing both in English and Mandarin and I foresee to learn more during the process. If I made any mistake, please excuse me as I am still learning.

The other learning opportunities are MSN chat, Face book, Maple Story etc

In MSN chat, I learned the lingo of afk – away from keyboard, brb – be right back, bb – bye bye, gtg – got to go etc. I had the benefit of chatting with relatives living in China and a niece located in Hong Kong advancing her career. I also had done video conferencing with them.

I have speed up my learning process with the encouragement and support of my two teenage sons. They are always supporting me with just a shout away and they responded instantaneously. They are my best buddies now!




学习与改变

最进，我发觉在学习和改变中的好处，而且还在享受中。

第一件是博喀，从它，我可以用英语和华语，发挥我的写作能力。如有错误的表达，敬请原谅。

其他的学习，如MSN chat, Face book, Maple Story 等等。

在MSN 交谈时，我学会了简说，如afk – away from keyboard, brb – be right back, bb – bye bye, gtg – got to go等等。

我也向在中国的远方亲戚打了教导， 也向在香港的甥女沟通。

我可以很快的学到这些电脑的知识，都是我两个儿子的支持和鼓励。现在他们是我学习的好帮手。

Hello

Welcome to my blog. Hope you like it.