One day in your life … remembering Michael Jackson

Thanks Michael for the gift of some of the most wonderful music that I grew up with …

One day in your life
you’ll remember a place
Someone’s touching your face
You’ll come back and you’ll look around you

One day in your life
You’ll remember the love you found here
You’ll remember me somehow
Though you don’t need me now
I will stay in your heart
And when things fall apart
You’ll remember one day…

From ‘One Day in my Life’, Michael Jackson, 1975

I would certainly remember you not just for one day in my life …

Port Dickson

Besides Kemaman, my parents also frequently made visits to Port Dickson in the early 1970s. Port Dickson located in the tiny state of Negri Sembilan, which boasts a 12 mile stretch of beach south of the town, was a popular holiday destination for not so much Singaporeans, but for many Malaysians. We often stayed at the Lido Hotel at the 8th mile of the 12 mile stretch, which was a somewhat rundown, but clean enough hotel, housed in a single storey building that opened to the beach, with a centre hall which served as the reception as well as a restaurant, and two wings with maybe five or six rooms in each wing.

Beach in front of Lido Hotel, Port Dickson, 1971

The beach around Port Dickson was by no means among the best beaches one could find in Peninsula Malaysia, especially compared to the white sandy beaches of the east coast of Malaysia, but they were probably one of the more accessible beaches, close enough to Singapore, during a time when a car trip by the old trunk or coastal roads would take a better part of a day. The winding roads that Negri Sembilan were well known for contributed a large part to the journey time, particularly so when the car you were in was part of a convoy of vehicles following behind a slow moving truck moving at 30 mph round the bends with little or no chance of overtaking.

Although the beach was nice enough for us kids to enjoy, building sandcastles, hurling a frisbee around, and having a dip in the somewhat murky waters, the highlight was often dinners, when we made our way into town to feast on fresh seafood – my favourite was the sweet and sour promfret served at the Peking Restaurant, which operated out of a cluster of food outlets by the waterfront in town.

In the late 1990s, I had the chance of visiting Port Dickson again, maybe some 20 years since I had last been there with my parents as a boy. The building which housed the Lido Hotel still stood at the 8th mile, looking a little worse for wear. Behind the faded sign on the façade and the faded mould covered paint, it looked like a restaurant was still opertaing out of the building, but if the hotel was still in operation, it wouldn’t be somewhere that I would want to stay in, but the sight of the hotel certainly brought memories back.

Ghost stories from my childhood

Two stories I that I remember hearing from my parents:

Late one evening, a colleague of one of my parents was returning home in his car, accompanied by his wife, after attending a party at a holiday chalet in Changi. The route from Changi to the north and central parts of Singapore took them through the old Tampines Road, which at that time was the longest road in Singapore. The poorly lit road passed through the rural Tampines area which at that time was quite wooded. Passing by a clearing by which were several fishing ponds, and going around a bend, the man suddenly felt a sense of unease. He then noticed a shadowy figure on the backseat of the car from the corner of his eye. Not being sure whether it was his imagination, he decided not to do anything to alert his wife seated beside him. He tried not to look into his rear view mirror and behind him as he stepped on the accelerator. After what seemed to him like an eternity, he suddenly sensed that the presence in his backseat had left … passing a quick glance behind he confirmed that there wasn’t anything there – maybe it was his imagination getting the better of him.

As he returned his gaze to the front, he noticed that his wife looked pale and wore a terrified look. She turned towards him and with a trembling voice asked: “Did you see that as well?” It wasn’t his imagination after all!

A second story that I heard involves a motorcyclist riding along a lonely and deserted stretch of the road in the Lim Chu Kang /Choa Chu Kang area on his way home from work, late one evening.  On his ride home one rainy evening, the motorcyclist noticed a long haired woman standing alone in the dark at a bus stop along a lonely stretch of the road. The woman was waving furiously at the approaching motorcyclist, as if to ask for a ride. The motorcyclist slowed down and stopped where the woman was standing, finding it strange that this young looking lady was waiting for a bus in the middle of nowhere. Thinking to himself that the young lady shouldn’t really be waiting for a bus all alone in a deserted poorly lit bus stop in the middle of nowhere, he offered her a lift on the motorcycle, and since it was raining, offered her his raincoat as well. The lady nodded her head in agreement, put on the raincoat and got on to the motorcycle, saying she was returning home to her village several miles ahead.

Turning into a dimly lit lane off the main road as directed by the lady, the lady asked the motorcyclist to allow her to alight at the corner of a junction. There were no more than a few lights in the distance and not wanting to the lady to think him impolite, didn’t ask any questions.

Riding off, the motorcyclist realised that the lady had his raincoat with her. He stopped his motorcycle and glanced backwards only to be greeted by the darkness behind him. He thought he would probably have a better chance looking for the lady the next morning on his way to work, when it would be light, and since he was drenched anyway, continued on his way.

The next morning when he returned to the same spot he had dropped the lady off, he could see anything except for the track which led to a clearing in the distance. Riding up the track, he came to a cluster of wooden houses in the clearing. He knocked on the first door and as best as he could, described the lady who had taken a ride from him to the elderly lady who opened the door. She shook her head and said she didn’t think anyone with the description lived in the village. The motorcyclist got a similar reaction from the occupants of the next few houses as well. He made his way to the last house and did the same … this time the old lady who answered the door seemed to recognise the motorcyclist’s description. “Yes” she said, “I think I know who you are looking for”. She got out of the house, closing the door behind her. “Please follow me, I can show you where she is”.

She crossed a drain, and took a path through some trees and overgrown grass … beyond the overgrown grass the motorcyclist could see a cemetery … then he realised why no one seemed to know the lady – he spotted his brightly coloured raincoat, neatly draped over a grave stone, as he approached the cemetery. On the grave stone were some Chinese inscriptions which he didn’t understand. What he could understand was the photograph on the grave stone. It was that of the lady he had given a ride to the previous evening!

There were several more stories I did come across, particularly from my grandmother, who although a religious person, was a firm believer in the supernatural. She was a keen follower of horror programmes on television, particularly the ones featuring the Pontianak, a Malay vampire of sorts. She had a lot of stories to share of her own about the Pontianak from her own childhood in Java, as well as several other types of ghosts.

I also recall a very hot topic of conversation during my early days in school. There was an article in the local evening Chinese newspaper with a photograph of an old lady bent over a washing board in a ground floor flat in Toa Payoh. The article had a claim that that was the photograph of a ghost of an old lady who had apparently lived in the area before its development into a built up housing estate, which appeared regularly to the occupants of the flat.

There were of course stories I heard during school and scouting camping trips, particularly of the Sarimbun area in the north-west corner of Singapore and Changi Beach where there had apparently been a massacre of Chinese men during the Japanese occupation.

Valparaíso, Chile

I only spent a day in Valparaíso. We got in early in the morning to pick a cargo up of Chilean grapes and were to leave the next morning. After tropical Central America, the temperate southern South America was quite a pleasant change. Wandering around the streets of Valparaíso, I hardly broke out into sweat, passing by numerous street vendors selling items such as fruits – including some of the juiciest and sweetest nectarines I have tasted and rattanwork. The city had an almost European feel towards it with long and wide avenues, plazas and the many monuments laid out along the plazas and avenues.

Chile at that time when I was there was under military rule, controlled by the rightist regime of General Augusto Pinochet. The presence of uniformed personnel on the streets did not go unnoticed. In fact, for some reason which escapes me, I was stopped from taking photographs along the Avenida de Brasil, right after I snapped a photograph of the bust of José Manuel Balmaceda, along the avenue.

I also discovered to my very pleasant surprise, the quality of the local wine, which was very afforadble. For a few dollars, we could get our hands on a bottle of wines from the Concha y Toro vineyards.

One regret that I have is that I did not have the opportunity to visit the adjoining city of Viña del Mar, famed for its many sandy beaches. Well perhaps one day … when or if ever, I do not know.

 

Valparaíso Street

Avenida de Brasil – Bust of José Manuel Balmaceda

Sunrise over Valparaíso

Valparaíso Street Scene

Valparaíso Rattanwork Street Vendor

Punggol

My family visited Punggol at least once a year.  A “sworn sister” of my grandmother resided in the area, and we would pay her a visit during the Lunar New Year. I never really looked forward to the visits to the small attap hut that she lived in with her husband and her daughter, as I never liked the smell of chickens, something one could never get away from where she lived. The Punggol area at that time was where most of Singapore’s pig farms and poultry farms could be found, and my grandmother’s “sworn sister” and her husband were running a chicken farm on behalf of the farm’s owners.

Our visit during the Lunar New Year would normally last an entire day and usually upon our arrival, a plump hen would be picked out from a cage and slaughtered right in front of our eyes. The sight of headless chickens running as if they were running for their lives is still very vivid in my memory. While the adults caught up with each other, I would be left alone in the living room of the hut, with new year goodies set on the pink formica top of a foldable table, to keep me occupied. Sitting alone by myself wasn’t my idea of fun, and there was only so much you could eat! For a city boy, the idea of venturing outside around where not so pleasant smelling animals were wandering around, didn’t seem very appealing as well.  The best I could look forward to was lunchtime, when at least I would have some company.

One Lunar New Year I would remember very well was when I was seven. One of my incisors was loose at that time, not quite ready to fall out yet. Biting into an Ang Ku Kueh, a sticky red coloured cake of glutinous rice skins with filling of green bean paste, I realised that I had swallowed the tooth. A mild panic overtook me and I dashed out immediately to look for my parents. They weren’t quite sure what to do, and it caused me quite a lot of distress over the next two days, before the tooth appeared through the orifice at the other end.

Another thing I remember very vividly of the Punggol area is the sound that punctured the air each evening around 5.30 pm – the squealing chorus of hungry pigs in the adjacent farms literally singing for their supper! 

Remembering 4 June 1989 – Poland

Besides the events on Tiananmen Square 4 June 1989 is also significant as the first of two days on which elections were held in Poland. The elections can be said to have started the chain of events leading to the fall of communism in Europe. The elections, the first where candidates other than those from the Communist Party were permitted to stand, saw Solidarity, whose origins are lay with a trade union led by a former shipyard electrician from Gdansk, winning most of the seats they were permitted to stand in. The elections were held as a concession to allow Solidarity a voice amidst widespread disenchantment at living conditions in a country whose rulers could no longer depend on full support by a Soviet Union distracted by the introduction of Perestroika and Glasnost by Mikhail Gorbachev, licking its wounds after its withdrawal from Afghanistan after a costly excursion lasting a decade. The elections provided the platform for the first non-communist led government in the Eastern Bloc, and could be seen as the catalyst for the sudden and dramatic collapse of communism which had dominated much of Eastern Europe following Nazi Germany’s defeat at the end of World War II.

How to tie a bow-tie

Preparing for the exams can be stressful. Besides our regular Friday evening beat the stress get-togethers, the Pub on Campus proved to be a great place to escape to, not just for a pint with friends …  sometimes there are a few new skills that can be picked up at the Pub as well …

How to tie a Budweiser Bow Tie (on the back of a drink coaster)

Afternote: If any is really looking for instructions on how to tie a bow-tie … this is possibly a clearer guide:

How to Tie a Bow-Tie (courtesy of Tie-Rack)

Radio

I grew up at a time when radio ruled the airwaves. My first memory of the radio was hearing Karen Carpenter’s silky smooth and warm voice singing the words “when I was young, I’d listen to the , radio, waiting for my favourite song” (maybe coincidentally) from a neighbour’s radio. Besides the local programmes we got on VHF, the broadcasts on the shortwave frequencies were popular, and they provided a vast array of foreign radio stations, such as Radio Moscow and the Voice of America (VOA), two stations to which I was a regular listener. Those were the days of the Cold War, the Berlin Wall and the Iron Curtain, when the world was divided into East and West. Radio served as a means to reach out to the other side of the world, particularly for the eastern bloc countries.

I listened to quite a fair bit of the broadcasts on Radio Moscow, not so much for the alternative views it provided, but, more for the insights it provided on the ethnically and culturally diverse Soviet Union. What fascinated me particularly was the many facets of life in the Soviet Central Asian republics, of which I would have otherwise known very little about. There was very little access to information on places with romantic sounding names such Tashkent, Samarkand,  Alma-Ata and Bukhara, that was associated with the ancient Silk Route and with the great Khans, which for much of the 20th century lay hidden behind the Iron Curtain.

Besides being a listener, I was also provided with the opportunity to gain 15 minutes of fame together with two of my classmates – by participating in a children’s radio programme, “Its a small world”, hosted by a popular deejay on Radio Singapore, Ms Gloria Mannasseh. The pre-recorded programme was broadcast once in the morning, and once in the afternoon, once a week, and opened with the theme song which was the disney song of the same name, and was popular with the local kids of that time, and would have three children representing a selected primary school participate each week. Two of my classmates submitted a request and when our school was selected, asked if I could join them as the school’s third representative. I remember the school Principal, Mr Ho, calling us into his office to congratulate us for being selected and also to give us some words of encouragement. What I remember most of the recording session, wasn’t the recording session itself, but the little tour of the television studios Ms Mannasseh gave us before the session. It was quite memorable to a 10 year old, seeing the studio where the news we watch every evening was televised live from.

Radio was also the means by which many sports fans could catch live broadcasts of various sports events at a time when live telecasts of events on the television via satellite were reserved for the more important events such as the football World Cup and FA Cup finals. It was the means by which I could follow the fortunes of Singapore’s football team which participated in the Malaysia Cup and the likes of Quah Kim Song, Dollah Kassim and Mohammad Noh. The BBC World Service’s programming on Saturdays also provided live broadcasts of English football, with second half commentry on a featured match during the football season, and it provided me with the opportunity to follow the ups and downs of my favourite team through the course of the season.

Nothing Gold Can Stay

Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

- Robert Frost

I watched the movie “The Outsiders” in my teens. It was a favourite of my sister, partly because of the cast of  Teenage heartthrobs, and also because it featured this beautiful poem by the American poet, Robert Frost. To me, the poem described the freshness and hope that is born out of the golden hues of dawn, be it the dawn of a new day, or be it the begining of all things new, and how this descends to tiredness as the day passes, as things become less fresh … life passes us by in a very similar way.

Remembering 4 June 1989

One Man alone,
can stop history,
can move a mountain

The man who can move mountains, Tiananmen Square, 1989

20 years on from the sad and tragic events of  3 and 4 June 1989, there is still the deep sense of anger, disbelief and astonishment at the brutal way in which the seven week old peaceful protest staged by students in China were ended by the Chinese government. Among the many stories and images that have been published, one image remains etched in the memories the many of us who were shocked by the television footage and newspaper reports. This image is one of a brave young man, attempting to halt the progress of a column of tanks by standing in the way. I remember seeing a poster of the much viewed photograph in Italy, with the words that went something that translated as “One man, alone, can stop history, can move a mountain”.

Being in University in the UK, the scenes on television were seen by the many students who came from different parts of the world. We were equally outraged and shocked by the way the protests were put down. It would never be known how many died on the square when the tanks and troops moved in, perhaps only the couple of hundreds that the Chinese government would like us to believe, or, perhaps the many thousands some others have estimated. What is important is that those lives were not lost in vain. It is for use to continue to remember, and to continue the effort to seek justice and freedom, where there isn’t any. We do know that 20 years on, the families of the many that perished still have not come to terms with what has happened – many continue to be persecuted because they seek to have the truth told (see the article below, published in the Scotsman on 30 May 2009). For us, observers from the outside, there is little we can do except that we must continue to remind ourselves and everyone else of the 4th of June 1989 and not forget what those who lost their lives, stood for. In our own way, we must find a way to keep the flame of the goddess of democracy alive.

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The poster, "One Man alone, can stop history, can move a mountain". (Added 14 Sep 2009) - Remembering Tiananmen.

20 years on, families still fight for the truth of Tiananmen

Published Date: 30 May 2009

By Carolynne Wheeler in Beijing

IT HAS been 20 years since Jiang Jielian, a carefree youth of 17, ignored his mother’s pleas and rode his bicycle to join friends among massive numbers of student demonstrators in Tiananmen Square, Beijing.

His death in the early hours of 4 June, 1989 – from a bullet that entered his back and pierced his heart – would change his mother forever, turning a mild-mannered university professor loyal to the Communist Party into a heartbroken, angry parent pressing for answers.

Ding Zilin, now 72 and frail, has withstood two decades of arrests, interrogations and constant surveillance. Even today, she remains under effective house arrest as she continues her fight for the truth about the military crackdown and killing of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of students on 4 June, 1989.

“Their bloody deaths should be returned by justice, not a life for a life. No matter what we do, our children will not come back,” she told The Scotsman in an interview conducted a month before the anniversary, necessary to avoid the government clampdown that comes before every sensitive occasion.

Twenty years after Tiananmen, the government still quashes all discussion of that day. Officials maintain the demonstrators had created a “counter-revolutionary riot”, therefore justifying the soldiers’ actions. Any mention of the incident in state media is forbidden and no credible number of those killed has been released.

Yet a quiet but resolute struggle by survivors and the families of the dead and injured for answers continues.

“I don’t know why they are so worried about us – we are widows and families who are old, sick and weak. It is impossible we would be a threat to national security. We just want justice,” Ms Ding said, referring to the Tiananmen Mothers’ network she has helped organise.

“We want the government to declare how many people were killed on 4 June. We want to know who died. And after that we want compensation for the people who were killed.”

Their efforts have produced a list of those killed – 195 names, the most recent discovered only in the past few months – and annual letters to the government reiterating their demands. This week, a new letter was signed by 128 family members.

“What was once the truth that couldn’t be clearer has become so blurred as to be almost turned upside down. Utilitarianism and pragmatism have replaced the idealism and passion of former days. China is not getting closer to freedom, democracy and human rights, but drifting farther away,” the letter reads.

Today’s students were babies in 1989. Too young to remember, they have been shielded from the truth by a government that doesn’t want them to know and families afraid they will suffer from political involvement. It’s a generation Ms Ding fears is more interested in good jobs and designer clothes than in the political changes her son fought for.

“Young people do not know the truth. They think the 1989 incident was not necessary.”

The events of 4 June are not discussed openly at universities on the mainland. However, earlier this year students at the University of Hong Kong – who, unlike their northern neighbours, are able to debate such issues – voted 93 per cent in favour of calling on the Chinese government to be held accountable for the Tiananmen crackdown.

About 10 per cent of that university’s students are from the mainland, and their debate was as loud as that among Hong Kong students.

“Even though they can’t access everything, many know the truth. You cannot cover the truth forever,” said Martin Kok, of the students’ union.

The Scotsman newspaper.