Chance meeting with Dato Seri Goh Eng Toon

I bumped into someone that I hadn't met for about eight years. Dato Seri Goh Eng Toon. When I first got to know him in the late 1970s, he was already the general manager and chief executive officer at Ban Hin Lee Bank. Every day, he would walk into the bank and go into his room. Then there would be a string of people going in to see him for meetings and approvals. Later, he was the bank's chairman as well. In my days with the bank, I used to bring cheques for him to sign to cover our inter-bank transactions with the central bank. Most times, the cheques would go into millions and I would go agog holding these cheques in my hands and waiting for him to sign them. To me, signing cheques worth millions of dollars was like signing your life away. Gah....

But as I said, I hadn't seen him for about eight years. And the first thing he asked me was whether I was still involved with chess. I hid my surprise. He remembered but all those years in the bank, he never once did talk to me about the game. Whilst in the bank, he kept his professional distance. Another surprise: the next thing he mentioned to me: "Chin Nam won at Melbourne again, eh?" He was, of course, referring to Dato Tan's horse, Viewed, coming in first at the Melbourne Cup just seven days ago. Winning by a nose, he marvelled.