Monday 27 November 2017

Visitors from Xiamen China


It took us about a day to prepare for the visit of four representatives from the Xiamen Haicang Songyu Federation of Returned Overseas Chinese and other related associations to the Penang Swee Cheok Tong Quah Kongsi (檳城瑞鵲堂柯公司) but there we were, the four of us waiting to greet the four of them on their arrival at our humble Kongsi this afternoon.

Led by their president, Mr Lin GuoBao, the four delegates were taken on a quick tour of our Kongsi's premises and given a brief rundown on our 171-year-old history. But of course, we had already hosted them for lunch and exchanged quite a lot of information and pleasantries earlier.

Nevertheless, it was only appropriate that at our Kongsi's premises, we partook the official exchange of souvenirs and the mandatory photographs. The four delegates from China were Mr Lin GuoBao (林国宝), Mr Xie Fu Kun (谢福坤), Mr Yan Di (颜笛) and Mr Jiang ZhiMin (江志民).

Myself receiving a scroll from Mr Lin GuoBao. Others in the picture are Quah Cho Pin, Keo Soo Liang, Mr Yan Di, Mr Xie Fu kun, Quah Chin Sun and Mr Jiang ZhiMin.

And my turn to present a souvenir from the Swee Cheok Tong to Mr Lin GuoBao






Thursday 23 November 2017

John Kongos


I almost bought another copy of this album recently until I remembered that I already had it in my possession. One of the songs on this album is a piece of pulsating music, mesmerising, full of incessant drumming - African drums, I am told - and someone playing an aggressive riff repeatedly on the guitar. Well, this is John Kongos' original version of He's Gonna Step On You Again which was covered later by Australia's The Party Boys and some others.


Side One: Tokoloshe man, Jubilee cloud, Gold, Lift me from the ground, Come on down Jesus
Side Two: I would have had a good time, Try to touch just one, Tomorrow I'll go, He's gonna step on you again




Monday 20 November 2017

Penang's great floods, part 2


It just came to my mind that I should perhaps separate my original post on Penang's great floods into two stories; the first one several days ago to describe my own experience with the flood that I missed and the second one here to show some rather disturbing pictures that emerged from the floods and the aftermath.

I was at a friend's hair salon yesterday and he related that the flood waters had risen about six inches into his shop at the Anson Road end of Seang Tek Road during that fateful weekend. But the floods had also affected his own single-storey home in Caunter Hall as he was chest deep in water. Together with his cousin who was staying with him, they had to make sure that his mother was safely perched on a table throughout the night. His car was submerged and he is now debating whether to get it repaired - an estimated cost is something in the region of RM20,000-plus with no guarantee that nothing else could go wrong with the engine in the next year or so - or scrap it off and buy another one.

If his end of Seang Tek Road could be so badly affected, I'm sure the other end of the road, where I stayed during my childhood, would have been severely flooded too. The Dato Kramat Road end of Seang Tek Road is basically a basin and I do recollect that the road outside the house my grandparents rented could flood after huge storms. There were at least four or five occasions when the flood waters then had even swept into the house. It seemed that the monsoon drain at Dato Kramat Road, huge and deep though it was, could simply not cope with the gush of water. My friend told me that even Dato Kramat Road itself was flooded.

This is Malacca Street.


Even the roofs had been blown off in the storm.

The beached ferry at the Butterworth terminal.

This huge sinkhole formed near the Surin Condominium in Tanjong Bungah affecting a nearly completed housing project.











Sunday 19 November 2017

Unbelievably stupid


This is one of my old postings that never got to see light way back in November 2015 for some obscure reasons that I can no longer remember. It was about my old school pal, Kee Thuan Chye, launching his Unbelievably Stupid books at The Star Pitt Street building in Penang, and Lim Guan Eng was there to do the honours. Remarkably, a host of my other school buddies were also around in Penang at the same time.

Thuan Chye has not written any new book since then, instead reserving his energy to produce an excellent play, Swordfish & Concubine, which had a short run earlier this month at the Kuala Lumpur Performing Arts Centre and which my wife and I had the benefit of watching.











Thursday 16 November 2017

Rhythm heritage


I've just been watching the first episode of the 2017 reincarnation of that hit television series of the 1970s, namely, S.W.A.T. and I must say that it is terribly interesting. Action-packed and interesting. But I had to wait until the end of the episode for the theme music which appeared before the closing credits. Well worth the long wait, though, because it is such a kick-ass piece of music. It made me decide to dust the old cobwebs from my copy of Rhythm Heritage's Disco-fied album.


Side One: Disco-fied, Caravan, Baretta's theme (Keep your eye on the sparrow), Theme from S.W.A.T.
Side Two: Blockbuster, My cherie amour, (It's time to) Boogie down, Three days of the condor, Disco-fied (reprise)



Wednesday 15 November 2017

Penang's great floods



When the rain came in the afternoon of 4 Nov, courtesy of Typhoon Damrey that had hit Vietnam, I was in Kuala Lumpur attending a seminar. As such, I had no idea at all of the ferocity of the storm nor the havoc it would create in Penang, both on the island and the mainland. It was only much later that night that my wife received a video on her mobile showing a flooded Nandaka Vihara at Bukit Mertajam.

The Nandaka Vihara flooded? Impossible to comprehend that at first because the meditation centre is located at the foothills of the Bukit Mertajam hill at Cherok Tokun. But when we then realised from the video that it was no joke, we grew concerned about the storm. Slowly through facebook and Whatsapp came information and pictures that showed floods everywhere.

The next morning came information that the streets of George Town were well under water. Not just water but murky muddy water as if the city had been drenched with teh tarek. And the rain was still falling.

We became concerned about our relatives in Penang, especially our son who stayed in an apartment off Dato Kramat. Only about a month earlier, the roads around the apartment had been flooded too and he had managed to drive his car into the apartment's compound, sharing a parking space with his landlady. We telephoned him and was told that he was okay. His car too, was dry. Well, that was a relief.

One of my sister-in-laws phoned to ask about us and our house in Bukit Mertajam. We told her that we didn't know. We hadn't been thinking about our house at all because we were staying in a rather elevated piece of land that wasn't flood-prone.

But I recalled that once this year when a particularly heavy rainfall touched home, water almost entered the houses on the opposite side of the back lane. Or maybe it did. At least an inch of water. But our house was about three feet above the back lane and we weren't affect. But just to be certain, my wife called a neighbour and was given the assurance that there weren't any floods in our neighbourhood.

Our thoughts then turned to our relatives. We had an aunt staying in Taman Sri Rambai in Bukit Mertajam. This has traditionally been a flood-prone area although in the past 20 years or so, there had been no floods there, thanks to an earlier flood mitigation programme initiated by the state government.

But in this particular case, because of the huge deluge, water had risen about three to four feet into most of the houses. All her furniture, electrical appliances and cars were damaged. Nothing except clothes and crockery sets could be salvaged once the flood water subsided.

We arrived back from Kuala Lumpur by train very late on 5 Nov night. A taxi driver whom we had contacted earlier at first couldn't commit to pick us up from the station because he said his place at Perda was flooded and he couldn't drive out. But later, we found him waiting for us at the station. The waters had subsided around his house, he grinned.

The next day, I drove to the Land Office in Bukit Mertajam, which had been converted into a flood relief centre, to join an old schoolmate friend in attempting to deliver foodstuff to some displaced Malay kampongs. It was very gratifying to see that the centre was filled with volunteers who were helping out with the distribution of food and other essential items. Even a monk was helping out.

One place that we went to was the Kampong Baru Alma. The surprising thing about this kampong, like many of the other urban Malay kampongs in Penang, was that it is located at the fringe of a modern middle-class community. There we were driving along perfectly tarred roads with neatly built double-storeyed houses lining both sides of the roads and suddenly, we turned a corner and entered another world of narrow, winding and uneven roads that led eventually to a haphazard collection of typical Malay kampong houses.

The social divide was so clear: the urban rich and the urban poor living together uneasily side-by-side. How many generation will it take to bridge this divide? Anyway, my friend distributed foodstuff to the affected families, 10 in all, and he came back again the next day with new mattresses for them. All their earthly belongings had been damaged by flood waters that had risen way above their heights.





Thursday 9 November 2017

Boys night out


Amidst all the cleaning up on the island and mainland on account of the unprecedented floods, my old schoolmates decided to continue with our reunion at the OFA Restaurant (aka New Wing Look Restaurant), which we had arranged quite a while back. 

Back row: Sukumaran, Ewe Soon, Hock Thiam, Oon Hup, Michael, Siang Jin, Seng Chye, Kah Thiang, Leng Kooi, Yoong Koy, Andrew and Swee Poh
Middle row: Teik Wah
Front row: Seng Sun, Huan Chiang, Boon Hoe, Wee Lork, Chye Chye, Ewe Leong and Siang Juan