Back to school

Made a return to the old school yesterday after months of self-imposed semi-quarantine due to the Movement Control Order. Was at the school to give a talk to the new intake of Lower Six students. Very receptive as the new boys and girls listened attentively to the story of Penang Free School. Met a few familiar faces among them too.

Loh Lean Kang was the other invited external speaker. He was the motivator between the two of us; I was just in a supportive role to warm up the students but I don't mind. Meanwhile, I was surprised to find The Old Frees' Association president, Lee Eu Beng, there also. He was there before Lean Kang and I arrived, not to give any talk to the students - he did anyway, after being invited at the last minute by the school organisers - but to look at the Pinhorn Hall's facilities as the OFA may want to hold their annual general meeting there next month instead of at the Association. Social distancing and all that would warrant looking for a bigger space so that the attendees can be seated further apart.

The headmaster, Omar bin Abdul Rashid, is already on leave prior to his retirement on the 28th of next month. His role in the School is being temporarily taken over by Ho Nean Chan, the most senior of their Senior Assistants. But I bumped into Omar all the same. He happened to be around as the School was being audited. So we chatted, all four of us, well until three o'clock. I think he looked very relaxed with the pressures of Penang Free School now off his shoulders. Or soon to be off his shoulders.

Hope we are recognisable with the masks covering half our faces. We tried to practice social distancing for this picture but it was not quite possible. But at least, our face masks were socially distanced. 😁

One of the slides in my presentation

Faked in China

Somewhere in China, even wall murals are faked. 

Off-line

I've been off the Internet for a week and only managed to get back online yesterday when Maxis finally did resolve the problem of my home broadband connection. The problem was not theirs to begin with but they took an awfully long time to troubleshoot it.

My problem began with a thunderstorm on 07 July 2020 afternoon. It was raining when suddenly a huge thunderclap sounded without any warning. Boom, and the electricity tripped in the whole house. Learnt later that a flash of lightning had struck an electrical pole outside my neighbour's house. That would be left than 20 feet away from my house. In any event, the lightning tripped not only my house but that of my neighbours. Possibly, about eight houses were affected. The neighbour on my left, the one with the electric pole outside the house, suffered the most damage to his electrical items: router, ceiling fans, electric cooker, The neighbour on my right had a ceiling fan damaged. Others suffered varying degrees of damage. Mine was confined to my Internet connection. My desktop's USB ports may have fried too but I haven't been able to confirm it yet.

Anyway, that same afternoon of the seventh, I made my complaint to the Maxis service and had arranged for their technician to come in on the 10th. He came in the morning, made some tests to the equipment - the cables, modem and router - and said the modem was damaged. Herein the snag. Although the router was supplied by Maxis, the modem was TMNet's. Maxis Broadband rides on TMNet's unifi infrastructure and has to use TMNet's modem. Therefore, to change the modem, the TMNet technician was needed to come in together.

I had to leave it to the Maxis technician to make the arrangements. We'll call you, he said. So I waited and waited. On Sunday - they work on Sunday?? - the Maxis service centre called and said they'd be turning up with TMNet on the 14th morning.

And on the 14th morning, the Maxis technician turned up but alone. A different guy. He diagnosed the problem as the router, not the modem. Maybe that's what he informed back to the service centre because the TMNet personnel did not even show up. Anyway, the Maxis technician changed my equipment to a new modem and quickly set up my WiFi network. It worked like a charm with my wife's laptop, iPad mini and my mobile. I plugged in my Lan cable and presto! my desktop connection came back alive. So everything is back to normal. Mighty glad that almost everything's turned out alright. Now to look into my USB ports...

P.S. My DEC phone is dead but that is another problem.....

Two moons (or five?)

Two images of the almost full moon in July. I said "almost full moon" because technically it is virtually impossible to take a picture when the full moon is at exactly 100 percent. Besides, the full moon occurred at 12.44pm on 5 July 20202 when it was daylight over Penang. We wouldn't have seen it over here.

So all I could do what to take pictures on both sides of the exact full moon. The image on the left was taken on the fifth morning at 6.03am. Initially I was a little reluctant to use it because the wispy clouds were obscuring the moon a bit. But the image was sharp enough. The moon on the right was taken on the fifth evening at 10.22pm. As can be seen from the two images, there were already some very slight blur at part the edges. One side in sharp relief, the other side with a almost imperceptible blur. Perhaps not noticeable until I mention it. Oh, yah, please don't ask about the two different colours because I don't know the answer.

By the way, did I mention that I had also caught sight of the planet Jupiter in the morning of 5 July 2020? No? Well, I'm mentioning it now. Jupiter was just a tiny prick of light in the sky but it was bright enough despite the moon being nearby. It's so much more difficult to take a clear snapshot of Jupiter because the hands cannot be steady enough. Most of my pictures turned out bad with streaks of light due to hand shake but I was lucky with this one shot out of so many duds. I had to brace myself against a fence too and lower my shutter speed to one-third of a second. So here is the digitally-cropped picture of Jupiter from my modest Olympus EPL7 camera and lens, still a bit streaky and oval-shaped instead of round as it should be, but at least the bonus is that three Galilean moons could be clearly seen. The fourth one was probably in front or at the back of the planet and thus cannot be observed at all.

Two names from the past

I would believe that this old image of the staff of Ban Hin Lee Bank Ltd can be found in the House of Yeap Chor Ee, a museum set up by his descendants to remember the old man. At one time, Yeap Chor Ee could have easily been the richest man in Penang. Not only did he run a vast business empire which included this Ban Hin Lee Bank, he owned large tracts of land on the island.

In this picture, taken on 04 November 1939 which was just four years after Ban Hin Lee Bank was incorporated and a year after the bank moved into the beautiful Beach Street premises, the founder was of course seated in the centre. He was flanked by his family members, all also directors of the bank. On his right were Goh Hock Siew (son-in-law) and Yeap Hock Hoe (son) while on his left were Yap Kim Hoe and Yeap Hock Hin (both also his sons). Missing from this picture was his Singapore-based son, Yeap Lean Seng.

The rest of the people were the staff. My former contemporaries from the bank would be interested to know that, standing second from left, was Ong Chin Seng, who had joined the bank in 1935 after completing his schooling. The features were unmistakenly him, no question about it. But in this picture was yet another person whom my former colleagues would know as well: Chew Chik Phoy. The name sprang up as I was scrutinising the names below the picture. There he was, standing right in the centre of the line, directly behind the old man himself.