Friendship, probate and rain

I met up with my old school pal, Shaun, last night. Our friendship goes back more than five decades. We had known one another since our Form One days at Penang Free School. Last week, he had invited my wife and I to join some of his relatives and friends for dinner. Where I was concerned, it was to thank me and another person for going through the hassle of signing statutory declarations as witnesses to his parents' wills. It was no hassle, I protested, because when I chose to become a witness for their wills 20 years ago, I knew what to expect. 

Basically, the Grant of Probate must be obtained from the High Court. From what I learned from my friend, he had been flying in and out the country several times in the past two years in order to settle his parents' affairs. Last Friday was the hearing for his mother's Probate. The Judge examined his identification papers in order to ascertain his status as the executor and beneficiary.

Dinner over, we have to drive back to the mainland in a pouring rain. The rain was light enough when we left the New CRC Restaurant but towards Scotland Road, the rain grew heavier. It was a crawl once we reached the Lim Chong Eu Expressway, traffic flow reducing to as slow as 20kph at one stage. When I reached the end of the Penang Bridge, I made a decision to use the old Federal Highway to get to Bukit Mertajam.

The North-South Expressway was my normal route but I did not want to use Chian Heng Kai Road at night, certainly not in the pouring rain, because the road had been recently resurfaced and the contractor was slow to redraw the traffic lines. It would have been mighty dangerous for me to drive on a dark unmarked road with no street lights.

So I chose the old Federal route instead. I had another decision to make as I reached the Bukit Tengah roundabout. Should I proceed to the roundabout or should I take the flyover? Both directions would allow me to reach home at about the same time. Then I noticed a long queue of cars going to the roundabout while the way to the flyover was clear. No big decision for me to make here as I drove by the queue; flyover it was. 

However, by the time I reached the top of the flyover, as it curved right, the traffic had slowed down to a crawl. A second crawl for my drive back home. There was no turning back. I had to join the lanes of traffic. When I inched towards the end of the flyover, I could see all the vehicles slowly converging into a single lane. Much of the road was flooded and nobody knew how deep was the water. Nobody wanted to find out too. So all lanes began converging into one and we drove along very slowly and keeping a fair distance between cars. Pretty soon, perhaps driving some 200 to 250 metres along this stretch, it became safe enough to drive normally again. By now, the clouds had more or less cleared away and the rain became a trickle.

But there again an anxious moment when almost reaching home. Would I have to drive through another stretch of flood waters at Kampong Baru? Thankfully, not. No sign of floods here unlike the last time when I drove in the pouring rain. And so, we made it safely home. A normally uneventful one-hour journey became almost one-and-a-half hours for me last night. 

Seventh Wu Lien-Teh annual lecture

I am posting this message on behalf of Anwar Fazal who is the President of The Dr Wu Lien-Teh Society in Penang which celebrates its 10th anniversary this year. The message concerns the society's seventh annual public lecture in commemoration of Dr Wu Lien-Teh's 144th birthday.

The recipient of this year's Dr Wu Lien-Teh Award for Leadership in Public Health, Prof Dr Jemilah Mahmood of Sunway University, will give her lecture on “Planetary Health or Accelerate Our Extinction - We have a choice”.

Date:
05 March 2023 (Sunday)
Time:
2.30pm - 4.30pm
Venue:
Penang Institute, 10 Jalan Brown, 10350 George Town, Penang
Admission: Free
(Venue opens for entry and registration at 1400pm onwards only)
Deadline for registration:
02 March 2023

Registration:
For physical attendance, please fill in this form at https://forms.gle/y4FBur2LhXKVFw7c7
There are only 60 seats available on a first come, first served basis.

For virtual attendance, there will be LIVE streaming on Facebook (@PenangInstitute) and (@wulientehpg) and on YouTube (@penanginstitute)

It is to be noted that last year's recipient was the Director-General of Health, Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah. Regarding Prof Dr Jemilah Mahmood, some people may recognise her name as the founder of Mercy Malaysia which lends a helping hand with humanitarian medical relief wherever disasters occur around the world. She's truly a well-respected figure.

Centenary plans

The Management Committee of The Old Frees' Association met with the Penang Free School headmaster, Syed Sultan, at his office two days ago. I was invited to join in the meeting by virtue of my being in the OFA Centenary Committee. The meeting with the headmaster was to discuss the Centenary celebrations which would involve the school, and there were many.

The most immediate one will be to continue with the revival of the Cheeseman Elocution Contest. It had been reintroduced in the school after a hiatus of many years. I wouldn't know how many years have gone by but it would be suffice to say that it had been far too long. I'm told that there was a contest last year to test the water but this year, as part of the OFA Centenary, there'll be an attempt to make this contest larger. As such, the OFA proposed opening a new category for the pupils of Forms One to Three to encourage them to begin speaking in public. Previously, the contest was only for those from Forms Four to Upper Six. The tentative date for the Cheeseman Elocution Contest is 10 May 2023.

It will be in September that the schedule for the celebrations at the school is fullest. On the second of the month, there'll be music and drama in the Pinhorn Hall as the Old Frees put up a show reminiscent of the school plays of the past. Then on the 16th and 17th, the school field will be occupied with football and hockey matches. Come the 24th of September, the Pinhorn Hall will be used again for the Centenary chess competition, and that's where I come in. More details about the chess competition will be made known later but for the moment, the date is finalised.

Lunch tête-à-tête

The committee members of Wu Lien-Teh Society had lunch today with their Honorary Advisor, Cheah Cheng Hye.

From left to right, Ong Siou Woon, Cheah Cheng Chua, myself, Ooi Geok Ling, Cheah Cheng Hye, Alison Chong, Anwar Fazal, Clarence Liang, Eva Cheah and Dr Hor Chee Peng

Moon Venus conjunction

I popped out of the house at about eight o'clock tonight and saw this thin crescent moon right beside Venus. I know that Jupiter is nearby too but I couldn't find it for the clouds over my area of Bukit Mertajam.

School badge

I was at Penang Free School this morning for a meeting with the Headmaster, his Senior Assistants and several teachers. Thereafter, I requested and was given one of the school's new metal badges. I remember that the badges were launched last year at the school's Speech Day on the 21st of October. During its launch, it was announced that the metal badge was being introduced to phase out the cloth badges on the boys' uniforms. As a symbolic gesture of a return to an old school tradition, a metal badge was pinned on the School Captain. Well and good, I thought to myself. And then I heard something else; that in the past, the metal badge had always been worn by the pupils. That raised my eyebrows because I knew this statement wasn't correct, in part because recalling the past is usually limited to remembering only one's personal history. In my own past, we never had a badge, cloth or metal, on our school uniforms, not until I was in Lower Six. There was a lot of resistance to this change but unfortunately in the end, the weight of authority prevailed and we were forced into using one. 

I kept my counsel because I didn't want to take away the triumph of having the hideous cloth badge replaced. I would prefer metal over cloth any time or better still, no badge at all. But today, four months later, I need to set the record straight and for this, I shall have to refer to my own book on the school's history, Let the Aisles Proclaim.

From 1971 to 1974, KG Yogam was Headmaster of Penang Free School. Very soon after settling into this position, at his first meeting with the Board of Governors, he got the Board to agree on something rather controversial. It had appeared on pages 246 and 247 of this book:

He also told the Board that he wanted to adopt the use of school badges by all pupils so as to instil in them a sense of belonging to the Free School. This last matter did not sit well with the Free School boys who had long enjoyed the privilege of not having to wear one. The Free School boy was known for his pristine white school uniform: a white shirt unblemished by a school badge and paired with either a white pair of shorts or trousers. Soon after, a letter appeared in the School Newsletter, couched in a language to remonstrate to this Headmaster that he was ignoring one of her traditions:

Since Reverend Hutchings founded this school where only the best will do, there never was a need for Frees to be identified with a cheap form of advertisement stuck to their left-hand pocket. This advertisement is what is now being introduced for all students of this immortal institution whose members are acknowledged and recognised, not by the badge but by the way they conduct and behave themselves in public. This unwritten rule goes with the 154 years of our existence and never should it be changed. It is part and parcel of this institution which was founded on traditions. Just like British Law which is unwritten, there is a school rule, unwritten, which does not require Frees to wear badges. This passage is written to express the feelings of the silenced majority.

FORTIS ATQUE FIDELIS

(We do not need a school badge 

to remind us of this motto of ours) 

The Headmaster was livid. Never before had he encountered such defiance. But then this was no ordinary school but one where the pupils were expected to uphold truth and be fearless. Nevertheless, he demanded that the distribution of this issue of the newsletter be stopped. He called in the editor and told him that all the copies would be burnt, just because of this one offending letter. As the Headmaster, Yogam had his way but fortunately, at least one copy of this issue had survived his wrath to bear evidence of this episode.

The source of information was the minutes of a Board of Governors meeting in 1971. Also, I can reveal now that the author of that defiant note in the August-September 1971 issue of the Penang Free School Newsletter was Sukhinderpal Singh, today a senior lawyer in Penang. He was in Form Five then and thus, one year my junior in school. Today, every Penang Free School pupil owns a metal badge. In my visits to the school since the Speech Day, I've noticed that the boys are pinning them on their school neckties if their shirt pockets still have the cloth badges sewn onto them. With the new academic year starting on 20 March 2023, I'm looking forward to seeing new Form One boys being the first batch that wears the metal badges exclusively.

Bragging rights

With the PCA President on the left, our WP2W team comprised
Poh Yu Tian, myself, Leonardo Alidani and Joshua Ng Shao Wen

Here's more catching up to do. I've to say something about the Penang Chess League last December, held after a hiatus of two years owing to the Covid-19 lockdown. Due to some scheduling difficulties, this annual team competition was held on 24-25 December which meant that many people could not take part. They were either on vacation or celebrating Christmas. 

My chess friends from The Old Frees' Association couldn't come together to form even a team of four players and as such, we were forced to sit out this competition. I was resigned to become just a spectator last year but quite suddenly on the eve of the event, the President of the Penang Chess Association called me to ask whether I was interested to play as a last-minute adhoc team had formed and they were short of a player. Yes, definitely, I would be interested to play, I told her, but be warned of my erratic form. Would my unknown team-mates mind? Never mind, she replied, just come and play. So, after the closing ceremony of the Penang open chess tournament, I went seeking for my team and lo-and-behold, found it to be such a mish-mash of diverse chess characters. 

One, Leonardo Alidani, was a Filipino who had finished playing in the Challengers section of the Penang open. He was top-seeded but couldn't win the event although a week later, he won the Challengers tournament at the Johor open. Two, Joshua Ng, who was from Penang Free School but now doing his Form Six at the Sekolah Menengah Zainal Abidin. Anyway, he had represented Free School at the MSSPP chess tournament in 2021 and in his SPM examination, was the best performing student from Free School, a straight A+ student. And third, a big surprise, 13-year-old Poh Yu Tian. A lot has already been written and said about Yu Tian on this blog and it is needless for me to add more in this particular story except for one new comment. I'm particularly pleased and proud that my bragging rights now include saying that I once led a chess team which included Penang's strongest player of the day, Fide Master Poh Yu Tian. 

Anyway, the first day turned out quite excellently for me, winning my first two games. But then on the second day, my erratic form surfaced and I salvaged only a further half-a-point from six games. However, my team-mates carried the day, Yu Tian winning all his eight games, Joshua scoring 6½ points and Leonardo 3½. Overall, we (the team) finished in sixth position. 

Post-CNY 𝑝𝑒𝑛𝑔𝑎𝑡

The main ingredients for my pengat: the pisang rajah banana,
yam and three types of sweet potato (orange, purple and yellow) 

My pengat (pe-ngat) or pungat (poo-ngat) was late this year. Usually, my family will cook this delicacy before Chap Goh Meh but this time around, it was unavoidably late. Why? It's because the pengat would not be a proper pengat if this traditional Chinese New Year fare does not contain any pisang rajah. 

Yes, the pisang rajah or the King of bananas. Only the pisang rajah is good enough for the pengat, not any other variety of local bananas. But the pisang rajah can be quite elusive. More often than not, it is not available when I need to buy it. That was why when I spotted a whole bunch of pisang rajah at the market 10 days ago, I immediately swooped in to buy a comb from the vendor.

Now, the problem with this particular comb of pisang rajah was that it was still green. Unripe. It would take time to ripen and the skin turning yellow. But never mind, I told my wife, we shall offer it first for worship of the Jade Emperor on Pai Tnee Kong Meh which was on the 29th of January night. Only the best banana variety for the Jade Emperor, see? 

That done, we targeted the pisang rajah to ripen by the fourth of February so that it could go into the pengat pot on Chap Goh Meh (the fifth of February). Unfortunately, the comb was only starting to get slightly yellow. So I told my wife that it was impossible to cook the pengat if the banana wasn't ripe enough. But then by yesterday, we noticed that three-quarters of the comb had ripened. Immediately, we started preparing the comb: unpeeling the individual bananas, slicing them and then boiling the slices with sugar. 

The next morning came the real hard task for me. Firstly, I had to peel the taro (more commonly called yam in this part of the world) and the three varieties of sweet potatoes (orange, white and purple). Next, cutting them up into diamond-shaped chunks. Since the raw tubers could be quite hard, it was difficult for me to cut them consistently into these diamond-shaped pieces. But I did try and I must say that I got quite a number of decent pieces out of them. The rest of the cut tubers, not being diamond-shaped, are put aside or even thrown away. That's why it can be rather wasteful if tradition is to be followed strictly. As for me, I do not throw them away. I'll dump these uneven pieces into the pot too. Nothing gets wasted in my pengat, what the heck! 

I've got to explain one thing: we were cooking pengat and NOT bubor chacha. Only the Penang Chinese of baba-nyonya descent will appreciate the difference. If one is a Penang Chinese and does not have any baba-nyonya blood in him or her, the pengat and the bubor chacha will be difficult to tell apart.

But I will say this. One of the biggest differences is that the pengat must include the pisang rajah. If there is no pisang rajah, I won't even contemplate cooking this. And I won't cook bubor chacha either. Certainly not in my kitchen. Another difference is the diamond-shaped cuts. But for this, I will compromise in order not to waste perfectly good ingredients just for the sake of visual presentation. And a third difference, in my opinion, is that there is no white bean or agar-agar jelly in the pengat. If at all, there'll only be pearl sago or tapioca powder that's cooked until translucent and then rolled into strips.

My pengat friends: from left to right, Alice, Heng Swee, Chiok San, Swee Hiang, Heng, Kwan, Lum, my wife and I, and Loh. Curiously enough, a common trait for all 10 of us here is that we've all been to the Nandaka Vihara at one time or another.