Old Bukit Mertajam

I came across these pictures of old Bukit Mertajam on Facebook. Old in the sense that they could have been taken in the 1960s or 1970s, or even the 1980s, and they certainly captured that laid-back look of a typical old town in Malaysia. This location happened to be Bukit Mertajam, where I now live, although the places in these pictures are a few kilometres away from where I stay.

The first picture shows Danby Road, with the shophouses on the left then occupied by Malayan Banking. What I noticed was the petrol station on the right side of the road, which I had completely forgotten about. It's now gone, and I suspect most people have completely forgotten that it was ever there! Only this picture remains to remind us that there was once a petrol station along this stretch of road. Really, familiar places can change so much over the years that things which were once part of the everyday landscape simply disappear from memory.

However, I still do remember the stretch of three old houses seen at the end of this road. Those are along Station Road, by the way, where Danby Road meets Station Road. Two doors away from the left-hand unit was Mun Kee Restaurant, which sold a very delicious tua pau, or dumpling. I used to stop by the restaurant early on Friday mornings to buy some before proceeding to work.

The second picture is Station Road itself, which was named because the old Malayan Railway station stood at the end of the road. It was an important station in those days, with trains from the north and south converging here before continuing on to Butterworth. I remember coming to this station quite often in the 2000s, before the railway was electrified, to catch the night train to Kuala Lumpur. I also remember arriving back here in the wee hours of the morning after the journey home. The station has since been relocated to Permatang Rawa, and the old station building was eventually demolished, with nothing replacing it. Another little piece of Bukit Mertajam's history disappeared.

And the third picture looks down the old Kulim Road. The rows of buildings on the right are steadily being demolished in the name of progress, although I noticed that at least one stretch has been restored. I suspect it may soon become a row of modern eateries, which seems to be the fate of many old shophouses these days.

These photographs are a reflection of Bukit Mertajam in the lazy, old days. Not only the buildings but the pace of life they represented. There was nothing particularly remarkable happening in these pictures. Just everyday life with roads, shops, a petrol station and a railway station, all looking as though they had plenty of time on their hands. Yet that was Bukit Mertajam once. But the town has changed quite a bit since the turn of the millennium, even if some of us who live here today hardly noticed it happening.

The boxer

I've been back from Kuala Lumpur for several days now and while trying to settle back into my normal routine, I bumped into an old YouTube video of Paul Simon performing The Boxer at a live show in Paris. I've known this song for most of my life, of course. The original Simon and Garfunkel recording has been with us since 1969 and I must have listened to it countless times over the years. But this particular performance impressed me tremendously. Paul Simon was no longer the young man who wrote the song, but there he was, guitar in hand, performing it with such ease and confidence that I found myself listening to it several times.

There was a simplicity about it all. The original recording of The Boxer was a magnificent piece of studio work but here was Simon performing the song live with his guitar, and somehow it worked just as well. Perhaps even better, with the warmth, maturity and intimacy that came through in the performance.

Of course, once I had started listening to The Boxer, it was only a matter of time before I found myself going back to Bridge Over Troubled Water. One song led to another, and before I knew it, I had spent an hour wandering through music that I hadn't properly listened to for years.

Bridge Over Troubled Water was released in January 1970 and was Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel's fifth studio album. It was also their last. The record went on to become one of the most successful albums of all time, winning six Grammy Awards the following year, including Album of the Year. Yet, behind the scenes, things were becoming increasingly difficult between the two men.

Simon and Garfunkel had been together, in one form or another, since their schooldays. By the late 1960s, however, their relationship had become strained. Art Garfunkel had also begun pursuing an acting career and was away filming Catch-22 while work was still continuing on the album. The recording itself took almost two years, and I can only imagine the difficulties involved in putting everything together when one half of the partnership was increasingly occupied elsewhere.

What eventually emerged was quite unlike the Simon and Garfunkel of their earlier folk days. Bridge Over Troubled Water was a varied album. The title song had its gospel flavour, El Cóndor Pasa took them into the world of Andean music, Cecilia was infectious pop, while Keep the Customer Satisfied went off in yet another musical direction. Paul Simon was clearly stretching himself as a songwriter and exploring a wider range of musical styles.

And then there was The Boxer, which had actually been recorded earlier and released as a single in 1969 before being included on the album. It was Paul Simon's song, written at a time when he himself was apparently feeling rather battered by criticism from the music press. The story of the lonely young man struggling to survive in New York has always seemed rather personal, even if Simon himself may not have intended it to be read as autobiography.

But watching Paul Simon in that YouTube video made me realise that after Simon and Garfunkel went their separate ways, The Boxer continued to live on in Simon's own concerts. He had written it and sung the lead vocal on the original recording, while Garfunkel supplied the beautiful harmonies, but over the years it became a song that Simon kept returning to.

Perhaps that is why the Paris performance impressed me. Here was a song written by a young Paul Simon about a young man being knocked about by life and refusing to give up. Decades later, Simon was still singing it, but the years had indeed rolled by. The song was the same, but the man singing it was older, just like me.

I suppose that comes from revisiting music from our younger days. The songs haven't changed, but we have. We hear things differently and perhaps understand them differently too. When Bridge Over Troubled Water was released in 1970, I was simply enjoying their music, not caring that this would be their final studio album together. All I knew was that they had produced some wonderful songs. And more than half a century later, The Boxer pops up on my YouTube, Paul Simon is performing it in Paris, and there I am again, being taken all the way back to Bridge Over Troubled Water.

Chowrasta market

Since I had already written about the origins of the Penang Bazaar building some time ago, I thought it was time for me to turn my sights on Chowrasta Market, which is another old Penang landmark a little further up Penang Road.

The building we see today is actually more than 60 years old. It was reopened in November 1964 after the old market (see picture) was replaced at a cost of $1.5 million. I do remember seeing this old market building when I was younger, although I can't remember ever going inside it. Maybe I did. Then one day that old building was gone and another had replaced it.

Chowrasta itself goes back much further than the present building. The area around Penang Road, Tamil Street and Chowrasta Road had long been associated with the Indian community in George Town. The early settlement here was closely connected with people from the Malabar coast of India, which explains the name of nearby Kampung Malabar. Malabar was then part of the Madras Presidency under British India and later became part of Kerala after Indian independence.

According to local accounts, Chowrasta Market was started by the Malabari people who had settled in this part of George Town during the early days of the settlement of Prince of Wales Island. As the community grew, so did the trading activities around the area. What eventually became Chowrasta Market started as a busy open-air trading area where people bought and sold everyday necessities. There were vegetables, fruits, fish, meat and other foodstuffs, with traders and customers coming and going throughout the day. By 1890, the municipal authorities had built a permanent market to serve the growing population.

The market eventually became known simply as Chowrasta, a name generally understood to come from the Indian subcontinent and associated with a crossroads or four-way junction. Roads, people and businesses converged there, and over the years Chowrasta became one of those places where different communities rubbed shoulders with one another.

My mother's generation, however, had another name for the place. They referred to it as Kelinga Bansan. I should perhaps explain that, because I know some people outside Penang may immediately regard the word “Keling” as derogatory. That is not how I remember it being used in Penang, particularly by the older generation. It was simply a familiar term for people of South Indian origin and was used matter-of-factly in everyday speech. In fact, the old Penang Hokkien name for the Chowrasta area, Kelinga Bansan, is recorded as meaning “South Indian Market”.

There is plenty of historical evidence for this older usage. The word Keling appears in classical Malay literature and historical records going back centuries, where it was used to refer to India or people from South India without the derogatory meaning that it can carry today. Even in early Penang, Kapitan Keling was the title given to the leader of the South Indian community, and the name survives in the Kapitan Keling Mosque.

So, when my mother's generation called the place Kelinga Bansan, they weren't using the word as a racial insult. They were using an old Penang term that had been part of the local vocabulary for generations. Of course, words change with time and I recognise that Keling is regarded as offensive in many contexts today. But I don't think we should automatically impose today's meaning on an old Penang name without understanding the historical context in which it was used.

That brings back another memory for me. I once had an Indian Muslim friend named Mohd Noor, a classmate from both our primary and secondary school days. He grew up in Tamil Street, right in the heart of that old neighbourhood. Later in life he went into the food business and built up a successful nasi kandar restaurant business. We lost touch over the years but reconnected in the decade before the Penang Free School Bicentenary in 2016. Sadly, he died an untimely death a year later. Another old friend and fellow chess player, Jimmy Liew, also has a Chowrasta connection. His parents used to run a Chinese medicinal hall in Chowrasta Road, so his family too was part of the community around the market. These are the sort of personal connections that make an old place come alive for me.

The market in those days was a very lively place. It was crowded and full of activity. Traditional markets were not merely places where people went to buy something and then hurried home. They were meeting places as much as shopping places. People knew the traders, chatted with their neighbours, exchanged news and generally knew what was going on in the community.

Chowrasta eventually became well known for more than just its wet market. The market and the shops around it developed a reputation for preserved fruits, nutmeg products, dried goods, Chinese medicinal halls, traditional biscuits and various local food products. And then there were the second-hand bookshops that came later and which became something of an institution in their own right. Generations of students, book lovers and collectors have wandered through them looking for something interesting, useful or perhaps simply unexpected.

By the early 1960s, the old market had evidently seen better days and a new building was constructed to replace it. When the new Chowrasta Market was reopened in November 1964, it had cost $1.5 million to build. That was a considerable sum of money in those days, and the building we see today has therefore been part of the Penang landscape for more than six decades.

The market has changed again in more recent years. Like many traditional markets, it has faced competition from supermarkets, shopping malls and changing shopping habits. The building itself also needed upgrading. Renovation works were carried out between 2013 and 2017 with the intention of improving the facilities while keeping the market's traditional function alive.

Today, Chowrasta sits comfortably within George Town's UNESCO World Heritage Site. It remains a working market rather than a museum. We can still buy fresh food there, while outside the market are stalls selling all sorts of things. The second-hand bookshops remain part of its identity too. Even today, Chowrasta continues to be described as a bustling market and an important part of George Town's living heritage.

But the atmosphere inside the market isn't quite what it used to be. It is still lively, particularly around the outside where goods and food are being sold, but inside it can feel relatively quiet compared with the old days when the whole place was crowded and bustling with people. That's because markets change as the city around them changes. The Penang of my mother's generation was very different from the Penang we have today. Yet Chowrasta has somehow managed to survive.

I suppose I have known Chowrasta all my life, even if I never really thought much about its history before. Having spent a lifetime watching Penang change, I sometimes find that places and pictures trigger memories I had almost forgotten. I remember the old building, although I can't remember ever going inside it. I remember hearing my mother and her generation call it Kelinga Bansan. I remember a schoolmate who grew up in Tamil Street and later built a successful nasi kandar business. And I remember that one particular Chinese medicinal hall in Chowrasta Road. All these little memories, from different periods of my life, somehow come together in this one small corner of Penang.

The day that changed the world

Time has really flown. It's hard to believe that it's already 25 years since the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre in New York City on 11 September 2001. What was I doing that day? Well, I was still working, although by then I was no longer in the banking industry but with JobStreet.com, based in the Hotel Equatorial building in Bukit Jambul, Penang.

Because of the 12-hour time difference, the attacks happened in New York during our evening on 11 September 2001. By the time I went to the office the following morning, the 12th of September, the full horror of what had happened was already becoming clearer. Word had come in that there had been a terrorist attack on US soil, and as more details emerged, we slowly realised that this was something on a scale none of us had known before. For the rest of the day, very little work was getting done in our office. My colleagues and I were glued to our computer terminals, reading the news, looking at the images and trying to figure out what was happening thousands of kilometres away in New York. We had no idea then that we were watching an event that would change the world, or that among the nearly 3,000 people who died would be three Malaysians who were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.

It was one of those days when the news seemed almost too unbelievable. Although we had become accustomed to seeing disasters and wars on television, this was different. The images coming out of New York were being shown again and again, and each time they looked unbelievable. First came the report of a plane crashing into the World Trade Centre, then another plane hitting the second tower. Before long, we knew that this was a coordinated terrorist attack.

There were four hijacked aircraft that morning. Two were flown into the Twin Towers, another crashed into the Pentagon and United Airlines Flight 93 came down in Pennsylvania after passengers attempted to take control of the aircraft. Nearly 3,000 people were killed, not counting the 19 hijackers. The Twin Towers collapsed within hours, taking with them office workers, visitors, firefighters, police officers and other first responders who had rushed towards the buildings when everyone else was trying to get away.

For those of us sitting in an office in Penang, we continued watching the events on our computers. Although the Internet was nowhere near what it is today, JobStreet.com by our very nature was very much connected through it to the outside world despite there being no smartphones delivering videos and notifications into our hands. So we sat at our computers, refreshing news websites and talking among ourselves as more details emerged.

I remember the feeling in the office. We were physically so far away from New York, yet somehow the events felt very close. Work continued, technically, but nobody was really concentrating on it. Every new piece of information seemed more shocking than the previous one. By the time we had spent hours following the unfolding events, we were not only distracted from work but mentally tired. And when the Twin Towers eventually collapsed, it was difficult to comprehend that the New York skyline had changed forever.

Twenty-five years later, the world has moved on in ways that would have been difficult to imagine that day. Airport security became much tighter, governments introduced new counter-terrorism measures and the United States went to war in Afghanistan. Osama bin Laden, the leader of al-Qaida, was eventually killed by US forces in Pakistan in 2011. But the consequences of 9/11 went far beyond the immediate response to the attacks and continue to influence the world today.

A whole generation has grown up since 9/11. In 2001, I was sitting in the office at Hotel Equatorial Bukit Jambul with my colleagues, staring at computer screens. This blog didn't even exist then, so there was no post for me to look back on and remind myself what I was thinking that day. Today, there are young people who were not even born when it happened. For them, 9/11 is not something they personally remember. It is something they learn about from history books, documentaries, photographs and the stories told by their parents and grandparents. So perhaps this is my belated 9/11 blog story, coming 25 years late.

Eruption!

Anak Krakatau has been much in the news over the past few days, erupting repeatedly since the fourth of September. The name itself is rather appropriate because Anak Krakatau means “Child of Krakatau”, having risen from the remains of the much larger volcano that erupted so spectacularly in 1883. In fact, Anak Krakatau only began emerging above the sea in 1927, eventually growing into the volcano we know today.

That 1883 eruption has a little story behind it for me. When I was in secondary school, our English language teacher told us about Krakatau and its enormous eruption in 1883. There were several huge explosions on the 27th of August that were heard thousands of kilometres away. The sound travelled so far that people on Rodrigues Island in the Indian Ocean, nearly 5,000 kilometres away, reportedly heard what they thought was cannon fire. The eruption also sent vast quantities of ash and volcanic material high into the atmosphere, producing unusually vivid sunsets around the world for months afterwards.

Our teacher then suggested that we ask our grandparents whether they had heard the explosions or seen those spectacular sunsets when they were young. It sounded like a perfectly reasonable suggestion at the time, except for one small flaw, at least in my case. None of my grandparents had been born before 1883! And even if they had been, they would have been far too young to remember an event that happened so far away. So I never got to ask them whether they had heard the great explosions or seen skies turning red, orange and yellow because of a volcano in the Dutch East Indies. But for some reason, that little classroom exercise stayed in my memory.

And now, more than half a century later, Krakatau has suddenly come back into my thoughts. Three days ago, I read about the temporary closure of the Soekarno-Hatta Airport in Jakarta, some 150 kilometres away, because of volcanic ash from Anak Krakatau. Then more reports began appearing about the scale of the eruptions. At one stage, ash plumes were reaching as high as 15,000 metres, or almost 50,000 feet, and the volcanic ash disrupted flights at eight airports. Almost 3,000 flights were reportedly affected, involving some 340,000 passengers. The airports have since reopened, although aviation authorities continue to monitor the situation because volcanic ash is obviously something aircraft operators do not take lightly.

The eruption itself has also been rather persistent. There was a continuous explosive phase from the fourth of September that lasted about 25 hours, followed by further eruptions over the next few days. These produced bursts of ash and lava, with some of the plumes drifting towards Sumatra and others towards Java. For the moment, the authorities have kept Anak Krakatau at a high alert level with people being advised to stay at least three kilometres from the crater. There has been no indication of an impending tsunami in the Sunda Strait, although the authorities are keeping a close watch on sea conditions because of what happened in 2018 when part of Anak Krakatau collapsed into the sea and generated a devastating tsunami.

Then I came across another interesting fact. Anak Krakatau isn't the only Indonesian volcano that has been erupting. Several others have been showing significant activity at around the same time, including Mount Semeru in East Java, Mount Ibu in North Maluku, Mount Ili Lewotolok and Mount Lewotobi Laki-laki in East Nusa Tenggara and Mount Sinabung in North Sumatra. Truly, Indonesia is one of the most volcanically active countries in the world, sitting along the Pacific Ring of Fire. So perhaps it shouldn't be too surprising to have several volcanoes erupting simultaneously. 

The six volcanoes are also at different levels of activity, so it would be misleading to suggest that all of them pose the same degree of danger. Some are producing regular ash plumes while others have more significant hazards for communities living nearby. Anak Krakatau has attracted the most international attention because of its famous name and the fact that its ash has affected aviation over such a wide area, while the others are mainly a concern for people living in their immediate surroundings.

All this has made me think again about that English lesson so many years ago. At the time, Krakatau was simply an interesting story in a school textbook and our teacher's suggestion to ask our grandparents seemed like an ordinary homework exercise. I couldn't do it because my grandparents were not even born yet! And I certainly never imagined that I would still remember that lesson more than half a century later.

Yet here I am, reading the news about Anak Krakatau erupting again, seeing reports about volcanic ash closing airports and wondering what it must have been like in 1883 when the original Krakatau exploded with such force that its sound travelled thousands of kilometres and its dust helped create strange sunsets around the world. I suppose some lessons from school stay with us for reasons that have nothing much to do with the lesson itself. I don't remember what else we studied in that particular English class, but I certainly remember Krakatau and the rather impossible homework assignment that came with it.

21st Malaysia chess festival

I've been back in Penang for several days now and am still trying to come to terms with my duties as the Fair Play Officer at the recent 21st Malaysian Chess Festival in Kuala Lumpur. There I was, spending nine full days at the playing venue, KL Gateway Mall. Originally, I intended to go down only to play in the Merdeka Rapid Chess Team Tournament as part of the PCA Penang Oldies team. But then Hamid invited me to lead the Fair Play team. 

I've known Hamid for ages, close to five decades if I'm not mistaken. He is an old hand at organising chess in the country and a vastly experienced international arbiter. He holds an A-licence from FIDE, the only Malaysian to do so, while I'm only a D-licence holder. Two years ago, he was even appointed Chief Arbiter for the Ding Liren-Gukesh World Chess Championship match in Singapore. 

So when Hamid asked me to take on the role of Fair Play Officer, it was an interesting proposition. Fair Play is still a relatively new development in chess, although efforts to eliminate cheating in chess competitions have been going on for a very long time. For several decades, FIDE has required organisers of FIDE-rated tournaments to prevent participants from bringing mobile phones into the playing hall. Over time, this was extended to cover all electronic devices, including smartwatches. 

These Fair Play checks were instituted only for the three FIDE-rated events at the Chess Festival: the Open Classical, Challengers Classical and Seniors Classical tournaments. These were played over nine rounds using the standard time control of 90 minutes, with an additional 30 seconds for every move. All the other events, which had faster time controls, were not FIDE-rated and the controls were therefore much less strict. My Fair Play duties did not extend to them, which meant I could take things a little easier on days when there were no Classical games.

And how does one enforce that? Organisers are required to provide a place for players to leave their devices before entering the playing hall. Players are also physically scanned to make sure that no hidden devices are being brought in or taken out.

Even something as mundane as going to the toilet has to be considered. Separate facilities have to be provided for players so that they do not wander into public toilets and start chatting with non-players, whether accidentally or deliberately.  For this Malaysian Chess Festival, we used a QR-code scanning app to scan the identification tags of players whenever they used the toilet. 

Of course, during the games themselves, I spent much of my time walking around the playing hall and observing the players. That became part of the job. Occasionally, an arbiter would come to me to discuss certain behaviour he had noticed, and we would then keep a closer eye on the players concerned to see whether anything was amiss. 

As I mentioned earlier, my initial objective for going to the chess festival was only to play for the PCA Penang Oldies team in the Merdeka team event. Initially confident, I found the going tough and it has become increasingly difficult to hold my own against the opposition. And no wonder, year after year, the standard of the Merdeka Rapid Chess Team Tournament seems to get increasingly competitive.  

Personally, I had four losses in four games on the first day. It was an ignominious record by any standard. Things didn't improve very much on the second day when I lost another three games in a row before finally managing to pull back a little dignity by winning my last two games. I don't know what my team-mates thought of me! 

On paper, my friends in the OFA Penang team were surprisingly the first seeds. But there was never any pretence that they were the strongest team in the competition. In the end, they were overshadowed by several foreign-constituted teams as well as a number of strong local sides. Still, they did well enough to finish as the third-best Malaysian team in the competition. Not bad at all.

Perhaps I should also say a word or two about the three Classical tournaments. Over the nine rounds, there were no dubious calls that required us to take action. There was none although on one occasion we did subject a player in the Challengers section to a rather more than thorough body scan after his game was over!

The reason was that this particular player appeared to be running away with the top prize despite being unrated in standard chess. This raised a few red flags among the arbiters. So he was immediately placed under a little more scrutiny. 

Later, I was particularly curious about where he had obtained his FIDE rapid rating. Before coming to this Chess Festival, he had played only 16 rated games in two FIDE-rated events this year. That didn't tell me very much. But then I started digging a little deeper. It turned out that in China, the player had been competing in their internal tournaments registered under his Chinese name since 2023. He had played in a number of rapid chess events there and, more recently, had been doing rather well, finishing first or second in several competitions. And that explained quite a lot to me. 

As far as I could tell, this Malaysian Chess Festival was simply his first attempt at obtaining a FIDE standard chess rating. And he did it in splendid fashion, which was a rather satisfying ending to my little investigation. Sometimes, a red flag is just something worth checking. And once I had checked it, I discovered that there was absolutely nothing sinister about it after all. He was just... a young man coming through the ranks.

Heritage walkabouts

I mentioned in my last story that I had gone exploring the old civic precinct in the George Town heritage core zone last July and August, but I never actually got around to dedicating a story in this blog to my walks. It wasn't just once, either. I think I made the rounds twice, perhaps even three times, taking my time to walk the streets and look around.

After all, I couldn't very well avoid the area when I had already visited the Penang State Museum and Fort Cornwallis three times each since their reopening. Call me obsessive about these heritage landmarks, but that's just me. So here are some pictures from my walks. Pictures taken from my perspective. I won't be describing them much, though, if at all. I'll leave that to the pictures.

This fair play thingy

Completed my first day as Fair Play Officer at the 21st Malaysian Chess Festival. 

I came armed with lots of ideas on how to make things work, only to discover that most of them worked better in my head than they did in the KL Gateway’s internal floor plan. In the end, it was finding the most practical solution to fulfil the anti-cheating guidelines, particularly where the toilet was concerned.

I was terribly shorthanded as well. My assistants were doing what they were supposed to do, but because they had to remain static at their posts, there was little they could do to help with anything else.

So, in between trying to keep an eye on things, I found myself taking on a few additional roles: Fair Play Officer, toilet monitor, food deliveryman and water boy. All in a day’s work. 😄

Nevertheless, Day One is done. One down, five more days to go. Will I survive? Hopefully I’ll get better at this before the festival gets the better of me!