Nursery rhymes

I've written before about my kindergarten days. That particular episode goes back to 1960, when I was six years old. It was my first experience attending kindergarten and it turned out to be quite an eye-opening cultural shock. Until then the only children I really knew were those from my immediate neighbourhood and my cousins scattered across the island. Suddenly there were perhaps 80 or a hundred children all under one roof, learning our ABCs and 123s.

Ten years ago I wrote that the master of the kindergarten was someone I knew only as Mr Poh. Since then a little more has come to light. His name was Poh Thean Poe, and he ran the place, officially known as Seang Tek Road Kindergarten, from 1955 until 1973. By then he had already stepped back from the day-to-day running two years earlier and left for Kota Kinabalu to work in his mother's restaurant. Later he settled in Seremban. That much I know about him.

Music was a big part of my kindergarten days. I still remember those mornings when we were seated upstairs in the two-storey wooden bungalow that housed the school. The teacher would put on colourful 45 rpm records on one of those changeable record players and we listened to nursery rhymes.

I sometimes wonder whether kindergartens today still play these traditional English nursery rhymes. Songs like The Farmer in the Dell, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and London Bridge Is Falling Down. They can still be found easily enough on streaming services like YouTube or Spotify. Recently I have been reacquainting myself with some of them and came across a collection recorded by Oscar Brand. 

Who exactly was he, this Oscar Brand? A practical unknown in this part of the world but Oscar Brand was one of the most prolific figures in the 20th century American folk revival. Born in Winnipeg in 1920 and later based in New York, he built a career that stretched across more than 70 years as a singer, songwriter, author and broadcaster. He recorded nearly 100 albums and wrote hundreds of songs, ranging from sea shanties and patriotic ballads to political campaign songs and his famous, or perhaps notorious, Bawdy Songs and Backroom Ballads series.

Brand's recordings covered an astonishing range of material. On one hand he recorded gentle nursery rhymes for children. On the other he was equally willing to document the more mischievous side of folk tradition.

That series was Brand’s cheerful attempt to preserve a part of folk tradition that polite society often preferred to ignore. Folk songs were not always wholesome campfire
material. Sailors, soldiers and travellers had been singing slightly risqué verses for centuries, usually in taverns or other less respectable surroundings. Brand simply gathered a number of these songs together and recorded them more or less in the spirit in which they had originally circulated.

My copy of Volume Three in the series was given to me by Anwar Fazal, that well known figure in Penang's civic and cultural life. The songs are performed in a straightforward folk style with little more than Brand’s voice and guitar. Despite the title, the humour is mostly based on suggestion and wordplay rather than anything explicit. That probably explains how such songs managed to be recorded at all in that period.

When these records first appeared in the 1950s they caused a certain amount of fuss. Some countries even banned them for a time, which of course only made them more attractive to collectors. Brand himself always maintained that these songs were part of genuine folk heritage. In his view they deserved to be documented.

Brand was also the long-time host of the American radio programme Folksong Festival on WNYC. The programme began in 1945 and ran for more than 70 years, earning a Guinness World Records citation as the longest running radio show with the same host. Throughout his career Brand championed both traditional and contemporary folk music, giving early exposure to performers such as Bob Dylan, Joan Baez and Joni Mitchell. He remained active almost until his death in 2016 at the age of 96.

Listening to some of his recordings today, especially those old nursery rhymes, brings back faint memories of those mornings in the wooden bungalow on Seang Tek Road. It is curious how a few simple songs on a record can open a small window into a very distant part of one's childhood.

Before the roads diverged

For the first 14 years of my life, I was an only child—until my little sister Judy came into the picture. Being the sole focus of attention back then, I naturally became the centre of attention for both sets of grandparents. We were living with my maternal grandparents in Seang Tek Road. When my parents married in 1954, my father moved into that household, which I believe was a fairly common arrangement in post-war Penang—grooms settling in with the bride’s family.

Unlike my mother’s side, my paternal grandparents had nowhere permanent to stay. No house, not even a rented one. My maternal grandparents or maybe, great-grandparents, on the other hand, had rented the house in Seang Tek Road a long time ago, and it had taken on the role of a kind of traditional family home, the kong-chhu (公厝). It was where extended family gathered during big occasions such as the Emperor God’s worship during Chinese New Year, prayers for the ancestors during the seventh lunar month, and of course, the winter solstice festival or Tang Chek (冬至). Relatives would come and go, especially to visit my maternal grandmother, who was the eldest among her siblings.

Her side of the family was large and lively. She had regular outings to visit relatives, too. The closest lived in Noordin Street, headed by a formidable cigar-chomping old lady I still remember clearly. Among her siblings, she was especially close to her younger sister who stayed in a kampung house in Ayer Itam. They had a car, so most of the time it was the sister who came calling. When we wanted to visit them, we’d catch a bus from Dato Kramat Road, either a municipal one or the green Lim Seng Seng bus. Her other brothers were scattered around Hutton Lane, Gopeng Road, Green Garden and Lim Lean Teng Road. I was told there was a fifth brother who died during the war, but nobody ever spoke much about what happened to him.

My paternal grandparents, meanwhile, were hit hard by the Japanese Occupation. After the war, my grandfather struggled to find work. My father had to leave school before completing his Senior Cambridge exams to earn a living. My earliest memories of my paternal grandparents were of them staying in a room along Malay Street with my aunt. I haven’t been able to trace that house anymore, but back then it was considered the groom’s “official” family residence when he got married. From there, they moved into a room in Green Hall—a gloomy upstairs space that also served as an office for a Chinese association. The stairs led to a dimly lit upper floor, and their room was right at the back. Lighting was poor in those days—just a bare incandescent bulb dangling from the ceiling.

It was in that dimly lit room at Green Hall where my paternal grandfather passed away. In the middle of the night, someone called at our home in Seang Tek Road to inform my father of the death. We arrived to see him on the bed, lifeless. The lightbulb was dim, the atmosphere heavy, and the air felt a little stale. The undertaker came and his body was taken to the Toishan Convalescent Home for the customary three-day wake.

That was my first encounter with death in the family, and I remember it vividly as something unsettling and difficult to process. The funeral home was dim, stark and solemn, filled with shadows and the smell of burning fake paper money, the silver gin-chua (银纸). Family members and acquaintances came and went, offering condolences, burning joss sticks, folding paper offerings. To me, it all felt like a blur. Ceremonies and rituals which I didn’t fully understand, but was expected to endure. Death wasn’t something people talked about openly. The adults moved around, and they wailed loudly when they cried. I didn’t feel grief the way they did, not exactly. What I felt was a strange sense of fear, of helplessness with no-one to talk to. I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to be sad or respectful, but as a nine-year-old, I was scared.

To this day, that three-day wake has stayed with me—not because of ritual or family unity, but because it was the first time I truly felt the presence of death. Not abstract, not in stories, but real, and final. It marked the end of something, but also introduced a part of life that, until then, had been hidden from view. I think that’s why I’ve never forgotten it. Perhaps one day I should write about it properly.

After Green Hall, my paternal grandmother and aunt moved to Carnarvon Lane, and later, came to live with us in Seang Tek Road. What began as my maternal grandparents’ traditional family kong-chhu eventually grew into something more: a shared home where the two mothers-in-law, each from different background, came to accept one another’s presence under a single roof. Once, that might have seemed unthinkable but times had changed, and so had the circumstances that bound us together. After finishing school at Penang Free School, I headed off to Tunku Abdul Rahman College in Petaling Jaya, graduating in 1976. I joined the Straits Echo but lasted only six months before moving on to Ban Hin Lee Bank. In 1980, everything changed. The landlord reclaimed all four units of the Seang Tek Road property, supposedly for development which, as it turned out, never happened. But we were evicted anyway, and with very little notice.

By then, our family circle had shrunk a bit more. There was just my maternal grandmother, my paternal aunt, my parents, Judy and me. We somehow squeezed into my grandmother’s sister’s house in Lorong Zoo Tiga. It was there that my last grandmother passed away. Around the same time, Judy left for Singapore to pursue a nursing career. That left only the four of us, and in 1984, my father bought a small flat in Seberang Jaya. We moved in, thankful for owning a property at long last but not long after, in 1985, my mother, who had been unwell for a while, passed away.

Following Chinese tradition, I married Saw See within 100 days of my mum's death. We moved to the Semilang area in Seberang Jaya, where our two children were born. Then, in 2004, came the big move to Bukit Mertajam after we grew tired of our Semilang neighbours. That’s where we’ve been ever since—21 years and counting.

Earliest memories, part 2

I had put off writing Part Two of my childhood memories in my former Seang Tek Road home for far too long, I wrote Part One in September last year but never had the urge to continue beyond that story. But about them, I must write or else memories will fade into nothingness. So these are more memories to share regarding the toys in my arsenal. 

How could I forget the inflatable paper balls? Every child, it seemed, had one, or desperately wanted one. They were a staple part of childhood, a simple joy that brought hours of fun. These weren't fancy, store-bought toys. No, these were often found in the chai tiam mah, roadside vendors or given out as party favours. They came flat, a disc of brightly coloured, patterned paper, a kaleidoscope of hues and designs. And somewhere, a small hole. The magic happened when one blows into that tiny opening. As a small boy, my cheeks puffed out, and I'd blow and blow. Slowly, the flat disc gets inflated into a sphere, a lightweight, bouncy ball ready for action. And sometimes, if a ball had been previously inflated and deflated, I didn't even need to blow; Continuous sharp hits upwards with the palm would somehow trap air inside, and it would inflate like magic! The beauty of these balls was in their simplicity. They were light enough to be batted around indoors without breaking anything, yet sturdy enough for gentle outdoor play. They provided endless amusement during my solitary childhood. 

Train sets, much like those inflatable paper balls, hold a special place in my childhood memories. Mine was a basic one with a circular track, the pieces easily taken apart. The train itself was battery-powered. I think two batteries were required, and that taught me me how to insert them in so that the end of the first battery should touch the positive end of the second or else the train wouldn't work. So I'd place the train on the track, connect up the metal carriages, two or three or them, and slide the switch to connect the battery power, and it was time for the train to roll. There's something inherently captivating about these miniature worlds, the rhythmic chugging of the engine, the clickety-clack of the wheels on the track and the sense of journey and adventure they evoke. This fascination has stayed with me in real life, and I marvel at the videos of train journeys that appear on my YouTube and facebook subscriptions. 

And then there were my toy building blocks. A mere 20 pieces, yet they held a multitude of imagination. Each one was a cube, six faces in all, and every face formed part of a picture. I could arrange all of them in a correct alignment, and like a child's version of a Rubik's Cube, they would form a complete picture. Not just one picture, but six! Six different scenes, each one a satisfaction waiting to be revealed. Having spent hours with those blocks, I knew the pictures by heart. Yet the act of creation, of turning those jumbled squares into a recognisable image, absorbed me. The way a simple twist, a different arrangement, could bring a whole new world into being. But I never owned jigsaw puzzles, at least not complete sets. There were too many tiny pieces going missing, a casualty of childhood chaos. But with my 20 building blocks, there was a sense of control, a manageable challenge and the certainty of a satisfying conclusion. 

Of course, no reflection on childhood toys would be complete without the humble yo-yo. My earliest yo-yos were plain plastic discs with a string attached, purchased from the same chai tiam mah above. They were nothing fancy. They didn’t spin for long, and they certainly weren’t built for tricks. But they did what they were supposed to do: I’d throw them down and they’d roll back up into my hand almost every time. That basic up-and-down motion was enough to amuse me. Back then, I didn’t know walking the dog from around the world. Those were tricks done by kids with flashy yo-yos that glowed or whistled or spun forever. But mine in their simplicity, were fun. There was something oddly satisfying about the rhythm of the yo-yo—its pull, its spin, its return. It was only much later in life that I owned a much proper yo-yo: a Coca-Cola-branded one. Red plastic, solid and shiny, with the Coca-Cola logo printed on the side. That yo-yo felt like a badge of status. It spun longer and smoother than anything I had before, and for a brief time I imagined I’d finally start learning all those clever tricks. But alas, time passed and somewhere along the way, that prized yo-yo went missing. I wish I’d held on to it, but such is life. Some toys stay with us only as memories.

Then there were the cap guns. A small metal toy gun that took those red rolls of caps which are thin strips of paper with tiny dots of gunpowder spaced evenly along the length. I remember feeding the roll into the chamber, pull the trigger and bang! I didn’t need much imagination to feel like playing cowboys or policemen. But even simpler were the DIY versions of cap guns made out of a piece of paper folded into the shape of a triangle. With one swift flick of the arm, the folded triangle snap open and crack! I think they are known as paper bangers. If you can’t fold one properly or failed to get a loud pop, you hadn’t quite earned your stripes in the playground. Kids today wouldn't know what the paper bangers are about now.

And finally, I want to mention the bubble blowers: those little bottles of magic solution with a plastic wand inside. Dip the wand, pull it out and with one long breath, send a shimmering orb floating into the air. All of them brought joy, every breath becoming a floating world for a few seconds. It didn’t take much, just a bit of soapy liquid, a breeze and a child's heart. Of all the toys from those days, the bubble blower might’ve been the most poetic. Each bubble a moment suspended in air and gone too soon. Then there were the plastic balloons. A small tube from the sundry shop, pop the cap, pierce the foil seal and squeeze out a bit of gooey plastic onto a narrow straw. The soft blob then inflated with a puff of breath to form a balloon. I could pop it with my mouth, make it shrink or blow it bigger until it burst and splattered my face. Simple, messy and endlessly fun. Another one of those small, unforgettable joys of childhood.

Earliest memories, part 1

How far back can one’s memory really go? I’d say — and this is just my opinion — that a person’s earliest memories probably stretch back to around five or six years old. Anything earlier than that is a bit wonly, at least for me. Sure, photos from way back can stir up vague memories of childhood, but I wouldn’t count that as truly remembering those earliest years. 

You might look at a picture and think, "Was I one or three years old when that happened?" but that's probably the extent of it. Can anyone really recall those moments without the photos to jog their memory? I have pictures of myself at five months old, seven months old, and if I were to rely solely on those, I could say I remember the times when my parents rolled out the mats and baby mattresses on the open back terrace on the first floor of our home on Seang Teik Road. There I was, lying on my belly or sitting upright on the mattress, with those moments captured forever by my father's camera. Did all this happen when I was less than a year old? Yes, it did. But do I genuinely remember it? No, I don’t. So, that doesn’t really count as a memory.

My first real memories from childhood come much later, probably when I was around five or six years old. I was an only child then with no siblings close to my age, and I wasn’t allowed to play with the neighbourhood kids. The neighbours were tradesmen or hawkers and my parents had that concern that their children were perhaps uncouth, naughty and rough. Hey, I could have been easily influenced and turned into a ruffian or a hooligan of sorts if allowed to mix freely with them! So, I became a solitary precious little boy to them. I had to invent my own games within the confines of the house to keep myself entertained. 

One of those memories is of playing with marbles in the airwell of the house. I kept my marbles in a tin can — there must have been 30 or 40 of them in there. I’d shake the can vigorously, making a tremendous racket, only to be hushed by my mother. "Shhh, don’t wake your grandma. She’s asleep." I’d stop for a while, but the next time I brought out the tin, I’d give it another good shake and receive the same scolding. There was a small. shallow depression along one side of the airwell, which served as drainage for rainwater. Whenever it rained, the water would flow along this depression into a drain inside the house and then out to the larger drain in the back lane. I would block off one end of the airwell's drain and use it as a makeshift play area for my marbles. For a bit of variety, I’d also play with the old Nyonya granite mill which my grandmother used for grinding her rice. The circular depression in the mill provided endless hours of fun with my marbles — who would have thought!

Then there were the cigarette box trains. Back in those days, my father was a heavy smoker, so there were always plenty of empty cigarette boxes around the house. All the boxes, hundreds of them, would be collected, and when it was time to play, I’d line them up painstakingly in a snaky pattern on the floor — the longer, the better — winding under tables and chairs, from the front hall to the kitchen, and back. As long as the floor was level, the more twisted and complicated the design, the better. There was the occasional frustration when a cigarette box was accidentally toppled and it set off the train, the frantic efforts to rescue the remaining painstaking work, but by and large it was great fun setting off the train and watching the boxes tumble one after another along the path. Maybe an hour's work for a few minutes of pleasure. But it was worth it!

The flat, level floor from the front of the house to the kitchen was more than just a space to play cigarette box trains or walk across — it was also my personal cycling track. I’d start with my little tricycle, pedalling around the main table in the front hall, navigating tight corners and tearing down the corridor. As I grew older and more confident, my cycling became better controlled and my attempts to take corners sharper. I would weave in and out between the tables and chairs, challenging myself to avoid crashing into the furniture. The thrill was to see how close I could get without toppling over or banging into anything. Sometimes, I'd pretend it was a race track, imagining myself as a speed racer, and other times, it was an obstacle course, with tables and chairs forming exciting barriers to manoeuvre around. The track felt like it was all mine — a place where I could ride freely and test my limits.

Then there were my toys, which were stored upstairs in my parents' bedroom, packed away in a large kerosene tin. Whenever the rain poured outside, it was my cue to turn that tin upside down and pour out my collection. I had an assortment of toys, though the memories of them are a bit fuzzy now. I do distinctly remember the small plastic toy soldiers that warmed my heart. The same ones as in the Disney film, Toy Story, each character was frozen in a different pose — some crouched low, others aiming rifles and a few with binoculars as if scouting for an enemy. I’d set them up in all sorts of battle formations across the floor or on the bed, creating imaginary battlefields and missions, only to knock them over and start again. 

I also remember my board games, though with nobody to play with: Snakes and Ladders, Ludo, Chinese Checkers and Draughts — but no Chess as this game came very much later to me — along with Happy Family, Donkey, Snap and Old Maid among other card games. I taught myself to play Snakes and Ladders, Ludo and Chinese Checkers alone — oh, poor me! These simple games were a welcome distraction on rainy afternoons, each one bringing its own bit of amusement to my solitary childhood days.

One of my most treasured toys was my Bayko construction set. It had all sorts of metal rods, baseplates and bakelite pieces that let me build miniature houses and buildings. The sense of accomplishment I felt after piecing together those structures was immeasurable — even if they were far from perfect. I could spend hours designing new layouts, trying out different combinations of windows, doors and roof shapes. It was like having my own little architectural playground. As I got older, my construction projects extended well into my primary school days. The Bayko set was always my go-to, especially on rainy afternoons when I could construct and immerse myself in my tiny world while the rain kept falling outside.

All in all, the house was more than just a home; it was a place of endless adventure and imagination, filled with the joy of simple games and cherished toys that made my childhood uniquely my own. 

As a postscript to all that I've written, I must add that the experience of being a precious little boy wasn’t unique to me; it was quite common in those days. One of my closest friends — we were at Westlands School together — had an overly protective grandmother, a prim and proper nyonya lady with a sanggul and dressed in baju kebaya and sarong, who came to the school by trishaw every single day before recess to bring him something nourishing from home. Oddly enough, she had other grandchildren, but this special treatment was reserved just for him, my close friend. Every recess, there she’d be in the canteen with a tiffin carrier. And after he’d eaten his fill, he wasn’t allowed to join the rest of us running around or playing games for fear of sweat ruining his school uniform. No, he had to stand quietly by the staircase until the bell rang and everyone had to rush back to the classroom. A precious little boy, indeed. At the time, he accepted it as he was required to, but now he looks back with some regret, frustrated that he wasn’t allowed to mix with the other boys during those precious recess moments.

Living in Seang Tek Road

Seang Tek Road and the surrounds were my playground for the first 26 years of my life. After almost 40 years later, why does it still feel like only yesterday that my family moved away from this part of George Town? I was born in this neighbourhood, at a nearby maternity home in Hundred Years Lane (this is quite an absurd translation of the road's actual name, Lorong Seratus Tahun, into the English language and besides which, I can't recognise the building now even if it still stands), and this neighbourhood was my haunt well into my adult life. Even when I studied in Petaling Jaya, I would head back to the familiar comforts of my home in Seang Tek Road at the slightest opportunity, be it a long holiday or only a short stay.

My attachment is still there. It is so obvious to see that I have an affinity for this corner townhouse at Number 10, Seang Tek Road which I grew up in. It still stands today, although it is a far cry from the warmth and homeliness of its distant past. The owners have renovated it and the tenants have turned it to commercial use. Only last month, I returned to this road just to look at the building again....

Last week, I decided to recreate the interior of my old home on paper. Drawing the plan to the best of my memories of the house, this is the best I can do, however. I tried drawing to scale but unfortunately, the dimensions are an approximation only. However, I am confident that I haven't deviated much from reality.

The townhouse, like all pre-war buildings was long and narrow. The internal width of the house was a mere 12 to 13 feet. But it stretched way back, possibly some 70 feet. Like many typical pre-war Straits townhouses on the island, it would feature a five-foot way, a main hall, a staircase, a sitting room, a dining area, an air well, a kitchen, a bathroom, a rear courtyard and a toilet located right at the very end.

Upstairs, the main bedroom would look over into the street below and there would be a small spy hole in the floor to look at anyone calling at the house, if we were all upstairs. There was also a second bedroom and then a terrace at the back. No bathroom though, so all ablutions will have to be performed downstairs.

Let me put the numbers and alphabets into the proper perspective.

On the ground floor, A was the five-foot way paved with terracotta tiles. A complete misnomer in this case, because the five-foot way measured 7½ feet from the granite edge to the front wall. In fact, almost the whole house was laid with these tiles. B was the main hall, C was the sitting room, D was the open dining area, E was the kitchen, F1 was the granite-paved floor of for the air well which was set about eight inches lower than the floor of the dining area. A shallow drain ran along the edge of the dining area and kitchen, took a left turn to go around the perimeter of the rear courtyard and the water emptied itself into the large drain outside the house. F2 was the walled and cemented rear courtyard.

Going on to the numbers, there were two main windows (1a) at the front of the house. It was very normal for the windows to sport vertical metal bars for security. The two halves of each window opened inwards. Above the windows were air vents. The main wooden door (2a) featured some vertical slits and simple carvings, and it was secured by a latch lock. During the day time, the latch lock would not be engaged and all that prevented the door from opening out was a simple cabin hook. Behind this main door was a massive wooden door (3) which swung inwards and would be left open from mornings till night-time. When the two halves of the door were closed, they were secured by a pair of thick wooden latches. 

we placed a rectangular table (4a) arranged squarely in the middle of the main hall, surrounded by a chair on each side. A small table (5) on the right wall held a Pye radiogram. I could spend hours listening to the radio, especially to the RAAF radio station broadcasting on 1445kHz from Butterworth. The space between it and the window was for parking a bicycle. Along the other wall, my father would park his Honda C50 motorcycle. Later when I owned my own Honda CB100 motorcycle, I would park it beside the bicycle.

The family worshipped Kuan Imm and a painted picture of the deity was placed at the main altar, a cupboard (6) which faced outwards towards the main door. A wooden cabinet (7) filled with a grand-uncle's books and magazines sat right next to it and on it was placed the memorial tablet of my maternal great-grandparents. Also having pride of place on the right and left walls of the main hall were huge portraits of the great-grandparents and other senior relatives. 

Separating the main hall from the interior of the building was a wooden latticed partition (8) which rose from the floor to the ceiling, broken only by two open entrances. On the other side of the partition was a corridor that led to a storeroom beneath the staircase (9). The staircase came with simple balusters supporting the handrails. All were carved from wood and very darkly shellacked. It had a landing zone halfway up and at this point, the direction of the staircase turned 360^o before continuing to the top floor. From the upper half of the staircase, it was possible to peer through the lattice work of the partition and look down into the main hall. In the sitting room was a long table or t'ng toke with detachable rounded ends (10) which served as my grandmother's bed at night. The two hemispherical halves could be combined together to make a round table. All that remains today in my possession is the middle portion. The two other pieces were claimed by one of my grandmother's siblings when the house was taken back by the landlord. There was also a small cupboard (11) for my books, a sideboard (12) and a single bed (13) for my grandfather. A window (1b) beside this bed opened out into the air well yard.

From the sitting room, a door (2b) opened out to the dining area. Against the wall was a small table (14) that held a small wooden cabinet that my grandmother had nailed together herself and which I'm still using today, a dining table (4b) for six people and the first of two food cabinet or chai too (11b). Beyond the dining area was the airy kitchen with a traditional Chinese stove (15)  right smack in the middle. The other chai too was located here too. A cemented brick water-through (16) and bathroom (17) faced the kitchen. I remember that we reared small fishes in the water-through to get rid of unwanted mosquito larvae. The unnumbered criss-cross pattern next to the bathroom was a wiremesh netting stretched out to become the drying area for washed crockery.

The walled courtyard at the back of the house had multiple uses. First, this was the area to dry our washed clothes. Second, we had three chicken coops (18) lining one side of the wall. At first, there were a few chicken but when I was older, I don't remember my family rearing anymore and the coops were largely left empty. Third, maybe they were used for keeping the unused flower pots because outside the coops, the area was used to grow all sorts of potted plants. Lots of them, actually. The squat toilet (19) was in the corner at the far end of the house and could only be accessed by a flight of three steps. It was a lucky thing that this house no longer used the bucket system and there was an efficient flush system in use. There was a small charcoal hut (20) at the other corner. A metal door (2c) opened out into a wide back lane which led to Perlis Road. 

By comparison, the top floor was very spartan. It was basically the sleeping quarters for the family: G was the main bedroom at the front of the house, while H was the second bedroom. The floorboard was of timber planks laid out lengthwise and resting on huge timber beams that ran across the house. The rooms were partitioned off with wooden planks to a height of seven or eight feet and above were latticed vents for air flow.

The three windows (23) of the main bedroom were equipped with wooden louvred shutters and they opened out into Seang Tek Road. Looking out directly from them, I could see the hills of Paya Terubong.  The interior was spacious. Even with the double bed, mirrored side table, cupboard, a standing clothes hanger and my baby cot moved in, there was still a lot of space left. The bedroom door (2d) led to a long corridor. On the right was a small storeroom (25) and then the top end of the staircase, immediately after which was the door (2e) into the second bedroom. A window (1c) looked out into the air well space. There were clothes cupboards arranged along the wall as well as another book cupboard for me. I certainly had a wealth of books around me!

A wooden door (2f) led to the open terrace (J) at the back. It looked over the void area (K) on the ground floor - from the air well to the rear courtyard - and the roofs of the kitchen, bathroom, toilet and charcoal hut. On the back ledge were balanced three or four pots of plants. There was also a pipe bringing running water to the top floor but there was no bathroom here. A drainpipe at the far corner directed the flow of rain and waste water to the shallow drain on the ground floor. 

We lived in this house until 1980 when the landlord took it back. We were given some monetary compensation for the eviction and we went on to stay in Lorong Zoo Tiga. That was before we made an eventual big move to the Taman Siakap area of Seberang Jaya on the mainland in 1983.

Perlis Road

I saw this image of a watercolour painting on a facebook page. The subject here was of a row of townhouses in Perlis Road, George Town. To me, this scene was instantly recognisable and brought back a lot of childhood memories. The house with the overhanging wooden balcony is very rarely seen today. I should visit this place one day to reacquaint myself with the old neighbourhood. After all, there was a similar balcony in a house opposite my old home in Seang Tek Road. 

That house was occupied by a family which sold chap fan or economy rice dishes for their walk-in patrons. Special dishes are also cooked on demand, especially soup-based dishes. Occasionally, my mother would ask me to go and buy their chap chai soup for dinner. This was a vegetable soup with various bits of pork and fish balls thrown in. For me, it was only a matter of crossing the road (Seang Teik Road) to place my order. Think it used to cost only $2 for a big bowl of soup. Of course, this shop and the balcony are no longer there. The back door of my old home opened into a wide back lane which connected to Perlis Road. You can see the entrance of this back lane in the painting. It is the exact one below the wooden balcony. 

If anyone is interested, this watercolour painting is available for sale at RM2,100. You only need to join this facebook group and place your bid there. This, and also many other watercolour paintings that are on sale. Amateur artists all, but very talented. 

I don't know about now but in the old days, Perlis Road was pretty notorious. Perlis Road and Irving Road. A lot of questionable nightlife activities occurred here. Once the sun had set, the back lanes assumed a new life. They were unlit. No street lights except for the headlamps of the occasional motorcycles that dared use the back lanes as shortcuts. This one and also another one across the road that led to Irving Road and beyond to New Lane. So all sorts of questionable nightlife and unsavoury dubious characters. To be blunt, prostitutes and transgenders. So much so that the houses along Perlis Road resorted to erecting iron barriers to fence off their five footways from these unwanted nocturnal visitors. 

Subdued mid-autumn festival

A reminder that today's the day when the Chinese community shall be celebrating the Mid-Autumn Festival with the traditional mooncakes. The festival falls on the 15th day of the Chinese eighth lunar month. 

Usually, the Chinese clan associations around George Town would openly celebrate with worship at the altars of their resident deities and also at the ancestral tablets, but the coronavirus pandemic has forced everyone to scale back their worship activities for yet another year. The situation is worse this time as the virus is still ravaging the community with hundreds in the city getting infected every day. When can it ever end?

In the good old days of the 1960s, there were lots of celebrations around George Town in connection with Mid-Autumn. The late CS Wong in his book A Cycle of Chinese Festivities wrote that according to the Sin Pin Jit Poh newspaper (星檳日報) of 27 Sept 1963: 

The Penang Peng Seah, which was then celebrating its 15th anniversary, held a tea party in the spacious flower garden of the Rubber Trade Association at Anson Road where amateur vocalists in Peking dialect regaled the audience with songs from the Peking repertory. The youths from the Hainanese Association in Muntri Street played harmonica numbers at their moonlit tea party, while members of the Hakka Association at Burmah Road entertained themselves with mooncakes and modern tunes. Finally, the Nightingale Musical Party went round the city in a decorated vehicle to serenade in the gay moonlight.

The 99.9 percent-illuminated moon at 9.45pm on 20 Sept 2021. The
astronomical full moon had occurred exactly one hour 50 minutes
earlier at 7.55pm.

As a young boy still staying in the rented Seang Tek Road house in the early 1960s, the night of this 15th day of the lunar month would be spent on the top floor at the back where there was an open-air terrace. The terrace faced East North East (ENE), meaning that we had an unhindered view of the rising full moon if the weather was clear. By nine or ten o'clock, it would be reasonably high up in the sky. Here, my family would set up a make-shift altar for worship, regardless of whether the full moon could be seen or not. There would be fruits and nyonya sweetmeat, and not forgetting the most essential offering of all, the mooncake. I would have lit my paper dragon-shaped lantern and gone parading around the neighbourhood. We would wait for the arrival of my grandmother's sister's family from Ayer Itam, then we would all troop upstairs to the terrace to commence worship of Ch'ang-O (嫦娥).

It's all rather inexplicably baffling because why should anyone worship a thief like Ch'ang-O, even though she was imbued with magic powers. According to legend, she fled to the moon after stealing an elixir of immortality that the Queen Mother of the Western Paradise, Hsi Wang Mu (西王母), had gifted Ch'ang-O's famous archer-husband, Hou-I (后羿).

Incidentally, Ch'ang-O is still honoured by the Chinese government today through their lunar exploratory missions, starting with Chang'e 1 and Chang'e 2 in 2007 and 2010 respectively, Chang'e 3 in 2013 and Chang'e 4 which softlanded rovers on the moon in 2019, and finally Chang'e 5 which returned to Earth with moon samples last year. 

Bukit Gambir

A quick reminiscence. I woke up this morning and looked out the window and suddenly, my mind was transported back to the 1960s when I was still growing up in Seang Tek Road. 

We lived in this house just off Dato Kramat Road and my parents' bedroom was on the first floor, looking out onto the street. So many times I would stare out of the window. 

The view looked into a back lane opposite the house and afar, I remember seeing a hill in the background which I assumed to be Penang Hill. I imagined seeing the funicular railway in the distance. During days when incoming storms were brewing, I could really see dark clouds cover up the gloomy hill top. 

But of course, there is no longer such a view for me. Now staying in Bukit Mertajam, Penang Hill is so far away and the Cherok Tokun Hill is my most immediate nature play ground. 

I opened up Google Maps today and tried to trace my line of sight from the Seang Tek Road house. To my surprise, it was not Penang Hill after all but the smaller hill next to it: the Bukit Gambir Hill, which nowadays has acquired the infamous nickname of Botak Hill after illegal hill clearings took place several years back.

Draughts board

For the past months I have been going through my storeroom and cupboards, trying to clean out the unnecessary stuff -- books, magazines and chess tournament bulletins -- but finding it almost impossible. Too much clinging to my material belongings although I know that I do not need them any more. They are no longer of any practical use to me but the very thought of throwing or giving them away pains me to no end. So back into the cupboard or storeroom from where they had emerged.

One item uncovered in the last few days was a homemade board of 64 squares. I posted the picture of it to a few chat groups. I mentioned that this was my very first chessboard and it could have been made in 1968 or 1969. Now, I'm not even sure that it is a chessboard. It could have been a draughts board. It would have also measured 8x8, the same as a chessboard.

Now, if it was a homemade draughts board, it could have been made even earlier than 1968. Possibly 1965 when I was still in Primary school. Chess was still far away from my mind but we kids were playing draughts (or dum-dum) during recess time or after school while waiting to be picked up by our parents or a school taxi driver or trishaw man. 

The game of draughts was all the rage. No need for sophisticated pieces. No horse head, no castle, no peculiar everything else. All that was needed were 24 bottle caps. And here, the type of bottle caps you owned probably hinted a lot at your social standing too. If your caps came from a brewery, you stood well above your friends who owned caps from soft drink bottles. Me? My caps were a mixture of everything, picked up from the coffee shop behind my home in Seang Tek Road in those days. But I proudly owned a homemade foldable draughts board...THIS draughts board.

Meaningful buildings

There are several buildings on Penang island which mean something to me. The first is obviously my childhood home: the house in which I grew up. And in fact, it was this house at No.10 Seang Tek Road that I lived with my parents and grandparents until I was 26 years old. There's a lot of attachment and many, many fond memories that goes with it.

The second is my secondary school building: the Penang Free School building in Green Lane where I had enjoyed seven years of schooling before stepping forth into the wide world. Again, a lot of attachment to it, and many, many fond memories too. Since 2012, I've stepped into the school premises again on countless occasions. Reliving my schooldays in a way.

The third has to be the former Ban Hin Lee Bank building in Beach Street which is now occupied by CIMB Bank. For 23 years, I was in the employment of this bank and I spent 18 years in this heritage building. So there's a lot of attachment here as well.

But there's a fourth building among two or three others that meant something to me. It could have been my primary school building, the Westlands Primary School building in Victoria Green Road or the Straits Echo building in Penang Road where I had my first meaningful employment, but no....I should refer instead to the Equatorial Penang building in Bukit Jambul on the south-eastern part of the island.

People may be curious to know why I should rank the Equatorial Penang building as one that means something to me. Well, it is because it was within the bowels of this building that I had spent eight-plus years employed at JobStreet.com. Yes, after I had resigned from Southern Bank in 2001, I joined this Internet job search company until my retirement at the end of 2009. 

For more than eight years, I crossed the bridge to reach Equatorial Penang from my residence on the mainland. Parking was always in the basement of the hotel. From there, lifts would take me either up to the ground floor where JobStreet.com was most visible through its sales, finance and administration offices. But there was also an executive search office further inside and a network control office too. I shared space with Ted Targosz, Teoh Eng Soon and Wong Yew Tuck who became good friends from my JobStreet days. 

Then several months later, I moved to the Lower Ground Fifth floor - deep down the Equatorial Penang building - to engage more with the software engineers in the research and development department of JobStreet.com. 

In those days, all the job search application software were developed from the Penang office of  JobStreet.com and the staff in this particular department probably numbered around 30 or 40 people. That's quite a large workforce to support the demands of a job search company which range from the job seekers to the companies advertising their job positions. Proprietary matching tools were developed to pair job positions with potential job seekers. part of my job was to check the correctness of the language on the website and that used for the mass emails that the company send to the job seekers. 

Working in a place such as the Equatorial Penang building gave my JobStreet.com colleagues and I plenty of opportunities to enjoy the restaurants at the hotel. Although we would usually have our lunch in Bayan Baru town, there were always occasions for celebrations and get-togethers in the hotel premises at the slightest excuse. Thus, places such as the Kampachi Japanese restaurant, the Golden Phoenix Chinese restaurant or their coffee house for lunch, The View restaurant for dinner or the Blue Moon pub to unwind after office hours. Plus, the time spent just sitting around and watching people passing by. 

I also like to mention the long and winding corridor on the Lower Ground Second Floor where the view was magnificent. Just standing there alone for five or 10 minutes, all serenely quiet and the wind sometimes blowing in the face, and looking out onto the Bukit Jambul golf course and the impressive bungalow buildings below was enough to soothe anyone's nerves. It brought me a therapeutic calm. 

All these are coming to an unfortunate end. After 32 years of being Penang's first five-star hotel in the southern reaches of the island. The management of Equatorial Penang has already informed the public that their hotel operations will cease from 10 February 2021 as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. The only consolation, so I hear, is that the tenants of their office block on the lower ground floors will function as normal. Nevertheless, the hotel will definitely become a much quieter place after this date.

Looking down Seang Tek Road

This is Seang Tek Road. Looking down from the Dato Kramat Road end. My old neighbourhood. Had been staying on this street until 1980. If you look at the double-storey terrace houses on both sides of the road, well, they haven't changed much, if at all, except that some have been converted into businesses where once they were all residential. Even the house I used to occupy has been converted into a restaurant. 

Looking further down the road, there are several new taller buildings, built in the last 30 years or so. Three-storey buildings, four-storey buildings, one apartment building further away, even a pseudo-heritage-looking office block. And that high-rise in the background? No, that doesn't belong to Seang Tek Road. It's located at faraway MacAlister Road but obscene enough to barge its way into the picture. That not withstanding, it's always a nostalgic walk along this road. Can't help it; I spent 26 years of my life here.

Mid-autumn mooncake / lantern festival

According to the Chinese lunisolar calendar, today is the 15th day of the eight lunar month, meaning that today we are celebrating the Mid-autumn Festival with mooncakes. Traditionally, mooncakes were either sweet with fillings of lotus paste or red bean paste with an enclosed salted duck egg yolk, or savoury with nutty fillings mixed with pieces of Chinese ham. But for quite a long time already, we've seen mooncakes with every inconceivable flavours as fillings. I quite welcomed them then but now, I don't quite like them.

Culturally, we Chinese have been praying to the Moon Goddess during this Mid-autumn Festival since time immemorial. When I was small and still living in Seang Tek Road, this was an occasion to look forward to every year. Come about nine o'clock at night, we would await my grand-aunt and her family. They would drive down from Ayer Itam to visit their elder sister - my grandmother - and we would then all troop upstairs to the open-air balcony at the back of the house.

I would follow them upstairs with my dragon paper lantern. My lantern was usually the grandest among my neighbours. I can say this about my parents. They always gave me the best lanterns every year and it was invariably designed as a dragon. Possibly it was the same paper lantern, kept and stored away till the following year, but I was too young to notice the difference or to care. If it was not displaying the lantern upstairs on the balcony, it would be out on the streets at night during the festival evening when the other kids in the neighbourhood would come out with their lanterns too. But as I mentioned, mine was always the dragon, and always the biggest and the grandest.

My grandmother would have already laid out a table there and placed the joss stick urn and candle holders on it. At 10 o'clock or so, she would lay out the mooncakes and mooncake biscuits and we would then spend the next hour or so worshipping the Moon Goddess. It being the night of the 15th day of the lunar month, the moon would be a round, bright disc in the dark sky. But occasionally, there would be thick cloud cover too and the moon couldn't be seen during that hour of worship.

But these prayers, if I remember correctly, tapered off soon after 1969. Maybe not immediately but it took a few more years before we stopped completely. By then, I had moved temporarily to Kuala Lumpur for my studies and lost touch with this moon worship. When I came back to Penang about four years later, my family were on the verge of moving to Ayer Itam because the Seang Tek Road house was about to be taken back by new landlords. Yes, we were being evicted on their pretext of redevelopment of the land on which their four houses, including our rented home, were standing. We moved to Ayer Itam and never prayed to the Moon Goddess during the Mid-autumn Festival ever again. (Note: The properties were never redeveloped. Until today, the four houses are still standing in Seang Tek Road.)

Even though as a family, we do not observe the worship anymore, this is a culture that is still widely popular among the Chinese community, particularly by the Chinese guilds. Only this morning, I was at the Swee Cheok Tong, the Quah Kongsi, to pay my respects to our resident deities and the ancestral tablets on the occasion of the Mid-autumn Festival. Apart from the usual array of fruits, roast meat and roast chicken, we offered boxes of mooncakes at the various altars. Unfortunately, missing this year were the mooncake biscuits; missing not by design but simply because the Treasurer forgot all about them! 😛

Anyway, tonight is the Mid-autumn Festival night. Would we be able to see the full moon tonight? I would say not likely. It will be more than clouds that will cover the sky. It will be the dreaded haze that had enveloped much of the country for at least a week now. No thanks to the irresponsible people of Indonesia who had been doing open burning on their plantations, the country is now more or less totally shrouded with a thick haze around the clock. Even rain cannot eliminate the haze. Only a change in wind direction can do it and none is expected till one or two weeks from now.

As long as the haze persists, there is little chance of seeing the moon tonight. And this is a great pity because tonight, at 8.21pm, the International Space Station is scheduled to streak right across the face of the moon. It will be very fleeting: the transit across the moon's face is expected to last a mere 1.26 seconds. Over in the blink of an eye. And will be missed by most Malaysians because of the inconsiderate Indonesians. Ah, well....

Woodstock, 15-17 August 1969

This is the story I wrote 10 years ago (2009) when the Woodstock music festival had its 40th anniversary and today, the 15th of August 2019, is already the 50th anniversary.

This post is my dedication to the Woodstock music festival at Bethel, N.Y. on 15-17 August 1969. Although widely described as a three-day music festival, it was more like a 3½-day festival because by the time the last strains of music left Jimi Hendrix's guitar, it was already bright enough on 18 Aug. Anyway, the festival termed itself as the Woodstock music and art fair but as far as I could tell, there was nothing artsy fartsy about it. Then there was the rain and the cold and the mud.... Don't know how the people there could stand it but I suppose they were too spaced out to care.

Anyhow, on the occasion of the Woodstock festival's 40th anniversary, this is my own little personal Woodstock moment. In a little street called Seang Tek Road in George Town, I was far, far removed from the festival but it had never stopped me from enjoying its music.

It was just before Chinese New Year in 1970 or 1971 when my father brought home a triple record album set from Woo Hing, his regular record shop in Campbell Street, George Town. My memory is a bit bleary but I must have badgered him enough to bring this album home. So, during the Chinese New Year holidays and especially during the eve, I was spinning this album with the volume turned up high enough to annoy my grandmother (and the neighbours). While other people were letting off fire crackers to chase away the New Year monster, I was doing my part by cranking up the sound of Hendrix's instrumental solo.

My only regret was that I allowed my father to return the album to the record shop. The owner was his good friend and he always allowed him to borrow records home. So there went my opportunity to own the Woodstock triple record album set. I also missed the chance to watch the movie when it was first screened in the local cinemas. The time was inconvenient itself. When the movie screened in Kuala Lumpur, I was in Penang; when I left home for the capital, the movie opened here.

Nevertheless, it must have been five or six years later that I finally caught Woodstock on the big screen. It was shown at the Choong Nam theatre in Ayer Itam, Penang. Choong Nam, before it closed down, was well known for screening second-run, third-run and even fourth-run movies.

Years later when I started buying compact discs, one of my earliest purchases was the Woodstock double CD by mail order from Amazon.com. It was a "must have". Well, at least now, I have the music in my collection...music that I could still remember from the carefree days of the late 1960s and early 1970s.

But I could never get enough of the festival. When the movie was available illegally on videotapes in the mid-1980s, I somehow got my hands on a copy and shared it around with friends who cared to join me on an historic musical journey going through huge acts like Richie Havens, Arlo Guthrie, Joan Baez, Sha Na Na, CSNY, Ten Years After, The Who, Country Joe McDonald, Santana, Joe Cocker and Hendrix. Of course, the movie is available officially on DVDs today...lengthened, remastered and enhanced in many ways.

Much later, I again ordered this four CD set from Amazon.com. For a guy who has never been to America, who has never attended a rock music concert, I could never explain why I enjoyed the music of Woodstock so much. Maybe it was the non-conformist in me to be different from the rest of my friends who were basically in mainstream pop music.

And while today marks the 40th anniversary of the music festival, what should I do on this special day? Nothing much, I'm afraid. Today, I'm still as far removed from Bethel as I was 40 years ago. So I think that I'll just put the Woodstock DVD into my player and sit back to watch the festival again on my home television set. Yes, I'll do just that. Save the celebration for the rest of the world.

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.