Exchanging keys

From the 17 September 1935 copy of the Pinang Gazette and Straits Chronicle, an old defunct newspaper from Penang, comes this story about that old Penang millionaire, Yeap Chor Ee. I believe this story could have been timed to coincide with the date of Ban Hin Lee Bank's incorporation as a limited company. Same year, same month, same day. Previously, it was a private community bank operating as a sole-proprietorship with all the personal risks shouldered solely by the owner. To me, the section on his banking business made the most interesting reading. The rest of Yeap Chor Ee's history is more or less widely known but that little snippet of him exchanging safe keys with his son, Lean Seng, in Kuala Lumpur, well, that was quiet something new to learn! Happy reading....

ROMANTIC CAREER OF MR YEAP CHOR EE

The announcement that Messrs Ban Hin Lee and Co, the well-known bankers of Beach Street, Penang, intend converting the business into a limited liability company marks another milestone in the romantic career of its sole proprietor at the present time, Mr Yeap Chor ee, now easily Penang's wealthiest citizen. Truly Mr Yeap Chor Ee's rise from poverty to affluence is one of the romances of Penang, one of the romances of the Chinese in Malaya. There have been other figures almost as romantic as him, Foo Choo Choon, the Tin King, for instance, but whereas Foo Choo Choon ended his days in comparative penury, nothing like that sort is likely to occur to Mr Yeap Chor Ee who has laid the foundations of his prosperity on solid structures. Today he is the recognised Sugar King; the biggest landed proprietor of Penang, deals largely in tin and has a banking business as safe as the Rock of Gibraltar.

OF HUMBLE BIRTH

Mr Yeap Chor Ee is a man of humble birth. A native of Fukien, he came to Malaya about 50 years ago, when Malaya was still jungle and entirely undeveloped. About 32 years ago he settled in Penang and owned a small barber's shop. That barber's shop gave way to other small businesses. Some time between 1890 and 1900 he started to deal in the brown sugar trade and from that time he has never looked back. The main industry in Province wellesley was then sugar planting, no fewer than four mills being in operation. From 1900 to 1910 Mr Yeap Chor Ee confined his attention to white sugar. Then came the rubber boom, and sugar plantations were turned into rubber estates. One dollar shares in the sugar plantations became ten dollar shares in rubber estates. That meant the end of the sugar industry in Province Wellesley. Later Mr Yeap Chor Ee turned his energies to tapioca and other trades, extending the scope of his activities and increasing his wealth.

THE BANKING BUSINESS

We are not quite certain when Mr Yeap Chor Ee started his banking business, known as Ban Hin Lee; but it is now well-known throughout Malaya. Mr Yeap Chor Ee has always controlled the Penang business which is regarded as the head office, while the Singapore business has been in charge of a son. Several years ago Mr Yeap Chor Ee, in the course of a case in the Police Court, revealed how carefully he conducts his business. Mr Yeap Chor Ee occasionally used to visit the Singapore Branch. When he did that he notified his son at Singapore. The son had to leave Singapore by the night mail just as the father left Penang. They met at Kuala Lumpur for the purpose of exchanging the keys of the safes. Mr Yeap Chor Ee took the Singapore keys with him, while his son had to continue to Penang with the Penang keys. The same process was repeated when Mr Yeap Chor Ee was on his way back to Penang. That was, of course, several years ago, before Mr Yeap Chor Ee's other sons began to help him in the firm. Now, they all work at his banking firm.

THE TOUCH OF MIDAS

In recent years Mr Yeap Chor Ee's wealth has accumulated with such strides that he has become known as the Chinese with the touch of Midas - everything he touches turns to gold. A couple of years ago, before the Tin Control Scheme came into operation, Mr Yeap had bought a great deal of tin, which he stored up until better prices set in. Tin went up and he made an enormous of profit. About a year ago he bought Homestead, Northam Road, the most palatial residence in Penang, on which Mr Lim Chin Guan, then in his hey-day, spent a fortune. Mr Yeap Chor Ee obtained it "for a song." Today he is easily the richest man in Penang, and his fortune is expanding with a vengeance. He donated $10,000 to the Penang Jubilee Fund.

Mr Yeap Chor Ee is one of the most careful and frugal men, and that is the main reason why he has amassed such a great fortune; unlike Foo Choo Choon, who spent his money with a lavish hand. In spite of his colossal wealth Mr Yeap Chor Ee still remains the humble individual who prefers a ricksha to a car, a plain white tunic suit to palm beach. One other fact about this remarkable man is that he does not know a word of English and transacts most of his business through interpreters.

Hits and misses

We never had our bak chor mee in Singapore. That was my initial plan when we went down to Singapore in February but like all plans go, it was subjected to change once we got there. Neither did we get our chilli crab there. What happened was that a few days before my gang of brothers and sisters-in-law in Penang were due to fly south to Singapore to visit my brother-in-law there, we received word that an aunt there had invited all of us to lunch on the second day of our stay. But with no further details, our plans became awry.

It was an invitation that was impossible to decline. Everyone had to accept. After all, this was the family of my father-in-law's youngest brother in Singapore. We had plans to visit them but they had better plans for us. Anyway, it would be a fabulous opportunity for my wife and her brother and sister to meet up with their Singapore cousins. It wasn't like they were staying in Penang and we could pop around the corner to visit them. So in accommodating them, that put a clanger in all our feasting plans. But we still had our makan moments....

This was our first meal in Singapore at a Chinese coffee shop in Ghim Moh. Belachan chicken wings. One of many dishes ordered by our sister-in-law there. I must say that the wings - and other dishes- tasted delicious. Maybe it was because we were famished. Very famished.

We were in Chinatown. We wanted to see the last of their Chinese New Year street lights there but we saw very little. Frustrated, we walked around and landed at this shop in Tiong Bahru that sold chicken rice. It's supposed to be well-known, this Tiong Bahru Hainanese chicken rice. Even claimed to have a bib gourmand award from the Michelin fellas. In my opinion, their reputation is a little over-rated.

Although the portion was generous enough and there was an endless flow of soup if one is so inclined to drink and drink it, I found the chicken meat to be a bit too dry to the extent that it had lost its succulence. So I can't claim to be impressed with this coffee shop despite their reputation. There must be better chicken rice stalls or shops elsewhere!

Oops, walking aimlessly around Chinatown after our dinner, we suddenly found ourselves entering the Maxwell food court. We were supposed to have this place in our itinerary on the following day and yet, here it was right in front of us. So we went in to look around. I showed them the Tien Tien chicken rice outlet which was in the midst of clearing up after the day's business. Anyway, we wouldn't be able to eat any more chicken rice for the day. We bumped into this stall and my wife and my nephew had the experience of deep frying the mini hum chim peng themselves. Five pieces for one Singapore dollar. We ordered 10 pieces to take away.

This I liked, the satay centre at the Gardens-by-the-Bay. Its uniqueness was that it sold pork belly satay. Everyone of us thought that it was heavenly. This is not something that we would see at satay stalls in Penang: pork satay, yes, pig intestine satay, yes, but pork belly satay, no. 

On the second day of our stay, we had breakfast at the Ghim Moh market's food court. A very traditional food court. I turned my attention to their chwee koay. I had it before and it tasted very good. But in this visit, it tasted kinda bland. Not as delicious as before, unfortunately. Oh yes, a word of caution for anyone from Penang searching for good popiah here. Don't bother. Unlike the Penang version, the version we are all so very familiar with, the Singapore popiah is all dry. Definitely not to our liking! I'd give it a BIG miss.

Two pictures of chicken rice in one story. But this one's from a stall at Food Loft in Geylang. stall by the name of Teik Kee which serves roast pork, char siew, roast duck etc. I opted for their chicken rice since it looked so irresistible and I did not regret it. In my opinion, one of the better sources for chicken rice in Singapore. My brother-in-law chose their roast pork and char siew rice and did not regret it either. 

For breakfast on the third day, I was rather apprehensive of the choices at the Ghim Moh market food court and opted for a simple roti telor. But then I saw that the same stall was offering mini roti chanai too. So I ordered a plate too. This mini roti chanai was nothing different from an ordinary one. It's just that the hawker had sliced up the flipped dough into five parts and made mini pieces out of each of the parts.

Quick lunch at the Changi airport before heading home. I ordered the prawn paste ramen from Woke Ramen. Can't say that I enjoyed the bowl. Maybe it was because I was too anxious about making sure that we did not miss the flight. While everyone else were taking their sweet time to finish their food, I kept looking at my watch. Would we make it to the gate? Luckily my mother-in-law was on a wheelchair which I could push ahead while the others caught up with us. Anyhow, we did make it to the gate before it closed.

LYF One-North

During my recent visit to Singapore, my group of travellers stayed at the very hip LYF One-North Hotel which was about a 15-minute walk to my brother-in-law's place in Ghim Moh. Located right next door to the One-North MRT station, thus making it very convenient for hotel guests. The place looked decent enough when I made the booking for three rooms and indeed, when we checked into the hotel, it surprised me and brought out our smiles. First impressions: nice lounge area, very polite and helpful staff to assist with our check-in, amenities included a swimming pool, an amphitheatre, a fitness room, laundromat, barbeque area and a well-equipped kitchen for anyone wanting to cook. 

Overall, a nice, clean environment. As I understand it, the hotel caters to a growing community of 400 companies, 800 start-ups and 50,000 professionals such as technopreneurs, creatives and self-starters. It is a vibrant cluster that hosts prominent research and knowledge-based organisations, startups as well as business schools. 

But as I said elsewhere in this blog, my group consisted of in-laws here on a short holiday stay. I only happened to bump into LYF One-North because it was recommended by my brother-in-law in Singapore. The studio rooms were rather small but that was no issue with us as we were out of the hotel for most of the time. We found them functional: comfortable bed, nice showerheads, wash basin outside the toilet and ample points to recharge our mobiles, even beside the bed. But there was no refrigerator in the room. Have to use the shared refrigerator on each floor and for this, there's a need to trust your food or belongings with the other guests well...people that you do not know at all.

I noticed that the rooms lacked complimentary drinking bottles and I did mention this in the feedback form. The reply from the hotel was, "To share, lyf is a co-living brand designed and managed by millennials for millennials, the millennial minded and the next gen travelers. It signifies a new way of living and collaborating as a community, connecting guests with fellow travellers and change-makers. While we do not provide complimentary beverages, as a co-living service residence, we have a social kitchen within the property which our guests are encouraged to use during their stay. The social kitchen is available 24/7 for the convenience of our guests coupled with vending machines that display an array of beverages and snacks. In addition, our lyf residents enjoy exclusive discounted rates at reputable food and beverage establishments within the one-north vicinity and our lyf Guards are always on hand at our Say Hi! counter to render any assistance to our guests as needed." 

So I get it....a hotel for millennials and run by millennials. I'm not one, unfortunately, the time has passed me by. Values have changed with the changing times. No wonder I noticed several millennials with laptops doing their work in the hotel's co-working lounge. The lobby has become a mobile workplace and replaced their cubicles in offices. 

Would I stay here again? I think so. The main drawcard would be the proximity to the MRT station. Practically a case of hopping-on, hopping-off after a long day of walking our feet off.

Gutsy lady

I met a very special person yesterday: Dr Jemilah Mahmood, the gutsy founder of MERCY Malaysia, who was in Penang to receive the second Dr Wu Lien-Teh award for Leadership in Public Health. Later, she delivered a very absorbing lecture on her pet subject of Planetary Health. 

I had heard about MERCY Malaysia - she's no longer heading this humanitarian aid organisation, by the way - long before the organisation's involvement with the Acheh earthquake relief work in 2004. A brave lady indeed, she was even shot at and injured while delivering medical aid to Iraq a year earlier. (I didn't ask about her injury but I was told that she treated herself for a wound on her hip before continuing on with her work.) Needless to say, but I'm saying it anyway, it was a very big thrill to have met her finally! 

Cutting it very close

It has been 10 days since I returned from a very short holiday in Singapore. How short was it, you may ask. Well, is a three-days, two-nights stay considered short enough? In my opinion, yes, because there are lots of things to do in Singapore. Of course, many people will dispute me saying this but all I can say to them is that you've got to make your own time interesting. If not, then your holiday will be boring.

Anyway, what happened is that my brother-in-law and his wife and kid, my sister-in-law and her husband, and my wife and I flew down to Singapore with my mother-in-law after months of persuading her to go visit her eldest son there. To my mother-in-law, two nights to anywhere outside Penang would be considered very long for her already. Ideally, she would prefer to fly into Singapore in the morning and return by night time. She is that homely a person. And the danger with her is that she was liable to change her mind at the last minute. We told her no way could she back out from the trip because the flight tickets have been bought and the hotel rooms booked. So finally, the extended family vacation for the eight of us became a reality. 

We went on Friday and came back on Sunday. There were anxious moments for my wife and I before the two flights. On the day of our departure, we were supposed to pick up my brother-in-law and family from their house in Bandar Tasek Mutiara at 6.30am. But horrors! Something went awry with the alarm clock and my wife woke me up ay 6.25am. We're late, we're late, she told me frantically. Her mobile alarm did not go off and for some strange reason, my own mobile phone went into a reset mode. Whatever sleep vanished from our eyes. We phoned her brother and told him to drive separately to the airport. We would join them there. Luckily, we had fully packed our bags the night before, It was only a matter of us washing up and loading up the luggage into the car. We did all that within 20 minutes. We left the house and hoped that there would be no traffic congestion on the Penang Bridge or the roads around the Bayan Lepas Free Trade Zone. There were none.

The other anxious moment was our return on Sunday. We cut it too close going to Changi airport. Our flight was at 2.55pm and I hadn't even printed our boarding passes. But I finally managed to get it down by 1.15pm. Then it was a rush for lunch which we managed to complete by two o'clock. I was a nervous wreck and had no appetite to complete my meal, but the rest of my group was oblivious to it. Afterwards, we had to rush to the boarding gate. I asked my mother-in-law to sit in a wheelchair and we followed my brother-in-law in search of the gate with the rest in tow behind us. As luck would have it, the gate had to be he farthest away. Except for five more persons lingering there, there were no more passengers. I heaved a big sigh of relief when everyone of us boarded.

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.

Jade Emperor worship

Today's the ninth day of the first Chinese lunar month - still well within the 15-day period of our Chinese New Year festival - the day that the Baba Nyonya and Hokkien community in Penang celebrate the Hokkien New Year and offer worship to the Jade Emperor Deity. Actually, the celebrations kicked off last night on the stroke of 11 o'clock as we Chinese reckon every new day to begin at 11pm and not midnight.

A long time ago when I was small and living in Seang Tek Road on the island, my maternal grandmother always made it a point to celebrate the worship on a grand scale. Nothing can be grander than to place the worship table, usually the table from the hall or kitchen, on stools to raise it as high as practically possible and thus closer to heaven where the Jade Emperor resides. The day earlier, she would have ordered several long stalks of sugarcane to tie around the legs of the table. Food preparation would take the whole day, and my mother and aunt had to help her. Non-stop work here, and sometimes there would be women relatives coming to lend extra hands. The house would be visited at night for the joint worship as 11pm crept closer. It was to be noted that my grandmother, as the eldest in her family, was the focal point for her five younger siblings to congregate during such occasions. At the end of the worship session, a huge bonfire of joss paper would be lit on the road in front of the house.

I don't know what happened but at one point, all grand worship was stopped on advice from her brother-in-law who everyone accepted was very knowledgable in metaphysics. During that year, there was a huge accident in downtown Bridge Street (now known as CY Choy Road) on the eighth day of Chinese New Year. If I remember correctly, a bus had rammed into one of the old houses along the road sometime in the afternoon, sending dust into the air. When the dust settled, the residents living in houses near the point of collision found their food stuff all covered with a thick layer of whitish dust. Especially the mee koo which was traditionally red, and now covered white with dust. The news spread like wildfire.

Bad omen indeed, my grandmother's brother-in-law said when the news reached his ears, for this sign to appear during Chinese New Year. "Mee koo pian peh koo on Pai Tnee Kong meh," he declared solemnly. What he said was that the red mee koo had turned to white mee koo on the night when we were supposed to worship the Jade Emperor, never mind the fact that it was only dust-coated. For him, it was surely a Sign from heaven. Thus from that year onwards - it must be sometime in the 1960s - everyone decided to end the joint Pai Tnee Kong celebrations and all her siblings began worshipping the Jade Emperor on their own on whatever scale. My grandmother continued to worship the Jade Emperor on Pai Tnee Kong Meh but this was now on a small scale. No more huge table on raised stools for the worship. She moved a small table below the Jade Emperor's small altar mounted on the left pillar at the front of the house, and on it would be placed small plates of fruits and sweetmeat, including sugarcane that had been chopped into small edible sizes.

My family continued this practice even after we moved to Seberang Jaya and later to Bukit Mertajam. While many of my neighbours here worship the Jade Emperor's birthday on a large scale, ours continue to be very modest. We utilise only the available space on the altar which is mounted on the wall. Thus, come Pai Tnee Kong Meh, we only offer three types of fruits or sweet delicacies. 

Tua Pek Kong temple in Taman Jernih, Bukit Mertajam

This year, my wife suggested that we shouldn't be worshipping the Jade Emperor on Pai Tnee Kong Meh since not even a year had passed since her father had died. I didn't want to argue with her. Okay, if she didn't feel like it, then let's not worship this year. No problem with me. In fact, we also decided not to hang the red cloth banner above the front door in deference to her wishes although many of my relatives said that I could still do so as I was only a son-in-law and not a son. But as I said, no problem with me. That's why this Chinese New Year, I also did not decorate the fruits with small red paper cuttings for deity worship. Then suddenly during one of our pre-festival forays to the nearby Kampong Baharu market for our shopping and preparations, we bumped into one of her relatives who told her that we could still worship the Jade Emperor but on a small scale. I don't know how much smaller our worship could be 😁 but in the next few days, I managed to pick up a bunch of green pisang rajah. Only the grand pisang rajah can do for such worship, okay, and not any other varieties of banana. And that's what we had for worship of the Jade Emperor last night.

Nandaka Vihara Meditation Centre, Bukit Mertajam

But....we did something else last night. After we had set out the altar for worship, we went to the Tua Pek Kong temple in my neighbourhood. Normally we would have visited this temple on the first day of Chinese New Year itself but somehow, it didn't happen. Last night, we decided to go there and found that the temple had also laid out an altar for worship of the Jade Emperor..

From the Tua Pek Kong temple, we also visited the Nandaka Vihara Meditation Centre where the final night of their seven-night Paritta chanting was taking place. This annual Paritta chanting is undertaken by a group of Buddhist monks from Ceylon. The nightly chants were usually for two hours from 8pm but for the final night, the monks took turns to chant throughout the night until the following morning. We didn't stay there for long but only for about half an hour. Nevertheless, it was quite an experience for me.

Seventh student leadership workshop, session 2

Finally, Lean Kang and I have completed the latest round of the student leadership workshop at Penang Free School, with assistance from Sue Hay, Yan Tatt and Mohamad Afan. The first weekend of the workshop was held last month and this month, we proceeded with the second weekend. Unfortunately, three of the participants in Lower Six were unable to join the group of 20 Form Four pupils as they were in the midst of their end-of-year school examinations. We shall try to fit them in later in the year so that they can complete both weekends.

Our experiences with this batch of Fourth Formers were not typically different from the other workshops that we held in previous years. Initially, they were quite reserved but by the end of the second day of the first weekend, we had opened them up and lowered the barrier between coach and students. Thus, they arrived for the second weekend completely relaxed and with minds that were eager for more information. We derived quite a lot of satisfaction from this particular group.

As usual, we had the Headmaster come around to present certificates to the participants. I've got to say this about Headmaster Syed Sultan: he was very supportive of the leadership workshops and we, in turn, were very glad of his continued belief in our workshop and training methods. It's a relationship which we hope will carry us through to the eighth workshop during the 2023 academic year.