Happiness tinged with some sadness

I'm writing this either late at night of the 17th of November or the early hours of the 18th, depending on how fast I can finish this post.

I've just returned from the 93rd annual dinner of The Old Frees' Association on the island. This was supposed to be a happy occasion because finally, the Bicentenary Committee has acknowledged my role in this year's Bicentenary celebrations: the time that I had spent on Let the Aisles Begin and my many other activities, all in the name of the Bicentenary.

I have to admit that I was surprised to be called onto the stage. Never expected it. But here at the St Giles Wembley's ballroom, I went up to receive an appreciation gift from the Bicentenary Committee chairman, Abdul Rafique. I suppose it sort of partially compensated for being overlooked during the official launch of the book by the Raja of Perlis on 21 Oct 2016. Can you imagine an author not invited for the launch of his own book?

Me and my school pals: Huan Chiang, Swee Poh, Michael, Kok Hin, yours truly, Andrew, Kim Guan, Oon Hup, Chye Chye, Kah Theang and Teik Wah.

Anyway, this was supposed to be a happy occasion - and it was a happy occasion until I received a whatsapp message from a friend to inform me that Soo Ewe Jin, an executive editor at The Star Publication had passed away earlier in the day.

This news had a very sobering effect on me because even though I knew that he was battling cancer, I had on occasions exchanged messages with him through facebook. Our latest exchanges were on the 8th of this month but I never realised that they could be our last.

Ewe Jin was, of course, an Old Free some five or six years my junior in school. Unfortunately, I never had the occasion to meet him face to face, either at school or when he was working in the mass media.

I had wanted to see him last year on one of my rare trips to the Klang Valley but a traffic snarl on the North-South Expressway meant that I arrived late in Kuala Lumpur and meeting up with him was postponed. We never did manage to arrange another date. My loss and anyway, it's too late for that. So all I can say right now is that my thoughts are with his wife and two sons.

Below was his last message to me. Guess I won't be receiving any more from the late Soo Ewe Jin. Rest in peace, my friend.

PFS 200 years video

This video below was first shown at the Bicentenary Dinner of Penang Free School.

Much, if not all, of the information in the video was based on the draft manuscript of my book, Let the Aisles Proclaim, which I had released to Mahyidin Mustakim who is the president of both the Old Frees Association Kuala Lumpur & Selangor and the Penang Free School Foundation.

P.S. Today being the 17th of November, my wife and I shall be celebrating the 93rd anniversary of The Old Frees' Association at the OFA Annual Dinner in George Town. Other than my own school mates, the Sesquicentenary boys, I hope to meet up with lots more Old Frees friends of various ages. See you there!

Maeklong and Damnoen Saduak

There are already so many videos about the Maeklong railway market that mine would seem so insignificant among them. But like I mentioned in the notes to my video, the train passing through the market may be excitement to the tourists but for the traders at the market, this is definitely a ho-hum affair for them four times in a day. For example, just look at the lady at the lower right corner of the video. She fascinated me. Even as the train approached, she was busily chopping away and quite ignoring everything around her. Even when the train trundled through, she was still chopping away with her knife. But for first-time visitors, watching the spectacle of the folding and unfolding of the canvas canopies for the train to pass slowly through was probably as memorable as it could get.



From Maeklong, we visited the Damnoen Saduak floating market next, which is probably the most popular floating market in Thailand. Most visitors to Thailand would want to visit a floating market and I would dare say that many of them would end up here. To get here, we hopped into a long-tail boat at the pier for about a 15 to 20 minutes noisy ride along the narrow canals. On both sides, we could see small wooden houses on stilts fringed the banks. As it was high tide, the water was lapping into the compounds of many of the houses. But my concern was whether the canal water would overflow into my boat. Apparently, not. Pretty soon, we arrived at the market place and was on dry land again.

 

 

Supermoon, November 2016

I was bemoaning that the rainy weather of the past few hours had put paid to my hopes of seeing the so-called supermoon tonight. Luckily by 9.30 pm, the weather had cleared up to leave a brilliantly lit orb of light in the night sky.

According to the timeanddate.com website, the full moon over George Town would occur at 9.52 pm on 14 Nov 2016. I consider myself lucky to have been ready with my camera to capture the moon at its most magnificent at this time.

Camera setting: ISO 100, shutter speed 1/2000s, aperture f5.6

Bangkok, part one

Normally, I would avoid group tours because the rest of the people in the group would be strangers that shared little or no common background with me. Thus, it was with a little apprehension when I signed up for a trip of Bangkok with other members of The Old Frees' Association. Granted that we were all members of the OFA, there was still some disconnect when we met at the Penang International Airport on the morning of 4 Nov 2016. But the uneasiness dissipated very fast because there were at least two familiar faces among the 11 of us. Those who were strangers quickly became known as we exchanged pleasantries. Perhaps it was that old school tie feeling after all, the ground-breaking question being "what year were you in school?"

I signed up for the Bangkok trip basically because I saw a visit to Maekhlong in the itinerary. I had always wanted to go there to see that famous railway market that would fold up whenever a train approaches the Maekhlong station. But the journey from Bangkok to Maekhlong was a long one, about one-and-a-half hours each way. To travel to Maekhlong on my own would be perhaps out of the question. Thus, seeing that the whole tour group would be taken to this town made me sign up unhesitatingly for the trip.

However, this was a trip that almost didn't happen subsequently. Soon after I had signed up for it with the OFA office, I was persuaded to make the trip to Dittisham instead. Of course, Dittisham would be impossible for me to miss amidst all the excitement of Penang Free School's Bicentenary celebrations but to go to Bangkok as well would stretch my resources a lot. Hence, I almost gave up on the Bangkok trip except that my wife persuaded me not to. It wouldn't be nice to pull out after you have committed to it, she said. And that was why the fourth of November found us on a 4D3N trip to the Thai capital.

Bangkok turned out interesting but the demise of the Thai King put a somewhat damper on our visit as we found the city largely in mourning. I would believe that no-where but in Thailand where the late King was so respected that I would find the common folk willing to wear black clothes, or at the very least dark-coloured clothes, as they go about their daily lives out of respect for their late monarch. And not for one day only; perhaps for the next 100 days from 13 Oct 2016 until the funeral. Entertainment establishments were asked to stop blaring their music publicly although indoors could be another different matter altogether. Thus, when we visited Khaosan Road in the evening of the first day for our dinner, we found a street still full of tourists in colourful attire, it was a music-less occasion and quiet except for normal conversation. The shops and restaurants were manned by Thai people wearing black. Quite dreary, in my opinion, but there was nothing more shocking than to visit the Grand Palace on the second day to find the whole place filled with Thai citizens and all in black as they visited to pay their last respects to the late King. We tourists were asked to wear dark-coloured clothes and pin a small black ribbon on our sleeves as a mark of respect too.

ART IN PARADISE (3D interactive museum)

Don't expect too much in this tourist destination which is located on the fourth floor of a quiet shopping mall. However, the exhibits did bring out the kids in us, even from 70-plus year-olds.

KHAOSAN ROAD

Touristy place, full of foreign backpackers but also full of tourists from the Asean region. We had about two hours here, of which the first hour was spent on locating local Thai food. We were famished and we found one such restaurant there.

Would you pay 10 Bahts to take pictures of their exotic fried insects and eight-legged friends? Grasshoppers, scorpions, worms, larvae...pretty disgusting. No, I didn't partake of these food and no, I wouldn't pay money to take pictures of them. This was taken with the longest zoom on my camera, and then cropped further. Hence, the image is not as sharp as I wanted it.

Small world

Time and again, we are reminded that this is such a small world that we live in. More than a month ago, we received an invitation to a wedding. One of our ex-colleagues from our Ban Hin Lee Bank days was inviting us to a luncheon on the occasion of her son's marriage.

So there we were today, at the Chinese restaurant opposite the St Anne's Church in Jalan Kulim, Bukit Mertajam. The moment we stepped into the restaurant, we met a man who looked so familiar to us. We acknowledged each other but my wife and I were hard put to remember where we had seen him.

The tables allotted to us were already semi-filled with many of our old ex-colleagues and several more arrived. To us, this was a reunion of old friends from our banking days. My wife looked around and even saw some of her old school friends and acquaintances who used to frequent the Safira Club in Seberang Jaya.

Towards the end of the dinner, she alerted me to an old lady seated at the main table. She's familiar, my wife mentioned to me. And why not, as we realised suddenly that this old lady was a former immediate neighbour of ours when we still stayed in the Semilang area of Seberang Jaya. The last we had seen of her was maybe two years ago when we attended the acupuncture sessions at a temple there. We hadn't seen her lately.

So we went up to talk to her and learnt that it was her grand-daughter that was getting married. Her grand-daughter was getting married to the son of our ex-colleague friend from the bank. What a coincidence! What began as us attending a wedding luncheon as guests of the groom's parents ended with us discovering that we were also friends with the bride's side.

London, Days Four, Six and Seven

Nothing much was achieved on our fourth morning in London, basically because we were waiting to be picked up by Allen Choong who had rented a car to drive us to Dittisham. But first, before we could even leave London, See Liang Teik requested to be driven to Leicester Square where he wanted to buy a ticket for the West End show, Les Miserables. The problem arose because we were all unfamiliar with London traffic and we lost considerable time going down the wrong roads, despite using a GPS unit, or driving into dead ends. But eventually, we did manage to resolve the problem with good old Google Maps on my mobile.

That done, we finally left London slightly after noon and reached Dittisham at about five o'clock. A quick shower at the Red Lion Inn, and we were again on the road, this time to Paignton where, together with the convoy of cars from the overland drive and other Old Frees who had flown in from Malaysia and Europe, we were to attend a dinner hosted by Lotus Group UK. The drive to Paignton took us to Dartmouth where we had to take a five-minute ferry ride across the River Dart.

THE DARTMOUTH FERRY

That's not a flooded or submerged road. That's only the end of the road where vehicles will drive on board the berthed ferry.

The ferry approaches, pulled by cables.

  

DINNER AT PAIGNTON

  The main banquet hall of the Palace Hotel in Paignton

 Saw See chatting with Aslam bin Farikullah, the Chief Operating Officer of Lotus Group UK

STONEHENGE

We left Dittisham at about noon on Day Six to head back to London but along the way, we decided to make a stopover at Stonehenge. However, it was past three o'clock by the time we arrived at the Stonehenge Visitor Centre and there wasn't enough time for us to go in and walk around. Besides, Allen was concerned about having to return the car to the rental company before six o'clock. Therefore, after spending about half an hour walking about the Visitor Centre and buying souvenirs, we were on the way again. We felt disappointed. Stonehenge was so near and yet so far. Then, as we drove back onto the highway, we suddenly noticed Stonehenge to our left in the far distance. Allen slowed down and I managed to whip out the camera and capture a few shots. 

LONDON AGAIN

Unfortunately, the London afternoon rush hour traffic loomed ahead and by the time Allen managed to drop us off at the Manor Hotel, it was almost eight o'clock. I really don't know what happened to Allen and the car after that. I never got around to asking him.

Meanwhile. Liang Teik was persuading us to join him at the Kings Head Pub in Bayswater. The Kings Head Pub, according to him, was the most happening place for chess in London in the 1990s. So we took the Tube from Earls Court station to Bayswater. A short walk took us to the Kings Head Pub where we found people eating, drinking, reading and socialising. They were doing everything except playing chess. Liang Teik asked around but drew a blank from the waiters and staff. Chess? Never played here, they replied. Oh well, we looked at each other and shrugged. Perhaps the passion for chess at the Kings Head Pub had long disappeared. 

Since we were there anyway, might as well have our dinner. We were hungry. We ordered our food. I chose their Fisherman's Platter while Saw See and Liang Teik went for the Mushroom and Chicken Pie. And we waited for them to arrive. We waited. And waited. Well over an hour. Saw See's and mine managed to arrive. Liang Teik's dinner never came. Even after complaining, his food never arrived. We decided to leave. He called for the bill and was given a 20 percent discount on our food. Anyway, as an afterthought, I must add that the pub food at the Kings Head Pub wasn't that great. A "Great British Pub" they are not. Sad.

 The food looked better on the menu than it tasted. Serious!

  

 

Day Seven of our stay in London saw us heading to Earls Court station at an unearthly six o'clock in the morning. We were on our way to Victoria Station where we would finally catch the Gatwick Express to Gatwick Airport. We were going home and yes, I finally got to experience my Gatwick Express train ride. It was a short stay in England during which time we experienced life in a large cosmopolitan city as well as in a small English village. Best of two worlds. It's only because of Penang Free School's Bicentenary that we got the reason to do that. Goodbye, London, I really hope that I shall get the chance to see you again.

London, Day Three

Our third full day in London began with us going for the walking tour to Buckingham Palace. For that, we had to meet at the Charing Cross Road visitor centre to await the tour guide and other tourists. Can't remember what his name was, but he was good. Unfortunately, he walked at breaknecking speeds and we had a hard time catching up with him. If not for him waving his beret above his head, we wouldn't know which direction to follow!

WALKING TOUR

Catching a breather near Trafalgar Square. The Japan fair was over and not surprisingly, most of the crowd too.

  

I could have sworn that the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation lion looks about the same as this.

The office of Tourism Malaysia in London.

Admiralty Arch. I hear the central gates open only for royalty to pass through. Plebeians have to drive through the side gates.

Hello there, Horatio. How's the weather from up there?

The first of many parades which we saw that morning. This one's on horseback and so, it is something more special than to watch soldiers march.

The first of several marching bands too.

So here we are, after walking down the Mall, we have arrived at the Victoria Monument.

We asked and we got it. A snapshot with one of the mounted policemen.

We weren't the only tourists outside the gates of Bukingham Palace.

Victoria, oh, Victoria, when can you be more cheerful?

The Mall doesn't look too short a road.

ST JAMES'S PARK

The St James's Park.

Pelicans at play, pelicans at work.

HORSE GUARDS PARADE

The grounds of the Horse Guards Parade.

NATIONAL GALLERY

By the time we walked back to Trafalgar Square from Horse Guards Parade, the weather had turned and for the first time since our arrival in London, experienced a drizzle that caused everybody to try and seek shelter elsewhere. We chose the National Gallery as the gates were the closest to us. We were wondering whether to go in and have a look around when we chanced upon their restaurant's menu. Fish pie. Traditional English fish pie! We were excited. Several months ago, we had attempted to make our own fish pie here in Penang, using a time-tested Hainanese recipe that a friend had shared with us. Now, we faced a choice of ordering fish pie here in England. Without a second's hesitation, we sat ourselves in the restaurant and ordered it.

Traditional English fish pie. Other than a mixture of mashed potatoes and onions to cover the top, the pie tasted very similar to the one cooked by our Hainanese friend. But we'll have to share our discovery with him, no doubt about that!

Our hunger satiated, now we could spend time exploring the National Gallery. Here, we have Saw See admiring a portrait of Giovanni della Volta with his Wife and Children, completed in 1547 by the 16th Century Italian artist, Lorenzo Lotto, who lived from about 1480 till 1556 or 1557. This family, seated around a table, hung with an expensive Turkish carpet, was probably that of the artist's Venetian landlord. Lotto asked for payment of 50 ducats for this commission, on account of the fine colours and high quality; but he received only 20.

As an example of another painting we saw, this one was called The Virgin and Child, painted in 1527 by Jan Gossaert who died in 1532. The Child's outstretched arms prefigure the Crucifixion. The golden letters on the stone arch were taken from the biblical passage where God spoke to the serpent after the Fall (Genesis 3:15). The words referred symbolically to Christ's triumph over evil.

Note the air vent on the floor from where the air-conditioned air flowed out.

FOYLES BOOKSHOP

Emerging from the National Gallery back into Charing Cross Road, I had one small indulgent to make: a visit to Foyles which was once reputed to be the biggest bookstore in the world. I wonder whether they still are in the age of the Internet. Anyway, the shelves were filled with every conceivable book title, such as these which I found on the fourth floor of the building.

HARRODS

By the time we emerged from Foyles, our feet were getting tired again and so, we decided to re-board the Hop On Hop Off bus and see where it would take us. The one that arrived next at the bus stop took in the direction of the Tower of London again but instead of crossing the Tower Bridge or London Bridge, it took us across the Southwark Bridge, skirting around the southern shores of the Thames - the London Eye looked so enticing from close up - before crossing the Westminster Bridge back into more familiar territory. Somehow, we found ourselves at the Hyde Park Corner station from where we started walking towards Harrods. Saw See insisted on stepping foot into Harrods for the ultimate experience, even though there was nothing to buy there (but we did buy something at the end).