Grandparents

This story touches on the darker side of life and death. It may come across as a little sad, even depressing. For a long time, I hesitated over whether I should write anything at all about the passing of the people on my side of the family who were closest to me. I refer to my two sets of grandparents, my parents and a paternal aunt who stayed with me right to the very end of her life. But then I thought, I had already touched on my paternal grandfather before, how he died and how his remains were taken to the funeral parlour. That was my very first personal brush with death in the family. I was nine years old, and the unpleasant experience terrified me. Having gone that far, perhaps I should write about the others too.

Let me recap what I wrote last August 2025. My paternal grandfather died in the wee hours of 10 December 1963 at the age of 66. Someone came round to Seang Tek Road to wake my father. By the time we arrived, his body was already cold. Later, a man from the coffin shop came to take the body to the Toi Shan Convalescent Home in Hutton Lane for the funeral preparations. Despite the name, the ground floor of this "convalescent home" was entirely a funeral parlour, divided into cubicles. Lighting was poor. At night, after the rituals, only a dim bulb lit the corridor. Shadows were cast on the walls, and if a candle was still burning, the shadows would dance. The dead, covered only with blankets, lay on wooden planks waiting for their coffins. As a young boy, I found the whole atmosphere terrifying.

One ritual involved wiping my grandfather’s darkened face and symbolically feeding him rice, placing a few grains on his lips for his final journey. That moment, staring into his lifeless face, has stayed with me to this day.

During the funeral, we had to wear black, topped with the mua sah, the rough hemp mourning cloth. My father wore a matching headgear made from the same coarse material. All of this was meant to show outwardly the depth of grief, that the mourner no longer cared for comfort or appearance. After the funeral, we were required to mourn for three years: wearing black for the first year, black-and-white for the second, then white-and-blue for the third. No celebrations were allowed. No angpow during Chinese New Year. Rigid rules, but that was the way things were done then.

Less than three years later, on 11 February 1966, my maternal grandfather passed away, 68 years old. Although we had not completed the mourning period for my paternal grandfather, my parents and I had to quickly tnooi ang, literally meaning return to red, before going back into mourning again.

Of the two, my maternal grandfather was my favourite. He doted on me and later, on my young cousin Irene. In the evenings, he would take me to a nearby Indian sundry shop. I was happy with the simplest things: sweets, crackers, biscuits. In return, I became very attached to him. So when he died, I was devastated. Just the day before his death, he was carrying his one- or two-year-old granddaughter happily in his arms. He could no longer walk while carrying her, having suffered from a mild stroke the year before. And that was the last time he ever held Irene.

At about five in the morning, my grandmother woke the family to say he was not responding to her call. We rushed downstairs to see him laying still on the bed. I shook him, beseeching him to call me, but all we heard was a gurgling sound from his throat. That was all. A massive stroke had taken him. Soon after, my mother’s sister arrived. She fell to her knees and crawled into the house, wailing that she would never see him again. That set my mother off again, though she had already been crying earlier.

Since he died at home, the wake was held in the house. The living room furniture was cleared, pictures removed, altars and mirrored surfaces covered with red paper. His body was placed on a narrow bed behind makeshift curtains. The curtains were drawn but if I climbed the stairs behind the living room to go upstairs, I could still look down at my grandfather's body. The coffin came the next day, and the Taoist rites. My mother and aunt took turns kneeling beside the curtains, burning joss paper piece by piece, their mourning interrupted by fresh wails whenever relatives came. I was supposed to kneel and receive them as they entered, such was the custom.

As my grandfather hadn't any son, there was nobody in the immediate family to wear the mua sah during the funeral. Instead one of his nephews in Penang, his elder brother's son, stepped in to wear this rough hemp clothing and also carry the tong huan or paper lantern. For the year-long mourning period, we were wearing only black-and-white, which was comparatively a more relaxed requirement than my earlier experience.  

Soon after, my paternal grandmother and aunt moved in with us at Seang Tek Road. She was already unwell and my father wanted her nearby. For a time, both my grandmothers lived under the same roof, a rather unusual arrangement.

But my paternal grandmother’s condition worsened. She tried all sorts of treatments, including an enema to unblock her bowels, but it only left her weaker than before. By early 1967, just before Chinese New Year, it was clear she would not last. On the night she died at the age of 62, on the sixth of February, my maternal grandmother decided to go stay with her other daughter to avoid the inevitable, but it was too late. Just as she reached the door, my mother’s wails drifted down from upstairs. She was trapped, and had to remain in the house through the funeral process.

Because it was so close to Chinese New Year, few relatives came and we couldn't fault anyone for that. It was a quiet affair except for the obligatory wails by my mother and paternal aunt. The funeral took place on the eve of the Chinese New Year and that night, as neighbours lit firecrackers and celebrated, our doorway had no red cloth and our lantern remained unlit. My father and I sat on the five-foot way and watched in silence.

This time, we completed the mourning period of one year. After that came the tnooi ang ritual. A cleansing bath, followed by the sin tok or pouring scented water and seven-coloured flowers over the head before changing into red clothes.

In the mid-1970s, we moved to Lorong Zoo Tiga in Ayer Itam. I can’t recall the exact year, maybe 1974 or 1975. The landlord of the row of four Seang Tek Road houses wanted them back. All the tenants resisted but eventually, we had to leave. We moved in with my maternal grandmother’s sister. Space was tight. My parents, aunt, sister Judy and I crammed into one room, while my grandmother shared another with her sister's daughter.

It was there that she passed away on 16 August 1980, aged 79. She had long suffered from weak lungs. On that day, her breathing finally failed and she collapsed on the bed in my mother's arms. I remember that on the first night of the wake, there was a power failure. The house was in darkness, lit only by a pair of candles at my grandmother's feet. Immediately my mind raced back to that funeral parlour in Hutton Lane in 1963 when shadows danced on the wall. When the lights came back, I felt a huge sense of relief. By the time of her passing, mourning customs in Penang were already beginning to shift. Some of the older, more rigid practices were being relaxed. For instance, the wearing of black-and-white was shortened to about 100 days, a more practical arrangement for modern times.

There is one small incident I should mention. There is a Taoist belief that the soul lingers until the seventh day, not fully aware that it has departed the physical shell. The living cannot see it, but there may be signs of its presence. On the fifth day after her passing, two days after the funeral, most of the family had gone out. Only my sister, my paternal aunt and I were at home. My sister, as usual, started talking her light-hearted nonsense, even making jokes about our grandmother. Suddenly, from the back of the house, there was a loud crash of pots and pans falling to the floor. We froze. Then my sister started crying. Was it coincidence? Or was our departed grandmother cross about the jokes and wanted to show her displeasure? We shall never know for sure. 

I think I’ve gone on long enough for now. There are still more to say, but perhaps I’ll leave those for another time when I feel ready to return to this topic.

NOTE: This story is part of my reminiscence series which I've been adding to my blog once in a while. The series is meant to document things I remember about my younger and childhood days; my important memories, which may be pretty mundane to other people, to pass down to my son and daughter. Life as it used to be in the 1950s to 1970s, perhaps into the 1990s. But let's see how it goes...

#seangtekroad

Oh, what a Carry On

The very first Carry On film I saw at the cinema was Carry On Doctor and from that moment on I was hooked on every Carry On film that ever screened in Penang. That continued until I temporarily moved to Kuala Lumpur in 1973 for my studies. Even then I believe I might have caught one or two Carry On films there as well, but I honestly don't remember much about them now. A lot of those memories came rushing back recently when I received this album, Oh! What a Carry On, from Anwar Fazal.

Come to think of it, the humour in those films reminds me a little of the Bawdy Songs and Backroom Ballads record by Oscar Bran,d which I mentioned a fortnight ago. Brand may not have been British, but many of the songs he collected and recorded came from the same old Anglo folk tradition of cheeky double meanings and playful innuendo, something the Carry On films turned into an art form on the cinema screen.

Oh! What a Carry On is a rather interesting little compilation that was released in June 1971. It brought together novelty songs and pop recordings by several stars from the Carry On movies. What made it unusual was that none of these songs were actually recorded for the films themselves. Most of them were singles released during the 1950s and 60s, later gathered together by the record company to ride on the huge popularity of the Carry On gang.

The LP contains 12 tracks. Side A opened with Be My Girl by Jim Dale, which was a genuine hit in Britain back in 1957, reaching number two on the charts. That was followed by You Need Feet by the towering Bernard Bresslaw. Barbara Windsor contributed On Mother Kelly’s Doorstep, while Frankie Howerd appeared with It’s Alright With Me. The real comic highlight of the side was Kenneth Williams performing as Rambling Syd Rumpo in Green Grow My Nadgers Oh! before the side closed with Spring Song by Joan Sims.

Side B continued the fun with The Ugly Duckling sung by Kenneth Connor. Jim Dale returned again with Piccadilly Line. Dora Bryan offered a cheeky rendition of Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend. Frankie Howerd popped up again with Song and Dance Man while Joan Sims sang another number titled Men. The album closed with another Rambling Syd Rumpo performance by Kenneth Williams called The Ballad of the Woggler’s Moulie.

The Rambling Syd Rumpo tracks are probably the most famous items here. The character actually came from the BBC radio programme Round the Horne which ran between 1965 and 1968. The writers came up with a clever trick to get past the BBC censors. They filled the lyrics with nonsense words that sounded extremely rude but technically meant nothing at all. Words like nadgers, moulies and cordwangle had audiences roaring with laughter while the censors could not really object because those words did not exist in any dictionary.

Another fascinating aspect of this album is the early career of Jim Dale. Long before he became a familiar face in the Carry On films, he was actually a teenage pop star produced by George Martin at Parlophone, years before Martin discovered The Beatles. Be My Girl, which appeared on this LP, was one of Dale’s biggest hits. Ironically he never enjoyed the life of a pop idol and preferred comedy, which eventually led him straight into the Carry On series. Much later he reinvented himself again as the narrator of the hugely popular Harry Potter audiobooks, performing more than a hundred different character voices.

Even the sleeve artwork is worth mentioning. The cover illustration was done by Tom Chantrell, the artist responsible for many of the colourful Carry On film posters that once decorated cinema lobbies.

Today, the record feels like a small time capsule from the golden age of British comedy. And for me personally, thanks to Anwar Fazal’s thoughtful gift, it also brings back memories of those days in Penang when a new Carry On film arriving at the cinema was always guaranteed to fill the hall with laughter.

Cataract routine

It’s been almost two weeks since the cataract operation on my left eye. I’ve already gone back twice for follow-up sessions with the surgeon and, according to him, everything is progressing well. So far, I haven’t experienced any of the warning signs he mentioned earlier, no pain, no discharge, nothing out of the ordinary, so that in itself is already something to be thankful for. There’s one more follow-up scheduled towards the end of next month, just to make sure everything continues on track.

So how do I feel with this artificial lens sitting inside the eye? From the very first day, the difference was quite striking. Vision suddenly became very bright and very clear. Almost too clear, if that makes sense. The best way I can describe it is with the Penang Hokkien expression, Cheng Beng. It's the same term used for this time of the year when we Chinese make our way to the cemeteries to spring clean the graves of our ancestors and especially, to remember and fulfil our duties to those that came before us. Cheng and Beng, clear and bright. That same sense of clarity in the air, as if everything has been washed clean. That’s exactly how things look now. Colours appear more vivid, whites look whiter and there’s a certain crispness to everything that I don’t remember having for quite some time.

But of course, it’s not all perfectly balanced yet. The left eye is now long-sighted, while the right eye is still short-sighted. So when I look at something, the left eye sees it sharp and clear, while the right eye comes in slightly behind, blurred and struggling to catch up. It’s a strange sensation, like the two eyes are not quite in agreement with each other. At times I find myself unconsciously favouring the left eye, letting it take the lead.

I suppose this is part of the adjustment period. The brain probably needs time to sort things out and decide how to combine the two different images into something workable. For now, I just carry on as usual, reading, moving about, letting the eyes and the mind slowly get used to this new arrangement. How long that will take, I really don’t know. But at least for now, things are heading in the right direction, and that’s good enough for me. 

Of course, there are all the little routines that now come with it. Whenever I’m outdoors in the daytime, I have to wear sunglasses. “Protect your eyes from the ultraviolet light,” the surgeon warned. For how long, I asked. “As long as necessary,” he said. I suppose that means quite indefinitely.

At night, I have to put on an eye shield before going to bed. It’s quite a ritual, sticking it on with surgical tape. For afternoon naps, it’s much simpler, just the sunglasses will do. Both are really there to stop me from accidentally touching or rubbing the eye when I’m not fully aware of what I’m doing.

Then there are the eye drops. Three different types, several times a day. And this, not counting my glaucoma eyedrops too! By now I’ve more or less settled into the routine. Life goes on. I’ve even resumed driving, although with the difference in vision between the two eyes, I do have to be more careful and alert. Night driving I’ve not attempted yet, leaving that to my wife for the time being.

On the hygiene side, showering is not a problem, although I’ve avoided shampooing my hair these past two weeks. Instead, I give the scalp a good wipe with a damp cloth. Surprisingly refreshing. The eyelid too gets a daily clean with damp cotton puffs, just to remove any accumulated dirt. But that’s as far as I go when it comes to getting water near the eye.

As for food, the surgeon more or less dismissed any need for restrictions. But my wife, after listening to various well-meaning friends, has taken a different view. So for now, anything involving prawns, shrimp, hehbee or belachan is off the menu. Pantang for three weeks, she decided. Thus, no Hokkien mee, no char koay teow. She is the "She Who Must Be Obeyed", as the character Rumpole in Rumpole of the Bailey would say of his wife. Woe is me.

As a postscript, perhaps I should say that inevitably, in the longer term, I shall need another operation on the right eye to balance up my vision. That is something for another day. For now, I’ll just let things settle and take it as it comes.

#chengbeng

Butterworth's PPC complex

A few days ago, I made a passing reference to the Penang Port Commission Complex (PPC Complex) in Butterworth when writing about the 1988 ferry terminal tragedy. I used to pass through that building regularly on my way to work from about 1980 to 2000. Not quite every day, but often enough. Slightly more than 20 years of ferry commuting. So yes, I knew the place quite well. Here’s what I remember.

Not many people think about it now, but the old PPC Complex didn’t just fade away quietly. It went out in a blaze, literally. On 20 May 2001, at about five o'clock in the morning, a fire broke out in the building which most people simply called the Butterworth bus terminal. The fire started on the upper floors where the Parkson Ria Department Store and Tops were located. It was a major one which took the firefighters nearly 12 hours to bring it fully under control, only around five in the evening.

By then the damage was severe. The top floor, including parts of the roof, was badly gutted. The rest of the building was no longer usable. Not long after that, the whole structure was demolished. Today, Penang Sentral stands on the same spot.

The building itself went back to the mid-1970s. It was completed in 1976 at a cost of about RM3.5 million, which in those days was not small money. It was considered quite modern then. The ground floor housed a 24-bay bus terminal, along with a police post, ticket counters and taxi stands. And once you came down the staircases, taxi drivers and bus touts would be calling out, each trying to pull you towards their taxis or ticket counters.

The first floor was where the small retail shops and food stalls were located. That was where people hung around, especially in the 1980s and 1990s. Nothing fanciful here. Just everyday things, cheap food and a place to wait for connecting buses. Up on the top floor was the shopping area. Emporium Holdings was one of the early tenants before Parkson Ria came in later. At one time there was even a small cinema.

This Parkson Ria outlet, in particular, was one of the places on the mainland to shop in the 1990s. I remember once being there with the whole family when my son, probably three or four years old at the time, decided to play hide and seek among the clothes racks. One moment he was there, the next moment he was gone. With all those unverified stories going around then about children being abducted, we were alarmed and started searching frantically, calling out his name. He remained quiet and then suddenly, out he popped from between the racks, grinning away. For that little stunt, his reward was a quick smack on his bottom.

The PPC Complex wasn’t just a building. For many people it was part of daily life. Students passed through it on their way to school. Workers used it every day, taking buses and ferries across to the island. On the odd occasion, I would be there too, waiting for a bus back to Seberang Jaya when my car wasn’t available. It was also a convenient meeting point, the sort of place where people would say, “wait for me at the bus terminal,” and everyone knew exactly where that meant. And then there were those who went there to lepak, simply not knowing what to do with their time. People lingering, watching the world go by, making the place feel alive. And the occasional students playing truant, trying to blend into the crowd, though not always successfully.

The complex was linked to the Butterworth railway station by a long covered overhead walkway, maybe a hundred or two hundred metres. Somewhere along that stretch, a branch veered off to the ferry terminal. That was where foot passengers bought their tickets, passed through the turnstile and waited for the next ferry. I remember always having a book with me, thanks to my British Council Library membership. Waiting time was reading time, whether in the terminal or on the ferry itself. And it was that very ferry terminal that collapsed in 1988.

After the fire and demolition, the area went quiet. Buses and taxis were forced to operate from somewhere else close enough. Then, years later, something new rose in its place. Penang Sentral, opened at the end of 2018. Clean, modern, efficient. Everything the old complex was not.

But for those of us who remember, the old PPC Complex was never just a bus terminal. It was a meeting point, a waiting place, part of the rhythm of daily life. A bit chaotic, a bit worn, but very much alive in its time. Now, like so many things in Butterworth, it lives on only in memory.

#penangportcommission #ppc #butterworth 

David Cassidy

It's almost nine years since David Cassidy passed away. Looking back now, it’s hard to explain just how big he was in the early 1970s. These days we throw the term “teen idol” around rather casually, but in Cassidy’s case it really meant something. For a few short years he seemed to be everywhere: television, radio, record racks in the shops and the bedroom walls of teenagers all over the world. Even here in Penang you couldn’t miss him.

Cassidy first burst into the public consciousness through the musical sitcom The Partridge Family, which began airing in 1970. He played Keith Partridge, the son in a family band that travelled around performing. The show itself was light entertainment, but the music took on a life of its own. When the single I Think I Love You came out, it became a massive international hit. It was heard everywhere, from record shops along Campbell Street to radios playing in coffee shops.

But anyone searching for I Think I Love You on a Partridge Family album might have been slightly puzzled. The song first appeared in 1970 as a seven-inch 45 rpm single issued under The Partridge Family name, with David Cassidy on lead vocal, and it quickly became a huge international hit. That was the format most people knew it from at the time. In later years, however, collectors sometimes encountered the track again on compilations such as David Cassidy’s Greatest Hits rather than on albums credited to The Partridge Family. Back in those days, if you wandered into, for instance, Wing Hing Records on Campbell Street and asked for the song, chances were the proprietor would simply point you to whichever record that happened to have it in stock.

The recording itself also had an interesting backstory. Despite the television image of a family band, most of the studio recording was actually done by seasoned Los Angeles session musicians. Cassidy sang the lead vocal, but the backing band was part of the famous circle of studio players often associated with the so-called “Wrecking Crew.” The result was a perfectly crafted slice of early 1970s pop that went on to sell millions of copies around the world.

Of course, once the television fame took hold, the record companies wasted no time building a solo career around him. Albums like Cherish and Rock Me Baby began appearing in the early 1970s. Even people who didn’t follow The Partridge Family probably knew at least one or two of his songs. By the mid-1970s he was reportedly one of the highest-paid entertainers in the world. 

But fame built on teenage hysteria rarely lasts forever. By 1975 the signs were already there that the wave was beginning to crest, at least in the United States. Musical tastes were changing, and the industry was moving on to other styles and new faces. Cassidy was still hugely popular internationally, but the days of absolute teen idol domination were starting to fade.

It was around this time that Bell Records released David Cassidy’s Greatest Hits. It was the usual record company strategy to gather up the familiar hits and sell them again while the name was still hot. But the album also ended up acting as a kind of summary of Cassidy’s first phase as a pop star. The songs on it came mostly from the years when he ruled the teen market: the Partridge Family period, the early solo records and the hits that had fuelled those screaming concerts. Soon after that, Cassidy moved to RCA Records and began trying to reshape his image. 

When I listen to those early hits today, it’s easy to remember why he made such an impact. For a few years in the early 1970s, David Cassidy was one of those rare pop figures whose appeal crossed borders and cultures. His records travelled easily around the world, and even in a place like Penang his songs found their way into record collections and transistor radios.

That’s what makes Greatest Hits interesting now. It isn’t just a compilation album. It’s a reminder of a particular moment in pop history when a television actor with a good voice and a lot of charm briefly became the centre of a worldwide musical craze. For those of us who remember those days, hearing those songs again also brings back a time when a simple pop tune drifting out of a radio could travel halfway across the world and still find its way into a Penang coffee shop.

Side 1: Cherish, Doesn't somebody want to be wanted, Daydreamer, Please please me, Could it be forever, If I didn't care
Side 2: How can I be sure, I think I love you, Rock me baby, I am a clown, I'll meet you halfway

Butterworth ferry terminal tragedy 1988

A few days ago, while I was just beginning my recuperation after the cataract operation, a story appeared in The Star newspaper revisiting the Butterworth ferry terminal tragedy of 1988. I’ll reproduce that story at the end of this posting, but first I want to say this: I was there when the terminal platform collapsed. This is my story too. My experience, my memory.

Almost 40 years have passed since that day. July has always been the time when the St Anne’s Church in Bukit Mertajam holds its annual novena, culminating in the Feast of St Anne, usually observed on the weekend closest to the 26th of July, with the candlelight procession drawing the biggest crowds. Every year the festival draws huge crowds from all over Malaysia and even from neighbouring countries. Not just Catholics, but people of other faiths as well, though perhaps not so much the Protestants or Muslims. In those days, many still crossed over from the island to the mainland by ferry, on foot or with their cars and motorcycles, even though the Penang Bridge was already there.

In 1988, also around July, there was another major event taking place. The committee of the Kong Hock Keong temple had announced that a once-in-60-years procession of Kuan Imm, the Goddess of Mercy, would take place on Penang island. That alone was enough to stir the imagination of the Chinese community. A rare chance to see the Kuan Imm images from this and other temples taken out and paraded through the streets of George Town.

Unlike the St Anne’s Feast, where people made a beeline for the church itself, the Kuan Imm procession would have people lining the streets to watch the floats go by. Since Kong Hock Keong was located right in the heart of George Town, long before UNESCO heritage status came into the picture, the ferry remained the natural way for people from the mainland to cross over.

At that time I was working in Ban Hin Lee Bank. I was living in Seberang Jaya then, newly married to Saw See, and my daily routine was simple enough. I would drive to Pantai Road in Butterworth, park the car in the compound of a private house, walk through the Penang Port Commission Complex to the Sultan Abdul Halim ferry terminal, cross over to the Raja Tun Uda terminal on the island, and then walk the last stretch to the bank in Beach Street.

A few days before 31 July 1988, I suggested to my father and my father-in-law that we should go together to watch the procession. Everyone agreed. So on that Sunday, we drove to Butterworth, I parked in my usual spot at the old couple’s house, and we made our way to the ferry terminal.

We thought it would be easy enough to cross over, but we were wrong. There were already several hundreds of people there, and more were arriving all the time. Add to that those returning from St Anne’s Church, and you were probably looking at a few thousand people packed into the terminal building.

The four of us edged forward slowly with the crowd. The ferry service was still running, but between ferries the whole mass would stop and wait. Then when boarding was announced, those at the back would surge forward. At the front of the enclosed terminal, the pressure built up on the steel structure and the wooden flooring.

Somewhere in that slow, relentless push, my father became separated from me. I could see him ahead, but the distance between us kept widening. But my father-in-law was still beside me. By about 4.30pm, we had cleared the ticket turnstile. We thought we might finally be able to board the next ferry. Spirits lifted a little. My father-in-law and Saw See next to me, my father perhaps ten feet ahead. Kuan Imm procession, here we come.

Then came a tremendous vibration followed immediately with a loud whoosh.

At first I thought it was a jet flying low overhead. The sound was something like that. And then, in an instant, everything changed. One moment we were enclosed within the terminal structure, the next moment we were staring at open sky. The roof had given way. Hardly 20 feet away, the platform in front of us had collapsed, taking with it everyone standing there.

Panic broke out immediately. The crowd surged backwards. We three had no choice but to move with it. But where was my father? I couldn’t see him anymore. Was he on that section that gave way? There was no way to know.

We were pushed all the way back towards the Penang Port Commssion Complex. Nobody could go forward, only back. Somehow the three of us made our way out of the building. But I knew I had to go back and look for my father.

As I tried to push against the flow, I suddenly saw him. He was staggering unsteadily towards me, holding on to his cane. He was alright though. Shaken, but alright. I gave him a hug, more out of relief than anything else, and we made our way back to the car. Not long after that, we all drove home in silence.

The incident happened on a Sunday. The next day, Monday, it was back to work for many people. But how were we to cross over to the island when the terminal had collapsed? I didn’t know what to expect, but to my relief, the ferry service was still operating. The damaged terminal was cordoned off, and foot passengers were diverted to the vehicular ferries. For the next few weeks, until the authorities sorted things out, the lower deck of those ferries was opened to foot passengers. There were no benches, so we stood all the way from Butterworth to George Town and back again every day.

In the end, although the debris was cleared and investigations concluded, that old terminal, built in 1956, was never used again. The vehicular terminal was modified instead to handle both vehicular and foot passengers.

It still feels a bit unreal. One moment we were just four people trying to catch a ferry to see a procession, the next moment we were part of something far bigger and far more serious. Time has moved on, the old terminal is gone, and life has carried on. But memories like this stay with us, surfacing when we least expect it.

This past Chinese New Year, for instance, my daughter was talking to her old schoolmate when the topic of the tragedy was raised. They were only one-year-old when it happened. Later, she mentioned it to me in passing and I could see the look on her face when she realised just how close her grandfathers and parents had come to being caught in it.

So when I came across this recent article in The Star, it brought everything back in a way I hadn’t quite anticipated. I reproduce it here for the record.

Revisiting the 1988 Butterworth jetty tragedy
Story by ANGELIN YEOH, 18 March 2026

THE year was 1988, and The Star reporter Paul Gabriel found himself at the district hospital in Butterworth, Penang. It was past 10pm on a Sunday and he had set himself a crucial task.

Paul needed to get into the morgue. Five hours earlier, Paul had arrived at the Pengkalan Sultan Abdul Halim jetty where a wooden platform collapsed under the weight of a crowd estimated at around 10,000 people.

The crowd was due to the Buddhist Guan Yin (Goddess of Mercy) festival taking place in George Town on the island, with the annual St Anne’s Feast being celebrated in Bukit Mertajam on the mainland on the same day. The Guan Yin procession was touted as a once-in-60-years event, with tourists coming from as far as Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore.

Paul remembered the chaos that followed the collapse of the jetty platform - sirens blaring, helicopters hovering overhead and blood-stained ambulances rushing the injured to hospital.

For a reporter, the most important detail is to uncover and be accurate with the number of casualties – a figure that will let readers understand the full scale of the tragedy.

“It was getting late into the evening and the police were not ready with the full casualty list. I wanted to go the extra mile to get as close a figure as I could,” he said.

Paul was 25 and was a year into his stint as The Star’s Butterworth correspondent. He was familiar with the district hospital grounds as he had covered VIP visits and interviewed victims involved in other incidents.

But stepping into the morgue was new territory for him. He approached a security guard with a story that he was looking for a missing relative.

“I said I was concerned for a relative who had gone to the jetty. I pleaded with him to let me in just for a while,” he recalled.

It took some time for Paul to convince the unsuspecting guard to let him in.

Eventually, he was granted access and went in alone. Then in the dimly-lit morgue, Paul saw black body bags and began counting, notebook and pen in hand.

“I took it that the large bags were that of adults and the small ones that of children,” Paul said, adding that as nervous as he was, he tried to keep calm to get the counting over with as fast as he could.

“I was purely in reporter mode. My thoughts were focused on covering the news and getting the facts as best as I could.”

Paul said he was done in about 10 minutes and left the morgue with the grim task of reporting to his editor that 31 people had died.

Later, police confirmed that there were 32 casualties with more than 400 injured.

The story didn’t end there as Paul said there was more work to be done to interview survivors and ferry officials. Ultimately, how did things go wrong and who was responsible?

He knocked on the door of then-Penang Port Commission (PPC) chairman Datuk Seri Syed Mohamad Aidid Syed Murtaza's office seeking answers.

“I asked him point-blank what he was going to do.... how much of a responsibility he would take.”

Paul remembered how Syed Mohamad Aidid looked him in the eyes to say: “I will not quit. I am not going to run away from this tragedy. I will stay and put things right. That is my commitment.”

Ironically, the PPC chairman was among those who narrowly escaped death, being just five metres away from the crashing platform and metal beams.

Paul said covering the tragedy was one of the biggest stories of his career, one that had also taken him to shootouts and a tour bus hijacking during his time in Butterworth which was notorious for crime back then.

He had no regrets about counting body bags in the morgue. "There was no time to ponder. It was a challenge I had to rise to. Back then, there was no Internet or social media. Everyone was waiting for the news. People would wake up and grab The Star  first thing in the morning! We had to be the best in delivering the news.

"As a child, Paul had fond memories of the ferries in Penang. He looked forward to being in the vehicular deck as his father drove the family across to the mainland.

“The sea breeze, the seabirds and yes, I think we also saw dolphins from afar!”

But now, whenever he returns to Penang and passes the Butterworth jetty on the mainland, memories of that fateful day 38 years ago come flooding back.

"The scene of the jetty platform collapse and bodies lying on the road is still etched in my mind," he said.

**On Sept 21, 1989, a 200-page report of a Royal Commission of Inquiry set up up to investigate the mishap found the PPC to be negligent. It said the ferry manager ought to have known the limitations of the upper deck, and that the duty of anticipating the passenger load lay squarely with operations which had figures from previous festivals.

The report concluded that overloading of passengers in the waiting area of the terminal caused the platform to collapse, and that the PPC’s operations department had pleaded ignorance on the maximum number of passengers allowed there.

#butterworth #ferry #tragedy

The nyonya kitchen awakens, part 3

Reading back over what I wrote in Part 1 and Part 2, I realise that I’ve been mentioning all these Nyonya koay rather casually, as though everyone would know what they are. In Penang half a century ago, that might well have been the case. In those days the names were simply part of everyday kitchen talk, especially around Chinese New Year when trays of koay would appear one after another from the steamer or oven.

A typical array of Penang Nyonya koay available commercially today:
(outer ring) serimuka, koay bengkar ubikayu, koay lapeh;
(middle ring) koay bengkar, koay tatai; (inner ring) koay talam

A household like my maternal grandmother’s could easily produce 15 or 20 varieties over several days. Some were meant for the altar, some for visiting relatives and friends, and some simply for the family to enjoy between meals.

Today, a number of these koay can still be found in Penang, though more often at market stalls or specialty shops rather than in home kitchens. Others have quietly slipped out of common memory. So for the benefit of younger readers and perhaps to refresh the memories of older ones, here is a short glossary of the koay I have mentioned, and more!

Note: Traditionalists like the Malacca peranakans will insist on using gula malacca when the recipe calls for it but the more pragmatic Penang Nyonyas generally substitute it with brown sugar.

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Glossary

Huat Koay – Small steamed rice cakes that crack at the top when cooked. The split crown is taken as a sign of prosperity and good fortune.

Tnee Koay – Sticky brown Chinese New Year cake made from glutinous rice flour and brown sugar. Traditionally steamed for hours, sometimes overnight. Will gradually harden over weeks if left untouched. To be enjoyed, the hardened tnee koay is sliced thinly and either steamed and coated with freshly grated coconut, or fried with egg and batter.

Ang Koo – Red tortoise-shaped glutinous rice cake filled with sweet mung bean paste. The tortoise symbolises longevity, although there can be other shapes as well, notably the Chinese gold bar and the peach.

Koay Kochnee – Banana-leaf parcels of glutinous rice dough filled with sweet grated coconut cooked in brown sugar, then steamed until fragrant.

Koay Kochnee Santan – A variation of the koay kochnee where each banana-leaf parcel is steamed with coconut milk that sets into a soft, jelly-like santan coating around the dumpling.

Koay Bengkah – A baked cake of rice flour and coconut, often coloured purple with the bunga telang or yam, with a lightly caramelised golden top. Usually cut into squares or diamonds.

Koay Bengkah Ubikayu – A separate cassava-based version made from grated tapioca (ubi kayu) mixed with santan and sugar, baked until the surface turns golden and the interior remains moist and slightly fibrous.

Koay Talam – Two-layered steamed kueh consisting of a pandan-flavoured base and a soft coconut custard top.

Pulot Tatai – Blue-coloured glutinous rice tinted with the bunga telang and steamed with coconut milk, then pressed into diamond shapes. Often eaten with kaya.

Serimuka – A glutinous rice base topped with a thick pandan custard layer, steamed carefully so the two layers remain distinct.

Koay Lapeh – Nine-layered steamed cake, alternating pink and white layers with a top layer of red, where each layer is added and steamed in succession. Children like to peel the layers apart before eating.

Koay Kosui – Small brown sugar steamed cakes with a soft, slightly springy texture, typically topped with freshly grated coconut.

Pulot Enti – Small banana-leaf parcels of steamed glutinous rice topped with grated coconut cooked in brown sugar.

Koay Tayap – Thin green pandan crepes folded around grated coconut cooked with brown sugar. Very rarely seen is the white crepe version filled with freshly grated coconut and white sugar.

Apong Bokkua – Soft fermented rice pancakes served with a syrup made from coconut milk and brown sugar. The Malays name this serabai or apom berkuah.

Onde-Onde – Small glutinous rice balls filled with brown sugar syrup and coated with grated coconut.

Koay Balu – Small sponge cakes baked in brass moulds over charcoal, crisp on the outside and soft inside.

Koay Ee – Small glutinous rice balls usually served in sweet ginger syrup. More commonly seen during the Tang Chek or Winter Solstice festival but still remembered in some festive kitchens.

Koay Bangkit – Light, airy coconut cookies made from tapioca flour and coconut milk, pressed into small moulds and baked until crumbly.

Koay Kapek – Chinese New Year love letters! Thin coconut wafers made by pouring a light batter onto a heated brass mould over charcoal, then folded or rolled quickly while still hot. The process requires two people working together, one baking and the other folding or rolling. 

Pineapple Tarts – Short pastry filled with thick pineapple jam; the pineapple symbolises the arrival of prosperity.

Peanut Cookie – Crumbly cookies made from finely ground roasted peanuts, flour and sugar, brushed with egg glaze before baking. Sandy texture and strong peanut aroma, they are common in Penang homes.

Cataract done

So I had my cataract procedure done on my left eye yesterday and I got through it okay. Many thanks to my doctor, Teoh Hian Jin, from Bagan Specialist Centre in Butterworth. I must admit that before the procedure I was mighty anxious and nervous because he had warned me that my iris was rather small and that he might have to use some alternatives to get it to open wider. And true enough, despite several attempts to dilate the eye, he eventually had to use hooks.

I probably wasn’t the perfect patient either. Several times he had to remind me to relax and unclench my jaw and turn my head slightly towards him. In the end, I attempted some basic techniques to calm myself down. 

Maybe I should also explain why I chose to go to him in the first place. I discovered that he is also an Old Free but seven years my junior at Penang Free School, although he isn’t a member of The Old Frees’ Association. Still, that information was good enough for me. I would trust an Old Free any time and in this case my trust certainly wasn’t misplaced. Hian Jin did an exemplary job on me. Now I just have to wait for the world to look a little brighter through that eye!

Cataract

Today's the day. Left eye. Wish me well.

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.

Nepal-India Day 16: Delhi and goodbye

Dateline: 6 December 2025. Waking refreshed the next morning, we checked out of Hotel Africa Avenue after breakfast and began what would be our final full day in Delhi. The original programme indicated a visit to Lutyens’ Delhi, that grand imperial layout conceived in the early 20th century. However, the roads were closed due to visiting foreign dignitaries. Our coach could only crawl through the roads, offering us a moving glimpse rather than the intended walk.

Still, we saw the imposing sweep of the India Gate. Beneath its 42-metre-high arch now stands a 28-foot granite statue of Subhas Chandra Bose, installed in 2022 in the canopy that once housed a statue of King George V. Designed by Edwin Lutyens and completed in 1931, the India Gate commemorates more than 70,000 soldiers of the British Indian Army killed in the First World War and the Third Anglo-Afghan War. Its resemblance to the Arc de Triomphe is unmistakable.

Yet it was Bose who held my attention. A pivotal figure in the independence movement, he led the Indian National Army (INA) against British rule during the Second World War. The name was not unfamiliar to me. I have written about him before, particularly the INA’s activities in Malaya. I told our surprised guide how the INA had used my alma mater, the Penang Free School, as a training ground during the Japanese Occupation. He seemed taken aback that someone from our group could recount such details about one of India’s national heroes.

From imperial grandeur, we proceeded to Gandhi Smriti, formerly Birla House. It was here that Mahatma Gandhi spent the final 144 days of his life, and where he was assassinated on 30 January 1948. The museum preserves the atmosphere of those last days.

Born in 1869 in Gujarat, Gandhi studied law in London before forging his political conscience in South Africa, where he spent 21 years advocating for Indian civil rights after being thrown off a train for refusing to leave a “whites-only” compartment. Returning to India in 1915, he transformed the Indian National Congress into a mass movement. His philosophy of Satyagraha or non-violent resistance reshaped the struggle for independence and inspired global leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr and Nelson Mandela.

At Gandhi Smriti, a simple concrete path marked with footprints traced his final walk to the prayer ground. A modest pavilion marked the exact spot where he fell. Inside his preserved living quarters, we saw the sparse belongings that defined his life: spectacles, a walking stick, a spinning wheel, low writing desk. Outside, pillars inscribed with his teachings stand among traditional symbols such as “Om” and the ancient swastika in its original Indian context of auspiciousness.

In the afternoon we visited the National Museum. With approximately 200,000 artefacts spanning over 5,000 years, it was less a museum than a condensed archive of Indian civilisation. Walking through its galleries felt like compressing millennia into a single afternoon.

The Indus Valley Civilisation section alone contained more than 3,500 objects excavated from sites such as Harappa and Mohenjo-daro. There were sculptures from the Maurya, Shunga, Kushan and Gupta periods, coins and armour, textiles and jewellery, miniature paintings and manuscripts. Each gallery offered a different chapter in India’s long history.

But it was the section devoted to the Buddha that drew us all in the end. The most fitting end to our Indian journey. Here were sacred relics of the Buddha excavated from sites such as Piprahwa in Uttar Pradesh. These relics, believed by many scholars to be among the corporeal remains distributed after the Buddha’s cremation in the 5th century BC, were displayed in a specially designed chamber meant to evoke the serenity of a stupa. 

A notice on the wall invited visitors to pay homage to the relics: 

"Around 463 BCE at Kushinagar, Lord Buddha passed away or achieved Mahaparinirvana at the age of eighty. The residents of Kushinagara cremated his body with ceremonies befitting a Universal King (chakravartin). Buddha's relics were divided into eight portions and distributed among eight kingdoms. The sacred relics were commemorated into eight different stupas. 

The relics housed in this hall are excavated from Piprahwa in the Siddharth Nagar District of Uttar Pradesh, an erstwhile part of the ancient city of Kapilavastu. The discovery of one inscribed casket in 1898 by W.C Peppe refers to the relics of the Buddha and his clan, 'Sakya'. Further excavations conducted by the Archaeological Survey of India in 1971-1977 discovered two more un-inscribed steatite caskets containing twelve sacred relics in the bigger casket and ten sacred relics in the smaller casket. 

National Museum, New Delhi humbly invites the devotees and museum visitors for paying homage to the sacred relics of Gautama Buddha."

Here, the atmosphere was understandably hushed. Visitors instinctively lower their voices. One does not merely look; one contemplates. Our Chief Abbott signalled everyone for a session of meditation. Even visitors from outside our group joined in. Later, there were other Buddhist groups that arrived to perform their own sessions.

There were exquisite sculptures representing different artistic traditions: the serene sandstone Buddhas of the Gupta period, often regarded as the classical ideal of Indian Buddhist art; the Gandhara sculptures influenced by Hellenistic forms, where the Buddha’s robe fell in Greco-Roman folds; and Mathura figures carved in the red sandstone of India. Each style reflected how Buddhism travelled, adapted and absorbed regional influences.

The museum also displayed fragments of ancient stupas, votive tablets and inscriptions in various scripts. Together they charted not only Buddhism’s spread but also the evolution of artistic language across centuries. For us who had earlier stood beneath the Qutb Minar contemplating the rise of medieval powers, it was humbling to be reminded of an even older spiritual current that had once radiated from this land across Asia.

By late afternoon, the collective weight of the centuries seemed to have settled gently upon us. Once again, there was that familiar sensation of information and visual overload. Delhi had offered us monuments of empire, places of martyrdom and relics of enlightenment. All in a single day.

Within hours, we would truly be on our way home. As I reflected on our 16-day journey from Kathmandu to Delhi, what I had initially thought would be a long trip but which now felt unexpectedly too brief, I realised how much there was still to absorb. Not merely the sights, but the stories behind them, which I hope I have been able to do justice to here in my blog. Perhaps that is what travel ultimately offers: not simply movement across geography but a quiet passage across time.

Previous:

Nepal-India Day 15: Jaipur to Delhi
Nepal-India Day 14: Jaipuri

Nepal-India Day 13: Agra

Nepal-India Days 11 and 12: The Varanasi ghats
Nepal-India Day 11: Varanasi deer park
Nepal-India Day 9 and 10: Bodhgaya to Varanasi  

Nepal-India Days 9 and 10: Bodhgaya
Nepal-India Day 8: Rajgir Nalanda  

Nepal-India Day 8: Rajgir Gridhakura
Nepal-India Day 7: Vaishali
Nepal-India Day 6: Kushinagar
Nepal-India Day 6: Shravasti 
Nepal-India Day 5: Lumbini to Shravasti 
Nepal-India Day 4: The sala tree 
Nepal-India Days 3 and 4: Lumbini and Kapilvastu 
Nepal-India Days 1 and 2: Kathmandu and Nagarkot