The Bahasa book came out first in 1991. What happened was that sometime in 1990, three of my old mates came a-visiting. And pretty soon, the conversation turned to how I could take my chess column - at that time, I was already writing a chess column in The Star newspaper for a few years - up another level. One of them suggested that I could write a beginner's book on chess, and another suggested that I write it in English and he could then translate it into Bahasa.
So that's how it eventually came to pass that my first book came out in 1991. To be fair to my two friends, I proposed adding their names as co-writers since it was the idea of one of them and the translation work of the other. By the way, I've to put on record my initial uneasiness when I saw my friend, Jimmy Liew, featured on the cover. He was the best player in the country at that time but at no time during the book's production was I ever shown the proposed cover. The decision and approval were all the publisher's to make. Was it their attempt to sell the book? I don't know. Over the years, I shared the royalty with my two friends. Then in 1995, we decided to issue the book in its original English version - but updated - and the publisher was quite agreeable with it. But I did insist that we should have a neutral cover design this time.
But as I said, I wasn't particularly happy with the errors that appeared in the books. I had to give the publisher my draft and they had to retype it to suit their format. Nobody knows how many errors were made in my typing and theirs too. Thankfully, they are now out of print. Suffice it to say that this was an achievement that I would rather not have. But for the record, I have to mention the books here in my blog.
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