Pagar Tras

In February last year, I had attended a workshop on the history and heritage of Pagar Tras organised by the Centre for Global Archaeological Research at Universiti Sains Malaysia. As part of the programme, the participants were taken on a field trip to visit the ruins of the abandoned Sacred Heart Catholic Church, once a spiritual centre of the old Pagar Tras community, as well as the Catholic church in Kulim where many of the salvaged artefacts eventually found a new home.

I still remember walking through the remains of the old church site. There was a quietness about the place that photographs alone could never quite capture. One could sense that this had once been a living community with its own rhythms, prayers and gatherings.

Fast forward to the present, and about a week ago I received a message from USM informing me that my copy of History and Heritage of Pagar Tras was ready for collection. Naturally, I wasted little time getting hold of it. After reading through the book over several sittings, I came away impressed by the amount of information packed into its 124 pages.

Written by Stephen Chia, Francis Chen and Clement Liang, the book pieces together the story of Pagar Tras. It traces how French missionaries arrived in the 19th century to spread Catholicism among the local Chinese community, and how the Sacred Heart Church gradually became the focal point of village life.

The story also reflects the upheavals that shaped Malaya during the mid-20th century. Following the Japanese Occupation and later during the Malayan Emergency, the Pagar Tras community was forcibly relocated to the new villages on the mainland. Once the villagers left, the old church was effectively abandoned, and nature slowly reclaimed the site.

Reading the book brought back memories of that field trip last year. What at first ap
peared to be little more than old ruins in the jungle gradually took on a deeper meaning. Behind the broken walls and silence was the story of an uprooted community and a forgotten chapter of local history that could easily have disappeared altogether if nobody bothers to document it.

Open distrust

There was something almost surreal about the recent reports coming out of Beijing during Donald Trump’s visit to China. According to multiple accounts, members of the American delegation were openly seen throwing away everything given to them by their Chinese hosts before boarding Air Force One to go back to the United States. Gifts, badges, souvenir pins, invitation cards and even temporary burner phones were reportedly dumped into bins near the aircraft stairs in full public view.

It sounded less like diplomacy and more like a scene from a Cold War spy thriller. Apparently the instruction was that absolutely nothing originating from China was to be brought onto the aircraft because of cybersecurity and surveillance fears. American intelligence agencies have long suspected that electronic devices, souvenirs or even ordinary-looking items could potentially be used for tracking or data collection. So the delegation travelled with temporary phones, avoided personal electronics and discarded everything afterwards.

I suppose none of this is surprising. Great powers have always spied on one another. Trump himself more or less admitted it when he casually remarked that America spies on China too. That was probably the most honest thing said during the whole visit.

Still, there was something symbolic about the public nature of the disposal. Diplomatic visits are normally wrapped in smiles, handshakes and carefully staged photographs. Mistrust may exist behind the scenes, but both sides usually try to keep appearances intact. This time, however, the distrust became visible for everyone to see. One moment there were banquets and ceremonial greetings. The next moment, gifts were being tossed into bins before boarding the plane home.

I wonder how the Chinese hosts must have felt watching that happen. Publicly, they remained polite and restrained, calling the visit historic and avoiding any official protest. But I suspect the message was fully understood. At the same time, China itself would probably do the same too, but perhaps with more discretion. The modern world has become deeply suspicious beneath all its diplomatic language. Nations trade with one another, smile for cameras and speak of cooperation, yet quietly assume they are also being watched, monitored and hacked.

Maybe that is the real story here. The world’s two biggest powers can sit across the same table smiling warmly while trusting each other so little. In another era, such behaviour might have caused outrage. Today, many people simply shrugged and said: of course they did. A reflection, perhaps, of the times we live in.

Quiet tragedy

So there I was with this Bakat TV 1971 record in my hand. Until that first moment when I placed the record on the turntable, I was mainly interested in listening only to Bryan Jeremiah sing Love Knot in My Lariat and Rajadin Wan Mat's My Funny Valentine, two songs which had impressed me those 55 years ago. But when the stylus reached the fourth track on Side Two, I stopped in my tracks. Hearing Feather in My Pocket today was like hearing it for the very first time in 1971. Michael Tan’s lone voice, accompanied by his guitar, carried a plaintive honesty that cut through everything else on the album.

The song was quiet. Just a voice and a guitar, nothing more. The stark simplicity allowed the words to stand on their own. Nothing to hide behind, no orchestral sweep to distract the listener. It sounded like someone thinking aloud, perhaps while travelling, perhaps in a moment of solitude.

There's this image of the feather in the pocket. It felt like a small reminder of home or direction. Even when the lyrics spoke of not knowing when home would come, there was still that feather to be carried along for comfort. Hope tucked away in a pocket.

The folk imagery, though not something we grew up with locally, reinforced the mood of the song. Malaysia does not experience the four seasons, so references to autumn skies, white winters and fields of wheat turning brown felt slightly out of place to us. Still, the pictures suggested movement and transition, a sense of time passing and life changing. There was weariness in the line about concrete stretching endlessly. The overall tone remained reflective and gently wistful.

Then there was the solo guitar being finger-picked. Clarity in every note. Everything felt intimate, like a private living room performance that gave the song space to breathe and leaving the listener with a thoughtful silence at the end.

And who was this 20-year-old Michael Tan? Not only was he a talented performer from the Bakat TV stage, but also a University of Malaya graduate in English, He hailed from Malacca and had honed his singing and guitar skills while still at the Malacca High School. After the loss of both parents, grief weighed heavily on him. He struggled to cope and eventually turned to substance abuse, a path that led to a tragic and untimely end at 41. 

Knowing all that inevitably changed how I heard the song. The themes of wandering, distance and longing...all felt more appreciated. The feather in the pocket seemed less like a poetic device and more like a quiet emblem of someone searching for steadiness in a life that later became unsettled. It was a gentle song, but it now felt like part of a larger story. One of promise, talent and eventual loss. In the end, it is hard not to see it as a quiet tragedy.

Bakat TV 1971

During my recent slow stretch away from the blog, I found myself revisiting something from the early 1970s that came back to me quite unexpectedly: the Bakat TV 1971 talent show. What made it more meaningful was that I had actually watched the programme when it was telecast live. I was in Lower Six at the time, and I still remember how the next day Bakat TV became the talking point in the whole school. Everyone had something to say about the performances. It left quite an impression on me, even then.

So I was genuinely surprised to find this record recently among a stack given to me by one of my cousins from Petaling Jaya. It was not something I was actively searching for, but there it was, and it was very much welcomed. Thanks, Eng Chye! In fact, I had noticed in the past that a second-hand vendor in KOMTAR was selling the same record at what I thought was a rather exorbitant price. At the time, I had simply looked at it and moved on. Now, having a copy in my own hands felt different.

The album was produced by Radio Televisyen Malaysia (RTM). Bakat TV itself was one of those early televised talent competitions designed to discover new performers across the country, long before the era of modern talent shows. In those days, television felt more communal. When a programme aired live, the whole country seemed to be watching together.

The 1971 record captured finalists and selected performers, backed by the RTM Orchestra under Johari Salleh. It was quite something to think that a national broadcaster made the effort to preserve a talent show in this way. There was a seriousness about culture and broadcasting then, and perhaps a sense that these moments deserved to be documented properly.

Playing the record brought back good memories of my Lower Six days almost immediately. I could picture classmates discussing the performances and debating the results the next morning in school. In those days, a programme like Bakat TV could become the talk of the whole school overnight. Some of the names on the album went on to establish themselves in Malaysian entertainment, and hearing those early recordings again felt like stepping briefly back into that period of youth.

Bakat TV 1971 was more than just another record. It captured a time when television, live performance and recorded music came together. Finding the record unexpectedly among a stack of old LPs made the rediscovery even more meaningful.

Second coming

During those 10 days away from the blog, I also noticed something else at home. The Tacoma tree outside the house had flowered again, and this time it seemed even more enthusiastic than before. 

I had already thought that this year’s earlier peak in early March was unusually generous, but there appears to have been a second coming.

Earlier this month, I saw the tree covered in flowers, almost like a canopy overhead. Then after a heavy downpour on the night of the sixth of May, I woke up to find the drain outlet completely choked with fallen blossoms. No doubt it was a colourful sight, but it was not very practical for drainage.

Still, as I have mentioned more than once, I do not really mind the sweeping. When I look at the bigger picture, the tree gives me something far more valuable in the afternoons: cool shade and a quiet patch of comfort. A little extra sweeping seems a fair exchange.

Scam calls

There are times when I become a little lazy and disconnect myself from the rest of the world. This happened to be one of those times. Almost 10 days without updating my blog. But actually, there's another way to look at it. It's time well spent away from the computer to do other stuff. So much so that it becomes a chore to eventually get back into the everyday grind.

I was jolted back into the present by a series of calls on my mobile phone a few days ago. The first came in at 11.55am, and an installed app flagged it as an unknown number. I glanced at the screen, saw that it carried a +65 country code from Singapore, and let it ring until it disconnected automatically. Hardly a second later, another unknown call came through, also with a +65 code. Then a third and a fourth, in quick succession. As if that wasn’t enough, immediately the next two were shown as calls from Kazakhstan. Of course, none of them were answered. I simply let each one time out. And finally, about an hour later, a seventh call appeared, once again from a Singapore number.

It didn’t take much thinking to realise that this was probably nothing more than a burst of computer-generated spam calls. The pattern was too clinical. When calls arrive so quickly one after another from different country codes, it usually suggests some automated system at work, which no human can replicate: random dialling, number spoofing or machines simply testing which numbers are active. In today’s world, our phones seem to attract attention the way an open window attracts burglars. Once a number is identified as live, it can find its way into other lists. If no one answers, the system just moves on and tries again later. That might explain why the last Singapore call came after some time. 

There is also a small caution I’ve come to keep in mind over the years. Answering unknown calls is not always harmless. In some cases, the other end may not just be a person, but an automated system recording voices, responses, even simple “hello” confirmations. These recordings can sometimes be used to feed further spam systems or to create patterns that mark a number as active and responsive. It may sound a bit far-fetched, but in the world of persistent spam and scam operations, even minimal interaction can sometimes be enough to invite more of the same.

As for my response, I don’t think I was wrong. There was no message, no familiar name, no reason to engage. Letting the calls ring out felt like the most sensible thing to do. In fact, answering might have been the bigger mistake, since it would have confirmed that the number was active. Sometimes silence is the best form of defence. There is no obligation to pick up every call that appears on the screen.

The lesson here is probably a simple one. Unknown international calls that arrive in clusters deserve caution, not panic. Let them ring. If it is genuine, the caller will leave a voicemail or try another channel. If not, the system will eventually move on.

So the episode served as a small reminder that even in my moments of quiet withdrawal from the world, the world has a way of tapping on my shoulder. One can choose whether to answer or ignore. And this time, I was quite happy to let it ring.

UPDATE: After I posted this on facebook, someone in Singapore happened to see it and took the trouble to report the numbers to the relevant authorities there as suspected scam calls. That was unexpected, but very much appreciated. It is reassuring to know that people do still take these things seriously and are willing to act on them, even when they are not directly affected. For that, I am quite thankful.

Rail memories

I came across two old photographs of the Butterworth railway station platform that were taken before the railway service was upgraded and electrified. They had that slightly lazy, unhurried look and I found myself lingering over them longer than I expected. It brought back some vivid memories of the nights when I used to catch the train from that very platform.

In the 1970s when I was still living on the island and needed to travel to-and-from Kuala Lumpur, this was part of the routine. I would buy my ticket earlier from Howe Cheang Dispensary along Penang Road, then made my way across by ferry to Butterworth. From the terminal, it was a short walk to the station, perhaps a hundred metres or so, where rail passengers would wait for the collapsible grille gate to open. A railway staff member would check the tickets and let us through.

Train services were sparse in those days. From what I remember, there were maybe two, at most three, a day: a morning train, a night train and occasionally a railbus service in the afternoon. Because there were so few services, the morning and night trains were long, easily 15 or 20 carriages by my estimation, and pulled by a diesel engine. Walking from one end to the other could feel like a journey in itself.

Travel was not quite as convenient as it is now. Luggage didn’t come with wheels, so every bag was carried by hand, often over quite a distance just to find the coach. The night mail offered second-class sleeping berths, but third-class passengers had to make do with upright seats. These were unnumbered, taken on a first-come, first-served basis. Tickets were often oversold, and during the run-up to national holidays, it could turn into a scramble. Those who were late, or simply unlucky, ended up sitting or trying to sleep along the passageways, or at the space, called vestibules, I believe, at either end of the carriage, right by the open exits.

Between 1973 and 1976, when I was studying in Kuala Lumpur, these journeys became a regular part of life. I still remember one trip just before Chinese New Year when I had no choice but to settle into the vestibule. As it turned out, I was sharing that cramped space with a woman who, to my surprise, was also an Old Free but a year my junior. We struck up a conversation, and what could have been a long, uncomfortable 10-hour ride passed rather more easily than expected.

Every now and then, I would opt for something different: the newspaper vans. In those days, freshly printed newspapers from Kuala Lumpur were sent north and south overnight in vans, and for a small fee, anyone could hitch a ride. We would gather at a designated spot in the city, usually around two o'clock in the morning and waited for the vans to arrive. There would be a few others like me, and we would climb into the back, settling ourselves on stacks of newspapers.

The vans would head north, stopping along the way to drop off bundles, each stop briefly interrupting whatever sleep we managed. Looking back, it sounded rather precarious, but at the time, none of that mattered or even crossed our minds. There were no worries about accidents, no thoughts about insurance or safety. It was simply a cheaper way to travel, and more than that, it felt like an adventure. Those, indeed, were the days....

ADDENDUM: How can I leave these rail memories without mentioning one other thing that shaped those journeys? The single track. Before electrification, there was only one line running north to south, shared by everything, passenger trains and goods trains alike. It meant that timing was never entirely in our own hands.

The Ipoh railway station was the key point. That was where the northbound and southbound trains had to meet and pass. Although Ipoh sat roughly halfway between Butterworth and Kuala Lumpur, the stretch southwards was actually longer, so the train from Butterworth would almost always be the one waiting. And waiting it did. Delays were part of the system, and it wasn’t unusual to be at the Ipoh station for an hour or more while everyone waited for the other train to arrive.

On a journey that already took close to nine hours, that stop could feel longer than it really was, especially at night if sleep didn’t come easily. You lay there in the second-class berth, half-aware of the stillness, wondering what time you would finally reach Kuala Lumpur, or back in Butterworth. If it was the return journey, there was always that worry at the back of the mind whether I’d make it home at a reasonable hour, perhaps even catch the family by surprise. There was a certain kind of boredom in that semi-darkness. And just when the mind had drifted far enough for sleep to take over, there would sometimes be that sudden, unmistakable jerk of the carriage, the whistle unheard, as the train eased back into motion. But more often, it was quiet and smooth, the movement returning almost unnoticed, and it was the unsteady rhythm of the carriage, the soft clacking of wheels on the rails, that told me the journey had resumed.

It was a long chain of small uncertainties, and yet that was simply how travel was in those days. Looking back now, what I remember most is that mixture of anxiety and anticipation, the slow approach towards home after being away for weeks or months, and the sense that every delay, every pause along the way, only made the arrival feel that much more satisfying.

Story of a tyrant

I’ve noticed over the years that films critics dismiss can sometimes be received quite differently by ordinary audiences. That thought came to mind after I finished Michael, the latest biopic that’s been drawing audiences worldwide. It hasn't exactly been warmly received by critics who think they know best, but I found the film engaging, not least because of the music. At the same time, what lingered most wasn’t just the songs or the spectacle, but the shadow of a father hanging over the entire story.

A big part of why the film worked was Jaafar Jackson. Playing his uncle, Michael Jackson, couldn’t have been easy, but he carried it off with real conviction. It was not just the look or the voice, it was the movement. The moonwalk, the toe balancing, the whole physical language was there. But what made it more than imitation was the way he showed Michael reacting to pressure, especially from his father.

That brings me to Colman Domingo as Joe Jackson. The film leant into the idea of Joe as a tyrannical figure, someone who governed through fear, control and an unyielding belief that greatness must be forced into existence. Domingo played him with a tight, contained menace, and I can well believe he’ll be in the running for Best Supporting Actor when awards season comes around.

What gave the film its backbone was that relationship. Everything seemed to flow from it. Joe drove the boys relentlessly, convinced he was pulling them out of a life that would otherwise swallow them. And in a way, he was right. But the cost was written all over Michael. The film kept returning to that tension, not in big dramatic bursts but in small moments. A look, a hesitation, a silence. Even at the height of his fame, Michael was still trying to step out from under his father’s grip. When Michael finally began to assert himself, it didn’t feel like triumph so much as release. Even then, his father's shadow did not quite disappear immediately. It was a slow and uneasy separation.

Around that central thread, the film played the hits, and they did their job. The familiar songs lifted the energy whenever they came in, and like that other big biopic, Bohemian Rhapsody, this was something that would really benefit from being heard on a big screen. The sound fills the space in a way that a smaller setup just can’t quite match.

But there were gaps. The other Jackson siblings, especially the sisters, felt pushed into the background. And the film noticeably sidestepped the more troubling controversies that followed Michael later in life. I could feel a certain smoothing over, a decision to keep the story within safer boundaries.

Even so, taken on its own terms, I found it more absorbing than I expected. It may not tell the whole story, but it told one part of it clearly enough: the making of a superstar under the hand of a father who believed that love meant control, and that success justified the cost. And by the end, that’s the part that lingered.

Asian chess players

I suppose I wasn’t the only one who felt energised when Javokhir Sindarov emerged as the Challenger for this year’s world championship match. It will be one match worth following, once FIDE finally gets around to confirming the dates and venue for Gukesh vs Sindarov.

In the meantime, FIDE has put out its May 2026 rating list. They do this at the start of every month, and I still find myself checking it out of habit just to see how things have shifted. Of course, for the top players, the real movement happens on the live rating list during tournaments, where every game nudges the numbers up or down almost immediately. On the other hand, the monthly list is more like a snapshot, something a bit more static.

Out of curiosity, I pulled out the top 20 and put them into a table. FIDE keeps things pretty bare, just the essentials. But I added an extra column of my own, noting down what I could about each player’s background. Nothing official, just something I thought might be interesting to look at.

What struck me, more than I expected, was the pattern that emerged. Thirteen out of the 20, that's 65 percent, have at least one parent of Asian background. Some represent Asian chess federations, others don’t, but the roots are there. Undeniably there. It’s not something that jumps out when looking at a standard rating list, but once I saw it, I couldn’t quite unsee it.

Maybe it doesn’t change anything in a practical sense. Games are still decided over the board, and playing strength is what matters. But I do find myself looking at the list a little differently now. Not just as a ranking of players, but as a reflection of how wide the game has spread at the top. Europe used to be the centre of chess, but Asia has more or less caught up, and this list seems to say exactly that.

The girl from Ipanema

Every now and then I come across a significant album that I need to talk about. Getz/Gilberto is one of those. I’ve known it for years but coming back to it recently, I found myself wondering about how it came together. Before this album came out, Stan Getz was already circling around the Jazz Samba sound, thanks to Charlie Byrd who had brought back records from Brazil. So when Getz finally got together in the studio  with João Gilberto and Antônio Carlos Jobim in 1963, it wasn’t just another session. João’s guitar had that soft, almost stuttering pulse that didn’t push. Jobim’s writing held everything together without drawing attention to itself. And Getz was somehow finding a way to fit in.

The whole situation was quite funny in a way. Getz and João didn’t speak the same language and Jobim had to translate, not just words but intentions. João, from what I’ve read, was particular about everything: the phrasing, the space, the balance. Getz came from a different world altogether. And yet when I listen to the album, none of that friction really showed. If anything, it felt as though everyone was holding back just enough to let the music breathe.

Then there’s Astrud Gilberto. I’ve heard The Girl from Ipanema more times than I can count, but it still reverberated every time I hear it again. There’s nothing showy about her voice. It was almost hesitant, as if she was feeling her way through the song. And knowing she wasn’t even meant to be the singer, that she just stepped in because she could handle the English lyrics, made it all the more remarkable. That slightly detached, untrained sound was exactly what the song needed. 

I also find myself thinking about the small decisions that shaped the record. The producer trimmed João’s Portuguese vocal for the 45-inch single and pushed Astrud’s lines forward. From a listener’s point of view, it worked. From João’s, probably less so. He wasn’t entirely happy with how things were handled, and in the background, things between him and Astrud weren’t exactly steady either. But that’s the nature of the music industry. What we hear is often the result of compromise.

Sonically, the album still holds up today. It doesn’t sound dated. If anything, it sounds cleaner than a lot of what came after. Very little reverb, everything close and direct. On the early stereo pressings, the separation was wide with sax on one side and guitar and voice on the other. It gave the music space. 

Maybe that’s why I keep coming back to either the record or the compact disc. There’s this sense of restraint running through the whole album, nobody trying to dominate, nobody in a hurry. The music just unfolding at its own pace. I don’t think the people in that studio fully knew what they had at the time. These things are usually clearer in hindsight. But listening to it now, with all the stories behind it, this was one of those moments where everything lined up just right.

I also have this compact disc, Getz/Gilberto #2, recorded live at Carnegie Hall on 9 October 1964. This should have been a perfect concert with Stan Getz and João Gilberto riding high after Getz/Gilberto, and appearing together at Carnegie Hall with Astrud Gilberto who was now a star. But the occasion was anything but perfect. 

First, Getz came on with his quartet filling the hall confidently with his music. Then João followed, and the whole mood shifted. Just his voice and guitar, sounding soft and almost fragile. A complete contrast. A concert in two acts. It felt like they were not really sharing the same evening. The more I listened, the more I noticed the tension. João’s idea of bossa nova was always about restraint. Getz played with more presence. Side by side, the contrast was sharp.

I’ve read about the arguments over sound during rehearsals, João wanting the drums muffled while Getz wanting something that would carry in a hall that size. Listening now, I can almost hear that disagreement in the music itself. Even when they finally come together at the end, it felt more like an obligation to the audience than a natural meeting between collaborators. 

And then there’s Astrud, somewhere in the middle of all this. By then she wasn’t just the accidental singer anymore. She was part of the sound and part of the connection between the two men. Not long after that concert, João and Astrud divorced. Once she was gone, it was hard to imagine how the two men could have kept going in any meaningful way. And when I go back to that Carnegie Hall album now, it felt less like a reunion and more like the last time all the three pieces were still in the same room, even if they were already pulling apart.