After I spent my last birthday at 60 milestone, I realised I started losing a lot of things, tangibles and intangibles.

One of the things is good dress sense which is slowly fading in my spectrum of life.

The first time I joined our local gym, I just turned 50. Most people wore tight Lycra outfits. In the class there were mixtures of people of all ages. The elderly, 60 and over, I guessed, seemed to stand out differently. I don’t blame them. They fought for our gender through the 60s, shouting women liberation by burning their bras, singing the top of the chart song: San Francisco!

Now they walk around braless, in loose worn T-shirt, and baggy track pants. Gravity is an unforgiving natural phenomenon that betrays them wilfully. They did it all for future generations’ sake. In hindsight, it is a great sacrifice. I can’t say anything except with gratitude.

A woman without bras is like a car with no seat belts, a boat without anchors. Especially Aussie women, they tend to be very established and prosperous in that part of their anatomy.

Once seated comfortably on a dining chair, they tend to make themselves more settled by parking their boobs snugly on the pristine linen tablecloth. The sheer size of their bosom makes it impossible to find space on the table for the cutlery. They will fortify by surrounding their bosoms with their forearms, hands held tightly into a fist, a declaration to the universe: these are mine, no sharing! No negotiation! Don’t even think about it! Whichever they refer to: the food or the bosoms?

I tell myself, my mind has to go first before my bras. The very day when my breath is too feeble to blow out the candles on the birthday cake, then it is time to say so long, farewell.

Looking back, I remember the evening we were ready to go out for a dinner in Shanghai. I really didn’t feel like dressing up. I still don’t. We were to meet up with my youngest son’s friends in Shanghai for the first time. Young people, what do they care about us, the obasans(歐巴桑）？

We were about to leave the hotel room, and my son, with his arms akimbo, glared at me: are you going out like this? Don’t you have something nicer?

I looked at myself. Casual loose top and loose pants.

I returned to the bedroom and put on a more for-the-right-occasion tight fitting dress. Ready to make a move.

He growled at me: are you going out like this in your flat shoes? Where are your high heels?

Such critical scrutiny! We must be meeting someone important!

Who are we meeting? Some Prince and princess from the Windsor family? Or Aisin Gioro (愛新覺羅）descendants of the Imperial Palace！

You are meeting my best friends!

Good heavens! That’s a big deal!

These heels are killers. They were like crab’s pincers, once they clamp on tight, they would not let go!

After dinner, out of the restaurant straight into a long wide colourful busy mall. It was going to be a long stroll. In this world, only my sister’s big feet dare to rival mine. And her shoes were made of good stretchy leather. She insisted we swapped shoes. I was glad she relieved my excruciating pain.

Immediately I felt I was taking a walk in the park! I wouldn’t dare ask her how her feet felt in case she changed her mind and wanted her shoes back! The next morning our heels were both covered in band-aids.

Another episode happened very recent. I was at the Coles checkout to pay for a loaf of bread, a carton of milk, a cube of butter. The credit card had just expired the day before. The new card must have arrived at the office, but my old man forgot to bring it home. While I was grumbling, a gentleman next in the queue volunteered: take them. I will pay for it.

No no no. You don’t have to do that.

Take them. You need them.

When I told my old man about this generous old stranger, he looked at me and said: that is because you dress like a homeless.

My old man has this tendency of twisting beauty into ugliness, white moon into black moon!

I am not afraid to say I have a habit of dropping in the local supermarket, unkempt. My logic is I am a nobody, faceless, and therefore nobody knows me. But the odds are I can bump into an old friend whom I have not seen for years. The greeting was a customary high pitch to emphasise the surprise! How have you been? Long time no see! Blah blah blah. And, after some hesitation, you have not changed a bit!

Rubbish!

My immediate reaction is to run my fingers like a comb through my hair. And if I have time, gloss my lips with saliva, pinch my cheeks for rouge. But it is all too late for any last second salvation.

I kept telling myself off: why are you wearing your son’s super sized thongs, and their over-sized kiddish T-shirt that screams loudly : long long time ago, in a galaxy far far away ………….in the front; and the asthmatic Darth Vader at the back!

I am not at the finish line yet. Optimistic estimation, taken all things under considerations, lucky to live another 10 years, that is 3650 days left. Minus bedtime, 8 hours/day, left 2/3 of 3650 days in balance. I am more than fully ready to dazzle, to emerge, to reinvigorate, with gusto!!!

I wrote on my magnetic shopping list on my fridge door:

Avoid sloppiness like a plague! FOCUS! FOCUS! FOCUS!

right below the other reminders : garlics, XXX ( triple Xs denotes urgency! ) Toilet rolls if <50cents/roll !!! ( triple ! means I have one week to hunt for specials).

But quick as a blinker, these old habits come back like a bad breath. Once you get it, you cannot wish it to go away!

Sloppiness harmonises with me. It reigns me. We two really get along so well. If you happen to bump into me in the future, in my old T-shirts and baggy pants that stand out like sore thumbs, don’t tell me I haven’t changed a bit!

Just say to yourself: Gosh!

Those were the days when my children became teenagers. They transformed into spring time asparagus spears, tall and lean. I became the shortest at home and had to look up at them. They changed. Voices broke, acnes breakouts, oily faces that require many trials of branded facial cleansers, little hair sprouting above their upper lips; leg hair and armpit hair springing out after a summer rain.

I did a lot of eavesdropping. Shaving, electric or manual? shaving cream, which brand? and acne control were such hot topics that could have featured in top-selling men’s magazines .

Besides smelly unmatched socks and used damp towels on the floor, there were bells. Not the ding-a-ling bells to announce it is dinner time! These bells have no bells. Maybe that is why they are called dumb bells. Their new fad then was about cranking up the torso, carving muscles into bulging rock hard six-pack. They talked among themselves about body building, weight training, etc.

Probably the reason why they were forever hungry. My kitchen was never fast enough to supply the demand for food. Right after dinner, came the question: what’s for supper, mummy?

I don’t run a 24 hour restaurant, son. There is food in the fridge. Make yourself at home.

The next morning I got a shock when I was making myself a cuppa. Opened the fridge and reached for the 3litre milk bottle. I was more than 200% sure it was 100% full the night before. Now the lid was gone, so was the milk. Saw the lid next to the butter tray. Someone had drunk all the milk and left the lid and empty bottle in the fridge.

Who is the smarty pants?

I shook the bottle over my head and told myself to be understanding. Be nice. Inhale, exhale……They were just some juvenile delinquents!

What is point of screwing back the top when there isn’t any milk left? Logical.

Don’t you be smart with me! We have a kitchen bin. Every thing has its designated place in the kitchen!

The bin? It was so full of trash! Mummy, what did you put inside the bin? It stinks!

You can at least help me empty the rubbish?

Yeah.

Do it now.

Later.

How late is later?

Later! After I finish Seinfeld. (Seinfeld was a popular American comedy)

Next I found that all the bacon and eggs were demolished!

Where are the bacon and eggs??????

We ate them. Calm down, mummy. Food is for eating, right? And you didn’t say not to eat it!

How did you cook them?

Microwave.

I opened the microwave door and I nearly wanted to bury my head inside to be microwaved! The hardened debris of eggs and bacon grease were stuck on the inside of the microwave oven! God, talk to me!

I immediately checked the sink for dirty plates and cutlery. No sign. I could bet my last dollar they were in the dishwasher. I could have fainted if not for my excellent blood pressure. The dishwasher was turned on full cycle for 3 plates, 3 sets of knives and forks. Why oh why? My dear boys?

How many times do I have to repeat? Turn the dishwasher on only when it is full. Economics, maximisation, efficiency, cost effectiveness!!!

Sorry. We didn’t look.

Make sure you clean the microwave oven. I want it squeaky clean.

Yes later.

Later is a terrific word. Utilise it in the right time and place, it is your friend. For my own sanity. I am storing it in my memory bank for LATER use! I would give him a biblical punishment: AN EYE FOR AN EYE! A TOOTH FOR A TOOTH! If he ever dare asked for a favour, big or small, from me, like, a ride to his friend’s house, listen, and listen carefully, LATER, son! You might be a smart kid, but I am smarter than you!

Mummy I understand you have no time to taxi me. Can I suggest I get a driving licence!

Driving? At your age? There is the public transport called bus.

You don’t want me to be mugged at a bus stop, do you?

Let’s sit down calmly and talk. You, are at the most vulnerable and unstable time of your life, a time when you will do a lot of stupid things. Like burning the tires, run the car head on to a gum tree, do a 360 degrees swerve in a roundabout, speed with your friends; a car is a lethal weapon to teenagers. One little mistake and oversight, you are going to regret for the rest of your life and you will blame me for sure. Can you wait till you start university?

But my sports teacher said I am a very responsible boy.

Don’t believe everything your teacher says. He does not know anything. I know every thing! Listen to me. Ok if you defer your driving till you enter university, you can have my BMW! How’s zat?

Stupid me! My offer was made without filtering through my brain. Old man kept telling me I was a bad negotiator, that I should not gamble in a casino.

Thanks mummy. Since it is going to be my car, starting this week, the washing, vacuuming, waxing, polishing tasks you can now officially hand over to me. But mummy, you have to be careful driving my car. I don’t want any dents or scratches, ok?

Yes, my dear son.

That how I lost my BMW. I felt I was short changed, even cheated. The new owner loved his car and with his P licence, his new grown pair of wings, he practically headed off like a bullet

His friends’ birthdays all seemed to fall on Fridays and Saturdays, miraculously. There were uni friends, high school friends, primary school friends, friend’s friends, and friend’s friend’s friends. Hard to believe. So our narratives went like this every Friday/Saturday night.

Where are you going?

Places.

It is 9.45pm now. Isn’t it a bit late to go out?

The night is just starting.

Who are going out with?

Friends.

Do I know them?

I don’t think so.

Are you going to drink?

Maybe.

What time are you coming back?

Soon.

Can you come back earlier?

I will try.

He had an answer to every question.

The BMW slowly morphed into a wild beast. How else did he get on this life style? Of course, he had to work a part-time job to finance this dream. He was not from a privileged family.

The car was lowered. The wheels were 19 inch mag rims. The boot was taken over by two 12 inch subwoofers, amplifiers, housed in a custom built ported box with a thick bevel edged glass and glossy red enamel finished side panels.

If he was to pick us up from the airport, haha, we were not as lucky as other parents. The only place to put our suitcases were on our laps.

The dash was decorated with neon lighting. Bluish white headlights that shone wide angled beams. The new chrome mufflers growled like a counterfeit sports car.

One engineering aspect he miscalculated or overlooked. Our driveway! It was on a gentle slope. DOOF, DOOF, DOOF, up the street. DOOF DOOF DOOF down the street. Enough fun, he decides to drive it back to our driveway. He is suddenly lacking confidence much like a little boy taking his first baby steps, and WITH GREAT DIFFICULTY, he inches the Beemer gingerly onto our driveway from the road. The lowered car made a painful scraping sound as its underside cut into the concrete driveway. Backseat passengers became a burden. He stopped the car on the verge, and yelled:

Out out out, out, all of you and walk up the driveway yourselves!

Plainly wrong. I sincerely believed it was the most unhappy car after the modifications. Like a woman with cosmetic surgery gone haywire.

DOOF DOOF DOOF …He is back. Check the time, 2.30am!

My old man was snoring. He took this whole children growing up thing as natural as waning and waxing of the moon. I took it as another labour pain.

Are you going to count sheep every Friday and Saturday night from now on. Get some sleep and forget this little bastard. LET GO!

I stuck a label on his car bumper: DRINK WITH RESPONSIBILITY as a christening gift from a responsible mother.

Every Friday and Saturday night’s routine: him ironing his shirt and trousers. He said he would not let any one do his ironing. That “anyone” he referred to was me. I hated ironing. Now you see his point. For your information, his late grandpa was a laundryman. Once he was nicknamed Laundry King of Penang. I guess it is a genetic connection or rubber stamping.

Let’s flash forward the time to the present. Now he is a fully grown man. He lives on his own, rides a non-fanciful bicycle to work, with his puppy, Murray, sitting in the rear basket. He goes to sleep no later than 9.30pm. He believes sleeping 8 hours every night is important. He even recommended a book by Matthew Walker about sleep to me. He was concerned that I watched too many Chinese romantic movies well past bedtime. His daily morning routine now is up at six for yoga, meditation and mindfulness. Then he brings Murray to the dog park for exercise and socialising with other canines.

A minimalist, e.g. Buying T shirts of the same colour, black. It minimises decision making time: what to wear today? Therefore, maximise time for useful things. He doesn’t believe in pushing work till “LATER” because time is money. He believes his internal eco system is in tip top form from the daily kimchi consumption and drinking home brewed kombucha.

Now the scary words are: might as well!

Mummy, can you look after Murray for me for the day? I am going bouldering.

No problem.

Since he is with you during the day, he MIGHT AS WELL spends the night with you.

No problem. And you MIGHT AS WELL have a good time.

Mummy, if you go shopping today, you MIGHT AS WELL pick up some dog food for Murray.

No problem. Any thing else?

Yeah, his shampoo. MIGHT AS WELL?

no problem!

I MIGHT AS WELL behave like a good mother!

This is one of god’s commandments to man. Love your neighbour as yourself. God is a smart fella. He knew our history back to front. The moment we had civilisations, we fought. From pre- historic time until today. Our weapons become more and more sophisticated. From the cavemen’s fighting with sticks and stones to today’s nuclear weapons and missiles.

We tend to hate our neighbour to the extent we want them out of our sight, out of this planet, wipe them out, rah tah tah tah tah. Their branches hanging over the fences onto our side is a territorial infringement, even though it is the air space we are talking about. We sweep our driveway the deposits of gum tree leaves, branches, and tree barks, thanks to our neighbour.

Yeah, if anything should fall, it should be their big old gum tree, which you know very well will land on their bedroom roof.

God understands we can’t stand our neighbours. So he says again and again, time after time, love your neighbour. We never listen.

We are not psychotic loners. We love the crowded markets where our trolleys crash into one another, or run into other people’s heels. We go to smoky noisy pubs. You can only hear each other by shouting into the other’s eardrum. We prefer crowded restaurants than quiet ones. We club together, be it a mahjong club, football fan club, car club, reading club. We are so adherent we seem to swim like a shoal of fish.

But neighbours are different. Their teenage kids throw parties till very late. For heaven’s sake, it is two o’clock in the morning! I run out of sheep to count! Their friends’ cars arrived with loud mufflers. Oh lord, call the police!

We eye them with suspicion and dislike them from the bottom of our hearts, sometimes almost with hatred. They are too near for our ease and comfort. We instal security cameras, maybe even barbed wire on the top of our fence.

Trevor was our back to back neighbour. A fifty-ish jobless eccentric. His house fronted a busy main road, whereas we live at the bottom of a hill. Both houses are built on the same slope. His on the higher ground. Mine is on the lower side, tucked in front of a little woods.

The original fence wasn’t much of a fence. It was part of the wall of his old shack. According to him, there were stacks and stacks of firewood inside which led to an almost full scale fire disaster one summer. So the council demanded his rubbish be cleared.

Omg, his backyard, now a complete sweeping vista, was more a junkyard piled with old bath tubs, rusty water tanks, a rusty bicycle, tricycle, old wheel rims, pots, clothes stands. This was definitely the many years’ of back breaking hard work of a diligent scavenger who dreamed of building a castle in the air.

We needed a new fence. I didn’t want to look into his backyard or being looked at. Most of all, I didn’t want to suddenly jump out of my skin while I was busy with my vegetable plot. He had this eerie habit of standing on his side of high ground with arms folded looking at me gardening, quietly like a statue. How long had he been standing there? What was this weirdo thinking? If he dared make an advance, what could I do for self defence? I would scream at the top of my lungs first. RAPIST! If he forcefully muffled my mouth, I would break his balls, a deadly gungfu kick with my knee, something I learned from the gym’s Combat Class.

Yes, without the fence I felt vulnerable. The cost was to be shared. The materials, style to be mutually agreed. Sooo simple. But there are people, no matter what, who like to find a way to take things so seriously unpleasant for themselves and others .

First he said he had no money and he had been sick. He was on an invalid pension. He said he couldn’t contribute monetarily. He could help build the fence. Perrrrfect, let’s get cracking. Then his next excuse was he hadn’t been feeling strong enough. So my old man said let us look after the entire bill. He didn’t have to lift one finger.

You had to be a genius to come up with another excuse, right? Trevor said he didn’t like the colour we chose and he disagreed with the height! Yes sir yes sir three bags full. There wasn’t any other way! your say was final!

You think that is the end of it. No. If he wasn’t insane, he was mad!

He became more ridiculous. He maintained that his land due to the slope, had moved one inch onto my side. In another word , I have taken one inch of his land and I have to return to him, the true owner. So to build a new fence, I would have to lose one inch and he, gain one inch. NO WAY, JOSE! I would give you nothing!

Imagine, by the same argument, he could claim my house is sitting on his land one day. Due to the the movement of the crust of the earth, like someone has pulled the carpet from underneath. Based on what? I want to see a surveyor’s report. He said it was too expensive to get one done.

And what if I gave an inch, then he wanted a foot. What if he stuck a flag pole down in my backyard and sealed it with his boot print, and claimed he was the new owner of my land. Who do you think you are? Captain Cook? Alexanda the Great? I was not setting a precedence to my disadvantage. I was not giving in!

Oh What this time? He knocked three metal poles, the width of one inch, down on MY land. Tied from one pole to the other two by a twine. It might have trapped some possums at night. It is a kind of ingenious caveman booby trap.

It took me many years to try to come to terms with such eccentricities. One has to slice open the top of his head to diagnose what kind of fungus mushroom was sprouting inside.

The stalemate went on for years. I still plodded along in my vegetable garden. He still went on with his dead man standing pose looking at me. Maybe he wasn’t looking at me. Maybe he was standing there feeling the earth moving under his feet, inch by inch towards my land, contemplating a major land conquest!

I put my foot down on my one inch of land, no matter how puny it was. To take it away from me, he had to walk over my dead body. But god has everything work out with a sense of, I don’t know, dark humour.

One day, he took a bus to town and died of heart attack on the bus, with an unfulfilled ambition of conquering my land. His family whom I’d never met all arrived at the house. The wife, son and daughter, in-laws and grandchildren. They cleared the rubbish the he used to hoard. They approached me about erecting a fence and sharing the cost. They didn’t care what colour, how high. They never mentioned the lost land. They were too eager to sell the house and split the inheritance.

Every now and then, I practise my fly kicks in my garden without a target. Sad!

Palestine and Israel are still fighting over West Bank for decades. My neighbour Trevor fought over one inch of land till he took his last breath. This war lasted 25 years!

If I tell you I recited the Hail Mary prayer before I started schooling, your jaw will drop. Then if I tell you I prayed in Hakka dialect, you have to bend down and pick up your jaw. I am not making this up. I can still remember the first two lines:

Hail Mary full of grace. The lord is with thee – in Hakka!!

What in the name of god is this! Oh how I hated it whole heartedly! I didn’t have the faintest idea what it meant. Felt buried live in a dungeon without light and air, my tongue rotted away from repeating the prayer.

I have many people to blame. First, my cousin sister. She once, only once, what a big deal, went with poh poh to attend the Sunday mass. She said the priest gave her a wafer thin white biscuit and a cup of red juice.

I pulled my tongue out and the priest stuck the biscuit like a postal stamp on my tongue. Then I swallowed the sweet juice.

Was it tasty?

Oh yes!

She bragged about this story many times, changing the context whenever she felt like. I didn’t know which version to believe in.

I was a curious five years old. I hoped one day Poh poh would bring me to her Sunday mass. To see with my own eyes that biscuit and drink the red juice so as to put a complete stop to my cousin’s bragging. My cousin even told me bigger fibs : the biscuit is the body of Yasoo and the red juice is Yasoo’s blood. In Hakka, we call Jesus Yasoo. Oh, for god’s sake! This was more horrifying than the only horror story I knew: a wolf-turned grandma crunching children’s bones when they had gone to sleep!

You lied! You lied!

Little did I know I had to pay a price before I even saw the biscuit and juice. To memorise Hail Mary. I was not the only one victimised. I dragged my poor cousin sister into it.

My poh poh was a churchy and moralistic Roman Catholic. She wouldn’t touch food from the Chinese festive altar table. How she became a catholic is another long story.

She attended the 6am mass every Sunday religiously. If she missed one or two sessions, the priest would rock up at her door step in a bus. He didn’t fit anyone that I knew. He was clean cut. He was in fact a young fella. But in a child’s eyes, he was old. His finger nails were properly manicured, no trace of dirt stuck in the finger nails like ours. His hair was neatly combed back, every strand stayed securely where it should be with the help of Vaseline grease. His attire was clean and well pressed. He spoke Hakka, politely, asked why my poh poh missed the Sunday mass. Was she ill? All very warm and caring, as he explained to Poh Poh it was an immoral sin not to attend mass.

To show remorse and repentance, poh poh slaughtered the fattest chicken and invited him to stay for dinner, also hoping that he would say a few good words to god about her.

I thought it had to be the delicious chicken poh poh cooked. Because we saw him more and more regularly. His excuse was my cousin and I were at the right age to know about this loving god. So time to teach us the bible, the words of god, starting with Hail Mary, in Hakka. The biscuit and juice were the temptation. I did as told. Most unlike Eve who took a bite of the forbidden apple!

Then dawned a time we hated this mundane boring reciting. The priest appearance became a burden to us. Enough is enough! Forget about the biscuit and the juice!

The minute we saw the priest disembarked the bus, we took off and made ourselves disappear under a big guava tree. Poh Poh definitely knew where we were. Her garden was like the back of her palm. But her chicken population like an arrow nosedived very fast. No bible lesson. No chicken for dinner. So the priest left. Hallelujah! I wondered what he said to god about us. Two good for nothing, godforsaken, useless, despicable kids.

The guava tree was next to a little stream where the ducks swam and dropped their poo into the water. I could see their duck down like cotton wool bobbing on the water surface. The murky water was continually fuelling the guava tree’s roots. It fruited all year round. The size of an apple, crunchy with little seeds. The trunk was as thick as a grown man’s thigh, smoothened and polished by our constant climbing up and down. I loved and still love this tree. The branches spread like a big canopy. I laid on the biggest branch, as comfortable as an armchair without holding on to branches. I could see through the leaves into the blue sky. I call that happy childhood.

I was to start schooling soon. The priest (before we expelled him) suggested my cousin and I should attend St. Joseph’s primary school, which is situated in Miri town. Only buses could take us there. My mum said: no rush! No rush! She is only 5 years old.

The priest had a head thicker than bricks. Did he think poor people like us could afford the bus fares to travel to St. Joseph’s? If only he mentioned scholarships, subsidies. Maybe my mum would come to the negotiation table. No. Not a word. He took a bus ride for the visit. He obviously knew how far the distance would be for these two little kids to travel. The least he could do was find us a donkey, like Mary and Joseph, clip crop clip crop from Pujut to Miri, and back. I didn’t doubt he knew his bible from back to front. But he had no idea what “below poverty line” meant!

If my mum said no to the priest, that would be rude of her. So she chucked the hot potato into my hand.

Deal with it! kid!

She, for once, asked for my opinion! I had to make a choice when there was no choice! I shook my head, and made a mmmm sound in my throat, the way my mum forced the bitter concoction of Chinese brewed medicine down my throat. My cousin’s head oscillated vigorously . I went to Pujut primary school instead, on foot. That was god’s wish and plan.

My cousin sister was brought up by my poh poh. She had 13 siblings. So my aunt said to my poh poh, I have a truck load of children, take her. She is four years my senior. In the 50s, Miri was a sleepy village, undisturbed, deep in its sweet slumber. After WWII, education became a big social problem. Children were produced faster than rats. There was a shortage of classrooms in high schools. So the quick fix solution was to hold back the kids for as long as they could in primary schools. My cousin sister was held back 3 years in primary one. When I started primary one, we were classmates. It was not good for her pride. She refused to talk to me in the classroom.

Relatives thought she was dumb. But I adored her, looked up to her, and trusted her. She is the one who imparted knowledge that was not taught at school. Do you know earthworms have no teeth, therefore don’t bite? I knew. So I was not afraid of holding a handful of slimy wriggling worms to feed the chooks. Have you ever seen the eggs of earthworms? They look like caviar except white in colour.

She taught me how to climb a coconut tree, sadly, without success. When I ascended not even six feet, I took a look down the dizzying height, and immediately forgot what to do and swoosh, I skidded downward. The rough coconut trunk cut my chest like a cheese grater. I didn’t want to turn myself into Parmesan shreds. So that was my last romance with the coconut tree.

She showed me when a chook laid an egg, it was soft then would harden in a split second. I bet you don’t know. I knew. To prove her point, we waited in front of the nest box for the moment, holding our breath, to the much dislike of mother hen. As soon as the egg emerged from the mother hen’ s backside, put the soft shell in our hands and watched it harden in front of my eyes.

I am left handed, except when holding a pen or chopsticks. I looked awkward working with a hoe. I was given one, a baby hoe. It became my hoe because no one claimed it. It was as blunt as the back of a plastic knife. It was light. Half the blade was gone to god knows where. So I followed behind my cousin sister like her shadow turning the soil she just tilled.

Once, she left her sharp lethal hoe on the garden bed, unattended, I immediately picked it up, and with one swing, my big toe was almost gone. BLOOD! I cried! She ran back to the house and back again with a rag. Skilfully tore the rag into strips with her teeth. She then used her spitum, spit into the split skin and skilfully wrapped up my big toe, finished off with a butterfly tie, a work of art! That was my first lesson in first aid. Thanks to her, my toe is still in one piece.

On the wall of Poh Poh’ s sitting room, hung two framed prints side by side, Mary and Jesus. My cousin told me they were a married couple. I did not doubt her at all. See the holes in Jesus’ hands, and the dripping blood? Yes! the holy bread and red juice! All those time, there was not a word of lie from cousin!

may god bless you!

I have three boys, the younger ones are twins. The elder and the twins are two and a half years apart. Anyone with twins will understand how I feel when the news is broken after the ultrasound.

Why? I only wanted one baby, not two. Why me? What am I going to do? How do I care for two? I have no helper. What has happened? What has gone wrong? I said in between sobs, tears, and blowing my nose, in front of the young GP.

Are you really really sure what you saw ? No mix up? I pressured the GP. Still crying. I could easily have gone through a whole box of tissues. The GP was looking very awkward. Apparently lost for words, he finally came up with stupidest answer: don’t blame me!

Not every day is a zipperdido dah zipperdido day, but they grow, through thick and thin. Pre-school, kindergarten, primary school…..I noticed something. If you bring up the children yourself, they tend to copy you, talk like you. I am vocal, so are they. I am very direct. They are worse.

One would tell their friend’s mum: my mum is older than my dad, but I am not supposed to tell.

Or to the brother, mum bought you a Christmas present. You are not supposed to open it until Christmas Day. I can’t tell you what it is except it has two hands and it ticks. The recipient to be will say: it is a watch!

Or after a SEX education session at school, they become sex experts. My mum and my dad had sex two times. My grandma with eight children. She had sex eight times.

When I break open an egg, I make sure I waste nothing. So I would use my finger tip to dig out the last bit of egg white before I discard the egg shell. I learned this from my poh poh. One day my elder one had a cooking class, making pikelets, small mini pancakes. He told the teacher not to throw away the egg shell until she dug out the rest of the egg white with her finger tip. The teacher did as she was told. She even said, oh, I didn’t know you can get so much egg white out of it! Thank you!

One day we were at Coles shopping for grocery. I stopped at a stand filled with fresh mushrooms, only $3.99/kg. I went to retrieve a paper bag. I could hear one of the twins yelling so loud at a far corner with an urgency in his voice: mummy mummy, don’t buy that one. Come over here, the mushrooms are bigger and fresher here, same price!

A woman shopper stopped and said to me with admiration: how do you train your kids?

Easy, have three children, one income and a house mortgage.

But there were embarrassing moments too. Like when we lost one of them, the other two would yell at the top of their voices: I-D-I-O-T! I know where you are. You must be looking at the chocolate ice cream! We can’t afford it!

Or one would tell off the other: this is not the bread mummy buys. Too expensive! Put it back! Get the no frill brand.

It was hard to buy a dress with three children and an adult squeezed inside a tiny change room. After trying on a few, they started to look bored and lethargic . They would start twisting their arms, clinging on my legs, squatting down, standing up. Once I tried on a dress I liked, I asked for their true opinion: does mummy look good? The answer was: mummy you look very pretty, but can we go home? We are tired.

The most difficult part of my job was to take them to public toilets. Before they could read, they all went with me to the LADIES washroom. After they could read, they would resist: but this is the LADIES!

So what? Same! I said.

No, Ba Ba took us to the GENTLEMEN!

God! Did you hear that?

We made a trip driving to Sydney to see old friends whom we missed so much. We drove all the way from Adelaide, made too many stops at service stations for toilet breaks. We were about to reach Sydney in 20 minutes, it suddenly rained heavily. The children had to pick this perfect time for a wee. The traffic was very congested once you approached Sydney. To find a service station in a heavy storm was like finding a needle in a haystack.

If one boy feels the urge to wee, the other two will get it immediately like a contagious measles.

Can you guys hold your bladders!

No! We can’t. We have to to wee. Now!

Not even after I put on a threatening voice: don’t you dare wet the car seat! Then I saw an empty juice bottle lying on the floor. Ah hah! God always opens a window after he closes a door!

Wee into it!

How?

How? Put your little willy into it.

So they did. Believe it or not, they got so much fun out of it. Next thing came the bottle fight!

My turn! No, it is my turn! Mummy, ger ger has a long turn. It is not fair! Give me the bottle! No, I only have a short turn!

A lot of wrestling and bickering. I was so tired from the long journey. I only made sure the top was tight you needed a commercial wrench to unscrew. No spillage please! Thank god, we safely arrived at the home of our dear friends.

My children are adults now. They still have the unshakable belief that : our mummy cooks the best curry in the world. Of course, it is utter nonsense. My curry is only edible but unpresentable. They possibly and probably will find out one day. For the time being, I am indulging in the curry love.

Or when speaking mandarin with the Miri accent, one of the twins would be teased by the mainland Chinese friends. He will defend me strongly: no, I am not wrong. My mum taught me mandarin. She speaks VERY good mandarin! And I like my accent!

I went through many challenges to earn my university degree, and yet gave up a good career for them. It seemed like a big sacrifice then. Hindsight is a wonderful thing. Looking back, I truly have no regrets! I believe I have done the right thing. Would I do it again if I am given another chance? YES. The hands that rock the cradles rule the family.

I fell in love with shopping when I was doing a course in Singapore. I was barely 19.

Of my entire 19 years in Miri, shopping as a past time was unheard of. What was wrong with Miri? How did Miri people spend their leisure time? Reason was there was no shopping mall then. But what we didn’t have, we didn’t miss.

But there was one boutique footwear shop. Opposite the town bus depot. Like Time Square in New York, this shoe shop took up the prime commercial location of Miri town. Rack after rack of latest arrivals displayed on glass shelves. As a forerunner, the styles were pretty upmarket then.

The boss was a lady nearing menopause, still attractive, who loved to wear revealing low cut top. There was a black mole on the corner of her lips that accentuated her femininity. The talk of the town was the prosperity of her business had a lot to do with her mole. When I entered the premises, she made a thorough evaluation of me by scanning me head to toes like a laser beam, paused for a second at my feet, then completely lost her interest at me. At the same time, she was suppressing a yawn.

I have a pair of unusual supersize feet that I was proud of. My poh poh told me when I was a little kid that my feet would grow to the size of a boat. I had never seen a boat then. Big boat or small boat? I asked her. She said depends on how much you walk. One advantage of big feet was I could climb mountains like the mountain goats. Fast! Steady! Never fall. Hakka women can rival the big feet of the Hobbits in the Lord of the Ring.

Obviously the boss of this particular shoe shop only stocked shoes for dainty feet like Cinderella. I suspected it was her cunning mole which directed her not to stock big sized shoes. They were not in demand. So what if you missed a few sales to Hakka big footers. Stocks collecting dust in the storeroom were dead stocks. Dead stocks equal dead money, losses. The Hakka big footers were least of your worry. They could survive barefoot!

So any thing I showed interest, she would take a slow and lazy shake of her head without bothering to find out what I wanted.

No stock!

Have you checked?

No stock!

I swore to God if I ever walked into that shop again, I would grow moles like black chocolate chips sprinkled all over my face! I would be more prosperous than her, for sure.

Then there was one other boutique selling women fashion. I don’t deny I have difficult feet, but I was a slim “one size fits all” kind of body. I fell in love with a denim skirt worn by a mannequin. It had an expensive price tag $50. It took me a lot of self talk, pros and cons, should I, should I not, why? And why not? to reach the conclusion to buy that skirt.

So I walked into the shop with the exact amount of bank notes rolled into the shape of a cigarette in my hand and told her I would like that denim skirt. She said that was the only one left. I said I don’t mind even it was display stock. She said, if I sell it to you, I will have nothing to show my other customers.

I want it and I want it NOW! You understand?

NO. I can’t. My father would kill me if I do!

Call your big daddy! Let me talk some sense into him! Heard of the famous saying: a bird in your hand is worth two in the bush! I am not even afraid of talking to God. Why should I be afraid of talking to your father?

Sorry to disappoint. I didn’t dare challenge her father. I thought the thoughts. Of course I was afraid of her father, especially one capable of killing his own daughter. I left her shop with my rolled up $50. What if I said to her: If you sell me the skirt now, you have $50. Save the $50 in the bank, collect interest, let it compound compound compound and compound, you will be on the front cover of Forbes magazine 50 years later.

Any way, no point wasting my breath on an idiot!

When I arrived in Singapore, I felt like an ex ugly duckling which grew into something that walked like a duck, quacked like a duck, looked like a duck. An UGLY DUCk! Singapore girls were too cool! They wore short mini skirts with silky stockings and high plate form shoes. My skirts were the awkward knee length! While they wore bell bottom jeans, mine were the prehistoric hugging style. Their silver framed glasses verses my antiquated black rimmed glasses, cobra like. I, the unsophisticated country pumpkin with out of date long hair instead of the Twiggy look. My dresses, my shoes, my jeans, my skirt, my hair, my glasses and myself should be packed in the OUT box, never see the day light again. My only consolation was: Singapore girls walked fast. heh heh, thanks to my big feet. Walking was my forte.

I didn’t click my fingers together and say the magic word, Abrakadebra! And things magically would happen. I had been saving up my hard earned money for two years and finally made it here to study. Transformation was painfully slow.

Most important of all, I had a strict budget to adhere to. I withdrew $150 each month from my savings. After paying $100 for food and lodging, I had $50 left for fixed expenses: Bus fares, lunch, personal hygiene like soap, shampoo, toothpaste, face cream, laundry soap, etc.

Leisure and entertainment: books for reading pleasure( a must), cassettes for listening pleasure(a necessity), a movie ticket to keep in touch with the fantasy world(why not?) and one bucket of popcorn( for lifestyle). Then came incidentals and accidentals: if I happened to see a nice mini skirt! A pair of bell bottoms; or new batteries for my cassette player, an occasional new textbook, classmates birthday presents.

I shopped at People’s Park where you’d get cheap bargain basement prices. One thing I learned from my room mate, no matter how cheap, you pressed ahead, bargained hard ! Sometimes I bought cheap and nasty, other times, cheap and pretty. I was a poor hunter gatherer. I bargained so much I forgot who I bargained with, what I bargained for and how much I bargained down.

Once, a very elderly shopkeeper being so sarcastic said to me: So you have made two trips round the world, and you finally come back to me! I liked his humour. I was happy I bought from him because he was the first person I started the bargaining round and his offer was still the best.

Shopping was the most invigorating, educational thing for me then. So many things to learn and so little time. I learnt not to trust anyone, holding my cards closed to my heart. If the price was good, I kept a straight face and still tried to squeeze more. It got to be a win-win game, for one winner, me.

One day, I remember stopping in a busy mall and I read a Chinese New Year couplet displayed in a shop window:

So so a year past, muddle muddle a life gone!

That is philosophy and wisdom to me. Yes, I decided to live my life like that: So so, muddle muddle. Only then my life would be aligned in the right way. No more strenuous calculating, bargaining, offering, counter offering. Too tiresome and time consuming I would drop dead one day while shopping.

Many years later I was in the shopping district in HongKong with my family. My old man with our three sons were spending too much time in an electronic shop. While waiting, I went outside to admire the jewellery displayed at the window next door. Every thing was so beautifully crafted. So golden and sparkly it could burn the vessels of my eyeballs. Then came my old man’s stern voice: don’t buy don’t look!

Thank god he was not working in retail. I could imagine the way he treated all the customers. “Don’t miss 50% off all stocks! tomorrow only” ; “every item was free in store yesterday!”

So so muddle muddle! My love affairs began in Singapore and died in Singapore.

This is my old man’s story….

The first time I touched down on Straya ( Aussie lingo for the word Australia) soil was in the early morning of January 1977. Unlike the convicts during the penal settlement in the 1788-1850, who arrived by the First Fleet of 11 ships, and the next wave of The boat people of Vietnamese refugees in the 1970’s and recent “migrants” brought in by people smugglers, I arrived by plane respectfully with a student visa. The first thing I noticed as I disembarked was the colour of the sky, azure, and cloudless. The impression was the height of the sky, soooo high, at least triple that of Penang’s and the air was oven dry.

In the 70s, Aussies didn’t travel abroad much like today. Their way of holiday was towing a caravan with family, their dogs and cats around their vast continent, making friends around BBQ stands in every caravan park they stopped over for refilling water and showers.

Besides the blue sky and the kookaburra sitting on the old gum trees, I had to get used to the prosperous size of people. Big was an understatement. Huge! I was tall and skinny, undernourished by their standard. They believed I came from a famished land. I had no doubt they were the cause of my famine.

Aussies were big blokes with big beer bellies and their shirt buttons near bursting point, a stubby (beer) in one hand, a cigarette hanging on their lips. They wore shorts and thongs and singlets. Some had big red bulbous noses.

Their complexion was sun dried and leathery with over sized pores. Their peculiar diction like toads croaking. Words were abbreviated out of laziness, wittiness or informality. I bet if they ever saw Queen Elizabeth, she would be greeted with a handshake and ” g’day, how ya go’in”

A larrikin way of speaking which stamped from their fingerprints of convicts. Brekkie for breakfast; sickie for sick leave, cigies for cigarettes , have a cuppa means have a cup of tea, a bikkie is a biscuit; tradies for tradesmen; Brickie for bricklayers; truckies for truckdriver; arvo is afternoon; barbie is barbecue; servo is petrol station; If you were happy, they said you were a happy little Vegemite. A pommie shower was to use deodorant without the shower. He lived in whoop whoop means he lived in the middle of nowhere. Ankle biters are small children; coffin dodgers are the elderlies. Flat out like a lizard means too busy with work. ” Yeah, but nah” means agree but disagree. His work is a killer means his work is great.

When it drizzled, aussies called it rain. When it rained, they yelled out: it is raining cats and dogs outside. Our tropical monsoon rain that came down in buckets would scare the hell out of them. When the summer sun able to fry an egg on a tin can, they didn’t need umbrellas. Umbrellas were for rain, not for the sun. They claimed water was for cows and bad for human. Only beers were good for health. They drink when lonely, when happy, when sad and when they were with friends. They greeted every stranger MATE! They called a young man a bloke, an old man a cobber, a person who avoided work, a bludger; a young woman is a Sheila whereas an older dame is Luv or Lovey. And Luvs would call everyone Luv.

Women were big too, genetically. They couldn’t tell an Asian’s age. I was a kid in their eyes. A common feature of theirs was an upper lip drooping until it disappeared and replaced by a symbolic line. Clever with lipsticks, they hand drew their upper lips full crescent. The very elderly with shaky hands would smear the lipstick around their lips, which looked like they just had a nice ice cream cone. Old ladies loved to wear the shift dress, loose A shape; with jewellery and perfumes, stockings and low heeled. They were so nice that you would consider adopting them as grannies. They all addressed us as ‘LUV’. Yes luv, thank you luv, sorry luv, or sometimes dear. Yes dear, dear lord, what can I do for you, my dear? Or darling, yes darling, wait a sec darling, won’t be long, darling! You poor darling.

It took me a while to get used to the Aussie twang. There was a reason for it. Australia in fact is a continent of flies, big blow flies with metallic green colours, double the size of normal houseflies. So Aussies talked with their teeth clenched in case they swallowed the flies. I had experienced swallowing one while I talked and sucked in air at the same time.

Imagine, I started my first job the very day I arrived. Forget about jet lag. I got a job as a waiter through my sister in a Chinese restaurant. She told her boss I was very experienced. She didn’t elaborate WHAT my experience was. The boss didn’t ask.

Assigned as a drinks server, a cocktail guide as my bible, I came up with gin and tonic, brandy alexander, Bloody Mary, Bacardi and coke, vodka orange. All were popular cocktails. It was a piece of cake( meaning, easy).

One night a patron asked for a ” Sutthick” beer. What on earth was that? I checked the bar. Nay. Nothing spelt anything near. Went back to the guy and apologised. He was appalled, “how can this restaurant not have Sutthick?!! This beer is as ubiquitous as Coca Cola. “. I made another trip back to the bar, came back emptied handed. The boss came out from the kitchen, apologising profusely. He went to the wine fridge and pulled out a bottle of Southwark beer, the best selling beer in its heyday.

English is the most misleading language. Instead of Southwark, Sutthick. Paddock, they say Paddick. The pronunciation and the spelling are way off. They even invented a weird word like supercalifragilisticexpialidocious! Luckily it appeared in a song once and it never saw the lights again.

Back in the 70s, all business meals were tax deductible. Every restaurant was sitting on a pot of gold. The business lunches were long. The patrons were mainly businessmen, very few women broke through the glass ceiling then. Asians worked in restaurants, rarely dined there.

Their favourite dishes were sizzling steak, sizzling prawn, sizzling lamb, hissing on the metal hot plate, emitting thick greasy smoke. Or sweet and sour pork, sweet and sour soup, anything sticky gooey reddish with tomato sauce got the thumbs up. Next on the popular list was the satay, satay beef, satay chicken, skewered with peanut butter dipping sauce. Black bean sauce with beef is a wowser too. They loved our wonton soup, christened it short soup. And they took the liberty to call Chinese noodle soup, long soup. Combination soup is long and short in a bowl. Popular desserts were either deep fried ice cream or lychee ice cream.

The saltier the dishes, the thirstier they became, and more quenching beers they gulped down. They loved to impress their friends by picking up a prawn gingerly with a pair of chopsticks and got lots of wows if the prawn dropped safely into the mouth. So normal cutlery were knives and forks.

After every meal, each patron was given a free fortune cookie. Inside every cookie is a note of good prophecy, e.g. The fortune you seek is in the next cookie; Only a fool seeks wisdom in a cookie; may the force be with you! Hahaha, forget what I just wrote. There were in fact serious messages you had to heed e.g. you will find your love one within a year if you keep looking; Don’t travel until the moon is full. Don’t trust your friends, trust your guts, etc, etc . Never bad prophesies.

To earn more tips a waiter had to impress the table by serving the drinks in the correct sequence to the correct patron. Questions like: who is having gin and tonic? is a big no no no. My first night as a drinks waiter was unforgettable. My right hand was pouring the Sutthick onto a tall glass, while my left hand was balancing the tray with other drinks . The lack of coordination tilted the tray. One full icy bottle of Sutthick cascaded onto a big Aussie woman with a big high puffy hairdo! Now her hair looked like spaghetti with foamy crabmeat struggling to hang on each strand. If you are thinking what I think you are thinking, you are wrong! These Aussies with a few drinks before this accident had ticklish bones. They were laughing their arses off and rewarded me with a handsome tip.

A year later, I worked in the famous restaurant in The Rocks. The Rocks is a historical site near Sydney harbour bridge. Built by convicts with thick large slabs of sandstone, this was an early prison to house the new arrivals from their motherland. When Australia was no longer a convict colony, this prison was converted into a restaurant. I started as a kitchen hand, peeling onions, carrots and potatoes. Day in day out. Sack after sack of onions, carrots and potatoes were magically transformed into vital ingredients for the chefs.

Then one fateful day I was promoted to look after the cottage pies. The oven trays were heavy, wide and deep. Once the pies were placed on them, the trays became heavier. When the oven timer rang, the cottage pies were ready to be served. The weight of the trays meant I needed both hands to slide them out of the hot oven. A sign nearby plainly written ” caution! hot oven, handle at your own risk! ” After awhile it was routine, and I was nonchalant. Acting cool in a hot kitchen carried risk.

A hot tray got too close and all it took was a brief contact with my left inner arm. Like a cow, i was instantly stencilled. After a day, little blisters appeared. Then it turned into a gigantic bubble. My then girl friend, now my clever wife said to me, you have to prick it before it ruptures. What I learned from my Penang Boy Scout days was don’t do any thing. But she said what she learned from her Miri Red Cross days was you poke it to let it heal faster. Since that fateful day I have a permanent scar, thanks to my skilful nurse and the Miri Red Cross society.

On Christmas Eve at The Rocks, the kitchen to me was the centre of the universe where every thing should have collided. It should have been pandemonium but with so many sous chefs assisting the executive chef, it was run with utmost military precision. On my smoko break, ( yes, I got that even for a non smoker) I could see from the iron barred window, well dressed guests mingling, chatting, drinking and enjoying the finger food on all three balconies that overlooked a cobbled stone courtyard. The sous chef had to be out of his mind that evening. He dedicated me to bring out to the courtyard a highlight of the evening, a giant snapper baked to perfection, displayed on a silver tray garnished with the most colourful ingredients.

To showcase it like a masterpiece to the guests on the balconies, I started with baby steps first to the opposite direction of the courtyard with the silver tray steadily balanced on my right extended arm just above my head. The fish weighed at least 6 kilos, plus the parsley, lemons, rock oysters, prawns, dipping sauce fringing the fish; They seemed to gain weight with every step I took. As if there was a big spot light shining my direction, the moment I emerged from the kitchen door, I heard loud cheers and a huge applause from the surrounding balconies. So overwhelmed. As I gained confidence, I walked smartly with an upright straight back.

Folks, for your own safety and information, cobbled stones were built for horse hooves, and carriage wheels in ancient time. You require skill to walk steadily on it. With only my 5 finger tips to stabilise the weighty contents on a silver tray, the skill required to manoeuvre oneself on cobbled stones was greater than the skill to drive an F1 Formula car with no safety roll cage and no brakes. Cobbled stones are not flat and even to walk on. I cannot emphasise enough. Cobbled stones are health hazard. A little twist of ankle, I saw the contents of the silver tray take flight. The whole fish literally jumped off the tray and glided across the courtyard. The crowd cheered, wolf whistled, hooted and clapped. They probably took it as the pre- main course entertainment: how to do a Charlie Chaplin fall. I wished the ground would open an escape tunnel for me. To cover up my fear and embarrassment, I took a concert bow, pretending I just performed a lovely violin concerto. The crowd started stamping their feet! More cheers! Merry Christmas!

Back to the heated kitchen came the icy voice of my boss: Don’t do it again! He didn’t sack me but that was the last days of my life as a kitchen hand.

I turned 21, in the early 70s. Many of my peers were already at their wheels, a big promotion from two wheeled bicycles. It was a dream to be able to drive an engine. I should give myself an equal opportunity.

During those times, I didn’t do any market research, no matter how basic. I didn’t even know that such a thing existed. So I blindly picked one instructor through words of mouth, the fastest media exposure then : because so and so knew him. Is he a good driving instructor? Does he charge the same market price? How many hours of instructions do I get? What if I fail, does the rate remain the same for further lessons? What is the condition of his car? All I knew was his name was Old Lo. Old Lo, sounded like an honest name. Good. So I got myself a driving instructor.

When we met, I was crestfallen. He was scruffy, very tanned. Greasy hair and two bulgy bulbous eyes that were hidden by his shades. He was forever dripping wet with perspiration. I couldn’t bear sweaty people. They had an odour that I couldn’t describe. Maybe a tumble dryer was a good idea. But on the other hand, where was my empathy? He worked outdoors, under the scorching hot sun throughout the day. He couldn’t be as cool as a banana.

He appeared calm in the beginning. There was no standardised benchmark, or step by step teaching. Absolutely a “whatever comes to his mind” carefree teaching method.

At first he spoke Cantonese, a local dialect. When the car reached a junction, he would change his Cantonese instructions into fashionable English.

SEE LOW. (Slow). He was pretty graphic, said it slowly.

SEE TOP. (Stop)

SICK SEE NAL ( signal)

And that was Old Lo. My assessment of him was a mere “He will be right if god help me!” at our first encounter.

One look at his car, I almost crumbled. It was not only very old. If you looked past the vinyl seats, it was but a rusty carcass.

One afternoon, I was learning the reverse park by myself while he was chatting to his colleagues in the shady part of the community carpark. He was literally far enough to be out of my sight and out of my mind.

It was not a good afternoon. The sun was fierce. The wind did not blow. A very very hot afternoon. This kind of weather only made the car feverish, and I was approaching melting point, dripping wet. The ignition key was not cooperating. On and off. On and off. Dak dak dak….Time and time again. The car just moaned and groaned and then it was as dead as a door nail. It was more difficult to start this engine than to get a teenager out of bed in the morning.

Finally I got it going and prayed to god, ” please keep going, don’t stop! “. It went for a while, then started the huff and puff , rocked its body, took a last breath and came to a standstill. I did not want to bother my absent instructor. I couldn’t bear his sight and his way of talking down on me.

Another go! “Come on! Don’t play game with me, my friend! ” Still the cough and whine, with loud urgent dak dak dak staccatos. I pressed the accelerator pedal, harder, harderrrrr to the limit, crank it harderrrrr! The muffler roared! Thick smoke bellowed from behind. Vroom, vroom, the engine spluttered then went silent. Then I started again. I wasn’t the type of person who would give up easily. This was not a free lesson.

Revving, revving, revving….I must have flooded the carburettor. The petrol fume was unbearable. Suddenly Old Lo appeared like a ghost, right in my face with his bulgy eyes, ever more bulgy . He slammed hard on the bonnet, so hard that the car and I both jumped.

“My car is going to catch fire!” And he put his hand in immediately from the window, and switched off the engine and took the key away. The irate man yelled “don’t you look at that temperature gauge? ”

Where? Temperature what? I panicked. Except the petrol gauge and the speedometer, every other thing was a round “for look only” thingy to me.

“This one! See the needle. It is pointing at the end of the red zone! This car is going to explode! On fire! You can kill yourself!”

I came to learn driving, not to be a mechanic! Such a schizophrenic.

One rainy day, he was dripping wet from the wound down window. The winder was stuck. What was new? About every thing in this car was either stuck, too loose, too tight.

Rain or shine, Old Lo was dripping wet. Hot day, he smelt like a fermented salted fish. Rainy day he smelt like an old unwashed sock! The passenger-side wiper refused to move. STUCK again. The rubber blade had hardened by the weather into leather. The other one was scratching the windscreen so hard it made “an upper teeth grinding lower teeth ” screeching sound. He had to extend out his arm every now and then to reset the leather like wiper back to motion. My side window refused to ascend fully to its maximum, therefore leaving a gap! The exterior fresh wind blew in the rain, pitter patter . I drove along with a wet sleeve too. Very refreshing!

Miri roads had some defects that we knew for a long time. we talked a lot about it, but we would do nothing about it. We took it as natural phenomena. Here today and gone tomorrow. After a heavy monsoon rain, our roads were full of portholes. They were like land mines, except covered under gushing water.

Kapoom, kapoom, Oh lord! What was it this time? I prayed the wheels still secured on the axles. In fact, I ran the car over a port hole without the SEELOW. The poor bone shaker took off and landed. I still didn’t SEELOW. I forgot how to.

He screamed: “the way you drive, my car is going to fall into pieces! I would be out of work! ” His scream made me lost concentration. Amid his yelling, kapoomkapoomkapoom!!! The car sped over more oncoming port holes. Took off, landed, took off, landed! I believed there were a few bolts fall inside the portholes.

I could tell Old Lo didn’t respect me, thought I was dumb. Because he always yelled “Alamak” (oh my god) at me and simultaneously slapped his forehead! Well well well, he did not do his research, e.g. checking on my IQ. Should he tick me into the risky box, reckless box, no brain box? Could he break even with customer of my type?

The reverse park was taught with no logic. Four flagpoles as guidelines. I vaguely remember I had to reverse, stop, turn the steering a certain way, reverse the car until the rear left bumper aligned with the flag on the pole. Then I straightened the car, drove forward a bit until my left bonnet pointing at the flag, then……until now, I am not shameful to tell you I cannot do a reverse park. Simply because of the missing flags and poles!

After a few weeks, I could cruise the car comfortably. He had grown very relaxed too. Lounging on his seat ( seat belts were not in fashion yet), hands behind his head, with his eyes closed, he blabbed about a friend of his who was very poor, who had a big fight with his wife over 50cents, for a third class movie seat, and now he was so filthy rich. The couple now only went for first class movie seats. He was reminiscing life’s ups and downs. And he said to me, nicely, “you can overtake the car in front. ” I swiftly did it. I even congratulated myself for such quick reflex! He, all of a sudden, back to full consciousness from his seat: “you want to kill me? You want to die?”

What did I do wrong this time?

“Did you look look at the rear mirror?”

I turned my head to look at the exterior mirror. He was so frustrated by me. He pointed to the front rear view mirror. “This , this this is the mirror! Not that outside mirror!” I felt a lot of his spittum all over my left arm. Yuck! “Don’t you know how to SEE LOW?” He screamed. After that he sank back to his seat, overwhelmingly exhausted.

One day he told me the good news. I was ready for the test. I couldn’t wait. Wish me luck! The transport department’s car was new. Responsive, smooth, you wanted to accelerate, it sped, you pressed on the brake, it SEELOW. I was like driving in a dream..

I passed, I passed. The department officer gave me a good assessment and congratulated me. I was very happy ! Old Lo could not scream into my poor left eardrums any more! Hip hip Hooray!

When I paid Old Lo the fees, he said, “do you know how you passed? ” I did extremely well. What do you mean? He said he gave $50 Kopi-o money.. that’s a code word for bribe, many free cups of coffee for someone…. you mean I passed illegally by bribing officers?

Grrrrrrr…..there were so many opportunities I could have killed this moron? Only because I have empathy!

I love sketching when I am in public place. It is a good way of passing time. After finished reading the papers, did the sudoku, completed the crossword puzzle. I could only look at my palm to work out where my fortune lies. Then scrutinise my life line; Will I live to 100? Or I started counting the number of liver spots on my arms. They seemed to multiply under my eyes. Time to look after my liver. Then watch the flow of traffic. It is more or less like watching grass grow and paint dry, which was not recommended. It can be very boring.

Especially in airport waiting room. But with a pencil in one hand, a pad on the other. I sketched people in the flowing traffic. Time flew. Lately I sketched handphones a lot; handphone next to ears, or people’s fingers sliding on the surface; people smiled to themselves and took selfies while walking. Never missed a step. There must be hidden side-view mirrors. Some walked slowly; others snaked across.

People talked really loudly on the phone: yah yah, I arrive 6:45 tomorrow. You come to the airport to fetch me. Don’t tell xxx I am the buyer. I understand. I understand. It is all cash deal. Ah ah ah. The bank? No problem. Don’t worry. Everything A OKay. Ok ok…

People dressed differently. Individuality parade. Some like it hot. Some like it cold. Some looked like they were going to a beach, others going to a masquerade. Some on heels. Some with thongs. An array of colours.

A pencil needs sharpening. But you cannot use a round sharpener. Because we need to expose most of the inner graphite core so as to lay the pencil flat to the surface of the paper. Only a blade can do the job and it can sharpen my eraser. The blade always stay in my travel bag. To find it is like treasure hunting, rummaging, feeling around. Emptying the whole contents from the bag is a last measure.

At the Guangzhou security check point, I was stopped abruptly and asked if I carry a knife in my bag? What a stupid question! I much prefer: do you or do you not carry a stack of US$1000000 bank notes ? I will answer: haha I wish.

A knife? Do I look middle eastern? Do I grow a beard? Do I look terrorising?

I, confidently, answered NO. She pointed to the computer screen, and asked: isn’t that a knife? I swear to god, and over my mother’s grave, there was no knife. I really couldn’t see a knife among the colourful rainbow images. I didn’t know what was wrong with her eyesight. On top of that I know all the knives I own in my kitchen drawers by heart. I can form images of every single one of them. Who planted a knife in my bag? What for? Cut an apple? I hate Apple. I don’t eat apple. The only fruit I like is banana. You peel banana. You don’t cut it with knives. We learned from the monkeys.

So, to prove I am right, she is wrong, I challenged: show me. She took out this green plastic blade, made in China, and dangled in front of me in a ‘I win, you lose’ manner. Now the ball is in my court. My turn to return the shot. Calmly I explained it is not a knife. It is a blade for sharpening my pencil for sketching. Not good enough! She said you can kill a person with this knife! Ok ok it is a knife, all right!

A gruesome death happened on flight A380 departing Guangzhou to Adelaide. A passenger accidentally fell face down on the aisle and hit an object. It was a green coloured blade for sharpening pencils. He died immediately from losing too much blood. HAPPY?

So I watched her dump my most innocent tool into a bin for murder weapons.

I was on my way back to Adelaide via Guangzhou. All planes going to Australia depart at mid-night. A lot of tired faces. Then I overheard an old man in his 70s , two rows in front of me, pleading to a young western girl to let him have his seat back. The old man was obviously China origin because he could hardly manage to speak understandable English, very broken, with the help of gestures to the young girl.

He pointed to the grey hair elderly lady next to the young girl. “She, ” he pointed at the grey haired lady, “my wife,” tapping with his hands on his chest. “I sit here, ” he pointed to the seat now no longer vacant. “I go toilet”, he pointed to the other side of the lobby where the toilets are. “Quick quick come back”, he waved his hands. “Now you sit my chair,” He pleaded. “Please I want sit my wife”, He held his hands into a fist like asking for mercy.

The girl mumbled something. Could be : I didn’t take your seat. It was empty then. I have every right to sit here. You can bulldoze me. But I am not moving…

Than a young Chinese boy, few seats away from them, stood up suddenly and defended the girl. Ah, the hero, the white knight, galloping on back of a horse, swept up the troubled princess from her feet, galloped away and lived happily forever! From his not so broken English, but very funny accent, I could safely said he is an overseas student from china.

He directed harshly at the poor old man: this is not your seat! Stop arguing! The poor old man’s voice turned huskier now, due to prolong argument and persuasion. He was a bit breathless. He repeated what he said before.

You could tell every one around was listening. But pretended it was none of their business.

I am 66 years old. There are not many situations can intimidate me. Moreover, I have eaten more salt than this smart boy eaten rice. So I raised my voice: Hey! young man, Where is your respect for this senior gentleman?

He was taken aback, turned and looked at me, two rows behind him. No, not another old fart! He probably thought. He then argued: it is first come first serve..I cut him off immediately: Can you keep your mouth shut, let the senior have the seat!

Then there were applause exploding like small fireworks from every row. No, no, no, I didn’t take a bow. I did it for our grey power!!

The young girl angrily snatched her bag pack and stormed away. And said to the loser: thank you for standing up for me!

Boohoooo

My first flying experience was with Malaysian airline, the Fokker Friendship, an extinct dinosaur, in the 70s.

By the way, the American who say ‘O ‘as ‘Ah ‘ will turn Fokker into an abusive word. But that is American. What do they know?

The Fokker was manufactured by Dutch. built for WWII, a war hero! You can check the authenticity.

Anyway after I boarded the little baby plane, I saw one interior panel next to a window loosely attached. It looked like a cardboard material. So it gave a constant pulsing prep, prep, prep while the plane was cruising.

Don’t under estimate this small plane. It is turboprop, whatever it means. Probably means it had big lungs and strong diaphragm. Size doesn’t matter. Its noise was booming. Like a baby’s cry, the inverse of its size.

Smoking was allowed. A passenger brought two live ducks caged into the cabin. I don’t remember any overhead lockers. Couldn’t imagine two ducks fell from the overhead lockers, and waddled into the cockpit!

No beautiful air hostesses. We were not shown the procedure of emergency exit, oxygen masks, life jacket, whistling device. What you don’t know doesn’t matter. Don’t forget this plane was built for war.

A passenger was obviously pleased with the ‘super’ speed it travelled. He said to his friend, “this flying boat is amazing. I only lit up my cigarette and before I finished the smoking , Ka boom, I arrive.”

The refreshments was a plain plastic bag of rambutan, a local fruit that taste like lye chee. You would not argue about the freshness as hundreds of live ants scurrying inside the bag. I dared not open the bag in case I would cause a mid air ant attacks. Imagine this: every passenger opened the bag of rambutan at the same time. There were, I don’t know, say twenty passengers. Each bag with 100 ants. I am even afraid to do the sum.

Then an announcement came from the captain: ladies and gentlemen, we have an emergency. Please fasten your seat belts! we have an unprecedented ant attack! Stay calm! Stop stamping your feet! Stop shaking, every one! Our plane is flying belly up now! Like I said before, this plane was built for WWII! It would be fine!

That was the first time of my life to have an aerial view of Baram river, muddy, bending left and right like a sleepy python, with mangrove forest and swampy growth to adorn this gigantic belt of flowing water, dotted with sewn timber rafts that from above looked like matchsticks. So calming.

My second memorable trip was in America, 2013. We were delayed for at least two hours in Vancouver because the Qantas computer forgot how to spit out boarding passes. By the time we arrived in Seattle, we had a further delay due to smog in Sydney airport. Qantas shared a business lounge with Japan airline. So the first class and business class passengers mingled in the open lounge.

Next to us was a group of young African American, some sitting down, some lounging some standing around a coffee table, with iPads playing intermittently some kind of music. They obviously loved singing so much. They tried singing few bars here, few bars there, naynaynaynaaaaay, lahlahlah laaaaah, ooooooooh, ooooOOOO…..OOOOOOooo……When the PA announced the flight boarding details, first in Japanese, then in very Japanese-American English, I was not able to catch what was said. So I did the normal thing a normal person do normally in a normal circumstances: SHOO ! to the lively group. One of girls immediately: SHOO TO YOU!

I shooed her because I had a perfect reason. She shooed me because She didn’t like being shooed. We neither knew each other from a bar of soap. Not until I arrived at Sydney airport I realised who I shooed! Beyonce, the famous singer, actress, song writer……..She had to perform in Sydney! I don’t remember how many times I was asked to tell this amusing story in parties.

I blamed my old man: You didn’t do anything! Why didn’t you? At least cover my mouth with your palm and shut me up! you idiot! His answer: First of all, I don’t really care who she is. I am not her fan. But I thought it was so funny when you turned and shooed!

Now that I think about it, will I shoo her if I know who she is? ABSOLUTELY AFFIRMATIVE!

Whew, lucky my old man was minding his own business.