It's complicated

Today, my brother's mother (who is not my mother) starts her new kopitiam business in Damansara Jaya. So it is a little complicated!! How many times have I seen that on Friendsters profiles - It's COMPLICATED!! My life is complicated!

Maternal grandparents
First complication arose from my maternal grandparents side. I had written about this when I was blogging in Friendster, but since I have deleted that, I'll put that on record again. I have 3 Grandpas and 3 Grandmas just on my maternal side. Real grandpa had an arranged marriage in China - took one look at the bride on wedding day and went YUCKS!! Ran off to Malaya after that. Real Grandma had married in China and her husband passed away. She had 2 boys and 2 girls and we were not aware of the existence of these Uncles and Aunts with different surnames until 1990!.In olden China, if your husband is no longer around, you get bullied big time. So she also came to Malaya to escape the bullying, leaving her kids in the care of the Shen family. From that marriage to my real Grandpa, my mum and her brother were born. So technically, I now have 2 Grandmas and 2 Grandpas.

Well, real Grandma passed away when my mum was 13 or 14 and real Grandpa married again. And the third Grandma was also previously married, so that's how the complication of 3 Grandpas and 3 Grandmas came about. So my mum ended up with brothers and sisters named Shen and also another 5 brothers with the same surnames, but different mum.

My generation
At first there was only my sister and me when my biological father abandoned us when we were knee high to a grasshopper. He remarried and had a son - Eng Kit. So my life is little bit more complicated. But it is Eng Kit's turn to have more of the complications. His mum remarried and have 2 sons and 2 daughters. So Eng Kit now has a brother and sister with the same surnames and 4 other siblings with different surnames. Does that make his siblings my siblings?? I don't think so. And that is how the new kopitiam is being re-opened in Damansara Jaya by my brother's mother!

Adding to all these are a whole bunch of Uncles and cousins and at least 2 levels of generational relatives in China and Malaysia - from Foshan, Panyu to Serdang.

Wait a minute - I forgot my wife side of the complications. Her dad left 2 sons in China in Meixian (border area between Guangdong and Fujian) due to the cultural revolution. As a landlord, he would have been humiliated and killed if he had gone back. So he re-settled in Malaya with wife no. 2 and have 2 sons and a daughter from that union. So my in-law branch of the family is also complicated, as the first mother-in-law is still alive and well. We have visited them in Meixian in early 90s and the brother in law from China has also come to Malaysia to visit us.

And I am still trying to figure out the rest of my paternal side of the family tree. Unfortunately, the grandparents have already passed away and no one in the next generation seems to have any idea who has gone where and when. Only rumors of relatives in San Francisco and Singapore.

And my surname is Tham in Chinese, mis-spelt as Than in my birth cert and now I am using SAM TAM for my blogs. My cousins who are THAMs are also mis-spelt as HAM and TAM.

It's complicated!!

Vote wisely for the coming General Elactions

For my foreign readers, today's post is about Malaysia and it's politics, so you may be blur blur after reading this.

I was 11 years old when May 13 1969 happened. That was the year that racial riots erupted in Malaysia, mainly in Kuala Lumpur and I am, as one author that I had read somewhere said, of an age that I could observe and understand but could not participate. If you read the recently published book by Dr Kua Kia Soong - it provides a good insight on why that had happened. Many foreign observers contends that the racial riots broke out as a result of a coup by Ultras in UMNO to grab power from the first Prime Minister - Tunku.

“The first credible account of the May 13, 1969 racial riots in Malaysia based on documents recently declassified at the Public Records Office in London”
AVAILABLE AT BOOKSHOPS & KINIBOOKS.COM

To this day, the leadership of UMNO and many of it's rank and file continues to use the spectre of May 13 to cow the Chinese during elections or whenever some "sensitive" issues are brought up. At the last UMNO assembly, the UMNO youth leader again drew out his keris and one delegate asked him when he was going to use it. The current UMNO deputy who is also the deputy PM was also reported to have said that it was time to bath the keris in Chinese blood during the early 90s when the MCA deputy leader raised the issue of abolishing NEP. Khairy, the son-in-law of the current PM has also made racist remarks against the Chinese these past few years and he is currently the UMNO Youth deputy leader.

I would like to quote from a poem attributed to Pastor Martin Niemöller (1892–1984) about the inactivity of German intellectuals following the Nazi rise to power and the purging of their chosen targets, group after group.

Translation

When the Nazis came for the communists,

I remained silent;I was not a communist.

When they locked up the social democrats,

I remained silent;I was not a social democrat.

When they came for the trade unionists,

I did not speak out;I was not a trade unionist.

When they came for me,there was no one left to speak out.

Remember this when the next General Election comes around. Use your vote to ensure that the corrupt and racist government of BN either does not get into power again or at least deny them the huge majority which they think is carte blanc to do as they please. Mahathir had remarked that we get the government that we deserve.

Recent activities has led many to believe that the General Elections are near.

- BN will want to hold this late this year so that Anwa Ibrahim does not have a chance to stand for election

- Stock market has generated a lot of cash for the BN machinery through the so called GLCs. These monies are important for them to selectively buy votes as they have done in the 3 recent by (buy?) elections, notably the last one in Ijok.

- they are starting to clamp down on Blogs carrying negative reports on the government.

I suggest that when you can go to the Malaysia Today website ( http://www.malaysia-today.net/index.shtml) to read up on expose by Raja Petra Kamarudin (RPK). As you read all his current and past articles, you need to ask yourself - what he has written is so explosive in terms of exposing the government, the police and so on, so why did they not sue him for libel and slander and instead charge him with the improbable charge of insulting the King and Islam? HIs expose are in general backed up with documents. I personally conclude that the powers that be dare not charge or sue him because they fear that he has a lot more dirt on them and these can be further exposed if he goes to court.

Muhammad, the son of Muhammad has already experienced this first hand when he laid the charge on RPK of insulting the King and Islam. Read RPK's "see you in hell, Muhammad the son of Muhammad"

Since the police report, RPK's site was getting millions of hits a day. Go figure.

My TARC and Motorola days

While looking for some old photos to update my previous blogs, I found that many of the old coloured photos that I had were starting to fade and lose it's colours. If I remember correctly, colour photo prints then cost 60 cents (not sen) per piece if you wanted good quality and longer lasting prints. IN those days, I had not started working and was doing part time jobs to supplement my pocket monies to indulge in my photography hobby. So I ended up processing most of prints at 25 cents per print. Many decades later, I can see why the cheaper prints were cheaper.. Like the Cantonese saying goes, good things are never cheap and cheap things are never good. Sigh!!!


Anyway, I think I have to spend some time scanning all my old photos to at least arrest the fading. Major project for the rest of this year if I do not have to travel until October. I still have one more major travel in August - to Beijing and Frankfurt.


So here is me and my class mates in the style of those years - bell bottoms, mop tops and long hair. The one below shows the Electronics class of SOT (first batch). Now for a test of my memory. Front row L to R: Evelyn Chua Poi Luang, Lim Meng Zium, Andy Ang, Michael Lee Soon Lock, Sam, Shum Kok Hoong, Wong Mee Choy (lecturer), forgot_1, Chong Choy Fook
Back row L to R: Chan Kau (I think), forgot_2, Lim Jit Jee, Goh Yap Hiang, forgot_3, Ooi Lye Hock, Ho Soon Fatt, EE somebody, Ooi somebody, Lau Chak Pooi.

Okay, so I have forgotten at least 3 of these clasmates and can't remember the complete names of at least 2. Never thought to write down at the back of the photo. Sigh!

This one below, shows me and some of my classmates L to R: Chong Choy Fook, Sam, Ho Soon Fatt and Ooi Lye Hock



And the one above is a photo of the lab staff of SOT and SAS (TARC). Seated L to R: Yuen somebody, Forgot_1, Choo somebody (how can I forget a girl's name!!), Ms Shum, forgot_2, Teng somebody, forgot_3
Back row L to R: forgot_4, forgot_5, Goh Yap Hiang, Nadarajah, Sam, Chin Seong Kong, forgot_6, Lim Jit Jee, Forgot_7

Wah, this is worse. What do you expect? I only worked around them for 1 year and we were all from different labs.

One more with me in the Maintenance Supervisor smock in Motorola. If I had stayed on, I might have ended up as Than bin Abdullah. more than 95% of the employees were Malays and a very significant numbers were Malay girls!! These Malay girls here - totally forgot their names!!



Who would have thought that the typical 60kg weakling would have turn out to be me today!!

Shanghai training in July 2007

One of my engineers decided to transfer to the Shanghai factory earlier this year. So, this July training was orphaned!! No trainers available. Considering that my team is already over-stretched in training deliveries, besides the expectations of providing online support and escalation management, I took it upon myself to deliver this class. I have been delivering this training about once a year since 3 years ago and almost once every 2 months in the years before that. So having to do this twice this year was not a big issue. I did the first this year in the first quarter in Beijing.

The class was a mix of experiences coupled with different support teams. I had at least 2 new engineers in class, 2 customer trainers, one call center personnel and of the rest of the attendees, 2 were from Thailand, one from India and one from Malaysia. So the challenge was to be able to deliver the training in English and Chinese while making sure that most of the participants understood me with my Malaysian English twang. Adding on to the challenge was the condition of the instruments in the training lab. We had missing parts, defective parts and instruments. I was tempted to call off the training with the most easily available excuse - that my father had passed away. But that would not have been fair to all the people who were expecting to be trained. So I persevered. I was suppose to have a co-trainer, but when he saw the list of attendees, he backed off and was not willing to even deliver one session. I guess the challenge for him was too big.

Anyway, the training went well despite all the challenges thrown up. I tried to inject some humor into the class and I think that for a majority of the people, that went well. We finally wrapped up the training with a graduation get together at a karaoke in Pudong. Everyone enjoyed themselves. We had S.H.E. and H.I.M. together with F4, Backstreet Boys, Westlife and a host of others entertaining us.

I am sure you can tell we enjoyed ourselves in these photos!.

Establishing relationships with my half brother

2 weeks ago, I wrote about the passing of my biological father. I was in Shanghai when that happened and I had no intention of attending his funeral or wake, so I stayed on in Shanghai to complete the delivery of the training that was scheduled. I have since learnt that his second wife also opted not to attend, leaving her son, Tham Eng Kit, to take care of things. Luckily he had the help of the uncles (2nd, 3rd and 5th) and Aunt (8th) and Uncle in law.

I got back from Shanghai on 14th July and in the evening, called up Eng Kit for a meeting the next day. I had avoided establishing any relationship with him all these years because I did not want to open any opportunity for his father to even find an excuse to come back into our life. So Eng Kit survived 35 years knowing he had an elder brother but not knowing how to contact him (i.e. me). Letting his father any opportunity to come back into our lives would have done a grave injustice to my mum.

I have shared with a friend before that I consider relationships in life to be multi layered - very much like the layers of a large onion. At the core is family - good or bad, like them or hate them, they are still family. I chose to put my half brother at an arm's length all the 35 years of his life. But with the passing of his father, there was no reason to do so. So today, 15th July, I whole heartily welcome Eng Kit into my family core. My mum, my cousin Madeline and her husband were also there to welcome him, along with my wife and son. Out of the blue, Alex had someone to call small uncle (Sai Sook). Eng Kit's background is just as complicated. His mum remarried and he also has 2 brothers and sisters with different surnames. Now that is what I call complicated!!

If you are interested, the other layers of the relationship onion moves from Family to a multi layered friends circle, starting with God Daughters that are almost family, to core friends, casual friends and new friends. Outside of these are the colleagues, acquaintances, strangers and a dried shrivelled layer called enemies. As with an onion, the enemy layer is very thin and few.

Having a younger brother around is a new experience. It sounded funny whenever he called me Tai Kor - sounds like I am some underworld boss or something. Most of my cousins call me Yew Kor (Kum Yew being my home name). The get together was surprising very relaxed with no noticeable tensions. I guess since both of us were aware of the existence of the other and the circumstances and situation, we had accepted that it was neither's fault that things were the way they were.

Eng Kit, welcome to my family.

Looking back at starting preparations for regular work life

This Sunday, woke up to torrential rain in Shanghai. Still a week to go before I can go home. Weekend has been lousy as it was either raining or heavily over casted skies. The weather put me into a pensive mood. It made me think back on the different paths I could have taken if I had taken different decisions when I had finished my Electronics course in TAR College.

I guess I was lucky and also fated to have pursued this career. After finishing MCE (O levels) with grade 1, the scores were not good enough to continue A levels in Government school, especially if I wanted to pursue Science Stream. I applied to TAR college, listing Bio Maths as my first option, Automotive as my second and some Arts Stream course as my third. TAR offered me my first choice. But between applying and getting the offer, I had time to reflect on what I really wanted and what my Mother could afford to sent me through. Finishing A levels meant that I should continue onto University and that would have put a very big strain on my mum. She had been working as a domestic help almost all of her life. IF I am lucky, I may have been able to get a scholarship, just as I did from Form 1 to 5. But that would have been speculative. I opted to take pursue vocational training, which would have gotten me into work life within 2 years and lift a burden off my mum. While waiting for TAR college's offer, I applied to FIT, a private college, taking an Electrical and Electronic course. I liked what I was learning but I did not like the college - it was noting more than a money generating concern with little care for students interest. I only studied there for 6 weeks.

So when TAR college's offer came in mid way thru my studies in FIT, I rejected the Bio Maths offer and asked if they could let me have a place in the inaugural Certificate in Electronics. Took them some time before they came back and said NO - because the class was already in progress. I had to ask my mum's boss to use his connections in MCA to help me wangle a place into TARC. The long and short of it was that I was able to get a seat in the class and went in 2 MONTHS LATE!!. I still remember my lecturer, Mr Wong Mee Choy, almost fainted when I walked in. "What? Another one?" were his exact words that i remember to this day.

The above photo shows the combined class of Electronics and Automotive visitng the Matsushita plant in Shah Alam in 1976. Look at the long hair and bell bottom fashion of those years!! I am in the standing row, wearing dark clothes in the middle of the pack.

Throughout the 2 years, I consciously made sure that I did not disappoint all those who helped me to that point in life. While not the top of the class, I did credibly well enough that the college offered me and 2 other a job when we graduated. I had applied to many other companies as well to hedge my job chances. Motorola had offered me a position as an electronic technician too, but I felt obligated to accept TARC's offer. Evelyn Chua worked in the same lab as me and the other chap (sorry dude, I can't remember your name) was in the Automotive lab. I'll see if I can find a photo somewhere to update this blog entry. Evelyn was the rose amongst the thorns of the class.

When I got my first pay increment from TARC, I was totally disappointed. I had put in a lot of effort (from my perspective) into my work and the increment was miserable. So I applied to Motorola again and was offered a job as an electronic Technician, again. 3 and the half years there, going from Electronic Technician to Maintenance Supervisor was quite an experience. Due to the heavy hours I put in especially in overtime, in order to pay back my friends for loans that they provided me in purchasing my first house, I had virtually no social life.

Working 2 shifts, that was how I met my wife. She was in a different shift and that shift always came in after my shift ended. Towards the last year in Motorola, I was actually on normal shift - essential 8 to 5 and then continuing till the end of night shift which was up to 10pm.

When HP had a position opened for a customer engineer, I confidently applied and eventually was taken in to support Medical and Analytical Instruments. I am trained on Ultrasound equipment operations. I had to learn from scratch how to use the instruments to take blood pressure readings (this was an invasive technique, not like today's instruments), place the leads on the ECG monitors to take heart rates. Learn to read ECGs and so on. In addition, I also had to recall a lot of my Science learning from my O levels to support chromatography instruments.

If I have to identify a high in my career in HP, that would have been my participation as the support team in Korea to support the Doping Control Center during the Asian games (1986) and Olympics (1988).

Dare I hope that TWO decades down the road, I will still have some contributions to make to Beijing Doping Control Center Support in 2008??

Shanghai revisited - July 2007

Another week in Shanghai. I have not been buying things from Shanghai in my last couple of visits. Especially not any of the "souvenirs" or any of the genuine fake goods ranging from Rolex/Omegas to DVD. Last night, a group of the training participants wanted to have dinner together and during dinner, we decided to go for karaoke. We headed to near Times Square in Pudong and while waiting for some of the group, I was browsing through some DVDs. There were like a DVD seller every 10 feet or so around that area!!!!. Remembered that my son was clamouring for TMNT movie as he did get to see it due to my travels. So, I got him one and found that the price of DVDs had dropped from about 7 to 8 RMB to only 5 RMB now!!. You can get a collection of 10 DVDs on 120 shows on the National Geographic Channel for RMB40.

And the thing is that, despite being pirated copies, they were really good clear copies, without any of those cinema sounds or out of focus stuff we get in Malaysia from the pasar malam. And... the pirates can still continue to get a profit from those kind of prices!! No wonder every Tom Dick and Harry wants to get into the business. And as long as the legitimate businesses insist on their ridiculous and exorbitant prices, they are fighting a losing battle.

I am staying in Diamond Court Apartments - a serviced apartments that serves our purposes for mid to long term stays. I get an executive apartment which has ONE bedroom, a study room for me to work and connect to the internet, a very large and comfortable living room. And they have cooking facilities, with a 4 burner oven, refrigerator and even a washing machine. 2 TVs - one in the bedroom and one in the living room. As it is located away from Pudong center, I did most of my meals and shopping in the nearby Carrefour (at Jinqiao). It is only 11 minutes brisk walk away (I have a pedometer to count my steps and time the journey!!).

Sunday, when I went to purchase some sundries to stock up the fridge, the crowd was so jam packed tight that you would think that things in Carrefour was free or close to it. And most of the customers were local Chinese.

Who says China is poor??

Passing of an era- who cares -updated!!

Today - 2 Jul 2007, is the first day of the class that I am delivering in Shanghai. I don't go back until 14th July, with a possibility of extension. Midway through my training delivery, my cousin sister Michelle called up. My biological father passed away and the funeral was the same night. She asked if me or my mum would be going. My answer was almost instantaneuos - NO!!! And I don't give a damn. All I would commit to was to inform my mum of this event. In any case, one of my grand aunt (aunt to one of my step uncles) had also passed away today and my mum had already planned to be at that wake.

My sister and I were abandoned by this man more than 45 years ago. My mum had to struggle to bring up both of us by being a domestic help almost all her life. Who cares if he is dead. Not me for sure. I even jokingly told my God daughter that if I could, I'll take the compassionate leave and go somewhere to celebrate. In fact, I had already planned to have dinner with 2 of my staff in Shanghai tonight, so it is still a celebration of sorts.

I realized that these 2 days, many people who knows me were wondering if I was joking or in denial when I said matter-of-fact - FATHER DEAD ALSO I WILL CONTINUE TO DELIVER THIS TRAINING IN SHANGHAI. (Say Lo tau dut gai juk pooi fun). It is neither a joke nor denial. How can one expect to have any feelings for someone you have never known in your life? Someone who has never been part of your life, especially in your formative years? I informed my sister in London of the event and she wrote back, she feels sad for her cat which had to be euthanized. For this man- no feelings!!

I was told by my cousin Michelle that my half brother had to shoulder the burden of doing all the rites. Well good luck to him.

The SOB is dead, long live the living!!