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.