Homecoming (a poem by my daughter for me)

 An elephant never forgets, and still

When the tears have run dry, she makes one last appeal,

Then says a final goodbye, though it hurts, though it’s hard.

As nature knows what it knows,

So she’ll go where she goes,

As the river flows but never knows the end goal from the start.

What is home if not a country, a people, a song,

The first place we feel we don’t really belong.

Some stay, but most know: true courage lies in making a new start

Sepandai Tupai Melompat, Akhirnya Jatuh Ke Tanah Juga

It's apt that on the day I am due to collect my citizenship renunciation slip, this famous malay phrase comes to mind. You can guess what it refers to from the picture below.

 

photo credit: gambar-ularcobra

Squirrels are uber athletes. This specimen above even had a fruit in its mouth as it attempted a leap from one tree branch to another and they do this countless times a day, with supreme confidence. And they almost always nail their landings.

Until they don't. And hence the phrase that means "as clever as the squirrel jumps, eventually it falls to the ground". As someone who likes data, this statement is tautological. Of course, if you jump as many times as the squirrel does, there will be that one occasion it falls. That said, I have never seen one fall. Ever. And given I have taken over 200 walks in parks the past 1.5 years and seen many squirrels (maybe 500 of them), I have never seen one fall. Until yesterday.

From an incredible height, it fell onto the paved jogging/cycling track in Bishan Park. Despite its luxurious fur lining, I could even hear the thud as it hit the ground. There it remained motionless for about 5 seconds (out of shock,probably, M says) and then as it sensed a bicycle coming its way, it flipped itself over and ran up a nearby tree.

It struck me that the Malay idiom is incomplete. It isn't about the falling. It's about the getting up again.

And this squirrel will likely have its confidence well intact, and probably attempt that great leap again, and naturally without harnesses or safety nets. 

I write this just as the Tokyo Olympics gets underway. Deferred by a year due to COVID19, the human uber-athletes of the work will now start to showcase how far, how fast and how high they can perform. Some of them will fall too. The human spirit cannot be any less than the squirrels'. They will pick themselves up and run, jump and score again. Another saying comes to mind, "you don't score any goals from the kicks you don't take".

Stateless

My early life is marked with mathematical precision.

Not just my date of birth, but even my time of birth is duly recorded on my birth certificate. Speaking of which, that birth certificate is no longer in my possession. More about that later.

It took my dad no more than one day to register my birth. And exactly as I turn one month old, I was duly baptised. My parents' plannin' remain impeccable. Because 3 years later, my brother arrived. And three years after that my sister.

But thereafter, there was less certainty. Again, the evidence is on my birth certificate. I was first enrolled into Ping Ming Primary School and later (I am sure after a not insignificant quarrel), my parents placed me in Bandar Hilir English School (which had already began teaching in the Malay medium). 

Being completely unschooled in the English and certainly Malay language, I refused to go to school. I was scared, naturally. My mom fought my fear with pain. She made me bend over and caned me repeatedly. I attended BHES and incredibly ended up topping the class and the year aceing every subject with all round perfect scores. Though I never repeated this feat, it was enough to teach a young me never to fear the unknown.

Indeed, much of my life thereafter is marked with courageous decisions of taking a step back from a current trajectory to leapfrog two steps ahead. Whether it was to leave Malaysia as a top student at the age of 17 to Singapore to further my studies. To leave an expat lifestyle in the aviation industry to join the incomprehensible management consulting sector. And to decide to break away (despite being the boss' blue-eyed boy) from a big international firm to join another. 

There remains, however, a constant. I remain a Malaysian. Or more precisely a Malaysian Chinese, in the sense that I identified with the second class citizenship the non-bumiputras in Malaysia suffered.  Adversity binds people together like nothing else and we knew no one owed us a living. I was radicalised early in life because I failed to win government scholarships despite my grades. My dad, aptly incensed, became a staunch opposition supporter. 

I chose a different way to battle the system. First, to endow myself with a better education - in Singapore and ironically under the auspices of a Singapore government scholarship. And then to return to help companies and the government in Malaysia become better. I was also publicly commenting on the country's state of affairs and even had a column in a local business paper.

For a moment, it seemed to work. Our recommendations were enacted into policies and programmes. And then a change of government in 2018 and the political leader whom I had become close to was to be Prime Minister in waiting.

But within two years, a mutiny within the ranks and the ruling coalition could no longer hold on to power allowing a back door government to emerge. I was despondent. It set the country back. I even penned an editorial titled, "Can I still believe in Malaysia?".

The piece, while hard hitting, still carried a somewhat unrealistically hopeful message but deep down inside, I didn't really think so.

And so by July 2020, I made a seminal decision to undo the one certainty I've had all my life: that of changing my citizenship. Within a year, my application to Singapore was approved and today I submitted the application to renounce my citizenship. Along with the application, I gave up with birth certificate, identity card and passport. At heart, I am still a Malaysian Chinese.

For the next week, I am somewhat stateless (until I get my Singapore documents). I am reminded of my great grandmother who almost a century ago, uprooted her family from Dabu, China to seek a new life for her sons in Nan Yang (Glorious South as what South East nations were referred to then). They endured a difficult 3 month journey, sailing in wretched condition. They were all part of a British masterplan in East Asia. The European imperialists had found SEA to be the plantation of the world given the fertile lands and conducive tropical weather. Rubber, rice and all manners of spices were worth their weight in gold and peoples from other colonised/annexed lands like India and Guangzhou were brought to Malaysia and Singapore to build the economy.

In those moments, my grandfather and his brothers must have been stateless too. They did eventually become British subjects and Malaysian citizens. Their move allowed me to grow up a Malaysian (away from the cultural revolution of communist China). I thank them for it. 

Nothing remains certain, however mathematically precise you wish it to be.