Rubber, Roots and the Tears of the Forgotten By Joseph Tek Choon Yee

I remember watching Roots, the 1977 television series based on Alex Haley’s book - the story of Kunta Kinte, the African man torn from his homeland and chained into slavery. His pain, his pride, his longing for home - all of it seared into my mind. It made me wonder about our own histories here in Malaya: who were the ones who toiled, who wept, who built the land we inherited?

Years later, while presenting a paper on plantation history at an ISP conference, a senior planter stood up during the Q&A. “Joseph,” he said, “you’ve spoken beautifully about European pioneers and Chinese entrepreneurs - and only a little about the Indians in plantations. Perhaps next time, could you also talk more about the South Indian workers — the Tamil labourers - who endured the hardest work of all?”

That question lingered long after the applause faded. Because even after three decades in this industry, I realised how rarely we give voice to those who came before - the nameless, barefoot men and women who tapped rubber, cleared jungles and carried Malaya on their backs.

And then, I remembered my late maternal grandmother.

She used to speak of them in half-whispers - not out of prejudice, but remembrance. Sitting by the window of our old wooden house in Jenjarom, she would chew betel leaf and murmur, “Ah Shek” (my nickname for being fair in complexion), “you don’t know how those Keling suffered.”

The Word and the World Behind It

The word Keling - once a neutral reference to an ancient South Indian kingdom - had, over time, curdled into something coarse, often used as an insult. But in my grandmother’s day, it was said more as description than disdain: a rural shorthand for the Tamil workers who filled the rubber estates, railway camps, and road gangs of British Malaya.

“They worked until their backs bent like old trees,” she said. “Even the rain could not wash their sorrow.”

Through her eyes, I began to see history not as policy or profit, but as people. People like Ravi - a name she often mentioned - a Tamil man who lived behind the estate line-houses, who left his village near Madurai and never saw it again.

The Journey Across the Sea

In the late 1800s, the British discovered that tin and coffee alone could not sustain their ambitions. Rubber - that miraculous sap feeding the world’s hunger for tyres - became their new gold.

The demand for labour was immense. Under the Indian Immigration Ordinance of 1884, recruiters fanned out across South India, promising work, wages, and a better life. Thousands from drought-stricken Tamil Nadu boarded ships bound for Penang, Port Dickson and Teluk Anson.

Many came under the indenture system; others through the kangani network - a chain of obligation that bound entire families to a single estate through debt and kinship.

But when they arrived, they found not paradise, but the relentless rhythm of colonial profit.

The Life on the Estate

Ravi would rise before dawn. He lived in a narrow wooden cubicle, a single oil lamp flickering against the wall. He walked barefoot into the mist, tapping knife in hand, cutting the bark of rubber trees with precision born of desperation. The white latex bled slowly into latex cups, drop by drop - like the measured tears of a forest.

He might have earned around twenty Straits cents a day - but after deductions for rice, salt, oil, rent, and advances, what he actually took home was scarcely half that. Even the doctor’s quinine could be charged to his account. For every day he fell sick, the debt deepened. (To put this in perspective: twenty cents in 1910 equated roughly to RM 12 today - barely enough for a bowl of rice and salt.)

The British planters praised the Tamil labourers as “industrious and docile.” My grandmother had two words - 可怜 (kělián), pitiful; and terpaksa, no choice.

She remembered them lining up at dusk, returning from the fields with their backs slick with sweat, their eyes empty. Some sang softly in Tamil hymns of home. Others sat in silence, their dreams folded away like the small cloth bundles they had carried from India.

Of Love, Loss and Labour

Among the workers was a young girl named Lakshmi. She planted seedlings in the nursery and shared her cooked rice with Ravi. My grandmother recalled seeing them talk by the river, laughing in that shy way only youth knows.

But joy was short-lived on the estates. Lakshmi fell ill - dysentery, they said. Estate hospitals existed, but care was basic; once convalescence ended, rent and ration charges resumed. One morning, she was gone. The kangani said she had been sent home. No one ever heard from her again.

Ravi grew quiet after that. He continued to tap the trees, but his songs faded. The jungle swallowed his laughter.

When I read Roots, I thought of Ravi and Lakshmi. They were not enslaved in chains, but bound by contracts and hunger - their freedom mortgaged to the Empire’s need for rubber.

The Machinery of Exploitation

By the early 1900s, Indian labour had become the backbone of the Malayan plantation economy. They built roads, railways and estates. The kangani acted as middleman, recruiter, and enforcer — controlling wages, advances, and punishments.

The estates became miniature kingdoms. The planter was ruler; the kangani, his steward; the workers, his subjects. The structure ensured compliance, not dignity.

When rubber prices rose, work quotas often increased. When prices fell, wages dropped. During the Great Depression of the 1930s, daily pay on many estates fell to barely twenty cents. Families starved quietly in their cubicles while the latex still dripped faithfully from the trees.

The state records were meticulous: pounds of rubber produced, cost per acre, yield per tapper. But there was no column for broken hearts.

The Weight of a Word

The word Keling haunted me. I began to hear it in the careless banter of childhood - used without thought, stripped of history.

But to my grandmother, it was never casual. It carried the echo of Ravi’s song, the cough of the sickly Lakshmi, the cries of children born in line-houses. She knew some of these people - not as “others,” but as neighbours, fellow sufferers under empire’s great machine.

“Don’t mock them,” she once said. “If not for them, the roads you walk, they would not exist.”

Her wisdom cut through the fog of inherited prejudice. It taught me how language can both wound and redeem - how memory, if tended, can humanise what history forgets.

The Legacy of Survival

After the Second World War, many Tamil families remained. They had known no other home. The estates became communities, their temples small sanctuaries of faith amid alien soil. Their children went to Tamil schools; their grandchildren spoke Malay and English.

They became teachers, clerks, soldiers - no longer “coolies,” but citizens. Yet the shadow of their ancestors’ toil still clings to the soil.

Even today, if you walk through an old rubber estate at dawn, you can almost hear it - the tap of a knife, the drip of latex, the hum of a distant song in a language that carried both prayer and pain.

The Reckoning

When that planter asked his question, I thought of how we in the industry speak so easily of yield, mechanisation and sustainability - but seldom of the ghosts beneath the trees.

The workers were the invisible roots of the plantation world. Without them, Malaya’s economic miracle would never have taken shape. They were not slaves, yet not free; not citizens, yet indispensable.

Their story, like Kunta Kinte’s, is one of dislocation - of people uprooted from their soil, planted elsewhere for the benefit of others.

The Visit Back

Years later, I visited an old estate near Banting. The rubber trees stood like ageing sentinels, their bark scarred from decades of tapping. The line-houses had been replaced by concrete quarters. A Tamil woman swept the yard.

I asked if there was still a cemetery nearby. She nodded and led me to a clearing by the stream. There, among the ferns, were small mounds of earth, unmarked and forgotten. She whispered, “My great-grandfather was from Madras. He died here. Never went home.”

I stood there in silence, thinking of Ravi, of Lakshmi, of all the nameless thousands who came with nothing but faith and hunger. The forest was quiet, save for the faint drip of latex into latex cups - steady, mournful, eternal.

In that sound, I heard both Roots and our own roots - the stories of Indians, Chinese and countless others who came to this land; tales of bondage and resilience, cruelty and grace, exile and endurance. These were not merely migrant journeys, but human odysseys - of men and women who crossed seas, planted hope in foreign soil, and built the foundations of a nation long before we called it home. Their sweat watered the fields of rubber, tin and rice; their hands raised the railways and roads we now take for granted. 

To remember them is not to dwell on sorrow, but to recognise that Malaysia’s story - like Roots - is born of pain and persistence, suffering and solidarity, and the quiet, enduring faith that from hardship, dignity can still grow. In truth, one could almost transpose the characters of Roots onto our own soil - replace Kunta Kinte with the Tamil labourer stepping off a steamer in Penang, his chains exchanged for contracts, his homeland fading behind him. The same story of uprooting and endurance unfolds here - not on the plantations of America, but in the humid stillness of Malaya’s rubber estates, where the struggle, the sorrow, and the search for freedom took a quieter, yet equally human form.

And I heard again my grandmother’s trembling voice: “Ah Shek, remember - this land drank many tears before it bore fruit.”

When I left the estate, the sun was setting over the horizon, staining the sky the colour of burnt copper. The trees cast long shadows across the road, and for a brief moment, I imagined I saw them - the silhouettes of men and women in Malaya walking home after a day’s toil, their laughter mingling with the wind.

History may have forgotten their names, but the earth remembers their footsteps. And so must we.

JT

Tears in the Tropics: Chinese Settlers Who Tilled Malaya By Joseph Tek Choon Yee

I grew up in Jenjarom during my early childhood - years that have never quite left me. Somehow, the sights, the scents and the sounds of that little town still return, as if memory itself refuses to fade. Our shared house, modest and wooden, stood amid neat rows of vegetables and cassava. I remember, as a boy, watching Chinese farmers bent over their plots from dawn to dusk, seven days a week, their straw hats glistening under the Klang sun. They worked as if time itself had forgotten to rest. My grandmother and mother often spoke of hardship, of the early years when even rice was rationed, and the only certainty was toil.

I still remember how life was then - when our toilets stood outside the house, raised on wooden stilts, with a rough plank floor and a single hole that opened into a bucket below. It was primitive by today’s standards, yet it was simply how things were. Every morning, before the sun climbed high, a man would come by with his cart to collect the filled buckets. We children would hold our breath as he worked, yet there was no disgust in his face - only familiarity. Later, I learned that he used the contents as fertiliser for his vegetable plots, where choy sum and kangkung grew lush and green. In its own humble way, nothing went to waste then - not even what we tried to forget.

Life was tough, yet the spirit of community thrived like a stubborn flower pushing through gravel. There were no gates, no high walls or padlocks - only open doors, open hearts. Neighbours would wander in without knocking, bringing plates of kuih-muih still warm from the steamer, their laughter filling the air long before the aroma reached you. I can still taste those steamed tapioca cakes - soft, golden and lightly sweet - their fragrance mingling with the smoky scent of firewood from nearby kitchens. We had little, but we shared much. In those simple gestures lay a kind of wealth that no progress has ever quite replaced.

Those images stayed with me - the creak of wooden wheelbarrows, the sound of hoes striking the soil, the smell of burning brush at twilight. At that age, I didn’t yet know that I was witnessing the tail end of a story that began generations before - when the first Chinese settlers arrived in Malaya, chasing a promise both cruel and kind: land to till, a life to claim.

River Settlements: Of Pepper, Gambier and Dreams

Long before rubber ruled the land, the Chinese had already carved civilisation along Malaya’s rivers. In the mid-nineteenth century, Johor’s Kangchu system opened river valleys to Chinese headmen - pioneers who brought labourers from the Teochew and Hokkien coasts. They cleared forests for gambier and pepper, planted, boiled, dried, and traded under a structure both feudal and free. 

The Kangchu (港主), literally “masters of the riverbank,” were elected leaders of these riverine settlements - part administrator, part entrepreneur, sometimes called Kapitan. Through their networks, labour, trade, and governance flowed as one, forging a uniquely Chinese frontier tradition.

Among those early arrivals, history could have placed Ah Kong and Mei Lan - a young couple from a village in Fujian, drawn by rumours of rich soil and steady work. They came not for gold, but for ground - a place to root their children’s future. Their smallholding was a clearing beside a sluggish river. Each dawn, the air thickened with smoke from boiling vats of gambier. The riverbanks buzzed with barter, prayer, and hope.

As Tan Pek Leng wrote in Land to Till: The Chinese in the Agricultural Economy of Malaya (2008), “The Chinese did not simply transplant their labour - they transplanted an entire system of community, credit and cooperation.” These were not mere farmers, but nation-builders in miniature.

When the Forest Turned to Fields

As gambier exhausted the soil, the planters turned to new crops: tapioca, pineapples, vegetables - and eventually, rubber. By the 1910s, Ah Kong had learned to tap latex, one careful diagonal cut at a time. His wife Mei Lan tended rows of leafy greens between the trees. Together, they turned jungle into geometry, hardship into habit.

They lived without Sundays or safety nets, yet their dignity was immense. The children went to Chinese school, their fees paid in coin and latex sheets. When the Great Depression came and rubber prices collapsed, the crops in between - chilli, long beans, sweet potato - kept them alive.

I think of them whenever I recall the women of Jenjarom’s early mornings - my mother’s generation - carrying baskets of vegetables on bicycles, balancing toil and tenderness. Their backs stooped not from weakness but from devotion. They lived with quiet pride, as though they knew that every stalk of kangkung was a prayer for tomorrow.

War, Wire and the Malayan New Villages

The war years tore everything apart. Rubber trees stood untapped; farms were looted; sons disappeared. During the Emergency, thousands of Chinese villagers were uprooted and resettled behind barbed wire into what the British called “New Villages.” Yet within those enclosures, something remarkable happened: despair gave birth to industry.

In those years, Ah Kong and Mei Lan might have rebuilt their lives yet again - planting vegetables within the wire, selling them by daylight, dodging curfews by dusk. The New Villages became crucibles of resilience, where families learned to live under suspicion but never surrendered their work ethic.

Family, Faith and the Field

In those families, women carried the unspoken burdens. Mei Lan would have risen before dawn to light the stove, pack food for her husband, and later sell vegetables in the market. Their sons learned to tap trees; their daughters to stretch every ringgit. They rarely said “I love you,” but their hands spoke it daily - in rice cooked, debts paid, children schooled.

When one of their sons left for Singapore to work in a factory, they wept quietly but said nothing. “He must find a better life,” Mei Lan would whisper, even as her own heart broke. Such stories are not unique; they are the invisible architecture of this nation’s prosperity. Behind every concrete suburb today lies a vanished plot once tilled by people like them.

The Land and What It Gave Back

By the 1960s, many smallholders joined the government’s replanting schemes. The second generation began moving to towns, chasing education and factory jobs. Yet Ah Kong refused to sell. “Land,” he said, “has memory. It remembers those who loved it.”

When Mei Lan fell ill, he stayed beside her through the night. She asked softly, “Do you think the land still knows our names?” He looked toward the rubber trees and nodded. After her passing, he planted a jackfruit tree where she used to hang her baskets. When the fruit ripened, its sweetness filled the air like remembrance refusing to fade.

Echoes in Jenjarom

Even decades later, as I drove along the paths of Jenjarom, I could still sense that lineage - the same quiet dignity in the faces of old farmers, the same smell of rubber smoke and earth. I saw the legacy of Ah Kong and Mei Lan in every wrinkled hand that guided a hoe, every child who now drives past the land their grandparents once cleared with machetes.

Our little town has grown, but the essence remains: industriousness, thrift, humility. The vegetable plots of from my childhood memories were more than livelihoods - they were lessons. The farmers taught me, wordlessly, that purpose is not always found in titles or trophies, but in constancy - the willingness to rise, again and again, when the world forgets you.

Coda: Roots That Remember

History records the colonial planters, the politicians, policies, the prices of tin and rubber. It counts estates and exports, production and profit. But between those lines - unprinted and unnamed - live the unwritten farmers: men and women like Ah Kong and Mei Lan, who bent under the same sun that shone on the masters’ verandas, and who quietly held up the nation’s backbone.

When I think of them now - the farmers of Jenjarom, the ghosts along the old kangchu rivers, the women balancing baskets of vegetables on bicycles that rattled through the dawn mist - I see faces weathered yet unwavering. Their hands were cracked, but their hearts were whole. What united them was not race or creed, but faith - faith not merely in God, but in the stubborn grace of labour itself. Faith that the land, though silent, would one day speak for them, and that their children would walk freer, learn better, live gentler.

They endured flood and famine, war and curfew and cruelty, yet still found time to plant flowers by their doors. They carried hardship lightly and gratitude deeply. Theirs was not a life of complaint but of constancy - and in that, a quiet nobility that modern times too often forget.

Among the Chinese, there’s a long-held saying that the Hokkiens are among the most hardworking, prudent and thrifty of all - the kind who turn sweat into savings and labour into quiet wealth. Old folks used to joke that beneath every Hokkien’s bed, beside the tampoi (those trusty porcelain urinary containers of yesteryear), lay hidden gold bars wrapped in cloth. I can’t say I’ve ever seen one myself - not a glint of gold under any bed I’ve known - but if such tales were true, every ounce of it would have been deservingly earned with sweat and tears. Their wealth, if any, was not flaunted but forged - a silent testament to endurance and the dignity of toil.

In the end, I realise I am not simply writing their story. I am returning to where it all began. For in their worn hands and gentle smiles lies the shared heartbeat of our nation: proof that Malaya was built not only by policy or power, but by the perseverance of those who asked for nothing except a fair day’s harvest. And perhaps, through these words, the land finally remembers and in remembering, speaks.

JT

from ABCDEFG to PQRSTUV

J is in town again: this time for his longest period yet (4 weeks) on a long term visit pass and already warmly welcomed at the airport with passport less entry! Both he and M are slowly and surely taking progressive steps to staying together, just like J & N who exchanged vows earlier this year. 

In fact, this is the first time our F6 team gathered since the wedding over two months ago. With all of these milestones, it’s only natural that I also think about mine.

My weekend walks (often for two hours) afforded me ample time to think this through carefully. In my case, the milestone I am approaching - just as the young ones step into their 2nd act - is my third act. The key is not about simply letting go and doing nothing. That is the surest path to purposelessness, boredom and perhaps dementia. Yes, it’s a retirement (from one stage of life) but an entry into another one filled with new adventures. It is joyful indeed that, at this age, I am still able to go on new journeys and discover what mysteries there are still in store. 

Maya Angelou famously said, “You can’t really know where you are going until you know where you have been.”. So let me start there… where I have been. 

Its never easy summarising 58 years but the long walks helped me frame this. In all these time, I have climbed seven pillars: ABCDEFG. 

A is for Academics; and not just the classical primary, secondary and tertiary schools but rather lifelong learning. It’s been quite a journey from caning at the first day of school to Cambridge to fulfill a childhood dream of learning!

Bohemian - rhapsody of rebellion, a maverick not afraid to colour outside the lines: not a prefect, still a leader with stripes to prove it

Confidence plus communications (despite my lisp) coupled with charisma and courage (including the certainty that I should take 1 step back to go 2 step forwards) 

Dreams - in the long car rides to Batang, I would stare out of the window and daydream. That dream became D who made them come true, including to develop houses and homes for us all to grow in.

Excellence - esp in my career. I really only understood what it meant to be world class when I was asked to help another country with their National IT Agenda. What a path it has been from Malacca to Singapore/Bangkok/Zurich to KL/Korea/China.

F is for family and friends and I count myself lucky to still have a handful of these to hang out with anytime we want. Indeed, the best ones were made back then.

G: I could be obnoxious and bask in the fact that I lived up to my zodiac animal, the Goat. But no, I don’t think I have been the greatest of all time. God is. And I am grateful that I had the opportunity to receive his blessings when I was at my lowest with a paralysed hand. 

Having done all of the above what’s next? 

First the numbers have to add up. The young ones told us oldies about FIRE: financially independent, retire early. I think we got the first part and so it’s now on to the next. Is it late or early… while we hope to have a good health span and yes, we hope this is early enough.

Over the next 3 years, as J, N & M serve out their bonds, I will also see out my time as a full time executive. I will then move into my PQRSTUV phase.

Purpose, and after profitable years past, will now be for People & Planet.

Questions remain. My intellectual curiosity remains. So I will keep searching for answers and not just doing so alone but rather, I will pose questions to my network and together we can answer some of them, whether informally in chats or recorded for posterity on Spotify and YouTube.

Relationships with family (of course one longs for grandchildren to dote on, including to pass on life lessons to, not to mention finding that one who inherited the chronicler gene) and friends (including or particularly with those that need repairing). I have taken stands all my life and it’s inevitable that I have also stepped on toes. 

Stories, which I hope to tell in a book, in a screenplay or perhaps in a movie! 

Travel … but not in snippets of sights and sounds but rather in journeys extended by long walks, wheels over rails and gliding over water (WWW).

Unfinished business - whether on boards or with clients and colleagues or with my car collection and generally tidying up all my collections

And finally to V. I think I have this far led a voracious, sometimes volcanic, sometimes valiant but always a visceral life (my wife calls me boomz as I always fill up the room). As you can tell though these are emotive words though they thematically belong to the vivid end of the spectrum. If not for my dear wife, the love of my wife, who balances my universe… I would not have had the opportunity to do all I have been able to and more importantly, I would not have learnt how to be vulnerable, to be vigilant and to be virtuous (nice connect to the last letter of my current act).

I hope my next act will be several decades long. I hope to be in good health to enjoy them all. And most of all, I thank God for the opportunity to plan this and to be able to look forward to the mysteries ahead and may they unfold slowly for me along the way ahead.

a trilogy of poems, united

It is said that before entering the sea

a river trembles with fear.

She looks back at the path she has traveled,

from the peaks of the mountains,

the long winding road crossing forests and villages.

And in front of her,

she sees an ocean so vast,

that to enter

there seems nothing more than to disappear forever.

But there is no other way.

The river can not go back.

Nobody can go back.

To go back is impossible in existence.

The river needs to take the risk

of entering the ocean

because only then will fear disappear,

because that’s where the river will know

it’s not about disappearing into the ocean,

but of becoming the ocean.

Kahlil Gibran

Credit: Hemaraj Laten

 

You are not a drop in the ocean. You are the entire ocean in a drop.

Rumi

The past and present wilt—I have fill’d them, emptied them,

And proceed to fill my next fold of the future.

Listener up there! what have you to confide to me?

Look in my face while I snuff the sidle of evening,

(Talk honestly, no one else hears you, and I stay only a minute longer.)

Do I contradict myself?

Very well then I contradict myself,

(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

Walt Whitman

and that is why God made the world

On board, flying from Singapore to Bangkok to Kuala Lumpur and back to Singapore over a three day period, I had multiple chances to partake of the inflight entertainment served on board.

I watched three interesting movies, Bonnhoffer, Chuck (The Life Of), Discovery (The)

. The alphabetical order aside, there was a philosophical theme to it. Serendipitous perhaps... but I also this gift to find patterns. And there certainly was a consistent theme threading across all three movies; and it is this: what is life and what do we make of ours?

In Chuck, a line in the Walt Whitman poem, Song of Myself, struck me, "I am large. I contain multitudes". Everything we see, everyone we know, every place we have been in, every day since birth are in our heads. Our whole universe, in fact. I recall the quote, that the drop in the ocean is also the ocean in a drop. It made me think of what we are to do with this life of ours, within this universe of ours. Chuck died at the age of 39 in the movie, a death he foresaw, and helped him resolve to live his life until it ran out. On his deathbed, Chuck could not remember much but he did recall his dance with a stranger one afternoon and the joy it brought everyone watching and despite all the pains in the universe, that is why God made the world.

Ironically, I watched Discovery because a life had just passed. Robert Redford's. He was 89. In the movie though he portrayed a scientist researching what happens when a life passes. He found that the consciousness does not die. It goes on to the next plane of existence. And that it its not merely a memory. That consciousness goes to a new place where it reimagines life's regrettable moments. It gives itself to chance to redeem past wrongs. And it can keep cycling back until the situation is corrected.

 Redford was one of the more decent humans in Hollywood. When President Obama awarded him the medal of freedom, his citation read "Robert Redford has captivated audiences from both sides of the camera through entertaining motion pictures that often explored vital social, political, and historical themes.

"His lifelong advocacy on behalf of preserving our environment will prove as an enduring legacy as will his pioneering support for independent filmmakers across America.". But even he would have his own demons. Perhaps his spirit is resolving those now.

Few of us however are as blessed as Bonhoeffer, who actually ran out of life at the age of 39 when he was hung by the Nazis. A Lutheran pastor and founder of the Confessing Church, he left notbone but two marks in the world. The first was his writings, including his 1937 book The Cost of Discipleship, described as a modern classic, which shaped the place of Christianity in the secular world. The second was an act of courage at a time when few were prepared to be brave in Germany. Bonhoeffer staunchly resisted the Nazi dictatorship, including vocal opposition to Nazi euthanasia program and genocidal persecution of Jews. He paid for these acts of defiance with his own life a mere two weeks before the Nazis fell. His own compatriot, Rev Martin Niemoller, penned these immortal words:

First they came for the Communists

And I did not speak out

Because I was not a Communist

Then they came for the Socialists

And I did not speak out

Because I was not a Socialist

Then they came for the trade unionists

And I did not speak out

Because I was not a trade unionist

Then they came for the Jews

And I did not speak out

Because I was not a Jew

Then they came for me

And there was no one left

To speak out for me.

Bonhoeffer, however, dared to speak out and shall be remembered for it. What a legacy he has left.

And that is why God made the world.

about parenting

First off, I appreciate my kids sharing what the notion of sharenting is! I learnt a new word, and understood a new concept. I like to think of myself as a lifelong learner and am grateful that I was taught something new.

Of course, I know parenting first hand. Yes, i have read books and also received much advice. But my best parenting lessons have come from observing other wonderful mom and dads, including my very own... and naturally from my own experiences.

What I learnt is that parenting is not just about the present. In fact, its power lies in its second order effect. I should explain: when parents protect their kids, the young ones may grow up lacking courage. When parents indulge the young ones, they grow up entitled. When they over-celebrate every moment, the children grow up needing affirmation. When they are pushed too hard, they may lack confidence.

There is even a third order effect because we all know what the real world is like: it needs courage, it requires personal effort, it doesn't always reward the way one expects and we all know the value of having confidence... and the lack of these qualities lead to other consequences.

Unfortunately, in the moment, many parents dont appreciate the longer term effects. On my part, I think I am aware of it. I even try to put it into practice. 

Its a bit of an occupational hazard with me, being a strategy advisor. I tend to see things in the future. But as a parent, I can only stand aside, having raised the children all these years and hope that enough wisdom have been transferred as they confront their own challenges in their own lives. 

With my offsprings all grown up now, I have little (or no more) say in their lives anymore. Now it remains for me to be happy and proud of my kids. In fact, I guess it is sharenting. 

As a parent, its one of the few things we can still do and I hope to do it wisely, celebrating my own pride and joy

a grandmother's outpouring of happiness

大家好！

恭喜政杰与欣仪的婚礼办得非常11成功，充满着温馨，快乐，开心的气氛

还有美味的菜肴及美酒。让大家留下美好的回忆！赞赞赞❤️❤️❤️😍😍😍🥰🥰🥰

Hello everyone!

Congratulations to J and N on their incredibly successful wedding, filled with warmth, joy, and happiness.

Delicious food and fine wine were also included. It left everyone with wonderful memories! Thumbs up!

回到家了！

勾起我很多的回忆，

政杰欣仪的婚礼

孩子们，孙子们

相聚在一起，

开心，快乐，温馨

笑声 此起彼落，

真的真的令我太开心了，我已经吃晚餐了，但是我仍坐在这里发呆，思念，我好想念一幕又一幕，我又笑又流泪，但这一切都是回想在一起的开心，我必须离开餐桌了，我告诉自己

天下没有不散的筵席，我会还有同样开心的相聚，我写着写着我的泪水不是慢慢流下而是哭.

Back home!

It brings back so many memories.

Zhengjie and Xinyi's wedding.

The children, the grandchildren.

All together.

Happy, joyful, warm.

Laughter echoes.

I'm truly, truly happy. I've already had dinner, but I'm still sitting here in a daze, yearning. I miss every moment, scene after scene. I laugh and cry, but all of this is just the joy of recalling our time together. I must leave the table. I tell myself, "All good things must come to an end. I'll have another equally joyful reunion." As I write, my tears aren't just flowing, they're crying.

你们都是他的宝贝，他逐渐老了，我仍然很爱他， 虽然我们常常吵，吵不代表不爱，也许是越吵越长寿吧！但愿如此。

请你们不要为我俩的吵而操 心，と 我继续写着但人流泪到哭到抽泣。好了，不多写了，你们的成就，梦想，读书，考试都要付出努力，但是要注意健康，健康确是排在第一。

My children, grandchildren, and grandchildren, I truly love you and Dad, Tata/Kong Kong.

You are all his treasures. He's getting older, but I still love him dearly. Even though we often argue, it doesn't mean we don't love each other anymore. Perhaps the more we argue, the longer we live! I hope so.

Please don't worry about our arguments. I continue writing, but I'm crying and sobbing. Okay, enough. You all need to work hard for your achievements, dreams, studies, and exams, but pay attention to your health. Health truly comes first.

❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

我不太会用手机

又不会检查生字

就发出了.

我对时代的技能

太差了,请大家原谅,希望你看得明白.谢谢大家！

I'm not very good at using my phone, and I don't know how to check new words, so I just posted this.

My understanding of the times is quite poor, so please forgive me. I hope you understand. Thank you!

爸爸和我为你们骄傲,继续努力,加油, 加油！💪💪💪😢😢😢😂😂😂

Dad and I are proud of you. Keep working hard. Come on, come on! 💪💪💪😢😢😢😂😂😂

a gift to welcome a new family member

Dearest N!

It's finally here! The day we've all been eagerly awaiting, the day which J & you have been preparing months, if not years for!

We're so glad to welcome you customarily today into our fold, for you're already very much a part of our small family:)

Here's a little bracelet-bangle we picked out together - Dad, Megs, Julian & I - we liked that there's an intertwine of gold and white gold: for us symbolising the embrace of the old and the new, that there is strength in the weave - symbolising strong bonds, and it reminded us of the friendship anklet J and you wore, symbolising our love & friendship.

We hope you'll enjoy this little gift, and we're looking forward to cheering you and J onto your next new chapter together!

a mother's loving prayer

Heavenly Father, we commit J & N's wedding to you this Saturday afternoon. Grant them good weather, that all is well & smooth going in your favors. Be it in the church, bless all the friends & relatives unity , peace & joy, as we come together in this joyous occasion to be with the couple. 

May your holy presence be among us. Bless the lovely flower girls (E & K), good stamina, joy, laughter tmr in the church, so they will enjoy it. 

 Even, in the evening, all will be well, during the wedding dinner, in Jesus mighty name, amen🙏🥰❤️

All of D's prayers came true. 

God truly did bless us with clear skies, 

and many happy smiles; 

psalm verses that touch the heart, 

friends and family who played their part.

The Monk Who Drove A Ferrari ...

... and the Malaccan Who Drives A Ferrari

I think the whole notion of mid life crisis was invented by men to convince their wives that they needed to buy/do something crazy, even non sensible. The word crisis is frightening and probably scared the listener to acquiesce; and I must doff my hat to those who coined it.

The logic goes something like this: most of us "heroic" men have "lofty" goals... and most of these were formed when we were barely out of our boyhoods and venturing boldly into manhoods. The capitalistic ones would be wishing to make a million by the thirty or forty (depending on how unrealistic one is). The idealistic ones would pledge to change the world. The more pragmatic ones would have simplet goals: have a good career, a loving wife, wonderful kids. 

So by mid life (round about 40, I would say), we take stock and check our bank accounts, the state of the world, the relationship with the wife and the conditions of our children. Suffice to say, some or maybe many, would not have made it. So, crisis. 

And then the toys for boys. One way to mark the attainment of childhood dreams is to reward oneself with one's hard earned cash with a very nice toy. In a world of crime and punishment or its more positive cousin, prize and achievement, it does make sense to go out there and get our well earned reward. 

There is the shrewd elegance of the midlife crisis concept. For those in crisis, who have nor achieved their life goals by mid life, it would also dawn on them that these may not materialise. 

The corporate ladder is no longer there for climbing. That million dollars perhaps too out of reach. The wicked problems of the world remains wicked. So, what is one to do? Well, we can comfortably ourselves with a nice toy (that is just that little bit beyond our attainment level).

In my case, I am fortunate that I could drive nice cars, including sporty and super ones. It's less about a midlife crisis but because I am blessed with a good life. The first people I gave rides to are my parents. They deserve it. They gave me the raw materials. They nurtured me. 

So, yes, a Malaccan now drives a Ferrari. I dont know how long I will keep driving it.  Maybe until I can't crawl in and out of the driver's seat. But until then, I thank God. 

Even at this age, i do think it is not too late to have aspirations. If a teenage me could dream all that and made them come true with my dear wife, how about taking time this next lap to enjoy my parents, my kids and their families. And of course do all I can with the love of my life.

The Best Weapon

About 35 years ago, as us trainee managers got our postings to various SQ stations, we would visit each other. I recall one such visit to Egypt and we would then see places suggested by the new 'local'. On one of our drives out of Cairo towards the south, we stopped by a village and I saw a class in session just like this. Back in those days, we were using film cameras, and to my disappointment, I lost this particular roll of film (it must have dropped out of the bag while I was reloading the camera). With the help of AI (Gemini in this case), I got it to recreate the image still vivid in my mind's eye.

It was a serene, uplifting scene. 

Today, it is anything but. "Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world", said Mandela. Back then, for this class of students, they were getting armed right. Right now, students in war torn lands around the world and especially the middle east are abandoning classes in order to avoid bombs and bullets. These weapons are not ensuring peace but sowing hatred in a new generation. 

Despite (maybe because of) all our technological advancements, we are facing a simultaneity of crises from climate change and social inequalities, and of course military conflicts. While it is amazing AI can create a serene image from the past, what good would that be if humans today are wreaking havoc on the relative peace and prosperity the world has known in the past 7 decades. Where are the better angels of our nature?

Sweet Spot Wisdom

My mom, knowing that I love to collect things, decided to give me some owls, which she had procured from various vacation souvenir shops. I have since added to this starter pack and now have a parliament of owls lining the ceiling in my study.

I see them whenever I work from home and that happens a fair bit nowadays. I don't think it's because their big googly eyes stare back at me but from a young age I have been quite the owl. I would sleep late - often well past midnight. It's a habit that suits D. She is an early bird and would go to bed early but is easily spooked when sleeping lightly. I have been on the receiving end of her annoyance whenever I climb into bed thumpingly or declare my "love only love". So, going to bed when she has fallen into deep sleep means I can settle in, listen to some boring YouTube podcast and fall asleep myself. 

Last night, as I stayed up to watch the final episode of Clarkson's Farm 4, I was joined by the third woman i love dearly: my daughter, together with her fiancee. We joked about visiting Jeremy Clarkson's pub, The Farmer's Dog, the next time we are in England together; perhaps (wink wink) when they are having an Oxford college wedding. I love it that I can talk so openly with M & J.

Mother, wife, daughter : a trinity of love that will make anyone a happy man. Add father, son and children in-law, the love is more than complete. Seven-fold, the magic number indicating perfect fullness.

My train has arrived at a happy station... though I think it still has some more stops to make. There is indeed a destination. There is this chart I saw (as meaningful as ikigai) which depicted a Venn diagram of health, wealth and time. Few people can reach this point which HBS referred to as the sweet spot wisdom.

I think of my cousin in law, P, who passed last week. A good man who has accomplished much in life. Rising from humble means to manage one of the country's top law firm. And accomplished and awarded lawyer himself, he also served the country and social causes. However, at 61, a year before his retirement, he fell ill. He never got to that point, though he clearly got to his ikigai (what we are good at, what the world needs, our job and our purpose).

I discussed with D that I would like to enjoy our third act together. Over the next three to four years, there are some milestones ahead to enjoy. First J&N's wedding, then M&J's, the completion of the scholarship bonds. I think I should also use the foundation if ikigai and move into the next stage of life together with D: spending more time with the seven-fold love and hopefully growing family.