News
Letter from Pulau Tikus
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News
Letter from Pulau Tikus |
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Ooi Kee Saik THE DEATH has been reported of Dr Ooi Kee Saik. He tripped and fell down the steps at the One Stop shopping centre, Pulau Tikus, and cracked the base of his skull. The doctor had gone blind in recent years. He walked with the aid of a stick but in public places refused to let his wife or son hold on to his arm as he did not want people to think he was blind. When he recovered in hospital a few hours later he had time to instruct the wife and son to bury him with all speed; they were not to organise a funeral and they were not to tell the newspapers. He was an atheist, so his widow and son, both Christians, arranged a memorial meeting for friends at the Penang Club. His favourite song, "Danny Boy," was played on the hi-fi. Dr Ooi practised for a few years in Singapore before finally coming back to Penang in the early sixties. He was one of the few privileged locals to play polo with the white man in colonial Singapore. He and Lim Kean Siew revived the game in Penang, when he was elected president of the Penang Polo Club. He astonished the privileged pro colonial group when he became the chairman of the Penang Democratic Action Party, a group inspired by Harry Lee Kuan Yew's PAP. He and Fan Yew Teng, a DAP national leader, were fined a few hundred dollars each for sedition under the laws which we inherited from British India. Fan appealed to the Privy Council and won. Kee Saik left to settle down in Australia. Nobody has been told the real reason for his sudden disappearance. His unexpected return to Penang a few years ago remains unexplained. His father was a rich merchant whose bungalow stood at the corner of Burmah and Larut Roads (where the Penang Plaza now is). His brother, Dr Kee Wan married Bunty Cheah, of whom we wrote a note in the March issue (Letter from Pulau Tikus). Bestiality We have just learnt that for the past three years warders have been demonstrating the art of whipping convicts to boys and girls of the primary schools to "discourage hooliganism". Pictures of the bleeding buttocks of the victims enlivened the education. I was pleased to see that Human Rights Commissioner Prof. Chiam Heng Keng told the press that this was contrary to Human Rights Conventions and that the warders would "teach children that it was legitimate to use force on their peers either in the form of retaliation punishment". |
| She
also said this was against the Convention on the Rights of the Child
which Malaysia acceded to in 1995, the Convention Against Torture
and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment of or Punishment and
the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights. The Convention
on the Rights of the Child she said imposed a duty on governments to ensure
all appropriate measures were taken to protect children from any forms
of physical and mental violence. This was followed by a statement by the
Yang di-pertuan Agong (our "King") that social ills cannot be solved through
punishment, putting the blame on others and holding public lectures. A minister
in the PM's department said that the role of missionaries is not
to punish and blame others. "When social ills happened, we need to seek
out their causes,..." . The demonstrations have been ordered to cease. Malaysia and Singapore have continued the brutal British whipping system in their prisons. This piece of savagery came with the Penal Code from India whose British rulers continued to flog Indians long after Britain had given it up. Violence seems to be inherent in our society which glorifies brutality. It is not surprising that a round table discussion with 85 teachers and school heads participating has proposed that teachers should be given the power to cane female students. In my time such a thing was unheard of. And the headmaster only caned a boy on the recommendation of the form master and council of prefects. More bestiality And here is sample of maid abuse. A woman poured boiling water on her Indonesian maid by way of punishment. Our people are a very cruel people. When I was young mui tsai (girls bought from China) supplemented the Ah Sam from China in the houses of the rich. These mui tsai were often beaten and starved as punishment. Despite the Mui Tsai Ordinance of the Straits Settlements, the local rich continued use them (char bor kan in Hokken) in defiance of the law. It was Mrs Lim Cheng Ean who, with the co-operation of the Chinese Protectorate, set up the Poh Leong Keok at Barrack Road to be a shelter for runaway char bor kan. Now it's fashionable to use Indonesians because they are cheap house maids, doing such jobs as cleaning the house, painting the gates, trimming the grass, helping with the cooking and taking care of the kids and their baby sister. I know of some who help serve coffee in the boss's coffee shop and there was one so talented that she was given the job of making paper houses for the dead, and very good they were too. M. Bakri Musa, the author, has commented that we are a spoilt nation because the Australian, whose income is well above ours, does not employ maids. Corrupt "yang berhormat" Corruption is spread to Parliament. We are told that some MP s are going to be charged in court for making illegal transport claims, some exceeding RM10,000 per month. Mentioned so far are six government MPs, five from PAS, three from Keadilan and one from the DAP. And these are the guys who love to be addressed as "yang berhormat" and even describe themselves as such on their service centre signboards. |
| Are
they not aware that long, long ago the the British Parliament required
that members of the House of Commons address one another as "The Honourable
member for (the constituency)" instead of by name, a practice which has
been adopted by Brtiain's former colonies. It certainly was not an invented
title for our MP's to self-glorify with. Funeral in red It was a rare sight. The mourners following the coffin of a 106 year old man in Butterworth were all dressed in red. It is a southern Chinese custom that when a person dies over the age of 80 the descendants wear red to celebrate his or her achieving a ripe old age. But the practice is dying out. Most wear black. Down the road from here, at the funeral of a woman aged 97, I noticed the family were in white, though she had originally come from Fukien province. Perhaps the choice of white was because they are Methodists. The Butterworth man was in fact 101 years old, but the family added 5 years to make it 106, as is the custom. Yet the lady down the road as was 97 by the western calendar and the children did not add the customary years to her age. Twins A neighbour gave us a box of muar guay cakes the other day. She was celebrating the first 30 days of her son's twins. On this happy day, friends and relatives are presented with nasi kunyit (glutinous rice soaked in pounded fresh tumeric and steamed with a bit of santan, pandan leaves and peppercorn). This yellow rice comes with chicken curry cooked with santan, arng koo (red turtle) - cakes made with glutinous rice flour and filled with green pea mash and shaped like the turtle, together with a pair of peach-shaped ones if it's a girl, and round, if a boy, plus two red-coloured eggs. (We share the red egg custom with the Malays, who give their guests two red eggs each at weddings). Nowadays the pratice is growing of giving KFC, MacDonalds or AyamMas vouchers even though packaged muar guay cakes are cheap. Charng We are in the charng season, the triangular pulut rice cake wrapped in bamboo leaves. Some cooks assume we read the American inspired articles in the Sunday papers and offer us only lean meat. I bought one such charng from an old woman who was selling them, going from table to table in a coffee shop. It was sans fat meat, sans chestnut and sans salted duck's egg yoke. Not much fun eating stuff like that but, then, one must not complain too much when paying RM2.50. This is also the time when the other charng, the one you dip into sweet treacle is available. The charng festival dates from 277 BC, the period of the Warring States, when fishermen threw rice into the river to tempt the fish away from devouring the flesh of the poet Chu Yuan who had drowned himself in despair at the rejection of his advice to his ruler. The Dragon Boat festival also is as ancient, each boat with a man standing at the bow looking for the body of the official. This is also the evil month when evil is warded off and offerings made to ancestors which include the charng. |
| Missing hawker The ch'ar koay tiau man was missing when I went for my breakfast at 11 am at Lau Heo Hnui. I asked the yee choke woman why he was not working. She said he had avoided a dog while riding his motorbike and had fallen and damaged his wrist. This was what I had feared. The man is over sixty and everyday he comes to his stall, with his wife behind him riding pillion. The yee choke woman says he does not have a car because he cannot drive. But I think the real reason is that he throws his earnings on horses. The young now go for football, email betting with bookmakers of London. Most hawkers here earn good money but it all goes on horses. You see them on motor bikes or driving small old cars. The story is that last year the man's son gave him a lecture and gave him $6000 and said, If you finish this, promise me you won't gamble any more. Of course lost the money now tells everyone he gambles no more. But I don't believe him. While the yee choke woman was telling me the story, six men of the enforcement unit of the city council drifted in, checking on licences. The usual formalities were gone through. "Show me your licence," then they sat down to write out the notices summoning offenders - which means most of them - to the council for a hearing. The offence? Permanent parking instead of perambulating. A hawking licence entitles a hawker to roam the streets with their carts on wheels but in this area they are illegally parked, becoming fixed stalls for which a different licence has to be applied for. The offenders will obey the summonses, go to the council, and end up paying a few hundred dollars fine each. This extra expense, they tell me, is cheaper than applying for a fixed stall licence because in the first place you are not guaranteed a site, and secondly, more incentives have to be paid. In a few months time, the unit will come round again and as usual start off with the demand, "Show me your licence," and the show will have another re-run. From this you can see that no one is harshly treated. The law is enforced with a fine but the "stalls" are not demolished nor are their owners taken to court. "Live and let live" is our slogan which my Swiss friend, Peter, noticed. That is why, he remarked with deep insight, you are all so relaxed in Penang, unlike us in Switzerland who are tense and aggressive because we are burdened with too many regulations and self-appointed policemen.. Snatch thieves We have always called Pulau Tikus "little Rome" in honour of the city famous for its motor cycle samseng. (Remember the surprise twist at the end of the 1968 film "Grand Slam" starring Edward G Robinson and Janet Leigh? A thieves' motorcycle zooms past the conspirators' table and grabs their bag of stolen jewels and disappears). Women lose their handbags, necklaces and other ornaments almost daily in this safe little suburb of Penang. |
| Then came the shocking
news that Bangsar had beaten us. Down there in Bangsar their technology was
better - the rascals were using cars; one woman who stubbornly held on
to her handbag was dragged a few yards before she collapsed with cuts and
bruises, and that same night they even got into her house with the house
keys. But nobody cared, until the death of a victim. Now the country is
full of Malaysia Boleh talk - more police on the street, surveillance cameras
and so on. And the police? - they are lecturing the public on self defence,
citizen's arrest (a risky business), instead of minding their business, which
is putting crime prevention on the street. Let's hope those surveillance cameras
don't suffer the fate of those Swiss speed cameras which stand at street
corners rusting and forgotten, and don't forget how they gave up
on those lorry black boxes. National service We have always taken national service to mean the compulsory training of young men in armed combat to serve their country in time of war. This was what it meant during the time of the prime minister Tun Razak though his proposal was shot down. Today what national service really means puzzles. What is beyond argument is that it is a compulsory course for boys as well as girls, that the job is privatised , that the courses are called modules, described as physical, nation building, character building and community service. So there is some marching, kayaking, rafting, running obstacle courses, abseiling, taekwondo, cleaning and painting hospitals and child welfare centre, clearing rubbish in a kampong, living outdoors with basic necessities, building shelters using" natural resources", outings, discussions on unity. We are authoritatively told that "National service is conceived as a tool for nation building. Its end objective is the creation of "bangsa Malaysia" or "Malaysian race." (Yes, there is no mistake, the report did say "race"). We are even told that its aims are military training ( a tongue twister that, considering that no firearms are issued), lessons in patriotism, character building and community service We are also told that the RM500 million set aside for this soul-lifting exercise are farmed out to politically connected UMNO personalities. Who are these skilled contractors and what are the qualifications of their lucky sub-contractors? We shall know when our snoozing opposition people wake up and start to ask questions. When the questions have been asked and the answers given we shall no doubt learn why these "modules" are superior to the existing Army Cadet Corp, the Boy Scouts, the Girl Guides, and the Red Crescent and Outward Bound.# K L Chai |
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| ______ INDEX Point to the article that you want to read, and CLICK Index
page A Baba examines himself
Baba words Book review Food guide
From Pulau Tikus
Hang Li Po Letter to the editor Pigs legs
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| _____________________ The Penang File Issue 35 |