First Article ( There are 2 articles here)
Journey to the South Pole
The Challenge: Trek 1127 kilometres to the end of the earth. Alone. In record time. And live to tell the tale.
by Todd Pitock, Illustrated by Olivier Kugler
February 2010
Readers Digest
One eye was frozen shut. He hadn't slept in days, and he was hallucinating.
The visions had been appearing for 36 hours already. Out of one eye, he could see his grandfather's house, but when he turned to look, it would disappear. His grandfather, wife, sisters, and nephew would all appear behind him. He knew they weren't really there – his grandfather had died in 2002, and the others were back in the United States – but he figured he'd go with it anyway.
''We're going to be OK,'' he said to his visions. ''We're going to make it.''
He kept repeating the last line, knowing even as he spoke that his chances of survival were diminishing by the hour.
Todd Carmichael, a 45-year-old adventurer from Philadelphia, had spent 39 days alone in Antarctica, where he'd walked almost 1130 kilometres pulling a sled he'd named Betty the Pig. He'd lost 23 kilograms, and his chest was as tight as if his ribs were bound in plaster. The wind, sometimes reaching 160 kilo-metres per hour, struck his body like a
boxer's blows.
The Pig – piled with over 100 kilograms of supplies (mostly food) when Carmichael started out more than a month earlier – was down to 27 kilos. But he'd lost so much strength that the sled felt just as heavy as before. He suspected his feet were frostbitten but couldn't take off a boot to check; if he did, his foot would swell and he wouldn't be able to get the boot back on. Many trekkers had died because of bad feet.
He'd been hiking for more than 40 hours without stopping. The finish line – the American-operated research station at the South Pole – was so close, he thought he could see it. The trouble was, he couldn't be sure it wasn't another hallucination.
He faced a crucial choice: keep pulling the sled and risk imminent collapse and death, or drop the Pig and walk on without his gear and supplies. There was no margin for error if he misjudged the distance or if the station wasn't really there.
He dropped the Pig.
''I'll come back for you,'' he said. ''I won't leave you here. I'll come back.''
Carmichael had set out on a similar journey the year before. But weeks of unrelenting blizzards had forced him to call for rescue. Quitting had been humiliating. At home, he'd fallen into a depression.
''Failure stays with you,'' says Carmichael, tall with a shaved dome, deep-set eyes, and broad shoulders. ''That feeling, from the moment I was evacuated, did not go away, day in and day out. I lived in it. I couldn't move on.''
The only thing that would assuage him was to try again. This time, he set his sights on a world record. Fewer than a dozen people had ever done what Carmichael was planning: 1110 kilometres alone, unassisted, and unsupported – no food drops, no medical care, no animals pulling the sled – from the west coast of the Southern Ocean to the Geographic South Pole. The record for the fastest solo trek, which he was aiming to break, was held by a British woman, Hannah McKeand: 39 days, 9 hours, and 33 minutes. Car-michael would be the first American.
''It's no different from challenges other people might want to face,'' Carmichael said before he departed, on November 12, 2008. ''This just happens to be mine. It's a very primal thing, the desire and willingness to trek across vast distances. We've loaded up carts and pulled since the dawn of man.''
His wife, Lauren Hart, 42, understood this about him. They met in 2004, when she was interviewing him for a Philadelphia TV station. She asked why he'd never married. ''Because I'm a trekker,'' he said. She recognised that his journeys weren't just a hobby; rather, they tapped into something deeply nomadic in him – something that went beyond
competition to embrace, as he put it, ''that sense of being completely off the grid.''
They married in 2005. At home Carmichael was a devoted husband, running the business he founded – La Colombe Torrefaction, a high-end coffee roaster and retailer – and going with his wife to Philadelphia Flyers games, where she sings the national anthem. She missed him when he left on long treks, but she didn't stop him. A cancer survivor, Hart knew what it meant to reach exhaustion and press on. After Carmichael failed in his first Antarctic attempt, it was his wife who encouraged him to set out again.
He did it with another loved one in mind. His grandfather, a World War II pilot, had painted ''Tout Jour Prest'', Old French for ''always ready'', on his plane. Carmichael had the phrase tattooed on his right arm.
The temperature was minus 37 degrees Celsius when Carmichael began his trek. At Hercules Inlet, the starting point, he duct-taped his cheekbones and nose to soften the impact of frost and wind. He pulled on his wool Flyers cap and goggles, strapped on cross-country skis, and harnessed Betty the Pig to his shoulders. He glanced at his marine compass, his main navigational tool, which he secured below his chin by soldering quarter-inch copper pipes into a kind of metal bow tie. Then he set off.
The first incline ran unrelentingly for 92 kilometres, the slope intensifying the impact of 105 kilometres per hour gusts that could knock the air out of your lungs. The wind had sculpted snow and ice into formations called sastrugi, sometimes as tall as a man, sometimes as wide as a ship. Otherwise, there was nothing to see – just a vast, barren landscape.
About 13 kilometres in, his ski binding broke, then a ski pole. Calling off the trek at that point would have made sense. He had never planned to walk to the Pole. But he couldn't quit. From age 17, when he'd traversed Washington's Columbia Basin desert for a week by himself, to dozens of other solo treks across forbidding routes through the Sahara and Saudi deserts, he'd conceded defeat only once, in Antarctica.
''I've come so far, and I'm never going to get another shot,'' he told the video camera he'd brought to record and verify his journey. He was disheartened – but still determined to beat the record.
Tout jour prest.
Within two weeks, he was 80 kilometres behind McKeand's pace. Carmichael recalibrated, increasing his daily schedule from seven to ten 70-minute marches – a goal of 32 kilometres per day – to make up the deficit. In business, Carmichael
believed the key to success was sticking to a plan without compromise. ''You can never stray from your routine,'' he said. ''If you rely on adrenaline or emotion, you burn out.
Inspiration comes from doing the work, not as a catalyst to do the work.''
But keeping to a plan isn't always possible, and it didn't take long for some of Carmichael's worst fears to materialise. In Antarctica, nature itself lays traps. Tiny shards of ice collect on one side of a crevasse until they bridge the gap, creating a solid-looking veneer hiding a seemingly endless blue abyss. Carmichael stepped on one such bridge only to feel the ground yawn beneath his feet. He caught himself on one side of the ledge, held on tight, and pulled himself up. It was the closest he'd ever come to losing his life. And it was only his fourth day out.
Problems accumulated like falling snow. A neoprene veil he'd attached to his goggles stiffened into a board of frost and rubbed the skin off his nose. His cheeks swelled from the cold. On day seven, in whiteout conditions, Car-michael arrived at a long tract veined with crevasses. He wouldn't have had a problem crossing them on skis – but on foot, it was treacherous. He checked in with Patriot Hills, the base camp, using his satellite phone. ''Do not move,'' they told him.
''Absolutely do not move.''
Carmichael took stock of his position relative to McKeand's record. I'll take that advice under consideration, he thought to himself, and pressed on.
Now he was covering at least 31 kilometres a day. Once, he went 43 kilometres, supposedly the longest anyone has trekked in Antarctica in a single day. His agony was matched by surges of joy, when he believed he was doing what he was put on earth to do.
''The object of life is not to avoid pain,'' he said into the camera. ''Beautiful things sometimes require pain, and this is one of them.'' Another time he contemplated how he kept going. ''I think, It could be worse,'' he said.
''I think of my wife. She survived non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, a year of chemotherapy. That's a lot worse than this.''
He had another reason to be positive. He and Hart were in the process of adopting a six-year-old Ethiopian girl named Yemi. He was excited about becoming a father.
And life on the ice kept him busy. Via satellite, he'd get text messages from people around the world following his trek. He used every waking minute to read, prep food, set up his tent. When it was time to rest, he'd zip himself into his cocoon sleeping bag, cover his eyes to block out the 24-hour light, and sleep until his alarm went off. Then he'd scarf down 1000 calories of porridge and 850 calories of chocolate-mint patties and sausages. Food kept him warm. Eating every time he took a break, with big meals at breakfast and dinner, he ingested 8000 calories a day. But he burned 12,000, a deficit that caused him to lose more than half a kilo a day.
Determination and discouragement ebbed and flowed. By day 27, Car-michael was heavy with doubt. His face was battered, and he had burn marks under his eyes.
''I'm beginning to question whether it's physically possible to do this,'' he said to the camera. In vast fields of snow, he sank to his knees with each step. The constant plunging and lifting was like being on a StairMaster for 14 hours a day.
On day 35, he was still 32 kilo-metres behind McKeand's pace. Yet the record would soon be the least of his worries.
About 129 kilometres from the Pole, his GPS broke. His compass would only point him to the magnetic pole, hundreds of kilometres from his destination – the research station. He needed a more precise measure to be sure of his direction. If he could remember the last position he'd read on the GPS, he might live. If not, he would die.
That wasn't all. His stove gave out, so he had no way to melt snow or hydrate food. He wanted to speak with his wife, but his satellite phone was dead. He reached for the backup only to find that it, too, was useless.
He thought of Robert Falcon Scott, the British polar explorer who in 1912 had perished 18 kilometres from safety. ''I'm two days away from the Pole. No-one knows where I am. There's a small possibility I could die out here,'' Carmichael said.
By now his muscles had lost their elasticity and hung from his bones like loose rope. For days he'd been coughing up flecks of blood from ''Eskimo lung,'' frostbite on the lung tissue. That's when the hallucinations began. He saw his relatives, and the station appeared as a speck in the distance. Was it there? Was it two kilometres away – or ten?
The Pig carried his tent and all his supplies. It had kept him alive, and he'd become as emotionally attached to it as a toddler to a blanket. But now it was a millstone. He unhooked it.
He took only his camera, started off, hesitated, then turned back. Without the Pig, his sense of isolation was total and profound. He willed himself on. Whenever he lost sight of the station, he'd turn to check his tracks and make sure he wasn't walking in circles.
And then, on December 21, having trekked 47 straight hours, he stepped up onto the wide airstrip of the South Pole station.
Inside, they'd known Carmichael was coming but weren't sure when he'd arrive. A woman came out and waved to him. She pointed to the ceremonial pole, which he touched as he verified his time. He'd broken the record: 39 days, 7 hours, and 49 minutes, less than two hours ahead of McKeand.
Carmichael was elated. But he knew he looked bad and sounded confused. He told the woman who greeted him that he had to go back out to the ice: ''I have to get the Pig.'' She didn't understand, but he was too exhausted to explain. She took him inside.
''What can we do for you?''
''I'd just like something to eat,'' Carmichael said.
After more than a month of 4000- calorie-a-day deficits, he felt as if his brain were out of gas. He could smell eggs and maple syrup on a big buffet nearby. By now, he hadn't had a proper meal in almost six weeks.
''I'm sorry,'' she told him, ''but we can't feed tourists.''
''I just need calories,'' he said. ''Just give me some condiments and I'll be fine. I just need some sugar.''
But the station policy was strict: provisions were for authorised personnel. The station gets about 100 visitors a season, mostly wealthy tourists who fly in to stand next to the ceremonial pole, take a photo, and depart. A handful of trekkers on expedition teams come in, almost all of them through a club called Ski Last Degree, which arranges treks from the 89th to the 90th degree south latitude, a 111-kilometre journey. And eight or ten hard-core trekkers – the sort of people who, like Carmichael, regard Everest as a glorified Disney World – arrive every year in small groups. They, like anyone who comes through, are required to be self-sustaining.
Carmichael had arranged to have Patriot Hills drop supplies, and they had arrived as planned. But he didn't know where they were and didn't have the strength to pull the box apart anyway. He was also battling to breathe.
He convinced the woman to ask the station manager to make an exception. While she was gone, a kitchen worker who had heard the exchange gave him two big cookies piled with frosting, which he wolfed down. Then he went out to the tent that the station provides for visitors, who aren't allowed to sleep inside the buildings. He curled up on the icy floor and fell asleep.
By now, the staff realised that Carmichael wasn't a tourist and needed help. When the station manager found him coughing up quantities of blood in his sleep, the medical staff rushed to act. Carmichael could see the panic in their eyes as they looked at an X-ray of his lungs. They started him on a nebuliser. It took 48 hours to get his lung capacity to 50 percent.
''He was lucky,'' says Wayne Moore, the physician assistant who treated Carmichael. ''I think he had maybe 24 hours to live. His airway would have swollen to the point where he wouldn't have been able to move air.''
Carmichael's timing was also fortunate. ''The next day, visibility went down to about half a kilometre and stayed like that for days,'' Moore says. ''There was no way he would have seen the station.''
Everyone at the station wanted to see Carmichael. Once he was stable, he offered to give a talk about his experience to the staff. ''I thought five or six people would come,'' he recalls. More than 150 showed up.
The road to recovery was longer than his four days at the station and the three days to get back to Philadelphia. A few weeks later, his skin was still burned, and he was still about ten kilos underweight. But that was OK. He had achieved a goal that had obsessed him.
When asked what motivated him on the ice, he talked about the paradox of being self-reliant while also needing other people. The hundreds of text messages he received, many from people who'd survived cancer or other challenges, helped keep his spirits up.
''On one hand, I felt like I couldn't fail in front of all these people who were counting on me,'' he says. But then, thinking about what they'd overcome inspired him too. ''Inspiration is like love. It's something you get in proportion to what you give.''
Soon he would give – and receive – even more. When Hart met him at the airport in Philadelphia, she had news of their daughter. ''Yemi,'' she told him, ''will be ours in a few months.''
Tout jour prest, he thought. Always ready.
Second Article
Feb 6, 2010 , StraitsTimes
Honoured for her trek to South Pole
President SR Nathan congratulating Madam Sophia Pang, the first Singaporean woman to trek to the South Pole, during a reception at the Istana yesterday.
The 37-year-old freelance IT consultant, fitness instructor and mother of three was part of an all-woman Antarctic expedition team from seven Commonwealth nations. The team reached South Pole on Dec 29 last year.
President Nathan presented Madam Pang with a commemorative plate in honour of her achievement.
Sunday, February 21, 2010
Be Bold But Agile, Just Like The Tiger
Feb 14, 2010 STRAITS TIMES
Be bold but agile, just like the Tiger
Learn from the predator before going on the prowl for stocks
By Lorna Tan, Senior Correspondent
The Tiger year that starts today can be a double-edged sword for investors: For all the optimism, power and determination it symbolises, there is also a tinge of fear.
Investors have plenty to learn from both the animal's attributes and how they can enhance investment styles before embarking on the new year.
Financial experts note that tigers often live dangerously but are admired for their bravery and courage. Their patience, agility and ability to take advantage of tough situations are handy qualities as well.
Mr Vasu Menon, OCBC Bank's vice- president of wealth management Singapore, said: 'For investors with strong pockets and brave hearts, the Tiger year may prove to be a rewarding experience provided they have the courage to embrace risk and buy into markets gradually during sharp pullbacks and periods of turbulence.'
Here are some of the desirable attributes of the tiger:
Mentally and physically powerful. Tigers have a strong mindset and are physically powerful. Experts believe that investors who trade shares should also possess these attributes.
'This is true especially when the market is in a bear phase. You need mental strength to make the decision to go against the fear of investing in bear markets,' said Mr Ben Fok, chief executive of Grandtag Financial Consultancy.
It is also important to keep healthy through a disciplined lifestyle of balanced diet and exercise. Doing so will help investors maintain their composure in times of market stress, too.
Agility. Unlike last year when the stock markets rallied due to the concerted efforts of central banks, excess liquidity and low interest rates, this year will be marked by bouts of market volatility.
During such times, investors can learn from the tiger to 'prey at the right opportunity' and enter the market during a correction, said Mr Albert Lam, investment director of IPP Financial Advisers.
Just as the nimble-footed tiger has the ability and willingness to take advantage of any situation, volatile and uncertain times can also translate to good trading and investment opportunities, added Mr Menon.
Short-term investors may want to buy on weakness and sell on strength. So if you achieve a gain of 10 per cent to 20 per cent, you may want to sell and enter the market again during another pullback.
Boldness. A tiger will wait for the precise moment before pouncing on its prey. It knows it may get hurt in the attack but it takes the calculated risk.
In the same vein, if an investor has done his research and is making an informed investment decision, he should be bold enough to invest and not do so half-heartedly.
Investors often understand the product or strategy well but still hesitate to invest. 'We tell our clients if you don't understand then don't invest, but if you understand the product well then, you should invest,' said Mr Fok.
For example, when the markets were down early last year, investors knew it was the best time to invest more, but many were hesitant and did not commit to any investment. Worse still, some panicked and pulled out their investments.
'Some clients were investing on a monthly basis, and during the first half of last year they stopped investing completely,' recalled Mr Fok.
'Investors understand the concept of dollar-cost averaging, that the best time to buy is when markets are down, but they choose to stay on the sidelines perhaps because they couldn't overcome their fears.'
Independent. Tigers usually prowl individually and make decisions independently. Once they identify a target, they typically pursue it alone.
Likewise, Mr Lam encourages investors to make the effort to upgrade their knowledge by understanding the investments they are buying. This will complement the advice from financial advisers.
Mr Fok warned that investors who follow blindly the 'noises' in the market, without first doing their own research may make the wrong investments.
Courage. Tigers are brave animals even in situations, which are not to their advantage. And when they attack, they zoom in for the kill. Often, they flourish under power and attention and strive to take advantage of the circumstances they are in.
Courage is an important element when it comes to investing but it does not mean grabbing every opportunity that comes along.
Mr Lam suggests that investors hone their ability to take risk as well as their need to take it. That will allow them to invest in assets that are commensurate with the level of risk they can live with.
Graciousness. Even though tigers are portrayed as fierce animals, they can be capable of kindness, particularly when they take on the role of a protector.
Likewise, investors should not be thinking about how to make money all the time, said Mr Fok. 'They should also learn to cushion their losses and ensure they have emergency cash for use in times of need.'
Increasingly, individuals are finding it desirable to give back to society as a way to lead a more meaningful life. This is because the happiness generated from the continual pursuit of acquiring more material goods is often short-lived.
True contentment and meaning in life comes from being able to make a positive difference to issues that you feel passionately about. These can include the needs of a group of people or issues like global warming, poverty and ageing.
Be bold but agile, just like the Tiger
Learn from the predator before going on the prowl for stocks
By Lorna Tan, Senior Correspondent
The Tiger year that starts today can be a double-edged sword for investors: For all the optimism, power and determination it symbolises, there is also a tinge of fear.
Investors have plenty to learn from both the animal's attributes and how they can enhance investment styles before embarking on the new year.
Financial experts note that tigers often live dangerously but are admired for their bravery and courage. Their patience, agility and ability to take advantage of tough situations are handy qualities as well.
Mr Vasu Menon, OCBC Bank's vice- president of wealth management Singapore, said: 'For investors with strong pockets and brave hearts, the Tiger year may prove to be a rewarding experience provided they have the courage to embrace risk and buy into markets gradually during sharp pullbacks and periods of turbulence.'
Here are some of the desirable attributes of the tiger:
Mentally and physically powerful. Tigers have a strong mindset and are physically powerful. Experts believe that investors who trade shares should also possess these attributes.
'This is true especially when the market is in a bear phase. You need mental strength to make the decision to go against the fear of investing in bear markets,' said Mr Ben Fok, chief executive of Grandtag Financial Consultancy.
It is also important to keep healthy through a disciplined lifestyle of balanced diet and exercise. Doing so will help investors maintain their composure in times of market stress, too.
Agility. Unlike last year when the stock markets rallied due to the concerted efforts of central banks, excess liquidity and low interest rates, this year will be marked by bouts of market volatility.
During such times, investors can learn from the tiger to 'prey at the right opportunity' and enter the market during a correction, said Mr Albert Lam, investment director of IPP Financial Advisers.
Just as the nimble-footed tiger has the ability and willingness to take advantage of any situation, volatile and uncertain times can also translate to good trading and investment opportunities, added Mr Menon.
Short-term investors may want to buy on weakness and sell on strength. So if you achieve a gain of 10 per cent to 20 per cent, you may want to sell and enter the market again during another pullback.
Boldness. A tiger will wait for the precise moment before pouncing on its prey. It knows it may get hurt in the attack but it takes the calculated risk.
In the same vein, if an investor has done his research and is making an informed investment decision, he should be bold enough to invest and not do so half-heartedly.
Investors often understand the product or strategy well but still hesitate to invest. 'We tell our clients if you don't understand then don't invest, but if you understand the product well then, you should invest,' said Mr Fok.
For example, when the markets were down early last year, investors knew it was the best time to invest more, but many were hesitant and did not commit to any investment. Worse still, some panicked and pulled out their investments.
'Some clients were investing on a monthly basis, and during the first half of last year they stopped investing completely,' recalled Mr Fok.
'Investors understand the concept of dollar-cost averaging, that the best time to buy is when markets are down, but they choose to stay on the sidelines perhaps because they couldn't overcome their fears.'
Independent. Tigers usually prowl individually and make decisions independently. Once they identify a target, they typically pursue it alone.
Likewise, Mr Lam encourages investors to make the effort to upgrade their knowledge by understanding the investments they are buying. This will complement the advice from financial advisers.
Mr Fok warned that investors who follow blindly the 'noises' in the market, without first doing their own research may make the wrong investments.
Courage. Tigers are brave animals even in situations, which are not to their advantage. And when they attack, they zoom in for the kill. Often, they flourish under power and attention and strive to take advantage of the circumstances they are in.
Courage is an important element when it comes to investing but it does not mean grabbing every opportunity that comes along.
Mr Lam suggests that investors hone their ability to take risk as well as their need to take it. That will allow them to invest in assets that are commensurate with the level of risk they can live with.
Graciousness. Even though tigers are portrayed as fierce animals, they can be capable of kindness, particularly when they take on the role of a protector.
Likewise, investors should not be thinking about how to make money all the time, said Mr Fok. 'They should also learn to cushion their losses and ensure they have emergency cash for use in times of need.'
Increasingly, individuals are finding it desirable to give back to society as a way to lead a more meaningful life. This is because the happiness generated from the continual pursuit of acquiring more material goods is often short-lived.
True contentment and meaning in life comes from being able to make a positive difference to issues that you feel passionately about. These can include the needs of a group of people or issues like global warming, poverty and ageing.
A Little Treasure House Of Memories
Feb 19, 2010 , Straits Times
A little treasure house of memories
By John McBeth, Senior Writer
The beach house south of the western Java fishing port of Labuan was this writer's retreat for many eventful years. The land has now been taken over by a power station, but the house stands on a new site.
WHEN Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono inaugurated a new 600MW, coal-fired power station near the western Java coastal town of Labuan recently, my wife and I were particularly interested observers.
For the station stands on the very spot where we once had a weekend beach house and where we spent many happy times for the best part of a decade, entertaining ourselves and a stream of friends.
In fact, power utility company Perusahaan Listrik Negara (PLN) liked the house so much that officials took the trouble to move it lock, stock and barrel to a new site next to the project office, as a place for guests to stay.
Back in 1997, when we lived in a tiny mid-city Jakarta apartment, we felt the need for a small place out on the coast, somewhere where we could stretch out and spend long, leisurely weekends. Going to Bali seemed too time consuming at that point.
Carita was already a popular West Java weekend tourist resort, dating back to the colonial era, but we were looking for a location a little farther away and easily reachable in a two- to three-hour drive from Jakarta.
On one of many excursions, my wife and her sister, who is an architect, eventually found an old kampung house, sitting only metres from the beach just to the south of Labuan, a busy fishing port.
It lay where the Sunda Strait, separating Java and Sumatra, empties into the Indian Ocean - too far away to see most of the ships using the waterway, but in clear sight of the Krakatau volcano.
The small, uninhabited house was in terrible shape, with a leaking, moss-covered roof and rats and insects running everywhere. But we saw the possibilities and, after much debate, finally decided to buy it.
The first nights we spent there were not particularly pleasant, because there was no electricity and only limited cooking facilities. We also had to close the bedroom door to keep the vermin out.
Soon contractors tore it down as far as its concrete piles, which we used as the foundation for a new three-bedroom bungalow, built almost entirely of wood, with a loft and a broad verandah facing the sea. It was to become our retreat for almost every free weekend after that.
When the 1998 financial crisis struck, we took advantage of the depreciated rupiah to buy 12 power poles which, by prior arrangement, allowed PLN to extend the power supply as far as the house.
There were drawbacks, of course. On stormy days, waves driven by the predominant west wind would crash over the fence and surge as far as the front steps, making us wonder whether living there would become untenable.
There were also the times when a change in the tide would scatter the port's flotsam along the length of the beach in a great stinking mass of cans, bottles, old flip- flops and tattered items of clothing.
Although I was not there, we did have a home invasion by machete-wielding men who threatened the maid and my wife's ageing father and took off with an old discarded television set.
Our night security guard, a man with a criminal past himself, whose sons would help themselves to anything not locked away, was so affronted that he tracked down the intruders one by one and beat them up.
Sometimes, but not too often, we would hear loud booming noises. My wife thought it was from a construction site, but it wasn't long before we realised it was Krakatau in one of its periodic bad moods.
Our front yard was full of buried pumice, a constant reminder of the devastating 1883 eruption and the accompanying tsunami which burst along the shore - our shore - and killed more than 36,400 people.
Earthquakes were even more common. After all, one of the world's most active fault lines - the one that caused the tragedies of Aceh in 2004 and Padang last year - runs parallel with the coast of the Indian Ocean.
There were many good times - and some of the most vivid and amazingly colourful sunsets I have ever seen in Asia. Our clever black mutt, Licorice, liked the place too, learning to surf the waves among the bamboo fish platforms that lay in the shallow water offshore.
One of my fondest memories is of thousands of giant fruit bats lifting off from their refuge on the small forested island in front of us and beating their way inland in search of food. Against the golden glow from the setting sun, the sight was almost surreal.
Then there was that birthday party when I got four microlite pilots, led by a rather mad Australian diplomat, to fly in from the sea and drop water bombs on the surprised guests standing on the lawn.
The wife of the United States military attache thought it was a terrorist attack, but she should have made the connection with the Flight Of The Valkyries, which we slipped into the tape deck just before the raid.
It was only when we decided to sell the house in 2006 and find a place in Bali that we were informed the land had been chosen for a power station. So there was our proud little house on television the other day, acting as the backdrop to the inauguration ceremony.
It made us feel pretty good, frankly.
Questions
1. Describe a memorable event that happened in the past.
2. Describe an interesting stay at a holiday resort.
3. Would you prefer to live and study in another country or in Singapore? Why?
A little treasure house of memories
By John McBeth, Senior Writer
The beach house south of the western Java fishing port of Labuan was this writer's retreat for many eventful years. The land has now been taken over by a power station, but the house stands on a new site.
WHEN Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono inaugurated a new 600MW, coal-fired power station near the western Java coastal town of Labuan recently, my wife and I were particularly interested observers.
For the station stands on the very spot where we once had a weekend beach house and where we spent many happy times for the best part of a decade, entertaining ourselves and a stream of friends.
In fact, power utility company Perusahaan Listrik Negara (PLN) liked the house so much that officials took the trouble to move it lock, stock and barrel to a new site next to the project office, as a place for guests to stay.
Back in 1997, when we lived in a tiny mid-city Jakarta apartment, we felt the need for a small place out on the coast, somewhere where we could stretch out and spend long, leisurely weekends. Going to Bali seemed too time consuming at that point.
Carita was already a popular West Java weekend tourist resort, dating back to the colonial era, but we were looking for a location a little farther away and easily reachable in a two- to three-hour drive from Jakarta.
On one of many excursions, my wife and her sister, who is an architect, eventually found an old kampung house, sitting only metres from the beach just to the south of Labuan, a busy fishing port.
It lay where the Sunda Strait, separating Java and Sumatra, empties into the Indian Ocean - too far away to see most of the ships using the waterway, but in clear sight of the Krakatau volcano.
The small, uninhabited house was in terrible shape, with a leaking, moss-covered roof and rats and insects running everywhere. But we saw the possibilities and, after much debate, finally decided to buy it.
The first nights we spent there were not particularly pleasant, because there was no electricity and only limited cooking facilities. We also had to close the bedroom door to keep the vermin out.
Soon contractors tore it down as far as its concrete piles, which we used as the foundation for a new three-bedroom bungalow, built almost entirely of wood, with a loft and a broad verandah facing the sea. It was to become our retreat for almost every free weekend after that.
When the 1998 financial crisis struck, we took advantage of the depreciated rupiah to buy 12 power poles which, by prior arrangement, allowed PLN to extend the power supply as far as the house.
There were drawbacks, of course. On stormy days, waves driven by the predominant west wind would crash over the fence and surge as far as the front steps, making us wonder whether living there would become untenable.
There were also the times when a change in the tide would scatter the port's flotsam along the length of the beach in a great stinking mass of cans, bottles, old flip- flops and tattered items of clothing.
Although I was not there, we did have a home invasion by machete-wielding men who threatened the maid and my wife's ageing father and took off with an old discarded television set.
Our night security guard, a man with a criminal past himself, whose sons would help themselves to anything not locked away, was so affronted that he tracked down the intruders one by one and beat them up.
Sometimes, but not too often, we would hear loud booming noises. My wife thought it was from a construction site, but it wasn't long before we realised it was Krakatau in one of its periodic bad moods.
Our front yard was full of buried pumice, a constant reminder of the devastating 1883 eruption and the accompanying tsunami which burst along the shore - our shore - and killed more than 36,400 people.
Earthquakes were even more common. After all, one of the world's most active fault lines - the one that caused the tragedies of Aceh in 2004 and Padang last year - runs parallel with the coast of the Indian Ocean.
There were many good times - and some of the most vivid and amazingly colourful sunsets I have ever seen in Asia. Our clever black mutt, Licorice, liked the place too, learning to surf the waves among the bamboo fish platforms that lay in the shallow water offshore.
One of my fondest memories is of thousands of giant fruit bats lifting off from their refuge on the small forested island in front of us and beating their way inland in search of food. Against the golden glow from the setting sun, the sight was almost surreal.
Then there was that birthday party when I got four microlite pilots, led by a rather mad Australian diplomat, to fly in from the sea and drop water bombs on the surprised guests standing on the lawn.
The wife of the United States military attache thought it was a terrorist attack, but she should have made the connection with the Flight Of The Valkyries, which we slipped into the tape deck just before the raid.
It was only when we decided to sell the house in 2006 and find a place in Bali that we were informed the land had been chosen for a power station. So there was our proud little house on television the other day, acting as the backdrop to the inauguration ceremony.
It made us feel pretty good, frankly.
Questions
1. Describe a memorable event that happened in the past.
2. Describe an interesting stay at a holiday resort.
3. Would you prefer to live and study in another country or in Singapore? Why?
What Chinese New Year Means To Me
Malay, and missing Chinese New Years of old
February 16, 2010 Tuesday, 05:35 PM
Zuraidah Ibrahim looks back at what CNY meant for her and her family.
IT IS Chinese New Year and I am feeling nostalgic. Um yes, I know, I am Malay. This year, though, I bought kumquats and hung Chinese couplets on one wall. On New Year’s Eve, we came home late after dinner and heard the clatter of mahjong tiles. I felt strangely comforted knowing that the traditions I remember from childhood are still being practiced today.
My father is the reason I have been reminiscing about Chinese New Years past. He had Chinese friends, some of whom were rich contractors and businessmen, and others who were country bumpkins. They walked into our lives because they could hardly speak or write English and they needed father's help with writing their letters and other documents for various official or legal purposes. Some of the men were clients of the law firm at Winchester House downtown where he worked as a legal clerk. By visiting our house, they avoided Shenton Way prices.
My father would type away on his trusty Olivetti while these Chinese men hung about drinking black coffee. Most conversed in bazaar Malay but a few could speak only dialect and so they had relatives or friends in tow as translators. We would see some of them for weeks before they disappeared, never to appear in our lives again. But there were others who maintained ties with my father over the years for assorted legal wrangles. They were the ones who made Chinese New Year come alive for my siblings and me.
I remember a Mr Lee, a small, bald man with a wide smile who ran a concessions store at Roxy cinema in Katong. This was in the early 1970s. He was grateful for my father's help and visited our house every New Year, bearing oranges and packets of nuts and snacks from his store. He also gave us hongbao, causing an outburst of joy and familial feeling: my older brothers who ordinarily would not give me the time of day were suddenly brimming with offers to help me spend my newfound wealth.
Mr Lee also gave us bags of firecrackers, which my brothers would set off almost the minute he left. They were fun, but no match for the bamboo poles of firecrackers that shopkeepers in my neighbourhood showed off in the evening. Our street was called Jalan Lapang, or Clear Street, but on the eve of New Year, it was anything but that. Loud pops and crackles filled the air, kids would be out in their pajamas, some in awe, others limp with fear as they hid behind older relatives. After the ban in 1972, our street never had these shows of light and sound.
The next day, you could hear the gambling in neighbours’ houses. Our neighbour on the left celebrated Christmas and Chinese New Year with equal gusto and we would receive plates of tarts and kueh bangkit twice a year. On each occasion, my mother would be assured that they used pots and pans reserved strictly for cookies, not meats. Then, there was Baba Tan, a rich elderly Peranakan who bought kueh from my grandmother’s stall on the street outside our house and hung about with other patrons (he was the first person I heard the words 'Tuan Allah' from, except he said 'Ala', his Hokkien-trained tongue could not wrestle with the double L in the Arabic word). He would also give me hongbao, sometimes twice, because he was forgetful.
The best part of the New Year would be the visiting with my father. I remember going to the houses of two men in particular, Yam Peng and Mr Tan, somewhere in Siglap. Both were businessmen whose fortunes seesawed over the decades. Yam Peng died a few years ago, I saw in an obituary, his real fortune a large extended family that mourned him. One visit to Mr Tan’s house was memorable. His New Year gatherings were lavish and, sometime in the afternoon, a troupe of lion dancers appeared at his front gate, cymbals crashing, drums thumping. The fiery-eyed lions looked very menacing and the sounds were just too much. I ran and hid between the fridge and a cabinet counter in the kitchen. But fear gripped me all over again as I turned to look at the counter. A bowl of blackened sauce and chunks of what must have been pork stood inches away. So deeply ingrained - even at that young age - was my aversion to pork, I felt sure I was going to faint. But children are resilient, and soon I was back playing, tucking into loveletters and, I left patting my pocket full of hongbao. The horror of leaping lions and stewed pork was forgotten.
My father embodied what it meant to be colour blind. He had friends from all stations in life and all races. His friends took him for what he was and he, them. Questions of religion did not quite enter the picture and even if they did, they were elided with grace or accepted with commonsense. Some cynics say the reason the older generation was more accepting of difference was because people were not very particular then about their religious practices. You could take the easy way out and blame that, or you could try. Yet, I recall that Muslims were strict about their food even then. At Mr Tan’s, a Muslim cook brought in the Muslim meals, with minimum fuss.
Perhaps it was easier for my father’s generation to forge friendships across racial lines because class distinctions were less apparent. People lived in more mixed housing. The street I grew up in had bungalows as well as kampong houses. The kampong we moved into later had bungalows and even a tiny block of low-rise flats. The middle and upper classes were not ensconced in their private enclaves. They had to go out beyond their charmed circle often enough for daily interactions and for business.
Back then, you never knew who you could end up being friends with.
Questions
1. Describe how you spend your Chinese New Year.
2. What are the superstitions and practices associated with Chinese New Year?
February 16, 2010 Tuesday, 05:35 PM
Zuraidah Ibrahim looks back at what CNY meant for her and her family.
IT IS Chinese New Year and I am feeling nostalgic. Um yes, I know, I am Malay. This year, though, I bought kumquats and hung Chinese couplets on one wall. On New Year’s Eve, we came home late after dinner and heard the clatter of mahjong tiles. I felt strangely comforted knowing that the traditions I remember from childhood are still being practiced today.
My father is the reason I have been reminiscing about Chinese New Years past. He had Chinese friends, some of whom were rich contractors and businessmen, and others who were country bumpkins. They walked into our lives because they could hardly speak or write English and they needed father's help with writing their letters and other documents for various official or legal purposes. Some of the men were clients of the law firm at Winchester House downtown where he worked as a legal clerk. By visiting our house, they avoided Shenton Way prices.
My father would type away on his trusty Olivetti while these Chinese men hung about drinking black coffee. Most conversed in bazaar Malay but a few could speak only dialect and so they had relatives or friends in tow as translators. We would see some of them for weeks before they disappeared, never to appear in our lives again. But there were others who maintained ties with my father over the years for assorted legal wrangles. They were the ones who made Chinese New Year come alive for my siblings and me.
I remember a Mr Lee, a small, bald man with a wide smile who ran a concessions store at Roxy cinema in Katong. This was in the early 1970s. He was grateful for my father's help and visited our house every New Year, bearing oranges and packets of nuts and snacks from his store. He also gave us hongbao, causing an outburst of joy and familial feeling: my older brothers who ordinarily would not give me the time of day were suddenly brimming with offers to help me spend my newfound wealth.
Mr Lee also gave us bags of firecrackers, which my brothers would set off almost the minute he left. They were fun, but no match for the bamboo poles of firecrackers that shopkeepers in my neighbourhood showed off in the evening. Our street was called Jalan Lapang, or Clear Street, but on the eve of New Year, it was anything but that. Loud pops and crackles filled the air, kids would be out in their pajamas, some in awe, others limp with fear as they hid behind older relatives. After the ban in 1972, our street never had these shows of light and sound.
The next day, you could hear the gambling in neighbours’ houses. Our neighbour on the left celebrated Christmas and Chinese New Year with equal gusto and we would receive plates of tarts and kueh bangkit twice a year. On each occasion, my mother would be assured that they used pots and pans reserved strictly for cookies, not meats. Then, there was Baba Tan, a rich elderly Peranakan who bought kueh from my grandmother’s stall on the street outside our house and hung about with other patrons (he was the first person I heard the words 'Tuan Allah' from, except he said 'Ala', his Hokkien-trained tongue could not wrestle with the double L in the Arabic word). He would also give me hongbao, sometimes twice, because he was forgetful.
The best part of the New Year would be the visiting with my father. I remember going to the houses of two men in particular, Yam Peng and Mr Tan, somewhere in Siglap. Both were businessmen whose fortunes seesawed over the decades. Yam Peng died a few years ago, I saw in an obituary, his real fortune a large extended family that mourned him. One visit to Mr Tan’s house was memorable. His New Year gatherings were lavish and, sometime in the afternoon, a troupe of lion dancers appeared at his front gate, cymbals crashing, drums thumping. The fiery-eyed lions looked very menacing and the sounds were just too much. I ran and hid between the fridge and a cabinet counter in the kitchen. But fear gripped me all over again as I turned to look at the counter. A bowl of blackened sauce and chunks of what must have been pork stood inches away. So deeply ingrained - even at that young age - was my aversion to pork, I felt sure I was going to faint. But children are resilient, and soon I was back playing, tucking into loveletters and, I left patting my pocket full of hongbao. The horror of leaping lions and stewed pork was forgotten.
My father embodied what it meant to be colour blind. He had friends from all stations in life and all races. His friends took him for what he was and he, them. Questions of religion did not quite enter the picture and even if they did, they were elided with grace or accepted with commonsense. Some cynics say the reason the older generation was more accepting of difference was because people were not very particular then about their religious practices. You could take the easy way out and blame that, or you could try. Yet, I recall that Muslims were strict about their food even then. At Mr Tan’s, a Muslim cook brought in the Muslim meals, with minimum fuss.
Perhaps it was easier for my father’s generation to forge friendships across racial lines because class distinctions were less apparent. People lived in more mixed housing. The street I grew up in had bungalows as well as kampong houses. The kampong we moved into later had bungalows and even a tiny block of low-rise flats. The middle and upper classes were not ensconced in their private enclaves. They had to go out beyond their charmed circle often enough for daily interactions and for business.
Back then, you never knew who you could end up being friends with.
Questions
1. Describe how you spend your Chinese New Year.
2. What are the superstitions and practices associated with Chinese New Year?
Commonwealth Essay Competition- by Shao Wei
Shao Wei, a Secondary 3 student from Raffles Girls' School, won first prize in last year's Commonwealth Essay Competition. She drew on her own experience while writing a short story revolving around Chinese New Year and Valentine's Day. -- ST PHOTO: KEVIN LIM
IT HAS been more than three years since Chew Chia Shao Wei's elder sister left Singapore for high school in Boston.
But her absence at home is still keenly felt by her family.
'I was especially struck by how much my mother missed her. She would go into my sister's room and spend time there,' says Shao Wei, 15.
The Secondary 3 student at Raffles Girls' School misses her sister too, especially during Chinese New Year.
'I love Chinese New Year. My sister does too. In fact, my whole family loves Chinese New Year,' says Shao Wei, who also has a younger brother. Her father is an administrator and her mother, a psychotherapist.
'It's three days of wearing new clothes, getting hongbao, seeing relatives and friends you don't get to see often, and going to parties. And we do it together as a family. It's a shared experience, like going on holiday,' she says.
When asked by Saturday Special to write a story revolving around the Chinese New Year and Valentine's Day, the first prize winner of last year's Commonwealth Essay Competition naturally decided to draw on her own experience.
'I was thinking about my sister and putting myself in her shoes,' says Shao Wei, adding that she hopes to study overseas too.
The result is a poignant short story about family love and togetherness, one which also whimsically captures the traditions of Chinese New Year.
'It took me just two hours to write after the idea came. I wrote two other stories before this, but I didn't like them,' she says.
A voracious reader, Shao Wei started writing when she was seven or eight.
'But I probably did my first story when I was two or three. It was called The Magic Pen and I wrote it on a Post-it note,' she recalls.
Her taste in books is eclectic.
'The last one I read was Ben Okri's The Famished Road,' she says referring to the 1991 Booker Prize winner about a spirit-child.
'I also read The Idiot last month.'
The classic - by Russian literary great Fyodor Dostoyevsky - revolves around the trials and tribulations of Prince Myshkin, a beautiful human being who wants to sacrifice himself for others.
Asked if she's partial to trendy fiction for teenage girls such as Stephanie Meyer's Twilight vampire series, she says: 'My friends all told me to read Twilight. I held out for a couple of months before I succumbed.'
Her verdict? 'I managed to finish the first one but not the second. It just fizzled out for me.'
WONG KIM HOH
Xin nian kuai le*
By Chew Chia Shao Wei
CHINESE New Year is approaching and your mother gets up from her desk in the late afternoon to get a glass of water, lingering at the open door to your empty room on her way back. You are away at college, and she misses you.
The little sunlight is bluish in this room you left behind. The bed is neatly made.
When she steps inside she moves her hand over the corner of your mattress, smoothing a wrinkle that reappears when her hand stills. And when she leans her hip against your bedside table and contemplates your bed, she is not looking at a bed but at an absence.
It is not your voice and your face that is missed. It is your individual pulsing life, the thread of your daily existence woven in and out of these corners and doorways, the dearth of which is keenly felt. All the after-school naps you took on the living room sofa, arm hanging over a side, uniform rumpled under your thighs, your mind quiet - even those lent your heartbeat to the house, which holds itself a little lopsided in your not being here.
On these late afternoons, to your mother you are your empty room, your vacant chair round the dining table, your unfilled space in the five-seat car. On these afternoons when the house is quiet, your mother sighs and badly wants you home.
Before you went back to school you took your sister shopping for New Year clothes.
Already the songs had started to play, cymbals clashing and exuberant voices ringing out in Chinese across the department stores. Even if you could not recognise the words, each song felt familiar enough for you to sing.
In primary school, they taught you a selection of songs. This was done in the Hall, everyone reading the lyrics off the screen on the stage. You learnt these songs without trying, and when Chinese New Year itself came you sang them boisterously with your siblings in the car between stops.
They did not teach you the songs every year, so as you grew older you could only repeat the choruses, and then only of a more limited number of songs. Singing boisterously in the car no longer held the same pleasure for the three of you as it used to, which gave your father some relief as he drove.
Also as you got older, red clothes stopped being a requisite of Chinese New Year. Then you were satisfied by having red in your clothes, and later on any clothes were fine, as long as they were not black.
Even these tinily evolving Chinese New Years were still Chinese New Year. Every year still in the days leading up to Chinese New Year, you watched your father hanging the red cloth above the front door.
Every year still your family began First Day mornings with a tea ceremony, exchanging auspicious greetings as you and each of your siblings took turns to serve your parents cups of tea and receive your red packets. Every year still the family photograph would be taken somewhere between the tea ceremony in the living room and the rush to the car. Every year it was visits to people whom you grew up associating mainly with red packets and roast pork and gong xi fa cai, gong xi fa cai, how big you have grown!
This year you watched your sister holding out outfits for your approval and as you nodded you realised that all the clothes she was buying were Chinese New Year clothes; all the clothes you bought that day were just clothes.
Over the three days of Chinese New Year visiting, your family thinks of you often.
You know this because even without being there, you amass a small stack of red packets that your siblings collect for you from friends and relatives who sort of remember that they have an elder sister.
Every party they stop at is a party your family has been dutifully going to for years, and they still remember the years you went to the same party with them.
In the car between stops, your sister sits on one side and your brother sits on the other and in the unoccupied seat their cellphones and wallets and red packets co-exist with a box of tissues.
Still, your family has a happy Chinese New Year. When they come home through the front door each night, smiling and taking off their shoes, one or two of them think wistfully of yours in the cupboard. Your absence is another change to the Chinese New Year tradition.
*Xin nian kuai le means Happy New Year in Mandarin
IT HAS been more than three years since Chew Chia Shao Wei's elder sister left Singapore for high school in Boston.
But her absence at home is still keenly felt by her family.
'I was especially struck by how much my mother missed her. She would go into my sister's room and spend time there,' says Shao Wei, 15.
The Secondary 3 student at Raffles Girls' School misses her sister too, especially during Chinese New Year.
'I love Chinese New Year. My sister does too. In fact, my whole family loves Chinese New Year,' says Shao Wei, who also has a younger brother. Her father is an administrator and her mother, a psychotherapist.
'It's three days of wearing new clothes, getting hongbao, seeing relatives and friends you don't get to see often, and going to parties. And we do it together as a family. It's a shared experience, like going on holiday,' she says.
When asked by Saturday Special to write a story revolving around the Chinese New Year and Valentine's Day, the first prize winner of last year's Commonwealth Essay Competition naturally decided to draw on her own experience.
'I was thinking about my sister and putting myself in her shoes,' says Shao Wei, adding that she hopes to study overseas too.
The result is a poignant short story about family love and togetherness, one which also whimsically captures the traditions of Chinese New Year.
'It took me just two hours to write after the idea came. I wrote two other stories before this, but I didn't like them,' she says.
A voracious reader, Shao Wei started writing when she was seven or eight.
'But I probably did my first story when I was two or three. It was called The Magic Pen and I wrote it on a Post-it note,' she recalls.
Her taste in books is eclectic.
'The last one I read was Ben Okri's The Famished Road,' she says referring to the 1991 Booker Prize winner about a spirit-child.
'I also read The Idiot last month.'
The classic - by Russian literary great Fyodor Dostoyevsky - revolves around the trials and tribulations of Prince Myshkin, a beautiful human being who wants to sacrifice himself for others.
Asked if she's partial to trendy fiction for teenage girls such as Stephanie Meyer's Twilight vampire series, she says: 'My friends all told me to read Twilight. I held out for a couple of months before I succumbed.'
Her verdict? 'I managed to finish the first one but not the second. It just fizzled out for me.'
WONG KIM HOH
Xin nian kuai le*
By Chew Chia Shao Wei
CHINESE New Year is approaching and your mother gets up from her desk in the late afternoon to get a glass of water, lingering at the open door to your empty room on her way back. You are away at college, and she misses you.
The little sunlight is bluish in this room you left behind. The bed is neatly made.
When she steps inside she moves her hand over the corner of your mattress, smoothing a wrinkle that reappears when her hand stills. And when she leans her hip against your bedside table and contemplates your bed, she is not looking at a bed but at an absence.
It is not your voice and your face that is missed. It is your individual pulsing life, the thread of your daily existence woven in and out of these corners and doorways, the dearth of which is keenly felt. All the after-school naps you took on the living room sofa, arm hanging over a side, uniform rumpled under your thighs, your mind quiet - even those lent your heartbeat to the house, which holds itself a little lopsided in your not being here.
On these late afternoons, to your mother you are your empty room, your vacant chair round the dining table, your unfilled space in the five-seat car. On these afternoons when the house is quiet, your mother sighs and badly wants you home.
Before you went back to school you took your sister shopping for New Year clothes.
Already the songs had started to play, cymbals clashing and exuberant voices ringing out in Chinese across the department stores. Even if you could not recognise the words, each song felt familiar enough for you to sing.
In primary school, they taught you a selection of songs. This was done in the Hall, everyone reading the lyrics off the screen on the stage. You learnt these songs without trying, and when Chinese New Year itself came you sang them boisterously with your siblings in the car between stops.
They did not teach you the songs every year, so as you grew older you could only repeat the choruses, and then only of a more limited number of songs. Singing boisterously in the car no longer held the same pleasure for the three of you as it used to, which gave your father some relief as he drove.
Also as you got older, red clothes stopped being a requisite of Chinese New Year. Then you were satisfied by having red in your clothes, and later on any clothes were fine, as long as they were not black.
Even these tinily evolving Chinese New Years were still Chinese New Year. Every year still in the days leading up to Chinese New Year, you watched your father hanging the red cloth above the front door.
Every year still your family began First Day mornings with a tea ceremony, exchanging auspicious greetings as you and each of your siblings took turns to serve your parents cups of tea and receive your red packets. Every year still the family photograph would be taken somewhere between the tea ceremony in the living room and the rush to the car. Every year it was visits to people whom you grew up associating mainly with red packets and roast pork and gong xi fa cai, gong xi fa cai, how big you have grown!
This year you watched your sister holding out outfits for your approval and as you nodded you realised that all the clothes she was buying were Chinese New Year clothes; all the clothes you bought that day were just clothes.
Over the three days of Chinese New Year visiting, your family thinks of you often.
You know this because even without being there, you amass a small stack of red packets that your siblings collect for you from friends and relatives who sort of remember that they have an elder sister.
Every party they stop at is a party your family has been dutifully going to for years, and they still remember the years you went to the same party with them.
In the car between stops, your sister sits on one side and your brother sits on the other and in the unoccupied seat their cellphones and wallets and red packets co-exist with a box of tissues.
Still, your family has a happy Chinese New Year. When they come home through the front door each night, smiling and taking off their shoes, one or two of them think wistfully of yours in the cupboard. Your absence is another change to the Chinese New Year tradition.
*Xin nian kuai le means Happy New Year in Mandarin
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
SIMPLE HOLIDAYS, RICH MEMORIES, by Lee Wei Ling, Straits Times, Dec 13, 2009
Dec 13, 2009 , Starits Times
It is December now, and the rain is pouring like water gushing from a fire hydrant as I write this. For some strange reason, I like this kind of weather - perhaps because the time of the north-east monsoon coincided with the long holiday when I was in school.
Today, I tried to fix an appointment for a patient to see another specialist. Two out of the three specialists I tried to contact were holidaying overseas. This brought back memories of my own school holidays more than 40 years ago.
My childhood holidays were much humbler than what the children of my colleagues enjoy today. Most of my holidays were spent with my paternal grandmother. Before August 1965, my family would also spend a portion of the holidays on Fraser's Hill or Cameron Highlands in Peninsula Malaysia.
Indeed, we were on Cameron Highlands in the days before Separation. I remember my mother, my brothers and I driving back to Singapore in a hurry on Aug 8, 1965. My siblings and I discovered the reason only the next day.
After 1965, we would spend part of our school holidays at Changi Cottage or the chalets next door, bungalows by the sea that government officials - civil servants as well as elected officials - could use.
We did the usual things that children did on seaside holidays. I would rise early to watch the sun rise and meander along the beach. After breakfast, my brothers and I would build sandcastles, dig for clams and search for starfish and hermit crabs. When the tide was in, we tried our luck at fishing with hook and bait or swam in the sea. If it was raining, as it often did in December, we would read or play games indoors.
I remember playing a memory game using cards with the young Lee Chuen Neng, who was staying then with his father K.C. Lee and his family in a neighbouring chalet. More than 40 years later, we are still good friends; he is a cardiothoracic surgeon and head of the department of surgery at the National University Hospital, and I'm a neurologist and director of the National Neuroscience Institute.
These holidays were the rare occasions when my brothers and I had our father's company for the entire day. He would sometimes join us on the beach and swim with us. My mother would watch over us children whenever we went swimming. Without saying so, she was our lifeguard.
Every evening, my father would play golf at the nearby Changi golf course. We would walk with him, sometimes pulling his golf trolley. Sometimes, I would walk ahead to the next hole and roam in the thick vegetation nearby. Those trees and undergrowth were probably left there to increase the chances of a golfer losing his golf ball.
Simple holidays, rich memories
Sun, sand and sea in Changi made for great school breaks during childhood
By Lee Wei Ling
It is December now, and the rain is pouring like water gushing from a fire hydrant as I write this. For some strange reason, I like this kind of weather - perhaps because the time of the north-east monsoon coincided with the long holiday when I was in school.
Today, I tried to fix an appointment for a patient to see another specialist. Two out of the three specialists I tried to contact were holidaying overseas. This brought back memories of my own school holidays more than 40 years ago.
My childhood holidays were much humbler than what the children of my colleagues enjoy today. Most of my holidays were spent with my paternal grandmother. Before August 1965, my family would also spend a portion of the holidays on Fraser's Hill or Cameron Highlands in Peninsula Malaysia.
Indeed, we were on Cameron Highlands in the days before Separation. I remember my mother, my brothers and I driving back to Singapore in a hurry on Aug 8, 1965. My siblings and I discovered the reason only the next day.
After 1965, we would spend part of our school holidays at Changi Cottage or the chalets next door, bungalows by the sea that government officials - civil servants as well as elected officials - could use.
We did the usual things that children did on seaside holidays. I would rise early to watch the sun rise and meander along the beach. After breakfast, my brothers and I would build sandcastles, dig for clams and search for starfish and hermit crabs. When the tide was in, we tried our luck at fishing with hook and bait or swam in the sea. If it was raining, as it often did in December, we would read or play games indoors.
I remember playing a memory game using cards with the young Lee Chuen Neng, who was staying then with his father K.C. Lee and his family in a neighbouring chalet. More than 40 years later, we are still good friends; he is a cardiothoracic surgeon and head of the department of surgery at the National University Hospital, and I'm a neurologist and director of the National Neuroscience Institute.
These holidays were the rare occasions when my brothers and I had our father's company for the entire day. He would sometimes join us on the beach and swim with us. My mother would watch over us children whenever we went swimming. Without saying so, she was our lifeguard.
Every evening, my father would play golf at the nearby Changi golf course. We would walk with him, sometimes pulling his golf trolley. Sometimes, I would walk ahead to the next hole and roam in the thick vegetation nearby. Those trees and undergrowth were probably left there to increase the chances of a golfer losing his golf ball.
Among the bushes and trees, I would pretend that I was a soldier on a topographic march. I had a good sense of direction and never got lost, although I was often scratched or poked by sharp twigs and thorns. But that merely made the game more realistic, so I didn't mind.
Often, at least once a year while we were in Changi, my father would take us to Pulau Ubin. We would visit the Outward Bound School there. It was then rather under-developed by today's standards, but knowing no better, we enjoyed it, as we tried out the obstacle course.
I still have black-and-white photographs of my elder brother Hsien Loong climbing a net-like structure with parallel rows of horizontal ropes attached to parallel rows of vertical ropes. In the photograph, Loong had made it to the top, while I was trying very hard to catch up with him, as indicated by the determined expression on my face. My younger brother Hsien Yang was then too young to try the obstacle.
All three of us enjoyed our holidays in Changi and the quality time we had with our parents. I doubt we would have enjoyed ourselves more if our parents had flown us off to more exotic and expensive destinations overseas.
In the late 1970s, I remember one doctor friend deflating the ego of another doctor when the latter was boasting about his skiing holiday. My friend feigned ignorance and asked: 'Where did you go skiing? Off Coney Island (also known now as Pulau Serangoon)?' I chortled, for I shared my friend's attitude towards downhill skiing.
It is a chance for the rich to show off their ski costumes and stylish sunglasses. Equipment and ski lift passes are expensive, and skiing accidents are common. In the late 1970s, if you could afford to travel overseas to ski, you had to be very wealthy.
Now my younger doctors, with children in primary school, routinely fly their entire families to Australia, New Zealand, Britain, Europe, the United States or China during the year-end school holidays. A few with larger families may opt to drive up to Malaysia. But on the whole, the children of the upper- middle-class are growing up with expectations that expensive holidays overseas are the norm.
My readers can probably guess what I think of this trend. It is a waste of money to travel vast distances for a holiday when there are many interesting places near Singapore one could visit for both fun and education. It doesn't make sense for well-off Singaporean children to be more familiar with Vail or Aspen than with Borobudur or Angkor Wat.
But the festive season will be soon upon us and I don't want to sound like Scrooge. So I will end this trip down memory lane by wishing all my readers a happy year ahead - and by reminding them that misfortune can occur at any time and it is best not to get used to luxuries.
The writer is director of the National Neuroscience Institute.
MORALS AND MORALE by Lee Wei Ling, Straits Times, 29 Nov, 2009
Straits Times , Nov 29, 2009
Chinese class taught me values that I still live by today; English spelling gave me grief
By Lee Wei Ling
Recently, my father acknowledged that he made a mistake in deciding how Chinese should be taught in our schools.
I remember many years ago Mr Lim Kim San telling my father that if my brothers and I had not been able to cope with both Chinese and English, he would not have insisted that all ethnic Chinese students acquire an equal facility in both languages.
My first nine years of formal schooling were spent in Nanyang Girls' - five in its primary school (I had a double promotion) and four in its secondary. I had no difficulty learning Chinese and I did not object to tingxie or moxie.
In tingxie, the teacher would pronounce the words and the student would try to write them down. As far as I know, tingxie is still practised in our schools. Moxie requires one to write down an entire essay or poem from memory.
For every wrong character, one mark would be deducted; and for every wrong punctuation mark, half a mark. As many of the classical poems and essays exceeded 100 characters, one could end up with a negative score.
Those who know about moxie might be surprised to hear that I enjoyed memorising the classics, and I never got less than 90 marks for moxie. It was English spelling that I had problems with.
Since I had no difficulty with written Chinese, I blamed my problems with English spelling on the strange spelling rules of the language. It was only many years later that I discovered I was dyslexic in English. To this day, I sometimes cannot decide whether to use a 'd' or a 't', a 'v' or a 'z'. I have even more difficulty with vowels. Fortunately, my e-mail and word-processing programs have spell checkers.
I had two favourite places where I would memorise my Chinese text. One was a particular tree on the Istana grounds with branches suitable to sit and lean back on; the other was a ledge outside the Istana building where I could sit and lean against the wall.
Both locations gave me a good view of the Istana grounds - the trees, shrubs, grass and ponds. And when twilight blurred the view, I imagined I was looking down on a vast lake or gloomy landscape, as they were described in the poems I was memorising.
Of course, there was always the danger I might fall off the tree or ledge - a danger that served to keep me alert as I studied, and was more effective in doing so than caffeine.
I rather enjoyed memorising the Chinese classics. The exercise trained my mind, and in later years, when I had to remember many medical facts, I could do so without much difficulty. And over and above the mental training, I absorbed many moral values from the Chinese classics I memorised. Some of these values are so much a part of me now that I find it difficult not to live by them.
When Chinese-medium schools were phased out, the Chinese language curriculum changed. Chinese culture and moral values were no longer always reflected in the Chinese textbooks. I remember one of my nephews, now 21, protesting: 'What Chinese culture are we being taught when we read Hans Christian Andersen in Chinese?'
I agreed with him wholeheartedly. I am told that the textbooks have been changed since then. I can only hope they have been changed for the better.
I took two major Chinese examinations: Chinese as a first language in my Secondary 4 school-leaving examination in Nanyang Girls' High School; and then later, the GCE O-level Chinese as a second language paper when I was in pre-university at Raffles Institution (RI). I took the latter because all the others in my RI cohort had taken it in their O levels. I received distinctions in both instances.
Recently, while searching for my old certificates, I found an exercise book in which copies of my essays published in Chinese newspapers were neatly pasted.
I remember being paid for those essays. In those days, $10 was big money to me. It was my mother who had cut out the newspaper articles and neatly pasted them in an exercise book.
I reread these essays. Years of disuse of the Chinese language - except to speak to some of my patients - have greatly lowered my ability to write in Chinese. The change from the old Chinese script to the modern simplified one adds to my problem. I know I cannot write Chinese essays now of the same quality as the ones I wrote as a teenager.
I do not regret that my parents sent me to a Chinese-medium school up to Sec 4, nor do I consider all the time I spent memorising those classical essays and poems as wasted.
I learnt how to behave honourably like a junzi - a cultured, honourable person. Among all the subjects I studied in school, I slogged the hardest for Chinese, but that was time well spent.
However, I recognise that not everyone can cope with learning two languages at a high level - especially English and Chinese, which are such different languages. For many pupils from English-speaking homes, Chinese is more a foreign language than a mother tongue. Such pupils form a growing proportion of our Primary 1 cohort.
The everyday use of Chinese will also be transformed by the development of IT, which will make certain skills like writing less important.
Schools have to keep up with these trends and customise the teaching of the language to meet the needs of different groups of students.
Chinese should be taught in a way that students can understand, and for a purpose that they will find useful. They should also be tested in ways that are relevant to how they would use the language in real life.
In that way, we can ensure that as many Chinese Singaporeans as possible retain their interest in the language throughout their lives.
The writer is director of the National Neuroscience Institute.
Morals and morale
Chinese class taught me values that I still live by today; English spelling gave me grief
By Lee Wei Ling
I remember many years ago Mr Lim Kim San telling my father that if my brothers and I had not been able to cope with both Chinese and English, he would not have insisted that all ethnic Chinese students acquire an equal facility in both languages.
My first nine years of formal schooling were spent in Nanyang Girls' - five in its primary school (I had a double promotion) and four in its secondary. I had no difficulty learning Chinese and I did not object to tingxie or moxie.
In tingxie, the teacher would pronounce the words and the student would try to write them down. As far as I know, tingxie is still practised in our schools. Moxie requires one to write down an entire essay or poem from memory.
For every wrong character, one mark would be deducted; and for every wrong punctuation mark, half a mark. As many of the classical poems and essays exceeded 100 characters, one could end up with a negative score.
Those who know about moxie might be surprised to hear that I enjoyed memorising the classics, and I never got less than 90 marks for moxie. It was English spelling that I had problems with.
Since I had no difficulty with written Chinese, I blamed my problems with English spelling on the strange spelling rules of the language. It was only many years later that I discovered I was dyslexic in English. To this day, I sometimes cannot decide whether to use a 'd' or a 't', a 'v' or a 'z'. I have even more difficulty with vowels. Fortunately, my e-mail and word-processing programs have spell checkers.
I had two favourite places where I would memorise my Chinese text. One was a particular tree on the Istana grounds with branches suitable to sit and lean back on; the other was a ledge outside the Istana building where I could sit and lean against the wall.
Both locations gave me a good view of the Istana grounds - the trees, shrubs, grass and ponds. And when twilight blurred the view, I imagined I was looking down on a vast lake or gloomy landscape, as they were described in the poems I was memorising.
Of course, there was always the danger I might fall off the tree or ledge - a danger that served to keep me alert as I studied, and was more effective in doing so than caffeine.
I rather enjoyed memorising the Chinese classics. The exercise trained my mind, and in later years, when I had to remember many medical facts, I could do so without much difficulty. And over and above the mental training, I absorbed many moral values from the Chinese classics I memorised. Some of these values are so much a part of me now that I find it difficult not to live by them.
When Chinese-medium schools were phased out, the Chinese language curriculum changed. Chinese culture and moral values were no longer always reflected in the Chinese textbooks. I remember one of my nephews, now 21, protesting: 'What Chinese culture are we being taught when we read Hans Christian Andersen in Chinese?'
I agreed with him wholeheartedly. I am told that the textbooks have been changed since then. I can only hope they have been changed for the better.
I took two major Chinese examinations: Chinese as a first language in my Secondary 4 school-leaving examination in Nanyang Girls' High School; and then later, the GCE O-level Chinese as a second language paper when I was in pre-university at Raffles Institution (RI). I took the latter because all the others in my RI cohort had taken it in their O levels. I received distinctions in both instances.
Recently, while searching for my old certificates, I found an exercise book in which copies of my essays published in Chinese newspapers were neatly pasted.
I remember being paid for those essays. In those days, $10 was big money to me. It was my mother who had cut out the newspaper articles and neatly pasted them in an exercise book.
I reread these essays. Years of disuse of the Chinese language - except to speak to some of my patients - have greatly lowered my ability to write in Chinese. The change from the old Chinese script to the modern simplified one adds to my problem. I know I cannot write Chinese essays now of the same quality as the ones I wrote as a teenager.
I do not regret that my parents sent me to a Chinese-medium school up to Sec 4, nor do I consider all the time I spent memorising those classical essays and poems as wasted.
I learnt how to behave honourably like a junzi - a cultured, honourable person. Among all the subjects I studied in school, I slogged the hardest for Chinese, but that was time well spent.
However, I recognise that not everyone can cope with learning two languages at a high level - especially English and Chinese, which are such different languages. For many pupils from English-speaking homes, Chinese is more a foreign language than a mother tongue. Such pupils form a growing proportion of our Primary 1 cohort.
The everyday use of Chinese will also be transformed by the development of IT, which will make certain skills like writing less important.
Schools have to keep up with these trends and customise the teaching of the language to meet the needs of different groups of students.
Chinese should be taught in a way that students can understand, and for a purpose that they will find useful. They should also be tested in ways that are relevant to how they would use the language in real life.
In that way, we can ensure that as many Chinese Singaporeans as possible retain their interest in the language throughout their lives.
The writer is director of the National Neuroscience Institute.
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