Old Tea Pot

While washing up the coffee pot this morning an old story came to mind.

On a five-foot-way of good old Penang's Heritage enclave, some 'uncles' were having a leisurely tea session when who should walk by but an 'angmoh' tourist toting a back pack.  He was looking high and low taking in every little detail of the quaint scenery.

As he got close to where the old uncles were seated, he paused and stared at an old and brown-stained tea pot sitting on a tray, from which one of the uncles occasionally poured tea for his friends.  He was so strangely attracted by the tea pot that he inquired on the spot as to whether the owner was willing to sell it.

Surprise gave way to greed as the old guy contemplated making some good money out of this strange angmoh who seemed deranged enough to want to buy an old and well-used teapot, one which he can get from any crockery shop in town for a pittance.

He said he was willing to part with this 'heirloom' for $200.

The tourist haggled for a lesser amount.  They finally settled at a price of $150.  The old man said for him to come back in an hour's time so that he and his friends can finish their tea session.  The tourist said OK, paid him a deposit for the pot and went his way promising to be back later to collect his purchase.

When he came back later he was shown a sparkling clean tea pot.  The old man had given the gem a good scrubbing and polishing job and felt mighty proud of it too.  The shiny thing almost looked new.  But to his surprise and dismay, the 'angmoh' refused to accept it as the pot he had paid the deposit for.

'No, no no...' he said.  'That's not the teapot I wanted.  The one I wanted was a real antique and brown in color with tea-stains all over.  I don't want one that is cleaned and polished!  It's of no value to me.  Now give me the one I wanted or give me back my deposit!'

The old guy reluctantly returned his deposit.

Hence, I'm told, to this day those old uncle tea drinkers don't polish their teapots.  They just throw out the used tea leaves and rinse them out.

The Promise

There was a phone ringing in the distance. It sounded like it was from a neighbor's house. It kept ringing but nobody picked it up. The sound came nearer after awhile. She stirred from her afternoon nap in the reclining rattan chair. Then she realized it was her own phone in the living room that was ringing. She got up quickly to pick it up. She tried to say 'hello', but her lips refused to part. Quickly she wetted her lips and said 'hello' again. It was a voice of a little girl on the other end. She was crying. She sounded desperate.

'Auntie, please come to the hospital. My mother is very sick. She cannot talk. They said they have to operate…' The voice trailed off and she only heard her uncontrollable sobbing.

She recognized the voice. The girl and her elder brother were siblings she used to baby-sit every now and then when their mother had to go to the hospital for her regular checks. The girl was then about 3 years of age and her brother was 5. Her mother's condition had been getting worse recently, but she single-handedly tried to raise the kids. The husband had been going after another woman who had now openly become his mistress. Too lazy to earn his own money, he preyed on women to fund his existence. 'What a parasite! She must have been blind to have married him. But what's done can't be undone. Poor woman. There wasn't even a relative that she knows of.'

When she got to her in the 3rd class ward, the woman was barely breathing. She wondered why she wasn't put on life support. She spoke to the doctor who was about to send her into the Operation Room. She pleaded with him to put her on oxygen because it seemed to her she wasn't going to last very long. He agreed to do it.

She went back to stay with her beside her bed. The woman grabbed both of her hands and said hoarsely, 'Please promise you will take care of my 2 children. I have no one else to depend on.' Her voice was almost a whisper. Her final effort to get an answer from her almost exhausted her.

Even as she tumbled the question over in her mind, she said yes. It was going to be a heavy burden on her. But how could she ever refuse a friend who's most probably making a last request of her life? She had no time to weigh the consequences of her reply. She said yes even though she was only 26 and had 2 small children of her own to raise while both she and her husband were struggling to make ends meet.

She said to the nurse, 'Please, the doctor said to put her on oxygen. She's very weak.' She'd noticed the distance to the O.R. was quite far and she was having difficulty breathing. She was afraid the woman might not make it.

The nurse said, 'Don't worry. This is our job. We know what we're doing.' She spoke as if the visitor was interfering.

They lifted her from the bed and wheeled her away on a stretcher. But a moment later she saw the doctor himself personally carrying the limp woman and rushing back into the Intensive Care Unit followed by the nurse and other attendants. They tried to revive her.

But she was gone. She held the girl close to her and they cried.

Just to convince herself she did the right thing, she called her mother and told her what she had put myself into. She said, 'How could you make such a promise? You think you can handle such a burden?'

'Mother,' she said defensively, 'what do you expect me to say to a dying friend's last request? She had no one. No family. I'm her only hope. I couldn't just say no.'

Even if she had said no, she would still end up with these children anyway. They had always looked to her for help had no other relatives that they could depend on. At least the mother died knowing her children will be taken care of.

Somehow, she found the will to do as she promised. She partitioned an extra room in her wooden house and raised the kids like they were her own.


They are now both grown up and married. The boy got involved with a Buddhist Charity Organisation and went to Indonesia to help the tsunami victims rebuild their lives. He and his wife are both still there. They are childless.

The girl met a young man who did not pass her approval but she stubbornly stuck with him. He inherited a fortune from his parents but he soon spent all the money. It seemed like she was destined to live her life like her mother did. The husband took no responsibility for the family. The brother sends her RM1000 every month to help put her children through school.

They're on their own now. She had kept her promise.

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This is a true story.

Why does a chicken learn karate?

He went to work part time in a shoe store.  There was this guy who was bigger in size working in the store with him together with a few others.  He didn't take too much notice of him at first, as he didn't quite like the way the guy swaggered, talked a little too much and too loudly.  So he kept a tolerable distance from him.  He kept to his work and twice a week in the evenings he would routinely attend karate class.

His dad's advice had been straight-forward: Work hard and stay out of trouble.

But life has a way of spitting in your face just to test your patience.  He knew that bragging about anything just wasn't profitable but like most teenagers he loved to discuss what he did in his spare time with his colleagues.  Word got around.  Big guy with the big mouth heard of his regular pastime. 

"So I hear you're the chop-chop kid, huh?  Wow… Let's see what you can do with bricks.  Chop-chop!". 

Big guy came up with some discarded bricks and stacked up a few in the store's backyard where the guys sometimes hanged out during their breaks.  He ignored him and went back into the store.  Stay out of trouble.

Big guy followed him in and said, "Hey, what's the problem?  Hands too soft or what?  Sissy's shouldn't learn how to fight!"  

He looked at big guy and said quietly, "Look, I don't think I need to show you what I can do with my hands.  No point chopping bricks.  Doesn't prove anything." 

But Big guy didn't want to give up just yet.  Every now and then he would make some taunting remarks.  He had this notion that with his size it was enough for him to push little guys around.  And nobody's going to push back.  Not even karate kids.

He kept reminding himself of his dad's words: Stay out of trouble, stay out of trouble, stay out of trouble …. 

The pressure eventually began to build up.  His nerves and senses got more and more tensed day by day.  Every word, every gesture the big guy made rang louder and more obtrusive each time.

He was up in the store-room getting a pair of shoes for a customer.  Big guy came up later and was rummaging around looking for something.  And the remark came rather casually, as if two old friends were discussing the weather.

"Why does a chicken learn karate?"

There was an exchange of words, loud and harsh, back and forth.  Big guy lunged at him with a fist.  He dropped the shoes he had in his hands.  By the time he had done with him, there were shoes and shelves all about the room like a cyclone tore through it.  Big guy had a badly mauled up face and he couldn't see where he was going.  His size didn't help him after all.

For a whole week he couldn't sleep peacefully.  It was pretty easy to whack the daylights out of someone.  The bigger the size the larger the target.  But he worried about what the other guy would do next time they meet.  He feared for his safety in case the guy were to hit back at him unawares.  He wished he had been more patient.  He'd learn that solving a problem with violence seemed to create more problems.  He stopped going to work. 

That was until the day the big guy showed up at his front door with his head still in bandages, a solemn smile on his face and offered his hand.

A Change Of Mind

The boy couldn't swim. So he rented an inflated tube and used it as a float. He leaned back on the float and paddled with his hands and feet. He floated around by the beach, not daring to venture too far out. He enjoyed the rise and fall of the waves, the cool sea breeze and the warm sun. He could hear the laughter and screams of pleasure of other kids along the beach and the splashing of bathers around him. He listened to the occasional calls of seagulls. It was very relaxing. It was like sleeping in a cradle. He almost fell asleep.

His floating tube was suddenly yanked from under him and he found himself in the water. He yelled, but he heard no sound from his own mouth. Water rushed into his throat and his nose. His feet couldn't find the friendly sand at the bottom. He opened his eyes even though they were stung by the sea water. He struggled and reached out with his hands towards a pair of legs he saw in the water in front of him. The waves tossed him about and the legs kept trying to move away. He managed to grab hold of one of the legs. He didn't know who they belonged to. He didn't care. He had to get out of the water. He had to breathe. His ears were ringing, his lungs were bursting and his heart pounding against his chest.

Somehow, he did not die. Someone had grabbed him by his hair and pulled him to shore. When he came to, he kept throwing up salty water. It was a crowded beach and no one had paid much attention. They just watched quietly and went away to whatever they were doing, more immersed in looking after their own pleasure. When he got home later, nobody asked him what happened because nobody knew about the incident.


It has been forty years since then. The man was having an idle chat with one of his older neighbors at his local haunt. He didn't know why, but something the other man said prompted him to talk about the past and he mentioned to his neighbor that he once almost drowned when he was a kid. He recounted all the little details that he remembered. He then said that even if he found the guy who had saved him, he would not thank him for it. He should have let him drown and spare him a life of misery and suffering.

The older man sat and listened quietly while he complained. When he'd finished telling his story, the older man nodded knowingly and said he knew what happened. He was the one who had rushed into the water and pulled him out. He was a life-guard. He saw how it happened. He knew who the other kid was who pulled the float from under him and caused him to fall in the water. The other kid was a big sized half-wit who didn't understand rules. He was watching him and he thought maybe this kid could do something nasty. And as if on cue, he did just that. He was in time to save him because he was running and diving into the water even before the kid went down.

The older man also added that on that same day, at that same moment, somewhere on that beach another boy drowned and nobody saw what happened.

The Angel of Death had a change of mind at the last moment.

The Bone-setter

Kim looked on with great sadness as her father lay on the bed immobilized by straps, tubes and needles all over his body. The regular beep of the heart monitor comfortingly reminded her he was still alive. The accident was almost fatal. His right thigh-bone was split diagonally from the knee to his hip and his left shoulder bone and upper arm was fractured in a few places. There was a crack in the back of his skull. Miraculously he survived.

The first time Kim's elder sister saw her father's condition she fainted and collapsed right in the door way. After she recovered she stayed around in the ward to help look after him. For someone who'd lived most of her life in a village, moving around in an ICU ward was like living in an alien territory. Once, she clumsily stepped on something while moving around the room and the heart monitor which normally went beep.. beep.. beep.. suddenly went beeeeeeeeeeeee....... All at once nurses and doctors were swarming all over the ward in panic and yelling questions.

After he was discharged from hospital Kim's father was confined to the wheel-chair. Before they sent him home, they measured his right leg and found it was shortened by two inches. He tried to walk but it was more like a crouching and standing routine without much forward progress. And it was painful. And he couldn't lift his left arm.

One day they received a phone call from someone who claimed he was an old friend of Kim's father. They'd grown up together in the village near the jungle. During the Japanese occupation he joined the resistance movement. At the end of the war they wouldn't allow him to leave so he remained in the jungles to fight the British and later, the Malayan armed forces. The Emergency was long over but he still lived in the shadows. He learned of Kim's father's condition. He recognized him from a photograph in a newspaper article about the accident. He wanted to help an old friend. They made arrangements to pick him up from a bus station in a town 50 miles in the north.

He came. The two friends had an awkward reunion. They didn't have the chance to talk of old times. The job at hand was urgent. He made measurements of his friend's wounded leg, hip, shoulder and arm. Before they dropped him off at the local bus station, he left instructions for them to buy a free-range chicken, several large bottles of Wu-jia-pi wine and a list of herbs. The chicken must be male, perfectly healthy and exactly one kati in weight, not one tahil more, not one tahil less. They had to enquire at a few kampongs nearby before they found a chicken of that exact weight. The bill for all the items came to a few ringgits short of one thousand. Then they waited for the friend to call. This time, he asked to be picked up from a bus station in a different town.

He'd come prepared with pieces of bamboo, cut to size to fit perfectly his friend's body and limbs. After he'd checked and verified every item in the list, he was ready. He asked Kim to prepare the kitchen and get him a knife and a good sized wok. Then he told Kim to leave. She must not look. But she was curious. She peeped through a gap in the partition between the adjacent room and the kitchen.

He grabbed hold of the chicken, chanted some verses for a while and left it standing on the table. Curiously, the chicken did not move or try to run away. It stood on the spot quietly while he sharpened a knife and started a fire in the stove. Then he declared to no one in particular, This has to be done right. If I fail to do this right, I'll have to abandon this quest to heal my friend.

He raised the knife and sliced the chicken into two halves from the head to its feet while it remained standing, spilling its guts, blood and feathers on the table. He raised the knife again. This time the chicken was quartered, one piece in each direction of north, south, east and west. He gathered the pieces and threw them, guts, blood, feathers and all into the wok which he'd heated up on the stove. He poured in the wine and threw in the herbs. He stirred and stirred and stirred until after many hours he was left with a paste-like concoction. This he scooped from the wok and laid out on some old newspapers to let it cool.

He tore up strips of old clothes and tied Kim's father by his good arm, his good leg and his body to his iron bed. The whole family was asked to stand by to hold him from struggling and be prepared to listen to a lot of cursing and screaming from the patient for the pain would be unbearable. He then applied the concoction to the pieces of bamboo and tied them on to the wounded parts of the patient's body with strips of cloth.

Kim's father had very little education and most of his vocabulary consisted of the best of words never found in dictionaries. That night, for hours on end, the whole family had to put up with a whole string of expletives. He spat, he hissed, he cried and laughed, and he cursed everyone while the pain racked his whole body. But they kept silent and determinedly took turns to hold him down, wiped away his sweat, saliva and tears, while the man of the jungles told of how he once suffered a gunshot which broke his arm and had to heal himself with the same method with the help of his comrades.

At dawn, they found him sleeping soundly. The man removed the bamboo casts and threw them away. Again, they sent him off and he asked to be dropped off at a different location. They never heard from him again.

On their next visit to the hospital, Kim's father walked into the doctor's office with a slight limp. They measured his leg and found it shorter than the good leg by a mere half inch. The doctor pulled Kim aside and asked her endless questions. But Kim would never tell him the truth. She promised the man that it would remain a secret. She went home to look for the recipe but she couldn't find it.

Some old place... some old story.

Every time you mention a place someone comes up with a story behind it.  A colleague asked about my kids.  I said the youngest is in National Service camp.

Where?  She asked.

Sik.  A jungle clearing on the edge of a kampung. A place called Kem Rimba Taqwa.  I said.

Oh...  That place is not very clean.  She said.  It's an ex-army camp.

Yeah, you're right.  They haven't started the clean up job yet.  The facilities aren't quite up to expectations.  You know, maintenance isn't one of our strong points.

No, I don't mean that.  I mean, that place is spooky.

How do you know?

My father-in-law was a staff sargeant stationed there many years ago.  One night the captain was reading in his room by candle-light.  Suddenly, he noticed that the candle was moving slowly from one end of his desk to another.  He ignored it.  The candle moved again slowly back to its original place.  The third time it moved, he decided he's had enough.  He drew his pistol and cocked it. 

"Do that again and I'll shoot," he warned.  The candle stopped moving.  He finished his reading and went to bed.

Next morning, on his way to breakfast, the captain fell down a flight of stairs. 
On his hospital bed he vehemently declared that someone pushed him.

Well, it's been many years since then and many national service trainings have been carried out in that camp.  Any old ghost would have shied away from that place.  I don't think they feel comfortable staying around humans either.  But it would be wise not to challenge them.

How to get rid of village bums

A certain rich man in a village lost a chicken. Just a chicken out of his backyard coop full of chickens, but he went ballistic and had to blame someone for it. So who should happen by but a village bum, a young man who had nothing better to do but spend his days hanging around the village shrine, fishing by the river or playing with the kids.

The bum argued and yelled and said he didn't even know there were chickens around the place! A crowd gathered round.

The rich guy was adamant he got the right man. "Show us the proof then," said the villagers.

The wealthy one couldn't get any proof, but he refused to let the young man go.

Then the young man had an idea. He suggested they go to the village shrine and ask the Tuapehkong. He thought the Tuapehkong would favor him because he was always there taking care of the place. The rich guy agreed on one condition. If the young man was found guilty he will be banished from the village. The bum said confidently, "OK, let's go find out the truth."

Tuapehkong decided in favor of the rich guy and the poor bum was thrown out of the village. He had nowhere to go, so he hiked to the next county.

The folks in the next county were fighting a war with several of their neighbors. The young man was immediately drafted into the army. They trained him. To his own surprise he found he could do lots of things he never knew he could. He learned fast and he fought well with different weapons. He was always suggesting strategies to his captain and they kept winning battles against their neighboring county. And they kept promoting him until he became a general. Then they won the war.

Years went by and the emperor heard about the young general of the county. He summoned the young man and made him a general of the imperial army. He won campaign after campaign, until the whole country was united under one emperor. The wars ended and the emperor made him a governor of his own county. It was good thing. The guy had a desire to visit his home village again.

The first thing he saw upon entering the village gates was the little shrine and the Tuapehkong staring at him. He stared back. He ordered his men to tear the shrine down and throw everything into a vacant lot nearby. That night he had a dream.

"I want you to build a house for me right in the vacant lot where I am now." said Tuapehkong.

"Who are you to order me to do things?" asked the governor. "You didn't stop them from throwing me out of the village years ago, remember? They still think I stole that chicken."

"I did that on purpose. If I'd told the truth you'd still be a village bum today. But look at you now. A word from you and things will be done."

The governor bowed his head when he realized the truth of that. When he woke up the next day he ordered the temple to be built.

The rich man who lost the chicken protested. The vacant plot of land belonged to him. The governor said, "I shall now pass a law that says all land not occupied or planted with food crops shall belong to the government."

Soon the rich landowners began to lease out their lands or hired laborers to plant crops instead of leaving them to grow weeds or became jungles.

And that was how the poor of the village finally got some land to plant their own food.


Moral of the story: Some people have the potential to be great. They just need a boot in the butt to get them going.

A Cry In The Night

She step off the factory bus. It was almost midnight after the second shift. She had to walk on a narrow path through the village to get to her home about two hundred meters away from the main road. The familiar path posed no problem for her as she had trudged though it all her twenty-five years living in this house with her family which included her mother-in-law.

But that night felt a little different. She couldn't say why but she was uneasy. There was a chill in the air but she felt a thin layer of sweat on her skin. A sudden gust of cold wind rushed by and she felt goose pimples all over. At the same moment she heard a lonely, mournful voice of a woman crying piteously. It was the cry of an inconsolable soul in unfathomable suffering. Her feeling of compassion for this pitiful being seemed greater than her fear and she stopped in her tracks and called out, "Whoever you are, what is it under the heavens that is causing you so much suffering? Tell me so I may help you. Otherwise, please don't scare me half to death!"

She had no idea what made her speak in such terms. Those words simply came out of her mouth before she realized what she was saying. But as soon as she uttered those words, her fear left her and the cold air became warm again.

She lingered a moment and listened but couldn't hear or feel anything out of the ordinary. She became aware again of the sounds of the night - the chirping of crickets, and croaking of frogs. There were the familiar shadows of trees and bushes and dark shapes of the houses of her neighbors in the dim light of the moonlit night.

She wiped a tear out of her eye, turned around and walked on home.

For Want Of A Little Nail

I once worked with a General Manager who came from The Bronx, NY, USA. It was a tough neighborhood where he grew up. He said many of his childhood friends were either dead or doing time in US gaols (jails).

He had a long list of experiences setting up factories in China and Taiwan. He could tell the thickness of a piece of paper down to a decimal of an inch just by looking at it. He married a Taiwan lady and eventually settled in Singapore. He was in his late 40s.

We were discussing an additional production line we had just set up and was ready for production. Going through all the equipments wasn't enough for him. He wanted to check the material inventory as well. He was right of course. We couldn't just take things for granted that they'll all be there like clockwork. Someone has to wind up the clock too.

We found that the screws were not in. Those were special screws. Stainless steel. They had to be flown in from the US.

And here's the story he told me that day.

A great general was about to go into a crucial battle. It was one that would decide whether they won or lost the war. He told his men to get ready. They checked all their weapons, supplies, food, equipment and transport. All seemed perfectly organised. All, except one little detail that their stable hand did not mention. A nail was missing from one horse-shoe on the general's horse. He thought little of it. Only one little horse-shoe nail. Beside's the general had several horses he could choose from. But that happened to be the general's best horse.

For crucial battles one always choose the best. It was to involve a lot of hard riding, covering many miles over rough terrain and difficult maneuvers.

In the thick of the battle the general noticed his horse limping. But it was too late. The horse went down taking the general with him.

They lost the battle and they lost the war.

Lesson from the woods

Take a lesson from the woods.

The teeny weenie little creeper said to the big strong tree, “Please sir, shed off some of your leaves and give me some sunshine.”

“No way, you little creep,” Said the big strong tree. “Go elsewhere and find your own sunshine, and don’t pester me. You have no place here.”

So the little creeper crept along the ground trying to find an open space to get a little bit of sunshine. But he couldn’t get very far. He got over-whelmed by all the other bushes and weeds. He finally crawled towards the big strong tree and began to climb upwards reaching for the sunlight. He kept going higher and higher. His brothers and sisters came along and they joined him in the upward journey. Soon, they were climbing all over the tree.

Eventually, without realizing it, the big strong tree began to loose his energy. His leaves shrank in size and branches started growing weaker. Slowly, over the years, instead of growing taller and bigger, he began drying up and some of his branches withered and fell off. Then when the last of his leaves fell away, he died and began rotting away consumed and defeated by the family of creepers.

End of story.

Now relate that to people. Doesn’t it sound familiar? There are people who are rich, powerful and strong and who won’t budge and inch no matter how hard you beg them. They take and take and keep taking, and leave only the bits and crumbs to the weak and lowly. But soon, the weak and lowly would grow and grow and multiply and they outnumber and overwhelm the big and strong ones and somehow, tactically defeat them.

Only the wise ones grow and help others to grow that they become stronger and their strength and the combined strength of others help sustain their great position. Thus they are assured of their lasting power. Those who have their power and don’t think that they owe anyone soon find themselves fighting for their own survival.

Like the big tree.

The Egrets

Sungai Petani has very few hills, hence the open view. And the few existing hills are being relentlessly cut away, one of which is almost gone. It's more flat land, rice-fields on the west and housing estates all around. Trees are getting lesser due to the fast pace of development of satelite towns, especially on the eastern side where once rubber or palm oil estates flourished.

There's still a huge track of mangrove trees beside the Sg Petani river where hundreds of egrets make their nests. At dawn they'd fly off in groups to the padi-fields to forage for food and every evening they make their way home again.

It's lovely just looking at them leaving the river at dawn or heading for home at dusk. Sometimes we get to see them flying in their customary V-Formation. Some of them have probably lost their migratory instincts. They come home late and alone, looking lost, and just heading in the general direction of the river.

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The Egrets


Against an evening sky with dashing strokes of brush

The great Artist paints with coloured ink and wash

Gentle breezes warmly stroking hair and face

Greeting folks on evening walks keeping healthy pace

In the fading light of yellow and orange hue

To the mangroves where young ones feeding is due

From soggy rice fields to cosy nests for the night

Straggling egrets on their homebound flight

Each dawn a relentless struggle in search of food

Till dusk a continuous duty to nourish their brood

People, environmant and nature to blend we must

From birth, nourishment and growth till all turn to dust