Proud of Malaysians Doing Well Abroad

A Kadir Jasin

[Please take note, ANONYMOUS comments with not be entertained. When commenting, your real identity is preferred. But a suitable pseudonym is accepted. If you have to use anonymous, please print your name or pen name at the bottom of your message. Please avoid seditious, defamatory and libelous statements. Unrelated comments will not be given priority.]

WHENEVER I travel, at home or abroad, I am reminded of the Malay saying “jauh perjalanan luas pemandangan” which, literally translated means, the further we travel, the more we see.

My early travel, as I had written before, was confined to visiting my aunt in Selama, Perak. We either went there in my grandfather’s Austin A40 car or by bus and train.

The train journey was exciting. We would first take a car to Pendang and then a bus to Kobah railway station. There we took the train to Bukit Mertajam and again a bus to Selama. The town is divided into two by the Krian River that forms the boundary between Kedah and Perak.

The next and the furthest journey was a sixth form excursion to Cameron Highlands and after the Higher School Certificate (HSC) examination in 1968 I joined a dear friend, late Abdul Razak Lazim, on a hitch-hiking trip to Batu Pahat, Johor, to meet his penpal, Ruby, who would later became his wife.

  

Beaten Up on Hitchhiking Trip

We hitched rides on a PWD dum truck,  newspaper vans and private cars. We spent the nights at roadside mosques and ate cheaply. It was in Batu Pahat that I spent my only time in hospital after being beaten by local thugs. The police told us that they were from the bicycle gang from Sungai Ayam. So I referred to them as “Samseng Sungai Ayam.”

These days we hardly see hitchhikers on our roads. Transportation is easy and the fares are reasonable. Furthermore, not many motorists dare to pick up hitchhikers for fear of robbery and other crimes.

My first journey abroad was to New Zealand in 1971 to do a journalism course at the Wellington Polytechnics under the New Zealand government’s Colombo Plan Scholarship.

I flew via Singapore on an Air New Zealand’s Douglas DC-8 jetliner. It made a refuelling stop in Perth before continuing to Sydney. There the Wellington bound passengers we transferred to the propeller-driven Lockheed L-l88 Electra aircraft, also of Air New Zealand.

The City of Old People

 Since then I have gone back to New Zealand more than 10 times for holidays and work. You can say that New Zealand is my favourite foreign destination. I have just returned from that country after visiting the people who opened their hearts and doors to me when I first landed in the rural town of Wanganui (in 1971) to do practical training at The Wanganui Herald.

With Roy and Wendy at Wendy's Chinese Restaurant

 

Roy McIntyre, at whose house I stayed back then is 79 now. His wife, Lucy died some years ago. He lives alone in a nice hilltop house. My dentist friend Dr Darell Grace will be 90 soon. He too lives alone since his wife, Ann was committed to care home. Then there is Elva, the widow of my late news editor and mentor at the Herald, George Abbott. She also lives alone in a beautiful two-bedroom house in a retirement village. On this last visit to her, she dug into the drawer containing George’s old cloths and gave me a woolen sweater.

“I would give George’s favourite things only to my favourite people. Ke-dia (Kadir) you’re one of them,” she said. Elva is an accomplished painter.

Dr Grace the dentist who treated me in 1971

Elva with Datin Zaiton at her retirement home

  

Doing Fine Away From Home

The trip, with a stopover in Adelaide, Australia, also yielded new Malaysian friends. At the South Australian capital, I met Sayuti and his fellow post-graduate students and Shukri, the director of Tourism Malaysia for Western Australia, the Northern Territory and South Australia.

We met at Azam’s Swingging Bowl (mangkuk hayun) Satay Restaurant in the chic Rundal Mall in the heart of the city to talk shop. I told them to study and work hard in order to become dependable and defensible Malaysia. (Melayu yang boleh diharapkan dan boleh dipertahankan.)

I was window-shopping along Victoria Avenue in Wanganui, New Zealand, when an Asian-looking man called out: “Melayu ka?”

He turned out to be an expatriate Malay from Kluang named Mason Esa. He and his wife, Rohani -- with the help of their children -- run an Asian restaurant at the Victoria Court called the Curry Puff Café. He also runs a professional test centre across from the café.

He is a Jack of all trades, including initiating the Wanganui Saturday Market aka Pasar Tani with six Pakehas (Maori word for White Men) in 2003. There he sold anything from fresh fish to Malaysian “kueh-mueh”. The latter became popular with the Maoris, the Pakehas and the Asians, including a handful of Malaysians.

Mason’s wife cooks the best nasi lemak I have tasted for years. Her think dark brown sambal bilis reminded me of the nasi lemak bungkus that I used to eat along the Muar-Batu Pahat road in the 1970’s.

Malaysian doctors and trainees at Mason's restarurant

No wonder in a period of less than a week that I frequented Mason’s café, Simon Tay, a Malaysian expatriate IT specialist in Willington and his wife, Merriane took a three-hour road journey to visit Mason’s kedai kopi twice. On the second trip, he “tapau-ed” two orders of “rendang” and one order of “ayam masak merah” for his dentist son in the nearby university town of Palmerston North.

Mason doubles as “father” to young Malaysians in the area and the Iman of the local mosque – the El Bilal.

We stayed at Wendy Ng’s very nice house in the wooded Peat Street. Wendy, a single mother, is a workaholic. She runs a Chinese restaurant in town. And like Mason, she opens for business seven days a week. Her life is devoted to work since her husband died many years ago and above all to her only child, Doreen who is the final year at the University of Otago Dental School in Dunedin.

Victoria Court, Victoria Avenue, Wanganui

During one of the many visits to Mason’s café, he arranged for me to meet four young Malaysian doctors and a medical student – Dr Wan Ahmad Firdaus, Dr Syed Mohammed, Dr Alina and Alina. They are attached to the Wanganui Hospital.

I am always very proud and pleased to see Malaysians and ex-Malaysians doing well abroad either in their studies or professions – the people like Azam in Adelaide, Mason Esa in Wanganui and Simon Tay in Wellington.

Away and detached from home politics, these expatriate Malaysians are true Malaysians. I too feel liberated from the politics of home when I am abroad although in these days of bits and bytes, news of home is literally at one’s fingertip.

It was good to be away, but it’s better to be home.