Dear Kooi Chock...
I am looking at my photo, which is you now at 18 years old. You are so grown up and sophisticated wearing a batik shirt with green leaves on orchard background. Of course Mama has the foresight to make you learn how to make your own cloths. She will make sure that you are self-sufficient when you come over to England. That pair of the very long bell bottom jeans is just the right length to cover your chunky black four-inch platform shoes. They make you look so tall and sophisticated. Suddenly you are so fashionable. I am so proud of you for the transformation! It is like you know that is the turning point of your life! Well done you! I do not need to advice you on style. Move over, Twiggy!
I can see that is the beginning of an exciting and challenging time ahead. A few months before, you were an extremely shy student doing your final year of secondary school exams, the equivalent of the GCSE. You are so talented in your own way, with freckle face, eyes so tiny and twinkly, as when you smile your two huge mountainous cheeks swell up even higher making your eyes endearingly smaller. And that head of shiny jet-black bob hair that was very quickly trimmed by one of our four sisters. It is always so neat. The fringe hangs just above your dark eye brows like a silk curtain. I know you hated all that but do embrace that as its cute to have high cheek bones and that amazing shinny crowning glory.
I hope our family are fine and all in good health. Remember, you must hug them and tell them every day you love them, as I know that our culture is not good at demonstrating our emotions publicly. I can’t remember Papa ever gave me a cuddle as an adult. Does he still wake you all up past midnight to ask you all to eat his lovely hot Chow mien and nasi lemak take-aways from our local village coffee shop? That was the only way he showed his love for us. Bless him. Once I burnt myself falling asleep on the laksa and I still have the scar on my hand as proof! Please, hug, kiss and tell them that I love them for me, too.
You do know that you should have to concentrate more on your studies rather than go scrumping for mangosteens from the jungle. Or be reading rather than be the only sibling out of eight to watch and help Mama cooking her delicious Nonya cakes. You would also rather be out there playing badminton instead of studying. Even though there was no actual court, and it was just a piece of sandy land between to wooden houses. How many times we had to dish the shuttle cocks from the smelly drain. If you have read instead, perhaps you would not have become so dyslexic. If you knew how much you would be bullied for that when you get older you would be reading viciously now.
It also affected me in an adverse way. I am telling you what happened to me so that you can learn from me and avoid those painful periods that I went through. It always was like a catch twenty-two situation.
It all started when the British, who colonised us, and before they gave us our independence, sidelined us, Chinese and the Indian and gave all 90% of everything to the Malays. It is still happening. That causes division and discriminations. It was and is the reason why I or you, my younger self would leave our family and friends behind to come over to London, where I am now. At the beginning, I could not bear to listen to any Chinese songs, or I would burst into tears as they reminded me of home. Every night for about a month I cried myself to sleep.
I used to cut the carrots and cabbages into strips and pretend they were bean shoots and used spaghetti like noodles. Spare ribs and Pigs' heads were cheap as the native though they were just bones until they tasted them with our sweet and sour sauce. So you need to compromise and be inventive to survive. Also, bring along a bottle of chilli sauce or sambal belachan. Even the fish and chips taste heavenly with that.
As I was saying earlier, the language was a big problem. I could not understand their accent as they were speaking so fast. Consequently, I lost my confidence to communicate and so I stayed quiet just in case I made a fool of myself. It was awkward asking them to repeat all the time. And they me. So my shyness became even more obvious. It was mentally painful. They must have considered me geeky and unsociable. Some even thought it was my culture. Although that was also partly true as we were brought up to not speak unless spoken to.
I hated it and wished to get out of my shyness. It took me a long time and I had the intuition to go out of my way to correct that. I had no one to tell me or show me how to get out of it. My managers were bullying me because our communication was bad between us. I signed myself up for a speech therapist session. She told me that because I started learning the English language late, my tongue must be retrained. We, Chinese speak with our tongue flapping, like a fish’s tail. Some of the English words like “three” need my tongue to be rolling. I had to practice saying, “The rain in Spain, stays mainly on the plain”. It really works! So my “three” is not “twee” anymore!
Young Chockie, take my advice, learn to speak English with an English person, and pronounced the words like the Queen’s English. I know it’s hard to be the first Chinese to be sent to a Roman Catholic English convent school many miles away, at 6 years old, while our friends stayed at our local little Chinese village school. I hope you, like me, have forgiven our parents for segregating us from our friends, as years later I found out that they were protecting us from being kidnapped by the communists. they would not dare to enter a convent. Also, our parents had the fore-sight for our better future, us going to the UK.
It still took me twenty years to come out of my painful shyness. I was ambitious and I worked very hard. After six years of nursing I retrained to be a biomedical scientist, passed all the exams, and very quickly got to the top to be a Chief. The higher I got the more they bullied me.
To prepare myself to be a public speaker for my job I made myself sing in the evenings in karaoke in front of large audiences. It conquered my fear of presenting my projects at work. Of course, knowledge helped and that gave me the confidence, too.
All the above could not happened until after I finished my secondary school. Something inside my head knew that I needed to “run” away from my oppressive country. Initially, you will resist to leave your homeland and try to apply for all university places, all the government jobs and any jobs. They will all be given to the Malays, as dictated by the British. Why did they not let us run our own country? Why did they side-line us Chinese and the Indians. Why did they instituted in article 153 to give only 5% to us and 90% of everything to the Malays? As if to undo their discrimination of us, they invited us to come over to UK to help the NHS. Please do not feel guilty for leaving our family and friends behind as we really have no choice unless you want to be a typist back in Malaysia.
With hindsight a rebellion should be held then to stop the British imposing the article 153 on us. They should have left it to us to sort out our problem, especially when they had to leave after they gave us our independence.
Perhaps you can set up a protest or a mini non-bloody rebellion, to stop the article 153 from going through. Then my old me and my generation will still be happily living in Malaysia amongst our families. There will be no division amongst us three races and we will all have equal opportunities.
Unfortunately, the British have not been back to undo their article 153 to stop causing division and publicly discriminating against us, Chinese and the Indians. A radicle young Malay journalist was brave enough to recently wrote that we were being ethnic cleansed. Does his opinion counts?
Malaysia can be the best place to live if we protests.
Goodbye for now.
Lovingly yours,
Your older self.