The Learning Teacher

It’s that time of the year again and I was wondering what would be my Christmas wish for myself and for those who are dear and maybe not so dear to me!

We all too often hear that Christmas is a time for giving but are rather happy just to receive. So I was really touched when my dear friend Hyacinth Gaudart told me that on Christmas Eve she was going all the way to Melaka to bring some gifts and food to children who have been placed in a covent there. These children are refugees from Timur-Leste. I was even more glad when she accepted my offer to contribute something for their gifts.

Giving money is an easy thing. Yes, the money was earned and now being given as an act of charity. But I can’t help but wonder how much more meaningful it is when it means giving our energy and time too. And this should never be seen as a sacrifice on our part as we often receive more than we actually give when we participate in a charitable act.

So my Christmas wish for myself this year is that  I would do a little more for others than I have done this year.

And for all Christians, I wish you a blessed Christmas. Hope you find your own speacial meaning during this festive season. To all other friends, students, colleagues and dear readers  of this blog, have a happy holiday and despite our different religious beliefs, I hope we find it in our hearts to be gracious and tolerant to one and all!

It is that time of the year again. People are busy sending greetings to all and sundry.

I am developing a dislike to receiving certain greetings.  First, is the greeting card from acquaintances, colleagues and business contacts. It is a card that has a signature and a rubber stamp. It is not addressed to me or anyone. It is  a card that an employee has put into an envelope and pasted a neat label with my address on it. I don’t think these senders even know I will receive cards from them.

Then there are these mass email greetings. One greeting card or message for all of one’s friends, etc.  Some senders don’t even bother to put the email addresses as BCC and we get to see how many of us received the same message!!! When I receive such an email I just see who it is from and without opening it, I delete it.

Are we really too busy to take time to send individual messages or cards to friends? Has it become such that we can categorise all one friends into a single lot and send all of them the same message? As for me, I think not.

I remember before the pre-email and Internet era, I would buy greeting cards for some friends. I would actually bother reading what was written inside and choose different cards for different friends. Later. I preferred blank cards so I could write my own message.

Today, I send out email greetings but I individualise my message. I would have some news which is common but my greetings and signing off will be quite different to each recipient. However, I must admit that I don’t send many email greetings.

What I am guilty of is sending the brief and standard sms greetings to my friends on the day of the festival. There are some who receive a variation of it like family and loved ones though.

This year, as many before it, I have not bought cards for anyone. I will send out email messages that are personalised. The sms?? I guess they will continue but at least the recipients won’t get to see who else got it too.

If you have read this far, merry christmas and a happy new year!

Cheers

Edwin

I have been working on an article over the last ten days and it has been quite an experience - very different from the academic papers I am used to writing.

I was writing about Brickfields and Jalan Masjid India/Leboh Ampang in Kuala Lumpur. It was my reading of these 2 places and how they remain part of the urban KL landscape. Of course, not just my reading as I was referring to various sources and people associated to these 2 places. 

The former is my birthplace and writing about it brought back quite a lot of memories and emotions. I was quite happy to keep them out of the article. Keeping my personal presence out of the article was not too difficult as I never wanted it to be a personal journey.

Brickfields Road and later Jalan Brickfields and now Jalan Tun Sambanthan will always be Brickfields to me. I’ve been there so many times over the years. Stopped at various places I had played, studied and grown up. Most of these places now no longer exist. The church I used to attend is still there. All else have been obliterated by one form of development or another. Is this a sign???

Then, telling someone you were from Brickfields sometimes had a plus point (depends how you look at it, I guess). It had some notorious gangs. They were mostly invisible to those who lived there. Other people wondered how we could live there. We did quite happily,  not harassed by the gangs. They gave us a protection of sorts and others would think twice before they did harm to a Brickfields boy.

The place where my home once stood is completely gone. Yet, in my mindscape it still remains. I can see the lane from the small road that led to my house - 6A, Jalan Kandang Kerbau (I used to dread telling friends my address, as child).  It was a wooden house with attap roof. It housed 11 of us, 8 children, my parents and my grandmother. I wonder how we fit into that small space. Still, we all had our own space. There was never a sense of over-crowding. That’s what a home is, I guess. My fondest memories of my childhood and family are probably there. In that house, there was no death, no serious illness or unresolved conflict.

I wonder if we live and love best when we have the least. Of course, there is the trap that I’m  romantising my past and making it seem idyllic. Sure, there were difficult times but we overcame them. There were loads of things we desired then and got them much later in life. But they did not get in the way of my childhood happiness.

As a child and a teenager, I lived in Brickfields; from birth till I was 15 years old. Everything was almost a walking distance away - school, aunt’s home where I had 9 cousins, homes of childhood friends, the church and all that I needed. 

I still remember going to the barber shop with my father and later my brothers. I reacll my father or was it my eldest taking me the tailor to sew my short pants for Christmas. And years later my first long pants were sewn at International Tailors, located in a row of shophouses, quite close to the YMCA.

I actually walked from my home to MBS KL - it was almost a daily routine - walking to school in the morning and taking a bus back home. Stopping at the ice kacang stall near Lido cinema (it too is gone). And loads of other things come rushing into my memory.

I wonder what happened to all my childhood friends, not that I miss them as we out grew each other as we moved away from our kampung in Brickfields.  It is a thought, a yearning an absence which slips into you when you return to your place of birth.

I wonder if a Brickfields reunion of sorts might be a way of finding out. Years ago, I went to my one only Form 5 class reunions and dreaded it. It was a disaster. We had grown up and just did not connect. What a sad lot we were, we had nothing to say to each other!! Maybe it is best to leave Brickfields in the past too.

And what about Jalan Masjid India? That would be another story. A less personal one, am sure.

I need a coffee now. My grandmother made the best coffee ever. I often see it placed on the dining table waiting for me to come and pick it up. And that too was in the past and for me that past somehow remains in the present.