My Childhood & Teenage Journey into My Golden Years in Life

 

Last evening, Saturday, 23 March. 2024 my family members, my wife’s younger brother, his wife and their two sons, together with just 4 family friends and myself went to Port Klang to “celebrate” my 85^th birthday that actually fell on March 20, and not on March 23. There was a delay of three days because I chose Saturday, a weekend evening when everyone was free from work. I also made it on March 25 as I did not want friends to know it was my birthday dinner.

After the much ado given by my youngest brother Lim Yew Cheng, a Senior Consultant Cardiothoracic Surgeon, and a Professor of Surgery who led us in thanksgiving and grace for the  food we were to partake, and the cutting of the birthday cake, blowing off the candle and all those normal fuss, and the usual sing of “Happy Birthday to You” both in English and in Mandarin, it was my turn to give thanks to all my family members were so supportive and gracious to me by their presence.

 

I began talking about my life, and the journey I took to reach the golden years at 85.

I was born on the 20th of March 1939 on a very stormy moonless night in very heavy rain in my small hometown called Batu Pahat in the State of Johore in Malaya in a small hotel room. I never had the luxury of being delivered by a qualified obstetrician in a posh and rich hospital.

Instead, I was delivered into the world by a small-town midwife who stayed about 100 meters away from my father’s hotel-cum-restaurant and coffee shop. I am glad I had a very humble birth.

 

My journey started during the Japanese occupation of Malaya when I was born. My earliest memory was when I was a baby, sleeping in a sarong (a piece of cloth used by Malays to wrap round the body as a trousers). The sarong used as a cradle where I slept was hung over a drainpipe in another Cold Storage shop also owned by my father in the main road called Jalan Rahmat. This Cold Storage shop, the only one in Batu Pahat, is directly opposite where my midwife stayed upstairs in a shop lot. My first memory was being pushed up and down inside my sarong cradle hung on a rain pipe in this shop. Then further memory was blank after just one or two months old. The next memory was about 4 or 5 years old when one of my bachelor’s uncles used to ride me on his bicycle to my father's rubber estate some 20 km away to hide me from the Japanese soldiers. There I stayed in that rubber estate where there were lots of monkeys and wild bores by day, and tigers roaming outside our fenced wooden village house at night. We could hear the tigers roaring outside at night. I used to swim and bathe naked together with sibling brothers and sisters in a very clear and clean stream down a small valley below. It was so quiet and peaceful in the jungle surroundings below where the small river about 3 metres wide flowed at the corner.  I could hear the rush of flowing waters round the bend.

 

There was no radio, television or telephone then. So, at night the only ‘entertainment’ I could get was to watch for hours and hours at the un-flickering flame of our oil lamp sucking up oil through the wick as it burned. There was no electricity then.  I suppose the flame of the oil lamp was the humble beginning of my interest in science, where in the still of the night I was very fascinated how an un-flickering flame was able to suck up oil through a wick for its own 'survival' so that it shall not be extinguished into darkness just like our and all lives. 

I owed that un-flickering flame burning in the darkness of the night in that village house of mine that it will lead me to be a scientist one day. That gave me light. After all, I was born on a very dark, stormy night in heavy rains as I said earlier.

  

We used to kill monkeys, wild boars, squirrels or small jungle animals, tapioca or sweet potatoes for food. There was hardly any rice then as our staple food, and so we ate tapioca and sweet potatoes we planted.   We made our own soap for washing and bathing by boiling caustic soda (potassium hydroxide) with animal fats to turn into soap (potassium stearate).

 

So life went on till I was about 6 when the Japanese surrendered and the British occupied Malaya once again. I was then put into Ai Chun Chinese school for about a year for my primary education after we went back to town from our rubber estate house in Yong Peng. After just a year in a Chinese school, my father decided there would not be any future for me if I were put into a Chinese school. So, he put me out of the primary Chinese school in the Government English School (later called Batu Pahat High School).

 

I studied in the primary section of that school till I was in Primary Six. It was a row of some six classrooms under rubber trees. I remember I used to collect the rubber seeds beside my primary school classroom, remove the outer coat of the seeds, invert the two seeds half sections opposite each other so that they look like a turbine of an engine, and with a sharp 'spine' attached on each half so that the spikes were at the top and bottom. I would hold the seed spikes with my thumb and index finger and blow into the concave section of the seed to let it spin and spin. That was the only natural toy turbine engine I had. Else, I would make my own kites to fly, or catch fighting spiders from the bushes, keep them inside match boxes with some leaves to fight with other spiders of my friends and classmates. Sometimes I would catch small fish in the drain to keep as hobbies, else I would play with the tops with other children. Sometimes I would play hopscotch hoping from square to square drawn on the back lane of my father’s Cold Storage shop. Sometimes I would use two milk cans joined together by a long, long string in a hole at the bottom of each can hold the string inside.

 

Once the ‘telephone’ was made, I could speak inside, and at the other end other children would put the milk can over his ears to hear like a toy telephone. When I am tired playing with some of these many hobbies, I would play ‘fire brigade’ by taking my mother's clothes sprayer, remove the spray head that sprayed out fine mists meant for her to iron clothes and threw away her water head sprayer so that the water in the bottle will spray out straight out like a fire hose. Then I would burn some paper boxes behind my house, ring the bell like a fire engine on its way and spray at the burning boxes. I was extremely mischievous then just for fun.

Else I would play with skipping ropes or play ‘snake and ladder’ with my sister, and cunningly make her lose all the time by my playful cheating.

 

In fact I was one of the most notorious “school criminals” who was always sent to the Saturday detention class to pull the heavy steam rollers wheels to and fro across the school field to level the grass, or asked to clean the school toilets or classrooms along with other school ‘criminals’ almost every Saturday morning, or asked to write 500 lines such as “I must not imitate my teacher”  or “I must not talk or laugh in class when my teacher was teaching”.

I also remember my mathematics teacher who had goofy teeth. So, when he laughed, he would put the maths text book to cover his teeth. So, when he left the class, I would go to the front of the class to imitate him laughing. But he knew I was very notorious for this. So, he would come back and hide behind the doors at the back, peeped through the hinges of the tall doors and the wall to look at who was laughing at him. I was always there imitating him laughing and stretching out the math textbook at a distance to read what's in there as he was long-sighted.

 

He would bounce out from behind the doors, and came straight at me to hit my head and back, and asked me to write 500 lines this "I must not imitate and laugh at my teacher"

 

Often, I would also imitate my science teacher with my hands pouring this chemical and that chemical and suddenly there was an "explosion".  Often my science teachers would make me stand on my chair at the back of the classroom with my hands across my chest pulling my ears till class was over. I was a very notorious "school criminal" then, always asked to write 200 - 500 lines or often sent to detention class on Saturdays as a "school cleaner" But it was fun for me. 

I remember another English essay teacher who was always mad at me about whatever I wrote in my essay book. After reading my essay, he would fly into a rage at me and also a few of my classmates too. He would violently throw away my essay book outside the classroom out into the veranda, and if violent enough, past the veranda into the drain outside and shouting at me and a few of my classmates too his favourite sentence:

 "How in the world you come to this class" 

 

 I remember when I was just in Form One after finishing Primary Six, I used to go back to High School Batu Pahat in the afternoon when my morning school was dismissed at about 1 pm when all the boys went home. It was a boys’ school then, no girls allowed. I was the only boy still in my school uniform who went back to school in the afternoon to listen to science being taught to girls’ students from another school for girls called Temenggong Ibrahim Girls School (TIGS). As I was only in Form One, I was not eligible to study science yet, not until I could go to Form Three till Form Five. But my older sister from TIGS was eligible to study science. But TIGS has no science lab as yet. So there was some arrangement between High School Batu Pahat (HSBP) and TIGS to allow girls from TIGS to come to HSBP where we have science labs and science teachers to allow students from TIGS to learn science in the afternoon after the morning session for boys were dismissed. So, I was the only boy still in my school uniform and school badge to cycle back to my HSBP and sit on the veranda outside the science laboratory to listen to science classes being taught to the girl students from TIGS where my older sister was learning science for the first time.  The science class was taught by a senior science teacher called Mr. Charly. As I was only in Form 1, and not eligible to learn science yet, I could not enter the science lab where the girls including my sister from TIGS were sitting comfortably. So, I could only sit outside on the verandah or lean against the door outside the lab to listen and watch the science experiments being conducted. I was always a regular figure there leaning against the door or sitting on the verandah. But Mr. Charly must have taken pity on me, so eager to learn science though not eligible yet. So, he never chased me away. 

 

I remember learning about acids and alkali, oxygen and carbon dioxide, about air, plants and photosynthesis…and all those things. I used to get very fascinated when they started to heat potassium chlorate mixed with manganese dioxide as a catalyst inside a test tube to produce oxygen which was collected inside a gas jar under water in a trough. Then Mr. Charly, the senior science teacher who taught my elder sister and other girls from TIGS would put a glowing wooden splinter inside the jar of pure oxygen, and it burst into bright flames inside the jar to prove it was pure oxygen inside. That excited me tremendously, wondering how a glowing wooden splinter, or burning sulphur, phosphorus, or magnesium strips could suddenly burst into such bright flame, so much so I went home to buy test tubes, potassium chlorate and magnesium dioxide from the Chinese medicine shop to conduct my own experiments at home. After that I started to conduct my own ‘fantastic and dangerous’ science experiments at home. I started to make gunpowder taught in the science class by mixing potassium chlorate, with powdered charcoal and sulphur.

 

 I would then go home to buy a clinical thermometer from a Chinese medicine shop nearby my father’s Cold Storage. I would throw away the thermometer and use only the metal casing to fill it up with gunpowder. Then in the evening when the entire school field was so quiet a doctor from Batu Pahat Hospital and his wife would come to have a quiet stroll in our school field.  I would then use alcohol inside a small cup to heat up one end of the thermometer with gunpowder inside, run to hide behind a tree and wait for the gunpowder to ignite to cause a loud bang to frighten the doctor and his wife away. The doctor and his wife would turn round to find out what caused the bang but seeing no one around in such a quiet school field they were puzzled I suppose.  I would do this evening till the doctor and his wife were so frightened that they never went back to the field anymore. I was very naughty then as a small boy hardly in Form 1 to play pranks. But that was fun for me learning science from Mr Charly meant only for my sister and other girls from TIGS.

  

I remember the 3 acids Mr. Charly taught to my sister and other girls – concentrated nitric acid, concentrated sulphuric acid, and concentrated hydrochloric acid. Then Mr Charly taught my sister who was in Form 3 eligible to go inside the lab to study, and myself only in Form 1 left outside in the cold, and not eligible to enter, that when you add water into these 3 acids, they become dilute nitric acid, dilute sulphuric acid, and dilute hydrochloric acid.

 

 I then went home from my "veranda science classroom “to challenge my sister, asking her how many types of acids there are. She will reply 3. I would reply with six types. Then she looked very puzzled, and asked how come? So, I would name all the six different types of acids, rattling away concentrated nitric acids, dilute nitric acids, concentrated sulphuric acid, dilute sulphuric acid, concentrated hydrochloric acid, and dilute hydrochloric acid. Then she looked even more puzzled. 

After some time, she replied but they were the same three acids, except you add water into each of them to dilute them. But I told her concentrated and dilute acids are not the same because when you put them into separate bottles you have to give them separate names as concentrated and dilute acids according to the acids. 

I then told her if there were the same 3 acids, then they should only be put into 3 bottles and name them as:

 

1. Concentrate nitric + dilute nitric acid, 

2. Concentrated sulphuric acid + dilute sulpuric acids.

3. Concentrated hydrochloric + dilute hydrochloric acid. 

 

Why must they put them into 6 separate bottles if they are only 3 types of acids?  

 

 She was stunned and looked even more confused. After some time, she called me a cheat as she insisted, they were the same three types of acids except you add water inside to dilute them. She called me a cheat and refused to speak to me for more than a week. I was very naughty then. 

 

(Actually, there are millions of different types of acids, both inorganic or mineral acids, and especially for organic acids they run into thousands of millions in numbers. I shall write on this separately later).

I have just done that here:

“Number of Acids Like Sands on A Seashore”

https://scientificlogic.blogspot.com/2024/

 

There were a lot more ‘fantastic and dangerous science experiments’ I conducted. I managed to learn on my own from my ‘verandah classroom’ that would be too long to relate here. It would run into dozens of pages. But it was fun for me to learn science on my own for the first time.

 

When I reached Form Five it was the last year in school. I then proceeded to English College in Johor Bahru then to the Singapore Polytechnic for my Higher School Certificate and General Certificate of Education (GCE) Advanced (A) Levels to prepare me for entry into the university.

 

To describe my mid teenage journey in life would need several chapters and I shall not bore you into this. This is because I attended not one, but different universities taking unrelated courses.  

Briefly, I read various courses for my graduate degrees in mathematics and physics, medical physiology, chemistry, zoology and medicine all separately. 

But for my Master's degree, I read food quality control, analytical chemistry (an extension of my BSc in chemistry), microbiology among many disciplines.

 

My Bachelor’s degrees were from India, my Post Graduate Diploma in Nutrition was from the University of London, my  Master of Science degree from the University of Reading in England, up to my PhD back in London again, besides my Fellowship into the Royal Society of Medicine, and also my Fellowship into the Royal Society of Public Health both in London, plus membership into several professional scientific societies in Malaysia.

I received British scholarships to read for all my postgraduate degrees in England. 

 

Once I reached universities I was already in my early and mid-twenties, and I have no chance of playing pranks anymore as by then I was more matured with heavy loads to study highly technical subjects that demanded a lot of my effort and time with lots of assignments, clinics to attend, research projects to conduct, data to analyse, and dissertation to write, besides presentations and forum discussions.

 

By the time I left all the universities I was already in my early thirties after which I worked as a nutritionist, a clinician and a research medical scientist, which are areas of my professional expertise. I would not be able to play about with dangerous experiments anymore, especially with clinical trials where I needed to lead teams of doctors and scientists.

  

I started work in 1968 till I retired from the Institute for Medical Research in 1994 – a span of 26 years into my golden second childhood years. But actually, my lifelong passion is in astronomy where I read at Oxford, evolutionary biology, and forensic science at Cambridge, all of them postdoctoral courses after my retirement. 

 

It was a lifelong study for me of course, mixed with fun. My retired life spans 30 years longer than my 26 years of working life which is God’s blessings to me. I am blessed with fairly good health without high blood pressure, diabetes, or any of those chronic health problems except an enlarged prostate and a chronic leg ulcer problem.  

 

But more importantly when I was a child, I was taught by my parents, especially my mother, who taught me to always be obedient, polite and courteous to those who were elderly than me, especially to uncles and aunties. I was always taught to greet them when they visited us. I was taught these Chinese customs and traditional values to greet my elderly relatives. 

 

I think children, whether old or young, should respect their parents and their elderly uncles and aunties all the time. This is exceedingly important because it clearly reflects their character and parental upbringing. It also reflects badly on their parents who have never taught them good mannerisms, behaviour and good character. As I said, my parents always taught me all these virtues even though they do not have any formal education like I did. My success in education and in working life is totally and entirely due to them who taught me qualities of life and behaviour.   Each time an uncle or an aunt visits us in our house, the first thing my mother would ask me to do is to politely greet and say “uncle” or “aunty” to them. 

During Chinese New Year house visits my parents especially will ask me to wish them "Happy New Year, Uncle, Aunty" and when given an ang pow by them, always, always, say "thank you, uncle / aunty" I think most respected parents teach all these mannerisms to their children, not just my parents.  

 

These virtues will also mould us to be successful in society where we need to interact with others, let alone seeking jobs later where employers will closely observe our behaviour especially during a job interview.

 

I was taught and brought up in this way as highly cherished social norms and traditional family values to respect elderly people even though they may not be our relatives. Unfortunately, some young children these days do not play those games and toys, flying kites, spinning tops, catching fighting fish and fighting spiders these days as I did in the late 1950’s, but they play with smart phones most of the time (but not all of them)  even when elderly relatives come to visit. They also have no courtesy of saying thank you or putting a smile on their relatives who gave them a present. Fortunately, as for me, I always get back the returns I gave when I was younger, irrespective of creed and race to whom I or they gave.

 

For instance, those highly respected customary values and family upbringing taught to me by my parents who were not educated, to respect the elderly has bought returns into my golden years by strangers in the streets, trains and buses who almost always addressed me as ‘uncle’, and who gave up their seats for me in buses, MRT and LRT trains, in hospitals and public places. They were all strangers to me who were always very polite to me, addressing me as ‘uncle’ irrespective of their race and creed or age. Strangers, especially Malays, followed by either Chinese or Indians will always nod their head in smiles and talk to me when they see me walk slowly, and give way to me.

 

For instance, about a year ago I was standing alone outside the terminus Light Railway Train (LRT) station, which was flooded outside the station after a very heavy rain when an early middle-aged Malay lady approached me asking “uncle may I help you”? I was taken aback. I told her I could not go to the shuttle bus parked about 30 metres away waiting for passengers. I have a bandaged-up leg due to a chronic venous ulcer and it was not possible for me to wade across the flood waters to the bus.

She immediately replied “no problem uncle” I shall go there to tell the bus driver to drive to the spot I was standing. I wanted to stop her as I did not want her to get her feet and clothes wet wading into the flood. But she insisted it was not a problem.

 She went over the flood water to the bus to ask the driver to bring the bus to me before returning to me. I thanked her profusely, asking her name. I then wrote a letter of appreciation to a local newspaper to acknowledge her kindness. She was not even a Chinese like me, but a young Malay lady who approached me standing there helplessly. These are rewards we get not through any university education, but social values and family training by our parents to be polite, respectful and helpful, especially to elderly uncles and aunties we meet in the streets or in home visits. In return I tried to help out by buying food for the homeless wherever possible.

 

All these social values are not taught in any of the universities I attended, although quite a bit of them in school. But these moral and invaluable social norms, courtesies and traditional values were all taught to me by my uneducated parents when I was a young child still in primary school. 

   

Today, at 85, I like to teach and remind all young children of these same values that would command them respect. It is not the amount of school or college education or jobs they have, or high positions and status they hold, or financial wealth they have or inherit. None of these commands any respect by anybody without good behaviour in the first place. These values are highly important to put in place for young children before they start working because prospective employers during job interviews will silently look at their appearance, how they talk, how they answer, the way they sit, stand, talk, smile and if they have that courtesy to say 'thank you' after the interview. These qualities they display will land them a chance to be employed, and not just their academic qualifications. 

Someone not long ago asked in a WhatsApp chat what we would want to do if we were to get back our childhood days. As for me, I would instantly choose to undo all those mistakes and sins I made in my younger days. Unfortunately, these past mistakes cannot be retrieved, but fortunately a loving God through Jesus is able to forgive me and erase forever all my past mistakes and sins for which I am extremely grateful and thankful. 

 How long can we live in this world? 10, 40, 60, 80. 100 or 120 years. Let’s have a look:

If the Age of the Universe determined at 20 billion years were to be telescoped into a 24-hour day, then the maximum life span of a human of 120 years will exist for only (24 x 60 x 60) seconds / 20 billion x 120 = 5.184 x 10 ^-4 second or 0.0005184 of a second

.       The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away (Psalm 90:10).

2.       Whereas you know not what shall be tomorrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapor, that appears for a little time, and then vanishes away (James 4:14).

3.       With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day (2 Peter 3:8).

 4.       All the world's a stage,

And all the men and women merely players:

They have their exits and their entrances 

(As You Like It: William Shakespeare)

Unto God I am and shall always be thankful for my health He gave, for the forgiveness of my sins I had unknowingly committed, and for the extended life span at 85 He has blessed me.