Family Story #1 - About my father



With dad, a visit aboard a navy ship.

 Little was known about my father. What ever I remember about him was from when I was growing up from the age of 5, perhaps, until the day he passed on in 1976.
My mother told me that my father was brought to Malaya with his mother from Java. Seemed that on the promise of getting work and a better life, they came to Taiping. I could not remember what his mother did or worked as to raise him up but they were poor people. My mother's family were neigbours and they lived in a rented shophouse somewhere between the old Capitol Cinema and Tupai Road (along the lane where the Government toddy shop was located). My father first went to the Taiping Malay School, the one near the Masjid India. Due his good results, he did his Secondary schooling at the Kind Edward VII School, Taiping (the Principal was a Mr Walker). After his Senior Cambridge, father joined the Government medical service as a Hospital Assistant (now called Medical Assistant). He was encouraged to do his Higher Senior Cambridge but because of his ailing mother, he had chosen to get a job. Two of his classmates continued their studies and retired as doctors.
Funny, those days, the HAs were referred to as Dressers by the common people. That was because they dressed up people's wounds, not making dresses.
What was my father like? Well, he was just like any typical father of those "old days". He was strict but also kind-hearted. Being in the Government Medical Service, he had worked in several Government Hospitals or clinics. Some that I could remember were at Tanjong Malim, Batu Gajah, Lumut, Bagan Serai, Selama, the Taiping Prison clinic and of course, Taiping Hospital (spanned from the years of 1930's, right up to 1970's).
Something funny about my father, he scolded me for asking to buy a toy but he would surprised me with one on my birthday.

At my dad's ham-radio set.

Father had a hobby of tinkling with radios, he was a Ham Radio enthusiast. His call-sign was 9M2FT. I would remember sitting near his "radio shack" listening to him chatting away with other people he could raised in the radio. Strangely funny, while writing this, I could clearly imagined him watching me with his kind, proud, smile.
Well, it is 1.00 AM now. Time to go to bed. To be cotinued....