Little does he knows it,
John has gotten me thinking a very long time ago, that we make the world we live in. We create our own reality, and he has given me the courage and faith to trust that as long as we keep our focus correct and intune, most of the time the unwritten laws of the Universe will usually fall into place, giving us what we rightfully deserve.
As a young man of 20, almost 18 years ago. I was fortunate to attend a seminar by
Lawrence Walter NG. It was the most valuable 5 days of my life. I took away just one memorable sentence, "Do whatever it takes". The simple seminar was simply entitled "The Secret of an A-star Student"
"Do whatever it takes". The message then, was a message for a 20-year old - a 2nd year university undergraduate. You do whatever it takes to get what you want (within legal and moral means). Nobody owes you that A in your exams. You do whatever it takes.
Either you cut down on your TV, write good notes, practice mock exam questions, anything - "Do whatever it takes"
I never knew my much of my paternal nor my maternal grandparents and their early days in Malaya. I've pieced together my personal history from oral accounts across dinner tables, festivities, a quip here and there some snide remarks, some short conversation.
All I knew, was they arrived in Malaysia as immigrants, fleeing some form of calamity in China. People were starving and many have died due to wars and famine.
My paternal grandmother was separated in the 'mad rush' (literal translation) from her younger brother. He ended up up in Madagascar (Malagasy) then and she in Malaya. Maybe they got on the wrong boat, seeing how similarly "Malagasy" and "Malaya" was spelt. To a peasant boy and girl in the 1930s, it must have been a traumatic experience running through a sea of humanity fleeing death and destruction only to be confronted by foreign romanic scripts which would ultimately determine their fate and the fate of their generations to come.
That would have been the last she would see him. 80 years later, I was actually witness to a very emotional reunion of the 2 families, as the Madagascar "branch" reached out to us after the passing of their "grandfather" (my grandmother's younger brother). Ironically they spoke French, and we spoke in English - it was rather hilarious
Simply put, growing up in Malaysia was never easy from the get-go. If you are not a Muslim, or an ethnic Malay, you have an uphill battle every day of your life. Not to mention the sordid corrupt society that Malaysia is slowly sliding into.
I've known nothing but sacrifices, the daily toil my grandparents had to undergo as they got up at the crack of dawn, skinning chickens and boiling them for soup to be poured over Chinese noodles, as the Chinese workers and miners got up early to mine the Kinta tin mines in Ipoh.
During it's heydays the Kinta Valley would produce 90% of the worlds tin ore.
Or my maternal grandparents who dodged bullets through the Japanese occupation and Malayan Emergency from Chinese communists terrorist and British Commonwealth forces as they went about their daily toil cutting and collecting rubber sap in the northern Malayan state of Kedah. Again Malaya would produce close to 80% of the worlds latex and rubber supply up to the 1960s. They finally bought the rubber estate and subsequently bought a shop in a little town and started selling textile and clothes.
The
Malayan Emergency despite it's name was a bloody all out guerrilla war. Simply called an Emergency because British Insurance Houses, bankrupt after the World War, simply refuse to insure any more British assets that were in a warzone.
They had walked on thin ice through their lives, for us; for me....and they did whatever it took.
My late father, sold baked potatoes on the streets till he was a teenager through the Japanese occupation. Running through back-alleys of Ipoh as the Japanese
kempetai were rounding-up Chinese for execution for being sympathetic supporters of Chinese resistance forces in Manchuria and
Nanking (read the "Rape of Nanking"). He attended school when he was 13, cutting and pasting newspaper cuttings and reading rudimentary English.
He would pass his Senior Cambridge with a Grade III 5 years later, obtaining a C in English Literature, with 3 essays on Macbeth.
Today in Malaysia, corrupt politicians award citizenships to illegal Indonesians Muslims and hey presto, overnight, these fellow brethrens of theirs are suddenly far superior than you.
Why ? Why do my children have to suffer the humiliation of a society that institutionally discriminates against them. After all my and their forefathers have sacrificed. I have known too many lives, hundreds of young lives and dreams crushed and literally wasted by wonton and overzealous affirmative and discriminative policies from Malay public administrators and policy makers.
I call them the Little Napeleons and they are running the country dry.
Do whatever it takes, again that may have rung through my subconscious as I moved my family to the USA. Do whatever it takes.
It is ironic I got to read
John's blog, an American who fled the USA and has found peace in Taiping, Malaysia.
It was ironic that I grew up in Taiping, amidst my cross-country trainings and tennis lessons in the idyllic Lake Gardens. The halal lunches at Yut Sun, the debating competition in Sekolah Menengah Sains (now SERATAS), in which John now teaches.
It is ironic how each of us have found peace in 2 distinct physical locations which in reverse would have been hostile to us.
Maybe it's the Law of Attraction, and that the expanding Universe is in a constant flux of Creation. Our thought vibrations will line up circumstances, events and provide us circumstances that line up with our thoughts.
Maybe it's and my constant thought vibrations of not wanting to be discriminated against.
Maybe when we do whatever it takes, nothing else matters and only what we want matters.
Anyway, John has shown me the same trappings that trapped me, was in fact a liberating force for another.
John did whatever it took.
So, hopefully we will meet, John.
