Things that I remember in the last 25 hours…

4th May 2005, 1:30am. I walked into my father’s room ready to begin another round of my so-called ‘night duty’. Y, a friend and workmate of my father for 20+ years was present along with DM, another workmate. A Buddhist hymn was playing on the radio.

2:30am. DM left. I checked my father’s body temperature and fed him some water. 37.5 Celcius. Dad was breathing heavily, but still stable and responsive. I didn’t think too much about it. For the rest of the night Y and I talked, reminiscing memories of my father. I thought to myself – its so nice to have someone to accompany me like that.

6:00am. Mom woke up, surprised to see Y still there. She thanked Y, then Y left.

7:30am. My maternal uncle visited. He looked upset. He sat down beside my father, then started to sing softly. My father responded by turning his head and looking at him knowingly. “Get well soon. Wake up and hear the magpies sing.” my uncle said.

I went to bed at 8:15am.

1:48pm. I was woken up by a phone call. As soon as I answered, I heard a frantic knock on my door asking me to go to my father immediately. I apologised to the caller profusely and ran to my father’s room.

I walked into his room. My father was no longer breathing.

It drizzled the whole day yesterday.

I struggled back emotions.

I touched my father’s hand. It felt cold. The kind of cold you feel when you touch someone who just came out of an air-cond room. Cold. Lifeless.

Reality struck. My father is gone. Nothing will ever bring him back. Absolutely nothing at all.

I cried.

I remember it drizzled the whole day yesterday.

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I’m not the most melodramatic person around. And I can’t write sappy poems to save my life. But the account above was the best I can do in my current state of mind.

The past 12 hours has been a long and difficult one. I’m overwhelmed with emotions, mostly sadness and anger. I’m still trying to swallow in the fact that I lost my father, that he will no longer be with me to continue on with my journey of life. This reality is hard to accept. I’m still struggling.

Nothing left but his indentation

I’ve read every single comment here, and I thank each and everyone of you for leaving kind comments and words of encouragement. Its especially heartwarming to hear from strangers and friends alike, from places as close to Kuching and from places as far as Australia, UK, US. I’m touched that some of you even dedicated entries on your blog for me. Somehow it makes going through the past 12 hours a little bit easier.

To my Kuching readers – I understand that my privacy may be compromised following my father’s passing. As always, I ask that you respect my privacy. Please do not disclose any unnecessary information about my family or my job. Please do not disclose the existence of this blog to anyone else in Kuching. Most importantly, do not mention to any of my family members what you read here. Please, leave them out of it. As odd as it sounds, I rather as little people in Kuching know about my blog as possible, because I know Kuching is a small place and I know how hurtful mindless gossips can be. I enjoy writing. I’m sure many, including you, enjoy reading. Please do not be a bad sport and spoil it for us all.

Grief

Eddie commented, saying that he looks forward to me writing humourously again. I hope I will. I’m sure I will. But not right now. kennysia.com will be a sad and sombre place for a while, only because the writer himself is feeling sad and sombre. But I promise you Eddie, I will try to make myself laugh. Then I’ll try to make you laugh again. Eventually.

I thank you all for giving me strength to get through this very very difficult time.

So here I am at 7am in the morning for another late shift for the fourth night in the row. Fourth night that my father is in a half-conscious state. The good thing is, the rest of my family has more or less recovered from their respective illnesses and are therefore able to lift the burden off my shoulders a little. The bad thing is, my body clock is so fucking screwed up I think I need to send myself to the watch repair shop.

My old man is still holding on

The only reason I’m doing the late night shift is because I’m unable sleep the normal hours anymore after four days of sleeping at 8am and waking up at 3pm. Funny. Last time I did that was after a drunken night out partying at the Varga Lounge back in Perth.

I think this was more fun.

I went through my father’s old photo album today.

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Its always interesting to do something like that. Seriously, there’s nothing like watching your own parents sporting some horrendously bad fashion that would make you cringe if someone were to wear the same thing today.

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It is a very cliche thing for our parents to say to us “In our days, we didn’t have it so easy…” But in my father’s case, I totally believe him.

No bricks and mortar – 12 years growing up in a Kampung like this

In the early 50s, there’s a small Malay kampung near Kuching called Kampung Penambai. Six families were living in this kampung, and the Sia family was the only Chinese one there. My grandparents worked for a charcoal company for long hours but got paid very little. If it weren’t for circumstances that forced my father to move to Kuching, hey, I might be still typing this entry from a shack in Kampung Penambai.

In amongst his siblings, my father, being the eldest, was the de facto leader of the house. As feared as he was, he genuinely cared for his siblings and provided them with opportunities they never thought they could have. Even 50 years later today, he is still seen as a great leader in many people’s eyes.

Pa, how come you’re using your belt for a necktie?

There weren’t any Chinese schools in Kampung Penambai. In order to receive his primary school education, my father would have to travel down to Kuching on a little sampan boat – the only possible way to get to Kuching then. It would take 4 hours to get to Kuching on a good day, and up to 8 hours on a bad day. My father had spent a good part of the year away from his family whilst he stayed with his aunt in Kuching. The only time he was able to reunite with his family was during school holidays, where my grandmother would cook sumptous feast to welcome my father back.

My father holding a miniature version of himself. In those days they don’t have Photoshop, so…

It is very characteristic of my father to be hardworking. In the mid-60s, his mother (my grandmother) and younger sisters were working tirelessly at the rubber plantation supporting their family and giving my father money for his education. To alleviate their burden, my father in his spare time would work as a tutor (where I got my tutoring genes!) and as a construction labourer.

There were fringe benefits though. The constuction job got him a six-pack and a tan body, whereas the tutoring job got him my mother. 🙂

In those days, toilet paper was kinda expensive. Having a long hair had more uses than you think. 😉

My father managed to get himself into all the good schools growing up and he was always scoring number one in his class. At the end of his secondary education in 1971, he was presented with an opportunity to study overseas – a privilege at the time. As tempted as he was with that offer, he turned it down, knowing that the cost of him leaving home would be unbearable for the family.

My father, at my age, was a high school teacher.

His first professional job out of school was as a teacher for a year – where one of his students ended up as his business partner today. Then for the next nine years he worked as a salesperson for ICI Paints and a aluminium company. In addition to that, he was also selling general insurance on the side.

An ICI Paints photo in black and white. Oh, the irony…

My father was still dating my mother then. I was told that my mother was his first lover and vice versa.

This is from a set of photos he sent to my mother when he was working with ICI Paints in West Malaysia. My father has really nice handwriting. That’s one thing I didn’t inherit from him. 🙁

My father was significantly poorer than my mother’s family back then. My mom told me once they went to the cinemas together. They walked to the cinema’s candy store, and my father asked her what she wanted. My mother happily pointed out the Horlicks candy which costed very little. Being tight-on-budget he hesitated and tried to persuade her to buy something else. But my mother didn’t take it kindly so she ended up pulling a long face for the rest of the evening. I thought was silly, ‘cos now my father would have bought her a swimming pool filled with Horlicks candies if he wanted to.

In those days, they didn’t have Inspiration Alan Salon to do my dad’s hair.

My parents got engaged in 1973 and 2 years later, he married my mother. I thought my mother looked so pretty in this picture. For some reason I didn’t find her as pretty when she yelled at me for not cleaning up my bedroom. Hmm…

In those days, they don’t have Internet so you can’t slack off at work reading blogs.

In 1978, my father took a huge risk by mortgaging his house, his car, borrowed a huge sum of money from the bank ot start his own company. I shall not disclose the name and nature of the company and all that. But it was the best move he has ever made. The rest as they say, is history.

The company boomed throughout the 80s and 90s, and he created hundreds of jobs for the people of Kuching. His employees loyalty to him is undeniably his strongest asset. As a matter of fact, his first employee is still working for him even until today.

Success. My father’s very first car – a Volvo.

I’m born in 1982, and growing up I hate to admit that my time spent with him was little. My father was a self-confessed and true workaholic. He’s so passionate about his line of work, its almost as if his company is his other family. Whilst other people work 9 to 5, my worked 9 to 12 – that’s 12am, not 12pm. The only time we get to spend the full day with him was on Sundays.

In the early days, my father had to travel to many ulu-ulu places to find business

That does not mean that he neglects his family or anything like that. On the contrary, we know from the things he did for us, that we’re the most important part of his life.

Perhaps my fondest memory of him was when I was in Secondary 3. Exams are coming and every night I’d be in the living room “memorising” my books and notes till 2 or 3am in the morning. My father saw what I was going through. Every night, he’d buy me kolo mee from KY Cafe for supper, ensuring I don’t starve myself late into the night, and also ensuring both my brains and my guts grow large.

This is what got me through my Secondary 3 examination

I swear to you that’s the best tasting kolo mee I’ve ever had. That’s only because once upon a time, my father personally bought it for me in my time of need. Thank you, dad.

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I didn’t sleep last night. In fact I stayed up till 8am this morning. In another mad coincidence of events, everyone in my family had fallen sick with fever, flu and cough – except myself.

My father’s condition is deteriorating to such a critical stage, I feel I need to be by his side. Things just doesn’t look right. I woke up at 3pm today and all I’ve been doing since then is pray.

I can’t write long today. My family needs me.

UPDATE: I grew up in a Buddhist family, although I admit that I’m the least devout one in my family. Over the course of my father’s ordeal, many kind people of other faiths have approached us and wanted to offer us prayers, but they feared that my family would take offense. Some think that if they were to offer us prayers and my father miraculously recovers that he would be forced to convert into another religion and my family wouldn’t like it.

Personally I think that if my father recovers, then that’s the most important thing. It really doesn’t matter what religion you are. It may seem strange when people pray to have Buddha and Jesus and Allah and what not watch over him. But a prayer is a prayer, and a prayer about the only thing we can fall back on right now.

I was actually thinking whether or not to publish this entry. I wanted to put it here for the sake of documenting my life, but the comment-whore in me was scoffing at myself. After all, what can be so interesting about visiting a graveyard?

In the end, I concluded that documenting events in my life is more important than producing exciting entries and gathering comments anyway, hence the reason to this post. Btw, this is not meant to be a humourous post. I love it when people recommend kennysia.com to others citing that I’m funny, but most of the time I’m just a normal 20-something who wants to write about his life, and his enormous balls. So if you find this entry funny, man you must be crazy! Go watch some Si Qian Jin video or something!

Despite the fact that Ching Ming is something almost every Malaysian-Chinese observe every year, it is still a refreshing experience for me to witness the customs and practices my extended family follow. This is my first visit to the cemetery in eight years. It is also the first time I visited my late grandmother’s burial place since she passed away in 2001. I was still in Australia when that happened and I regret I wasn’t able to be by her side during her last days. I wasn’t even able to attend her funeral.

All these happened two weeks ago so its kinda old news. But what the heck.

Its not as scary as it looks

Like most people we woke up at 6am in the morning to beat the crowd. Turned out that we didn’t even need to do that because it was raining damn hard in Kuching that morning and the crowd was scarce. My mother stayed at home to look after my father and my sister hadn’t return to Kuching yet, so it was just me and my brother joining our extended family to pay respects to our late grandparents. I didn’t bring my digicam along as I think its rude to snap photos of the cemetery, but I had my camera phone anyway. 🙂 Most photos are deliberately cropped/blurred for privacy reasons.

Oh and I still have to reiterate to people who knows me in real life, PLEASE do not mention this website to any of my family members or anyone else in Kuching who knows me personally. They are sensitive about this sort of things, so please keep whatever you read to yourself so I can write more stupid things about myself. Deal?

So we headed over to our grandparents’ tomb which was re-decorated since I last remembered. The cemetery is surprisingly clean and mosquito-free, which is good because I had recurring nightmares of me as mosquito-breakfast from when I was a fat 14-year-old.

Somehow an ice-cream umbrella over a tomb didn’t quite look right

We propped up a bright red ice-cream umbrella over the tomb. It looked odd. Too bad I didn’t get any request from people asking to suck my ice-cream.

Malaysia’s answer to Doraemon

There’s a guy with a small umbrella attached on his head. I thought it was kinda cute. I wonder if he’s gonna fly away Mary-Poppins style if the wind blew harder.

My umbrella is bigger than yours, sucka

Mr Umbrella-Head looked kinda cool. I knew I have a bigger umbrella than him, but I felt like closing the little umbrella on his head and carry him around like a regular umbrella.

The currency of other world. Too bad I can’t use them here ‘cos I’m seriously broke.

These are yuan baos, or rather paper notes folded into the shape of gold ingots used in ancient China that my aunts have prepared. I remember when I was young and my grandmother was alive, my siblings and I would join her and fold bags and bags of these paper notes for our grandfather. Its a somewhat sad yet sobering thought that we are now doing it for our grandfather and her as well.

All these vegetarian food and imitation meat. Not something I wanna eat.

These are offerings, which are mostly vegetarian dishes since that’s what my grandmother ate when she’s alive. There’s also two bunches of small sticks next to the fruit basket if you noticed. Those are skins off the bamboo stems.

These are what smokers will have to put up with if the price of cigarettes keep going up

Here’s a closer look at the pack.

It looks like something illegal I know, but I swear its not!

You put some tobacco leaves (I think) onto the bamboo skin, roll it up and smoke it like a normal cigarette. My uncle called it Lo Ko Hoon, which he described as the cheapest form of cigarette.

Skinny as, but it does the job when you haven’t got much money

Its the first time I see this sort of thing. My uncle bought it because apparently that was what my grandfather smoked when he was alive. My aunt shared stories about how she used to sneak these cigarettes for my grandfather even when he was lying on his death bed.

My grandfather passed away when I was 1 years old so I hardly get to know him. All I know was that my grandparents married when the Japanese ruled Borneo during World War II. My family was very very very very very poor until when my father started his business. Looking at that RM1.00 pack of “cigarettes” is a sobering thought how lucky I am I got to study overseas.

While we were chatting amiably about our late grandparents, a family not far from us were doing something interesting…


Nice tent! Too bad the rain stopped soon after they put up the tent! HAHAHAAHAAAA!!! One hour worth of effort… GONE!

Heh, I think they came on the wrong show lah. They should be playing Survivor.

Anyway, when we figured its about time to leave, my uncle did this special ritual involving two coins. He kneeled in front of the tomb and threw two coins. Its a game of probability: two tails meant my late grandparents were not satiated yet, two heads meant they’re smiling on us, and a head and a tail meant that they were full and we may start packing and leave. I thought it was an interesting custom.

Ok this is starting to really look like Survivor

We left the cemetery in a big way by burning all those yuan baos and other unfolded paper notes. I’ve seen others burning all sorts of funny things like cardboard beer cans and houses, but we weren’t into those kinda things. So we packed and left and had lunch together and that was that.

I think Ching Ming is great tradition to observe. I never realised its importance until today. I guess the best part is that we shared stories about our late grandparents, reminiscing the good ol’ times and how life is better for us now because of them.

Somehow talking about grandparents made me feel that a part of them in my heart still lives. 🙂

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This is going to be a very difficult topic to write, if it is even possible for me to put it in words. Nonetheless, it has happened and it was the beginning of a very difficult journey for me and my family.

My father has always been a very driven man. One thing he loves as much as he loves his family is his business. When he was younger, my father was very poor. My father grew up in a time when the Japanese was occupying Borneo. In between studying and working, my father also had to take care of the rest of the family whilst his parents were at work. My grandmother used to tell me stories about how little they had to survive on, how having food on the table everyday is a difficult task. Sometimes she even had to "borrow" food from good samaritans. In his family, my father is an authorative figure that his siblings fear, yet respect.

My father is a very smart guy. My mother often told me when my father was a student, he’d always score 100 for his Maths tests whilst his classmates did poorly. His teacher would then scale up everyone’s scores by 10 points. However because my father had already hit 100 points, the teacher would ‘owe’ my father 10 points and add 10 points to his scores in later tests. Unfortunately, my father kept on getting 100 points for his Maths tests right until the end of the year. I saw his end of the year report cards which read: "Maths: 100% + 30%". Unlike the luxuries that I enjoy right now, my father did not have any tertiary education.Right after he finished his secondary studies, he worked as a teacher, a tutor (where he met my mom), an ICI Dulux salesperson, an insurance salesperson and so on, before he established his own company.

Even after his company achieved considerable success in Kuching, my father was relentless in his pursuit for excellence. That is very typical of him. He knows no limits and he would always find an opportunity to explore. He created hundreds of jobs and he shares his success with his less fortunate siblings. The wealth and luxuries that we enjoy right now would never be realised if he were to sit back and relax. I will not be here today if it were not for him. He single-handly turned the family from rags to riches, and these riches are not just one-off. For generations and generations to come, every single person in my family would enjoy the fruit of his labour. And that’s how significant his contribution is.

Beginning July 2004, my father began to experience some bizzare symptoms. We all noticed that he lost some weight and was easily fatigued, which we all dismissed as being work-related stress. My mother had to send his trousers to the tailor to adjust for his declining waist size. His company was rapidly expanding into North-East Malaysia, and he would work through day and night. We didn’t think much of it. After all, when he was in Perth he’d usually undergo a series of health check-ups. Usually the results turns up ok or average, but nothing life-threatening. For me back then, my life wasn’t all that interesting. I was working, I enjoyed it, everything’s ok. But its usually when you start feeling that way that life throws you a curve ball. Oh how I wish I can say that everything is ok now.

Up until 26th October 2004, my father had lost a total of 11kg. I still remembered a conversation we had on the dining table. My mother was visibly worried that my father had lost so much weight, and she was telling my father that.
Dad: "Its ok. I’ve always wanted to lose some weight because I’m fat."
Mom: "…"
Dad: "You see Kenny also lost 11kg but you didn’t say anthing."
Mom: "That’s different! He went to the gym and diet like crazy."
I advised my father to go for a thorough medical check-up, he’d already made an appointment for the next day and that was that. We watched Troy together on DVD and didn’t think much of it.

At 5:25pm on the 27th October 2004, I was at work and counting down the minutes to 5:30pm. My brother logged on to MSN Messenger and messaged me. "Can you come home right now? Its urgent." he wrote. "I’m coming home in 5 minutes time. Why? What’s so urgent?" I replied. "Papa has cancer."

My father was diagnosed with cancer. I was heartbroken.

I can’t describe how I felt. Those who have experienced the pain of being helplessness, and those who have been through the thought of losing someone close would know exactly what I was feeling. Those who haven’t, let’s just hope you never have to go through it yourself.

How? Why? How could it happen so suddenly? Million of thoughts went through my head as I rushed back home. I opened the door, and saw my mom. I hugged her and she couldn’t stop crying and I couldn’t stop crying. Everyone was feeling upset. My dad wakes up from his nap. “???, ??? (Nothing’s wrong, nothing’s wrong)” he said. Ironically he’s the only person in the family who felt positive – maybe he was just putting up a brave face to comfort us and I appreciated that. We watched The Day After Tomorrow on DVD together, but as if I had the mood to watch.

After we watched, we talked. My dad said that the results from the afternoon was very surprising. He did not have the symptoms that’s typical of a cancer, eg. traces of blood in the urine. He described that our life here is a holiday destination. My dad has made the most of it, and he is happy with what he has accomplished. He is glad that my brother has shown so much interests in the family business and that I’m starting to show interest as well. Now that his holiday is almost over, he is happy to pack his bags and leave.

A further diagnosis with CT scanning showed that a tumour the size of an orange on one of his kidney. The cancer had since spreaded to both his lungs. Many doctors have expressed negativity. However, we do not want to keep our hopes down. We’ve all been feeding him with stories of cancer survivors. Sometimes we should not underestimate the power of hope. My family was upset that at 56 years old he’s already facing this situation.

On November 2004, he returned to Kuching for the first time since he knew that he contracted kidney cancer. He essentially said to the company that he founded about his situation. It was an emotional scene, but the last thing that my father wants to see is people feeling sad and thinking that he would not be back. He kept saying that he will be back to lead the company and spend time with family and friends back home.

I felt sorry for my dad. I feel upset because my father has been supporting me all my life from the day I’m born till now. I have only just started working, just beginning to earn my own income, and just when I wanted to start repaying my debts to him, when I received news like that.

Meanwhile, I ask that you treat your parents well everyday. Life is full of surprises. We don’t want to wait till its too late to show our gratitude to our parents.