Imaging the dim past ___ early stage

19 July 1933 is a very significant date as far as I am concerned. It was the day I took my first huge gasp of air and that has kept me going ever since. I remained unaware of the things around me for quite a long time till I was about five and what I am about to reveal was unfolded to me by my parents, mostly mum. That first breath of fresh air took place at Kandang Kerbau Hospital in Singapore. How and why my parents went that far south remains a mystery to me.
Dad left for Batavia soon after my birth to visit his aunt. She was Dutch. Dad didn’t feel at home in Java. The lifestyle was strange to him and he didn’t like the way the Javanese were treated. Segregation kept the Whites apart from the common people. At the cinemas the first class was reserved for the whites. He decided to leave before the sixth month of his stay. From the day of our reunion we never heard from Batavia again.
We moved back to Penang after the sixth month . It was there where the two of them grew up. Dad was under the care of a certain Doctor Smith and later grew up in the orphanage at St Xavier’s .
I believe he met mum when he started working at the Penang general hospital.
The depression of the 19thirties was on and jobs were difficult to find. His first appointment as a hospital assistant in a Rubber Estate hospital, not far from the island, came in the nick of time. I grew up there and was soon joined by my siblings in a short period of four years. Dad had a motorbike and the three of us, mum dad and me, went everywhere at every opportunity on the bike with me riding on the tank and mum the pillion rider.
I started school at St Xavier’s institution when I was seven and I lived with my Aunt in Penang till the end of that year, when world war ll started.