(Excerpt from book, “Profiles in Resilience”, edited by Kua Ee Heok and Abdullah Tarmugi. Publisher: Write Edition)
A Reflection in the time of Covid-19, by Soo Eng Hiong
The year 1973, the year when the results of my Malaysia Certificate Exam (MCE) were released, was a significant year for me.
I had failed my Bahasa Malaysia, which meant that I would not be able to continue my studies with my other classmates. There weren’t many other options — my peers who did well in their MCE would be able to go on to continue their studies in Malaysia and eventually take their GCE A-Levels, and friends who came from well-to-do families went to Australia or private colleges in Malaysia. I, on the other hand, had neither the results nor financial means for either option. At this point, the future looked bleak, and I felt demoralised and lost.
I was born as the third child of a Hainanese family living in Batu Pahat, in Johor, Malaysia. It was a very humble beginning; my family of seven lived in a single room in the shophouse, behind the small coffeeshop that my father ran. After some thought and discussion, my father managed to pull together money for a one-way air ticket to London. So in the year of 1974, I arrived in London as a young man, set on embarking on a new chapter of my life.
It was wintertime in the bustling metropolis and to a person who’d spent his entire life living in the tropics, I was unaccustomed to the bitter cold. I was alone in a foreign land, with only a hundred pounds in my pocket and a promise from a friend to help me find accommodation in the city – I was 17 years old. East London of the 1970s was a rough, chaotic place. I was accepted into both Imperial College London and University of Southampton.
After obtaining my degree, I had the choice to work in Kuala Lumpur, or across the border in Malaysia’s neighbouring city-state, Singapore. I went with the latter, seeing how it was closer to Batu Pahat and would make it easier for me to visit home.
My father is my role model because he had faith and courage in his own abilities. It is with this tenacity that he set about carving out his own living from scratch, working as menial labour and other jobs.
The skills I acquired and the life that I’ve experienced are what mended my view of myself, like the Japanese ancient method of repairing broken ceramics with gold, Kintsugi. This way of fixing the porcelain helps give the broken pieces new life and shows us how the cracks and imperfections can contribute to the beauty of the object.
There is nothing shameful about having a few cracks; I think the cracks and flaws in all of us, when treated and accepted, make each of us unique and precious, like porcelain that have been repaired with gold.
In the earlier years, residing in the rough East End of London, I found that it was not conducive to study surrounded by constant activity, noise and disarray. In a bid to escape the noxious environment, I often sought shelter in the college library, parks, and museums. It was during these frequent visits to the British Museum that the exhibits on Chinese artefacts and relics first caught my attention.
Even after I left UK and settled down in Singapore, this interest I had in Chinese ceramics did not fade.
Although the road that I have opted for was not the most straightforward or smooth-sailing one at times, it has been instrumental in helping me understand who I am and what I value. I am satisfied with how I’ve faced the obstacles and how I’ve weathered the storms in my path, for it was those that led me from a small coffeeshop in the quiet town of Batu Pahat, to where I am today.
Soo Eng Hiong is a retired engineer.
Where to find kintsugi repair kits in Singapore?
(Featured image by Riho Kitagawa on Unsplash)
