a true ‘boleh malaysian’

i have not read the paper (the star which i subscribed to) for 3 days! too busy. er… actually not really that but i should rather say ‘too busy on computer’. haha. when i’m on computer how to read the paper? (whether hardcopy or online. i rarely read online paper anyway). my free time are all spend on the PC, so where got free time to read paper unless… i will only read the paper when i’m watching tv and i hardly watch tv but spent a lot of time on PC, thus no time to read paper. that’s my definition of ‘no time to read paper’. by right, it should be ‘prefer to be on the PC than read paper’. haha.

well it was because i did not read the paper that i missed out this feature on one remarkable man whom i had get to know personally, mr kuan huah oong (picture – with his daughter), or known fondly as uncle kuan to me. i knew of this feature only when i visited ktemoc’s blog. he had posted the whole article in his blog.

it had been a long time i had not seen uncle kuan as i had lost contact with him. i was delighted to suddenly see this feature on him by none other than his own daughter.

i met uncle kuan many many years ago… er… somewhere in the early 90s i think – the time when the bi-weekly magazine ‘malaysian post’ was in publication. anyone remember the magazine? heh. only those around my age or few years younger will remember i guess. before it was known as ‘malaysian post’ it was known as ‘new thrill’

you see, at that time, i was a very regular reader of malaysian post and i used to write to malaysian post quite regularly. then among us the regular readers and writers, as we get to know each other more via malaysian post (MP in short), we decided that maybe we should meet and maybe form a ‘MP readers club’. it’s just like us bloggers lah… after visiting each other blogs and knowing each other online, bloggers decided to meet, right?

so one day someone did initiate a gathering and the venue was at the esplanade. many regular writers turned up. most of them were younger than me! then we notice one elderly man present. he was uncle kuan! well so we had our meeting and we discussed this and that, among them a venue for our gathering. . we did want to meet more often but we were worried about the venue. then suddenly uncle kuan said that we were welcome to use his house as the venue! wow! can’t believe that! we were all total strangers (having just met) and yet he was willing to open his house for us to use as venue.

so yes, once in a while, we did had gathering in his house. other time we had it in macD or KFC (at that time for us ‘kids’ that time, no starbucks or coffee bean as venue, not like the more affluent ‘kids’ nowadays – the bloggers! –  who always choose these 2 expensive places)

that was how i get to know uncle kuan. with a two of the MP readers i got to know well, we decided to visit uncle kuan once in a while, not only when we had a gathering. that was when uncle kuan introduced us to hiking up penang hill via the jeep trail! (next to botanical garden). it was mentioned in the star’s feature about him hiking up to trail 84, halfway mark of penang hill.  the shelter there where tea was served (and sometimes biscuits) was built by him. my 2 friends and i then started to hike up there weekly and we will meet uncle kuan either at the foot of the hill or at the 84 mark. he had many stories to tell us while we were hiking with him or while we were sipping tea with him.

as i said i wrote quite regularly to malaysian post, i remember once i interview uncle kuan and wrote a feature about him. it came out one whole page, just like this star’s feature of him. i will look out for the article and maybe scan it to be posted here or if free, re-type the article. watch out for the update!

note: btw, the phrase in my heading ‘boleh malaysian’ came from ktemoc