Translation Work

For the last couple of months, I have been helping to do some translation work from Chinese to English on a book to commemorate an old couple who passed away in Australia. The lady passed away in 2005 while the man passed away in 2006. They migrated to Sydney to follow their spinster daughter who had migrated earlier. One of the daughters of the deceased used to be my primary school Chinese teacher. She still stays with her husband in Sabah but travels a lot to Singapore because her son who married a Singaporean has settled down there.

The book contains articles written by the daughters and grandchildren. Their stories told of very simple migrants who came from China and struggled hard to carve out a living and raise a family in Sabah. Nothing fantastic - just ordinary people living ordinary lives.

I could understand from the articles that this spinster daughter (who had been staying with her parents) would take quite a while to get over her parents' passing. The book is basically her idea of paying tribute to her parents.

Another West Malaysian has Left Us

Last week, our UMS-graduated engineer left us to return to West Malaysia. That makes our office a bit short-handed when deadlines of a number of projects needed to be met.

I had originally decided against employing another West Malaysian after our previous UMS-graduated engineer left us to work in Singapore. His reason then was that he could be closer to his girl friend who is working in JB. However, due to the difficulty of getting graduate engineer of quality, we had no choice but to take in another West Malaysian knowing well the risk of him leaving one day.

Of course, his leaving us was unexpected. He told us that his aged father who runs a little roadside mee store together with his mom broke his arm not long ago and he felt the need to go back to convince them to stop the business once and for all. I asked him what his parents would do if they are forced to stop work when they still opt to continue working. He felt that at their age, it is too risky for them to carry on. He told me that he has been apprehensive about his aged parents having to get up early each morning at 5am to ride a motorbike to the road side to set up the store.

I must admit he is a very motivated person and one that is hard to replace. Paul would agree that he is one of those rare ones indeed!