Chapter 14: Money Mattered

Providing enough food for the family was a constant concern for my parents. In those days, my father worked as a tailor, but there was no such thing as a statutory minimum wage. His income depended entirely on how many trousers or shirts he could complete in a given month. Supporting a household of eight - my parents, grandfather and five boys before my youngest sister was born - was a monthly challenge.

 

The pressure intensified when all the boys began attending school. To make ends meet, my parents had to take on additional work. Every morning, after preparing breakfast for us, they would hurry off to tap rubber at a nearby plantation. Once the trees were tapped, my father would rush home, wash up, and head out on his bicycle to begin his tailoring work for the day. 

My mother, meanwhile, stayed behind to complete the remaining tasks - Collecting the latex, straining the milk, adding chemicals to trigger coagulation, and finally rolling the rubber into sheets. By the time she returned home in late morning, it was already time to cook lunch for the boys returning from school. 

On weekends, we children also helped out with the rubber tapping. Although we weren't allowed to perform the delicate task of shaving a thin layer of bark in a downward spiral using the sharp tapping knife, we were entrusted with collecting latex and other lighter duties. We would wrap up the day once the rubber sheets were rolled and hung out to dry.

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At times, my mother took on odd jobs as housekeeper for expatriates living nearby in the government quarters. Back then, the British colonial government often built these residences on Signal Hill, which offered sweeping view of the South China Sea.

 

My father, on the other hand, seemed to work tirelessly -  almost 24/7. Every evening after dinner, he would immediately return to his tailoring, working on items brought home from the shop or fulfilling orders from friends and acquaintances. Both of my parents worked incredibly hard to keep the family going.

 

Even as a young boy, I understood the importance of earning extra money. I took on my first job at the age of 15, while I was in Form II. My uncle - my mother's brother, Yee Tshan Fah - hired me as a helper during the school holidays. At the time, he was a contractor involved in the construction and restoration of graves and tombstones at local cemeteries. My main task was to trace Chinese characters or calligraphy onto the tombstones and later painted them with gold paint. I was paid four dollars a day. 

I remember many occasions when I was left alone in the cemetery during lunch breaks when my uncle went out to buy food. Oddly enough, I often found myself napping atop covered burial chambers - and I wasn't the least bit afraid!

After completing my A-Level Upper Six at Sabah College, I worked as a trainee draftsman in the Structural Section of the Public Work Department (PWD) for nearly a year and a half, from early 1972 until March 1973. I left the job to pursue a degree in Civil Engineering at the University of Malaya.

P/S: Looking back, one of the most satisfying moments in my life came years later, when some of the expatriates my mother once worked for became my colleagues. Between 1978 and 1984, while I was serving as an engineer on the KK International Airport development project, one of those expatriates - now a mechanical & electrical consulting engineer - was assigned to the same project. It felt like life had come full circle!