Off to Manchester for a semester

23 January 2010 11 Comments

bye-bye dinnerMy daughter Elaine went to stay with my wife’s sister and husband, Amy and Mike in Bolton, England. This is the coldest in England in perhaps two decades. All of us are going to miss her but she is all wrapped up in warm comfort and care.

She will be an exchange student in the University of Manchester for a semester. How the Lord opened the way and provided the funds for her to go there is a testimony in itself. We are grateful to God for his undeserved blessings, and theAmy and Mike generosity of friends and family.

We were with her on skype and she looked happy and spoilt! She showed us a smart jacket and some warm turtleneck from sales there- snazzy stuff. We were happy for her and appreciated the Blyths for the love and generosity in hosting her for the period.

As all football fans know, Manchester is the home of the world’s second most famous football club: Manchester City FC. In case you wonder which is the most famous, and greatest, it is Arsenal FC.   🙂

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They’re all growing up fast

14 January 2010 Leave a comment
Christmas event photo
L to R: Joshua, Elaine, Kenny, Wen Mun, Matthew, Wen Por

Wen Por and Wen Mun live in Bangkok and study in an international school there. Their mum, Baby, is my wife’s younger sister, a Singaporean who has worked there, met her husband and now has her home there for over twenty years. Her husband Jack, is Taiwanese, and they run a trading business there. They have visited us over more than a decade now, usually during the Christmas season and they are great to have around. They are very well brought up and well behaved and this time it struck me that they are mature young folk and love doing things young people love doing. They are no longer young kids. So my son and daughter who were on vacation brought them to an overdose of shopping, church events, and activities and I am sure it built strong bonds of love.

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My grandparents were from Sarawak

7 January 2010 3 Comments

my mum's family of origin: Law family

My wife and I were tidying up our drawers recently and we found some old documents like this photo above and my mum’s family tree. My mum Ada Law, is the girl on the extreme left, next to her frowning mum, my maternal grandmother, Beatrice Kho. The father John Law was probably taking the photo. The interesting thing were the two boys in the front wearing shorts. One was James and the other was Harry. Both went missing during the Japanese Occupation, presumably taken away and killed by Japanese soldiers. My mum before the onset of Alzeihmer’s disease, harboured bitter memories about their deaths.

I also learned that my maternal grandparents and great-grandparents were from Kuching and there are relatives I do not know who still live there. They were all Sarawakians.

Among my aunties was one who married a Malacca man, an Ahmad Derus, who had ten children and twenty-nine grand-children. The aunty, Mable Law, married him, and had one son, Johan, before she passed away. The rest were born to the second wife, a Connie Jacobs. We still have contacts with Johan who married a Japanese woman, lives in Malacca, and owns and runs a Hotel Johan there.

Knowing this also made me think: I must try to visit Sarawak one day. Even if I cannot meet my relatives, I am sure there is a mountain to trek there. 🙂

(This blogpost was first published on August 17th, 2006 and I want to make available this information for myself and posterity by republishing it.)

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