SS Quah's Anything Goes

PFS heritage walk

noreply@blogger.com (SS Quah) — Mon, 05 Oct 2026 04:02:28 +0000

Let me begin with some irrelevance. I was just thinking that, since the oldest participant in our Penang Free School heritage walk last Saturday entered Form One in 1956, there must have been at least 50,000 students who had walked through the gates of the old school over the past 70 years. Just an estimate, mind you, because it is a number that no one can easily verify. So I plucked it from the air.

Then I considered that with the 30 participants who turned up for the heritage walk, they constituted only 0.06% of those 50,000 Old Frees. My devious mind then thought, wow, the other 99.94% of Old Frees must already know everything about their old school, and that's why they weren't interested in this activity at all. 😁

Anyway, Siang Jin and I thought that with only these 30 participants, the heritage walk was still a great success. Everyone seemed to enjoy themselves thoroughly. Some had not returned to the Free School for a very long time, so for them it really was a walk down memory lane.

We began in one of the classrooms where we introduced the participants to the Free School Guide and explained how it came about. Although we usually trace its beginnings to the school's Bicentenary celebrations in 2016, the seed was actually sown a year earlier when Lean Kang, a former Prefect of the Free School like Siang Jin, was the organising chairman of the 150th anniversary dinner of the school's Prefects' Board. He had, at some point, taken a peek into the Prefects' Room and wasn't particularly impressed with what he saw.

Funds raised from that dinner went towards improving the Prefects' Room, among other things. Both of them then channelled the excess funds towards organising a series of exclusive student leadership workshops for the Prefects and other potential student leaders from 2017 until 2024. Myself and one or two others were invited to assist. We had Tan Soo Choon as our bedrock trainer until his untimely demise at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. He is greatly missed. Somewhere along the way, Siang Jin realised that nobody was going to read Let the Aisles Proclaim, my 350-page book on the school's 200-year history, and we decided that perhaps we should do something more manageable. So we took the information from the book and turned it into 10 short videos.

We asked some of our schoolmates from the Class of 1970 to get involved, and they responded enthusiastically. This is perhaps an appropriate time to mention Teik Wah who did the voiceover admirably, Chei Jin lent his voice to the School Rally and the main man behind the video productions, Kumaraveloo. That was in 2019. Then, in 2024, Siang Jin and I worked on the Free School Guide itself, an interactive mobile app that would allow people to access information about the school from anywhere in the world. In a way, the student leadership workshops, the videos and eventually the Free School Guide were our own small way of giving something back to society. We had benefited from our years at the Free School, so what better way to give something back than to contribute to the school itself and to the students who would come after us? That, in a nutshell, was how it all started.

Then came the shock about two months ago when we learnt that the PFS210Years organising committee had suddenly announced a PFS heritage walk through the school grounds on the morning of the third of October. This caught us completely by surprise because we hadn't been informed of any such plan. Ivan Ooi, the organising committee chairman, subsequently spoke to Siang Jin about it and the two of us decided to chip in and help. At the very least, we had to defend our turf and make sure that whatever was told to the participants would be based on correct information. But the fact that the organisers announced the event without consulting us was not quite right. A fait accompli for them, perhaps, but it was boh sui.

We anticipated that perhaps 70 to 100 people might register for the walk, but in retrospect, the 30 participants turned out to be quite a comfortable number. We could take our time and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves. After the introduction, we proceeded to the Pinhorn Hall which I have always considered to be the soul of the school. My main focus there was on the wall plaques, where I explained the story behind the donors who had contributed towards the construction of the former Penang Free School building in Farquhar Street, now occupied by the Penang State Museum. Their names are permanently etched on three marble plaques there.

When the present school building was completed in 1927 and the school moved into these premises on 9 January 1928, the donors' names were reproduced on a wooden plaque and mounted in the space above the main entrance to the school hall. Very few people today know about its significance. Most visitors tend to concentrate instead on the plaques bearing the names of the Head Boys, the Queen's Scholars and the Headmasters. I thought it was worth bringing this little piece of the school's history back into the picture.

From Pinhorn Hall, we took a short walk to the Archives building, which had already been opened up for the visitors. For many of the participants, this was the first time they had even realised that the Archives rooms existed, let alone stepped inside them. I could only manage a preliminary explanation because everyone seemed much more engrossed in exploring the rooms for themselves, which was probably a good thing. After all, an archive is something you really should be allowed to poke around in rather than simply have someone standing there telling you what you're looking at.

Eventually, we returned to the classroom for a quiz and, after that, called it a day with a fairly robust singing of the School Rally. Thirty people may have been only 0.06% of my rather fanciful estimate of 50,000 Old Frees, but judging from the enthusiasm in the room, I don't think we needed the other 99.94% to make the morning worthwhile.

PS. There was a special dinner at the school on the same night to commemorate the 210th anniversary, but I did not attend because I had a prior appointment elsewhere. For me, the next significant events will now be on the 21st of October itself. The traditional visit to Robert Sparke Hutchings' grave in the morning and The Old Frees' Association's annual dinner in the evening.

Digital transformation

noreply@blogger.com (SS Quah) — Thu, 01 Oct 2026 22:45:00 +0000

There is something about October that excites me every year, and it always revolves around Penang Free School. When October comes around, there is usually the school's Speech Day, or Founder's Day, which followed the visit to Robert Sparke Hutchings' grave on the morning of the 21st of October. Then, in the evening, there is the annual dinner of The Old Frees' Association that I look forward to.

This year, Speech Day was brought forward to the first of October because of clashes with the examination dates. Last year, it was also held earlier, that time because of its proximity to Deepavali when the school took a break. And there have been quite a few such instances in the school's long history. So, while most Old Frees would probably like to see Speech Day held on the 21st of October every year, it is obviously not quite etched in stone.

I almost missed this year's Speech Day because I was given the impression that it would be open only to those who had contributed to the school's Digital Transformation Fund. But what the heck, I thought to myself. Nobody's going to stop this Old Free from attending Speech Day, fund or no fund. I have attended every Speech Day since 2012 and I wasn't going to break my consistency. So there I was at 8am on the first of the month, walking into the school hall and immediately being greeted by familiar faces from The Old Frees' Association. I was right to attend after all. There was no such restriction. A miscommunication, if ever there was one.

One of the first people I bumped into was Danny Quah. I would consider him a cheen-lang, as his forefathers had migrated from the same locality in Amoy as my ancestors. Danny was there as the Old Free invited to address the school.

This was also the first time the new Penang Governor, Ramli Ngah Talib, attended Penang Free School Speech Day as Guest of Honour. Traditionally, the Governor attends the school's Speech Day every year, a tradition that goes back to the days before Independence when the Resident-Governor would attend the school's annual Speech Day.

This year's Speech Day was, of course, part of the celebrations for the school's 210th anniversary, and Ivan Ooi, president of the Penang Free School Foundation and organising chairman of the PFS 210 Years celebration committee, reminded Old Frees that an anniversary was not just about looking back. It was also about thinking about what we would leave behind for future generations.

While the traditions and character of the school must be preserved, he said, the school also has to prepare its students for a very different world shaped by artificial intelligence, robotics, data science and other digital technologies. That was where the Penang Free School Digital Transformation Fund came in. Supporting the fund, he said, was not simply about buying technology but about creating opportunities for the next generation of Frees. After all, the school had given us an education, friendships, discipline, confidence and character. Now it was our turn to give something back.

Danny's speech took a rather different tack. Having left Penang Free School in 1976, he began by calling himself a relic and reflected on how much the world had changed in those 50 years. His generation (and obviously mine too as we are only three of four years apart in age) had slide rules, black-and-white television, rotary phones, handwritten letters and examination papers passed down by seniors. We waited for buses, waited for replies to letters and quite often got lost. There was no mobile phone to keep track of where we were and much of our lives left no digital record.

The 1976 Free lived with "unreachability, waiting, uncertainty, shared scarcity, and forgetting", while the 2026 Free lives with "instant knowledge, continuous connection, digital identity, machine intelligence, and collapsed distance".

But Danny was not suggesting that life was better in our day. Today's young people may have more information than they know what to do with, but they also have to navigate deepfakes, misinformation and algorithmic feeds while dealing with much bigger problems such as climate change, geopolitical conflict and the uncertainties brought about by AI.

Yet his message was ultimately an optimistic one. Today's Frees also have access to tools that our generation could never have imagined: almost unlimited knowledge, global communities and the ability to learn, create, publish and build things from almost anywhere.

In other words, today's young people may have inherited bigger problems than we did, but they have also inherited much more powerful tools with which to tackle them. Fifty years ago, our generation walked out of Penang Free School into our world. Now it is the turn of today's Frees. "Go out and make your world a better world," was his parting advice.

Quiet presence, but powerful

noreply@blogger.com (SS Quah) — Sun, 27 Sep 2026 22:58:00 +0000

I was pleased to see Uzbekistan win the Open section of the 46th Chess Olympiad in Samarkand yesterday. It was rather appropriate that the Uzbek team won the gold medal on home soil, especially considering the remarkable crop of young players the country has produced in recent years.

The five members of the team were Nodirbek Abdusattorov, Javokhir Sindarov, Nodirbek Yakubboev, Shamsiddin Vokhidov and Mukhiddin Madaminov. An exceptionally talented bunch, led by Sindarov and Abdusattorov, both still very young by any normal measure of things. Sindarov is only 21 and Abdusattorov 22, yet both have already established themselves among the world's strongest players.

But as I watched the matches over the past couple of weeks, I found myself noticing somebody vaguely familiar who wasn't actually playing. Didn't really recognised him at first, but there he was, Rustam Kasimdzhanov, the team's non-playing captain.

It was in 1998 that I first met Kasimdzhanov. He was just 19 years old and playing for Tashkent in the Asian Cities Team Chess Championship at Genting Highlands. I remember him because he spoke excellent English. He was already a grandmaster then, but of course nobody knew what the future held for this young Uzbek player.

I happened to be involved in that tournament as an arbiter, so I saw him around the event. Six years later, he would become FIDE World Champion. He subsequently went on to become a highly respected coach and second, working with players such as Viswanathan Anand and Fabiano Caruana in their world championship campaigns.

Now, nearly three decades after I first saw him in Genting, here he was again, this time supporting a new generation of Uzbek players. During the Olympiad, he was constantly around. He was there from the beginning of the rounds and when the games were over, he was still there. When one of his players won, he was there to congratulate him. When one of them suffered an occasional loss, he was there to offer some consolation.

He wasn't doing anything dramatic and for the most part, he wasn't the person the cameras were looking for. The attention naturally belonged to the four players sitting at the boards. They were the ones winning the games and collecting the points. But Kasimdzhanov provided the quiet, steady presence behind them.

I thought that was quite important in a team competition like the Chess Olympiad. These young players may be tremendously strong, but they are still playing 11 demanding rounds under considerable pressure. There will inevitably be good days and bad days, and having somebody with Kasimdzhanov's experience around throughout the tournament must have been useful, even if much of what he did would never show up in the tournament statistics.

And there was something quite nice about it for me. In 1998, I was watching an 19-year-old Kasimdzhanov playing first board for Tashkent. Yesterday, I was watching a 47-year-old man on the other side of the chessboard, so to speak, helping Uzbekistan's latest generation of young stars win the Olympiad.

The players received all the attention after their victory in Samarkand, but there was also the quiet man who had been with them throughout the journey, and whom not many people noticed. Perhaps after nearly 30 years in top-level chess, Kasimdzhanov knows that sometimes the most useful thing you can do is simply to be there when it matters.

PFS heritage walkabout

noreply@blogger.com (SS Quah) — Sat, 26 Sep 2026 03:45:09 +0000

Calling all Old Frees...

If you are free on 03 October 2026, come join the PFS Heritage Walkabout & Quiz from 9:30am to noon at your alma mater, Penang Free School. There are cash prizes to be won.

Register via this form: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeXes6eH3bbD2oir_xdL0-NRxCQoUB4lv0ilZPMXVMPD0Binw/viewform

The quiz is based on the Free School Guide. Download it via this link: https://mega.nz/file/DexgVRyD#BIXEhVptqHrwwxlpZLK_7lHLnJQBqNdk7XVA1ijBtUI

Celebrating the mid-autumn festival

noreply@blogger.com (SS Quah) — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 22:02:00 +0000

With today being the 15th day of the Chinese eighth lunar month, I started thinking about what we in Penang actually call it. In English, there are two names commonly used: Mid-Autumn Festival and Mooncake Festival. But when I was growing up hearing, speaking and breathing Penang Hokkien, there was yet another name that sounded more familiar: pek-gueh chap-goh. That is how many of us first knew the festival: not by its formal Chinese name, 中秋节, or by the English name "Mid-Autumn Festival", but simply as pek-gueh chap-goh.

So which name should be used? There isn't really a rule saying that one must be used and the others avoided. "Mooncake Festival" is perfectly familiar in Malaysia, Singapore and among Chinese communities elsewhere.

But if I had to choose one in English, I'd still go with Mid-Autumn Festival. The reason is quite straightforward. The Hokkien name is 中秋节 (Tiong-chhiu chek). Tiong-chhiu means "mid-autumn" and chek means festival. So the literal translation is Mid-Autumn Festival. There is another Penang Hokkien expression that is worth mentioning here. The mooncake itself is known as tiong-chhiu pneah, literally the "mid-autumn pastry" or biscuit. So there is a nice connection between tiong-chhiu chek, the Mid-Autumn Festival, and tiong-chhiu pneah, the mooncake we associate so closely with it.

"Mooncake Festival", on the other hand, is a popular name that has developed from one of the customs associated with the occasion, but it does make the festival sound as though it revolves around a particular pastry.

However, there is considerably more to it than that. The festival falls on the 15th day of the eighth month of the Chinese lunar calendar when the moon is traditionally regarded as being at its fullest and brightest. It is closely associated with the autumn harvest, the full moon and families gathering together.

There are also lanterns, moon gazing, poetry and the familiar stories connected with the moon, particularly the tale of Chang'e. Different parts of the Chinese-speaking world have their own customs and foods too. In some places, pomelos and osmanthus feature prominently.

Here in Penang, we have our own particular way of celebrating. Lanterns are still a familiar sight, especially where children are involved, while mooncakes come in an a confusing variety of flavours. Traditional lotus paste and salted egg yolk still have their followers, but these days we're also seen everything from durian and chocolate to artificial flavours. All sorts of combinations that our grandparents would probably eye with some suspicion.

And then there is the packaging. Mooncakes have become big business. Every year the boxes seem to become more elaborate, more expensive and, occasionally, considerably more impressive than the mooncakes inside them. Hotels, restaurants and bakeries compete to come up with new flavours and presentation, while companies send them out as corporate gifts.

This is another reason why I prefer the name Mid-Autumn Festival. "Mooncake Festival" puts the emphasis rather heavily on the commercial and culinary side of things. It is a bit like calling Christmas the English Pudding Festival. The pudding may be an important part of Christmas, but it doesn't really tell us what Christmas is about.

Still, I can understand why "Mooncake Festival" has caught on, particularly in Malaysia and Singapore. It is simple, catchy and immediately gives people an idea of what the festival involves. If someone unfamiliar with Chinese customs hears "Mooncake Festival", they at least know what to look out for.

So I'm not suggesting that we should start correcting people every time they say "Mooncake Festival". That would be taking things rather too seriously. For me, though, Mid-Autumn Festival feels more appropriate because it describes the occasion rather than the food.

And perhaps pek-gueh chap-goh is the most Penang way of looking at it. It doesn't even try to explain the festival. It simply tells us when it happens. Those words would have been enough for an older generation of Penang Hokkiens to know exactly what you were talking about.

Which brings me back to the question of what we should call it. Mid-Autumn Festival, Mooncake Festival or pek-gueh chap-goh? Perhaps all three are perfectly valid, depending on who you're talking to. But when I look up at the full moon, I'd still rather think of it as the Mid-Autumn Festival. The moon, after all, was there long before the mooncakes.

A little Cameron break

noreply@blogger.com (SS Quah) — Wed, 23 Sep 2026 14:21:51 +0000

I haven't done a long-distance drive for quite some time. If I want to go to Kuala Lumpur, for instance, my go-to mode of transport nowadays is the ETS train service which KTMB introduced in 2014. So, the furthest I have probably driven in recent years is Taiping. A few days ago, friends invited us to stay at their apartment in Cameron Highlands and we jumped at the opportunity. But there was a nagging doubt at the back of my mind about whether a much older me could still manage a long drive. After all, getting up to Tanah Rata, one of the three main towns in Cameron Highlands, would take about four hours, and possibly longer if we ran into traffic jams in the highlands.

Well, I did manage it and arrived in Cameron Highlands to a wet, windy and rather cold afternoon. Temperatures had dropped to 16°C or even lower overnight during the previous week, which was something we hadn't experienced in any of our recent visits. It brought back memories of Cameron Highlands in the 1970s and 1980s, when there was much less development and therefore far fewer people around. Perhaps that was why it seemed so much colder then. But for this trip, it was fortunate that we had come prepared with thicker clothing.

This was a very free-and-easy three days for us. We weren't interested in visiting the lavender farms or strawberry farms, or any of the usual tourist attractions in the highlands. Neither did we make the trip to Brinchang for food. In fact, the furthest we ventured was the Tanah Rata town centre, where we had all our meals.

I was pleasantly surprised to discover that the restaurants there served very good Indian food, or at least the two we tried did. Singh Capati Urban Restaurant served a remarkable range of Punjabi dishes and I really can't praise them enough. The masala thosai at Highland Spice Restaurant was better than any I've eaten in Penang. While walking along the main street, we came across Cameron AA Curry House, only to discover that it had closed since we last ate there about a year ago. It was a little sad to see a familiar place gone.

We had a black pepper steak at Rosette Cafe and were impressed with how well it was prepared. The meat was soft and tender, just the way I like it. One morning we had braised pork knuckle koay teow at Hui Wei Restaurant and, of course, no trip to Cameron Highlands would be complete without scones and cheesecake at The Lord's Cafe.

All too soon, our three days were up and it was time to head home. Before leaving, though, we took a quick drive around Tanah Rata. It wasn't really planned, but somehow that little drive ended with us having scones and a spot of English tea at the old Smokehouse Hotel. We hadn't been there for more than 30 years, so it was a pleasure walking around the grounds and exploring the hotel interior again. It brought back memories of another old hotel we had stayed in, the Red Lion Inn in Dittisham, and for a little while, we were quite happy just to be there and take in the surroundings before finally making our way home.

Old Bukit Mertajam

noreply@blogger.com (SS Quah) — Tue, 15 Sep 2026 22:48:00 +0000

I came across these pictures of old Bukit Mertajam on Facebook. Old in the sense that they could have been taken in the 1960s or 1970s, or even the 1980s, and they certainly captured that laid-back look of a typical old town in Malaysia. This location happened to be Bukit Mertajam, where I now live, although the places in these pictures are a few kilometres away from where I stay.

The first picture shows Danby Road, with the shophouses on the left then occupied by Malayan Banking. What I noticed was the petrol station on the right side of the road, which I had completely forgotten about. It's now gone, and I suspect most people have completely forgotten that it was ever there! Only this picture remains to remind us that there was once a petrol station along this stretch of road. Really, familiar places can change so much over the years that things which were once part of the everyday landscape simply disappear from memory.

However, I still do remember the stretch of three old houses seen at the end of this road. Those are along Station Road, by the way, where Danby Road meets Station Road. Two doors away from the left-hand unit was Mun Kee Restaurant, which sold a very delicious tua pau, or dumpling. I used to stop by the restaurant early on Friday mornings to buy some before proceeding to work.

The second picture is Station Road itself, which was named because the old Malayan Railway station stood at the end of the road. It was an important station in those days, with trains from the north and south converging here before continuing on to Butterworth. I remember coming to this station quite often in the 2000s, before the railway was electrified, to catch the night train to Kuala Lumpur. I also remember arriving back here in the wee hours of the morning after the journey home. The station has since been relocated to Permatang Rawa, and the old station building was eventually demolished, with nothing replacing it. Another little piece of Bukit Mertajam's history disappeared.

And the third picture looks down the old Kulim Road. The rows of buildings on the right are steadily being demolished in the name of progress, although I noticed that at least one stretch has been restored. I suspect it may soon become a row of modern eateries, which seems to be the fate of many old shophouses these days.

These photographs are a reflection of Bukit Mertajam in the lazy, old days. Not only the buildings but the pace of life they represented. There was nothing particularly remarkable happening in these pictures. Just everyday life with roads, shops, a petrol station and a railway station, all looking as though they had plenty of time on their hands. Yet that was Bukit Mertajam once. But the town has changed quite a bit since the turn of the millennium, even if some of us who live here today hardly noticed it happening.

The boxer

noreply@blogger.com (SS Quah) — Sun, 13 Sep 2026 22:26:00 +0000

I've been back from Kuala Lumpur for several days now and while trying to settle back into my normal routine, I bumped into an old YouTube video of Paul Simon performing The Boxer at a live show in Paris. I've known this song for most of my life, of course. The original Simon and Garfunkel recording has been with us since 1969 and I must have listened to it countless times over the years. But this particular performance impressed me tremendously. Paul Simon was no longer the young man who wrote the song, but there he was, guitar in hand, performing it with such ease and confidence that I found myself listening to it several times.

There was a simplicity about it all. The original recording of The Boxer was a magnificent piece of studio work but here was Simon performing the song live with his guitar, and somehow it worked just as well. Perhaps even better, with the warmth, maturity and intimacy that came through in the performance.

Of course, once I had started listening to The Boxer, it was only a matter of time before I found myself going back to Bridge Over Troubled Water. One song led to another, and before I knew it, I had spent an hour wandering through music that I hadn't properly listened to for years.

Bridge Over Troubled Water was released in January 1970 and was Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel's fifth studio album. It was also their last. The record went on to become one of the most successful albums of all time, winning six Grammy Awards the following year, including Album of the Year. Yet, behind the scenes, things were becoming increasingly difficult between the two men.

Simon and Garfunkel had been together, in one form or another, since their schooldays. By the late 1960s, however, their relationship had become strained. Art Garfunkel had also begun pursuing an acting career and was away filming Catch-22 while work was still continuing on the album. The recording itself took almost two years, and I can only imagine the difficulties involved in putting everything together when one half of the partnership was increasingly occupied elsewhere.

What eventually emerged was quite unlike the Simon and Garfunkel of their earlier folk days. Bridge Over Troubled Water was a varied album. The title song had its gospel flavour, El Cóndor Pasa took them into the world of Andean music, Cecilia was infectious pop, while Keep the Customer Satisfied went off in yet another musical direction. Paul Simon was clearly stretching himself as a songwriter and exploring a wider range of musical styles.

And then there was The Boxer, which had actually been recorded earlier and released as a single in 1969 before being included on the album. It was Paul Simon's song, written at a time when he himself was apparently feeling rather battered by criticism from the music press. The story of the lonely young man struggling to survive in New York has always seemed rather personal, even if Simon himself may not have intended it to be read as autobiography.

But watching Paul Simon in that YouTube video made me realise that after Simon and Garfunkel went their separate ways, The Boxer continued to live on in Simon's own concerts. He had written it and sung the lead vocal on the original recording, while Garfunkel supplied the beautiful harmonies, but over the years it became a song that Simon kept returning to.

Perhaps that is why the Paris performance impressed me. Here was a song written by a young Paul Simon about a young man being knocked about by life and refusing to give up. Decades later, Simon was still singing it, but the years had indeed rolled by. The song was the same, but the man singing it was older, just like me.

I suppose that comes from revisiting music from our younger days. The songs haven't changed, but we have. We hear things differently and perhaps understand them differently too. When Bridge Over Troubled Water was released in 1970, I was simply enjoying their music, not caring that this would be their final studio album together. All I knew was that they had produced some wonderful songs. And more than half a century later, The Boxer pops up on my YouTube, Paul Simon is performing it in Paris, and there I am again, being taken all the way back to Bridge Over Troubled Water.

Chowrasta market

noreply@blogger.com (SS Quah) — Fri, 11 Sep 2026 22:55:00 +0000

Since I had already written about the origins of the Penang Bazaar building some time ago, I thought it was time for me to turn my sights on Chowrasta Market, which is another old Penang landmark a little further up Penang Road.

The building we see today is actually more than 60 years old. It was reopened in November 1964 after the old market (see picture) was replaced at a cost of $1.5 million. I do remember seeing this old market building when I was younger, although I can't remember ever going inside it. Maybe I did. Then one day that old building was gone and another had replaced it.

Chowrasta itself goes back much further than the present building. The area around Penang Road, Tamil Street and Chowrasta Road had long been associated with the Indian community in George Town. The early settlement here was closely connected with people from the Malabar coast of India, which explains the name of nearby Kampung Malabar. Malabar was then part of the Madras Presidency under British India and later became part of Kerala after Indian independence.

According to local accounts, Chowrasta Market was started by the Malabari people who had settled in this part of George Town during the early days of the settlement of Prince of Wales Island. As the community grew, so did the trading activities around the area. What eventually became Chowrasta Market started as a busy open-air trading area where people bought and sold everyday necessities. There were vegetables, fruits, fish, meat and other foodstuffs, with traders and customers coming and going throughout the day. By 1890, the municipal authorities had built a permanent market to serve the growing population.

The market eventually became known simply as Chowrasta, a name generally understood to come from the Indian subcontinent and associated with a crossroads or four-way junction. Roads, people and businesses converged there, and over the years Chowrasta became one of those places where different communities rubbed shoulders with one another.

My mother's generation, however, had another name for the place. They referred to it as Kelinga Bansan. I should perhaps explain that, because I know some people outside Penang may immediately regard the word “Keling” as derogatory. That is not how I remember it being used in Penang, particularly by the older generation. It was simply a familiar term for people of South Indian origin and was used matter-of-factly in everyday speech. In fact, the old Penang Hokkien name for the Chowrasta area, Kelinga Bansan, is recorded as meaning “South Indian Market”.

There is plenty of historical evidence for this older usage. The word Keling appears in classical Malay literature and historical records going back centuries, where it was used to refer to India or people from South India without the derogatory meaning that it can carry today. Even in early Penang, Kapitan Keling was the title given to the leader of the South Indian community, and the name survives in the Kapitan Keling Mosque.

So, when my mother's generation called the place Kelinga Bansan, they weren't using the word as a racial insult. They were using an old Penang term that had been part of the local vocabulary for generations. Of course, words change with time and I recognise that Keling is regarded as offensive in many contexts today. But I don't think we should automatically impose today's meaning on an old Penang name without understanding the historical context in which it was used.

That brings back another memory for me. I once had an Indian Muslim friend named Mohd Noor, a classmate from both our primary and secondary school days. He grew up in Tamil Street, right in the heart of that old neighbourhood. Later in life he went into the food business and built up a successful nasi kandar restaurant business. We lost touch over the years but reconnected in the decade before the Penang Free School Bicentenary in 2016. Sadly, he died an untimely death a year later. Another old friend and fellow chess player, Jimmy Liew, also has a Chowrasta connection. His parents used to run a Chinese medicinal hall in Chowrasta Road, so his family too was part of the community around the market. These are the sort of personal connections that make an old place come alive for me.

The market in those days was a very lively place. It was crowded and full of activity. Traditional markets were not merely places where people went to buy something and then hurried home. They were meeting places as much as shopping places. People knew the traders, chatted with their neighbours, exchanged news and generally knew what was going on in the community.

Chowrasta eventually became well known for more than just its wet market. The market and the shops around it developed a reputation for preserved fruits, nutmeg products, dried goods, Chinese medicinal halls, traditional biscuits and various local food products. And then there were the second-hand bookshops that came later and which became something of an institution in their own right. Generations of students, book lovers and collectors have wandered through them looking for something interesting, useful or perhaps simply unexpected.

By the early 1960s, the old market had evidently seen better days and a new building was constructed to replace it. When the new Chowrasta Market was reopened in November 1964, it had cost $1.5 million to build. That was a considerable sum of money in those days, and the building we see today has therefore been part of the Penang landscape for more than six decades.

The market has changed again in more recent years. Like many traditional markets, it has faced competition from supermarkets, shopping malls and changing shopping habits. The building itself also needed upgrading. Renovation works were carried out between 2013 and 2017 with the intention of improving the facilities while keeping the market's traditional function alive.

Today, Chowrasta sits comfortably within George Town's UNESCO World Heritage Site. It remains a working market rather than a museum. We can still buy fresh food there, while outside the market are stalls selling all sorts of things. The second-hand bookshops remain part of its identity too. Even today, Chowrasta continues to be described as a bustling market and an important part of George Town's living heritage.

But the atmosphere inside the market isn't quite what it used to be. It is still lively, particularly around the outside where goods and food are being sold, but inside it can feel relatively quiet compared with the old days when the whole place was crowded and bustling with people. That's because markets change as the city around them changes. The Penang of my mother's generation was very different from the Penang we have today. Yet Chowrasta has somehow managed to survive.

I suppose I have known Chowrasta all my life, even if I never really thought much about its history before. Having spent a lifetime watching Penang change, I sometimes find that places and pictures trigger memories I had almost forgotten. I remember the old building, although I can't remember ever going inside it. I remember hearing my mother and her generation call it Kelinga Bansan. I remember a schoolmate who grew up in Tamil Street and later built a successful nasi kandar business. And I remember that one particular Chinese medicinal hall in Chowrasta Road. All these little memories, from different periods of my life, somehow come together in this one small corner of Penang.

The day that changed the world

noreply@blogger.com (SS Quah) — Fri, 11 Sep 2026 00:46:00 +0000

Time has really flown. It's hard to believe that it's already 25 years since the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre in New York City on 11 September 2001. What was I doing that day? Well, I was still working, although by then I was no longer in the banking industry but with JobStreet.com, based in the Hotel Equatorial building in Bukit Jambul, Penang.

Because of the 12-hour time difference, the attacks happened in New York during our evening on 11 September 2001. By the time I went to the office the following morning, the 12th of September, the full horror of what had happened was already becoming clearer. Word had come in that there had been a terrorist attack on US soil, and as more details emerged, we slowly realised that this was something on a scale none of us had known before. For the rest of the day, very little work was getting done in our office. My colleagues and I were glued to our computer terminals, reading the news, looking at the images and trying to figure out what was happening thousands of kilometres away in New York. We had no idea then that we were watching an event that would change the world, or that among the nearly 3,000 people who died would be three Malaysians who were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.

It was one of those days when the news seemed almost too unbelievable. Although we had become accustomed to seeing disasters and wars on television, this was different. The images coming out of New York were being shown again and again, and each time they looked unbelievable. First came the report of a plane crashing into the World Trade Centre, then another plane hitting the second tower. Before long, we knew that this was a coordinated terrorist attack.

There were four hijacked aircraft that morning. Two were flown into the Twin Towers, another crashed into the Pentagon and United Airlines Flight 93 came down in Pennsylvania after passengers attempted to take control of the aircraft. Nearly 3,000 people were killed, not counting the 19 hijackers. The Twin Towers collapsed within hours, taking with them office workers, visitors, firefighters, police officers and other first responders who had rushed towards the buildings when everyone else was trying to get away.

For those of us sitting in an office in Penang, we continued watching the events on our computers. Although the Internet was nowhere near what it is today, JobStreet.com by our very nature was very much connected through it to the outside world despite there being no smartphones delivering videos and notifications into our hands. So we sat at our computers, refreshing news websites and talking among ourselves as more details emerged.

I remember the feeling in the office. We were physically so far away from New York, yet somehow the events felt very close. Work continued, technically, but nobody was really concentrating on it. Every new piece of information seemed more shocking than the previous one. By the time we had spent hours following the unfolding events, we were not only distracted from work but mentally tired. And when the Twin Towers eventually collapsed, it was difficult to comprehend that the New York skyline had changed forever.

Twenty-five years later, the world has moved on in ways that would have been difficult to imagine that day. Airport security became much tighter, governments introduced new counter-terrorism measures and the United States went to war in Afghanistan. Osama bin Laden, the leader of al-Qaida, was eventually killed by US forces in Pakistan in 2011. But the consequences of 9/11 went far beyond the immediate response to the attacks and continue to influence the world today.

A whole generation has grown up since 9/11. In 2001, I was sitting in the office at Hotel Equatorial Bukit Jambul with my colleagues, staring at computer screens. This blog didn't even exist then, so there was no post for me to look back on and remind myself what I was thinking that day. Today, there are young people who were not even born when it happened. For them, 9/11 is not something they personally remember. It is something they learn about from history books, documentaries, photographs and the stories told by their parents and grandparents. So perhaps this is my belated 9/11 blog story, coming 25 years late.

Eruption!

noreply@blogger.com (SS Quah) — Wed, 09 Sep 2026 22:45:00 +0000

Anak Krakatau has been much in the news over the past few days, erupting repeatedly since the fourth of September. The name itself is rather appropriate because Anak Krakatau means “Child of Krakatau”, having risen from the remains of the much larger volcano that erupted so spectacularly in 1883. In fact, Anak Krakatau only began emerging above the sea in 1927, eventually growing into the volcano we know today.

That 1883 eruption has a little story behind it for me. When I was in secondary school, our English language teacher told us about Krakatau and its enormous eruption in 1883. There were several huge explosions on the 27th of August that were heard thousands of kilometres away. The sound travelled so far that people on Rodrigues Island in the Indian Ocean, nearly 5,000 kilometres away, reportedly heard what they thought was cannon fire. The eruption also sent vast quantities of ash and volcanic material high into the atmosphere, producing unusually vivid sunsets around the world for months afterwards.

Our teacher then suggested that we ask our grandparents whether they had heard the explosions or seen those spectacular sunsets when they were young. It sounded like a perfectly reasonable suggestion at the time, except for one small flaw, at least in my case. None of my grandparents had been born before 1883! And even if they had been, they would have been far too young to remember an event that happened so far away. So I never got to ask them whether they had heard the great explosions or seen skies turning red, orange and yellow because of a volcano in the Dutch East Indies. But for some reason, that little classroom exercise stayed in my memory.

And now, more than half a century later, Krakatau has suddenly come back into my thoughts. Three days ago, I read about the temporary closure of the Soekarno-Hatta Airport in Jakarta, some 150 kilometres away, because of volcanic ash from Anak Krakatau. Then more reports began appearing about the scale of the eruptions. At one stage, ash plumes were reaching as high as 15,000 metres, or almost 50,000 feet, and the volcanic ash disrupted flights at eight airports. Almost 3,000 flights were reportedly affected, involving some 340,000 passengers. The airports have since reopened, although aviation authorities continue to monitor the situation because volcanic ash is obviously something aircraft operators do not take lightly.

The eruption itself has also been rather persistent. There was a continuous explosive phase from the fourth of September that lasted about 25 hours, followed by further eruptions over the next few days. These produced bursts of ash and lava, with some of the plumes drifting towards Sumatra and others towards Java. For the moment, the authorities have kept Anak Krakatau at a high alert level with people being advised to stay at least three kilometres from the crater. There has been no indication of an impending tsunami in the Sunda Strait, although the authorities are keeping a close watch on sea conditions because of what happened in 2018 when part of Anak Krakatau collapsed into the sea and generated a devastating tsunami.

Then I came across another interesting fact. Anak Krakatau isn't the only Indonesian volcano that has been erupting. Several others have been showing significant activity at around the same time, including Mount Semeru in East Java, Mount Ibu in North Maluku, Mount Ili Lewotolok and Mount Lewotobi Laki-laki in East Nusa Tenggara and Mount Sinabung in North Sumatra. Truly, Indonesia is one of the most volcanically active countries in the world, sitting along the Pacific Ring of Fire. So perhaps it shouldn't be too surprising to have several volcanoes erupting simultaneously.

The six volcanoes are also at different levels of activity, so it would be misleading to suggest that all of them pose the same degree of danger. Some are producing regular ash plumes while others have more significant hazards for communities living nearby. Anak Krakatau has attracted the most international attention because of its famous name and the fact that its ash has affected aviation over such a wide area, while the others are mainly a concern for people living in their immediate surroundings.

All this has made me think again about that English lesson so many years ago. At the time, Krakatau was simply an interesting story in a school textbook and our teacher's suggestion to ask our grandparents seemed like an ordinary homework exercise. I couldn't do it because my grandparents were not even born yet! And I certainly never imagined that I would still remember that lesson more than half a century later.

Yet here I am, reading the news about Anak Krakatau erupting again, seeing reports about volcanic ash closing airports and wondering what it must have been like in 1883 when the original Krakatau exploded with such force that its sound travelled thousands of kilometres and its dust helped create strange sunsets around the world. I suppose some lessons from school stay with us for reasons that have nothing much to do with the lesson itself. I don't remember what else we studied in that particular English class, but I certainly remember Krakatau and the rather impossible homework assignment that came with it.

21st Malaysia chess festival

noreply@blogger.com (SS Quah) — Tue, 08 Sep 2026 06:22:05 +0000

I've been back in Penang for several days now and am still trying to come to terms with my duties as the Fair Play Officer at the recent 21st Malaysian Chess Festival in Kuala Lumpur. There I was, spending nine full days at the playing venue, KL Gateway Mall. Originally, I intended to go down only to play in the Merdeka Rapid Chess Team Tournament as part of the PCA Penang Oldies team. But then Hamid invited me to lead the Fair Play team.

I've known Hamid for ages, close to five decades if I'm not mistaken. He is an old hand at organising chess in the country and a vastly experienced international arbiter. He holds an A-licence from FIDE, the only Malaysian to do so, while I'm only a D-licence holder. Two years ago, he was even appointed Chief Arbiter for the Ding Liren-Gukesh World Chess Championship match in Singapore.

So when Hamid asked me to take on the role of Fair Play Officer, it was an interesting proposition. Fair Play is still a relatively new development in chess, although efforts to eliminate cheating in chess competitions have been going on for a very long time. For several decades, FIDE has required organisers of FIDE-rated tournaments to prevent participants from bringing mobile phones into the playing hall. Over time, this was extended to cover all electronic devices, including smartwatches.

These Fair Play checks were instituted only for the three FIDE-rated events at the Chess Festival: the Open Classical, Challengers Classical and Seniors Classical tournaments. These were played over nine rounds using the standard time control of 90 minutes, with an additional 30 seconds for every move. All the other events, which had faster time controls, were not FIDE-rated and the controls were therefore much less strict. My Fair Play duties did not extend to them, which meant I could take things a little easier on days when there were no Classical games.

And how does one enforce that? Organisers are required to provide a place for players to leave their devices before entering the playing hall. Players are also physically scanned to make sure that no hidden devices are being brought in or taken out.

Even something as mundane as going to the toilet has to be considered. Separate facilities have to be provided for players so that they do not wander into public toilets and start chatting with non-players, whether accidentally or deliberately. For this Malaysian Chess Festival, we used a QR-code scanning app to scan the identification tags of players whenever they used the toilet.

Of course, during the games themselves, I spent much of my time walking around the playing hall and observing the players. That became part of the job. Occasionally, an arbiter would come to me to discuss certain behaviour he had noticed, and we would then keep a closer eye on the players concerned to see whether anything was amiss.

As I mentioned earlier, my initial objective for going to the chess festival was only to play for the PCA Penang Oldies team in the Merdeka team event. Initially confident, I found the going tough and it has become increasingly difficult to hold my own against the opposition. And no wonder, year after year, the standard of the Merdeka Rapid Chess Team Tournament seems to get increasingly competitive.

Personally, I had four losses in four games on the first day. It was an ignominious record by any standard. Things didn't improve very much on the second day when I lost another three games in a row before finally managing to pull back a little dignity by winning my last two games. I don't know what my team-mates thought of me!

On paper, my friends in the OFA Penang team were surprisingly the first seeds. But there was never any pretence that they were the strongest team in the competition. In the end, they were overshadowed by several foreign-constituted teams as well as a number of strong local sides. Still, they did well enough to finish as the third-best Malaysian team in the competition. Not bad at all.

Perhaps I should also say a word or two about the three Classical tournaments. Over the nine rounds, there were no dubious calls that required us to take action. There was none although on one occasion we did subject a player in the Challengers section to a rather more than thorough body scan after his game was over!

The reason was that this particular player appeared to be running away with the top prize despite being unrated in standard chess. This raised a few red flags among the arbiters. So he was immediately placed under a little more scrutiny.

Later, I was particularly curious about where he had obtained his FIDE rapid rating. Before coming to this Chess Festival, he had played only 16 rated games in two FIDE-rated events this year. That didn't tell me very much. But then I started digging a little deeper. It turned out that in China, the player had been competing in their internal tournaments registered under his Chinese name since 2023. He had played in a number of rapid chess events there and, more recently, had been doing rather well, finishing first or second in several competitions. And that explained quite a lot to me.

As far as I could tell, this Malaysian Chess Festival was simply his first attempt at obtaining a FIDE standard chess rating. And he did it in splendid fashion, which was a rather satisfying ending to my little investigation. Sometimes, a red flag is just something worth checking. And once I had checked it, I discovered that there was absolutely nothing sinister about it after all. He was just... a young man coming through the ranks.

Heritage walkabouts

noreply@blogger.com (SS Quah) — Tue, 01 Sep 2026 22:06:00 +0000

I mentioned in my last story that I had gone exploring the old civic precinct in the George Town heritage core zone last July and August, but I never actually got around to dedicating a story in this blog to my walks. It wasn't just once, either. I think I made the rounds twice, perhaps even three times, taking my time to walk the streets and look around.

After all, I couldn't very well avoid the area when I had already visited the Penang State Museum and Fort Cornwallis three times each since their reopening. Call me obsessive about these heritage landmarks, but that's just me. So here are some pictures from my walks. Pictures taken from my perspective. I won't be describing them much, though, if at all. I'll leave that to the pictures.

This fair play thingy

noreply@blogger.com (SS Quah) — Mon, 31 Aug 2026 23:28:03 +0000

Completed my first day as Fair Play Officer at the 21st Malaysian Chess Festival.

I came armed with lots of ideas on how to make things work, only to discover that most of them worked better in my head than they did in the KL Gateway’s internal floor plan. In the end, it was finding the most practical solution to fulfil the anti-cheating guidelines, particularly where the toilet was concerned.

I was terribly shorthanded as well. My assistants were doing what they were supposed to do, but because they had to remain static at their posts, there was little they could do to help with anything else.

So, in between trying to keep an eye on things, I found myself taking on a few additional roles: Fair Play Officer, toilet monitor, food deliveryman and water boy. All in a day’s work. 😄

Nevertheless, Day One is done. One down, five more days to go. Will I survive? Hopefully I’ll get better at this before the festival gets the better of me!

A rather surreal few weeks

noreply@blogger.com (SS Quah) — Sat, 29 Aug 2026 22:26:00 +0000

The past few weeks have been rather surreal for me. Looking back, quite a lot has happened in a relatively short space of time, and I am still trying to take it all in. It started in July with the release of a People of Penang podcast in which I was the featured guest. Not long after that, an article I wrote appeared on the ChessBase India website, the second time my name has appeared there.

But the most significant event in July was undoubtedly the Penang State Awards investiture ceremony at the Dewan Sri Pinang. That was followed a few days later by the official reopening of the Penang State Museum. The museum visit turned out to be rather special for me. I was happy to be reacquainted with the name of my great-great-grandfather on the marble plaque on the museum wall, but there was also the satisfaction of seeing how some of my own contributions to the history of Penang Free School had been acknowledged in the museum's new exhibits.

There was also a charity and fellowship dinner organised by the Persatuan 88 Captains. That evening gave me the chance to show the Penang Governor an old photograph from 2008 that featured him, Tan Chin Nam and myself at a private function, back when he was the president of the Malaysian Chess Federation from 2007 until 2016. He didn't say much, but his wife asked me for a copy of the picture.

Then there was a Town Hall dialogue with the Penang Island City Council, which I attended as the representative of the Swee Cheok Tong (Seh Quah Kongsi). I also took the opportunity to walk extensively through the civic precinct of George Town's heritage core zone and revisit several of the landmarks there, including the newly reopened Fort Cornwallis.

Rather unexpectedly, after not attending a George Town Festival programme for years, I suddenly found myself at one again. This time, at the former Majestic Theatre for a Malaysian Songbook performance. It was nice to be back at a festival that I had not been following for quite some time, and even nicer to discover that I could still be pleasantly entertained by what it had to offer.

And then came yet another small satisfaction of seeing my name in print, this time in the August 2026 edition of Penang Monthly, the magazine published by the Penang Institute. I had written about the history and development of chess in Penang. As I haven't actually elaborated on this last bit yet, here is the story in full:

Farsighted organisation behind Penang's prowess in chess competitions
By Quah Seng Sun

IF SUCCESS IS measured by titles, then Penangites have built a reputation for prowess in chess. The state can proudly point to its roll of International Masters, FIDE Masters and Candidate Masters, titles bestowed by the World Chess Federation (FIDE), their numbers growing with each passing generation. But Penang’s chess story is not just told through 64 squares and 32 pieces, but also the generations of students, teachers and enthusiasts who have transformed the game into one of the state's most vibrant youth activities. What began with scattered school clubs and occasional competitions almost a century ago has evolved into a thriving ecosystem supported by schools, parents, coaches and volunteers: one which has always had students at its core.

The birth of school chess
The earliest traces of organised gameplay in Penang are difficult to pinpoint, but the Penang Free School magazine provides a starting point. Throughout the 1930s, chess matches were reported, suggesting scattered pockets of enthusiasm among students, appearing briefly before disappearing. Under the Japanese Occupation, organised chess largely vanished from public view. Following the war, chess gradually re-emerged, but only in 1964 did student chess establish a significant presence. A major catalyst was the Penang Schools Students' Chess Council, formed by leading school chess clubs to organise annual competitions among themselves. No longer confined to individual institutions, students had a platform to compete against peers from other schools, creating rivalries, friendships and a growing sense of community.

Although the Council performed a pioneering role, a more comprehensive organisational framework was necessary to institutionalise the game. In the pivotal year of 1972, the Council voluntarily dissolved following the establishment of the Penang Chess Association, which assumed responsibility for the game’s broader statewide development and administration (and keeping the trophies accumulated by the erstwhile Council). That year also saw the introduction of the first team chess championship under the Majlis Sukan Sekolah-Sekolah Pulau Pinang (MSSPP, Penang Schools Sports Council) at Han Chiang Primary School, while an individual championship was introduced the following year. And in December 1972, the Majlis Sukan Sekolah-Sekolah Malaysia (Malaysia School Sports Council, MSSM) organised its inaugural team chess championship at Dewan Sri Pinang, officiated by then-education minister, Tun Hussein Onn, where four players represented Penang. This event marked the beginning of national-level school chess competitions, sending a clear signal that chess was recognised as a legitimate school sport.

These competitions provided a regular, structured and enduring pathway for student participation and talent development. Even after the MSSM chess competition was suspended after the 1997 edition, a casualty of the Asian Financial Crisis, Penang continued organising MSSPP championships uninterrupted, ensuring that young players continued to have opportunities to compete and develop.

A generational divide?
Despite these advances, chess remained widely perceived as a game for adults, as reflected in competitive chess circles. When the Malaysian Chess Federation, established 1974, organised its first National Closed Championship that same year, none of the Penang Chess Association's representatives were students. They remained in school competitions, the strongest state representatives were generally expected to be adults.

Although this distinction persisted for many years, the foundations laid by the MSSPP were quietly producing results. In the 1970s–80s, students gained tournament experience and developed stronger competitive skills at increasingly younger ages. By the 1990s, student players had the strength and confidence to compete successfully against experienced adults. When the Penang Chess Association selected teams for major events, such as the Merdeka Team Chess Championships, talented students increasingly found themselves earning places on the senior team through merit.

Since then, the student–adult balance has shifted decisively. Today, it is normal that student players dominate Penang’s (and Malaysia’s) chess scene. In most open tournaments, students typically make up around 75 percent of the field. A thriving calendar of junior tournaments encompassing various age groups ensures a steady stream of opportunities for young players to develop skills and gain competitive experience.

Fascinatingly, the growing presence of young people in chess circles persists despite the dominance of smartphones, social media and digital entertainment, all of which foster fragmented attention spans unconducive to a game requiring patience, concentration and prolonged quiet thinking. For many youths, chess appears to offer something that much of the online world does not: rewards for sustained focus and careful thought. Competitions themselves provide experiences that cannot be replicated entirely through screens: students travel to tournaments within and beyond Penang, meet friends from other schools, test their skills against unfamiliar opponents and cope with victory and defeat. Friendships are formed, rivalries emerge and memories are created across tournament halls.

This growth did not happen by accident. Many students who took up chess during the 1970s–90s have since become parents themselves. Having experienced the game’s benefits first-hand, they have introduced it to their own children. It is not uncommon to see parents waiting outside tournament halls for their children to finish games. Occasionally, coaches are present to provide immediate post-game failure analysis. As a result of the game’s re-emerging popularity, chess clinics and coaching programmes have mushroomed nationwide, where experienced adult players find themselves becoming coaches, either part-time or full-time.

Initially, coaching was logistically constrained. Coaches often travelled between students’ homes, limiting the number of children whom they could reach. But with the Covid-19 pandemic lockdowns, online coaching quickly became practical, and even unexpectedly advantageous. Coaches could teach larger groups simultaneously without spending hours on the road, while students could attend lessons from the comfort of home. Online platforms allowed students to play, learn and analyse games at any time of day. Coaching became more accessible and competitive opportunities multiplied. Further, a timely popular culture boost—Netflix's The Queen's Gambit—introduced the game to a worldwide captive audience. For perhaps the first time in generations, chess became fashionable. Across Malaysia, tournament participation increased, coaching programmes expanded and a new generation of young players emerged.

Rather than being overwhelmed by the digital revolution, chess has adapted strategically. If anything, the game's ability to cultivate focus, patience and thoughtful decision-making may explain why it continues to attract young players. In a world where attention is constantly under siege, the chessboard remains one of the few spaces where deep concentration is essential.

Lessons beyond the chessboard
Despite these technological changes, the essence of chess revolves around two players sitting across from one another, each attempting to outthink the other. In an increasingly screen-dominated era, one could argue that the qualities cultivated by chess— concentration, patience and self-discipline—have become even more valuable. Beyond mental discipline, chess develops pattern-recognition and structured thinking ability. Students learn to identify recurring ideas and anticipate likely outcomes, skills that prove useful in everything from mathematics to language. It strengthens decision-making under uncertainty, teaching players to weigh imperfect options against each other, and accept that every choice involves trade-offs.

The game also nurtures calculated patience and delayed gratification. Students learn that short-term sacrifices can sometimes lead to greater long-term rewards. Working memory and concentration are strengthened when players hold multiple possibilities in mind while planning ahead. Every defeat becomes an opportunity for failure analysis, encouraging students to examine mistakes objectively and improve systematically. Chess also promotes creativity within constraints, with players constantly challenged to discover original solutions within a structured framework. This skill translates naturally into many professional and academic fields. Equally important are social and emotional lessons. Learning to remain composed after a blunder, managing time pressures and displaying good sportsmanship all contribute to emotional resilience.

Today, chess in Penang continues to be organised and regulated by the Penang Chess Association. The association itself is among the relatively small number of sporting organisations classified as Category One—the highest—by the Majlis Sukan Negeri Pulau Pinang (Penang State Sports Council, MSNPP). Since the mid-2000s, the Association has organised its annual flagship Penang Chess Festival at year-end, which continues to attract hundreds of players from Malaysia and neighbouring countries. Such recognition reflects the breadth and consistency of its activities, both nationally and internationally. Above all, it is a story of students, who have embraced the game, carried it forward and reshaped it according to the needs of their times. In the process, they have ensured that chess remains not merely a pastime from an earlier era, but a living and relevant activity for the 21st century.

A not-so-simple appeal

noreply@blogger.com (SS Quah) — Fri, 28 Aug 2026 13:27:42 +0000

My writing today is a little on the heavy side and so, do bear with me if this isn't my usual style. I'm still on the matter of the controversy surrounding the recent eChess competition at SUKMA XXII in Selangor, particularly the incident involving Penang's Poh Yu Tian during the rapid event. I wasn't there when it happened, so I am naturally reluctant to pass judgement on exactly what took place. But having now read the draft incident report, I find myself less interested in whether Yu Tian actually made the disputed move than in how the subsequent appeal was handled.

To recap, Yu Tian was playing Muhammad Emir Rasyid when, according to the report, the move 12...Qb6 appeared on his electronic chessboard. Yu Tian immediately said that he had not made the move and that the piece had moved by itself. What followed was a series of discussions and appeals which eventually resulted in Yu Tian being told to continue the game from the position after the disputed move. He refused and the game was subsequently forfeited.

At first glance, it might seem like a fairly straightforward case of a player claiming that he did not make a move and the organisers having to decide whether to believe him. But the report suggests there was rather more to it than that. For instance, the report says the account had been accessed on 20 August 2026 before the competition, and a tactical puzzle had been played on it. The initial reaction was therefore to consider restarting the game.

That decision was disputed by the opposing team, and the matter went before the Appeals Committee. The committee subsequently decided that Yu Tian should be given a new account, but that the game should resume after the disputed 12...Qb6 move. Among the reasons recorded was that there was no proof of third-party interference and that even a strong player could conceivably make a pre-move blunder. The Penang side then lodged a counter-appeal.

During the hearing, it was demonstrated that the same Lichess account could be logged in on two devices simultaneously, with a move being made from the second device while the player was playing on the first.

One thing should be clear first. This demonstration does not prove that somebody interfered with the game. It does not tell us who might have done so, and it certainly isn't evidence that someone actually hacked the competition. What it does tell us, however, is that interference was technically possible. And that, to me, is where the Appeals Committee's responsibility becomes important.

An Appeals Committee is there because somebody has disagreed with a decision and wants it reviewed. Its job is to examine the available evidence objectively, consider the circumstances and arrive at a decision that is fair to everyone concerned. But in an online chess competition, that may require rather more than a conventional understanding of chess rules.

When the dispute concerns an electronic board, an online account, simultaneous logins and the possibility of a move being transmitted from another device, there is another aspect to the problem. Someone on the panel needs to understand how the technology works, what the online platform records, what its logs can tell us and what they cannot tell us.

That does not necessarily mean that every member of an Appeals Committee needs to be a computer expert. But collectively, the committee should have access to the expertise necessary to understand the technical evidence before reaching a decision. Otherwise, there is a danger that something which is technically significant may be treated as if it were merely incidental. And that means fairness to both players. One player should not be unfairly penalised if he genuinely did not make the move. At the same time, the second player should not be deprived of a legitimate position simply because his opponent says he did not make it. The committee therefore had to balance the interests of both players while protecting the integrity of the competition itself. This is why I find the eventual reasoning somewhat unsatisfactory.

According to the draft incident report, the committee rejected the counter-appeal on the basis that there was no proof that another person had logged into the account and made the move. The conclusion recorded was essentially that whatever was on the board had to stand unless there was proof identifying who was responsible. But was that really the question that needed to be answered?

The issue was not necessarily whether somebody could be identified and punished for cheating. The more immediate question was whether the committee could be satisfied that the disputed move had actually not been made by Yu Tian. Those are two different things.

The absence of proof that somebody else made the move is not quite the same as proof that Yu Tian made it himself. Once it had been demonstrated that another device could technically make a move through the same account, I would have thought that the committee would want to look more closely at the available technical evidence before deciding that the move should simply stand.

Perhaps the evidence would still have led to the conclusion that Yu Tian made the move. If so, fair enough. But the committee should arrive at that conclusion after examining the evidence, rather than because no alternative culprit could be identified.

And this brings me back to the question of competence. In over-the-board chess, most disputes are things that an experienced arbiter can observe directly: whether a piece was touched, whether a move was legal, whether a clock was pressed, whether a player made an illegal move or whether a rule was breached.

Online chess introduces another aspect. The board we see on the screen is only the visible end of a chain involving an account, a device, software, a server and a network connection. If a player says, “I didn't make that move,” the answer may not be found simply by looking at the position on the board. There may be login records, timestamps, device information, connection records or platform logs that can help establish what happened. There may also be limitations to what those records can establish.

This is why I think the competence of an Appeals Committee for eChess deserves some serious thought. It is not enough simply to take the procedures used for conventional chess and apply them unchanged to an online environment. The committee must understand the environment in which the alleged incident occurred.

Again, I am not suggesting that the members of this particular committee were incompetent. I have no basis for saying that, and I don't know their individual qualifications. My point is that competence in chess arbitration and competence in online chess technology are not necessarily the same thing.

Perhaps this is something organisers will have to think about more seriously as eChess becomes part of major sporting competitions. Appeals panels dealing with online disputes may need people who are not only familiar with the Laws of Chess but also understand the technical workings of the platforms on which those games are played. At the very least, they should have access to someone who does.

There is also the question of the account itself. If the organisers had already become concerned that the account might have been compromised, surely that was something that needed to be resolved before Yu Tian continued using it in competition. The later demonstration that simultaneous access from another device was technically possible makes that earlier concern all the more relevant. Again, none of this proves foul play. But it does mean that the possibility could not simply be brushed aside.

I also think an Appeals Committee has another important responsibility: it must be prepared to reconsider an earlier decision when new information comes to light. An appeal should not simply be an opportunity to defend what has already been decided. If new evidence changes the picture, the committee should be willing to look at the matter again with an open mind. To me, that is precisely what an appeal is supposed to be about.

I appreciate that SUKMA is a major event and that a dispute over one game can hold up an entire round. But if we are going to have an Appeals Committee, then its role is not simply to keep the tournament moving. It is there for those occasions when things don't go according to plan, and sometimes getting the right answer may take a little longer.

What happened in this case may eventually turn out to have been nothing more than an unfortunate technical incident or a simple mistake by a player. It may also turn out that there was no outside interference whatsoever. I don't know, and I don't think the incident report allows anyone to say otherwise with certainty. But that is precisely why I think the Appeals Committee needed to be particularly careful.

There was an unexplained move, there had already been concerns about the security of the player's account, and a technical demonstration subsequently showed that the scenario described by the player was possible. Yet the final decision appears to have rested largely on the fact that there was no evidence identifying another person as having made the move. For me, that is not quite good enough.

An Appeals Committee should not be there to decide which player it believes more, nor simply to endorse the decision of the tournament officials. Its responsibility is to look at the circumstances as impartially as possible and find the fairest solution for both players and for the competition as a whole. And perhaps that responsibility becomes even greater as chess moves further into the eSports arena.

We are no longer dealing only with pieces, clocks and a board of 64 squares. We are dealing with accounts, devices, networks, software and online platforms. When something goes wrong, those deciding the dispute need to understand that environment and be prepared to investigate it properly.

That may mean rethinking who sits on an Appeals Committee for online chess competitions. Being a strong chess player or experienced arbiter is valuable, but it may not by itself be enough when the dispute involves technology. The people deciding the case must have, between them, the competence to understand both the chess and the technology.

I don't think anyone should come away from this incident saying that Yu Tian was definitely hacked. There simply isn't enough evidence for that conclusion. But neither should we dismiss the possibility simply because nobody has been identified as the culprit. There is a difference between “we have no evidence that foul play occurred” and “we have established that foul play did not occur.” That, perhaps, is the real lesson from this episode.

When two players are caught in a dispute and the facts are not immediately clear, they deserve an Appeals Committee that will give both sides a fair hearing, examine the evidence without preconceived conclusions and, above all, protect the integrity of the game. Because in the end, an Appeals Committee should not be there for one player or the other. It should be there for the game of chess itself.

Keeping online chess fair

noreply@blogger.com (SS Quah) — Tue, 25 Aug 2026 22:27:00 +0000

In the last few days, a dispute has emerged over the eChess competition at SUKMA XXII in Selangor. During the rapid chess event, a game involving Penang's Poh Yu Tian became mired in controversy when he reported that a move had appeared on his electronic chessboard without him touching his mouse.
His protest went before the Appeals Committee, which did not accept that there had been a breach of the online system on the lichess platform. Instead, Yu Tian was instructed to continue the game from the position in which the disputed move had occurred. He refused to do so and the game was eventually forfeited.
I wasn't there, so I don't want to pretend to know exactly what happened or pass judgement on whether the move was the result of a technical problem, human error or, more worryingly, some form of foul play. But the incident does raise a bigger question: how do we ensure fairness when chess is played online?
Chess has always been a game in which the result should be decided by what happens on the board. But when the board is an electronic screen and the players are connected through an online platform, establishing what actually happened can be considerably more complicated.
In an online competition, the concern is not necessarily that a player might cheat. There is also the possibility of a technical failure, a system error or, in the worst case, someone deliberately interfering with the system itself. If a move appears on a player's board without the player apparently making it, the organisers need to be able to determine how that happened before simply requiring the player to continue the game.
This is why proper monitoring is important. A camera can show what a player is doing, while screen recording can show what is happening on the player's computer. But neither can necessarily explain what happened inside the online platform. System and platform activity logs, together with proper technical oversight, could provide a much clearer picture.
The role of the Appeals Committee is equally important. In a dispute such as this, its responsibility should not simply be to decide whether a player's complaint is valid. It must also ensure that both players are treated fairly and impartially. Where there is an unexplained technical incident, the committee should have access to whatever technical evidence is available and satisfy itself that the circumstances have been properly examined before deciding how the game should proceed.
After all, fairness must apply to both players: the player making the complaint as well as the opponent who may otherwise be affected by the decision. The objective should not be to assume that somebody has cheated or that the system must have malfunctioned, but to establish, as far as possible, what actually happened.
Most players, I believe, simply want to play chess and enjoy the competition. But organisers, including the Appeals Committee, have a responsibility to protect both the players and the integrity of the system. A player should not be left having to accept an unexplained move on his board simply because nobody can immediately establish how it got there.
That becomes increasingly important as chess moves further into the eSports arena. If online chess is to be regarded as a serious competitive sport, its systems must be robust enough to deal with both deliberate cheating and genuine technical problems.
Penang has a long history in competitive chess. We should not allow that reputation to be clouded by doubts over the fairness or transparency of an online competition. Rather than waiting for another controversy, perhaps this is the time to put better safeguards in place.

Technology has changed the way we play chess. It should not change the fundamental principle behind the game: the player who plays the better game should win, and everyone should have confidence that the game was played fairly.

Old photograph, old memories

noreply@blogger.com (SS Quah) — Mon, 24 Aug 2026 22:01:00 +0000

Earlier this month, I was invited to a charity and fellowship dinner organised by the 88 Captains, an organisation whose members comprise many of Penang's local captains of industry, hence the name. The association has been around for about four years, with its primary objective being to raise funds among its members to provide scholarships for needy students in Penang who might otherwise not be able to pursue their further education. So far, some 25 to 30 undergraduates have benefited from this initiative, which I thought was a rather noble cause. There are also ongoing projects to provide schools in the state with educational aid and connect them to the digital world.

This year's charity dinner raised an impressive RM1,888,888.88. Donors contributed amounts ranging from RM10,000 to RM200,000, with the balance being topped up by the association's generous president, Dr Ooi Eng Hock. Not a bad result for a single evening.

So there I was, with my wife and son, at the Eastern & Oriental Hotel on the evening of 08 August 2026. The current Penang Governor, Ramli Ngah Talib, was in attendance with his wife. As far as I know, this was the first time they had attended an 88 Captains function. And, as usual whenever the Governor is present, the State Protocol Department was there in full force, imposing all sorts of regulations on the organisers. I won't go into the details, though I am sure anyone who has organised similar functions will know what I mean.

What made the evening particularly interesting for me happened right at the end. As the Governor was making his way out of the ballroom, shaking hands with people along the way, I had the opportunity to show him an old photograph that had been sitting in my collection for the past 18 years. His eyes lit up when he recognised himself in the picture. He was seated beside Tan Chin Nam, with me standing between the two of them.

The photograph was taken at a private function in Kuala Lumpur in May 2008, hosted by Tan Chin Nam to welcome Ramli Ngah Talib into the Malaysian chess fraternity after he had become the new president of the Malaysian Chess Federation in 2007. He remained MCF president for several terms, until 2016, so that photograph brought back a little bit of chess history. I have posted the picture on this blog before, but I suppose with some people curious about what I showed him, I'll put it up here again.

Free School reunites

noreply@blogger.com (SS Quah) — Sun, 23 Aug 2026 22:47:00 +0000

My alma mater, Penang Free School, will celebrate its 210th anniversary in October this year. Not on the 21st of October, though, as that date apparently clashes with the examination schedule. Instead, the main celebrations will take place on the first and third of October, with the school's Speech Day on Thursday the first, followed two days later by a full day of activities organised by the Penang Free School Foundation (Yayasan Penang Free School), culminating in a homecoming dinner that evening.

The celebrations are not merely about marking another milestone in the school's long history. They are also an opportunity to bring the Free School community together, reconnect Old Frees with their old school and, perhaps most importantly, look towards the future.

The programme begins on Thursday, 01 October 2026, with the Penang Free School 210th Speech Day which will recognise students who have excelled in academics, leadership, sports and service. There will also be a thanksgiving and prayer gathering on the second day, but the real action for Old Frees comes the following morning.

Free School Reunites on Saturday, 03 October 2026 will feature sports and other activities, together with a Free School Guide Walkabout. It will give Old Frees from different generations a chance to return to their alma mater, meet old friends and perhaps rediscover some familiar corners of the school. In other words, it is the Homecoming, so Old Frees should mark the date.

That evening, the Penang Free School 210th Anniversary Dinner will bring together alumni, students, teachers, distinguished guests and friends of the school to celebrate 210 years of history and achievement.

There will also be a visit and service at the Founder’s Tomb on Wednesday, 21 October 2026 to pay tribute to Robert Sparke Hutchings whose vision led to the establishment of Penang Free School in 1816.

For 210 years, Penang Free School has produced generations of scholars, sportsmen and gentlemen who have gone on to make their mark in society and the nation. This anniversary is therefore not merely about looking back at what has been achieved. It is an opportunity for the wider Free School family to come together, celebrate what binds us and look towards what lies ahead.

A tale of two records

noreply@blogger.com (SS Quah) — Sun, 23 Aug 2026 06:19:56 +0000

I was going through my record collection again the other day when I came across two Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young records which, at first glance, might seem to have little in common. One is So Far, the well-known 1974 compilation album. The other is a rather obscure record titled Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young Month Celebration Copy.

The interesting thing is that I always thought of the latter simply as another CSNY compilation. It was only when I started looking into it that I discovered it was actually a promotional record, supposedly marked “Sample Copy Not for Sale”. That puzzled me because I am quite certain I bought my copy from a record shop in town. So much for “not for sale”. Perhaps the record shop was not supposed to sell it, or perhaps promotional records had a habit of finding their way into shops anyway. Whatever the explanation, I clearly remember paying for mine.

So Far, on the other hand, needs little introduction. Released in 1974, it was put together at a time when Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young were riding an enormous wave of popularity. The group had not produced much new material together since Déjà Vu in 1970, but they were about to embark on a major reunion tour. A compilation was therefore a convenient way of putting some of their best-known recordings together, and it became a huge seller. In fact, So Far went all the way to No. 1 on the Billboard 200.

The album opens with Suite: Judy Blue Eyes, followed by Long Time Gone, Woodstock, Teach Your Children and the rest of the familiar material. Marrakesh Express is missing, despite having been one of their early hits. Among the group's best-known songs, surely Marrakesh Express would have been an obvious choice.

There is a little curiosity. Ohio and Find the Cost of Freedom had already appeared in live versions on the 1971 double album 4 Way Street. But So Far was the first time their studio versions appeared on an LP. Until then, the two songs had been released together only as a single.

And then there is Woodstock. It is one of the best-known songs associated with CSNY, but it was written by Joni Mitchell, who also provided the painting used for the So Far cover. So there is a little more Joni Mitchell in the album than one might initially realise.

Apparently Graham Nash wasn't particularly enthusiastic about So Far being released in the first place. He regarded it as little more than a cash-in on the reunion tour. If that was his view, history rather proved him wrong. The album topped the charts and became one of CSNY's most successful releases.

My other record, the Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young Month Celebration Copy, is a different animal altogether. It dates from 1971 and was apparently produced by Atlantic Records as part of a promotional “CSNY Month” campaign. Rather than being a regular commercial album, it was a 12-track promotional compilation drawing from the group's earlier records, as well as some solo material.

Unlike So Far, it includes Marrakesh Express. It also goes beyond the group recordings to include Stephen Stills' Love the One You're With and Bluebird Revisited, as well as Graham Nash's Military Madness and Simple Man. So in some ways it is a more interesting snapshot of the musicians than So Far, even though it was never intended to be a proper greatest-hits album.

It is also an odd-looking record. The copy I have is the sort of black-and-white promotional pressing that might have been handed to a radio station or record retailer rather than sold to an ordinary customer. The labels carry the familiar warning that it is a sample copy and not for sale.

Dr Gnoh Lean Tuck

noreply@blogger.com (SS Quah) — Thu, 20 Aug 2026 06:04:39 +0000

From the archives of The Straits Echo newspaper comes this story about a certain Dr Gnoh Lean Tuck who found worldwide fame a few years later as Dr Wu Lien-Teh.

Dr Gnoh Lean Tuck
The Straits Echo, 9 October 1903, Page 5

DR GNOH LEAN Tuck arrived on Wednesday night at 11 pm from Singapore by the German liner Zieten. Many friends and relatives went on board to meet him and escort him ashore in a steam launch. On reaching the wharf he drove to the Ng Sing Kongsi and then to his parents' home at Green Hall. We are informed that Dr Tuck will stay in Penang until the 15th of this month, when he will sail for Kuala Lumpur in order to start work at the Pathological Institute there.
We have much pleasure in giving our readers today the portrait and an authoritative resume of the career of this distinguished Straits Chinese. Mr Tuck obtained the only Queens Scholarship awarded in 1896, at the early age of 16 years. He left his home on Aug 7th of that year, arrived at Cambridge towards the middle of September, and forthwith passed the College entrance examination. He was admitted as a 'Pensioner' at Emmanuel College under the able tutorship of Mr WN Sharshawd, MA, FRS. He began studying Natural Sciences in conjunction with Medicine, but was somewhat handicapped in this respect during the First Term by having to prepare for the "Little Go." This, however, he passed without any difficulty in December of the same year, and thereupon commenced that enthusiasm for science which has continued until the present day. In June 1897, he passed both parts of the first examination for Medical and Surgical Degrees, and in the succeeding December the first part of the second MB Examination. He was classed in the "First Class" in the Intercollegiate examination in Natural Sciences, June 1897, and was elected to an exhibition of £40. The next December he sent in his name for the second part of the second MB Examination (Anatomy and Physiology), which was and still is perhaps the most crucial point in a Cambridge medical student's career. It was an unusually early period for this difficult attempt, and Mr Tuck earned the well-deserved congratulations of his friends and teachers when he got through it easily.
This success enabled our future Doctor to devote the remaining two Terms entirely to science, and when the Tripos lists appeared in June 1899 nobody was surprised at his name being placed amongst the "First Class Honours' Men." He graduated BA a few days afterwards amidst much cheering from the Undergraduates' Gallery in the Senate House, as he was the first Chinaman who had attained that distinction. The four subjects he chose for his Tripos were Chemistry, Zoology, Human Anatomy and Physiology. The authorities of Emmanuel College honoured him by electing him to a Foundation Scholarship of £50 a year.
It was now the end of his third year. In the following September he competed for and won one of the two University Scholarships (value 55 guineas), at St Mary's Hospital London. This scholarship just covered the expenses in fees during the next three years. Mr Tuck's brilliant career was continued in London, and he carried off the most important prizes, namely, the special prize in clinical surgery (1900), the special prize in clinical medicine (1901), the Cheadle Gold Medal in clinical medicine (1902), the Kerslake Scholarship in Pathology and Bacteriology (1902), a record which had never been accomplished by any St Mary's student before.
He passed the first part of the final examination in April 1901, and the second part in the following December.
He had thus taken five and a quarter years altogether in finishing his students' course, and when he graduated MB he was the first and only one to do so out of over 120 students who entered the University in 1896.
At the expiration of the Queen's Scholarship in his fifth year, his old College elected him to the Research Studentship (value £150.) This enabled Tuck to take instruction in Tropical Diseases under Major R Ross, FRS at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, and to devote his spare time in the preparation of his MB Thesis on "Certain clinical features of the Blood in Malarial Fever," which degree he obtained in March 1901.
Dr Tuck left England for Germany in April and joined the Hygienic Institute of Halle under Prof Carl Fraenkel. Here he made some important observations on the occurrence of Tetanus Spores in gelatin. The subject of Bacteriology interested him immensely, and he occupied the next six months in this way. He next visited Leipzig, Berlin, Dresden, Vienna, Munich, Zurich and Berne in succession, but only for short periods, and early in September joined the voluntary staff of the Institute Pasteur at Paris under Prof Metchnikoff. This famous home of research, where Pasteur Roux and others had done such marvellous work for so many years, is the most wonderful institution of its kind in the world, and the large number of excellent workers turned out from it have spread its name, fame and benefits to all parts of the earth's surface.
Dr Tuck returned to England at Christmas of last year, and was early this January appointed House Physician to the well-known Brompton Hospital for Consumption, London, after having graduated MA, a few days previously. Here he served under Dr Percy Kidd, Dr Robert Maguire and Dr Samuel Habershon, all famous London consultants. During this time he completed the Thesis for the MD degree, which he had begun in Germany and continued in France. It was duly presented to and accepted by the Regius Professor last March, so he will now only have to wait another one and a half years for his full degree.
The appointment of House Physician terminated in July, and after a brief holiday in North Wales and some farewell calls on old friends, he left London on August 28th and reached here last night via Singapore, where he was for five days the guest of the Hon Lim Boon Keng.
It should be added here that Dr Gnoh Lean Tuck's popularity in England and elsewhere was great, and the regret in leaving that country was mutual on both sides. The farewell dinner given in his honour by his many friends in England and presided over by his old Tutor, now chief of the Meteorological Office, London, was a result of the great esteem in which he was held by many English scholars.
To Mr Hargreaves particularly, we are sure, Dr Tuck's return will give the greatest pleasure, since it was he who was mainly responsible for moulding his old pupil's character, and thus fitting him for the honour which he has brought back to those who are near and dear to him, to his admiring countrymen, and to a host of friends of various nationalities.

Town hall meeting

noreply@blogger.com (SS Quah) — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 22:10:00 +0000

Earlier this month, I attended this meeting at the Penang Town Hall as the representative of the Swee Cheok Tong (Seh Quah Kongsi). Called by the Penang Island City Council (MBPP) and chaired by its mayor, Rajendran P Anthony, it brought together representatives from numerous Chinese clan associations in George Town.

The meeting began with a presentation from the Heritage Department which highlighted the dos and don’ts of carrying out repair works on heritage buildings in the core and buffer zones of the UNESCO-listed city. It was a reminder that owning or occupying a heritage building comes with responsibilities. Old buildings in the protected zone cannot simply be treated like any other property, and a decision to knock down a wall, replace a roof or alter its façade needs careful consideration.

The presentation covered the conservation guidelines and the Special Area Plan (Rancangan Kawasan Khas) for the George Town World Heritage Site. The emphasis was on ensuring that any development or repair work is compatible with the site's UNESCO status and that the historic character of George Town is not gradually eroded in the name of improvement.

This was the second Town Hall session organised by MBPP that I attended, the first being last year. I learnt from the circulated minutes that there had been another one in February this year, attended by a handful of clan associations, apparently the bigger ones. I’m quite certain that the notice of that meeting never reached us at the Quah Kongsi. Was there a misdelivery? I don’t know. Nevertheless, I welcome the idea of having these meetings every six months, which should provide a regular channel of communication between the city council and the various stakeholders within the World Heritage Site.

The Town Hall meeting provided an opportunity for both sides to sit down and talk. After the presentation, the floor was opened to representatives of the clan associations, who raised their views, suggestions and concerns on matters affecting heritage conservation. This was perhaps the more important part of the afternoon because it allowed MBPP to hear directly from people who actually own a large number of these historic properties.

The mayor also addressed the elephant in the room, namely the recent collapse of a termite-infested beam at a house in Armenian Street, which injured two foreign tourists. He said that while the council would work with the various stakeholders to inspect and monitor the condition of the buildings in the UNESCO zone, the responsibility for carrying out the necessary repairs still rests with the owners.

Rajendran said the Town Hall was intended to strengthen the relationship between MBPP and the community, explain the council's policies and obtain direct feedback from those who play a role in preserving George Town's heritage.

That is really what a town hall meeting should be about. Not simply telling people what they can and cannot do, but explaining why the rules exist and listening to the difficulties that arise when those rules are applied in real life.

21st century transformation

noreply@blogger.com (SS Quah) — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 06:35:35 +0000

I nearly did a double take when I saw a Bernama Lifestyle article yesterday announcing that Penang Free School would be celebrating its 210th anniversary this October. Two hundred and ten? It somehow felt like only yesterday that we were celebrating the school's Bicentenary in 2016. In reality, 10 years have quietly slipped by. Perhaps that is what happens as one grows older. Milestones that once seemed a lifetime apart suddenly begin arriving with surprising regularity.

According to the Bernama report published on 18 Aug 2026, Penang Free School will hold a simple three-day celebration from the first to the third of October at the school. Organising chairman Ivan Ooi Jieun Vei explained that this will be the first major anniversary celebration since the Bicentenary a decade ago.

But why celebrate the 210th anniversary instead of waiting for the 250th? After all, Free School had previously marked its 100th, 150th and 200th anniversaries with grand celebrations. Surely the next logical milestone would have been another 50 years later.

Ivan's answer was practical. The decision, he told Bernama, was not made hastily but was taken in the best interests of the school and its future. This year's celebration is not simply about commemorating another anniversary. More importantly, it is intended as a rallying cry for Old Frees everywhere to come together and support the school, its teachers and present-day students. That is the real significance of the 210th celebration. Not about looking backwards but looking forwards.

The focal point of the celebration will be the establishment of the Penang Free School Digital Transformation Fund. Before anyone gets the wrong impression, this is not because Penang Free School has suddenly been left to fend for itself. Ivan made it clear that, like every government school in Malaysia, Penang Free School is fully funded and managed by the Ministry of Education. Operational expenses, teachers' salaries and infrastructure development remain the government's responsibility.

The new fund is intended to complement public funding, not replace it. Government funding keeps the school running while the proposed Digital Transformation Fund is meant to help accelerate its transformation into a school equipped for the demands of the future.

As someone who left Free School more than half a century ago, I can appreciate how dramatically education has changed. When I was a student, life revolved largely around textbooks, examinations and the traditional professions. Parents hoped their children would become doctors, lawyers, engineers, teachers or perhaps go into business. Those were the respectable career paths most of us grew up hearing about.

Today, the educational landscape is almost unrecognisable. Artificial intelligence, data science, robotics, coding and digital technology have become part of everyday conversation. Industries that did not even exist when many Old Frees were in school are now offering careers for today's students.

Ivan was quoted in the Bernama article as saying that the school must help students realise their potential not merely as scholars but also as future members of the workforce and leaders in the 21st century. Education has never stood still. Every generation has had to prepare its young for a world different from the one their parents knew. Our generation learned to use slide rules before calculators became commonplace. Later generations grew up with personal computers, followed by the Internet and smartphones. Today's students are entering a world where artificial intelligence may become as ordinary a tool as a pen or calculator. Whether we like it or not, schools must evolve alongside society. And Penang Free School, with its long history stretching back to 1816, has survived precisely because it has continued adapting through two centuries of change.

The celebrations themselves will be spread over three days. The first of October begins with the school's 210th Speech Day, brought forward from the traditional 21st of October because of clashes with examination dates. Speech Day will be held in the school hall from 8am until noon, with Old Frees welcome to attend.

Then comes the third of October, which promises to be a rather lively reunion day under the banner Free School Reunites. Old and current Frees, together with former and present teachers and staff, will gather for sports and fellowship from morning until early afternoon. There will also be a Free School Guide walkabout of the school that I shall be conducting together with my friend, Siang Jin.

Yes, that's something close to my heart. It is always nice when people have an opportunity to walk through the old corridors and rediscover the many stories hidden behind familiar classrooms and buildings. Schools are not merely bricks and mortar. They are repositories of memories accumulated by generations of students who have passed through the same gates.

The highlight of the celebrations will be the 210th Anniversary Dinner at Penang Free School itself on the evening of the third of October. After all, how many institutions can boast of having their former students returning to dine in the very school that shaped their teenage years, some 50 or 60 years after they first wore its uniform?

For many of us, Free School is more than an old school. It is where lifelong friendships began. It is where teachers left impressions that remained long after their lessons were forgotten. It is where boys arrived as awkward adolescents and departed as young men, each carrying different memories of the same classrooms, the same assembly ground and the same ringing school bell.

What I found most encouraging in the Bernama article was Ivan's insistence that the Digital Transformation Fund is not about raising money merely to buy the latest gadgets. Its broader purpose is to develop educators, strengthen STEM education, encourage artificial intelligence, robotics and coding, build stronger links with industry and ultimately help create the talent pipeline that Penang's future economy will depend upon. That is a much bigger ambition than filling classrooms with computers.

Technology by itself does not transform education. But if additional resources can help Free School provide opportunities beyond what normal public funding allows, then I believe it is an initiative worth supporting.

The school has produced generations of scholars, professionals, entrepreneurs, public servants, sportsmen and people from every imaginable walk of life. There is no reason why future generations should not enjoy even greater opportunities simply because the world around them has become more technologically demanding.

A school that is 210 years old should become more than a museum piece. Its history deserves to be preserved, certainly, but its future deserves to be invested in as well. So perhaps celebrating the 210th anniversary, instead of waiting another 40 years, is not such a strange idea after all. The Bicentenary was a magnificent occasion that celebrated two centuries of history. The 210th anniversary will have a different purpose altogether. It is an opportunity to bring Old Frees together, not merely to reminisce about the past but to contribute towards preparing Penang Free School for the next generation. Will I see you there?

Legend of seven maidens

noreply@blogger.com (SS Quah) — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 08:07:55 +0000

It is that time of the year when, in the midst of observing the month-long Hungry Ghost Festival, my family looks forward to celebrating the legend of the Seven Fairy Maidens (七姊仙女), sometimes also known as the Seven Fairy Sisters. There are some stories based around the seven celestial sisters but the most famous is the romance between the youngest sister, the Seventh Maiden, and a mortal man named Tong Eng (董永).

And before going any further, I want to say that this story is sometimes confused with the much better-known legend of the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl which is celebrated during the Mid-Autumn Festival that comes about a month from now. Both involve a mortal man, a celestial woman and an unhappy separation. But they are two different stories.

Here, I want to tell the story of Tong Eng who was a poor young man whose greatest virtue was his devotion to his father. He was so poor that he could not afford his father a proper burial. So, in order to raise the money, Tong Eng sold himself into servitude. It was apparently this extraordinary act of filial devotion that caught the attention of the Seventh Maiden. Moved by what she had seen, she descended from Heaven to the mortal world and married him.

But being married to a celestial being did not immediately solve Tong Eng's problems. He was still bound by his agreement to serve his new master. And so, the Seventh Maiden decided to do something about it. She approached the master and offered to weave ten bolts of silk overnight. When she presented the silk to the master the next morning, he was so delighted that he reduced Tong Eng's period of servitude from years to just 100 days.

For a while, it seemed that the couple might actually have found their happy ending except that Heaven had other ideas. Once the heavenly authorities discovered that one of their fairies had married a mortal, this breach was reported to the Jade Emperor who ordered the Seventh Maiden to return to Heaven.

She had little choice but to leave her husband. Love was found, happiness was briefly enjoyed, and then the heavens decided that the relationship could not continue. It's a tale of heartbreak. There are later versions of this legend which are somewhat kinder to the couple. In these, the Seventh Maiden was eventually stripped of her immortality, allowing her to return to Tong Eng and remain with him permanently.

But to me, the legend of the Seven Sisters is most relevant in the traditions surrounding the Chhit-Chiah (七姊仙女) Festival, which falls on the seventh day of the seventh lunar month. In my family, the worship of the Seven Maidens is carried out after 11pm on the evening of the sixth day, which is tonight, when the calendar is considered to have crossed over into the seventh day. I remember how, days or even weeks before this day, my grandmother and mother would have started preparing for the occasion. They would purchase perfume or the square-boxed hun pniah, or even make their own bedak sejok, all of which were offered to the Seven Maidens. These are small details from my childhood that have stayed with me, even though I probably paid little attention at the time to the significance of what they were doing.

By the way, the Seven Maidens don't appear only in the Tong Eng story. They make a brief appearance in the classic Chinese novel Journey to the East, where they were celestial peach-pickers. Their job was to tend to the peaches in Heaven, which was a rather important responsibility given the magical properties of those fruits. Unfortunately, they happened to awaken the Monkey King. And Sun Wukong was not particularly pleased when he discovered that he had not been invited to a heavenly banquet. The predictable result was that he cast a spell that left the seven sisters frozen.

There are also regional variations of the Seven Maidens story. In Hainan, for instance, local tradition tells of the seven sisters coming to the aid of the indigenous Li people when they were threatened by a demon. After defeating it and protecting the people, the sisters eventually became seven mountain peaks. These variations are particularly interesting in that they show how a familiar group of mythological figures can acquire completely different identities as their stories travel from one part of China to another. That is one reason old legends survive. They are passed from one generation to another, picked up by different communities and reshaped according to local beliefs, customs and circumstances.

The Seven Maidens may be celestial beings but their stories are really about rather earthly matters like filial devotion, love, sacrifice, skill and the choices that have to be made between love and duty. And perhaps that is why the story of Tong Eng and the Seventh Maiden has survived for so long. Fairies may live in Heaven, but the problems they face are still very much down-to-earth.

Nomadic statue

noreply@blogger.com (SS Quah) — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 22:46:00 +0000

It seems quite appropriate for me to say something about the Francis Light statue at Fort Cornwallis as I have written quite a bit about this statue in the past. In fact, I have probably written more about it than most people would care to read. But having followed its movements over the years, I couldn't resist taking another look after Fort Cornwallis reopened following its extensive conservation works.

The last time I saw the statue, it was standing at ground level within Fort Cornwallis, silently eyeing visitors as they entered through the western gate. It was a fairly prominent position, although not, as far as I was concerned, the most historically appropriate one.

Then the fort closed for restoration as part of the North Seafront Programme, with Think City involved in the conservation and redevelopment of the site. I had heard that the statue would be repositioned, but there was little information about where it would eventually end up. I began to wonder whether this might finally be an opportunity to put it somewhere more appropriate. After all, the statue was not originally erected inside Fort Cornwallis.

This is something I had written about previously after digging through old newspaper reports. When the statue was unveiled in 1939, it stood outside the fort, on the grass verge in Light Street between two of the bastions, opposite the District and Police Courts. Those courts are now replaced by the Penang State Legislative Assembly. The statue was deliberately positioned there with Fort Cornwallis as its backdrop and facing the courts.

So when I heard the statue was going to be moved again, I thought perhaps it might finally go back there. But it didn't. As I subsequently discovered, there was a rather obvious reason. The conservation works have restored the moat along the southern side of the fort. And once I saw the completed moat, I realised that putting Francis Light back in exactly the same spot was no longer viable unless they intended to put him in the middle of the moat!

That would certainly make for an interesting monument, but somehow I don't think that was ever going to happen. So while I had to revise my expectations, I still kept an eye on the southern side of the fort in the months leading up to the reopening. I couldn't see any obvious preparation for the statue, so I had a feeling that Francis Light wasn't going back there.

Sure enough, after Fort Cornwallis reopened to the public on the 26th of July, I went looking for him inside the fort. This time, he had been placed in the north-western corner, in the bastion there. And the area around him had been roped off with a sign announcing that conservation work was in progress.

So there he stands now, looking down at the centre of the fort while visitors look at him from behind a barrier. I suppose Francis Light has been moved around so many times that he must be quite accustomed to having his address changed.

The statue has had a rather nomadic existence. It was commissioned for the 150th anniversary of Penang's founding and unveiled in 1939. It subsequently moved to several locations, including a spell in front of the Penang Museum, before eventually returning to Fort Cornwallis in 2003. And even then, it didn't return to where it had originally stood.

There is also the little matter of his missing accessories. The bronze statue originally had a sword, but that disappeared during the Japanese Occupation and only returned after the War. The brass plaque has also disappeared, but it was still there when the statue stood in the Museum grounds.

So here we have Francis Light, minus his sword and plaque, moved around the civic precinct several times and now installed in another corner of Fort Cornwallis, where he is currently being kept behind a barrier. The poor fella has had a rather unsettled afterlife.

To be fair, I don't know what considerations went into deciding where to put him this time. There may be perfectly good conservation or practical reasons for his present location. And having seen the restored moat, I can now understand why simply returning him to his 1939 position wasn't as easy as I had originally imagined.

Nor do I want to take anything away from the good conservation work at Fort Cornwallis. The fort has undergone a considerable transformation and it is gratifying to see a historic site that had been looking rather tired for years receiving some much-needed attention.

Perhaps once the conservation work around the statue is completed, the barrier will come down and Francis Light will finally be allowed to mingle with visitors again. Perhaps there are further plans for him that I know nothing about. Who knows?

After all these years of following Francis Light around Penang, I've learnt not to assume that I know where he is going next. For now, he has found another home inside Fort Cornwallis. Let's just hope this one lasts a little longer.