Birthday comments to Dad from all 6 children

 Fei Min

My first full time job was at FasLane ITC. I got to learn from you about so many adult life things and it gave me lots of confidence for future jobs.

I loved "The Adventures of David Chong" as the way to hear about your childhood during our morning drives to school.

We could play so many board games after Family Home Evening: Fox & the Hound, Chinese Checkers, and lots of 1-on-1 games of chess. FHE held so many great memories. You were always most excited about REFRESHMENTS!!!!

In the car, we learned so much math. You taught me multiplication when I was 3-5 even though I had no idea what it was. And then at 9 or 10, you taught me binary, and I didn't learn that in school until I was 16. You would always show off what you taught me to your friends & family. One time, I found condoms in the side drawer & asked you and Mom what they were and you said "Contraceptives" - I asked what that was & you explained that it's what we use when you don't want babies.

At family events & parties, you would ask me in front of your friends "What's a contraceptive and I would answer. Everyone laughed but I didn't get it. I was 9.

To be continued...

FamilyLane 2018 October Reunion

The Prelude in Kuala Lumpur:

I am glad to know that I am a Child of God and all of Earth's human beings are my brothers and sisters from different branches in a global family tree. Hence, Families and Friends mean a lot to me as shared in the Facebook post below:

Thinking about Mom

28 Sep 2018
They are starting to come closer as the days go by

Su, Jay and Leah arrived safely in KLIA but on transit to Taiwan first! It's a long way to fly from Boston so Leah is catching up with her sleep!

Meanwhile, notice is posted to friends and family though social media about the BIG reunion that will take place soon in Kuala Lumpur by "Dad the KL City Kid" It is also a great motivational part of this Dad to proceed with the digital pre-launch of this Malaysian social media character's First Book. So far he has only been creating online journals augmented with photos and videos. 

It was decided that the family will meet old friends in the Cheras branch of the Church as not many local members of old are found in the KL branch. Also the Cheras branch had planned an Open House for their new premises that they had just moved into. Hence the creation of this video below:

(Post-dated developments on 6 Oct itself: Due to final discussions in the family, the event at 7pm is now called "Munch and Mingle". It will still be at 7pm to start the impromptu pot-luck session suggested by several sisters in the Church and therefore will increase mingle time without a "Fireside" styled meeting that is more for presentations! Our family plans to be there before 7pm too. )

Excited and dressed for the occasion

Me too!

30 Sep 2018

Han who left for UK for work in London for 3 weeks in the month of September, took time to visit his cousin's family in Stuttgart Germany on one weekend.  He flew back to Singapore on this last day of the month

Han is mentioned in my "Latest News" social media post which I use to express myself or my Consciousness as an aspiring Writer and Socialpreneur helping to Re-Engineer Malaysia today.

3 Oct 2018

Father Dog has planned Malaysian styled tatami mats for all his Doggie-Lioness born children to watch this movie together knowing they're all not going to sleep much with all the excitement expected in his apartment. With fast internet access, large screen displays and amplified sound systems found in an airconditioned living room and bedrooms plus a wet kitchen that the 'Good maid' can cook anything.

He even helped to save this apartment from going to the wild and corrupt dogs as shared here due to his latest choice of a career to be a writer and socialpreneur. He hopes to be an example to his children to adopt the principle of always Thinking and be a Life Long Learner shared in this soothing video.

4 Oct 2018

Most of the family have arrived except for the oldest son Han arriving early on Friday morning The girls now living in the US with the boys in Singapore had a chance to walk along the path of Nostalgia eating 'Yong Tau Foo' from Ampang town and visiting familiar places in their childhood as follows:

With 6 children growing up at different times, some attended kindergartens like this one.

They remembered the Ampang shop where they got all their stationery from...

...so I asked the shop owner if she remembered the children in Cantonese dialect which she replied yes especially Me!  Ha Ha these lady businesswomen are very sharp! Then we got into a conversation about how time flies and talked about how we have aged where she replied quickly to point to my still very dark hair!!!   

Further down the road, the 'kids' wanted to see if the same fruit stall we patronized was still there. We found a younger man running the place and I asked him was he the son whose parents manned the stalls in years passed. He acknowledged and when I asked if his parents still man the stall and he replied in the affirmative to comment that they were having a holiday in Taiwan!

From fresh fruits to barbequed pork, the streets of Ampang had all that the children remembered and loved!

With 6 children, we have tried a variety of schools near Ampang including those in KL. Shuan, for example, started kindergarten in 'On Pang' which had a primary school too but he went to Kuan Cheng primary, then transferred to Chung Hwa primary off Jln Ampang near the Thai embassy and did his secondary in Tsun Jin of Loke Yew road. He later moved with the family to Singapore to repeat secondary two at ACS Anglo Chinese School. Other brothers Han, Ern and Ray all were blessed to have good education in ACS.

So the walking tour of Ampang ended here at the old kindergarten of Shuan that was part of a primary/elementary school. The facade of the building of the school in the background had changed to look like a 'Fantasy Land' design from Disneyland seen in the far background partially hidden by the tall gates of the entrance of the school. Missing in the photo is the 'Big Boss' or the oldest brother Han who could leave after work only on this day.

Later on, the group divided into two where one would go to the city center for shopping while some who had gymnastic training in their youth went to visit their old gym and instructors, the Yongs who have become our close family lifelong friends:

5 Oct 2018

Photoshoot by my son-in-law Jay Liu

6 Oct 2018
The gymnasts of the family who didn't get to see the Yongs followed up the next day to visit the gym named Scope.

Finally, all the gymnasts of our family got to visit Scope again to meet with the Yongs!

In their gym are many old pics of past events and this one of 2003 brings back memory when Su and Shuan qualified for the Malaysian finals held in East Malaysia.

The Yong's came with their children to our home for a social get together and enjoy competing on computer games which amused the dog looking at their faces of reactions while they were playing!

At the "Munch and Mingle" session after the open house of Cheras Church branch, visiting with several older member friends who were originally from the KL branch in the early 80s when we started our family.

7 Oct 2018
The fun, celebrations and love shared recorded on my video:

At the end of the short video above, I initiated our familiar family cheer. From my research on Human Consciousness, I found a video below by a well known social psychologist that explains the reason why this family cheer was relevant.

Blooper in the live video recording :

I was too filled with emotion to be able to continue to read out what each of my children had written about their memories of me in the 60 cards presented to me! The real Mom and not I the Mr.Mom did a better job on her 50th birthday as recorded in the video below:

Postdated comment on 16 Oct 2020 to find this blogpost by Fei who made it for my 50th that was much easier for me to read alone than in public especially with the camera recording!

The energy level is high when Familylane members get together with the youngest Leah in the middle of it all recording memories to be remembered as she gets older just like what her uncles and aunty have carried forth with them!

We were happy to have Uncle Tony from Utah who is a frequent visitor to KL since in the 80s when our family just started with just the two oldest girls only, Fei and Su. He has been my longtime friend who became part of our family as our Uncle Tony. I am so glad he could be in town to join us in our family reunion, 

I know his wife too and met several of his children at various times either in the US or in KL when they visited who would enjoy climbing hills with me as recorded in this 'Peaks of my life' journal.

We have similar backgrounds that we both joined the Church in Australia in our student days where he was much earlier of course as my senior. We both became CPAs in our initial career path that turned to become entrepreneurs later. We raised 6 children too where he has four girls while I have two. Our network is strong both in the family as well as our friends and associates worldwide.

"Family and Friends are Forever" has been my belief ever since young and while I have seen enmity or feuds in family and friend relationships everywhere, I'm glad my own circle of family and friends have been my joy or treasures till today where I will try to connect with them wherever they are in the world. "Dad the KL City Kid" turned 60 but still a kid in his Heart but with a Mind and Spirit like fine wine that has aged with collective wisdom from the earth and beyond! The latter is a reality to me not just because of the teachings of my faith alone but I actually have chronicled true experiences that have occurred multiple times in my life like this one where the inspiration to write a book was located. I used the metaphor of the Story of 7 to hide the implication of miracles in my life that keeps happening which I try to keep up with in my Spiritlane journal which is somewhat more sacred I felt.

The boys in Singapore had to go back first as work starts on Monday. This was a much shorter journey to travel home as compared to the reunion in 2016. 

The family get-togethers continued in Singapore. We see Justin and Ying Er on the bottom left of the photo above. 7 years ago they are seen in this video to be playing the violin together, with Han on the right of the photo playing the piano, who composed the music, and Superman Ern playing the flute. The two violinists fell in love to be married in June 2016 thus making the above gathering as a reunion of the Thongs, Chongs and Lius. (TCL) Hmm... reminds me of my ITC group of companies I started soon after marrying my wife, being an Initiative of Thong and Chong!

The girls from the US with their spouses could stay longer in Asia to use the time to travel a bit to neighboring sites where only my granddaughter and parents could spend another 2 days in KL at the start of the 3rd week after returning from their visits to nearby resorts to catch their flight home from KLIA. 

Leah is such a Cutie!

She was so excited to go through the routines like the other much bigger kids!

She is very responsive to her Grandpa!

Just look at how she smiles at the camera or two cameras haha!

She was sleeping when she first arrived in the airport, as seen above, and is also sleeping at the start of her long journey home to Boston from KLIA!

29 Oct 2018

Wow it took me till the end of the month to recover from the big reunion we had in Kuala Lumpur but this Monday morning, I'm in fast forward gear again!

1 Nov 2018
PERCEPTION shared

This post of Nov 1 is here because of my perception. While finishing some important notices in WhatsApp for a bigger reunion event next month to celebrate all our old-school boys turning 60, Facebook gave me a notification that my buddy Alvin Lim in Melbourne liked the above old post for some reason.

It caused me to look at the video above and my perception caused me to add the comment below:

The interpretation of my perception is that the real Mom of the family, and not I Mr. Mom, wanted to have a greater part of this post especially to have her favorite 'I have a Dream' song shared. Another thought before I go to bed to share, as I may forget tomorrow, is that just before this, I was sharing with an old boy from my school and classmate too on WhatsApp about my post on perception to introduce a scientist to him found on my journal post where I shared this video below:

The video shares an exceptional latest scientific knowledge about our human cell that it is the foundation of how perception is possible in us which makes it possible for us to change our behavior and even our state of health to challenge the old belief that it is our DNA that determines our health!

I was so excited to sit beside my old classmate Darius Abdullah who sat close to me in our classroom in the year 1975 to tell him, "Darius, I want you to know for many years I thought about you wondering where have you been all these years and suddenly you show up!" 

I was glad that I made an effort to attend the lunch celebration of this group of old boys to celebrate Nazli Shah's birthday as my perception and familiarity of this group of boys had increased.  I learned that Nazli was in an old photo of 6A3 class that I had always treasured as it is the only photo I have from that class.

Nazli is the one on the far left and I am wearing my signature glasses on the right. He informed me in the lunch gathering that there were three of us from 6A3 class who were present.

The three were me, him Nazli Shah and the third person Kamarul Bahrein seen at the far end of the table.

Here is an enlarged photo to see Kamarul at the far end

We can see a better photo of Kamarul in this photo taken in the same Bilal restaurant at the start of the year in January where Nazli was not present.

As we talked about the class of 6A3 during lunch, Pardip showed me a pic of a twin class of 6A3 that was in School 1 of St John's primary with a different school teacher while the three of us mentioned earlier was under Mr. Kumaran in the 6A3 of school 2. 

After the lunch, I took some random close up photos of those who gathered outside of the restaurant that can be found in the proper journal post of memories and reunions of St John's here. The wefie photo I took of Darius and Ikbal with me above was taken after the three of us spent more time together catching up with each other. It was interesting to get to know Ikbal who was close to Darius to learn that they were part of a government program in the early days to bring students from the rural areas outside KL to study in city schools. Ikbal had maintained good contact information with the group of students who organized this lunch whom I was less familiar with as I had only spent time with them when I was in classes with them in my earlier years in St John's when I was new in the school shared in this full post of my schooling years.

This November 1st post has been a diversion from our Familylane theme probably due to the fact that my friends from school were important in my life due to the relationships we had established together since our youth. It is the very reason why I have often quoted my belief that "Family and Friends are Forever" in accordance with my Perception.

As I have always believed, we are all connected in some way or another. This 1982 photo shows my wife, the Mom of our family, already involved in our school class reunion activities. This was the year when we got married, with some others possibly who had already married earlier than us.

Post-dated development:

For the family of boys from my Alma  Mater, I've created a special post with my perception of our reunion event shared here.

2 Nov 2018

Ray's 21st Birthday celebration in Singapore

After the family reunion in Kuala Lumpur last month, everyone returned to their respective homes and got together again online this time to sing Happy Birthday to Ray who is the youngest who turned 21 while he is still with the army in Singapore under National Service.


18 Jan 2019
Google Hangout on Leah's 3rd Birthday

Isn't technology wonderful? 

27 Feb 2019

Explanation by a social psychologist of why our family cheer "All for One and One for All" found above repeated 3 times is relevant:

I was watching the video long after our family reunion was over, as part of my continued research on social psychology for my book about human consciousness. I was surprised that the speaker repeated our family cheer double the number of times our family did, hahaha!

It's slightly different from our family cheer that we adopted from the story of the three musketeers but apparently, it is considered a synonym here. Check out the timed video links below that I made to count the number of times he repeated it:

1st time https://bit.ly/2TjOgfn
2nd time  https://bit.ly/2IFezZx
3rd time https://bit.ly/2VpJudM
4th time https://bit.ly/2T8wIUx
5th time https://bit.ly/2Vocti0
6th time https://bit.ly/2H3phGC

4 Apr 2019

Mom would be 57 years old today from her date of birth of 4 Apr 1962!

This video was created to hear the family cheer again the 7th time after Jonathan Haidt's video above!

7 Apr 2019

Click on the timed video below to hear our Church General Authority use our family cheer in a live worldwide General Conference that I stayed up late to watch!

Published on 7 April in Youtube!

By Elder Carl B. Cook

Of the Presidency of the Seventy

15 Apr 2019

The follow-up story:

It's Monday night and late. I've been a busy bee every day of my life... really! Non-stop learning, doing and reflecting (PAR). It's moments like this in my life that requires me to update my journal, lest I forget, to count my many blessings in life, whether of temporal nature or spiritual. I have to make this short as deadlines of publishing my book, where "Everything Comes Together", will be exemplified.

If one would scroll above to the post of date 27 Feb 2019, referencing to our family cheer, I noted that I counted the number of times the cheer was repeated by the social psychologist Jonathan Haidt was 6 times, one short to make it my lucky number of 7. Well as one who forgets dates often when I'm engrossed in doing something, I thought myself lucky to remember my wife's birthday on the day itself of 4 April so I created a video, sharing her artistic talents to commemorate her 57th birthday and counted that as the 7th time to catch our family cheer again. Call it forced luck but it was her 57th which can be considered lucky I felt!

It was rather coincidental too to be able to gather her photos of her previous school work kept in a different drawer from the other family photos I have kept over the years. A few weeks earlier I had sorted and selected some photos for batch scanning and had not done it yet. This made it convenient to quickly create a video to post on her Facebook timeline on the day of her birthday itself!

Now April 4th was a Thursday before our Church general conference of April 6-7 weekend in Salt Lake City. The conference would be telecast on the internet. Now due to my 'good luck' in the past to be able to even tune in spiritually to predict what would be a topic covered by a general authority, I felt something special might happen this time but I didn't announce it on Facebook again as doing all these little things will only consume more of my precious time to record more in this journal when I'm focused working on my book to finish it as soon as possible!

So I'm doing this today with just the following photos with more links to click, as given above, if you really want to understand how to link the dots of my Consciousness, to understand the meaning of what I have experienced and am sharing recently.

The time stamp for this photo is 2.52am on Saturday 6 April 2019 in Malaysia which is before the conference starts as US is a day behind us. It is a page from my old quadruple scripture's topical index about friend or friendship which can be viewed online too.  When I was inspired to find it, I was wondering how would this be a topic that would be shared in our General Conference? I just felt that I knew Friends, and Family were always a large part of my life from young and while writing my book, I was also impressed that the Consciousness I had gained from so many friends across the globe I had acquired and be in contact with online and offline over my lifetime was crucial to give me ideas of topics to be included in my book!

But look how "Everything Comes Together" for me in the above General Conference video that I viewed on our Malaysian time of Sunday of April 7. One can click here to watch or read the talk by Elder Carl B. Cook of the Presidency of the Seventy to know why his talk became the miracle talk that was related to my topical index reference to Friends, besides providing me the 7th time of repeating our family cheer of "all for one and one for all", both being mentioned above.

I screen captured part of the web page of the talk to note friends was quoted 7 times in Elder Cook's talk. Just do a 'Ctrl F' that searches any word typed in found on the screen of the talk on a computer like I did with "friends" to get the same result I got of finding 7 words in his talk and the longest arrow pointing to the "all for one and one for all" cheer of our family rightly counted as the 7th cheer after the video talk of the social psychologist Jonathan Haidt found above.

More surprises and synchronicities below from old and new friends, young or old, of my life: 

Now on the previous Sunday at Church, I was surprised to see Fidelia and daughter from Kuantan at Church in KL to learn that a group of them had joined our KL branch group to go to the Hong Kong temple recently and had just returned to KL. I captured the above photo to send it to Duncan Horne, whose wife is Fidelia, to pass it to her. Soon Duncan invited me to join their WhatsApp group on the topic of the forthcoming General Conference. 

I thought March was a busy month to be with many old friends but April was no different explained below. I was with 3 old friends for lunch in a popular local restaurant in Cheras and had to share a table with a Japanese couple.

In March, I had an old friend Tony Seow from Utah visiting me and I introduced him to Michael Lee who was part of my history of serving as a missionary in Malaysia shared here.

Since the topic of number 7 is mentioned here with a photo of an old friend Tony Seow above, I just thought I'd post this photo related to Tony who had returned from Australia last month and gave me a stack of 7 piles of AUD50s to change into ringgits for him! He can be seen in our family reunion video when we repeated our family cheer shared above.

Patricia Cheah was our first miracle convert recorded here who is 90 years of age on this day and she was with her younger brother who is only 5 years younger seen sitting at the lunch table photo above arranged by Michael who picked them up by car to find me. Here is a quick story of another miracle that happened while I was in the car with them heading to the restaurant. My phone suddenly rang and it was another friend who asked me, out of the blue, to help sell his luxurious apartment. Now I'm not a real estate agent and I guess he knew I was well connected so I responded that I will try to follow up for him. 

After lunch, outside the restaurant, while waiting for Michael to drive up the car close to the two elderly siblings, a man started staring at me and I looked at him to ask if he knew me. He said I looked familiar and mentioned our old school to even recollect my name but I couldn't remember him as in our brief dialogue, I discovered that we were never in the same class together. Furthermore, he didn't attend a reunion event that I had recently promoted and organized last December. He gave me his name card and he turned out to be a property agent! Synchronicity strikes again!

A message came to me that I was too busy to realize or respond to when it came in at the start of the week when I was fully engrossed in the multiple activities of my "ShanFu-Consciousness."  This included determining how I would end my book, cleaning house full of things stored and paperwork unfinished which if not completed my mind will be sub-optimal to create a best seller book!

This is from Johnson who visited me at a timely moment in March. Being a member of the Church from India, meeting him caused my consciousness to pull out the book written by my mission president Talmage Jones in 1980-82 who pioneered setting up the Church in India as mission president of 5 countries that included Singapore, the mission headquarters and Malaysia, India, Sri Lanka, and Indonesia.  Johnson is also a skilled person in the field of computer programming to learn of my desire to publish my book online and offered his services to me. Am I not a lucky man?

On the weekend following the conference, we had a replay of the entire recorded event where I made more notes while watching the videos that highlighted more personal notes to me than watching them live the first time. We had a linger longer lunch on Sunday where I met up with Ricky above to chat but was not aware then until I got his photo above of his baptism exactly a year ago on that Sunday to share here.  I was then the branch mission leader to conduct his baptism service and it was an unforgettable experience. The meeting was filled with a fulness of the Holy Ghost where tears were flowing in our eyes especially mine to hear his testimony shared to the members present! He became an awesome member helping to fellowship with new people learning the Gospel to eventually receive the Melchizedek priesthood and later called as the Elders Quorum president of the branch!

I had learned of the creative talent of Ricky in thinking and working in an event, stage management company as he was enrolled with me in our branch self-reliance program with a few other members on the topic of starting your own business. We were all to present the project we had in mind which is where he learned of my book project in more detail. He pointed out to me that Sunday a very salient point where my book title should change from the simple draft title I had that began with "My Consciousness..." to something that would attract the attention of those who will buy a book by its cover, like using my name instead to call it "ShanFu-Consciousness" with an emphasis on the topic of Body Mind Spirit that many are curious about! (ShanFu is my given name in Mandarin explained here.)

This is marketing 101 that I somehow overlooked as I was more concerned to emphasize in the title that it was just "My consciousness" and not that of the general public. From all the research I've done and my life's accumulated experiences compared to others, I am unafraid to publish it as a genuine discovery of mine with my name on it as I really do feel I have broken the code so to speak of the enigma of our Human Consciousness. That Sunday, I gained more than just being at Church to watch a replay of the Conference. I am always grateful for my friends and family members who teach me and touch my life for good more than they realize!

Thanks to Barbara Hong, a new found friend offline and online, who must have felt something thousands of miles away to send me a message on Facebook, that she rarely does, at the right timing again to affirm that yes, "Everything has come Together" for me.

From Barbara's message, I somehow managed to get to see her latest online interview published on 9 April 2019!

I have journalized in the past 40 years of my life, at this point of writing, to make it possible to publish a book today with up-to-date skills, knowledge, perception backed by extensive personal experiences which I feel is worth sharing especially to leaders and citizens of the superpower countries of America as No 1 and China as No 2, in our somewhat precarious world today. It is also for the rest of the world to see if my rationale shared will help readers predict the future of these two giants where if they sneeze, we will catch a cold!

For personal benefit and families, my book should also be useful for helping readers optimize their lives wherever they live to ensure that they can be happy, healthy and productive in contributing to the world to make it a better place for everyone.  My "ShanFu-Consciousness" view of the future will give readers the frame of the Body Mind & Spirit which they can apply to their own fields of interest and endeavors in order to profit from the future. I will help readers focus on the whole and don’t get lost in details or things that will only be blips on the screen of their phones about the world which has become famous in the US to be called "fake news."

To be continued or edited...