Familylane: First 2021 Familylane post

18 Jan 2021

Today is the birthday of my first grand child Leah Liu Yu Li who turns 5 years of age with a video recording here. While it is night now in Kuala Lumpur, it's just early morning of the same day in the USA. Her birth and growing up years including a trip to Kuala Lumpur for our family reunion in 2018 is recorded in this family post. Leah had a baby sister Anya Liu Yu An born on 21 April 2020 where both their pics are found in this post.

Before the day is over, I like to include a special 'Nonya' lady I met in Penang in 2020 who is also born on this day too.

Why is she special? Well she is born on 18 Jan 1938 that makes her 83 years old today and look how active she is dancing in this video:

Her name is Annie Lim, born in Singapore and made her home in Penang where I was introduced to her by my friend Ang in the photo above with three of us together!

She is famous in Penang well covered by the press as shared below

I had to interview her to find out more information of her amazing life and vitality to have roles to act in the following movies:

Anna and the King (Penang)

Road to Dawn (Penang)

A Tale of Two Cities (Penang)

Dream Hotel (German film in English)

Love & Death at Java (Penang - German film in English)

Shining Love (Penang - Mandarin)

Mata Mata (Penang - Mandarin)

Wedding Diary (Penang & Singapore)

You mean the world to me (Hokkien)

My Papa Rich (Penang - Jack Neo Instagram)

Unforgiven (Penang)

Crazy Rich Asian (Blue Mansion)

The Journey (Chinese movie)

Media Corp 2019 (Promoting Peranakan Culture)

Kung Fu Taboo (Penang-Julia St temple)

On top of all that, she has 5 sons and 3 daughters with 20 grand children!

The only other famous 'Nonya' lady I know is when I was researching for my family history who wrote a book entitled, 'Memories of a Nonya. Her name is Queeny Chang shared here.

10 Feb 2021

Pre-Chinese New Year

With the emergency MCO announced by what Malaysian's know is a backdoor government trying to hold on to power by avoiding full parliamentary meetings that will question them if they have a majority vote to continue as the current government, one can't expect much to celebrate this CNY especially when the economy of the whole country is going downhill! (Ref to politics in Malaysia)

So the best we can do in our relationships with family or friends is to interact via the internet, which fortunately I could do easily as a senior citizen today. Most could use WhatsApp that has become popular with those without a techie background and initiated ones progress to Facebook and Messenger that is a little more sophisticated. I could fully use the two of them due to an inherent desire in me to always seek to connect with my family and friends since young. When technology was more basic in the early days with no internet technology, I would learn some simple programs that I could create a newsletter to print out and send by snail mail to all my friends (Ref to my newsletters)

This word "seek" at the start of the year of 2021 became more prominent or important to me to explain my own consciousness. I could continue to have a lot of quiet time to ponder about the subject especially with the ongoing pandemic and emergency MCO executed by local government. I had started a new Consciousness journal at the end of 2020 where I was impressed to recreate a new presentation format of James Allen's famous short book entitled, "As a Man Thinketh" that has come under Creative Commons license. (Ref to my journal version of James Allen's book.)

Today, in Facebook messenger, I received a message from a very long, good and close friend who sent me this old pic

It is a photo of my Mom with Felix Yong who rarely connects to me on Facebook and this was a nice surprise. I'm impressed to share it in this journal to remind me that my mother, born in Penang, was also considered a Nyonya though living in KL, she would only dress up like a Nyonya on certain special days only. She is more accustomed to wear modern clothes as seen in the photo above.

Some old photos from a small album my father had given to me shows my grandma wearing the Nyonya. My mother as a young wife was just wearing a simple Chinese outfit were both my father and mother were married young at 16 in 1937.

Here is an old pic of what Chinese call the "Full Moon" dinner/celebration of my birth after a month from birth, the last and seventh child of my parents. She was just wearing a Chinese "Cheong Sum" styled from China different from the Nyonya culture. I remember that she did wear the traditional Nyonya dress on rare occasions as it is quite elaborate and time taking to wear, most likely having learned it from my grandmother,

Chinese New Year 2021

Year of the Ox celebration