Old photo from the columnist’s album shows him (seated, second right) during his early start as editor of ‘The Square’ in 1967. With him are (from left) Datu Saleh Sulaiman, Edrea Ong, VK Kumaran and Dolly Crocker. Those standing are (from left) Carot Ripid, Jabu Entinggie, Ahmad Shamsuddin, Dato Abang Affandi Abang Anuar, Edric Ong and Peter Salang.
THIS week marks my 300th column for The Borneo Post, which had just celebrated its 46th year of publication last Wednesday (April 24).
Sometime in June 2018, I was approached by Phyllis Wong, the general manager for The Borneo Post and Utusan Borneo, to contribute a weekly column for the group’s English daily.
On July 7, 2018 my first column had appeared. Except for non-publication dates, I have not missed a Saturday column during that period since.
How and where did I begin?
I suppose before one can consider putting anything into words, first there must be the learning by reading process.
I was, at a very early age, taught to learn to love books. My mother was my earliest and most devoted teacher: she had read to me from storybooks from as early as I could remember.
The love for reading was then swiftly cultivated and from about the time when I could read an entire book to myself, probably at age eight or nine, my life has been greatly influenced by the written word.
Our household was filled with books, magazines, newspapers and other reading materials.
Following in the footsteps of my mother, my siblings and I were all voracious readers.
After absorbing as much information as I could from reading from whatever printed materials I could get my hands on, the next obvious progression was to try my hand at writing. Essays were the norm from around Primary 3, at age nine, and by Primary 5, I had my first full-length essay published in the school magazine, ‘The Square’.
This had greatly encouraged me to write even more, and I became the primary school’s editorial representative in both the school’s periodical (published six issues per year) and the annual ‘The Thomian School Magazine’.
By age 15, in Form 3, I had become the editor of ‘The Square’, which was to last till my final year in school in 1969, at age 19. I also became the editor for the ‘The Thomian’ for that year.
When most of my classmates were taking up extracurricular activities like playing football, hockey and running track events in the fields, or busy attending Boys Scouts meetings, Science Clubs and 4Hs and so forth, I was only interested in the debating club, drama society and the occasional school excursions and expeditions to places of historical and cultural interest.
My favourite haunts were the British Council and American Consulate libraries.
When she was 16, my sister Edrea, a year younger than me, was invited to write for The Sarawak Tribune, which was the largest English daily then – it was Dennis Law at the helm at the time.
Edrea’s column was called ‘Teena’s Page’ and it had a very successful run for a number of years.
She was an even better writer than me. Her topics had included teenage angst and also touched on how our teens behaved, as well as the fashion trends of the day and what activities had entertained them.
A few months after seeing how they were missing out on this particular demographic (ages 12 to 18) in their readers’ reach, the other main English daily competitor The Vanguard’s chief editor Desmond Leong took me on to start a column called ‘Pop Art’, which ran from 1967 to 1969.
Every week I had to fill up an entire broadsheet page with news from the entertainment world of movies, books and music, including reviews of them as well as photographs and illustrations.
I also did interviews and covered press conferences.
I had my hands full, with school homework, editing the magazines, as well as running and publishing a monthly Elvis news bulletin called ‘The Aron’ as I was the president of the Elvis Presley Fan Club of Malaysia (1966-1969).
But with the nice pocket money that I had coming in from the Vanguard, I was able to support all these ventures as well as fed the addict in me – I collected records (vinyl), stereo equipment, camera equipment (I had the photographer bug for a few years), books, magazines and went to movies.
Once I had started work for The Borneo Company in March 1970 as an executive cadet, I had to put all this behind me while building a career in business for myself.
But during this period whenever possible and needed, I would be there for my peers and bosses in churning out any press releases, promotional materials and whatever that was required in the field of putting words together to either sell, promote a service or product, or even to quell some public-relations disaster or to smoothen some ruffled feathers – in simple terms, in my working life I had to become a diplomat of words.
After I had retired from working for various corporations and companies, I had turned to a career in film production services in 1987, in which I am still actively involved in association with ScubaZoo Images based in Sabah and Chandran Rutnam in Sri Lanka.
Here, the correctly strung-together ‘words’ could create opportunities and open doors.
Some years back, Rajah Murugaiah had collared me in to write for Tan Sri Clement Hii’s ‘The Ant Daily’, an online news and opinion outfit that had lasted a few years.
During that period, I was able to write about socio-economic and political views and opinions, with Francis Siah and Joseph Tawie being my respected peers there.
With the advent of the Internet and the phenomenal growth of Facebook, I had found a new outlet to channel and share many of my personal knowledge, opinions and views.
Self-discipline and self-censorship have enabled me to make my personal thoughts and ideas known to many here – so long as one behaves and holds oneself accountable for one’s words and actions and does not go overboard or express any extremist views, one can find a very large following here.
I have found out after six years of writing here that the printed word on hardcopy newspapers and magazines are no longer as well read nor as popular as there were in the 1960s to the 2000s.
The ‘Internet Age’ has changed all that!
The younger generations now turn to scrolling on their smartphones and iPads and other devices; are addicted to YouTube and TikTok video-clips and send each other texts and forwards on WhatsApp and WeChat.
But folks are still interested and curious about matters and issues that affect them and will continue to be attracted to news, events and happenings as they occur.
Their memory retention of news, both good and bad, may be very short-lived as in a matter of days they would have moved on to other ‘newsy’ issues.
Blame it all on the 30-second TikTok clip!
What has been my most gratifying experience as a writer?
I still get the occasional reader who would come up to me at a coffee shop or at an event and say something like: “Hey, I read your column last week and I had enjoyed it.”
More than anything else for a writer, any writer, that would usually make his day!
Thank you, my dear readers, for staying for the past six years and I hope to be able to continue to write something that you might find some snippet therein to enjoy.