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By International Master Jimmy Liew
Those
were the days
I do a little travelling in my work mainly in
the Asia Pacific region. Two days ago, I was on a plane to Bangkok
where I was to spend some eighteen days for a project implementation.
On the plane, I had the window seat. Beside me sat a distinguished
looking grey haired gentleman with receding hairline.
I turned to him to borrow his newspaper and as
we looked at each other, our mouths dropped open as we mutually
recognized each other. Here was a man I had not seen in probably
fifteen years. His name is Christopher Lee. Somehow, meeting him again
brought back memories of my early days in KL.
Penang in the 1970s was pretty much limited in
terms of job as well as chess opportunities. I had travelled to KL to
seek a job and to get
closer to the chess scene. I finally landed a low paying job in a
factory along Jalan Semangat in Petaling Jaya in 1977.
In those days, a group of chess players would
gather every Sunday morning at the La Salle school canteen. When I
learned of the meeting place at the La Salle I couldn’t wait for
Sunday to come. I had to take two bus from my lodgings at
Old Klang Road to
get to the school. Among the regulars were Joseph Toh, Tham Tick Hong,
Gerald Menon and Peter Long and a host of other chess people including
Chris.
At around 2 PM, the group would disperse and
Joseph and I would take a bus down to Kuala Lumpur where another group
of chess players gathered in the evenings. After a couple of hours of
chess (usually blitz), both of us would make our way to the old Klang
bus station. In a nearby back alley, Joseph introduced me to the best
Hokkien fried mee stall. For a mere four ringgit, we could get a plate
of Hokkien mee and another plate of Cantonese fried noodles, both of
which were large enough to fill both our bellies.
Those were the days where I worked a five and
half day week just to get to Sunday where I could be amongst chess
friends. And that was all that I ever wanted in my life at that point
in time.
Man, those were the days.
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