Destiny's child revisited

In an earlier posting, I referred to my son as Destiny’s child without giving any details. I am trying to cut a long story short in explaining why I called my son so.

In the early ‘70s, as a bachelor I nearly drowned in Port Dickson. But I suppose my three children were destined to be born!

It was an Asia Insurance’s company trip and I had two ex-classmates working there. They invited me to join them. Asia Insurance staff were no strangers to our family and I shall write about it in another posting.

It was late afternoon or early evening when I went for a dip. I could not swim but knew how to float on water, lying on my back, with my head half-submerged. I had no idea that it was high tide and just a short distance of drifting out, I decided to stand and got the shock of my life! I just went down into deep water and panicked. I struggled to stay afloat and started waving. After two or three times bopping in and out of the water, I saw the direction of the beach and tried whatever strokes I knew to swim under water towards it. Fortunately for me, it really made a difference when I tried standing up and my head was above water level. By then, my spectacles had dropped into the sea and I walked towards the beach looking for help.

One of my ex-classmates, Peter Chan, had a set of goggles and he managed to retrieve my specs in no time. Incidentally, Peter Chan died of a heart attack about 10 years ago.

It was more than 2 years after finishing my A-levels that I got the chance to go to UK. A month or two before I left, during one of my evening outings with ex-classmates, I met another classmate, Pearl, outside the former Hilton Hotel. She and her family were leaving as we were about to go to the coffee house. During the brief chat, I told her I would be going to Leeds. She seemed surprised and exclaimed, “Leeds!” She was then studying at Nottingham University and only later I knew the reason why she exclaimed.

According to my wife, after returning to UK, Pearl visited her in Leeds before her new term started.

Anyway, just a month or two after I arrived in Leeds, I received a letter from Pearl. In that fateful letter, she mentioned that ‘in case you feel lonely or bored’ I could look up her friend. I was given her name, telephone numbers and address.

I could have been bored or lonely or simply out of curiosity, I phoned SP. She was most friendly taking my call and invited me for tea at her place. I asked my room-mate, KC and he agreed to come along. KC and I were ex-classmates in secondary school.

I could remember SP made some ‘char siew’ and cooked a few other dishes for dinner. Being away from home in a foreign land, any home cooking was appreciated.

Having established contact and probably there was some chemistry between us, I continued to look her up, without morale booster KC! KC and I are still the best of friends and we jam whenever we can when we meet up in Kuala Lumpur.

After her 6-month practical training in Leeds, SP went back to London to finish her course. She refused to admit if I was the reason she went back to Leeds to work! As the cliché goes, the rest is history.

I have always been fascinated with the course of events: my delay in going to Leeds, my arrival during SP’s 6-month in Leeds, Pearl’s letter and suggestion, my willingness to do something about it within the period (some may just forget about it or delay in contacting when it was too late), SP’s friendliness and encouragement in inviting me for tea (some may expect the boy to suggest a date instead and he could be too shy to initiate) and so on. All these events suggest our lives are pre-destined in many ways.