Growing up in Johor Bahru (2E4 Billy Ng's Mother)

    My mother was born in the year 1956 in Johor Bahru, Malaysia. At the age of eight she had to wake up at 5am to work in the rubber plantation along with all my aunts and uncles except for my two youngest uncles, who were good in their studies. Every day they cycled to the plantation and each of them had to collect rubber sap, using the machine available to make the sap into rubber sheets which they brought home. According to my mother, at the plantation there appeared to be blue or green lights floating around in a distance whilst they were working and birds sometimes pecked  her on the shoulder giving her a fright. Sometimes when they were heading home, their bikes slipped on the moist soil and they fell. But the saddest part is that the rubber sheets fell into the ditch they had fallen into and were damaged. The rubber would be torn, as it was quite thin and could not be sold. Each fortnight a lorry would arrive and buy the rubber sheets from them.

  My mother stopped schooling at the age of nine (Primary3) as her teacher always scolded her for being late and her classmates often laughed at her. (My mother got very upset as she did not intentionally wish to be late. The reason was by the time she came back from the plantation and had a bath it was 12.30pm and school started at 12 noon.)

   My mother stopped going to the rubber plantation at the age of fourteen as she thought it would be easier to make money in Singapore. She then came to Singapore to find a job. Everyday she flipped through the newspapers and at last she found herself a job in a sewing factory in Geylang. There were about 100 workers in the factory at that time. Hostels were available for those who worked in the factory to live in. In a few months she had already made some friends who became her clique but she did not befriend the ones who were mean towards others.

  One day when she was shopping with her friends, my father walked past and turned back to ask my mother for her phone number. My mother hesitated as my grandmother had warned her before not to give her number to a stranger, especially a man. My mother agreed and gave her hostel’s phone number to him. After he left, her friends all started teasing her. That night she couldn’t sleep as it was the first time a man had ever asked her for phone number.

  After two weeks my father plucked up the courage to ask my mother for a date and the first place they went to was an open-air cinema in Chinatown. (The movie tickets in the past cost only 20cents each) After the show they went for supper in Geylang, my father sent my mother back to the hostel after supper.

  After five years of dating, they got married when my mother was  28 years old. She lost her job as the factory had closed down. She bought a sewing machine to continue sewing for her customers at home. My parents were staying in the two-room flat in Redhill. After five years, my sister was born and followed by me three years later. When I was three, my mother went to work as a factory operator in Redhill which is about 300 metres from our house.

  Although my mother is working, she still makes it a point to cook for us when she gets back from work.

Billy Ng Chee Wan

2E4