A Matter of 10 Cents

May 1972. A few months after my Form Five exams, the much awaited letter finally arrived. I felt so excited that the Singapore Police Force had approved my application and was calling me for an interview. But I was also very worried because I had no money to buy the train ticket to Singapore.

While I was thinking of how to get the money, my friend Kian Hong came and told me that he had received a letter calling him for an interview with the Royal Malaysian Armed Forces in Kuala Lumpur as a cadet officer. His interview was a week earlier than mine and he could afford to buy the train ticket to Kuala Lumpur.

On the day that he was to board the train to KL, I fetched him on my bicycle from my hometown, Sg.Lalang in Kedah to the Bidong train station, four kilometers away. We said goodbye and as I sadly pushed my bicycle out of the railway station I saw a 10-cents coin lying on the road. Of course I picked it up but I knew that this amount of money was way too little to buy a train ticket.

The next morning I woke up still worrying about how to buy my ticket. As I got up I happen to see a “three-digit directory” (the pink book which match 3-ekor numbers to certain things or events) . I took it up and flipped through it when I suddenly saw a sketch of a person sending someone to the train station. It reminded me of sending Kian Hong to the railway station yesterday. And so I used that 10-cents to buy the number 583 since 10-cents couldn’t contribute anything to the twenty plus dollars needed for my ticket.

I could hardly believe it when that number actually striked first prize that evening. I won about sixty-two dollars !! I had enough for the ticket and also some pocket-money! But Mother let me keep just enough for the ticket and took the rest, telling me I could ask my brother in Singapore for pocket money when I got there.

So I finally got to Singapore, went for the interview and was accepted. But Uncle in Singapore disagreed and would not allow me to join the Police. So I sat around doing nothing but reading advertisements in the newspaper looking for another job. I applied to a socks factory and was accepted to be an apprentice technician. I was fascinated with the machines that made socks and so began my career in the socks industry.

A Matter of A Pair of Socks

“Can I have a pair of socks for the New Year? This New Year can I get a pair of socks?” A week or two before the Chinese New Year, I would be asking my mother and grandmother the same question many times, hoping one of them would finally say yes.

I wanted a pair of socks to wear during the Chinese New Year but much more than that I wanted a pair of socks to wear to school. Not all the students wore socks and I wanted to be one of those who did.

It was on the eve of the Chinese New Year that Grandmother finally took me to the shop-that-sold-everything in my little kampong and bought me one pair of very new and very white socks. I was so happy. For the rest of the year, I wore this one pair of socks to school. Of course with time, they became yellowish, then brownish and then the elastic also gave way. But still I wore them to school – with rubber bands to hold them up!

And so every Chinese New Year, I would beg my mother and grandmother for one new pair of socks. But when I started secondary school, I did not ask for socks anymore – because it was compulsory to wear socks to school, my mother bought a pair for me when the school year started.

Now forty something years later, I have so many pairs of socks because I am manufacturer. If I were to wear and throw away a new pair each day (of course I won't) I would still have plenty left. As I put on one pair, I remember how precious my very first pair of socks was.