More 6 Adis Road Pictures and Memories

My maternal grandfather P.C. Wen with my brother (3 years old) 

This picture above shows my maternal grandfather PC Wen, sitting out at the driveway with my younger brother. The Simca is in the background and the main hallway of the house is also in view. The room to the extreme right in the picture was never occupied for some unknown reason, and the entry to the house was to the left up the step from where the car is parked. The house and the entire plot of land was easily 200,000 ft2. 

To the left of the house was where my mother's car was parked and behind it was some shed structure where the workmen would leave their tools and stuff, as well as the dog kennel and lots of overgrown bushes leading to a 6 foot fence. We had lots and lots of play time fighting with the neighbourhood kids, catching spiders, climbing the rambutan and papaya trees, riding our Chopper Bikes and general carefree mayhem of early childhood.

There was a Malay neighbourhood Kampung nearby up the road, and the houses lining up Sophia Road had plenty of colorful facades. The main road which was about 10 minutes walk was Selegie Road, and I would take the 111 bus to my school, St Andrew's at Woodsville when I was about 11 years old (Primary 6). The return journey would be from Woodsville back by Jalan Besar and I would drop off at Bencoolen Street. I would pass the 'mamak' (Indian Muslim) shop on the way back to the house and every week without fail I would save up my pocket money to buy the "Shoot !" magazine from the UK which would be full of colour pictures of my boyhood football team Wolves.   

I recall, in the early days, my father drove the Simca, then had a Mercedes E230 for quite a while whereas my mother drove first a Datsun 323, then a red Mini Cooper, a Mazda 626 and then an old E200 in her later years as I recall.

My father's love for the E230 (which happened to be my mother's ex-boss'es car Dr Eddy Ho) has indeed rubbed off on me. I used to drive the E230 from 2012 till 2017 and am full of praise for its roadworthiness and safety. His car was silver grey in colour which is just the way I like my cars too. 

2 Monkeys and a Simca

Life in the late '60s and early '70s were really carefree. We did not study very much, if at all as I recall. As expected, our Mandarin was atrocious and I recall always failing the 'ting xie' test or listening comprehension test (because I did not study at all) and would end up going to the front of the class and getting my ears twisted till they hurt and turned red (well, for a dark brown skinned boy, it still turned red). Our Chinese teacher was a rather overweight Mrs. Pang. That was in Primary 3.

Speaking of Primary 3, our class teacher was a Miss Ang who had a rather catty personality and dressed very much the sophisticated single lady. She made an arrangement with the taxi driver who (then) drove me to and from school to pick and drop her off from her house - as I recall. So she caught a lift from the driver who was all too happy to drive a pretty lady home. 

Our family when John was barely 1 and I was approaching 4

I had a rather large head as a kid, the front was protruding and my Mum used to call it 'mango head'. So while my head was large, my then puny body made me look a little weird.

I recall my parents taking me to a peaditrician, to get some sort of injection - I think it was 'placebo' actually on their part !

Only later when I started to stretch out (in terms of length), did my head seem more in proportion to the rest of my body.