...and the love story begins

Once upon a Saturday mid-night, I was restless.

I was still tossing and turning in my bed, no thanks to the few cups of expresso a couple of hours before bed-time.

Wifey was already in deep slumber and I tip-toed to the door; got myself at the dining table reading “dead” news from the day old newspapers as all 3 TV stations already ended transmission.

By chance, I noticed a call for entries to a nation-wide short story competition, ....and so I thought it might be a good idea to kill time by writing one. I always have crazy ideas!

That was 22 years ago, 1988.

The inspiration came almost immediately as I mentally mapped out a love story with a twist - and in no time I was scribing down the characters to the story line by hand on pages of fullscape papers.

I started writing the story, and words flowed somewhat effortlessly. I was in top writing form. It was strange. I amazed and completely surprised myself! ...and with a writing form like that, it was easy to tweak the storyline as I went along.

“What!..” wifey exclaimed, “...you worked right through this hour?”

It was already 7:30 am Sunday morning, and I was editing the long story written. I had to slash about 50% of what has been written just to make it a short story, abiding by the competition rules on story length.

You see, it wasn’t the age of computers yet then, and I had to write by hand – and I write heck lot faster than to work it out on a typewriter. I completely messed up our dining table.

Becky and Samuel, then aged 8 and 4 years respectively had awoken, and they looked strangely at what has been going on at their favourite breakfast spot “ursurped’ by dad.

With a little clearing up, we sat down for breakfast anyway and the story was unfolded to them. Sam was still too young to understand but wifey & Becky liked it immediately.

The whole story was again re-edited in the afternoon, and the next day it went through skilful typing by Daphne Ng, a personal assistant in the factory where I worked.

As she was seated just 10 feet away from where I was, I could see the expressions on her face as she typed. Sometimes she smiled and sometimes she heaved deep sighs. Sometimes she grinned, and sometimes she shut her mouth ballooning her cheeks. When she was about to finish typing the story, I could see her taking a quick wipe on her eyes. If only I had taken snapshots of those moments!

The results of the competition were announced and I emerged a winner! Fourth placing to be exact, not bad for a first-timer!

Around that time I was also working on a “TORAY – Pen Group” corporate video with Don Law, film director Krishnan, a colleague Yeoh Khai Leong and script-writer Ms. Khoo Su Nin (now Khoo-Salma Nasution, President of The Penang Heritage Trust). At that time, Ms. Khoo was also a journalist with The Star and she was assigned to interview me.

My story “The Day The Crows Flew By” written under the pen-name Yee Sang was published in The Star on the 6th of December 1988. The phone didn’t stop ringing for days after that!..... I was so happy with this acheivement!

...and through those 22 years, I wrote a number of stories but I have kept them under lock and key. I yearn to get them published when the time is right.

Let me share this short story with you on this blog. I shall post it part by part for your reading pleasure from tomorrow. Enjoy the read, and feel free to comment.

I am now exploding the storyline, adding more characters and intrigue, and to blend in interesting sub-plots and lotsa monkey tricks to make it my first novel.

Wish me luck!