Parr's new book is available
parrt...@cs.com
The memoir, "Tan Chin Nam: Never Say I
Assume!" authored by Dato' Tan Chin Nam with this
writer, is available at http://www.mph.com.my.
The publisher, which is celebrating its 100th anniversary
in the business, has a storewide sale going on right
now. The book is being translated into both Chinese
and Malay and will be marketed throughout Asia,
including Australia. There will be some distribution
in England also. But probably not in the States,
given that it's a Commonwealth book.
The title "Never Say I Assume!" is explained by
Dato' Tan as follows: "Never say I assume because you
make an 'ass' out of 'u' and 'me.' I say that often
-- probably too often. But in business it means
persevering year after year to do the hard work that
provides concrete answers to specific questions. Never
say, for example, 'I assume that hotels will want to
use my industrial laundry machines.' Check it out.
Never assume that a market is there. Before you build
a better mousetrap, make sure there are mice."
The reference to hotels and a laundry service
is to one of Dato' Tan's early business failures
caused by making a lazy assumption. "I had not yet
fully learned," he says, "that success comes from the
glands -- sweat glands."
Chapter X of the memoir is about Dato' Tan's
life in chess and is titled "The Gymnasium of My Mind."
His early life is covered by two chapters, "The
Beginning of My Life" and "The Little Men Who Wouldn't
Be Shoved," the latter title being a reference to
Malayan governor Sir Shenton Thomas' response after
being informed by General Percival at 3 a.m. on
December 8, 1941, that the Japanese had landed on
Malaya's northeastern beaches near Kota Bharu.
"Well, I suppose you'll shove the little men
off!" Sir Shenton responded.
"To the extent that I thought about the war in
the first days," Dato' Tan states, "I must have
assumed -- Never Say I Assume! -- that the big British
men would kick the 'little men' in the pants. 'Now,
off with you laddie,' I probably imagined a British
tommy saying."
There followed speedy disillusionment. "Then
came Wednesday, December 10. The battleships HMS
Prince of Wales and HMS Repulse were sunk near
Kuantan. The news shocked us."
Worse followed.
"Twelve days later came news that paralysed
us. For it was the ... incomprehensible.
"Penang Island fell on December 19, a fact
that only became known about three days later. Word
spread that the British and other Europeans secretly
fled the main settlement of Georgetown during the
night in spite of promises by the government to treat
all races equally. Many Chinese on Japanese death
lists were left to battle-crazed Nipponese with their
long, sharp, ugly bayonets notched with runnels to
carry the blood. Duff Cooper, whom Winston Churchill
sent out to coordinate British forces in Asia,
delivered a disastrous radio speech. 'It has been
necessary,' he said, 'to evacuate many of the civilian
population. We can only be thankful so many people
have been safely removed.' All of Malaya knew that
the 'people' were white Europeans only."
From that point, which was as good as it was
ever going to get for the next 3 1/2 years, life went
downhill precipitously.
As the Japanese made their way down the Malay
Peninsula, peddlng bicycles and backed by superior air
power, there occurred what Dato' Tan calls a "towering
national bonfire":
"Along with the news of war came its sights and
smells. In Kuala Lumpur there was not yet ... the
sharply focused face of war with its dead bodies,
destroyed buildings, derelict cars and deserted
streets. Instead, there was its preface of debris,
stink and squalor.
"Garbage piled up and then spread outwards as
piles tend to do. The odour of carrion and rot was
everywhere. The British scorched-earth policy flooded
the atmosphere with billowing black smoke from tens of
millions of gallons of aviation fuel, lubrication oil
and petrol. Dumped oil soiled streets, roadsides and
the accumulated mounds of garbage. Householders and
shopkeepers lit fires in thousands of yards, burning
almost everything printed in English. My friend, the
chess master Dr. Yeoh Bok Choon down in Singapore, lit
a match to the scores of his chess games, rightly
fearing that the Japanese would mistake innocent but
opaque chess notation for military code. Grey smoke
from first-class libraries as well as from thousands
of tons of random books, magazines and newspapers
joined the black smoke. To this towering national
bonfire, we added family photographs (for fear the
Japanese would ask questions about those in the
pictures), German Reichsmark currency and personal
letters. We buried some gold jewellery and coins,
which were later stolen, in our garden at Hale Road.
"Fires, great and small, were burning all over.
"'So this is why the face of a soldier always
appears streaked with engine oil,' I thought at the
time. For Kuala Lumpur, day by day, began to take on
the look of a gigantic unshaven soldier's face. This
face was not yet contorted with pain or set in the
rictus of death. Nor did it have many pockmarks from
the tiny 25-lb. bombs that Japanese planes dropped.
It was just enormously unkempt and grimed with filth."
Dato' Tan's closest brush with death came one
blistering afternoon in mid-1942 when he was on his
way to Kuala Lumpur to meet a brother and to see a bit
of gory history (several heads stuck on sticks along
what was then called Foch Avenue in the old downtown
area of Kuala Lumpur).
As he notes, "During the Japanese Occupation, you
never knew when the Samurai sword might swoosh down,
taking your head with it. The single certainty was uncertainty.
At any moment, for any unpredictable reason, disaster could strike
like an unexpected lightning bolt from a clear blue alayan sky."
Then one day: "I approached a roadblock manned by Japanese
sentries in their grey-green uniforms and soft peaked caps. Stopping
I alighted from my bicycle and bowed.
"But not low enough. And definitely not respectfully enough.
"One moment I was a 16-year-old kid pedalling
down a quiet, dusty road, thinking about business and
seeing some gory history. The next moment, a sentry
descended on me, slapping and knocking me about. I
cannot recall precisely what happened next. Perhaps I
just stood there. Perhaps I lay on my stomach -- just
a young Chinese in torn singlet, old blue shorts and
woven sandals -- staring at the red laterite ground.
I must have thought about the Japanese bayonets with
their oiled surfaces always gleaming so evilly. The
guard himself had a smile that was no smile at all --
just his lips drawn far back over long, canine teeth
in expectancy.
"If it is true that one sees flashing images
from one's life before death, then one also sees the
awful logic of possibility when facing an armed enemy.
You see a grieving mother. You see a family without
its English-speaking hope for a better future. You
pause before reacting. You then bow deeply and hope
the sentry will let out a curt 'Hai!', which means 'Okay!'
"'Nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be
shot at without result,' Churchill once wrote. But I
was not a warrior. My run-in with the Japanese sentry
and the five severed heads that I saw on Foch Avenue
loosened my bowels. That was the precise effect that
fear intermingled with total disgust had on me."
Another incident involved the torture of Dato'
Tan's mother in front of him and other family members.
As blood spurted from her mouth, he describes his
desire to "rush the bastards," who were members of the
Kempetai or Japanese gestapo. He also notes how the
Japanese smiled, waiting for this young man to rush
forward for what would have been one final lunge.
The chapter devoted to Dato' Tan's life in chess
and its promotion contains two hitherto unrevealed
instances in which he was offered the presidency of
FIDE by a delegation of top officials -- and declined
the office.
The first sentence of the chapter reads,
"Friends and family members say that I eat, drink,
talk and dream chess. Which gets it right." When
speaking of the millions of dollars he has spent on
the royal game, he states, "An interviewer once asked
why I had spent so much money on chess. I answered,
'Some people are born stupid. Just think how I could
have invested those funds!' But the truth was, of
course, different. I got involved in chess because I
have loved playing it since my youth and know well its
value for the development of mind and character."
The memoir comes in both hard and soft cover editions.
parrt...@cs.com
In my announcement I made mention of the
sinking of the HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Repulse off
the coast of Malaya near Kuantan, on December 10, 1941.
Please consult the Parr family webpage at
http://www.kids4chess.com/parrfamily/ for a picture of
one of the survivors who was on the Prince of Wales.
Just click on "Larry" on the home page and scroll down.
Here's the story.
One afternoon not too long ago in Singapore, the
family and I decided to visit General Percival's
underground "Battle Box," which was the main
headquarters for directing the battles of Malaya and
Singapore that resulted in the largest surrender in
the history of British arms. We met Mr. and Mrs.
Peter Appleby Anson, who were returning to SE Asia
over 63 years after young Midshipman Anson survived,
first, the sinking of the Prince of Wales, and shortly
thereafter the sinking of the Exeter, a destroyer. He
then survived 3 1/2 years in a Jap prison camp.
The best firsthand account of the sinking of the
Prince of Wales was written by Cecil Brown, a CBS
radio correspondent, who also lived through the
experience. See his wonderful volume, "From Suez to
Singapore," written in the form of a vivid, very
immediately personal diary. Although a married man,
he evidently fell in love with a Chinese nurse, and
his description of searching for her in the final days
of the battle and then finally deciding to escape to
safety is at least honestly put. Brown was later
attacked by BBC correspondent Giles Playfair in
"Singapore Goes Off the Air" for running away rather
than going down with the ship, as it were. Brown's
defense was that he was American, and Singapore was a
British battle.
Jürgen R.
wrote:
>NEVER SAY I ASSUME
>
> The memoir, "Tan Chin Nam: Never Say I
[blah blah snipped]
The money bag, whose lackey you, are sounds like an inflated bore.
Bruce Leverett
--Bruce Leverett
parrt...@cs.com wrote:
> NEVER SAY I ASSUME
>
> The memoir, "Tan Chin Nam: Never Say I
> Assume!" authored by Dato' Tan Chin Nam with this
> writer, is available at http://www.mph.com.my.
>
> The publisher, which is celebrating its 100th anniversary
> in the business, has a storewide sale going on right
> now. The book is being translated into both Chinese
> and Malay and will be marketed throughout Asia,
> including Australia. There will be some distribution
> in England also. But probably not in the States,
> given that it's a Commonwealth book.
>
[snip]