Sarawak, New Zealand, and back

ON Monday this week, I was at a dinner in the newest hotel in the city.

Our hosts were the New Zealand High Commission in Malaysia, New Zealand’s South East Asia Centre for Excellence (SEA CAPE) and the Kuching-based Malaysia-New Zealand Chamber of Commerce.

The function was held in honour of the appointment of Tan Sri Hamid Bugo as New Zealand Honorary Consul in Sarawak.

For a couple of hours, the guests – the New Zealand University alumni of various periods in the past 60 years, businessmen and women and government officials – were not glued to their handphones for a change. They were animatedly talking about their happy memories of New Zealand, not forgetting the cultural shocks that they had experienced in that lovely country – the weather, the scenery of the countryside, the people.

Some of us old-timers were wondering what the situation now is.

As to the weather, the answer is that Wellington is still as windy as the city was 60 years ago.

The scenery in the countryside is as beautiful as ever, and there are many more cows than New Zealanders called ‘Kiwis’ (the birds who cannot fly).

Tan Sri Hamid was telling the audience how he was the last passenger on a bus. Arriving at the terminal, the driver asked him where he was going.

He had missed the bus stop near his friend’s house, and here they were at the end of the route.

No problem, the driver turned back and delivered his one passenger to the right destination.

That’s hospitality of a practical kind!

Others were reminiscing. In New Zealand, ‘Tea’ is the dinner, the evening meal. If you are invited to tea, expect a fully cooked meal of beef or mutton with baked potatoes and vegetables. No rice; rice would come in the form of pudding.

If you were invited to ‘supper’, eat first. Supper meant cakes and more cakes.

I have a couple of stories of my own; one will do for this week’s column. Please bear with me.

In July 1964, I was appointed a trainee Land Registrar at the Magistrate’s Court in Auckland, then sited between Queen’s Street and Prince Albert Park, next to the university campus.

Those who have been to that part of Auckland would know what location I am referring to.

My first job at the Registry was to write down all the transactions relating to transfers of land ownership between vendors and buyers – by hand, in black ink.

No computers and printers in those days!

The handwriting of memorials was the standard practice at the Land Registry for years.

There was a pile of documents (similar to the sale-and-purchase agreement in Sarawak) for me to check for accuracy each day, and I was the only one doing it.

All the relevant details of the transactions earlier agreed upon by the parties to the transaction: name of seller, name of buyer, location of the property on the deposited plan, the purchasing price (consideration), duration of the lease, must be entered into a large book by hand – mine!

I hope the department had kept those memorials for the museum and my grandchildren to see.

Now every transaction is written on the computers.

While at the Registry, I was tutored in registering land transfers under the Torrens System. I may write about its application or abuses in Sarawak in another article.

While I was at the Registry, I had a problem with a buyer. He declared that he had bought a piece of land along Queen’s Street in Auckland between the Odeon Theatre and the next shop house for an undisclosed sum of money.

I was under pressure to complete the transaction by the same afternoon. I would not write that down without knowing the exact amount of the purchase price.

He said that would not be necessary because there was mutual understanding between him and the seller.

I insisted on him revealing the full amount, as without it, I could not pass the document for signature by my boss, Mr Vail.

The buyer came back a few days later and inquired if the ‘Certificate of Title’ had been signed. It had not been signed because a crucial legal requirement of contractual relations was absent.

Mr J went to see Mr Vail who, I believe, lectured him on the law of contract. I was patted on the back by the Registrar.

Feeling very pleased with myself, I celebrated my victory at a Chinese Restaurant with a plate of ‘chowmein’ (noodles).

Memories, memories… on my first-ever flight in an aircraft, it was a voice in the front of the plane. It was the pilot speaking: “Ladies and gentlemen, on the left is Mount Cook covered in snow!”

All of sudden, everyone got out of their seats and moved to the other side of the aircraft, to look at this majestic mountain.

I stayed firmly in my seat, because – as I know very well from paddling boats around the river at home – if a ‘kapal’ (ship) is unequally balanced, it will capsize to help balance the plane.

Everybody had a good laugh when they realised what I was doing. For days, I was the butt of the joke among the Colombo Plan students from Sarawak and North Borneo.

“Hey, that’s the fellow, and he’s not even very big, who thinks he can balance a whole aircraft!”

The plane would not be in trouble because the pilot knew how to compensate for the slight shift in his load.

To this day, I maintain that we would all have been in trouble had I not balanced that plane by my weight.

We all had a good laugh!

Memories… Hamid Bugo and Alex Ting, now chief of the Malaysia-New Zealand Chamber of Commerce, were in my class at St Thomas’ School in 1959.

Not fellow-students – I taught them. Any teacher would be proud to see how the boys have grown up and have made the grade in society and business life.

Keep it up, boys, keep it up! Remember the school motto: ‘Aim Higher’!

* The opinions expressed in this article are the columnist’s own and do not reflect the view of the newspaper.