Half full or half empty: 03 (Dealing with news of a death)

I've just heard about the deaths of two people I didn't know personally but known to the bringer of the news.

    Both were not young, but a loss is a loss, whatever the age of the departed.

    My consolation to the bereaved has always been:  "It's always hard on the survivor, but I always try and tell myself that it's kinder on the deceased, as s/he is no longer suffering.  This makes it easier to accept."

    I've used this half full or half empty perspective on two occasions to help me through a mega depression.

    One was the unexpected death of a Taiwanese friend from a traffic accident.  He had been a (platonic) soulmate, and I'd just spent a month in the summer with him in Taiwan.

    I asked British Monomarks (the telex agency where I was working part-time to support myself through my first degree) to give me all the spare hours they could find.  This way, I'd come home totally whacked, down a big glass of brandy and fall asleep, getting up the next day to another full shift.  Day in, day out.

    When there were no more hours to be had at Monomarks, I'd sit on the floor against the radiator in the basement flat, and grieve.  My West Hampstead flat was a short distance from Hampstead Heath, where I could go and take a long walk, but I didn't want to do anything, I just wanted to sink in my depressed state.

    One day, a thought suddenly struck me:  the person who had died wasn't suffering anymore, so I was not feeling sad for him but for myself.  I had lost a good friend, so I was feeling sad for my loss.  I was therefore being selfish.  That thought brought me out of my debilitating depression.

(London, 1979)

The guardian angels in one’s life: 14 (The young man I met in the mountains)

 

The details of how I came to meet this young man, three years my junior, a final year high school schoolboy at the time (July 1975), will have to go into my A Collection of Spooky Stories, because it’s too long a story for this blog.

    I’d given him the nickname of 胡老大 Hú lǎodà / “Hu old big” because he was the oldest of the group of three boys I’d met in passing.  (老大 = “leader / the oldest / the boss”.)

    We hit it off (platonically) right from the start up in 梨山 Líshān / “pear mountain” where we met, and kept in touch for the rest of my time in Taiwan (1.5 years until November 1976) — me in Taipei in the north, him in 嘉義 (Chiayi / 嘉义 /Jiāyì) in the south.

    We kept up correspondence after I returned to Singapore and after I came over to London, by which time we’d known each other for only about three years.

    Yet, knowing I didn’t want to take money from my mother, he offered financial help.  I got a letter from him (snail mail days) saying that should I need any help financially, his father had a sugar cane field that they could sell in order to send me the money to live on in London.

    His family wasn’t stinking rich — it was only a sugar cane field they owned.  Still, a sugar cane field at that time could go a long way towards the cost of living in Taiwan, yet he offered to turn that field into cash for me.

    I found a part-time job in the end, as a telex operator with British Monomarks which saw me through my university course, so I didn’t need to take him up on his generous offer after all.

    It’s incredibly touching, though, that a friend of only three years’ standing should offer to sell off a piece of family land to see me through my studies.  It’s not like I was in hospital, or in serious trouble that I needed to be bailed out of.

    Thank you, 胡老大 (d.1979), for the thought behind that kind and supportive, not to mention generous, gesture.  It was enough to see me through spiritually, knowing that there were friends out there who would step forward to help me out should I end up needing it.

    I’m eternally grateful, and feel honoured to have met you.

(London, 1977–79)

The guardian angels in one’s life: 13 (The ex-schoolmate)

 

I’d saved up over my two years of working in Taiwan in order to support myself for my first year in London, studying for my ‘A’ levels to get into university.

    The advice I’d been given was not to work at all during my ‘A’ levels but to focus completely on my studies and get good grades for getting into a good university, because once in, I’d be fine until the end of the course, barring failing my Year 1 end-of-year exams.  That was the practice at the time:  once you passed that Year 1 end-of-year exam to confirm that you’d be able to last the course, there were no more exams until the final year.

    Knowing how strongly I felt about taking money from my mother, ex-RI (Raffles Institution) schoolmate Wilson wrote from Australia and said that he’d send me money if I was ever in need.

    This was only a schoolmate, not even a distant relative, yet he offered to help me financially for living in London which wasn’t cheap even in the 1970s.

    As far as I know, he wasn’t that well off himself either in Australia, so if I’d appealed to him, it might’ve meant a bit of deprivation in his own life, all alone in Australia, just to help me out.

    I didn’t have to turn to him after all, because I found a part-time job as a telex operator with British Monomarks, which saw me through my university years, but it was a godsend to have that offer on tap should I ever need it, settling any panic that might surface.

    Thank you, Wilson, for being such a supportive friend.  I’m very grateful and feel very blessed to have a friend like you.  God bless you.

(London, 1977–81)

The guardian angels in one’s life: 12 (The evening course classmate and the telex agency)

 

I had no idea what I could do for part-time work, which had to be regular for the flow of income, yet not disrupt my studies, but I’d cross that bridge when I got to it, I decided.

    Enter the evening course classmate for that:  Steve Hunt.  He was one of the two classmates (the other being Hugh Lansdowne) on the evening course who’d nagged me into applying for SOAS (School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London) through the clearing system, resulting in three very happy and productive (knowledge-acquisition-wise) years.

    Steve worked part-time at British Monomarks, a telex agency not far from his flat near Russell Square.

    He mentioned me to the manager.  I not only got in, I got to choose my hours, which were: 5pm–9pm on Mondays and Fridays.  The reasons were: 

• my lectures at SOAS finished at 4.30pm, so I could walk across Russell Square over to Queen Square and clock in comfortably by 5pm.

• I’d have done my lesson prepping over the weekend for the whole week ahead, leaving me free to work on Monday 5–9pm without worrying about the rest of the week.  I could work 5–9pm on Friday as I had the weekend ahead to prep my lessons for the following week.

    British Monomarks was not just a flexible employer, allowing me to work the hours that were convenient for me, it was also very compassionate.  When a very dear Taiwanese friend died at age 23 in a road accident after we’d spent a lot of time together during my month in Taiwan the summer of 1979, they gave me all the extra hours I asked for to distract me from sitting around at home grieving.  They saved my sanity that autumn.  

    Thank you, Steve Hunt (deceased).  Thank you, British Monomarks.  The two of you saw me through my first degree without financial worries.  I’m very grateful.

(London, 1978–1980)

See also: 

https://piccola-chinita.blogspot.com/2025/05/the-guardian-angels-in-ones-life-05.html 

https://piccola-chinita.blogspot.com/2025/05/the-guardian-angels-in-ones-life-06.html 

The cockney accent (London)

 

My exposure to the cockney accent prior to my coming over here to London was passive knowledge.

    I knew that it was an East London accent spoken by “traditionally one born within hearing of Bow Bells” (my computer dictionary tells me), and had heard a bit of it in old black and white British films, but no more than that.

    In my second year in London, I started working at British Monomarks, a telex agency, to see my way through university, as I was self supporting.

    One day, a young colleague with a constantly puckered brow (Cliff Webb [Webber?], late teens or early 20s at the most) said to me across our two machines (facing each other), “Can you pass me some piper.”

    What on earth was “piper”?  

Me:  Pardon???

Cliff:  Piper.

Me:  Say that again.

Cliff:  Piper.

Me:  Sorry?

Cliff:  Piper, piper.

Me:  Can you spell it?

    He gave up in frustration, walked over to the desk by me and grabbed a sheet of paper from the ream on it.

(London, 1978)

The brain works in wondrous ways: 01 (Penny the ex-colleague) (London)

I was out food shopping on Seven Sisters Road one day in the 90s.  

Waiting at the bus stop, I saw an apple fall out of the rucksack of a woman who was standing with her back to me.  

I picked it up and said to the back of her head, “Your apple’s fallen out of your rucksack.”  

She said, even before she turned round to face me, “I know that voice!”  

It was Penny who’d worked at the telex agency, British Monomarks, when I worked there 1978–1981.  

She’d started working there a bit after me, and hadn’t stayed as long (I think) — therefore, we hadn’t known each other that long.

We hadn’t always been on the same shifts — therefore, not that much exposure to each other.  

When our shifts did overlap, we didn’t actually talk much because there was always so much to do — therefore, she hadn’t had that much sampling of my voice.  

That’s going back more than a decade, yet she recognised my voice from that one short sentence uttered behind her back!  

(London, 1978–1981, 1990s)

Mishearing things (UK)

A while ago, one of BBC Radio 4’s programmes talked about people mishearing song lyrics, with hilarious results.  Some of them even made more sense than the original.

This reminds me of two cases of people I knew who were involved in mishearing messages.

The first one happened at British Monomarks where I’d worked as a part-time telex operator throughout my first degree.  

Subscribers would ring in and dictate their telexes to us.  

One of them was a shoe company:  they had contracted a factory in Taiwan to make the shoes, which they would sell in the UK.  

On this particular occasion, the sender of the telex was placing an order for a batch of shoes, ending the message with a reminder to the factory to “make sure the shoes sit properly” (which was what my colleague heard down the phone line, and duly typed up and sent out).  

The people at the Taiwan end must’ve wondered about the way the British cultural perspective works:  getting their shoes to “sit properly”, whatever that means.  

Manager John Haste couldn’t get over it.  He went round saying and chuckling, for a number of days after that, “Make sure the shoes SIT properly!  Make sure the shoes SIT properly!”

The second story neatly confirms how easy it is indeed to get “s” and “f” wrong when heard down the phone line.

It had happened to an English chap doing Japanese during my first degree days at SOAS (School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London).

He’d originally got into Oxford University to do zoology.  He’d done his end-of-first-year exams.  That was the practice in those days:  if you can’t even pass the first year exams, you’re deemed to be unable to get through the rest of the next few years of the course.  

The telegram from his mother arrived in Greece where he was having his summer holiday.  It said: SAILED ALL SUBJECTS.  He happily carried on with his holiday.  

He got home and found out that it was meant to be:  FAILED ALL SUBJECTS.

(UK, late 1970s)

* For those who might need help: to sail through = to succeed easily

See also: https://piccola-chinita.blogspot.com/2020/12/thinking-outside-box-london.html 

Thinking outside the box: 01 (London)

(from googling)

Quote

"Thinking outside the box" is an idiom that encourages creative and unconventional problem-solving. It means approaching situations with an open mind and considering solutions beyond the typical or expected. This type of thinking can lead to innovative ideas and solutions.

Unquote

I worked as a part-time telex operator at British Monomarks throughout my first degree at SOAS (School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London), being self-supporting, not taking my mother’s money. 

Small companies didn’t have enough business to justify installing their own telex machine (too expensive if they only needed to send the occasional telex), so they’d open an account with British Monomarks for a small subscription fee.  Then they’d pay for however many telexes they sent/received — could be once/year (just exaggerating to illustrate the point). 

Customers would phone in and dictate their outgoing messages.

One day, I took a call from a customer who had been trying to get the other party (in Taiwan, as it happened) to settle a debt, with no success — the debtor never responded to their letters asking for payment; my customer couldn’t prove that the debtor had received the requests / demands.

Customer said he wanted to send a telex this time because our machine would show that the connection had been successful.

The procedure:  

1.  We’d dial the recipient’s number.

2.  Once we got through, their machine ident would automatically come up — this is called the answer back.

3.  At the end of the transmission, we always asked for the ident again (just in case the line had got disconnected during the transmission, which did happen every now and then). There’s a key on the telex machine for getting the answer back.

So we’d have their machine ident at the start of the message printout, then again at the end — double confirmation that the transmission had gone through successfully.

Customer said he wasn’t sure if it’d work as the debtor could still claim it never arrived. So how to proceed, he asked, he couldn’t think of anything else.

I suggested we send a telex to them via the Taiwan GPO [General Post Office] instead, for the GPO to deliver by hand — like the old-fashioned telegram/cable, whereby the postman would hand over the telegram/cable and the recipient would have to sign receipt for it.  One has to sign receipt for a post office delivery first without getting a chance to read the contents (i.e., they can’t conveniently pretend they never got the item after they’d seen that it was a demand for payment).  Also, my customer had a neutral third-party (the Taiwanese debtor’s own GPO) as witness if he had to take them to court. 

A few weeks later, the manager John Haste read out, and pinned up on the notice board, a letter from the customer saying my plan had worked and the debtor had settled, thanking me (by name) for solving the conundrum which had been plaguing him for quite a while.

(I was 25 at the time.)

(London, 1979)