Are you a member of any library? I am. Just a few days, I decided to renew my DBKU (Kuching North City Commission) Library membership in Kuching City. It has been more than a year since I last visited the library located on the top floor of Majma Tuanku Abdul Halim Mu’adzam Shah, Lorong P. Ramlee 5, Jalan P. Ramlee in the city.
The RM5 membership fee I pay allows me to borrow five books for a duration of two weeks. I realise that reading English books is a must to improve my English vocabulary. I have fond memories of libraries. I remember visiting the Sibu Urban District Council (SUDC) Library right in the centre of Sibu town with my best friend, SML, when I was a pupil of SUDC No.4.
Because my family lived near to the library, the compound of the council was a playground for my siblings and I. When I continued my secondary education at St Elizabeth’s Convent School (now renamed SMK St Elizabeth), I used to spend whatever free time I had in the school library.
I wasn’t revising all the time – sometimes, I took the opportunity to look through the recipe books and copied a recipe or two.It was all just for fun. I never tried any of the recipes I copied. Those I tried were from the Domestic Science class I attended when I was in Form Two.
Like many of my classmates who were in Form 1A, Form 2A and Form 3A at the all-girls school, I only took up Domestic Science in Form Two. It was decades later that I became interested in cooking again. Going to the SUDC Library opened my heart and eyes to the world beyond my front door. My best friend and I loved fairy tales and we competed with each other to be the first to read any new fairy tale at the library. Life was hard for my family when I was young. The books I read offered me a temporary escape from the reality of life.Through the books, I had the opportunity to experience things and visit places that I never knew before. Later on, when I was put in charge of my nephews and nieces, I made it a point to bring them to the DBKU Library in Kuching and enrol them as members there.
I let them find and read the books they enjoyed. According to Neil Gaiman, an author of fiction who writes for children and adults in the United Kingdom, there is no such thing as a bad book for children. The simplest way to raise literate children is to teach them to read and show them that reading is a pleasurable activity.
He advises parents not to discourage children from reading just because they feel the children are reading the wrong thing. He says there are no bad authors for children because every child is different. I had not heard of Neil Gaiman when I was taking care of my nephews and nieces then. But I am glad I followed my heart and let the young boys and girls read the books they liked. Just recently, one of my nieces, Ah Hong, thanked me for bringing her to the DBKU Library when she was young and encouraging her to read English books.
Writing papers for her Diploma in Mass Communication classes is no problem for Ah Hong because of her strong command of the language. She said many of her friends wanted to know the key to her secret of writing good English essays.
She shared with them how I used to bring her to the library and encourage her to borrow books. Even today, Ah Hong is a voracious reader. She often reads stories online. I have been a journalist for decades. In my heyday, I have won a few prestigious awards. In my family, there are only two young girls who are good in English and make me proud of their writing. Ah Hong is one.
The other girl is Ah Yen, my grandniece (my nephew’s daughter). In my family so far, I am the only journalist. When I was growing up, I did not know of any journalists or writers. But I truly loved reading old newspapers because I could not afford to buy the latest edition of the newspapers. My mother made me very happy when she came home one day from the Sibu Central Market with pork wrapped in old newspapers printed in Australia.
Australia? My eyes nearly popped out of my head. After unfolding the pork carefully, I could read the contents of the newspapers clearly. They were fashion pages from a newspaper. I have forgotten the name of the newspaper because so much water has flowed under the bridge since then. But anyway, from that day onwards, I looked forward to newspaper-wrapped pork from the market.
Sometimes, I came across pages of advertisement and sometimes there were pages of personal problems faced by the readers. When I was in upper secondary school, I looked forward to the old copies of Sarawak Tribune that my dear father, a worker at the Kheng Chew Association in Sibu, kept for me. Reading old copies of the newspaper made it easier for me to write my General Paper essays.
I never thought that one day, I would be working for the New Sarawak Tribune in Kuching. But then, that’s life. Can you still remember the scene when the lead character, Forrest Gump (played by Tom Hanks) in the 1994 film.
“Forrest Gump” says, “My mom always said life was like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get?” Indeed, life is like a box of chocolates for me. I have travelled far from my hometown, Sibu, and gone through many ups and downs in life. And I agree wholeheartedly with Marc Brown (to whom the quote is attributed) when he says “Having fun isn’t hard when you’ve got a library card.” My friends, what are you waiting for? Get your library cards now!
