There's No Way But Up

introduction

When I started to write There's No Way But Up, there was that sinking feeling, that moment of truth! I was actually going to write a book about my life so far. I knew that many of my friends and family would be in a state of shock to see that I had actually mustered enough effort to come up with this book. For those of you who are kind enough to read my story, I think that you will also see why my writing this book at all is such an amazing feat.

Having gotten over the initial headiness and excitement of achieving this milestone, I knew that I needed to set my motivation right first... I have never really thought of myself as a writer but then again, I had never thought that I would be doing anything substantial anyway. Planning for the future or having grand ambitions was not part of my repertoire. I am the type of guy who likes to live his life on a day-by-day basis, and I am fortunate enough to achieve this by having really nice parents and others to help maintain my care-free, aimless lifestyle. Although, this seemed like a neat arrangement for a while, it was not going to last forever.

All was fine until one day, someone entered my life and slowly turned it around; my tidy equilibrium was in jeopardy! Suddenly I was being told by this person that I should be a better person and that I could actually make something of myself. Initially, I did not really believe him but what he had to say was pretty convincing. He also told me to write and he painstakingly repeated this over and over again despite my obvious laziness, doubts and self-absorption. Sometimes he would drop hints in a conversation, he would remark on my excellent choice of words in something I had written and pause for a while to let it sink in before he continued.

One of the ideas he suggested a few years back was for me to write a book about myself. I thought this was a horrible idea! At that time, I knew my book would either cause readers to tear up the book in rage because it was so bad or fall asleep out of sheer boredom. This is not to mention the horror of whoever was unfortunate enough to edit it. But I told him, Why Not? feigning an enthusiastic smile. After all, writing about myself is the only subject matter that I should have no problems with because I should know myself better than anyone else, right? Thus, this was how There's No Way But Up came into existence. I did not really know how to begin and even where to start. So I started where I began - with my childhood.

chapter 1

sleeping on the pew

I was a typical Chinese baby, born in the old Assunta Hospital in Petaling Jaya, a suburb of the capital city of Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia, back in 1980. Life was a lot simpler then but it wasn't easy, especially for my mother. While she was pregnant with me, she was going through a legal dispute with her former employers. She was working in a beauty parlour and they had fired her when they learned of her pregnancy. Throughout the pregnancy, she had to endure the stress of dealing with the legalities and consultations with the lawyers. Fortunately, she won the court battle and not long after, I was born.

Unlike the birth of the historical Buddha Shakyamuni or the remarkable 14th-Century Tibetan saint Lama Tsongkhapa, my mother gave birth to me without any auspicious dreams, earth tremors or celestial music. It was more likely she had nightmares. Some nasty cramps and pains accompanied by my loud cries when I came into this world. Anyway, she had to endure the same nasty cries for months to come. In other words, I was born a normal healthy baby weighing in at 8.4 pounds and destined for some measure of greatness in mediocrity.

Most of my early childhood was spent just like any Malaysian child growing up in Malaysian suburbia. My earliest childhood was spent within the confines of a double-storey terrace house in an area called Subang Jaya in Petaling Jaya. The house was owned by my grandaunt and she allowed us to stay in it. Like most Malaysian homes, it was virtually identical to our neighbours'. This might explain why I, like some people born and bred in Malaysia, have a horrible sense of direction. No matter where you look, everything looks the same!

I do not remember much about my home except for my little bedroom, which I had all to myself. I loved it because it had a ceiling that slanted to one end. It felt really cosy, like being in the attic of a really big house. You know how the whole world is a lot bigger from a perspective of a two to three foot high toddler?

Both my parents were working at that time so each day, on their way to work, they would drop me off with a babysitter who would take care of me. My babysitter during those tender years was an old lady who turned out to be a really nasty person. Later, my dad told me that she was physically abusive towards me but I do not remember anything except a vague memory of being made to sleep on a hard antique chair. He said that he found bruises all over me when he got back from work one day. It was obvious I had been beaten but the babysitter just kept giving lame excuses. He finally decided to stop taking me to her and I was placed under the care of much nicer people at a kindergarten.

Months and years rolled by like the rolling clouds above my idyllic home. Our comfortable days in this house were numbered. Towards the late 80s, we finally had to return the house to my grand-aunt as she was experiencing financial difficulties. My parents too were cash-strapped and so we moved into a rented room. This time, we lived at another suburban area that was futuristically called SS2. Although it sounds like a spaceship, it was just another regular Malaysian neighbourhood.

This time we lived within just the master bedroom of a double-storey house. It was a tight squeeze for a family of three. But after discarding most of our furniture, we managed to fit two beds into the room, my parent's queen-sized bed and my single child-sized bed along with some essential wardrobes, a TV and some cushions. Naturally, I was sad to leave my spacious home behind but I was easily consoled. At least, I still had my beloved desk. It was my most favourite desk in the whole world! I remember fondly keeping my toys and books in its storage compartment under the table's lid. How I loved that desk!

There were other people living in the same house of course but we did not mingle with them. I cannot really remember why, perhaps they were nasty or something. At that time, I was just a boisterous little kid who loved to talk and play with just about anyone. However, my childhood fun was mainly confined within our room, recess time during school and occasionally in the playground opposite the house in the evenings. School, playground fun, toys, reading, cartoon and homework were the order of the day. Like most kids, I detested homework and delighted in toys, cartoons, friends and the playground.

It was during this period that my mother began to take me to church every Sunday. Too young to understand what it was all about, it became reduced to just time to play with the other kids. I always found a way to wriggle away from boring Sunday Mass in order to run off to play with the other kids in the field next to the church. My dad was a Buddhist but my mother somehow found a way to take me to church with her instead of letting my dad take me with him to the temple. Either way, it didn't make any difference for me, as the world was just a large playground! I guess I have not changed much since then.

After kindergarten, I was enrolled into a nearby primary school like most children of my neighbourhood. I do not really recall much of my early school days except meeting a lot of friends and playing all kinds of games with them. At that time, I was a mediocre student at school because I was preoccupied with having fun. Although my parents were not wealthy, my mother did her best to provide all the toys, books and cartoons I wanted. At times, I was a spoilt brat who just screamed my head off when I didn't get what I wanted but my parents never spared the rod to teach me a lesson or two.

Finally when times became better, my dad bought a single-storey house in an area called Taman Mayang Jaya. Finally, I had a whole room all to myself again! We didn't have much but we still managed. I was already daydreaming about owning my very own furniture and bed. When we did move in, my mother spoilt all the fun when she started to store all manner of junk in my room! I resented all the extra old furniture and I threw a tantrum but it fell on deaf ears. Eventually, I realised it was futile so I re-arranged everything to look like a half-decent bedroom and less like a junkshop.

When I was around seven, tragedy struck my family. My grandfather passed away and there was a huge funeral at his mansion. He was my mother's wealthy father and family members came from all over to pay their last respects. It was a solemn occasion with droning Chinese monks chanting and wafting incense smoke amidst soft sniffles of mourning relatives.

A makeshift altar was installed before the casket and monks would sit at certain hours to chant Buddhist Sutras to aid my grandfather's rebirth. I was too young to understand what was going on and the only tears I shed were due to the pungent joss sticks burning all day and all night. Perhaps I was just too young or the fact that I never knew my grandfather that left me feeling alienated from all the sorrow around me.

Chinese funerals are elaborate affairs that can stretch for days on end. On the first night, I dreamt of the funeral. It was dark and the mansion was lit with just the softly flickering flames of red Chinese candles. The scent of incense and the sound of chanting hung heavy in the cool night air. Suddenly, just like a scene from a movie, the Chinese Goddess of Mercy, Kuan Yin descended from her celestial abode in the sky. She landed softly on the lawn and her glowing benevolent figure towered above everybody.

A crowd gathered around her and offered what seemed like prostrations and prayers to her. She was pleased and took a small willow branch which she dipped in the sacred waters of her porcelain vase and sprinkled on everyone. Then I woke up. Was this dream auspicious? Or was it just a bizarre re-enactment of a favourite Cantonese movie I had recently watched?

Not long after moving into our new home, a new school was built nearby, so my dad enrolled me there. It was also around this time that I started to learn to cycle around my house with a bicycle that my father had bought for me not long ago. It had two smaller extra wheels attached so it was virtually impossible for me to fall. However, the neighbourhood kids laughed at me for being such a big baby. Most of the kids my age had already advanced to two-wheel bikes and some even mountain bikes. I was utterly embarrassed!

Just when I was about to ask my dad to remove the wheels, I noticed one of the neighbourhood kids was cycling on four wheels too, but with the smaller wheels tilted away from the ground. He did that so he could cycle without the aid of the smaller wheels but they were still there to provide confidence. I was so excited with this fantastic idea and wanted to replicate this on my bike!

I immediately got my dad to help me make the same adjustments. On the first trial run on the altered bike, I went swooping down the steep hill like those bikers I saw on extreme sports on TV! However, I took a fast bend at a corner with lots of sand and lost control of the bike and fell. The sand dug deep into my knees and they bled. I looked around and was relieved to find nobody was around, so I got up and cycled home. I was glad nobody witnessed my fall from grace but I never gave up. The fall was slightly painful but I did not want that little fall to keep me from cycling around like the other kids.

Eventually the school term began and it was also the first term of my new school. I was one of the pioneers of this brand new school and I felt some excitement in the air because I was with new friends and teachers having fun. I also sported a new pair of glasses and I loved my glasses at that time. I had started wearing glasses two years ago when I began having headaches and had trouble reading the words the teachers wrote on the black board. So my mum suspected something was amiss and she took me to the optician for a checkup. I was discovered to be shortsighted and had to wear prescription glasses. Unlike some kids, I liked my glasses then because I thought they were cool.

Big rims were fashionable in the nineties, so I sported a pair and I loved it. It made me look weird and a friend even remarked that I looked like I had two fishbowls stuck to my eyes. It irked me but I got over it. Besides my glasses, my other prized possession was a bicycle that my dad bought for me from his hometown of Teluk Intan, which was a three-hour drive away in another state of Malaysia.

Instead of hiring a lorry to deliver it, my dad decided to save money by dismantling the wheels so it would fit in the car and we brought it back home safely. It was promptly re-assembled and I was ecstatic! I remember riding the bike to school for the first time and it was just so cool! It had a basket in front that made it a little girly but I quickly realised that it was handy when I wanted to carry extra stuff. When I was at school, I had to lock my bike at a bicycle shed and go for class. One day after school, I found my bike on the floor. I was upset as I wondered who that nasty person was who had pushed it down? When I came closer, I found another bike on top of mine! I was furious at that time. So I unlocked my bike and deliberately stepped on the other bike. I knew it was silly but I was venting my frustration.

To my horror, the owner of the bike came waving his fist at me. I sped away feeling completely embarrassed. As the days went by, I kept bumping into him as we cycled back from school. I was still embarrassed so I avoided eye contact at first but we always took the same route home everyday. The route that I used to go to school had me panting from the exertion of going uphill. It was just a road of about twenty houses but the uphill climb was a killer! I had to cycle up that hill every single day and I used to dread it.

The owner of the other bike lived near me, across a playground. He eventually became my best friend. His name was Roger but I always called him Roger Rabbit after the cartoon movie. We used to hang out together at school all the time and after school, we used to play chess and all manner of games and toys. Sometimes we would rope in his brother and his baby sister. He was always better at chess and most games and so was his brother. Luckily his sister was just a toddler or she might have beaten me too!

Roger Rabbit was really a goody-two-shoes and he always did his homework before playing. Thus, he influenced me to do the same. At times, we even did our homework together after school so we could just go home and play. I had never been so disciplined in my short little life! He turned out to be a positive influence and being disciplined with my homework at that time was something big for me.

Roger was Buddhist and so we never hung out together in church. By this time, I had outgrown the church's playground so I did not particularly look forward to Sunday mornings because I had to wake early to go to church. I do not mean to be disrespectful but the old priest's sermon was just what I needed to put me to sleep. So I dreaded going to church but dared not express that to mum or I would be yelled at. I'm not even going to mention my mum's obsession to be punctual in church when everyone else would be still fast asleep in their warm, comfortable beds.

One Sunday morning, I was bored silly in church and so I fidgeted and looked around. It was the same old folks who had been coming to church all these years. I recognised them and it dawned on me that maybe if I was as devoted as them, I might not be as bored and sleepy. So I took a closer look at the prayers and followed along, and for the first time I began to read through the prayers and sang all the hymns. It felt good because I wasn't so sleepy anymore and church was not such a bad experience. After church, I also noticed a little store outside the church that sold all sorts of religious paraphernalia from crucifixes to rosaries. So I took a look but dare not look too interested, as I could not afford anything with my small amount of pocket money.

I tried to get my mum to buy a neat plastic crucifix that looked like the one used by a priest to exorcise a spirit in a recent movie. She wouldn't buy me the cross but she gave me a few pictures from her own prayer book and some items from her altar. Nonetheless, I was delighted. Out of the blue, I began to set up my own altar. I had been saving the little pink candles that came with a recent birthday cake and now I could light them on the altar.

However I was not allowed to light the candles and leave them lit after I had left the room. I did that once and mum threw a huge fit. So I would always blow out the candles when I finished my prayers. This was not exactly what children my age would be excited about but I guess I was a little weird. I also did the prayers and all but I was too lazy to keep it up daily although I had my altar until I was a teenager.

At school, I was always better than Roger Rabbit at English. He always thought that I was good at English simply because I was Christian. It did not make sense. How would one's religion have anything to do with proficiency in one's language? He referred to English names such as David, as Christian names. I know David is a biblical name but not every English name out there has something to do with Christianity. Actually, I think that it was not my faith but my penchant for reading detective novels that gave me the edge. Anyway, he was still always better at Mathematics than I ever was so it was fair and square.

When I was young, I was not naturally inclined towards reading but it changed when I won an obscure prize in primary school. It was an Enid Blyton book on Amelia Jane that I read during the school holidays. It was so good and I was hooked for more! Thus, it spawned my voracious appetite for literary escapades. I would get my parents to buy me more books and sometimes I would even save up for a book. I was hooked on Enid Blyton for years. I eventually outgrew the childish tales and sought teenage detective books. The famous ones at that time were the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew series

As you can see, reading became a distraction for me and I became increasingly introverted as I hit puberty. I often spent hours locked up in my room reading. Whenever my parents did their weekend shopping at the local mall, I often preferred to be left alone in the bookstore. In my teenage years, I was already reading science fiction and fantasy books. I even remember being incredibly mesmerized by The Lord of the Rings trilogy and had my hands locked onto its final pages even on the eve of my exams. Needless to say, I did incredibly well in the exams the next day.

You know, one of the fondest questions that adults like to ask children is, What would you like to be when you grow up? Just like any child, I got plenty of those thrown at me and at first, I actually took it seriously and would consistently give the same answer. I figured that since I loved reading about science at that time, I would become a scientist so I would proudly proclaim that to the world. However, I could be reading about crime investigation the next month and my answer would then be detective instead. So what I wanted to become constantly changed with the books I read.

However, one of the many items spinning around on the Lazy Susan of my ambitions was to be a writer. Being spellbound all those years by so many fantastic books had always inspired me to write. At that time, the notion of being a journalist or columnist in the local tabloids was less enticing than authoring a best seller. After all, there would always be the chance to earn big bucks when my book made it to the big screen. But any early attempts at writing simply faded away due to laziness and other pressures of school and peers.

The years rolled by fairly quickly and I was soon in my teens in secondary or high school. Everything changed as new challenges came into play as I grew up. Suddenly, all the pent-up teenage angst and loneliness became magnified. I progressively withdrew inwards and basically became the quiet nerd. My glasses that I used to think were cool and an expression of myself just became a symbolic shield from people. In the first year of high school, I was virtually a stranger in a class of completely new friends as my best friend Roger was placed in another class. Our friendship remained but it would never be the same again.

High school was nothing to shout about and I certainly did not lose my virginity during those years. I barely understood the changes my body was going through; I am certainly not planning to divulge any intimate details here! In school, I was an introverted nerd who did not quite fit in. In fact, unlike the other nerds who did extremely well in their exams, I didn't particularly excel in any given subject in school except perhaps in English and History. Instead of facing this whole new world, I delved deeper into the realm of magic and sorcery as I became increasingly engrossed with books and computer games.

Meanwhile, there were some developments at home. The legal wrangling over my grandfather's estate was slowly being resolved after years of legal proceedings. The portion my mum was about to receive was not tremendous but allowed her a much more comfortable lifestyle. When the lawyer informed my mum, she