Oh that's a long time ago. 1952: December 2nd. I remember very clearly. We were leaving Hong Kong to go to England to study. That's the first time we met on the ship. She was I guess they were in the first class. We were a bunch of poor students in third class, I guess, in the lower, cheaper class. So we saw them enter the boat, but that's about it. Then they found out that in the first class, all stiff British people, rich British people, and they couldn't get along with. At Singapore, they switched over to 3rd class to join us. So then, I get to meet them on the ship for the next 20 some day. On the way to London, so the first two week, the ship was quite smooth.
From Singapore to Pannan, Columbo. I always remember we went through Yemen. You know that place that has a lot of trouble now. It was a very quite, peaceful small town. We went around the thing into the Red Sea, and then go through Suez Canal to the Mediterranean, and it was in December, the weather start to be very bad. Everybody got sick. I always remember, they put a lot of ropes on the deck, and we had 8 people dining table. I was the only one who showed up for food. It was a different waiter, and I said gee, what happened to the other guy. He said, "oh, he's seasick." Everybody was seasick and the place was quite bad. I was okay. I did not get seasick. I met the captain on the ship. He was also going between the ropes, and it was a captain, you know with his captain hat and all that. He told me. He said that the boat, the tip of the boat goes up and down 60 feet each time. You know they go down and come up, go down and come up, without left and right rolling, but just up and down 60 feet. He said most people couldn't take it. I also remember I ordered eggs for breakfast, and the waiter said, "are you sure you're okay?" because eggs are easy to throw up if you don't feel good. I said, "Hey I want eggs." I was okay, so I was one of the lucky ones to go through that. So mema, and Auntie Julia were all sick, so they stayed in the cabin. For over a week they were very sick until we reached London.
I remember that was the first time I saw Uncle Tommy. I didn't know him. I knew his younger brother because we were introduced once. Anyway, he came to pick up Irene and Julia because they knew each other well, so that's how I started to know Uncle Tommy, a very chubby guy. A very fat guy. He was very fat, even in high school I guess. He was already in London. He came to the Southhampton dock to pick them up, and I remember Irene told me at that time that you only have to look for the fattest guy, and that's him on the dock waiting for us. I said hey, I see a fat guy over there on the dock, and it was him!
So we went to London, and he treat us with some Chinese meals and all that and they went to a boarding school, and I went to South Ancy, that was a beach town about 30 miles from London. And over there, I had a few students in Hong Kong together. It happens to be that their visa was issued so that their visa was issued, so they joined their school in September, and I didn't get the visa until a few months later. I joined them 1 semester later, so they found a place for me to live on the same street. I always remember it was called Greenways. They said you go buy a bicycle because we need a bicycle to go to school, so we rode bicycle from the boarding. We each took a room with, you know, the English landladies. At that time, after the second world war, lots of soldiers died. A lot of widows have a house, no husband, no income, but they have rooms to rent, to spare, so they rent rooms out to students, cook us meals, so we can live, they take care of the room and board. And we paid like 3.5 pounds per week, I remember, so we were given like 500 pounds for a year, father gave us 500 pounds a year, and we really can live very comfortably. Pay the room and board, and we even have money left over to go for skiing trip. You know, cheap skiing trip, student skiing trip in Austria, Switzerland, so that's how I first learned to ski. Yolanda went and she was hopeless on the skiis. I was okay, I got to learn fairly quickly, and she just keep on falling. Finally, she's so painful that she doesn't want to do it anymore. So I learned the basic skiing, and she didn't. I remember that's the first time I got introduced to cheese fondue. After the whole morning climbing the slopes on the two pieces of long board, and everybody was hungry and tired, and cheese fondue was wonderful! It was good.
We had a medical student as an instructor for skiing. He showed us. He showed off. He can jump up and flip over and all that. We couldn't even move on the slop easily, but anyway we had fun. The first week, we did nothing but climb. Climb up and down and then we learn the rope tow. Very elementary rope tow, very hard. You grab onto the rope, and they pull you up the slope, and you try to get down. So two week in Switzerland, learn how to ski. We get to learn snow plow. We get to learn Stem Kristy. That's about the most advanced we got. Nobody got to parallel ski at all, the first year, less than two weeks. The second winter, we went to Austria, and we got a little better. And Austria was also very nice for skiing. I also remember, we couldn't afford those expensive dinners in the restaurant. We were in the dorm, but later on when we visited Austria, we discovered that the Austrian food was so gorgeous. Veal scallopini is absolutely wonderful. Veal parmesan and all that. Really good, and their cake was very very dainty and nice. I always tell people who people go to visit Vienna to go and taste their little cakes.
Oh you see it on the street all the time. They have a setup very much like Paris. They set up tables on the street. They serve you coffee, and tons of beautiful looking cakes. It's not cheap, but it's good. Well, wish I can go there now, but then well no. Well anyway the story was at that time we went to arrived London, and then they went to their boarding school. We went to South Anancy, they knew we had 10 chinese. All Shanghainese in that school. South Anancy Municipal College. So we had a good time, and Uncle Tommy come to visit, and at that time food was rationed. Everyone has one egg a week, a few ounces of meat. You know the landlady gets all this to get food. So he came to visit, bring over a big pork joint. They were all so happy. He knows how to cook too. We made that thing, and we had so much fun. He is a, he is a poor student, but he knows how to enjoy food. I don't think he ever graduated, although he came to Hong Kong somehow, he got a position in the Hong Kong Polytechnic to teach textiles. I don't see. I don't know what he did, but he was a teacher for a while. Until his father spent some money, let him to open a microelectronics, when he hired Uncle Frank to be the prime manager for do the semiconductors. So then that company, the father who put the money in there wanted the two other sons to come in and join into that factory. And then the three brothers after a while don't talk to each other. They hate each other's guts, so maybe the 3 brothers working together did not do so good. So finally, they all went separate ways. The old guy went to work for Phillips in England, and he did by far the best. Phillips get him to start another factory in Hong Kong, and he did very very well. The second son, the one, I finally in the same school and in the same class with, he more or less took over the existing one and didn't do nearly so good, but still in existence. And the third one joined the second one in that. He became a marketing guy, so that's how the three brothers.
Uncle Tommy and Uncle Frank worked together to start a company in Hong Kong called Microelectronics. They couldn't get along well, so Uncle Tommy's father talked to my father and said, either you buy me out, or I buy you out. You know, so you can minimize the conflict, and once I could go on. So at that time, father asked Uncle Frank, "how confident are you?" He wouldn't say he was confident, so father let the other side buy the thing, so he is out of that. Uncle Frank got out and looking for a job to work for in Singapore, so he went to work for others rather than do it on his own. But then from Singapore, he finally decide to go to Shanghai, and we thought he was crazy, but I guess it was a good decision. He got together with the landlord. The landlord owned the land. He has some principle, and he wants to build the building, and he tried to borrow money from everybody, so we loaned some money to him. I finally said hey, we can help if you're starving to death, but we cannot sponsor your huge project. So I only loaned him like 100 some thousand dollars and I think Steven loaned him a lot more in Hong Kong, so he went on and finished the project. That's the building he owns now, and it turned out to be worth a lot of money now.