THERE was a time long ago when I would sit by an abandoned rice field behind my house to watch the last lights as the cacophonous sounds of insects grew louder from a nearby forest to welcome the night.
At the time, just as the days seemed short in a 'kampung' still without electricity and piped water, my future looked bleak. I hoped for nothing more than for it to change for the better.
And so it did, when in the spring of 1991 as I first set foot in New York, on a familiarisation tour hosted by the giant telecommunication company, AT&T, the city swept me off my feet.
As I got out of the terminal at the John F. Kennedy airport in Flushing, Queens, New York City was basking in glorious bright lights. And when I reached the Marriott Marquis right smack in the middle of Times Square, I found it hard to focus my attention on anything. The city was so alive.
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| Lower Manhatan New York, at night. Picture taken from Brooklyn. |
THERE was a time long ago when I would sit by an abandoned rice field behind my house to watch the last lights as the cacophonous sounds of insects grew louder from a nearby forest to welcome the night.
At the time, just as the days seemed short in a 'kampung' still without electricity and piped water, my future looked bleak. I hoped for nothing more than for it to change for the better.
And so it did, when in the spring of 1991 as I first set foot in New York, on a familiarisation tour hosted by the giant telecommunication company, AT&T, the city swept me off my feet.
As I got out of the terminal at the John F. Kennedy airport in Flushing, Queens, New York City was basking in glorious bright lights. And when I reached the Marriott Marquis right smack in the middle of Times Square, I found it hard to focus my attention on anything. The city was so alive.
I returned in 1994, this time to witness handing over of a financial aid to the people of Bosnia who were then facing the risk of annihilation by the marauding Serbs in the former Yugoslavia. I was about to return home after attending an advanced journalism course at the Thomson Foundation in Cardiff, Wales, when I got an order from the office asking me to proceed instead to New York to cover handing of the aid at the United Nations.
From New York I took a train to the capital city of Washington DC to cover a visit by the then Deputy Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim. That was my first close encounter with the man and that meeting had a profound effect on my views of him during the financial and political turmoil that rocked Malaysia four years later.
In between, I had travelled the world, covering the then Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Dr Mahathir Mohamad's working visits. One such visit was to the war-torn Bosnia Herzegovina itself. I entered the ravaged Sarajevo two weeks after the Dayton Peace Accord that ended the war was signed.
I visited America again in 1996, but this time coming into the country through its Pacific coast, to cover Dr Mahathir's visit to the high-technology areas within the state of California. He was at the time actively promoting Malaysia's Multimedia Super Corridor project. That was not the end of my fling with America. In fact it was to get even better.
It was during an assignment in Montego Bay, Jamaica, later that I learned of my name being mentioned in our newsroom in Kuala Lumpur as being the possible candidate to serve as the newspaper's correspondent in New York. I arrived again in the Big Apple in the fall of 1999, this time with a bigger suitcase, my wife and my two daughters.
The tour-of-duty in New York lasted close to three years, during which apart from covering proceedings at the United Nations, I also travelled to Washington DC for the annual World Bank and World Trade Organisation meetings.
Dr Mahathir came to visit America once while I was there, the working trip involving a visit to the Motorola plant in Schaumburg, Illinois.
That period, however, proved to be a cataclysmic one for New York, New Yorkers, America, me and the whole world. I was there when the World Trade Center came crashing down in a giant cloud of dust, debris and a mountain of sorrow.
In response, once again, America made a call-to-arms and they are still at it although it has been difficult to detemine whether the Americans are winning the increasingly senseless war.
I was sitting under the Queensboro Bridge on the last day of my tour-of-duty, writing my final piece from the Big Apple for my newspaper, when it struck me that I had actually gotten quite far from that end-of-the-road kampung tucked in that insignificant corner of Negeri Sembilan.
ENDS
In between, I had travelled the world, covering the then Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Dr Mahathir Mohamad's working visits. One such visit was to the war-torn Bosnia Herzegovina itself. I entered the ravaged Sarajevo two weeks after the Dayton Peace Accord that ended the war was signed.
I visited America again in 1996, but this time coming into the country through its Pacific coast, to cover Dr Mahathir's visit to the high-technology areas within the state of California. He was at the time actively promoting Malaysia's Multimedia Super Corridor project. That was not the end of my fling with America. In fact it was to get even better.
It was during an assignment in Montego Bay, Jamaica, later that I learned of my name being mentioned in our newsroom in Kuala Lumpur as being the possible candidate to serve as the newspaper's correspondent in New York. I arrived again in the Big Apple in the fall of 1999, this time with a bigger suitcase, my wife and my two daughters.
The tour-of-duty in New York lasted close to three years, during which apart from covering proceedings at the United Nations, I also travelled to Washington DC for the annual World Bank and World Trade Organisation meetings.
Dr Mahathir came to visit America once while I was there, the working trip involving a visit to the Motorola plant in Schaumburg, Illinois.
That period, however, proved to be a cataclysmic one for New York, New Yorkers, America, me and the whole world. I was there when the World Trade Center came crashing down in a giant cloud of dust, debris and a mountain of sorrow.
In response, once again, America made a call-to-arms and they are still at it although it has been difficult to detemine whether the Americans are winning the increasingly senseless war.
I was sitting under the Queensboro Bridge on the last day of my tour-of-duty, writing my final piece from the Big Apple for my newspaper, when it struck me that I had actually gotten quite far from that end-of-the-road kampung tucked in that insignificant corner of Negeri Sembilan.
ENDS
Why don't you include some of those long pieces you wrote on FB in the blog? I would love to read them again here.
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