(Life Story – Malaysia)
He Left His Shadow in Kuala Lumpur
(Life Story – Malaysia)
My name is Lim Chee Hong.
I was born in 1974, in a terrace-house neighborhood in Kuala Lumpur—
not one of the big residential areas like Cheras, just an old fringe of the city,
a place so ordinary that its name never appears on the news or even on traffic reports.
Where I lived, you only needed to walk five minutes to find a mamak stall,
a kedai runcit selling colorful snacks and cheap stationery,
and a tiny temple with curling incense smoke drifting out to the roadside.
The drains were always filled with stagnant water,
frogs croaked after the rain,
and mosquitoes behaved as if they didn’t have to pay tax.
There was nothing dramatic about my family.
My father was a Bas Bandar city bus driver.
My mother stayed home with her old sewing machine,
taking small jobs from neighbors—altering school uniforms, shortening pants, sewing curtains.
When she stepped on the pedal, the tak-tak-tak sound traveled from the kitchen
to the living room and all the way to the front gate.
My childhood joy was simple:
running after dragonflies in the overgrown back lane,
or shining my small torchlight at the geckos on the wall,
watching them flick their tails and disappear into cracks.
1. The Bus Driver’s View
I can’t remember for sure whether my father drove Bus 11 or Bus 17,
but I remember his route went through Petaling Street and Jalan Pudu—
the billboards, the sun-faded banners, the endless tangle of electric wires.
On weekends, I would follow him to work.
I’d sit in the front row on the brown leather seat warm with old sweat stains,
watching his calloused hands pull the long gear stick,
tapping the signal, shifting the clutch—
the whole city moving past the window like an old film reel.
I especially loved the moment the bus climbed onto the flyover,
and the cars below looked like tiny toys inching along.
There was no air-conditioning in those days.
Only the open windows and a tired little fan.
The wind that came in wasn’t cool,
but it was better than nothing.
At red lights, he sometimes glanced at me and asked,
“Chee Hong, what do you want to be when you grow up?”
I always said, “I don’t know. I just want a place with cool wind.”
He laughed—a rough, nasal laugh I can still hear today.
“Then don’t become a driver. This job ah… always hot,
always breathing exhaust. Like sitting inside an oven.”
Only years later did I understand:
the laugh hid the exhaustion of a man
whose elbow had two different skin tones from
resting on the sunburnt window frame all his life.
2. The Gaps of the City
When I was twenty, around 1994,
I worked in a handphone shop on Jalan Tun Tan Cheng Lock.
Phones back then were the size of bricks—
Motorola and Nokia were kings.
People pulled them out of waist pouches like performing magic tricks.
My job was to replace batteries, stick screen protectors,
and repair buttons that refused to press down.
My pay wasn’t much,
but enough for a hot plate of roti canai
and an iced teh tarik every day,
with a half-boiled egg when I wanted to “treat myself.”
Our shop faced the LRT station.
I saw Kuala Lumpur at 7 a.m.—
office workers with neat shirts and sleepy eyes rushing through the gates.
And I saw KL at 10 p.m.—
neon lights flickering tiredly,
street stalls packing up,
the whole street turning quiet like someone pressed the mute button.
Watching people flow in and out like waves,
I sometimes felt like the broken standing fan at our shop entrance—
spinning just enough to make noise,
but never enough to change anything.
What kept me going was the Malay auntie at the nasi lemak stall next door.
Before closing, she always handed me a leftover fried chicken wing and said,
in her gentle but not-so-perfect Mandarin:
“Save money can… but don’t skip dinner.
Eat first, tomorrow only got strength.”
I still remember that taste—
the coconut and pandan aroma mixed with the smell of old frying oil.
It was a small warmth, but it stayed with me longer than most memories.
It was the first time I realized:
some people don’t give you advice—
they just make sure you’re not hungry.
3. My Only Regret
I got married at 33, in 2007.
My wife was a kindergarten teacher—
soft-spoken, gentle,
smiling with crescent-shaped eyes like the moon drawings children make.
We had no children,
but our home was always lively.
The walls were filled with her students’ crafts—
crooked paper flowers, uneven colorful cutouts,
and “Happy Teacher’s Day” written in shaky handwriting.
Our old terrace house looked like a tiny holiday classroom all year round.
Five years ago, she fell sick.
We went from Hospital Kuala Lumpur (HKL)
to private clinics,
to specialist centers,
our days sliced into numbered tickets:
queue, blood test, wait, repeat.
She often told me,
“Tomorrow don’t come so early… sleep a bit more.”
But I never listened.
I always arrived long before her appointment,
carrying a plastic bag with her clothes and some bread.
I was afraid that if I slept too long,
the reality would shift without me,
and the story would change while I wasn’t looking.
The night she passed away,
I stood alone in the wet hospital carpark.
The ground reflected the yellow streetlights,
and the only sounds were the hum of air-conditioning units
and a distant ambulance.
Suddenly, the evening Isyak call to prayer
echoed from a nearby mosque—
a long, solemn voice drifting through the humid night.
At that moment, I understood:
all my joy, all my fear,
the entire shape of “home,”
came from one person.
My only regret
is that I never gave her
that “place with cool wind.”
4. Why I’m Writing This Down
I work night shifts now as a warehouse guard in Subang Jaya.
The warehouse is quiet at night—
only the occasional forklift sound
and the soft metal creaks of shelves expanding and cooling.
My life is simple:
clock in, make my rounds,
sip a 3-in-1 coffee in the guard room,
staring at the CCTV screens until my eyes blur.
When it rains,
the raindrops hammer the metal roof loudly—
like someone knocking on memories I thought I forgot.
I have no dramatic achievements,
no life lessons to teach anyone.
I only know one thing:
one day,
I too will be blown away by the wind of this city.
No photos,
no records,
no proof that a man named “Lim Chee Hong”
ever lived so earnestly
in this hot, noisy, chaotic country.
Then someone told me,
“There is a place now,
where ordinary people’s stories can be kept.”
For the first time,
I felt that maybe
this painfully ordinary life of mine
might have a corner to rest in—
instead of being swallowed whole by time.
5. If You’re Reading This
Then I want to say:
terima kasih.
(Thank you.)
Here, we have a saying—
not in exact words,
but in meaning:
“Those who are remembered never truly leave.”
I don’t know how many people will ever read my name.
But if just one stranger—
you—
stopped for a moment to read this story,
then this entire life of mine
was not lived in vain.
— Lim Chee Hong
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia