First office: Members of a chingay team demonstrating their skill with the Star flag outside the newspaper’s rented building in Weld Quay in Penang where the tabloid was launched in 1971.
I HAD just completed my Sixth Form and was waiting for my university application results. The year was 1980 and admission into one of the five public universities was uncertain.
When I turned up for an interview for a cadet reporter position – the lowest ranking post – at The Star in Pitt Street (now Jalan Masjid Kapitan Keling), Penang, I was met by the boyish looking H’ng Hung Yong.
He was an Oxford law graduate with an arts degree from Harvard University. As a fellow Xavierian, I had looked up to him while becoming an avid reader of The Star from school days.