Best friends: A reunion of former employees in Sydney on March 24,2012 at the home of Khoo Teng Guan and Muriel Speeden with guests (standing from left) John Santiago, SF Yong, Michael Aeria and Teng Guan and (seated from left) Tan Thean Peng, John Chong, Muriel, Geh Guat Beng and Ooi Kim Kee. All of them worked with The Star previously.
BACK in the days when The Star had its office in Jalan Travers, Kuala Lumpur, one of our bosses used to say: The first language here is Hokkien, second is Tamil and English is a poor third.
If you had dropped by the office then, you may be surprised to see N. Dorairaj from the sports desk and the Circulation Department’s SP Ramasamy (Samy) conversing in Hokkien with their colleagues.
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.