I'm more inclined towards reading non-fiction, especially stories of people, for several reasons.
First, biographies or autobiographies provide knowledge on how to deal with real-life situations. They also present valuable lessons and allow you to see the world from a different perspective.
Successful people in their advanced years have found that it pays to tell their story, especially their triumphs and setbacks. Penning a book certainly beats narrating experiences verbally. Wong Seng Chong's recollections are a case in point.
The Kuantan-based 77-year-old lawyer-cum-accountant's Bend With the Wind, Flow With The Tide, Life Lessons on Adversity chronicles his tough childhood in Ipoh during World War 2 and the Communist insurgency, helpful neighbours, upliftment through education to escape poverty, skirmishes with calculative colleagues, meeting kind people, and discovering the fulfilment of philanthropy.
Wong also delves into family relationships and how lack of love, attention and quality time with the family could also spell disaster.
For a person who has married twice (because of the untimely death of his beloved first wife, Theresa Lim), Wong had this to say: "Marry the right person. This decision alone will determine 95 per cent of your happiness or misery. Choose carefully before you tie the knot."
The book also relates his first love with an Ipoh lass but was thwarted by her materialistic mother. Wong recalls that one day the girl's mother had driven them to a sumptuous dim sum breakfast in her new car before heading for a shrine on the outskirts of Ipoh. There, they met a popular fortune-teller known for giving predictions. The readings for his girlfriend and her siblings were great.
When it came to Wong, the soothsayer opined that if Wong were to marry the girl, their marriage would end in failure and he would also become a bankrupt! Wong was then barred from seeing his girlfriend!
In hindsight, Wong wonders if the fortune-teller had colluded with Janice's mother. God alone knows, he writes.
In recounting his life of poverty, he mentions that he was always struggling to earn something to feed his family. They included tending to livestock, growing vegetables, doing odd jobs and dealing with his opium-fixated father, Wong Yew, who took the drug to ease the pain from injuries suffered during the Japanese Occupation.
Wong Yew, a barber, was spared the bayonet when a Japanese soldier recognised him and said he could be of use for free haircuts!
Wong's frankness about his destitution and fierce tenacity to excel often got his teachers at Pasir Pinji Primary School, Sam Tet Secondary School and St Michael's Institution to help him do well in his studies.
After Form 6, he joined the Inland Revenue Board and eventually rose to become an assistant director before he resigned to set up his own practice to be nearer his family.
By his own admission, the long hours he spent in isolation to study for the many accounting and law exams took a toll on his relationships with his family, to which he says he regrets today.
But his book seemed to have mended fences as his children have now begun to see his side of the story!
Wong's dropping out of Universiti Malaya because of lack of funds later turned out to be a major motivating force for him to help many needy students to further their education.
Today, Wong is beaming with contentment. He has rekindled close ties with his children, gotten companionship from his new soul-mate, Datuk Gan Lee Yong, while many of those he helped have also blossomed into useful citizens, like him.
The writer is a former Bernama chief executive officer and editor-in-chief
