Tam Kwong: A Journey in Time
The most important job parents have is to pass on some basic virtues onto their children. As it has been said, children are the reflection of their parents. We all want our children to inherit some likeness from us, not just our outer appearance and physical features, but also our characteristics, values and virtues, to shape them in a way a child should be brought up for a proper upbringing.
As one gets older, we take pride in saying that our children were raised by virtue in our likeness, and when the time comes that we leave this worldly domain, our children are the best link to our past and the stories of our forebears. There will come a time when we all get a bit older and get a little nostalgic and tell stories of our childhood days to our little ones and walk them down memory lane.
How did we get through that stormy weather and life’s struggles and, more importantly, choose right from wrong? When you confronted some of these life questions, did Mum and Dad taught you all these? Were these values I imbibed as a child, or did I pick them up along the way? As the family tried to recall through my meandering life and struggled for an answer, I decided to venture into the past. This venture entailed recalling memories of chatting to Dad about the past. Through the memories of chats with him, I found myself travelling back in a time and reliving our fond and wonderful times together. Someone told me that it is not important to know if I am what I am today because of my parents. I decided that a book should be written to celebrate his life and leave it to the rest of the family and their progenies to be judges if these values were passed onto them.
No matter what, it is certain that all of us are proud of our father, Tam Kwong, with his roots firmly embedded on solid ground to enable us to set sail on our own life journey in different paths in a new land, a foreign country, a land of opportunity “down under,” Australia. As we relive the journey and paths Dad had walked before us, maybe someone down the line will pick them up and keep Dad’s legacy ongoing to the next generation and beyond.
