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天文台的一具老傢伙 - 劉天賜先生撰文
An Old Friend from the Hong Kong Observatory
Mr Lau Tin-chi

少時，大約三年班下學期，父親從天文台退休，從山林道四十七號四樓頭廳搬遷住紅磡漆咸道四佰二拾四號，政府華員會的漆咸大廈，新的獨立單位屋宇裡。父親仍然放置一張『鋼製寫字檯』於窗前，檯邊牆壁掛上了一具四方立體的東西，大約只有六吋乘六吋面積(圖一)。這四四方方的東西由外邊木框與及內鑲了兩個儀表組成。右邊長形儀表，我懂得是什麼，那時大家都叫『寒暑表』。正確一點稱為：『溫度計』，一條約四英吋長的玻璃管，很幼很幼，管兩旁都有度數，便是攝氏度數及華氏度數。那時候，香港仍用英制，天文台報氣溫用華氏表度數的。
When I was young at Primary 3, my father retired from the Observatory and we moved from the upper room on the 4th floor of 47 Hillwood Road to a flat in Chatham Building of the Hong Kong Chinese Civil Servants’ Association at 424 Chatham Road, Hung Hom. In our new home, my father had kept his steel desk and placed it by the window. On the wall next to the desk, there was a square object measuring approximately 6 inches by 6 inches (Figure 1), made up of a wooden frame and two meters. I knew the rectangular meter on the right. People called it, in Cantonese, a “meter showing summer and winter”, but its proper name was “thermometer”. On either side of a very thin glass tube about four inches long, there were scales marked in degree Celsius and Fahrenheit. At that time, the British system was still in use in Hong Kong and the Observatory reported temperatures in Fahrenheit.

『寒暑表』的左鄰，儀表面積比較大，有三枝『針』，表上有些英文字，以當年小學三年級才學a man and a pen的英文水平，不知是什麼一回事。
To the left of the thermometer was a larger meter with three “pointers” and some English words on it. Given the fact that I was in Primary 3 and “a man and a pen” pretty much summarised my English proficiency, I had no idea what this meter did.

圖一：前台長Mr Heywood夫婦贈送給劉天賜的父親劉伯華先生的退休禮物 - 家居用的溫度及氣壓計。
Figure 1: Mr Heywood, former Observatory Director, and his wife presented this home thermometer and barometer as a retirement gift to Mr Lau Pak-wa, the father of Lau Tin-chi.

父親掛上這具小小儀器之後，珍而重之，我未夠高度，根本『摸不著』儀器的屁股，遑論騷擾它了。平日，父親不多看它一眼，只有『打風』時節，才躬身細看這具小東西。
My father cherished this small piece of instrument that he had hung on the wall. I could not reach the bottom part of it even on tip toe, let alone mess with it. On a typical day, my father would not pay much attention to the instrument, but he would look at it closely during the typhoon season.

原來它的兩枝指針，不像時鐘長短指針活動的，平日靜靜地，只有『作打風』的時候，其中左手邊一枝便向下活動了。『作打風』這個名詞，近年來漸漸從老百姓生活中淡出了。普羅大眾在沒有空氣調節（冷氣）的空間生活，對環境溫度變化敏感得多。某天，感到很悶熱，風扇，人力撥扇愈撥愈熱，空曠地方吹來的是『悶熱的風』，入黑，飛出了飛蟻（白工蟻），有時，蟑螂也肆意滿場飛，大家心裡口裡都知道：『作打風了』！
I realised that the pointers did not move like the hands of a clock. Normally the pointers stayed quiet, but with the approach of a tropical cyclone, the pointer on the left would move downwards. While people in Hong Kong used to say “typhoon is coming!”, fewer and fewer people use the expression in recent years. In the past when there was no air conditioning, people were much more sensitive to temperature changes. On a certain day, it was exceptionally hot and stuffy, even with electric fans and paper fans, and the breeze was hot even in open areas. After dark, there were flying termites everywhere; sometimes, even cockroaches flew, and everyone knew “typhoon is coming!”.

『打風』是當時生活中一件大事！普羅市民戰戰競競如臨大敵，儘管是石屎樓，窗戶多是木框鑲玻璃。『打風』須做好防風措施。用繩索縛緊木窗，用膠紙打十字貼在玻璃面上，如窗戶有滲水情況，又要堵塞好。防風防雨忙過不亦樂乎。更不論那些住在僭建天台上、山邊，陸上艇戶等的居民了。大家心裡都不希望『打成風』，打得成，可能家破人亡，可能損失慘重。真與四十年後的香港市民心情大大不同了。
In those days, typhoons were a big deal. People were particularly anxious, as if they were facing a formidable enemy. This was because even in concrete buildings, the windows mostly had wooden frames and it was crucial that precautionary measures were taken before a typhoon struck. Wooden windows were secured with ropes and the glass was taped, while window leaks were sealed. It was indeed a lot of work getting prepared for heavy rain or the typhoon. Meanwhile, it was worse for people living in unauthorized rooftop structures, close to a hill or on boats. Everyone hoped that Hong Kong would not be caught in the path of a typhoon, because if it was, homes might be destroyed and lives could be lost. Forty years later in Hong Kong today, people feel completely different about typhoons.

『作打風』前夕，父親忙於看這小東西，並且將其中銀色小針調校，以便觀察另外一枝指針的走勢。幾小時後，便可能發現另一指針再往下走，他便會肯定的預言：『這場風打成啦！』小孩子不知什麼原故，打成風可怎樣？除了不用上學外，悶坐家中不好受的。
Before the arrival of the typhoon, my father would be busy looking at this small instrument. He would adjust the small silver pointer and observe how the other one moved. A few hours later, if the other pointer moved further downwards, he would announce with absolute certainly that, “the typhoon is on its way!” As a kid, I did not understand all the fuss about typhoons. Although I would get an extra day off from school, I would be stuck at home and it was rather boring.

年長，知道這具儀器是『氣壓計』，不必用電池或其他動力，內裡『機關』感應大氣內的氣壓，推動指針活動的，原理須問科學官了。父親離世之後，再細心看這陪伴我家數十年的『老傢伙』，是當年天文司Mr. Heywood夫婦贈送給家父的禮物，木框下一塊小銅片，刻上受物人贈物人名字和日期。『老傢伙』由家父退休哪年『服務』至他辭世，我做了它的主人後，不知如何使用，只放在案前裝飾。及有緣認識了天文台岑天文司和高級科學主任宋小姐後，知道設有一個歷史室，冒昧將這具家中呆了六十多年的『老家人』送去更有意義的地方(圖二)。當市民參觀天文台歷史室時，這『老傢伙』可能給觀眾一個新鮮的面貌，原來當年家居氣壓儀是這樣子的。
As I grew older, I learnt that the instrument was a barometer. Not requiring any batteries or other power sources, the “mechanics” inside senses the atmospheric pressure and causes the pointers to move. For details of the principle, you need to ask a scientific officer. After my father passed away, I had a good look at this “old friend” that had been in our family for decades. It was given to my father by the then Mr Heywood, the Observatory former Director, and his wife. The names of the givers and receiver, along with the date of presentation, were inscribed on a small plate under the wooden frame. Our “old friend” had served our family since my father’s retirement up till his passing, but after I became its owner, it was treated as an ornament on my desk because I did not know how to use it. Therefore, when I met Mr Shun, the current Observatory Director, and Ms Song, the Senior Scientific Officer, and learned from them that there was a History Room in the Observatory, I offered to send this “old friend” that had been with our family for more than six decades to a place where its existence would be more meaningful (Figure 2). When members of the public visit the History Room, hopefully our “old friend” can show them what a home barometer in the past looks like.

圖二：劉天賜(右)把父親的天文台退休禮物「温度及氣壓計」贈送回天文台，由岑智明台長(左)接收這件歷史文物。
Figure 2: Lau Tin-chi (right) donated his father’s retirement gift, a thermometer and barometer, to the Observatory. Mr Shun Chi-ming, the Director of the Hong Kong Observatory (left), received the instrument from him.


圖三：五十年代初，劉天賜父親劉伯華（右）在天文台工作，抱年幼的劉天賜坐上香港第一個測量站石墩上留影；今天劉天賜（左）再走到同一位置，笑說從前巨大的石墩縮小了。（相片提供：蘋果日報）
Figure 3: In the early 1950s, Lau Pak-wa (right), the father of Lau Tin-chi, worked in the Hong Kong Observatory. This photograph shows him with the young Lau Tin-chi sitting on a stone pier at Hong Kong’s first survey station. Today, Lau Tin-chi (left) revisits the place, and he says the giant stone pier has shrunk. (Photo courtesy of Apple Daily)

A GOOD READ from one of the greatest leader that lived, #SINGAPORE's founding man, #LeeKuanYew

THIS MUST BE SHARED AND THOROUGHLY READ BY EVERY FILIPINO... Its quite long but it will surely strengthen our minds but then at the end, I was like "SAYANG!!!"
It came from the SINGAPORE'S FOUNDING MAN ITSELF, former Prime Minister LEE KUAN YEW on how the Philippines should have become, IF ONLY...

I've just read it and, its point blank!
Its a good read
____________

(The following excerpt is taken from pages 299 – 305 from Lee Kuan Yew’s book “From Third World to First”, Chapter 18 “Building Ties with Thailand, the Philippines, and Brunei”)

*

The Philippines was a world apart from us, running a different style of politics and government under an American military umbrella. It was not until January 1974 that I visited President Marcos in Manila. When my Singapore Airlines plane flew into Philippine airspace, a small squadron of Philippine Air Force jet fighters escorted it to Manila Airport. There Marcos received me in great style – the Filipino way. I was put up at the guest wing of Malacañang Palace in lavishly furnished rooms, valuable objects of art bought in Europe strewn all over. Our hosts were gracious, extravagant in hospitality, flamboyant. Over a thousand miles of water separated us. There was no friction and little trade. We played golf, talked about the future of ASEAN, and promised to keep in touch.

His foreign minister, Carlos P. Romulo, was a small man of about five feet some 20 years my senior, with a ready wit and a self-deprecating manner about his size and other limitations. Romulo had a good sense of humor, an eloquent tongue, and a sharp pen, and was an excellent dinner companion because he was a wonderful raconteur, with a vast repertoire of anecdotes and witticisms. He did not hide his great admiration for the Americans. One of his favourite stories was about his return to the Philippines with General MacArthur. As MacArthur waded ashore at Leyte, the water reached his knees but came up to Romulo’s chest and he had to swim ashore. His good standing with ASEAN leaders and with Americans increased the prestige of the Marcos administration. Marcos had in Romulo a man of honor and integrity who helped give a gloss of respectability to his regime as it fell into disrepute in the 1980s.

In Bali in 1976, at the first ASEAN summit held after the fall of Saigon, I found Marcos keen to push for greater economic cooperation in ASEAN. But we could not go faster than the others. To set the pace, Marcos and I agreed to implement a bilateral Philippines-Singapore across-the-board 10 percent reduction of existing tariffs on all products and to promote intra-ASEAN trade. We also agreed to lay a Philippines-Singapore submarine cable. I was to discover that for him, the communiqué was the accomplishment itself; its implementation was secondary, an extra to be discussed at another conference.

We met every two to three years. He once took me on a tour of his library at Malacañang, its shelves filled with bound volumes of newspapers reporting his activities over the years since he first stood for elections. There were encyclopedia-size volumes on the history and culture of the Philippines with his name as the author. His campaign medals as an anti-Japanese guerrilla leader were displayed in glass cupboards. He was the undisputed boss of all Filipinos. Imelda, his wife, had a penchant for luxury and opulence. When they visited Singapore before the Bali summit they came in stye in two DC8’s, his and hers.

Marcos did not consider China a threat for the immediate future, unlike Japan. He did not rule out the possibility of an aggressive Japan, if circumstances changed. He had memories of the horrors the Imperial Army had inflicted on Manila. We had strongly divergent views on the Vietnamese invasion and occupation of Cambodia. While he, pro forma, condemned the Vietnamese occupation, he did not consider it a danger to the Philippines. There was the South China Sea separating them and the American navy guaranteed their security. As a result, Marcos was not active on the Cambodian question. Moreover, he was to become preoccupied with the deteriorating security in his country.

Marcos, ruling under martial law, had detained opposition leader Benigno (Ninoy) Aquino, reputed to be as charismatic and powerful a campaigner as he was. He freed Aquino and allowed him to go to the United States. As the economic situation in the Philippines deteriorated, Aquino announced his decision to return. Mrs. Marcos issued several veiled warnings. When the plane arrived at Manila Airport from Taipei in August 1983, he was shot as he descended from the aircraft. A whole posse of foreign correspondents with television camera crews accompanying him on the aircraft was not enough protection.

International outrage over the killing resulted in foreign banks stopping all loans to the Philippines, which owed over US$25 billion and could not pay the interest due. This brought Marcos to the crunch. He sent his minister for trade and industry, Bobby Ongpin, to ask me for a loan of US$300-500 million to meet the interest payments. I looked him straight in the eye and said, “We will never see that money back.” Moreover, I added, everyone knew that Marcos was seriously ill and under constant medication for a wasting disease. What was needed was a strong, healthy leader, not more loans.

Shortly afterward, in February 1984, Marcos met me in Brunei at the sultanate’s independence celebrations. He had undergone a dramatic physical change. Although less puffy than he had appeared on television, his complexion was dark as if he had been out in the sun. He was breathing hard as he spoke, his voice was soft, eyes bleary, and hair thinning. He looked most unhealthy. An ambulance with all the necessary equipment and a team of Filipino doctors were on standby outside his guest bungalow. Marcos spent much of the time giving me a most improbable story of how Aquino had been shot.

As soon as all our aides left, I went straight to the point, that no bank was going to lend him any money. They wanted to know who was going to succeed him if anything were to happen to him; all the bankers could see that he no longer looked healthy. Singapore banks had lent US$8 billion of the US$25 billion owing. The hard fact was they were not likely to get repayment for some 20 years. He countered that it would be only eight years. I said the bankers wanted to see a strong leader in the Philippines who could restore stability, and the Americans hoped the election in May would throw up someone who could be such a leader. I asked whom he would nominate for the election. He said Prime Minister Cesar Virata. I was blunt. Virata was a nonstarter, a first-class administrator but no political leader; further, his most politically astute colleague, defense minister Juan Ponce Enrile, was out of favour. Marcos was silent, then he admitted that succession was the nub of the problem. If he could find a successor, there would be a solution. As I left, he said, “You are a true friend.” I did not understand him. It was a strange meeting.

With medical care, Marcos dragged on. Cesar Virata met me in Singapore in January the following year. He was completely guileless, a political innocent. He said that Mrs. Imelda Marcos was likely to be nominated as the presidential candidate. I asked how that could be when there were other weighty candidates, including Juan Ponce Enrile and Blas Ople, the labor minister. Virata replied it had to do with “flow of money; she would have more money than other candidates to pay for the votes needed for nomination by the party and to win the election. He added that if she were the candidate, the opposition would put up Mrs. Cory Aquino and work up the people’s feelings. He said the economy was going down with no political stability.

The denouement came in February 1986 when Marcos held presidential elections which he claimed he won. Cory Aquino, the opposition candidate, disputed this and launched a civil disobedience campaign. Defense Minister Juan Enrile defected and admitted election fraud had taken place, and the head of the Philippine constabulary, Lieutenant General Fidel Ramos, joined him. A massive show of “people power” in the streets of Manila led to a spectacular overthrow of a dictatorship. The final indignity was on 25 February 1986, when Marcos and his wife fled in U.S. Air Force helicopters from Malacañang Palace to Clark Air Base and were flown to Hawaii. This Hollywood-style melodrama could only have happened in the Philippines.

Mrs. Aquino was sworn in as president amid jubilation. I had hopes that this honest, God-fearing woman would help regain confidence for the Philippines and get the country back on track. I visited her that June, three months after the event. She was a sincere, devout Catholic who wanted to do her best for her country by carrying out what she believed her husband would have done had he been alive, namely, restore democracy to the Philippines. Democracy would then solve their economic and social problems. At dinner, Mrs. Aquino seated the chairman of the constitutional commission, Chief Justice Cecilia Muñoz-Palma, next to me. I asked the learned lady what lessons her commission had learned from the experience of the last 40 years since independence in 1946 would guide her in drafting the constitution. She answered without hesitation, “We will not have any reservations or limitations on our democracy. We must make sure that no dictator can ever emerge to subvert the constitution.” Was there no incompatibility of the American-type separation of powers with the culture and habits of the Filipino people that had caused problems for the presidents before Marcos? Apparently none.

Endless attempted coups added to Mrs. Aquino’s problems. The army and the constabulary had been politicized. Before the ASEAN summit in December 1987, a coup was threatened. Without President Suharto’s firm support the summit would have been postponed and confidence in Aquino’s government undermined. The Philippine government agreed that the responsibility for security should be shared between them and the other ASEAN governments, in particular the Indonesian government. General Benny Moerdani, President Suharto’s trusted aide, took charge. He positioned an Indonesian warship in the middle of Manila Bay with helicopters and a commando team ready to rescue the ASEAN heads of government if there should be a coup attempt during the summit. I was included in their rescue plans. I wondered if such a rescue could work but decided to go along with the arrangements, hoping that the show of force would scare off the coup leaders. We were all confined to the Philippine Plaza Hotel by the seafront facing Manila Bay where we could see the Indonesian warship at anchor. The hotel was completely sealed off and guarded. The summit went off without any mishap. We all hoped that this show of united support for Mrs. Aquino’s government at a time when there were many attempts to destabilize it would calm the situation.

It made no difference. There were more coup attempts, discouraging investments badly needed to create jobs. This was a pity because they had so many able people, educated in the Philippines and the United States. Their workers were English-speaking, at least in Manila. There was no reason why the Philippines should not have been one of the more successful of the ASEAN countries. In the 1950s and 1960s, it was the most developed, because America had been generous in rehabilitating the country after the war. Something was missing, a gel to hold society together. The people at the top, the elite mestizos, had the same detached attitude to the native peasants as the mestizos in their haciendas in Latin America had toward their peons. They were two different societies: Those at the top lived a life of extreme luxury and comfort while the peasants scraped a living, and in the Philippines it was a hard living. They had no land but worked on sugar and coconut plantations.They had many children because the church discouraged birth control. The result was increasing poverty.

It was obvious that the Philippines would never take off unless there was substantial aid from the United States. George Shultz, the secretary of state, was sympathetic and wanted to help but made clear to me that the United States would be better able to do something if ASEAN showed support by making its contribution. The United States was reluctant to go it alone and adopt the Philippines as its special problem. Shultz wanted ASEAN to play a more prominent role to make it easier for the president to get the necessary votes in Congress. I persuaded Shultz to get the aid project off the ground in 1988, before President Reagan’s second term of office ended. He did. There were two meetings for a Multilateral Assistance Initiative (Philippines Assistance Programme): The first in Tokyo in 1989 brought US$3.5 billion in pledges, and the second in Hong Kong in 1991, under the Bush administration, yielded US$14 billion in pledges. But instability in the Philippines did not abate. This made donors hesitant and delayed the implementation of projects.

Mrs. Aquino’s successor, Fidel Ramos, whom she had backed, was more practical and established greater stability. In November 1992, I visited him. In a speech to the 18th Philippine Business Conference, I said, “I do not believe democracy necessarily leads to development. I believe what a country needs to develop is discipline more than democracy.” In private, President Ramos said he agreed with me that British parliamentary-type constitutions worked better because the majority party in the legislature was also the government. Publicly, Ramos had to differ.

He knew well the difficulties of trying to govern with strict American-style separation of powers. The senate had already defeated Mrs. Aquino’s proposal to retain the American bases. The Philippines had a rambunctious press but it did not check corruption. Individual press reporters could be bought, as could many judges. Something had gone seriously wrong. Millions of Filipino men and women had to leave their country for jobs abroad beneath their level of education. Filipino professionals whom we recruited to work in Singapore are as good as our own. Indeed, their architects, artists, and musicians are more artistic and creative than ours. Hundreds of thousands of them have left for Hawaii and for the American mainland. It is a problem the solution to which has not been made easier by the workings of a Philippine version of the American constitution.

The difference lies in the culture of the Filipino people. It is a soft, forgiving culture. Only in the Philippines could a leader like Ferdinand Marcos, who pillaged his country for over 20 years, still be considered for a national burial. Insignificant amounts of the loot have been recovered, yet his wife and children were allowed to return and engage in politics. They supported the winning presidential and congressional candidates with their considerable resources and reappeared in the political and social limelight after the 1998 election that returned President Joseph Estrada. General Fabian Ver, Marcos’s commander-in-chief who had been in charge of security when Aquino was assassinated, had fled the Philippines together with Marcos in 1986. When he died in Bangkok, the Estrada government gave the general military honors at his burial. One Filipino newspaper, Today, wrote on 22 November 1998, “Ver, Marcos and the rest of the official family plunged the country into two decades of lies, torture, and plunder. Over the next decade, Marcos’s cronies and immediate family would tiptoe back into the country, one by one – always to the public’s revulsion and disgust, though they showed that there was nothing that hidden money and thick hides could not withstand.” Some Filipinos write and speak with passion. If they could get their elite to share their sentiments and act, what could they not have achieved?

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SAYANG! kindly share.