Eulogy for my father Robert Koh Dut Say (1937 - 2018)
On behalf of my dad, mom, and sister, I want to thank you for coming out tonight. And thank you for sharing your memories of my dad. They help to give a fuller picture of the man. I will always remember my father as a man of great patience. When I was in Radin Mas Primary School, he waited for me outside the school gates for my pianica class to finish, so he could bring me home on his bicycle. He taught me how to swim in the Bukit Merah public swimming pool. He would patiently demonstrate the strokes to show me how to do it. Whatever patience I possess as a teacher now, I learned it from him. When I went overseas for my studies, he waited for me to come home. When I decided one year not to come home in order to travel around in Europe, he waited for me still. His patience was the kind that gave his children the freedom to pursue their own lives. After I moved to New York, I would come home every summer and find him waiting for me. I don't mean to suggest that he was not doing a...