Mdm Low said the family celebrates her birthday in June.
“In those days, they didn’t have such (specific) records. She told us what her own mother told her when she was born.”
Mdm Lin grew up in the Boat Quay area, where her father was in charge of a few cargo boats. Supplies such as rice were stored in the godowns while the family lived upstairs. She had three other siblings, all of whom have died.
Girls did not receive formal education in those days, but her children said that Mdm Lin learnt to read and write in Chinese from a tutor.
And, as was common then, living in a multi-racial village in Pasir Panjang meant that she also learnt to speak Malay and the Teochew, Cantonese and Hokkien dialects. She converses in fluent Malay with Ms Herawati.
Throughout her life, she never worked but did take on babysitting jobs.
As with most women of her generation, she married young, at 18, to a Malaysian who was delivering goods to the godown at Boat Quay.
Mdm Low said her mother had told her in detail how she met their dad.
“My father used to frequent a red bean soup stall at Boat Quay and the owner told him that if he was keen, there was a young girl who lived upstairs he could marry. And so, they did,” she recounted.
I can almost picture this scene, straight out of a vintage movie where boy meets girl, set against a busy Boat Quay in late 1930s Singapore.
