Fatherhood should be this easy

During the first few years I joined Rotary, I used to remember our club presidents asking for volunteers to take in exchange students for anything from a few months to a year. Being a bachelor and not having a “proper home” as such, I have always managed not to get too involved. Even much later, when I became president of the club, I continued to shy away from such a responsibility. What do I know about being a host to children or young adults? These are responsibilities better left to married members in the club, whose wives are better equipped to make sure the exchange students are fed and looked after properly.

But that was to change through no “fault” of Rotary whatsoever. In fact any relation to Rotary they had was that one of them was the daughter of a Rotarian in Nakhon Sri Thammarat (about 200km to the north of Hat Yai) and the other had an elder brother sent to the United States on an exchange programme for one year by a Rotary club in Phuket.

I was asked to be a “father” for three months to two 20-year-old graduating students from the University of Walailak, South Thailand, while they were undergoing practical training at our office. Reluctantly I had to accept the responsibility. If this had anything to do with tourism and travel, it was only the fact that both of them were pursuing degrees in tourism management.

One Sunday morning in September, I had to cancel my usual late wake up time and pick them up. I was actually trying to discourage them from staying with me. But no such luck. One of the girls’ father in fact accompanied them all the way from Thailand to make sure they were delivered into safe hands in Kuala Lumpur.

I must say the experience of being a father to somebody else’s children was not altogether unpleasant. It had its moments. Of course, there were times when the antics of two 20-year-old girls can get on your nerves. But fortunately those moments were far and few in between. I suppose without those moments, it would have meant I did not really mature as a father.

One day, several months after that, I was in the company of one of the girl’s parents in Phuket and was being introduced to some of their friends at a dinner function. I did feel a bit uncomfortable being introduced by the girl’s father as “my daughter’s daddy from Malaysia.” Now, it would have really been interesting to see the peoples’ reaction had her mother been the one doing the introduction.
But that was a very Thai way of doing things. A male guardian takes on the role of a father and is accorded the same respect that one shows to one’s own father. So naturally they had to call me daddy.

One day when returning home from the office they took the wrong bus and had to walk almost a kilometre home. Two men on a motorcycle decided to get to know them a little better (all in the spirit of ASEAN, naturally) and actually followed them just to find out where they lived presumably.

When I later asked one of the girls, a martial arts exponent why she did not give the bikers a flying kick, she replied, “Cannot-lah daddy. Skirt too tight.”

Another amusing incident happened on one Sunday towards the end of their stay in Kuala Lumpur. One of the girls decided to make me a drink. There was a knock on my door, and when I came out, there she was with a broad smile and a steaming mug. I asked her what was inside the mug, and she told me it was tea.

“I know you like coffee but we have run out, so I decided to make the tea the same colour,” she said.

Exactly how was by boiling two tea bags for a couple of minutes. Had I finished the mug of tea, I would have had trouble going to the toilet for a week.

This same tea maker would have made Chef Wan blush. On that same day she decided to cook lunch. Her cooked rice would have been perfect if it was meant to be eaten with satay. I must say she had a weird sense of logic for a student whose average grade was in the top five per cent in her university. (She in fact ended up the top student).

Anyone familiar with rice cooking knows that to get rice to cook correctly, the water you put into the pot should be about one inch above the rice level at the start of cooking. She decided that since she was cooking double the usual amount, the water level should be two inches above the rice, the result of which would have made the satay makers in Kajang very proud. I suppose she was using a bit of Maths logic here. Probably you would remember the question we used to be asked in primary schools. You are washing five handkerchiefs of equal size. If it takes half an hour for one handkerchief to dry, how long would it take five to dry?

Anyway I digress. Just that the point I am trying to make is being a father to an exchange student or students can be quite an invaluable experience. But at least I did not have to change their diapers or force-feed them those gooey-looking stuff that children hate. Of course, there was also the downside. I lost part of the freedom that goes with bachelorhood.

Still at times I do fancy getting another irritating phone call in the middle of a golf game, asking me to pick them up later from Ampang Park because they did not have the taxi fares to get home. So I did what any father would do when I picked them up. Gave them a sound ticking off for not being more careful with their money.

Worst of all, after three months, I had actually grown terribly fond of them. And for at least a week after they left when I returned home every night to a lonely house, there was always a feeling as though someone had kicked me in the stomach as I walked through the door. I suppose I would have been heart-broken had they been eight or nine year olds. The nerve they had, coming into my life and messing up my fine-planned bachelorhood.

And I would like to think that in some lonely corners of the world, another old bachelor would be listening to the same words of Simon & Garfunkel before they went their separate ways.

I am a rock
I am an island
A rock feels no pain
And an island never cries