sgusers7的部落格

There are 12,800 people in Singapore who are 90 years old and above.self storage SundayLife! meets four of them and finds out what keeps them going strongLiving healthily and staying active well into your 90s is no longer such an anomaly.Singapore is home to 12,800 people aged 90 and above, according to resident population estimates at the end of June. This is 700 more than last year. There are 11,800 nonagenarians, while another 1,000 have lived past the century mark.The sizeable number may partly be explained by medical advances as well as the fact that these very senior citizens were born at a time when people all over the world had large families.From interviews with nonagenarians, SundayLife! found that they tend to have a strong family or social support network. Most have not suffered a major illness before, which for some individuals can sap their will to live.Gerontologist Kalyani Mehta identifies four key factors for longevity: a positive attitude towards life, being generally healthy and mobile, strong family or community support and, finally, a belief system that gives meaning to life."Very often, we underestimate the power of the last factor. But in my view, when one reaches the 90s, material life is less important than spiritual life," says Associate Professor Mehta, who is head of SIM University's gerontology programme.Four 90-somethings share their life stories and secrets of ageing well with SundayLife!, giving a peek into the spirit of a generation that lived through hard times and upheaval.clare@sph.com.sgDevelop green fingersMR LOW HAI NG, 94Family and friends always know where to find Mr Low - watering, pruning and weeding at the communal farm beside his HDB block in Bukit Batok.The oldest among a few elderly, experienced gardeners in the community who maintain the farm, he spends a few hours there every day. It is a small strip of land with more than 10 banana and chiku trees, a vegetable patch and more than 60 flowering plants and bonsai.The vegetables are used by the residents' committee's cooking interest group to prepare dishes such as Hakka lei cha fan (thunder tea rice).Mr Low, who has never had a major illness or been hospitalised, is fit enough to do the heavy lifting in the garden, from digging and tilling to constructing bamboo trellises for the vines."But if it's too tough, I ask my younger friends to help," he says in Hokkien. His friends range in age from 50s to 77.He is also vice-chairman of the neighbourhood's senior citizens' executive committee, which makes him one of the oldest grassroots leaders around."I have done manual labour all my life. We used to grow vegetables when my family lived in a kampung in Bukit Panjang. Gardening is something I know and keeps me fit," says the father of 10 children, all in their 50s and 60s.The last place he wants to be is cooped up at home. "I want to be active in the community. I like the kampung spirit of neighbours helping one another."He lives in a four-room HDB flat with two of his sons, one single and the other married with two children. His wife, Madam Kek Swee Lan, died more than 10 years ago of liver cancer when she was in her 60s.In all, Mr Low has more than 20 grandchildren ("I've lost count of how many") ranging in age from six to 40-something. He relishes spending time with them, particularly the two who live with him, who are aged 10 and six.He is happiest walking the two grandchildren to their schools in the neighbourhood every day and having coffee with other elderly friends at a neighbourhood kopi tiam.Ask him what is his secret to a long, healthy life and he laughs. "Don't smoke, don't drink, eat in moderation and have no bad habits," says the non-smoker and teetotaller.He has perfect eyesight and does not wear glasses. His only ailment is high-blood pressure, for which he takes medication every day.As for his diet, he eats "simple bland food, not too oily or salty", mostly cooked by his daughter-in-law. He likes vegetables and fruit and takes red meat only occasionally. His one quirk is a dislike of fish or seafood. "I don't like the fishy smell," he explains.Mr Low was born in 1919 to a farming family in Ankui village in China's south-eastern Fujian province. The oldest of four children, he never went to school and started working in the rice fields from a young age.At age 16, he came to Singapore with an uncle to look for work. He took on odd jobs, such as being a rubber tapper and delivery boy.He and his wife were introduced by mutual friends and got married when he was 24 and she was in her teens. As the size of their brood grew, he became a miner in a stone quarry, a job that involved long hours and was "quite dangerous because you had to use explosives, but paid better than other labouring jobs". His wife held the fort at home, bringing up the kids.Back then, he says, "my life was work, come home, eat, shower, sleep. I just wanted to earn enough to feed 10 kids. There was no money left over to smoke or drink, so I had to control myself".He could not afford to send some of his children to school. But he is pleased that some of his grandchildren have made it to university. "That's progress," he says.A Taoist, he goes to the temple during religious festivals and says he does not think about dying."I live one day at a time. I have always lived a simple life, I don't have high expectations," he says.Embrace the simple pleasures in lifeMR THOMAS CHACKO, 93A slight deafness is the only trace of Mr Chacko's advanced age - he can move around unaided and his jet black hair has only a faint sprinkling of grey.That he is a little hard of hearing is the outcome of more than four eventful decades spent glued to a headset and a wireless set, first intercepting Japanese messages during World WarII and then, during peacetime in Singapore, sending and receiving signals to and from ships.Born in Kerala in south-west India to a farming family, the third of seven children completed high school and was a Malayalam teacher for a few years. Then he joined the Indian Army in 1942 at the age of 21. The reason: The army paid better.India was a British colony and played a key role in the war against Japan. "Because I was educated, I was assigned to be a signaller," he says.In a remote camp on India's north-west frontier, he and other signallers hunkered down with their wireless sets and learnt to decode and transcribe Japanese signals.After the Japanese were defeated, he was sent to Singapore in 1946. The British were helping the Dutch fight Indonesian insurgents and needed signallers to intercept Indonesian messages.By this time, Mr Chacko was weary of army life and wanted to settle down. A few years after arriving here, he found a civilian job as a signaller for Telecoms, the precursor of SingTel. The signalling unit was housed in Kallang Airport, later Paya Lebar Airport, and its job was to communicate with ships in Singapore waters and all over South-east Asia.In 1951, he married his wife, Annamma, who is now 81. Theirs was an arranged marriage - like him, she is a Syrian Christian from Kerala. They went on to have four sons and a daughter, who are aged 46 to 61.Their first home was a double-storey house shared with a few families in a Malay kampung in Jalan Selamat, Geylang. Then they moved to a five-room flat in the Telecoms staff quarters in Yio Chu Kang. They were there for nearly 20 years, surrounded by facilities, such as a football field and a tennis court."That was where I picked up tennis. I used to play tennis almost every day until three years ago, when my family stopped me because of my age," he says with a smile.They moved to their present home, a semidetached house in Seletar Hills, in 1989. Today, Mr Chacko lives there with his wife and two of his sons, Flame Of The Forest publisher Alex and Georgy, both single.The rest of the family visit regularly, particularly daughter Grace and her two daughters Charis, three, and Shauna, nine. In all, Mr Chacko has seven grandchildren, the oldest of whom is 28.He retired from his signaller job in 1985 at the age of 65. His last workplace was the now-defunct Civil Radio Receiving Station at Yio Chu Kang. Ship-shore communications now comes under SingTel and relies on computers and satellites. As a result, the work of sigmini storageallers like him has been phased out.Looking back on his life, Mr Chacko says he feels"extremely blessed. I don't feel like an old man". He has never suffered a major illness.He delights in simple pleasures such as taking walks with his family at a small park near their house or eating his wife's tangy fish curry with mashed tapioca, a Kerala staple."I eat at home all the time and nothing beats my wife's cooking because it's cooked with love," he says.He enjoys being driven by his sons to the places of his past and seeing what has changed ("Kallang Airport is still there, Jalan Selamat is totally unrecognisable") and he also keeps in touch with current affairs and watches news programmes on television.He is philosophical about the prospect of death. "Whenever God calls me, I will go. I don't think too far ahead, I just live every day that God gives me," he says.Play dominoes with friendsMADAM LAU SOON SIANG, 93The Toa Payoh resident, who has never had a major illness and walks briskly without the aid of a walking stick, remembers her younger days with crystal-clear clarity.Madam Lau can rattle off details from 70 or 80 years ago, from when she first came to Singapore - she was 10 - to her late husband's $30 pay cheque as a chauffeur in the 1940s.Ironically, it is on recent events that her memory fails her. "My mind is like a rubbish bin filled with all the old things. But if you ask me what happened this morning, I cannot remember," she exclaims in Teochew.Home is a two-room rental flat where she lives with the fourth of her seven children, Mr Ng Yeck Kwan, 66, and his wife, both factory workers. Madam Lau's husband, Mr Huang Ah Zheng (Ng is the dialect rendition of Huang), died 21 years ago of heart failure at age 82.She spends the better part of her weekdays at the neighbourhood Seniors Activity Centre, when her son and daughter-in-law are at work.The centre is run by Care Corner, a voluntary welfare organisation. There, the outgoing nonagenarian enjoys playing games such as dominoes with friends - "it's addictive, I can play it for a few hours at a stretch" - and takes part in the exercise classes and craft activities, which are free for members.Once a month, she looks forward to catching up over zi char dinners with various branches of her huge extended family - she has 13 grandchildren in their 30s and 40s and nine great-grandchildren of school-going age."Now is the best time of my life. All my children are married and some are grandparents. I don't have to worry about them and I just take things one day at a time," she says.She is illiterate and never went to school, like many women of her generation.The saddest moment in her life, she says, was losing her father during the Japanese Occupation. He was an itinerant jewellery-maker from the village of Beh Swa Kio in Chaozhou in southern China.The family had moved with him to Bangkok - where Madam Lau, the middle of three children, was born in 1920. They later came to Singapore where her father found work at a goldsmith's.At the age of 54, he was one of thousands of Chinese civilians rounded up by the Japanese in the Sook Ching massacre of 1942. His body was never found."He went out to buy yew char kueh (dough fritters) for breakfast and never came back. Someone saw him being tied up and taken away. We were close - I was the only daughter - and it was very hard to accept that he had been killed," she recalls matter- of-factly, the decades having blunted the grief.Today, she is the only surviving member of her immediate family.Also tough was bringing up five sons and two daughters. At 17, she was matchmade to her then 27-year-old husband. At 19, she had her first child. She single-handedly raised the kids as he worked long hours as a chauffeur and lorry driver."They were all born two to three years apart. I breastfed all of them and when the younger ones slept, I cleaned the house and cooked for the older kids," she recounts.For nearly 40 years, the family lived in a twobedroom attap house in a kampong in Hougang. Later, the Government acquired the land and resettled them in an HDB flat in Toa Payoh.Accustomed to hardship, she lives and eats simply. Meals are usually either economy rice from hawker stalls or plain porridge, which she cooks and eats with salted fish and canned preserves.Her one indulgence is durians. "I used to skip dinner and pig out on three durians at night," she says with a laugh. Now, she eats only small quantities of the cholesterol-laden fruit as she has high blood pressure.Nonetheless, "as long as I can eat and can walk, I am happy".A Buddhist, she has never been hospitalised before and fears a debilitating illness. "I just hope to pass on peacefully in my sleep," she says.Enjoy the company of loved onesMADAM CHUA KIM NOY, 94Having to move around with a walking stick does not stop Madam Chua from doing what she does best - making Chinese desserts.She can often be found seated at a table in the kitchen, making from scratch tang yuan (glutinous rice balls with peanut filling) or snow skin mooncakes with white lotus paste.Another favourite of her huge extended family is her agar agar, fashioned into pastel-coloured roses and goldfish using moulds and homemade food dyes, and delicately flavoured with coconut milk and sweetened condensed milk.Madam Chua has seven children, aged 50something to 75, 13 grandchildren and 13 great- grandchildren. Her desserts are served when they gather at her home, a semi-detached house in Bukit Timah, on weekends or festive occasions.She lives with her youngest daughter Geraldine, who works in the financial sector, son-in-law William, an IT professional, and their two daughters, Susanna and Joanna, who are both in their early 20s and recent graduates, one doing post-graduate studies. Madam Chua's husband, Mr Toh Kim Whee, died of age-related ailments in 1963 at age 68."I love to cook. I used to memorise recipes that I heard on Rediffusion," she says in Teochew. A former housewife, she is illiterate and never went to school.Her other specialities include bakwan kepiting (crab meat ball soup), mee siam, ngoh hiang and duck soup with salted vegetables. She no longer prepares such elaborate and labour-intensive dishes, having passed her recipes on to her four daughters and Filipino domestic helper.Born in 1920 in Swatow in southern China, she was the third of four children from a poor farming family. Her parents came here to eke out a living. At the age of 16 in Singapore, she entered into an arranged marriage. Her husband, also Teochew, was an educated shipping clerk.For many years, their home was a three-bedroom attap house in a kampung in Hougang, which they shared with Madam Chua's brother's family of seven. She grew crops such as sugarcane and sweet potato on their plot of land and also reared chickens and ducks which she slaughtered for meals.To save money, the soft-spoken, enterprising housewife made clothes for all her children as well as curtains and other furnishings. To earn extra income, she was a babysitter for other families' children. She also made kueh bangkit, love letters and other delicacies to sell during Chinese New Year.Her fondest memory of those days is of her husband, an amateur musician, playing traditional Chinese instruments such as the yangqin and erhu at home. "In his free time, he would play for me. I enjoyed listening to pieces such as the Butterfly Lovers Concerto and Teochew folk songs," she recalls with a smile.Today, she closes her eyes whenever her granddaughter Susanna plays these tunes for her on the piano every few days, as it reminds her of her late husband. He eventually became a manager in the shipping company and the family moved to an HDB flat in Dover Road.Madam Chua, a Catholic, says her greatest happiness is "to be surrounded by all my family". Since she turned 90, the entire clan has celebrated her birthday every year with a big bash at a restaurant.She suffered from stomach cancer several years ago and had half her stomach removed. These days, she eats six small meals daily prepared by the maid, including two egg whites, one egg yolk and sweet potatoes."I seldom cook now compared to before and I miss that. But it is God's grace to be blessed with longevity and the love of family," she says.迷你倉