She raised 16 kids on 20 cents a day

She raised 16 kids on 20 cents a day
By April Chong

WOMAN OF SUBSTANCE: Madam Lim travelled from China to marry Mr Joseph Loh in 1936. They were both 17 years old at the time. -- PHOTO: COURTESY OF THE FAMILY OF MADAM LENA LIM

MARRIAGE had never figured in the mind of the young Lena Lim.

Born a Catholic and raised next to a convent in Swatow in China, she dreamt of becoming a nun. But she found herself matchmade at age 12, married at 17 and then a mother to 16 children.

All before she turned 42.

Last Wednesday, her 12 surviving children were summoned to see her in her Ang Mo Kio flat. She held out till past 7pm for the last child to arrive before closing her eyes for good. She died that day at age 90.

Her wake was attended by more than 300 people each day, so much so her children were kept on their feet taking people for a last look at their mother, and serving visitors with snacks and drinks.

About 150 mourners formed a snaking line behind her cortege yesterday. She was buried at Choa Chu Kang Christian Cemetery, where her husband had been laid to rest 26 years earlier.

'Although she had a hard life, she never complained and she taught us that no matter how poor we were, there were others worse off than us,' said Madam Lim's youngest child, 48-year-old author Joanna Loh.

At the age of 17, Madam Lim was put on a boat to Singapore to marry a man she had never met.

She narrowly missed the revolutionary war that broke out in her hometown and left her well-to-do family impoverished.

With her petite 50kg frame, family and friends always marvelled at how she could carry 16 children to term, having one almost every year.

Because of her strict Catholic views, contraception was not practised. Her large brood later gave her 22 grandchildren and six great grandchildren.

The transition from a luxurious life, where embroidering silk handkerchiefs was about the only chore for rich young girls, to being a mother in a new land was tough.

On just 20 cents a day from her husband, who was a clerk in the British Naval Base then, she brought up her brood and ran her household like clockwork.

To feed her family, she planted vegetables and reared chickens when they lived in her husband's family home in Hougang.

'She ran the family like a CEO,' said Madam Loh, recounting how the children were rostered to do household chores once they turned eight.

Although the family was poor, she refused an offer from a relative to buy one of her sons.

'Over my dead body,' she said in Teochew.

But she lost three of her own during World War II in the 1940s. They died of malnutrition and illness before they were even a year old.

The family moved from place to place in their early years as they could not afford their own home until her husband retired in 1971.

That was when they bought a semi-detached house in Changi with his pension pay-out. What she regretted was not being able to take her 500 pots of orchids collected during her kampung days in Hougang because the new place was too small.

Although poor, Madam Lim was still the epitome of the sio jia, or lady of leisure as the Teochews would say.

She never had a hair out of place, even though she could not afford expensive clothes or cosmetics.

She was haggard when she was young, but as her children grew up, she increasingly had more time and money to dress up.

'She was younger when she was older,' quipped Madam Loh.

Granddaughter Susanna Loh, 40, remembered how she used to play at her Ah Ma's dressing table, fascinated by her lipstick, powder and 'sexy' sarong kebayas.

She would do her hair in the salon and her sarong kebayas were always figure-hugging, she said.

She recalled with a smile: 'She was a very hip grandmother!'

After her husband died of a heart attack in 1982, she became active in church work. Having travelled only once - to the Philippines - up to then, she was urged by her children to 'see the world'.

And see the world she did - from the United States to the Middle East.

It was on one of these trips that she was reunited with her sisters in China - fully 50 years after she left her hometown. She was then 68.

Dementia started to set in when she was 78. She forgot who her children were and had regressed to a child-like state.

To celebrate the matriarch's ninth decade last year, family members threw a party with 120 guests. Her grandchildren even put up a band performance for her.

Although she could not recognise her family members and had become oblivious to her surroundings, family members recalled how she could still clap her hands during the party.

'We're glad we decided to do that. It was the last time we took a family photo together,' said Madam Loh.

NUS team makes history by finding frog with no lungs

April 10, 2008

NUS team makes history by finding frog with no lungs
Kalimantan find is only the 4th creature with backbones known to breathe without lungs

By Shobana Kesava




ONE OF A KIND: DrDavid Bickford holds preserved specimens of the endangered species of lungless frog that his team found in Indonesia. -- ST PHOTO: LAU FOOK KONG

SINGAPORE scientists have discovered a lungless frog that breathes through its skin - a find that makes evolutionary history.

The aquatic frog is affectionately called Barbie - short for its scientific name Barbourula kalimantanensis. It was found in two mountain rivers in the heart of Kalimantan last August.

A group of nine researchers, led by evolutionary biologist David Bickford from the National University of Singapore (NUS), found the flat, dark brown frogs with golden specks under smooth rocks in clean, cool and fast-flowing water.

Their findings are set to be published next month.

Since animals first waddled onto land eons ago, only three other creatures with backbones - two groups of salamanders and a single species of the earthworm-like caecilians - have been known to forsake their lungs.

Dr Bickford, 39, said Barbie absorbs oxygen dissolved in the water through its skin.

Barbourula kalimantanensis
Length: 38mm

Weight: 6.5g

Reproduction method: Unknown

Home: Found on the bed of cold, clean rivers

Body temperature: 14 to 17 deg C

Respiration: To stay safely on the river bed, away from swirling currents, it has done away with air-filled lungs which would increase its buoyancy. Oxygen passes into its bloodstream through the skin.

Vision: Forward-facing eyes make the frog more streamlined and help it pinpoint prey.

Food: Scientists believe it is a fierce predator feeding on beetle larvae three times its length.

'The discovery is not so much a surprise to the scientific community as much as a surprise that it has taken so long to find it,' DrBickford said.

One reason could be that the frog resides deep in mountain rivers and is fully aquatic.

A fisherman first took a Barbie to Indonesian scientist Djoko Iskandar in Kalimantan in 1978. He had been searching for the animal ever since.

Part of the NUS team last August, DrDjoko co-authored the scientific paper with DrBickford.

'Djoko was near tears when we found them after all those years of searching,' said DrBickford.

The specimens the NUS team discovered were well over 50km from where the first frogs were spotted by local fishermen.

Their original wading grounds had become prime gold-mining and logging territory.

'They must have been forced upstream from their original habitats...so we got to the end of the logging road and started the search,' added DrBickford.

He hopes the find will help spur research into South-east Asian wildlife, much of which is threatened by development.

'Frogs are a clear indication of how degraded our environment is, so if people who know the terrain can help us discover what we have and preserve it, my work in conservation will be worth it,' he said.

Indonesian zoologist Indraneil Das, who studies amphibians and reptiles, said the discovery of a lungless frog could stir up national interest.

'This shows us yet another innovation by amphibians. If the findings are read by the government and if it does something about them by way of conservation...that will be a good thing for all concerned, except perhaps the gold-miners.'

$50k daylight robbery

April 10, 2008
$50k daylight robbery Girl, 3, and maid held captive in victim's car
Robbers told maid that she and child would be killed if police were called
By Sujin Thomas and Lim Wei Chean
ORDEAL: One of the robbers went with the victim to withdraw the cash at this POSB branch in Hougang Central while his accomplice waited in her BMW in a nearby carpark with her grandchild and maid. -- ST PHOTO: ASHLEIGH SIM WHEN a woman in her 60s walked into a POSB branch in Hougang Central on Tuesday afternoon to withdraw $50,000, the staff there did not turn a hair. They thought she was just a regular customer making a withdrawal. What they did not know: She was taking out the cash at the behest of a man armed with a knife. A spokesman for DBS, of which POSB is a part, told The Straits Times: 'We knew what had happened only when the police came asking for closed-circuit TV tapes to assist in their investigations.' After thewoman got the money from the bank in Block 805, she handed it to the robber, who then fled. Her ordeal had begun about an hour earlier, at 12.30pm, when a man with a knife confronted her in the driveway of her home in Chiltern Drive, off Braddell Road. Shouting for help Hougang resident Diana Chia (below with her son, Justin), who saw the maid and child locked in the car: ... more The police said he then got into the rear seat of her BMW, along with her three-year-old granddaughter and Filipino maid, and ordered her to drive. After picking up his accomplice along the way, they made their way to Hougang Central, where the woman and one of the men alighted outside the bank, Lianhe Wanbao reported. The other man then drove the car to the ground level of a nearby multi-storey carpark, with the child and maid still inside. He told the maid he would kill her and the child if she called the police. An hour later, he locked them in the car and went to meet his accomplice who had received the money - but not before winding down the car's window by about 8cm to let air into the car. The maid and child could not get out because of the child-safety lock. The maid shouted for help, attracting the attention of a passing rag-and-bone man. He did not understand English, so he called out to resident Diana Chia, 35, of Block 850, who was going to her car to pick her son up from school. The maid's armed-robbery story scared Ms Chia. She turned to her neighbour Ting Ming Sheng, 45, who had just driven into the carpark. She asked him to help and left to pick up her son. Mr Ting called the police, who arrived shortly. When Ms Chia returned about 20 minutes later, she slipped packets of milk, bread and biscuits through the car window to the duo. When the victim learnt where her maid and granddaughter were after the robber fled with her money, she asked her husband to take a spare key there. At the family's bungalow last night, The Straits Times spoke to one of the four maids working there. She said the maid involved had been told by her boss not to speak to the press. She added that the maid had settled back into her chores and did not seem traumatised. The police yesterday released descriptions of the two men: One is between 30 and 40 years old, slim and tanned, and about 1.7m tall. He was wearing a black jacket, dark trousers and a navy-blue baseball cap. The other is between 40 and 50. He was last seen in a black-and-white striped shirt and dark trousers. Those with information may call the police on 1800-255-0000.