While my friends were scuba diving off the east coast of Peninsular Malaysia last weekend, I hired a car and a driver and made a two-hour trip to the city of Kuala Terengganu.
It was my first visit in more than 30 years, and only the third time I have set foot in “KT”, where my grandfather and his grandfather were born.
The latter’s father – my great-great-great-grandfather – had made his way to KT from the district of Tongan, in the southern Chinese province of Fujian, sometime in the early 19th century.
Today my only relations in KT – those that I know of anyway – are the descendants of my grandfather’s siblings and half-siblings. And I made a point not to see them while I was there for the day – there were far better ways of spending my time in KT.
It is not that I do not like them, but we have nothing in common apart from the fact that we share a few ancestors.