The writer's father died 16 years ago form the complications of emphysema, a disease arising from years of smoking. He was a traditional Confucian father not given too much expression of mawkish sentiment to his nine children. The present day philosophy of loving your children to death and embracing their character-despoiling traits or other warts was not one he understood or practised at all. If the writer was rambunctious and broke the golden rule that children should be seen and not heard, he let his displeasure be heard, restoring the silence with a gruff "harrumph". If his children were ill-disciplined, he let histemper be felt for he wielded a mean rotan(cane), however, no rewards were given for behaving, why should children be rewarded for behaving the way they should in the grand oder of things? Yet the writer never felt unloved, even if all the love was implicit only in action. Indeed, any oral affirmation of endearment would have been an embarrassment to fathers of yore. When he was in dotage and frail with illness, we cared for him as dutiful children with a bounden responsibility would. Yet the writer felt regretful that he had not expressed his maudlin sendiments of love and affection for him while he was still alive and appreciative.

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