TRIBUTE ABDUL - Perdana Library

TRIBUTE TO TUNKU ABDUL RAHMAN
thriving land, which has the densest population in the world, so
much so that cities and towns and countryside all merge into one
another, and seemingly without a single square yard not being put
to some productive use.
He spent a most interested and interesting morning at the
Hydraulic Research Laboratory in Delft, which is a special kind
of headquarters for designing and solving all Holland's battles
with its eternal enemy, the sea. Another afternoon was devoted
to touring the gigantic Shell Refinery in Rotterdam, the largest
in Europe, and a third in visiting the equally vast radio and electronic
works of Phillips.
I regret with a sigh, a very personal one, to report that the
intensely practical Dutch, wishing to show the all round development
of their industrial economy, could not fit in a spare moment or two
for a visit to one of the famous Art Galleries.
I would like to tell a typical Tunku story here. When he was
a student at Cambridge about forty years ago he lived for six months
i n the village of Little Stukeley with a Dutch family - Jonkvrouw Van
der Wyck and her twin sons, who became his great friends. He
knew them as Wally and Rhyn; the family knew him as Bobby.
The Tunku and Jonkvrouw Van der Wyck used to exchange annual
greetings for many years, but he lost track of her and the family
when war began. He often wondered what happened to them,
and before leaving Kuala Lumpur he decided to find out. At
The Hague he asked the Dutch authorities to make enquiries, and
after a day or so they said Jonkvrouw Van der Wyck, now aged 84,
was living in a small town named Oomen in Eastern Holland 200
kilometres away.
The Tunku, with a busy day ahead of him asked the hotel to
get in touch with her and let her know that the Malayan Prime
Minister would ring her that evening. I learned later what happened.
When the old lady got the message she rang her son Wally, who was
the Burgomaster of a small town about 70 kilometres from Amsterdam.
She said, "Why should the Malayan Prime Minister want
to ring me up?" Burgomaster Wally replied, "Oh, mother, don't
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