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