In my many years I’ve always talked about the important people in my life. My father, my mother, my wife and now my kids. I just realized recently that the one person I haven’t really talked a lot about is my younger sister.
There are four kids in my family. My two eldest brothers who are close in age and then there’s my sister and I who share a 3 year gap in our age.
We grew up spending most of our time together. We found toys to play with together, we played computer games together and up until I turned 15, shared a room together.
This is an early picture of us from 1990.
Looking back at my record as a brother, I don’t think I was a very good one growing up. I would hog the computer and play my games while she watched on. Then as my mom came home I would run and hide and leave her playing the game for all of the 30 seconds she would get until my mom saw her playing and scolded her for it.
I once asked her to close her eyes and led her face first into a pillar because I thought it would be funny. Turns out it was not… she went crying to mom and I got an earful… and boy just thinking about how bratty I was then makes me want to go back into the past and smack boy-Tim. If Fighter ever did anything like that to Penny I would go mental.
It’s instances like that which led to some of my regrets. That I wasn’t a better brother to my sister when we were kids. Rather than being a brother who took care of her, I was a brother who lived for himself and only played with her when I wanted to. To some extent I see a little of that in Fighter now and how he treats Penny.
Filling in my gap of not being the protective brother was my parents. Being the only girl in the family, my parents were always more protective of my sister, constantly worrying about her and whether she’ll be able to face life on the outside. What all of us never really noticed was that my sister was and is a lot stronger than we thought.
I got to know in my later years how she struggled through many personal struggles growing up but kept it all to herself and handled it. I sometimes ask myself if it’s because I wasn’t emotionally there for her enough that she was forced to be strong herself. If so then perhaps some good came out of the bad boy-Tim did.
Today my sister is a grown woman working in an advertising agency managing a team of her own. She’s totally unmaterialistic, lives a very simple life by choice and doesn’t demand for anything apart from a good glass of single malt whiskey every now and then.
She gets emotionally attached to the things she uses. She would use a mobile phone and never want to change it until it crashes and never comes to life again. Her old Honda looked like it had gone on a road trip through Syria but she refused to change it until my Dad bought her a new one.
She also has this really friendly personality that turns strangers into friends in five minutes. Once we went to a park and she disappeared for a while only to see her making friends with a group of strangers and talking about some handle bar stuff.
She also shares some similarities with my wife. She is the kind of person who won’t naturally know how to think about what to do for you but if she knows it, she will. Some sort like my wife really. With that in mind I know that no matter what happens I know my sister will have my back.
As a more matured older brother now I’m trying to make up for lost years. Trying to be a better brother to her than I was growing up, doing as many things as I can for her. She’s also grown really close to my family, constantly making time to spend with Fighter.
Professionally too she’s doing great. I once saw her perform in a work setting and I was really impressed at how she presented an idea and how capable she was. I went home and told my parents that their little girl wasn’t a little girl anymore. The little girl in our family has grown up to be this strong woman now.
And that is the story of one of the most important people in my life.
Timothy Tiah – Co-Founder of Colony, Kuala Lumpur Co-Working Space