talk #374

The recent PC virus hoax inadvertently started by Peter Chang, dismissed timely by Peter Tong, and verified by S.S. Lau whether delete or not makes no difference led me to the title of this chit chat. Many moons ago, one of my co-workers came back from Mexicali, an AlliedSignal manufacturing plant in Mexico, and reported that one of the local manufacturing engineer was complaining that his PC has no MS-2. It turns out that the guy thought DOS were Spanish for 2 (i.e., uno =1, tres = 3...). 2 = too is straightforward for most of us with mother tongue other than English.

The me too follows S.S.'s movie talk on Soong sisters, and Peter Sun's e-mail to S.S. Yes, the three Soong brothers were not mentioned much in the movie. They were: TV (Van, literal, literati), TA (Ang, peace), and TL (Liang, good, well). They donated lots of Chinese paintings, antiques to the De Young Museum in Golden Gate Park in later years. TV was in the central government during the war, and the two younger ones were not. I have an old bank note issued by Bank of Canton with the youngest, TL's signature in brush-stroke. I met Oi-ling in New York City in the summer of '61 when I went to visit Dr. H. H. Kung at their Fifth Ave penthouse apartment. My late father was working for him during the war both in Chungking, and America when China was one of the Big Five. They were like ordinary people, and not high and mighty. When I graduated from Illinois in '63. I got a gift from their oldest daughter, a check for $ 1000. I thought Mei-ling went to Wesleyan College in Macon, GA, and none of the eastern schools. Anyway, that part was from some one I met in Atlanta. She went to that school in Macon. She could be wrong, or short on details. I am sure Peter Sun knows his relatives more than outsiders. As for Big-ear Tu, I met one of his sons when I was in grade school in Shanghai. His name is Tu Vee Soon. The school was the one that the Soong sisters went. It has an English name Mrs. Mactyre's, and a Chinese name Chung See (China-West). I brought these tit-bits of my past to substantiate the words "me-too". If any Lighter feels that I am trying to whitewash the wrong doings of the Soong's, Kung's, and Chiang's; I am not. I don't know enough modern Chinese history to do that.