Living in Basements and Boxes: From Menara Kuda Lari to Villa Emas -May First. 2025

 

---

Living in Basements and Boxes: From Menara Kuda Lari to Villa Emas
May 1st Reflections on Transitions, Fatherhood, and the Art of Letting Go

I feel like I am about to close a chapter in my life and begin a new one. After eight years of living in Menara Kuda Lari—aptly translated as The Running Horse Apartments—we are now preparing to move to a place called Villa Emas, or Golden Villa. An elderly Chinese lady who visited during our open house years ago remarked that this apartment had very good Feng Shui. I believed her. I have loved this place deeply.

The bird's eye view of a part of Georgetown

This apartment became a sanctuary, a safe haven where I brought my two children under one roof, rescuing them from separate lives that had begun drifting dangerously toward the fringes of the street. It wasn’t an easy task to pry them from the influence of those who clung to their innocence like parasites. But I succeeded—by the grace of God—and today, they are on the road to success. I sometimes marvel at the miracle of that transition.

If I have learned anything through all the shifts and changes of my life, it is this: one must be willing to detach, to let go, to adapt, and above all, to remain genuine and sincere while surrendering to the will of the Lord. Only then do things fall into place as they are meant to.

This is not a new lesson. I’ve been here before.

When I was a student at the University of Wisconsin–Green Bay, I lived in the basement of a friend’s house simply because I had nowhere else to go. I squatted at the Sule residence on Hickory Hill Street. During that time, I wrote in my journal under the title “Living in Basements and Boxes.” Survival, at times, was an art.

                                       In Loving Memory of Mr. Charles Sule of Green Bay Wisconsin.

Later, when I was booted out of the Green Gulch Zen Center in California, a friend invited me to sleep under the kitchen table in his basement apartment on Haight and Ashbury. I stayed there for over a week before I found work with H&H and rented a tiny room in a cheap hotel on 16th and Mission Avenue in San Francisco.

                                       I slept on the floor under the kitchen table in this kitchen.

                           The Advaark was across the street from where I was on Haight and Ashbury.

                                       The Hunan on Haight is across the street from the Advaark.

                                                Folsom Street Downtown San Francisco

             View of the KOIT Tower, the Golden Gate Bridge, and the Marin Headlands.

I still carry these sketchbooks from the 1980s with me—worn, scribbled with truths and tears, housing fragments of the many lives I have lived. They remind me that no matter how low I may have gone, I have always found a way to stand back up and make beauty out of rubble.

So now, on this symbolic First of May, I reflect on another turning point:
— The day I drove my uncle’s body home, lying in the back of his van.
— The day I left Green Bay for Alaska.
— The day I begin a new chapter in Penang.

Life is always a new beginning, like the eel, where it came from and where it goes, who knows

I walk into Villa Emas not in fear or regret, but in humble gratitude. I carry the lessons of basements and boxes with me—not as burdens, but as blessings. This, too, is a labor of love and healing.