Legacies Project Oral History: Irene Loo

Mon, 08/29/2022 - 11:57am

When: 2022

Transcript

• [00:00:09] FEMALE_1: To start, will you please say and spell your name.
• [00:00:12] Irene Loo: Irene Loo, and it's I-R-E-N-E. The last name Loo is L-O-O.
• [00:00:21] FEMALE_1: Thank you. What is your birthday including the year?
• [00:00:25] Irene Loo: September 2, 1938.
• [00:00:30] FEMALE_1: How would you describe your ethnic background?
• [00:00:33] Irene Loo: It's a bit complicated, but I consider myself Japanese. My mother is Japanese and I lived in Japan for a long time. My father, I'd like to talk about him later perhaps, his ethnic background, but he's not Japanese.
• [00:00:53] FEMALE_1: Okay.
• [00:00:53] Irene Loo: Okay.
• [00:00:55] FEMALE_1: What's your religious affiliation, if any?
• [00:01:02] Irene Loo: None whatsoever.
• [00:01:05] FEMALE_1: What's the highest level of formal education you've completed?
• [00:01:08] Irene Loo: Masters in chemistry at the U of M.
• [00:01:14] FEMALE_1: Did you attend any additional school or formal career training beyond which you completed?
• [00:01:19] Irene Loo: No.
• [00:01:21] FEMALE_1: Are you married?
• [00:01:22] Irene Loo: Yes.
• [00:01:23] FEMALE_1: Is your spouse still living?
• [00:01:25] Irene Loo: Yes.
• [00:01:26] FEMALE_1: Do you have any children?
• [00:01:29] Irene Loo: I have two sons.
• [00:01:33] FEMALE_1: Do you have any siblings?
• [00:01:34] Irene Loo: Oh yes, I have. I have a brother who is now deceased and I have three sisters.
• [00:01:42] FEMALE_1: What would you consider your primary occupation to have been?
• [00:01:48] Irene Loo: Teaching, I think.
• [00:01:50] FEMALE_1: At what age did you retire?
• [00:01:52] Irene Loo: Sixty-nine.
• [00:01:54] FEMALE_1: Okay. Now we begin the first part of the interview, the real part. Beginning with some things you can recall about your family history. We begin with family naming history. By this I mean any story about your last or family name or family traditions and selecting first or middle names. Do you know any stories that your family name, Loo?
• [00:02:24] Irene Loo: You want clarification. I talk about my family name?
• [00:02:28] FEMALE_1: Sure. Is there anything behind it?
• [00:02:31] Irene Loo: Well, on my father's side, the family name is Khan. It's spelled K-H-A-N, and it means prince or king. On my mother's side, it's called Kitamura, which means Northern hamlet.
• [00:02:52] FEMALE_1: Are there any naming traditions in your family?
• [00:02:54] Irene Loo: No.
• [00:02:56] FEMALE_1: Okay. When did you come to the United States? You said you lived in Japan.
• [00:03:01] Irene Loo: Yeah. I came here in '75. But prior to that I lived in Singapore. I went to school in England. It's not just a very simple, straight answer.
• [00:03:15] FEMALE_1: Where did you first settle on the United States?
• [00:03:18] Irene Loo: I came here first in 1968. I came here on, I'm having a memory lapse, National Science Foundation scholarship. I was in Brandeis in Waltham for a year. I went back and then I came back here again in 1975 because my husband was doing a PhD program in engineering at the U of M. I started my masters program in chemistry here also at the U of M and I've lived here since.
• [00:04:05] FEMALE_1: Okay. You just came with your husband?
• [00:04:10] Irene Loo: He came here a headfirst.
• [00:04:12] FEMALE_1: Okay.
• [00:04:13] Irene Loo: But I came in '75.
• [00:04:17] FEMALE_1: What possessions did you bring with you?
• [00:04:19] Irene Loo: My son. [LAUGHTER] I wouldn't consider him a possession, but my baby son, he was about two-and-a-half and I came with a suitcase. Just a single suitcase.
• [00:04:37] FEMALE_1: Did any of your older family members come along?
• [00:04:39] Irene Loo: Oh, no, not at all. I came here from Singapore at that time.
• [00:04:45] FEMALE_1: Okay.
• [00:04:45] Irene Loo: I moved around quite a bit in different countries.
• [00:04:50] FEMALE_1: What traditions and customs have you made an effort to preserve?
• [00:04:57] Irene Loo: Well, not really, because I'm from Singapore. Singapore is very cosmopolitan and you have different races living there. There wasn't anything in particular that I wanted to preserve other than the fact that I was from that part of the world, Southeast Asia. Maybe the most that I wanted to preserve was the cuisine. I loved the cuisine there.
• [00:05:31] FEMALE_1: Are there tradition that you've given up?
• [00:05:35] Irene Loo: There was nothing for me to give up per se because of the many different races living in Singapore. We live in Singapore, just as we live over here. In fact, Singapore is in many ways far more technologically advanced in terms of daily living. But not at the time that I came that was in '75. There was nothing in particular. Maybe during Chinese New Year, we get together with Chinese friends, or when it is Divali we'll get together with some Indian friends right here in Annaba. But other than that, there was no concerted effort on my part to preserve traditions. I was going to school. I was busy. I had my little boy and no, I didn't have time for that and I was young then. I wasn't that much interested in traditions here.
• [00:06:51] FEMALE_1: What stories have come down to you about your parents or grandparents?
• [00:06:59] Irene Loo: On my father's side, he has a very colorful and interesting history and he always wanted to share the stories associated with his past. But at the time when he wanted to tell me I was not interested in hearing. I'd prefer to go out with my friends and have a good time and so on. I don't really have a very clear idea, but I recall little snippets here and there. But they're too long to tell here.
• [00:07:42] FEMALE_1: Do you know any courtship stories like how your parents, grandparents, or other relatives came to meet and married?
• [00:07:49] Irene Loo: A little. Just very little. My mother is Japanese and she was born in 1919. It's a very male oriented society. My mother was one of the first to graduate from college. For a woman to go to college in that time period, in a society like a Japanese society which was very male oriented, it was quite an achievement. My father was a professor at the University of Kobe and they met there.
• [00:08:34] FEMALE_1: Now we're going to talk about your childhood up until you began attending school. Even if these questions jog memories about other times in your life, please only respond with memories from the earliest part of your life. Where did you grow up and one of the strongest memories of that place?
• [00:08:53] Irene Loo: I grew up in Japan. What else would you?
• [00:08:57] FEMALE_1: Just do you have any memories that stand out from living in Japan?
• [00:09:01] Irene Loo: Yes. I was always very cold and I was always very hungry because the year that I was born, which was 1938, Japan was already at war with China. Food was scarce and when she entered the Pacific War with the United States, many people were starving. I have vivid memories of always being hungry and cold and much later on, still during the war years, I saw people die.
• [00:09:41] FEMALE_1: Had your parents lived in Japan before then?
• [00:09:50] Irene Loo: Yeah, my mother, of course, because she was born there. My father has, as I mentioned, a very colorful history. He sought political asylum in Japan because the British were after him and so he lived. I think he went to Japan probably in the late 1920s, or early 1930s. I'm not sure. I have no idea. But he left Japan or I believe he had to leave Japan. I'm not sure of that too, and he joined a political movement called the INA.
• [00:10:39] Irene Loo: It's much a long story and you had mentioned a couple of times to keep it short. You can always ask me later about it if you're interested.
• [00:10:54] FEMALE_1: What was your house like growing up?
• [00:10:59] Irene Loo: I remember we lived in this big, white rambling house with a huge garden, and it was near the foothills of the Rokko Rage in Kobe. Kobe is a seaport in Japan, and it was built on the slopes of the Rokko Range. If you go right up to the very top, the roof was flat. That's what I remember. When we stood there, we could see the sea, the harbor with all the many ships. I was about three or four years old, so my recollection is not all that clear, but that's what it was. We played a lot in the yard. I've been to a Japanese nursery school. I learned different songs, which I don't remember and I hope you will not ask me to sing [LAUGHTER] them.
• [00:12:06] FEMALE_1: You said we used to play, how many people lived in the house when you were growing up?
• [00:12:10] Irene Loo: My parents and my two younger siblings. They were all together, five of us.
• [00:12:17] FEMALE_1: What languages were spoken in around your household?
• [00:12:20] Irene Loo: Only Japanese. This is in Japan.
• [00:12:26] FEMALE_1: Were different languages spoken in different settings, such as at home, in the neighborhood, their local stores or was it all Japanese?
• [00:12:33] Irene Loo: All Japanese.
• [00:12:36] FEMALE_1: What was your family like when you were a child?
• [00:12:40] Irene Loo: You see my father left to join this political group, the INA. I don't even remember what year it was. It had to be somewhere late in 1941. I was about three-years-old, so I don't have recollections of my father until we met again after World War II, which was in, I think April of '47. The war ended in '45. I don't really know. Maybe it was '46. I'm not sure.
• [00:13:32] FEMALE_1: Does your mother work?
• [00:13:34] Irene Loo: No, not at all. She was at home.
• [00:13:41] FEMALE_1: Okay. You said you always remember being called, do you have any earlier memories?
• [00:13:49] Irene Loo: Because those were the war years, I had absolutely no toys. We had very little, but I never felt deprived because everybody else was in that same situation. Nowadays, sometimes on television they say, well, this little boy is something to be pitied because he doesn't have a new bike, or a little girl doesn't have whatever toys or those electronic toys. It doesn't sit too well with me because I had nothing and I was happy. We played, we made things to amuse ourselves. I was good at marbles. We caught spiders from hedges and put them in match boxes and we made them fight together. We played Cat's Cradle. I don't know if you know things like that. Hopscotch, jump rope. We really improvised a lot of play ourselves.
• [00:15:10] FEMALE_1: I did love hopscotch and jump rope when I was younger.
• [00:15:14] Irene Loo: Really? I'm surprised.
• [00:15:16] FEMALE_1: Cat's Cradle.
• [00:15:17] Irene Loo: You, too? Good.
• [00:15:19] FEMALE_1: What was the typical day like for you in preschool at the nurseries that you went to?
• [00:15:28] Irene Loo: The last few months or the last year of the war, we were sent to the countryside because the bombing was so severe and there was no food at all, and so the children were sent to the countryside. I will focus on that. In the house that I lived in the countryside, it was Ochiai, that was the name of the village, in the province of Okayama. There was a river, and I remember going there with friends. It was a beautiful river. We used to collect the pebbles, play a game called five stones. We caught little fish and we ate those little fish. Nothing was wasted. I remember wading through the rice fields, the farmers were not very happy about it, but I did. We caught yields at certain seasons. But one thing I didn't like about the rice fields was when the leeches came stuck onto me. But I was pretty used to it, but I still didn't like it. With the older kids taught us how to sample edible weeds and we ate those. Because we were always very hungry. The boys I didn't like them, they were bullies. They liked to tease the girls. They were bullies.
• [00:17:22] FEMALE_1: Were there any special days, events or family traditions you remember from this time? Any birthday celebrations or anything?
• [00:17:29] Irene Loo: No such luxuries? There was nothing really to celebrate about. Maybe I remember one time it was Japanese New Year, which is the 1st of January and we had this special Japanese cake which was made from pounded glutinous rice called omochi, and that was lovely. That was a big, big treat. But other than that, there was nothing.
• [00:18:07] FEMALE_1: I think that's all I asked for today.
• [00:18:10] Irene Loo: That's fine.
• [00:18:11] FEMALE_1: That's early life. Thank you so much for your time,
• [00:18:13] Irene Loo: You're welcome.
• [00:18:17] FEMALE_1: Now we're going into a little older. We talked about how you went to a daycare or preschool thing. Then did you go to a grade school or kindergarten?
• [00:18:32] Irene Loo: Yes. I went to a nursery school and kindergarten, but that was in Japan. Then my elementary school years were in Singapore and also part of my high-school years. Then the last two years of my high-school was in England.
• [00:18:52] FEMALE_1: What do you remember about elementary school in Singapore?
• [00:18:58] Irene Loo: Nothing anything of significance. We sang a lot, we danced a lot and we played a lot, and we had a recess, which I look forward to. I don't think it was in any way different from a kindergarten or elementary school years here. Teachers were nice.
• [00:19:22] FEMALE_1: That's good. What about High School in Singapore?
• [00:19:28] Irene Loo: That was pretty stressful. I was actually a pretty good student. There was one subject that really bugged me and that was Chinese. Have you ever looked at Chinese writing, the characters and you have to remember about at least 2000 of them?
• [00:19:53] FEMALE_1: Really.
• [00:19:54] Irene Loo: Of course.
• [00:19:56] FEMALE_1: Those are many.
• [00:19:57] Irene Loo: Yes in order that you can read the papers, or books, and whatever. It was really the most difficult thing for me. Since my father was born in Shanghai, China, he insisted that I pass this Chinese tests, which we have pretty frequently. I think it was once every three weeks or four weeks. Every Friday, I went to a conference school. You know the nurses and their full regalia of your dark black gowns and [inaudible 00:20:37] and huge crucifixes, that was a kind of school that I went to. Every Friday was a release because a few of us girls would get together, we love to chat a lot. I can't imagine why we chatted so much but we love to chat a lot. Singapore is a tiny island, it's only 27 miles east to west, and 14 miles north to south. It's bigger now because they've reclaimed part of the land from the sea, but when I was growing up, that was what it was. We all hit for the beach hut step and jumped. I can't describe to you what a wonderful time we had on the beach. It was usually deserted because it was during the weekday, and then right by the road which was some distance away from the beach, there would be a row of hawker stores and they would sell all kinds of delicious local foods. You don't know what food tastes like until you've gone to Singapore. The food is just delicious, and so each one of us girls, that would be about 5-7 of us girls, and each girl would buy whatever she likes. Then we'll all sit together on the beach and we'll pull our foods together and we'll eat and we'll chat and we'll gossip usually about boys. Well, after my last Chinese test, which I failed miserably, my father told me he was a pretty authoritarian, he said, if you don't pass the next test, no more phone calls, now, we didn't have cell phones that you know, no more phone calls and you cannot go out on Friday? I couldn't believe it. How could he do that? It's like casting me into hell. I tried. I really tried. I tried to memorize those characters, but I couldn't. It was like a two or three-page of characters and the characters run down this way. I knew I would fail, but I couldn't afford to miss the Friday session with the girls. In utter desperation, I took a fountain pen, we didn't have ballpoint pens, and I looked at the texts and I wrote the texts on both of my thighs. Yes. I got up early that morning and did that we all have to wear school uniforms. We walked and then we all tripped into class. There was Sister San Damian. She was a huge nun and she came from Northern China. Northern Chinese are big whereas Southern Chinese are petite. Then she took her place in front of the class and she said, girls, we'll start the test. The first few lines, of course, I knew, I could remember. I took a backseat, of course. As she went on, I realized, I don't think I know from here on. At the backseat, we have these [inaudible 00:24:30] for us, for our uniform. I lifted it a little bit, I saw it and I wrote it and I lifted it a little bit more as the test went on and I was able to write and more and more was on one thigh. Then, I had to go on to the next side because next part of the test was there. Singapore is hot, it's a tropical climate. Low and behold, when I looked at it. Writing was smudged and I couldn't make out what the characters were. I was trying very hard to figure out whether the strokes go, did it go this way or that way, or this way, or this way? I was trying to figure out. Then suddenly I realized that the class was very quiet. None of the girls were talking but usually you hear them coughing or shuffling papers or things dropped down, but it was really quiet. But I couldn't be bothered. I was trying to decipher what was on my side. But then after a while when it continued, I looked up all 40 pairs of eyes, 39 pairs looking because the 40th is mine, were riveted onto me. They couldn't believe what I was doing. Then Sister San Damian realized that there was something horrible, so she looked and then she realized that. She saw me with my skirt raised right up to my panties, I don't remember. Anyway, I had to raise that whereas all the girls and have the skirts down to their knees. She thought I was being immoral. Big issue was and the space between the rows of desks were narrow, she ran and before you could say Jack Robinson, she was the next to me that she thought I was being immoral. But then low and behold, she saw all that writing. Not only was I being immoral, I was cheating I don't quite remember exactly what she did, but she yanked me by my uniform and dragged me to the front and she was spouting words and I don't remember what the words were, disgraceful, disgusting, or whatever, they bounced off me and then I was looking down. I was afraid to look at her face and she's like, look up, look at my face. Slowly, I raised my eyes but I only went up to her lips, I couldn't raise it further because I was so afraid of her. Her lips quivering, and then I looked and she's like, look up, so I looked up a little bit more and then I stopped. I stopped because at that close range, I saw mustache. She had mustache. I couldn't believe it. [LAUGHTER] I [inaudible 00:27:53] get. She was so infuriated, she thought this girl is incredible. I can't remember what she was saying, but it was nothing complimentary her [inaudible 00:28:09] shooting at them right in my face.
• [00:28:16] Irene Loo: That was basically the end of it. I was not really dismissed from the class. I was expelled for being immoral and for cheating.
• [00:28:26] FEMALE_1: Expelled from the school?
• [00:28:28] Irene Loo: Yes. I was immoral, showing my thighs. [LAUGHTER] My father had to be very contrite and beg Sister Saint Debian to please take his recalcitrant daughter back to the school, and he had to make a donation to the school building fund.
• [00:28:51] FEMALE_1: Did they let you back in?
• [00:28:53] Irene Loo: Yeah, they did. But before that, I was a prefect. If you know anything about the British school system and you follow the British school system, a prefect is a very important student in the class. She has control of the class in the teacher's absence or if they are making too much noise, she can tell them too. Sister Saint Debian reaped the prefect badge [LAUGHTER] from my uniform, but I was taken back.
• [00:29:27] FEMALE_1: But no longer a prefect?
• [00:29:28] Irene Loo: No longer a prefect. [LAUGHTER] But well, that was one very clear memory that I have of my school days.
• [00:29:41] FEMALE_2: [OVERLAPPING] She was growing up with nuns.
• [00:29:44] Irene Loo: She too? [OVERLAPPING].
• [00:29:48] FEMALE_2: She went to a Catholic school. They had long uniforms and that pretty similar in that.
• [00:29:52] Irene Loo: But your mum, how old is she?
• [00:29:54] FEMALE_2: She is 52.
• [00:29:56] Irene Loo: She's still a lot younger than I am because I'm 76. So it's still one generation away. I feel sorry for them because in Singapore it's so hot, and they wore black habit from top to bottom. No part of their skin was showing. They would have been able to work with Ebola patients given their attire. [inaudible 00:30:21]
• [00:30:25] FEMALE_1: That'd be awful.
• [00:30:27] Irene Loo: They were strict.
• [00:30:32] FEMALE_1: I bet. Then why did you switch high schools the last few years?
• [00:30:36] Irene Loo: Well, Singapore was a British colony for a long time. I think it's a colonial mentality that schools in the mother country, namely Britain, would be better than in the colony itself. So my father at great expense had sent, my two younger sisters initially to England, to London. Then very much later, on he sent me there. I hated it
• [00:31:13] FEMALE_1: Really?
• [00:31:14] Irene Loo: It was awful.
• [00:31:15] FEMALE_1: Why?
• [00:31:17] Irene Loo: Why? First it was the last two years of my high-school. Can you imagine being sent to a different school. Are you a junior?
• [00:31:29] FEMALE_1: I am .
• [00:31:30] Irene Loo: In your junior year. Girls can be mean, boys are better. Boys may give you a punch or do something, but girls, they are terrible, they can be vicious.
• [00:31:45] FEMALE_1: The say mean things.
• [00:31:47] Irene Loo: Of course. By my junior year, the class had already formed its own cleats. Here I was somebody foreign from Singapore, a colony at that. And so they look down on me because I was from the colonies, but I beat them in math all the same, but that's another story. That's the reason why my father thought that he could give me a better education in England than it would be in Singapore. That was what it was. He was very unhappy with me because he thought I was very ungrateful. Here he was spending a lot of dollars to put me in a boarding school in England and giving me, so he thought, first-class education and it was not, and I didn't appreciate it at all.
• [00:32:53] FEMALE_1: You're the lead here. Friday girl time.
• [00:32:56] Irene Loo: God. There was no beach to speak of anyway. [LAUGHTER] Food was dreadful.
• [00:33:12] FEMALE_1: Really?
• [00:33:13] Irene Loo: It was dreadful.
• [00:33:15] FEMALE_1: Did you eat at the boarding school?
• [00:33:16] Irene Loo: I had to. There was no other place for me to eat. The food was dreadful. Sometimes we were served curries. I don't know why they did that because this is in England. The curries in Singapore are so rich and spicy and fragrant and the aroma hits you way far away from the source where it's been prepared. In England, it was watery and it was just loaded with cabbage and it was difficult to find a little morsels of meat that was buried in the cabbage. That was that.
• [00:34:10] FEMALE_1: Then what did you do after high school and boarding school?
• [00:34:13] Irene Loo: I lost no time in going back to Singapore and I went to the university there, University of Singapore, which is a very rigorous university, it's very hard. People who are well off in Singapore send their children to study in New Zealand, or Australia, or even here to the States, and of course, to England. So if you are not as wealthy as they are, you try and vie for a place at the University of Singapore. I wanted to be there, University of Singapore, so I went there.
• [00:34:55] FEMALE_1: Do you remember anything about it?
• [00:34:59] Irene Loo: By years at the University of Singapore? There were lots of things that happened. Those were the late '50s, early '60s. Those were good years. Those were very good years. There are too many things there. [LAUGHTER]
• [00:35:26] Irene Loo: It was good.
• [00:35:29] FEMALE_1: Did you play any sports or extra curriculars?
• [00:35:32] Irene Loo: No sports. I don't like sports at all. Either couch, potato. I love to read. That's what I do most of the time.
• [00:35:41] FEMALE_1: How would you spend your extra time?
• [00:35:47] Irene Loo: Going places with friends, with your colleagues, classmates, eating, I love to eat. Then going out to parties, dances.
• [00:36:03] FEMALE_1: Yeah that's good.
• [00:36:04] Irene Loo: Thinks that kids here do. [OVERLAPPING]
• [00:36:06] FEMALE_1: Something similar.
• [00:36:07] Irene Loo: It's not that different.
• [00:36:11] FEMALE_1: Do you remember anything that's significantly different from school now?
• [00:36:20] Irene Loo: I'm still in the analog stage, whereas you guys are all in the digital age. We didn't have a lot that the the TVs were small little things. Black and white. That's the one great difference. Here I find that young people don't talk to one another as frequently as we did. When you text one another, you call one another, you electronically relate with each other. But during my time, we talked.
• [00:37:06] FEMALE_1: Yes.
• [00:37:07] Irene Loo: We held hands and we did stuff together. It was more warm and personal and it was more real.
• [00:37:21] FEMALE_1: Do you remember the popular music at that time?
• [00:37:25] Irene Loo: Yes. The Beatles, they were my favorite In addition to that, we had Peter, Paul, Mary. I know this probably sounds very strange to you. Simon and Garfunkel.
• [00:37:40] FEMALE_1: I know all this.
• [00:37:41] Irene Loo: You do?
• [00:37:42] FEMALE_1: Yeah unusual. My sister hates popular current music, and she only listened to still '60s and '70s music.
• [00:37:51] Irene Loo: Really?
• [00:37:51] FEMALE_1: Yeah, so I'm with her so much as quarter favorite. What's your favorite Beatles song?
• [00:37:57] Irene Loo: I can tell you a favorite Beatle song, they're all wonderful. [OVERLAPPING] Not only that, there was a black singer from Africa, Miriam McCabe. I liked it to her. Her voice was the white that was so attractive. Miriam McCabe. Who else? I can't even remember. Let me recall. Well, those were my favorites..
• [00:38:33] FEMALE_1: When you went to the dances, you talked about, is this the music therapy plan? This is what you would dance to?
• [00:38:37] Irene Loo: Yeah.
• [00:38:38] FEMALE_1: Did you have any particular dances to go with the songs?
• [00:38:44] Irene Loo: Not rarely. We just gyrated on the floor. Did all the stupid stuff.
• [00:38:52] FEMALE_1: That's so how it is now.
• [00:38:53] Irene Loo: Is that so? Well, I don't go to dances now, so I don't know, but you're doing your own movement and the bold, daring ones did more daring stuff.
• [00:39:06] FEMALE_1: That sounds very familiar.
• [00:39:08] Irene Loo: But I always had this vision. I love Waltzes, and we didn't play Waltzes, but I loved Waltzes. I always had this vision of being dressing them beautiful long gown and dancing in one of the palaces in Vienna, To Your Hearts clauses waltzes. That was it.
• [00:39:38] FEMALE_1: What were the popular clothing and hairstyles of those time.
• [00:39:42] Irene Loo: I wish I can remember. We had these miniskirt and they were really mini. You couldn't bend down because if you did, you'd show your panties. But those were the miniskirts were in vogue. Twinkie. Have you heard of that?
• [00:40:04] FEMALE_1: Yeah.
• [00:40:05] Irene Loo: You have?
• [00:40:05] FEMALE_1: Yeah.
• [00:40:05] Irene Loo: You surprised me. [LAUGHTER] Was this pencil thin model? Twinkie was our idle.
• [00:40:12] FEMALE_1: Really?
• [00:40:12] Irene Loo: Yes. Everybody hooked it or try to be like her, and the cosmetics that were famous during those days, were Mary Quant. You may probably have heard of that.
• [00:40:24] FEMALE_1: Yeah I've heard of Mary Quant.
• [00:40:25] Irene Loo: Brilliant reds and oranges.
• [00:40:31] FEMALE_1: Really?
• [00:40:32] Irene Loo: Yes. It seems so long ago, Sylvia, I can remember. [LAUGHTER] I've lived those years and you know.
• [00:40:45] FEMALE_1: Were there any other fads or styles from this era?
• [00:40:49] Irene Loo: But log care for the young men.
• [00:40:52] FEMALE_1: Really?
• [00:40:53] Irene Loo: Yes. But the Singapore government clamped down. But that right away. when was it?
• [00:41:03] FEMALE_1: In the late '60s.
• [00:41:08] Irene Loo: I think it was. By that time I was teaching and I remember telling my students, I don't agree with what the government is doing and that, and I almost got into trouble back there.
• [00:41:28] FEMALE_1: Really?
• [00:41:28] Irene Loo: Yes. Finally, I guess I overstepped by position. That was the first time the seeds were planted for me to go away from Singapore. That was one of the first times. It was a very authoritarian, very paternalistic, very strict government. But I was a political so I had it easy though, if you were interested in politics that there was a lot, I guess you could have found two. You could have had a lot to protest about.
• [00:42:19] FEMALE_1: You said you were teaching, were you still teaching chemistry?
• [00:42:24] Irene Loo: I taught chemistry, but I also taught what we call general science, which is chemistry, physics, and biology.
• [00:42:33] FEMALE_1: All of this together?
• [00:42:35] Irene Loo: Not mixed together, but they were like first semester you do whatever biology may be right there, I remember. Then second semester you would do chemistry and the third semester, you reserve it for the most difficult topic, physics?
• [00:42:56] FEMALE_1: What was your typical day like in this time period?
• [00:43:00] Irene Loo: As a student or is a teacher?
• [00:43:02] FEMALE_1: Both.
• [00:43:03] Irene Loo: Student and you're always rushing around to go to classes and struggling with your work and then shabby with your friends and goofing around with them. Eating out with them and then you'd like some boys, you have a crush on a boy and then your hokey notices you and all that stuff. I'm sure it was the same the other way.
• [00:43:39] FEMALE_1: I can relate to that.
• [00:43:41] Irene Loo: That was really easy. Happy years. Attending lectures was one of the things that we did. I remember one time. This was a huge auditorium and we were all sitting in tears and then we had a board. Teachers wrote on, a professors wrote on boards. The building was a circular building and the board stretch from one end. Anyway, right round that went to the other end. We were there in the auditorium talking, yakking as usual, making a lot of noise. Then a guy walked in. He was dressed in the most used worn jeans. He walked flip flux and can't even remember his shirt and his hair was disheveled. He walked in and we thought he was one of the parents who take care of the room itself. In other words, he erases the board, that he makes sure that there is chalk and erasers and stuff like that. We thought it was hip. Then the next thing we knew, he took sticker shock and he started writing all these chemical formulas. We will also stranded. You mean cleaner knows chemistry before doggedness that the cleaner was our professor in chemistry. Then the next horror we found out was that he was ambidextrous. He'll write with whitehead real desperately copied down. Before we knew what happened was already writing with the other head anywhere with one hand and the other. I've learnt to never judge people by their outward appearances.
• [00:45:54] FEMALE_1: It's a good lesson.
• [00:45:55] Irene Loo: It was it still is.
• [00:46:00] FEMALE_1: At this time, how often did you see your family?
• [00:46:06] Irene Loo: Not much. I lived in in the hostel. They call it the hostel, but here we call it the dorms. We stayed the whole week there except we get either they would come visit us or I take the bus and go visit them.
• [00:46:27] FEMALE_1: Were there any changes in your family life during your school years?
• [00:46:33] Irene Loo: Yeah there were some unhappy years within my family, culminating in the separation of my parents, but I don't care to talk about that.
• [00:46:46] FEMALE_1: Did your family have any special sayings or expressions?
• [00:46:51] Irene Loo: Yeah, I remember my father was telling me Irene, knowledge is power. Nobody can take that away from you. Even your youth will be gone, your beauty, maybe God, but knowledge always remain with you. And so he stressed a lot of learning in our home.
• [00:47:16] FEMALE_1: Were there any special days, events or traditions?
• [00:47:20] Irene Loo: Singapore is a multicultural society and in the true sense of that word. You have the Chinese owning about 75% of the population. Chinese New Year, which lasts 15 days, would be a very big event. Then there would be the Malays who are Muslims. They are really delightful people. They are like Polynesia and they would celebrate, we call it Eid here. But over there in Singapore we call it [FOREIGN]. And again, that was special. Then the Indians form about, the Malays are about 10%. I think the Indians are about 10%. So Chinese, 75, the remaining 5% were mainly British. During the, most of the Indians were Hindus. They're from Southern India and so we have Divali, the festival of lights. Here they call it Diwali, I don't know why, but in Singapore we call it Divali. So the Chinese New Year, all of that, all of my friends and I, whether you are Chinese or not, it didn't matter. You make a rash and visit every single Chinese home that you have any excuse to visit. Because you know why? Not that they offer you all the candies and stuff, they give you a red packet, small little packet like this, envelope. Inside is money, and it's called ampao. If you are single, you're not married, you are entitled to an ampao. We had to make sure we'll hit as many homes as we could so that we could get the ampao.
• [00:49:32] FEMALE_1: How much money would you get?
• [00:49:35] Irene Loo: Well, it depends. If you go to a rich home, you could get, and the numbers had to be even. Even number. So you might even get as much as $20, but that was a bonanza. Usually you get about two bucks, four bucks. Hey, but they add up, and it was free. They gave it to you.
• [00:49:57] FEMALE_1: That's crazy?
• [00:49:58] Irene Loo: Were there any special food traditions in your family or with your friends?
• [00:50:05] Irene Loo: Food. We ate all kinds of foods, be it Chinese food. Malay food is delicious. It's like Indonesian food. We ate Indian food, Thai food, Vietnamese food, we're in that part of the world surrounded by all these countries and we're very free and easy about that. It was a food haven. Not like here. Here when you go out, maybe I can learn something from you. There's pizza always. They are hot dogs, and burgers, and pasta.
• [00:50:52] FEMALE_1: Awesome pasta.
• [00:50:53] Irene Loo: What else?
• [00:50:54] FEMALE_1: There's you can usually find some kind of sandwich.
• [00:50:57] Irene Loo: I hate sandwich. Alright, sandwich.
• [00:51:00] FEMALE_1: Then there's a bunch of different kinds of salad, you can get.
• [00:51:03] Irene Loo: I hate salad everybody's food.
• [00:51:05] FEMALE_1: Then you can go to a Chinese restaurant and get Chinese food or Mexican restaurant.
• [00:51:11] Irene Loo: I don't like Mexican food, all beans, gives you a lot of gas. I don't like beans gives you a lot of gas. [LAUGHTER]
• [00:51:20] FEMALE_1: You can go to a Chinese. [OVERLAPPING] It's not real, that's not as good. It sounds like you can get Sushi, still not as good.
• [00:51:31] Irene Loo: Oh, I love sushi, that's my favorite.
• [00:51:34] FEMALE_1: I love sushi too.
• [00:51:35] Irene Loo: You too?
• [00:51:35] FEMALE_1: Yes.
• [00:51:36] Irene Loo: You're a bit unusual.
• [00:51:37] FEMALE_1: When you're saying how you and your friends every Friday we go get food, my friends do that a lot and sometimes we go to sushi restaurants. Just last week.
• [00:51:48] MALE_1: I like sushi too for the record too.
• [00:51:49] Irene Loo: You do? My goodness.
• [00:51:51] FEMALE_1: I think sushi is making a comeback and more and more places are selling it.
• [00:51:55] MALE_1: But then again, I like everything you said you didn't like. [LAUGHTER].
• [00:52:02] Irene Loo: I love sushi, but Sushi was very expensive in Singapore because of the hot weather. I suppose fish has to be really fresh. I guess they find it hard to maintain that.
• [00:52:22] FEMALE_1: Do you like to cook?
• [00:52:24] Irene Loo: I used to when I was younger and when my two boys were at home and they ate like horses, [LAUGHTER] yeah. I didn't realize that their appetite was so huge until one day, an older friend of mine came over for a visit. I said, wait I have to, I'm fixing something for my son. He was in college then. I said wait until I do this, it'll only take a few minutes more. I believe I had mashed potatoes and some roast pot roast and carrots. I yelled out to my son, and said, hi, the food is ready. Then he took his plate and he went to the dish where I had a lot of mash, he must have helped himself a lot. That was very normal.
• [00:53:25] FEMALE_1: Yeah.
• [00:53:25] Irene Loo: Yet this chunk of meat, carrots low. Then he went and put it at the dining table to sit down to eat, my friend, she was mesmerized. She said, He eats like that every time? I said, yes. He's a growing boy. That is the stuff.
• [00:53:53] FEMALE_1: Are there any family recipes that you still have or have been passed down?
• [00:53:58] Irene Loo: You know, [NOISE] I was rather pampered, I have to say because when I was in Singapore, we had maids. During my time. Well, now there are still are made in Singapore, but they come from the Philippines and from Indonesia. But when I was growing up, we had made Singapore maid. They did all the cooking. Sometimes I didn't watch them, so I learned a few things, but not really, but I have favorite Singapore foods.
• [00:54:41] FEMALE_1: Like what?
• [00:54:44] Irene Loo: There are too many. People will think I'm greedy if I keep on making list, and you wouldn't know what they are unless I describe them in detail to you, but one of my favorite is Pierre, and there's olwa, and there's is [inaudible 00:55:03] many different kinds. [inaudible 00:55:09] , you wouldn't know. [LAUGHTER] I keep on going and you wonder, what are these things, you have to look it up online, then I will describe to you.
• [00:55:21] FEMALE_1: Now, when you think back on your school years, were there any important social historical events?
• [00:55:36] Irene Loo: Social, yes because it was in the '60s, it was a great liberating period. With the advent of the pill, I think a lot of young women became free from the constraints and fears of pregnancy. There was a lot more freedom, sexual freedom. That is about the one big thing that I can think about. Then of course, the presence of beetles and all that that help to add flavor to the '60s. I would think of the '60s as a great liberating period. That was the first time I came to the States. I came to the States in '68 on the National Science Foundation Scholarship. I went to Brandeis for a whole year and I saw things that I never thought I would ever see in Singapore. I was haunted by this song before I came here. It was about San Francisco, and there was one part it says with a flower in her hair. It's a beautiful song, and I thought I have to go to San Francisco. The first stop in the United States was in Hawaii. I was so unimpressed with Hawaii I know that, my goodness, this is exactly like Singapore. I don't care for Hawaii at all. Then I landed in San Francisco.
• [00:57:36] FEMALE_1: So different.
• [00:57:38] Irene Loo: It was lovely. There's subs and one of the first places I went to was Haight Ashbury. You know what that is?
• [00:57:48] FEMALE_1: No.
• [00:57:50] Irene Loo: Is a hippie concentration area. It opened by, people were smoking pot and drugs openly. I couldn't believe it. Then after that, I went to Denver. I had to visit somebody at the University of Colorado because I was collaborating with one of the professors about a book. I thought this is the most beautiful place in the world. Colorado.
• [00:58:30] FEMALE_1: It is beautiful.
• [00:58:31] Irene Loo: It is so beautiful because you don't have mountains in Singapore. That was that and the weather was nice. After that I flew to Chicago. I had a very scary situation in Chicago where I was almost molested, and then I flew up to Boston and then to Brandeis.
• [00:58:59] FEMALE_1: You saw a lot of the country?
• [00:59:03] Irene Loo: I did. I was in my 20s and 30s. You'll do the same thing too.
• [00:59:09] FEMALE_1: I hope so.
• [00:59:10] Irene Loo: I hitchhiked in Europe for six months with a backpack.
• [00:59:14] FEMALE_1: Really?
• [00:59:14] Irene Loo: Yes.
• [00:59:15] FEMALE_1: By yourself?
• [00:59:17] Irene Loo: By myself, who would want to come with me? [LAUGHTER] No, by myself. In fact, it was after my return from the United States after spending a year. My brother lived in England, my parents separated and she was in England. First of all, I've went to England and I spent three months there going all over England, Britain. Then the other three months were on the continent of Europe.
• [00:59:47] FEMALE_1: It sounds like a great time.
• [00:59:49] Irene Loo: It was. [LAUGHTER]
• [00:59:50] FEMALE_1: Was it scary or?
• [00:59:53] Irene Loo: No, it wasn't scary. Sometimes I was lonely because I was on my own and I was poor, but I had a Eurail pass. When I needed to sleep, I'll do Eurail train and then I'll sleep at the train and then find myself the next morning in a different country. But it was like that. It was exciting. I didn't know why I was so brave, guess I was stupid.
• [01:00:27] FEMALE_1: That does take a lot of courage.
• [01:00:29] Irene Loo: I think it's because I was unaware of the dangers. I met lots of interesting people.
• [01:00:38] FEMALE_1: I bet you did.
• [01:00:39] Irene Loo: Lots and lots of interesting people. Especially in France, you buy baguette. They're so inexpensive and so utterly delicious, their crusty on the outside, and soft and white and chewy at the inside. They were so good. You buy some lunch meats. You have wine. A bottle of wine which was cheaper than Coca-Cola.
• [01:01:14] FEMALE_1: Really?
• [01:01:14] Irene Loo: Yes. Why would you want to buy Coke? You buy wine? The local wines. You buy of grapes or somewhere that apricots or whatever fruits. You go to a park and you eat. It was good simple life. The best sausages, bratwurst was in Germany. They give it to you on a hot dog bun, but how hot dog buns at yucky. But these are real nice solid bread, and you had this juicy bratwurst and pilled with sauerkraut. Very nice sauerkraut. I think they cook it with pork or something, I don't know but it tasted good. You would just get into it. It's so good. I could only afford food like that. I could go to a four-star restaurant and eat. But it was good.
• [01:02:26] MALE_2: Making me so hungry right now. [LAUGHTER]
• [01:02:28] Irene Loo: But it will be lunch hour not too long for some pizza for lunch.
• [01:02:35] FEMALE_1: Is there anything else you want to say about your college or right after life?
• [01:02:43] Irene Loo: When I went to college at University of Singapore, during those years, I wanted to be free. That was so important to me. I didn't want to be financially dependent on my father, so I decided to apply for a scholarship, and I did at this board meeting. I'm a chemistry major but I loved journalism. At this board meeting, I explained that this is what I wanted to do, and then the board chairman said to me, unfortunately, we are not offering any scholarships for journalism, and we don't think that journalism is a fit career for a woman. Well, they could say that in those days, they could. Not now, now you'll be in trouble.
• [01:04:00] FEMALE_1: You can never say that now.
• [01:04:01] Irene Loo: But basically, that was what he said. I was so disappointed, I was crash. Then he said, "But we do have a teaching position in chemistry at such as school." "I'll take it." That's what I said, and they let me take it and so I landed in the school.
• [01:04:26] FEMALE_1: That worked out that well.
• [01:04:29] Irene Loo: Yeah, I liked young people very much and so I had a good rapport with my students. Chemistry here I come.
• [01:04:37] FEMALE_1: That's good. That's all we're going to cover today.
• [01:04:42] Irene Loo: Thank you.
• [01:04:43] FEMALE_1: Thank you so much. This was great. Now we're going to talk about just after your education and when you started the workforce and started a family and all that. You said after you finished high school, you went to college in Singapore, is that correct?
• [01:04:59] Irene Loo: Yes. I went to the University of Singapore, which is a rather elite school because too many people vie to get in there because not everybody is wealthy enough to go to Australia or England or to the States. It was the one and only university in Singapore, and so there was a lot of competition to go in. I like to say I got in by the back door. [LAUGHTER]
• [01:05:34] FEMALE_1: Is that why you are the girl in Singapore?
• [01:05:38] Irene Loo: I spent my teenage years and my young adult years in Singapore. Singapore is very special for me. I still have friends there, and I went back last year in November and spent a month there. It was just wonderful with a capital W.
• [01:06:01] FEMALE_1: Then after you finish college, did you stay there and did you move around?
• [01:06:04] Irene Loo: I worked for a short while. Actually, I was on the scholarship of teaching scholarship at the university, which meant that after I graduated, then I had to work for the government for five years and they wanted me to teach. You know what? Chemistry, of course. The way I got this chemistry scholarship was quite a little different. I never wanted to do chemistry or any of the hard sciences. What I really wanted was to be in journalism. I went before this board, all these stern looking people looking at you and you had to state why you wanted to do whatever it is you wished, and I put it in my spiel for journalism.
• [01:06:55] MALE_2: I'm going to stop you, I'm sorry but sirens are pretty loud.
• [01:07:01] FEMALE_1: [inaudible 01:07:01]
• [01:07:01] MALE_2: I'm sorry.
• [01:07:02] Irene Loo: That's okay. It's not your fault.
• [01:07:04] FEMALE_1: [inaudible 01:07:04] necessarily a sensitive life.
• [01:07:14] FEMALE_3: As long as okay. All those sirens.
• [01:07:14] MALE_2: [inaudible 01:07:14]
• [01:07:15] Irene Loo: Previously you could even pick up people talking the next table, I remember.
• [01:07:19] MALE_3: [inaudible 01:07:19] was extremely well.
• [01:07:22] Irene Loo: Really? Oh.
• [01:07:27] MALE_3: Still there.
• [01:07:28] FEMALE_4: Tell us when we can get there.
• [01:07:34] MALE_3: Yes, still here. There we go.
• [01:07:38] FEMALE_4: You were saying.
• [01:07:38] Irene Loo: Yeah. I appear before this board of directors and I say I would like to get into journalism and they let me state my spiel about why I should be in journalism. Then finally the head stopped me and he said, we have those scholarships to offer you in journalism, but we have for chemistry. I was so desperate about wanting to be free of my parents. I wanted to be on my own, so I said I'll take it.
• [01:08:13] FEMALE_4: Yeah.
• [01:08:14] Irene Loo: That's how I landed in chemistry.
• [01:08:17] FEMALE_4: You told us little about this.
• [01:08:18] Irene Loo: Did I?
• [01:08:18] FEMALE_4: Yeah.
• [01:08:21] Irene Loo: I started teaching chemistry for the most part.
• [01:08:28] FEMALE_4: I'd like you to tell me a little about your marriage and family life. Were you talking about the [inaudible 01:08:33]?
• [01:08:35] Irene Loo: My husband Ming is a Singapore born Chinese, but he studied in the States. At the time when I met him, he had gone to Purdue and he had a bachelor's and master's degrees in engineering. He had worked for two years in Chicago at this place called Interlake Steel. He designed some at that time, this was in the late '60s, automatic strapping machines and for which he was highly promoted. Anyway, he came back to Singapore. When he came back to Singapore, he couldn't get a job. His father's friend who owned a confectionary in town offered him a standby job. This engineer from Purdue was learning how to bake ice cakes and decorate cakes for a number of months. Some of his friends who had similarly graduated, they worked in factories producing amunitions for the Vietnam War, and Ming absolutely refused to do so. He was really poor at that time because decorating cakes didn't get much money. Anyway, then he joined the University of Singapore finally and that was when I met him.
• [01:10:19] FEMALE_4: Okay.
• [01:10:21] Irene Loo: It was a good time. I met all the young professors and all that. Actually, I met him at the French Film Festival, but what really endeared him to me was the fact that he plays the recorder beautifully, and he would be with English [inaudible 01:10:47] Greensleeves and music like that. It was very beautiful.
• [01:10:55] FEMALE_4: What was it like when you were dating?
• [01:11:01] Irene Loo: Well, I don't know what it is like dating now, but we went to movies. We went out to eat in nice hip restaurants, hip at that time with no log discerned out. We went to parties, we went to various places. One time we took two weeks off. I had a VW and so did he, a beetle.
• [01:11:28] FEMALE_4: Okay.
• [01:11:29] Irene Loo: From Singapore, if you can visualize Singapore, I don't know how much you know about Malaysia. I'm drawing Malaysia, I know it like that. It's a peninsula right at the very tip at a point, and that point is Singapore Island. We got into my beetle and we drove all along the East Coast of Malaysia, which is much less developed than the West Coast. It was one of the most wonderful experiences ever. If you can picture miles and miles of pristine beaches, white sand, black sand or yellow sand depending upon the soil strata, and coconut pops all along the coast. There was one place in a little further up north called Tringanul which many people had named the Beach of Passionate Love because it was so beautiful. We drove all along the coastline and we drove into Thailand into this place called Su-ngai Kolok. There was a village and we had a wonderful meal there. I remember a little, I think it must be an otter. I don't know whether otters have to be in water all the time, but there was this little animal, [LAUGHTER] so cute. He was begging and bothering us. Well, I would say bother because that's got a negative connotation, but we played with him. I even had turtle eggs, have you ever had turtle eggs?
• [01:13:18] FEMALE_4: No.
• [01:13:19] Irene Loo: They don't have a shell, it's a leathery skin, but you have to break it open and then it looks like a chicken's egg. We had a wonderful time, I wish I could do that again, but I don't think I can with my husband because he has back problems and there's no way he can drive that distance.
• [01:13:44] FEMALE_4: Yeah. Tell me about your engagement and whatever.
• [01:13:54] Irene Loo: It's a bit odd, awkward. My husband comes from a very Christian family. His grandfather was a Presbyterian pastor, and not just Presbyterian pastor, but he was very orthodox. They wouldn't even drink tea because it's got caffeine. Can you imagine a Chinese not drinking tea? That was the family. That was his grandfather, not his farther, but some of it trickled down to the family. When my husband's family comes from Southern China, from Shantou. China has many different groups, he belongs to a certain group called [inaudible 01:14:52] . When his parents learned that we wanted to get married, they were up in arms and they said absolutely no. They gave their reasons. First, I wasn't Chinese, that's a big no. I wasn't Christian, no.
• [01:15:14] MALE_3: [inaudible 01:15:14] one of those.
• [01:15:17] Irene Loo: Yeah, I can hear that.
• [01:15:18] MALE_3: I just heard everything you said. I want you to tell me talking about that.
• [01:15:27] Irene Loo: Yeah, I can hear you [OVERLAPPING] don't worry.
• [01:15:30] MALE_3: Every little sound it picks up.
• [01:15:32] Irene Loo: That's all right, don't worry, I'm easy.
• [01:15:37] MALE_3: I can even hear the table.
• [01:15:38] Irene Loo: Tell me.
• [01:15:40] MALE_3: Because we're filming you, that's okay. Any sounds you make, it's alright.
• [01:15:44] Irene Loo: But then, you don't need a squeaking table. I'll fold my arms.
• [01:15:51] MALE_3: No, it's fine I'm saying like that's a powerful it is I can use here like.
• [01:15:56] Irene Loo: I could hear too, footsteps and thuds.
• [01:16:00] FEMALE_4: You can put your arms that's fine
• [01:16:07] Irene Loo: Then I won't do this, they did not want Meng and I to get married because I'm not Chinese and that's a big no, I wasn't a Christian no. What else? The parents were trying to arrange a marriage between my to be husband with another Chinese woman who had a master's degree from New Zealand.
• [01:16:41] FEMALE_4: I'm passing me via Zoom and we talked about your whole life.
• [01:16:48] Irene Loo: It wasn't my whole life, but that's all right. [LAUGHTER] The segments, fragments of my life that I can remember. [LAUGHTER]
• [01:16:56] FEMALE_4: Now we're going to focus more on your younger youth, like youth and young adult life and your independence and coming of age. To begin with, you can be as specific, detailed, or vague as you want and you can feel free to expand on any topic. Or if you don't want to answer a question, that's completely fine, and you can end the interview at any point if you want. Just to go over what we've already talked about where and when were you born?
• [01:17:27] Irene Loo: I was born in Japan in Kobe, and I was born in 1938, that was just the year before Japan entered into war with China. So already there were lots of deprivations, one of the things that I couldn't get as a child was milk and so I was raised on soy milk. I guess since I'm already 76 and relatively healthy, it had no bad effects on me. Another thing I think the first meat that I tasted I was about eight years old. I lived through the war in Japan when I say the war, it's World War 2 and it's an experience I wouldn't want anybody else to have.
• [01:18:20] FEMALE_4: Yeah.
• [01:18:20] Irene Loo: We starved and there were times when there was food available, it was mainly just two things sweet potatoes and pumpkins. Those are the only two types of foods available. In fact, my early childhood is a blur the two painful memories that I carry with me even to this day is I was always hungry, and I was always cold in Japan.
• [01:19:03] FEMALE_4: You grew up in Japan, you were born and raised there?
• [01:19:06] Irene Loo: Yeah, I left Japan but I was about seven years old. And up to that point, Japanese was the only language I could speak, and then from there, we went to Singapore. I don't know whether you heard anything about Singapore lately, but the Prime Minister of Singapore Mr. Lee Kuan Yew he died a few days ago. And world leaders moaned on his loss and there were quite a number of write-ups in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and such like. Anyway, we went to Singapore, and during the war, the Japanese military was pretty hard on the local population, and so to speak Japanese in Singapore and this is in 1946, 47 was dangerous. My father forbade us to speak Japanese, the only language that we knew, and had us learn Malay which is the language of Indonesia and it's the lingua franca of that whole area. And I learned a smattering of Chinese because Singapore is 75% Chinese. Because we were young, it was relatively easy for us to pick up a couple of new languages. I couldn't still speak English then but then my father was at one time a professor of linguistics at the University of Kobe, and he taught us English at home. But he was working, and so the amount of time he had to teach us was pretty limited but we survived. Children are very resilient and that was the word I was looking for. Today English is the most predominant language that I speak, I also speak Japanese and I speak Malay, I understand quite a bit of Chinese so that's it. I learned French for five years and German for three years. [LAUGHTER] There was a time when I could read French. I read for example let me see, Bonjour Tristesse by Francoise Sagan, I won't be able to read it I forgot everything. Language is something that you've got to hear and be able to speak.
• [01:21:50] FEMALE_4: At this point in your life when you moved to Singapore, who were you living with?
• [01:21:54] Irene Loo: With my parents, we lived in an apartment because there was a critical housing shortage. I think those were the best years of my life but it became the late '50s, I remember Elvis Presley. He was such a hit and my father frowned on it, he wouldn't let me listen to Elvis Presley that we didn't have TV not yet then. Because this would be like in the late '50s and we didn't have TV. But I remember seeing him in the movies and boy, my father thought it was most indecent. I mean the hip movements of Elvis Presley, but I liked it very much. Very shortly after we got a TV and that of course came the Beatles. Wow, they're something, I just fell in love with them too. People like Simon and Garfunkel, I don't know whether these names mean anything to you.
• [01:23:00] FEMALE_4: I don't know.
• [01:23:00] Irene Loo: Are you familiar? Simon and Garfunkel, Peter, Paul, and Mary, Miriam McCabe, and such like. It was a period of great freedom, we felt personally liberated. We tried many things, some things that I would frown on today [LAUGHTER] but I enjoyed myself very much with my friends. We were experimenting all that time. I remember also there was a book I can't remember the title, but it was by Hermann Hesse. He introduced quite revolutionary ideas, and even people like Aldous Huxley in this Brave New World. You read any of those? No. That's something too for you to delve into it at a later time baby.
• [01:23:59] FEMALE_4: At this point, do you have any distinct memories that really stand out?
• [01:24:05] Irene Loo: We traveled a lot as a group of young people, me and my friends. We traveled the length and breadth of Singapore and Malaysia using trains and buses because we didn't have cars, none of us had cars. We were too young, and I think in Singapore you start driving when you are 21. Yeah, and so none of us were of age to drive cars and even if we could, our parents would not let us have cars. I remembered my first airplane ride, the first time I sat at a plane, it was to go to Cambodia and I was at the airport, and then coming down the runway was this little thing that looked like a bee just flopping down on the runway, and that was the plane, Royal Air Cambodge. It took forever to get to Phnom Penh in Cambodia. I had a good time in Cambodia, we saw so many temples. Because I had studied French in school, and the foreign language spoken in Cambodia was French. I got used to my French and me and my friend we met a young handsome Cambodian man. I remember his state to this day, he's Banbury, and he had studied at the Sorbonne in France, and he played the violin so beautifully. Banbury took us all over Phnom Penh. We saw things that we would never have seen had we been as two girls on our own. The first time we met Banbury, my friend, her name was Iwa, we were together under road at the crossroads. We were looking at a map to see where different things were, and that's when he came and stood by us and he said, can I help you? That's how it started. That was good. Travel has always been a great pleasure for me, and I saw a lot of Southeast Asia. We made as a family, many trips to Japan, to Hong Kong, but there's one place I've never been to and that's Bali. It's a hop-step, a jump from Singapore, and when I had foreign friends, there were some British who used to come to Singapore to teach English. Every time we had a break from school, I was teaching at the school and they wanted to go to Bali and other places nearby. I said Bali, I don't want to go to Bali. It's right at my doorstep, I can always go there. I want to go to Europe, I want to go to Paris, and so on. But now that I'm in the States, Bali is half a world away from me and I regret so much that I never gave myself the opportunity to go to Bali just because it was at my doorstep.
• [01:27:46] FEMALE_4: Then, what was your life in college?
• [01:27:52] Irene Loo: College, it was based on a British system where the first year you read four subjects, that's was the term that they use. You read four subjects. I was in what? Is called the science stream, and so I did biology, chemistry, math, and physics. Well, those were the only four classes that I had to take. I dropped physics like a hot potato in my second year because I did not know at that time that I suffered very much from astigmatic, but I didn't know. Whenever we had physics experiments in the lab, I remember especially when it was on light, we had to see an object through a system of different lenses and you have to look at it, and see that they're all in what they call in parallax, all as one uniform thing. I could never see it in parallax, and I remember my physics instructor coming and he threw his arms up in the air and he was so happy when I dropped physics the following year. Because he probably also was not aware that there was a condition called, he never suspected that I was astigmatic, so he didn't realize how difficult it was for me to do those special light experiments. But physics has saved me because we did a lot of experiments on electricity, for example, and I'm good to jump. Many years later, one day in the States, I had to vacuum the house because my husband was bringing his boss over for dinner, and of course, the vacuum cleaner had to break. It wouldn't work and it was on a Sunday, I believe. I was desperate and he was not around. I gingerly removed the flap, and there on the flap itself was a circuit diagram. I remembered, that's the resistance, that's this, that's that, and see it and correlate that circuit diagram to the wiring that I saw on the vacuum cleaner, I was able to fix it.
• [01:30:30] FEMALE_4: Really?
• [01:30:33] Irene Loo: Yes, and I never felt so proud of myself because usually I delegated all such work to my husband, but that day, either I did it or the boss came to a dirty house. I was desperate enough to want to fix it and I did it. It isn't so with computers today with me, I just can't figure many things out.
• [01:31:03] FEMALE_4: You said you love to travel?
• [01:31:06] Irene Loo: Yes.
• [01:31:07] FEMALE_4: Are any memorable vacations specifically in your college life?
• [01:31:12] Irene Loo: I traveled that during my college years back right after my colleges right after I graduated. I was really fortunate enough to win the National Science Foundation Scholarship, it was for a year and I could choose whichever college here in the States provided the college accepted me. That same year, in fact, I was awarded two scholarships one by National Science Foundation here in the state, and the other by the Rotary West Club of Singapore. If I accepted the Rotary Club of Singapore scholarship, I would have gone to the Weizmann Institute in Rehovot Israel. This was in 1968 or thereabout and Israel had just had a six-day war with some Arab countries and I thought why would I want to go to a war-torn country? But that was not the real reason. The real reason was hippies and the United States had all the wonderful things I had heard about it, so I accepted the National Science Foundation scholarship, and my then boyfriend who's now my husband, he said, well, since you rejected the Israeli scholarship, why don't we go to Jewish school here in the United States? I say, which one? He said Brandeis in Wayfair Boston. I said, okay, I'll go, I applied and I got in. The first stop from Singapore to the United States was in Hawaii. Who cared about Hawaii? It looked exactly like Singapore. So there was no thrill whatsoever. Then my first stop, it was in San Francisco. Oh, it was so lovely. Again I fell in love with San Francisco. When I landed there the first place I went to was Haight Ashbury. That was a hippie enclave, and even before you reached there, you can smell the sweet smell of marijuana and all that. I was in my 20s and it just enthralled me. I spent a few days in San Francisco that the next city was Boulder, Colorado because I was supposed to interview with Dr. William Mayer who was conducting a chemical CSCS, Chemical Sciences Curriculum Studies, and he was to show me what the new studies in chemistry word that I could bring back to Singapore. I think it was a very beautiful place. He had his secretary drive me through the mountains. I don't remember the name of the mountain. Maybe it was Bare Mountains thereabouts. But the air was so clean and clear and the smell of the evergreens. I thought I was in God's country. From there I flew to Chicago. I liked the city, and I stayed at the [inaudible 01:34:55] because I didn't have much money by the [inaudible 01:34:57] was right in the center of Chicago. I believe it was one of the side streets of Michigan Avenue. It was in the evening, but it was since it was summer, was still very bright. I decided to take a walk through Grant Park and I did, but everybody, I guessed that I was not from the state because I had my camera slung over my shoulder and stuff like that. As I was walking through one of the paths lying by trees on both sides, I was almost molested by a guy. I should have been wiser because I saw him between the trees looking, but I guess I was naive because in Singapore, a woman can walk the streets of Singapore at 02:00 AM in the morning and nothing will happen to her, nothing. But I was young and I was strong and when he started coming, I ran for my life. I don't know how fast I ran, but I ran and I remember from grandpa up to the street level, I had to run down some steps, almost stumbled in doing so, and then I got onto the street level, I was safe because there are lots of cars and people. I saw a police officer, a cop, and I went up to him and I told him what had happened. You know what? He was so sympathetic, he said, why were you walking alone at whatever it was, 7:00 PM in Grant Park? Who does that? We do that in Singapore. That was my first interaction with a cop, and I guess I just didn't feel good about it. Then from there, I went to Boston to work there, and because of that incident, I was late arriving at Logan, and so my ride had disappeared and I took a cab all the way down to Logan and Brandeis was one super school. I had many new experiences there in the theater. Oh, I have to tell you about this one. I remember it was maybe the second or third night at Brandeis. In the middle of the night, I could hear shuffling of feet outside, and I thought, oh, that's straight was very late at night, maybe like 11:00 PM,12 midnight. I don't remember. It was very late, and I looked out the window of the dorm that I would stay and to my surprise, I saw a whole bunch of naked people, young men and women, running through the campus. I didn't know what whatever it was. Oh my goodness, where have I landed myself into? [LAUGHTER] That was one experience. What do they call that?
• [01:38:22] FEMALE_4: Streaking.
• [01:38:23] Irene Loo: Streaking. A whole lot of them not one, a whole bunch of them, men and women. [LAUGHTER]
• [01:38:33] Irene Loo: It was strange, but in a nice way. I don't know if I ever mentioned to you about an incident that happened in the chemistry lab at Brandeis?
• [01:38:49] FEMALE_4: I don't think so.
• [01:38:50] Irene Loo: All right. You can always delete it. Anyway.
• [01:38:53] FEMALE_4: Okay.
• [01:38:54] Irene Loo: In the chem lab, there were very few of us. I think there were no more than 8-10 students and I was the only female in there. The rest were all guys. This is 1968, girls never took chemistry then, I guess. Anyway, we worked on long lab benches and because there were so few of us, we each worked at one lab station. On one bench, your partner sit, it's not really a partner, another student will work in the center and you will work in the center but facing each other. I remember we were trying to set up some experiment and then this guy who was up. The guys, they were not friendly. How you doing? Have a good day, that's about it. Anyway, this guy suddenly in the middle of an experiment, he shouted D, G, I, F. I thought, oh my goodness, maybe it's an earthquake or maybe fire. I've never heard of that expression. As he said that, [NOISE] he ran out of the lab and down the hallway. I thought, maybe it's something. I ran after him down dark hallway, double glass doors, and then I saw him enter a side door. I ran for all that I was worth and when I entered that because side don't, I suddenly saw urinals in that room. There was a guy busy on the urinal [LAUGHTER]. I thought, what happened? I dashed out. Then I remember I was wearing red skirt and I thought everybody will know. I ran all the way back to the dorms, changed my outfit completely and I had a ponytail them. You have to tie your ponytail up because they doing the chem lab. I didn't care, I let go and hit my head coming down and I walked nonchalantly back into the lab as though nothing had ever happened [LAUGHTER]. Those are some of the things.
• [01:41:25] FEMALE_4: At this point, what was the relationship with your family like?
• [01:41:31] Irene Loo: My parents had separated like four years prior to that and because my sisters were all in England, they were sent to boarding schools much early on. I too went to a boarding school, but for just two years and hated it. Hated it and hated it. But my mother, after the separation, she went and joined my sisters in England. It was rather fractured and somewhat lonely, but I have a lot of friends with whom I played around, mixed around with. It was, I didn't miss my parents then.
• [01:42:15] FEMALE_4: How often did you see them?
• [01:42:17] Irene Loo: I lived with my father. He had his house and I did see why I should pay rent to rent an apartment. That was not the norm than. Today of course, young people, once they graduate from college, they would have their own apartment and so on. But that was not the norm in Singapore then. You still stayed with your parents until you got married. I wasn't married at all then.
• [01:42:48] FEMALE_4: How do you think your upbringing made you stand out while you're in college?
• [01:42:57] Irene Loo: I grew up at a time when there was very great depreciation, no food, no heat in the house. I had absolutely no toys. I made my own toys. Because everybody else around me was in that same situation, we became pretty innovative and we never had the sense of entitlement, which I think after many years of teaching in the United States, I think is one of the greatest drawbacks holding students back. This sense of entitlement that you have a right to education. You have a right to so many things. I never had any of that feeling. What ever I wanted I knew that only Irene Loo, then ours Irene Kan had to get for herself. I think that has been my salvation.
• [01:44:19] FEMALE_4: Then did any other important lessons there with you throughout your childhood?
• [01:44:26] Irene Loo: I never reflected on that, but I'm sure I was appalled when I first came here to the States. I opened the newspapers and had all these ads for different stores. The first thing you see on the top of the page is safe and it says whatever the X number of dollars were and so I didn't thought, how could you save by making yourself spent money? [LAUGHTER] I thought it was strange. I don't feel a need for materials staff. I don't feel a need to have 20 pairs of shoes or a whole huge wardrobe of clothes and so on. One thing I enjoy is eating and I like small amounts of food, but prepared very well. When friends were to say, let's go to such and such a place, a pizza place, it's a buffet, you can have as many pizzas as you like and I was thinking, how many slices of pizza can you eat? I can only two at the very most. Why should I go to [LAUGHTER] a place where people go watch themselves with food and to this day, but I see some anybody with that plate piled high with food makes my stomach turn.
• [01:46:02] FEMALE_4: Also, how do you think your childhood influenced who became as a young adult in addition to what you're saying about being innovative?
• [01:46:12] Irene Loo: Basically the same thing. You make things happen for yourself by working for it. I never expected anything to fall on my lap. I think that's a very important aspect of survival that you initiate and you make things happen. When I was teaching here at Pioneer, kids will say, Mrs. Loo, the problem you gave us can not be solved, it's too difficult da, da. One time, I was a little upset and I said, you make me feel as though when I was born, I knew chemistry already. That's not it. I said there were many times I used to cry over my chemistry problems because they were so difficult to solve. But when I solved it, I felt so exhilarated. I baked a small achievement, so you guys have to either try and do it to the best of your ability and if you can't I'll be more than [inaudible]