It was the name of a humble suburb north of Butterworth that got it all started. “Mata Kuching”, which I had mentioned in this column about two months ago, rang a bell in Bob Margolis, about 10,600km away in Yateley, not far from London, and he sent me an email asking about it.
“I am a member of the RAF (Royal Air Force) Butterworth and Penang Association through being at Butterworth from 1947 to 1952 with my father, a civilian weather forecaster at the base,” he wrote.
“The name ‘Mata Kuching’ has puzzled myself and the association archivist for several years. There are numerous references in various archive materials, but your article is the first to state clearly that it was a local name for what is now TUDM (Royal Malaysian Air Force) Butterworth.”
As it turned out, Margolis, a 74-year-old lecturer at the Mathematics and Computing Department at the United Kingdom Open University, is a regular visitor to Malaysia, having been here nine times since 1997. We met in Kuala Lumpur last Monday when he and companion Viv Addy had already finished their three-week tour of Ipoh and Penang.
“I come even when I have to pay my own fare. Malaysia is not perfect. But then, even the United Kingdom is not perfect.
“When I left, it was 3°C in London, and over here, it has been 34°C the past few days. We were in Penang for three weeks and the people said it was too hot. Well...”
Margolis was a little boy who even attended the local school in Butterworth when his father was hard at work at the RAF base, and it was with a very heavy heart that the family had to return to England when the posting ended in 1952 when he was 10 years old.
The first time he came back to Malaysia in 1997, he found the changes startling. At the time, the airport was still in Subang. And, when he came the second time five years later, the plane landed at the modern, sprawling KLIA in Sepang.
His visits became more regular thereafter, either in the course of work or as a tourist.
In 2004 for instance, he was here for two weeks to conduct studies
and make recommendations to the Kuala Lumpur Open University.
Margolis’ heart has always been with Penang where there are “big changes” taking place.
In 1950, he said, George Town stopped where Komtar (the 65-storey landmark which holds the heartbeat of the Penang government administration right in the city centre) is now. Now, there are buildings everywhere.
But, some things have remained the same, he noted, like the Penang Swimming Club and the Chinese Swimming Club in Tanjung Bungah, which brought great memories. One of the things that pleased him was the vast improvement to the public transport system, which is tourist-friendly. He showed me a travel card issued by Rapid Penang which, for just RM30, entitled the holder to travel anywhere within Penang in one week.
And, back to the inquiry Margolis made about Mata Kuching in his email two months ago: “I wonder if you could also clear up which of the various proposed translations of Mata Kuching is the best? Cat’s Eye seems very odd. It does fit the old spelling system for what is now ‘kucing’ but otherwise doesn’t have a lot to recommend it.
“That it might refer to the tree bearing the mata kucing fruit is a bit more plausible as perhaps the trees grew around the base? The theory (also used for Kuching in Sarawak) that it might be a corrupted form of a Chinese term meaning ‘old well’. The eye of a well could be it’s opening, I suppose, and it is plausible that there might be an old well on the site of the base.
“I found your article very, very interesting. My detailed knowledge of the base was in RAF days, before RAAF (Royal Australian Air Force) and RMAF. I apologise that my BM (Bahasa Malaysia) is kurang baik and not up to this sort of discussion.”
In my reply, I explained to Margolis that Mata Kuching used to be where Teluk Air Tawar is now.
The name is hardly used nowadays except for it being a parliamentary constituency in the election. But, that too, has now been changed to Bagan.
As for the origin of the name Mata Kuching, I told him I was not sure but it could be a shortened version of Permatang Mata Kuching, as the names of many villages around Butterworth seem to start with permatang followed by a fruit name — Permatang Durian, Permatang Manggis, Permatang Pauh, etc.
Mata Kuching is the Malay name for longan.
See you again, Bob.
Syed Nadzri is former NST group editor