The Diary of Anne Ku
31 August 2000 Thursday cloudy, starting to get cold in the evenings
FRANCES, THE ARTIST
For the final entry of the first section of my on-line diary, I toast a happy birthday tribute to my talented sister Frances.
| book author | pianist, Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1 | painter |
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It's kind of hard to believe that she could be good at so many things. She told me that the first high point of her life was receiving a standing ovation after playing Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto at university. The second pinnacle was her book signing event. She wrote and published two books in one year - the first a collection of her political cartoons, the second a cartoon-illustrated book on learning English. Both were bilingual in English and Chinese. A year after her stint as an author, she re-invented herself once again - as a water colour artist in Maui. When I visited her last October, I challenged her to do an oil painting of myself, thus opening up another opportunity to excel: self-portraits of people who want to leave behind a legacy in oil.
My father writes:
I cannot but recall the day you were born. We, the three of us, were living in a one-bedroom house provided by the First Girls High only 10 min walking distance from the campus. Your Mom was taken to the Provincial Gyn-Obs Hospital the day before. One morning Anne woke up and found she was alone with me on the bed. She asked and was told Mom was in the restroom. Soon she saw an ox outside the door. There were lots of squatters, shacks around. Soon she found she began to have a new company--a baby sister...We later moved to a new place. Many houses at the old site were later destroyed in a fire and demolished. Today, the old site is the address of the Foreign Ministry, the Central Library.