One unexpected event that took place in 1996 was when our parents were informed to vacate the house at 15 Tupai Road by the new owner, Mr. Leong Kum Weng. The previous owner, Mr. Manecksha, had told our parents that they could stay in the house as long as they like as he had no intention of selling it. However, his son who inherited this property when his father died, sold it without informing our parents. Our parents had no choice but to vacate the house which they had lived for almost 54 years. They received some compensation from the new owner before they finally left the house in December of 1996.
In the beginning, our parents stayed at Chew Kiat's home in Bukit Mertajam. But, they dearly missed all their old friends, the food and the environment they had been so used to that they decided to move back to Taiping. In September 1997, they returned to Taiping where they had rented a single-storey terrace house at 237, Lorong 1, Taman Bersatu Kampung Boyan.
Though they stayed by themselves, we would visit them regularly and take them out for meals, shopping, visiting friends and relatives etc. Those of us who lived out-station would come back very often to be with them. Even father's younger sister, auntie Sui Wan and her husband came to pay them a visit. That was the last time we saw auntie Sui Wan. She passed away on December 27, 1999.
While in Kampung Boyan, our mother would often asked me to take her house hunting as it was her greatest desire to have a house of her own. We surveyed many of the new as well as the old housing schemes in and around Taiping but could not find one that suits her. This dream of hers was suddenly shattered in the following year.