Family trees

A family of trees.. haha, this is really taking things literally, ey? :P

Don't you ever wonder where you came from? Who your ancestors were? Wouldn't it be exciting to know?

The furthest up the family tree that I really know would be my grandparents. I have to admit that as a young generation these days, I don't really know every relative that I may have. Sometimes, when you go to the mall with your parents, they met someone and their family. They started talking, asking how they are doing and how long they have not seen each other. You drew a blank, trying to remember who this person is. Sounds familiar? Hehehe.. Sometimes, these people can be your second cousins or third cousins or a person who you are related to, but the family link has gone further and further apart with the arrival of newer generations down the line. That person's and my great grandparents may be related or first cousins and so that makes us, what, forth cousins? Family trees can be very complicated indeed but fascinating as well.

I know my first cousins quite well, as to be expected. As we go further, I do know some second cousins, aunties and uncles quite well and can recognise most of them though I may not remember some of their names. Then, speaking of third cousins, I only know a few, whom can be counted only by hand, haha.. as to be expected. We have to rely on our parents to tell us who these people are. I would usually be able to remember them after meeting them a couple of times in weddings, family functions and so on. My mom is quite good at explaining who that person is and how we are related, but sometimes after quite a confusing explanation, my eyes would start to glaze over and I do forget at more occasions than actually remembering them, hahaha.. unless we get to meet that person again and again, then that would help very much.

Like I said, family trees are complicated stuff. Sometimes when you get to meet someone new, you get to know each other and somewhere down the line, a name popped up which is familiar to both of you, and from there on, you know that somehow the two of you are related.

I guess that we can't really help these things from happening. It is bound to happen. A lot of factors come into play, of course. Some may migrate to another country, some may live quite dispersed around the country. We are quite busy with our own daily lifes that we tend to be wrapped up in our own little worlds. That's just how it is.

Just a few days ago, my uncle was just telling us about some exciting news. Apparently, some uncle relatives of mine (from my mom's side) are compiling family information of our ancestry together with some relatives from Bongawan, Sabah. I know that we have some relatives in Bongawan. The last time that I ever visited Bongawan was in 1988, according to my parents. I was about 3 years old that time. I don't really remember much from that time period, hehe. Bongawan is quite far from Kota Kinabalu. I will try to dig up some photos from the old photo albums, haha.

From the information that they managed to compile, apparently, I am one of the descendent of Abu Bakar Pakir bin Lamudin, who can be considered as my great, great grandfather. According to them, there are now 8 generations of this family, living in Brunei and Sabah. So that probably makes me the 5th or 6th generation. I'm still quite confused by the whole thing, hmmm.. If that is the case, so that means I may have indirect grandchildren relatives somewhere! Haha, how exciting!

Abu Bakar Pakir's father, Lamudin (my great, great, great grandfather) had 5 children with an unidentified wife. Abu Bakar had 3 wives; the first was Noralam (Brunei), the second Tiamah (Brunei) and the third Ainun (Sabah).

With the first wife, he had 3 children. With the second wife, he had 1 daughter and with the third wife, he had 4 children. My current family came from his marriage with his second wife, Tiamah.

So Abu Bakar with his second wife had a daughter named Armah, who was my great grandmother. Armah, married my great grandfather, Ahmad bin Salleh, and had 7 children (2 of which died young). One of the children was my grandfather, Hj Durahim bin Ahmad. My grandpa married my grandmother, Hjh Pasah and they had 8 live children, one of which is my mother. Whew! That was quite confusing.

My uncle relatives managed to get the names of other relatives from the other marriages and their next generations and formed quite a complicated family trees and charts. Some of the charts are still incomplete. From the looks of it, Abu Bakar Pakir's family is very large. I only mentioned the names to which I am directly connected to. It would even be great if we could find more ancestries further up the chart. But of course it will not be an easy job, especially when the elder generations have passed away.

This is certainly an interesting discovery for me, so exciting indeed that I decided to share a bit of my family history with you. Who knows, maybe we could be related in some way, hehehe.