It is a long read, decidedly. An even bigger issue is this – we published Part Two in February. We will be unkind to our readers if we offer no explainer.

Berlin appears in the heading because our narrator, Zubaidah Aziz, lives in Berlin. She arrived in Berlin on June 1 1978 to be married. Zubaidah’s father, Aziz Ishak, who was Malaysia’s first Agriculture Minister, accompanied her.

Aziz’s elder brother, Yusof Ishak, was Singapore’s first president. The brothers were born in Padang Gajah, near Kuala Terong, Perak. Their father Ishak Ahmad was a decorated Fisheries Department officer.

We will now publish Part Three and we have not brought in Zubaidah Aziz’s maternal side. We have made no mention of Zubaidah Aziz’s broadcasting career at RTM and TV3, and the Berlin Wall.

This story could very well go on to Part Five but this has to be done by August. Delaying it would be bad, on our part.

Part Three could well reach readers who have no inkling of Part One and Part Two, but these two articles could be assessed effortlessly.

We are pretty excited about this story for a number of reasons. Learning about the many personalities deliver us previously unknown perspectives and context. Our collective history must be narrated. We need more content. Lots of hard work have gone in nation building.

Story-telling and family ties and bonding. A nice concoction. Also clans. History, yes. Battle of ideas. Styling. ISA arrests. Politics. Journalism. Geopolitics. Careers. Places. Food too.

The series cover an exhaustive period, dating back to 1877. Names must be made familiar. Articles of this nature should rightly avoid bringing in too many names. We decided that it will be unkind to leave out names.

We also decided that personalities and titles of books that appeared in Part One and Part Two should be revisited in Part Three and beyond.

ApaKhabar added a line in Part Three that essentially acknowledge that not much journalism is required in piecing this together.

Zubaidah Aziz’s retention power is stunning.

The ApaKhabar reporter who has been interviewing Zubaidah Aziz wasn’t sure of her Penang-dialect and general Utara-speak abilities until they met up for a chat on July 2. The Northern diction is classy.

Perhaps, this actually represents a strategy: Part Three ends with a foray into the ongoing conversation on the history of Penang.

Sven-Amin, Zubaidah Aziz’s son, a speaker of the Northern dialect, should have appeared right at the end of Part Three. That will have to wait.