By Soo Ewe Jin

PETALING JAYA, MALAYSIA: For Dr Konrad Ng and his wife, Maya Soetoro, it was a bittersweet moment as they celebrated Barack Obama's election as the 44th president of the United States.

They could not be in Chicago to be with Obama as he made his stirring victory speech in front of a crowd estimated at close to a quarter of a million. They had to watch this defining moment in history, like millions of people all over the world, live on TV from an apartment in Honolulu. The apartment belonged to Madelyn Payne Dunham, Maya's and Barack's maternal grandmother, who died on Monday of cancer, aged 84.

Memorial for Obama's grandmother who passed away on Nov 2

"Grandma Dunham was a tremendous figure in our lives," Ng said in an e-mail response to The Star. "To honour her spirit, we watched the election as she would have watched it: quietly in her Honolulu apartment. It was a moment filled with joy and sadness."

Throughout the campaign period, the world witnessed how Dunham proved to be such a central character in Obama's life. Pictures of how deeply affected the president-elect was when his beloved "Toot" (a shortened version of Tutu, a Hawaiian word for grandmother or older female relative) died were splashed across newspapers all over the world.

Obama lived in her two-bedroom Honolulu apartment from 1971 to 1979 and visited her in hospital there just a week or so ago, in the final days of his campaigning. In his memoir Dreams From My Father, Obama described his grandmother as "suspicious of overwrought sentiments or overblown claims, content with common sense." He also called her "a trailblazer of sorts, the first woman vice-president of a local bank".

"What Toot believed kept her going were the needs of her grandchildren and the stoicism of her ancestors," Obama wrote. "So long as you kids do well, that's all that really matters."

Dunham certainly saw her grandson do really well, although she missed his ascension to the highest office in the country by just a day. A makeshift memorial was set up below the apartment and nearby residents have been placing flowers and notes of encouragement.

Malaysian student Siaw Mei Li and her friend were among those who came by with flowers. Said Siaw: "What I really wish we could've said to her is, "We're so grateful for what you've done!"

On the election itself, Siaw, who is doing her masters at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, said it had been a poignant experience to observe the election from Obama's hometown, where many people feel such a strong sense of connection to the man and his family.

"At the same time, I rejoiced online with other teary, non-American friends across the globe when his victory was announced. "He may not be our president, but we see this as a defining moment that also belongs to the rest of the world, including Malaysia," she said.

Ng, a professor at the University of Hawaii, teaches at its Academy for Creative Media. His family was originally from Sabah. Maya was born to Lolo Soetoro, an Indonesian businessman, and Ann Dunham, who is also Obama's mother.