Girls Will Be Girls

So there we were nine damsels all in a row - from right *Dak Ijah, Dak Pe'ah, Dak Izah, Dak Ani, Dak Ji, Miss Twiggy, Dak Mah, Dak Cantik (can't recall the name - she was new)and Dak Rose.

*Dak is the Melaka shortform of "budak" used when referring to people younger or same age as you.

We were gathered in the tuckshop - as school canteens were known then - waiting patiently for the guest of honour to make his appearance.

This was quite an important occasion going by the formal baju kurungs almost everyone was wearing except for the two hostelites who were dressed in the fashion of the time - mini-skirt and short shift - mainly because they had to save their single pair of baju kurung for study period later at the hostel's Bilek Mentala'ah. It was 1968 and short Beatles mop was in. Miss Twiggy even had on her kasut beatle!

On the blackboard was chalked in decorative writing "CLIFF AND SHADOWS"

And I guess that was their music that was played on the school record-player.

Cliff Richard - Congratulations

 We were waiting for this man, Che'gu X ( I'm not sure what his name was. Sorry Che'gu if you happen to be reading this).

The young and dashing Che'gu was one of a pair of trainee Bahasa Melayu teachers who were posted to our school for their practical training after getting their degrees and then doing their education diplomas. Teachers with degrees were not too common then and were viewed as prized items and son-in-law material. This Che'gu was the more popular of the two with the girls perhaps because he looked better than the other and exuded charisma, whereas his colleague, who taught my class, bit with sarcastic humour and tended to disengage the students rather than draw us in to the subject at hand.

Be that as it may, for as long as I was studying at that school there had never been a farewell party held for any teacher except these two. And I suspect that it was only for Che'gu X that it was intended as it was mainly organised by the girls from the classes that he had taught, and I had heard only glowing accounts of his teaching style from them.

Looking again at those pictures....  gosh,  sophisticated minah jogets of the P.Ramlee movies we were indeed not. The one sitting in the chair next to where Che'gu was making his farewell speech was just too shy and had to turn her back away.

But like I said, this Che'gu had a natural charm and a way with words that could blow anyone's defences in his raja lawak fashion. I can't remember at all what he had said but just look at the effect he had in this picture.

Gone are the shyness and the "on best behaviour looks" and out came the shrieks and squeals, 3rd from right left bent over double crying, Dak Rose, Miss Twiggy, Dak Ji and a few others forgetting to close their mouths and Dak Ijah hurriedly getting her handkerchief out...

Hahaha I can't stop smiling looking at those pictures. Girls are girls anywhere anytime - and it is only the best Che'gus that bring out the best in them.


Meanwhile at another place at about the same time, at a gathering of the goody-goody boys with some goody-goody girls, you can see good girls are just that - GOOD girls; and good boys are just..... boys.

In the photo below the girls were exactly in the same position and pose, but the boys had moved and looked more relaxed.

Is this the old "cool" or what?

Well... you may try and spot my hubby :)

Roots and Leaves

When dad got his transfer order to serve in Singapore he decided that it was time that the girls get acquainted with their roots and mix with real children from the provinces. Not only were my two elder sisters and I packed off to go to school in his hometown Melaka  but we had to live in the school hostel as well. I was a mere eleven year old who had just had her birthday on Christmas Eve and a fortnight later in the new year entered Std 6 at the Durian Daun Girls' School.

This was a quaint school with a grammatically incorrect name. Shouldn't it be Daun Durian, I remember thinking but what surprised me more was that there was only one block of it. The KL school had three blocks and a hall with a stage; my immature mind wasn't too sure whether this was a proper school at all.

The school uniform comprised a green pinafore worn over a white blouse with a green bow-ribbon at the collar and a belt buckled at the waist. As if to confirm my "doubt" over the school,  I noticed that the green wasn't a standard shade but ranged from bright-apple to sombre-jungle and it was apparent that the girls' tailors were given free rein on how to sew the pleats on the skirt section. Some were arranged as in those of convent uniforms, some were box pleats, some side pleats and some simple gathers, and I shall not even mention the multiple styles of the bows or even the collars.

Later I learnt to appreciate this variety of the so-called uniforms, making the school unique in it's interpretation of the word conformance. And in the ensuing weeks I observed that a huge percentage of the school population did not come to school by car or trishaw but walked to school everyday, some from seemingly great distances. And I was one of them.

This primary school was actually the feeder school to the nearby Malacca Girls High School where my two elder sisters had been placed. It was a newish school set up to serve the locality as well as for bright young girls specially picked from the rural areas and given the opportunity to study in an urban school. These kids were also provided places in the school hostel which also took in girls from the neighbouring Malay-medium school Sekolah Tun Teja and the brand new co-ed (mixed boys and girls) lower secondary school. With a teachers training college also in the vicinity, this neighbourhood had a nice studenty atmosphere to it,  the roads each morning and afternoon filled with kids walking to their schools or going home.

Yes, from being driven everyday, this time I had to walk to school. But the distance was almost negligible and it took at most maybe 5-8 minutes, two of those were from negotiating the corridors of MGHS from the hostel before exiting through it's main gate.

One particular quirk of the Durian Daun School was the punishment for being late for Assembly on Monday mornings. There was a huge tree at the front of the school block where late-comers had to wait until the Assembly was over. I had always by then suspected it to be a durian tree that did not bear fruit - hence the name of the school. Anyway I was late on one day and after the assembly, late-comers was asked to stay behind to be issued the punishment.

It was nothing really but a friend who was also new to the school went on and on about it saying what a stupid school it was, and that at her old school in Tampin she never had to do this kind of thing. And that we were never asked our reason for being late in the first place.

The punishment was: to pick up the leaves that had fallen from the huge tree and pile them up - the duty of the school-gardener it was. Well, better than running round the field 10 times I must say, but thinking back it would have been more appropriate to call it Pungut Daun Girls' School, wouldn't it?

But the one thing I liked most studying there apart from the very friendly Melaka girls was that while I had always languished in about no. 15 in Std 4A and 5A in MGS KL, I was consistently FIRST in class Std 6B at Durian Daun! You could say I knew a long time ago how it felt to be a jaguh kampung... (this is not, I repeat NOT, a reference to our badminton team)

Back at the hostel, I was the littlest of all the penghuni - as we were known then. Where at home I had 4 little ones to play and have fun with, here I was like everyone's little sister but who still had to do her own washing and ironing. Everybody had to anyway except for one girl whose dad could afford the RM4 per month dhobi fees, which in fact was my pocket money for the month. This was the balance from the RM20 hostel fees which dad sent! And amazingly it was enough since I have no recollection of either being hungry or deprived whatsoever, only that of  being secure in a wonderful sisterly environment of anak-anak dara sunti, ah moi's and tangkachi's from the outback - and of course basking in the thought that I  was really quite "clever" there...

1965 - The puny one in the centre is me

How I've grown! By 1968 I was a member of the politburo

with Madam President cum Warden -  Bien Mei Nien 
 Me in the back row centre off-right ooops right off-centre

and my multi-racial constituency
1DORM!!!

I think Dad had made a wise decision plonking us at the hostel where our values of mutual support and togetherness were formed, where I improved tremendously in spoken and written Malay, also picked up some Mandarin, and learnt to appreciate the roots (some very humble) of each of our fellow penghuni asrama.

Form Four he decided it was time I lose my hilly-billyness and move back to KL.

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Remembering School

Would you like to know how many schools I attended thoughout the 13 years of schooling? I'll tell you anyway - they were two primary schools, two secondary schools, and one for Form 6 (pre-university). That makes five altogether when others might go to two or at most three. And that is why I have no significant feelings of attachment for any of those schools although I thoroughly enjoyed my time in all of them.

I loved to go to school. Somehow those days the brain was like a sponge, absorbing everything the teachers dished out, though that didn't  mean that recall wasn't a problem during exams. I didn't like exams especially public ones where you had to sit at a desk in a huge hall with a huge clock up on stage and bored invigilators sitting in front, day-dreaming. But I was OK at sports and  I had lots of fun representing the schools in athletics and netball except for in Form 6 in a boys' school, where football and rugby reigned.

At the first primary school, the Jr. Methodist Girls School, the pupils were mainly children from middle-class families who get ferried to and from school in cars. Some who lived nearby either walked it or hired trishaws for transport and I used to envy my friends who got to ride those trishaws everyday. For my sister and I, either my father or my mother would do the ferrying as we lived about 3  km or so away by road but only about half the distance walking. Which was via a shortcut the last maybe 80 metres of which was a path on a hillslope, of course accessible only on foot.

There was a day when dad couldn't pick us up after school and mum was in confinement yet again, so we were instructed to walk home together. Me and one of my bestfriends Ai Gaik, being teacher's helpers at the time had to help carry our class teacher Mrs. Lam's books to her car after school and so I wasn't present at the rendezvous point to meet my sister at the agreed time. Sis then set off for home by herself.

When I told Ai Gaik that I had to walk home alone, she offered me a ride in her hired trishaw. I was elated for I had never ever ridden in a trishaw before. It was such a joy to feel the wind in your face and so much fun to be jolted by every bump in the road as the old apek pedalled towards my friends house which was along my walking route. Having enjoyed the ride and being halfway there already, I practically skippety-skipped the rest of the way home, not knowing that back at home there was a commotion brewing when sis arrived without me in tow. Mum alerted dad at the office and when I reached home it was to to a very relieved mum asking me all sorts of questions.  An anxious dad arrived some time later when I was wolfing down my lunch and wondering what the fuss was all about. After a futile search dad was about ready to call the police I guess.

Now being a mum to five myself I can imagine what must have gone through mum and dad's minds at the time. Who knows... I could have been hit by a car or bus or lorry, or kidnapped for ransom (not likely for a child of a govenment servant), or got lost on the way home, or got chased and bitten by a dog, or followed a paedo home.... I was only in Std. Three.

However that was to be the first and only time we had to walk home after school but in my childhood I fondly remembered it as the first time I had ridden in a  trishaw.

The school percussion band 
me standing in the centre 4th row, 
Ai Gaik on the extreme right