Clubs

I love clubbing.

Initially in my younger days, I was adverse to the idea of clubbing. May be it was because I witnessed the bad side of it when my elder brother always came home drunk each night after he came back from the Club nearest to our house in Kuala Trengganu. This was when I was in FELDA then. Our rented house, or more so, I would term it as a cottage one bedroom house, was next to the Cosmo Club, where we would see a lot of expatriates and top government servants entertained by Chinese businessmen who were loggers or contractors or common traders.

The whole place seemed to be noisy towards the early part of the evening, with almost everyone talking at the top of their voices and the clanking of glasses for more drinks could be distinctively heard. My brother as usual always got invited to join the crowd by his expatriate and Chinese friends. In those days, heavy drinking was quite common. Indeed if one was a nondrinker, promotion became a far cry to one’s career .

I myself indulge in a little bit of drinking but I went in as far as a glass or two of beer only each time we were with our superiors and their guests. Thank goodness, I left this habit pretty early in my life, although by today’s community’s standard, quite late, when I was in my late forties. Anyway, because I found my brother always drunk each time he came home at night, I formed an anti-club attitude and refused to join the Cosmo Club when invited to do so by my brother’s expatriate friends.

It was only much later that I did become a member of the Club but it was more of expediency and necessity in order to entertain my visiting superiors from FELDA headquarters.They have excellent steaks, especially the T-bone steak , sold in the club that both Ainul and I always enjoyed eating ! The Cosmo Club had nothing else to offer besides normal food and drinks though.

It was much later when we were back in KL that I joined the first club in Seremban, which was the Sungei Ujong Club. This came about in a coincident way. Playing tennis then was my favorite indulgence. I never failed to take along my tennis racquet wherever I went in those days. Hence when I was in Seremban to visit my mother, I made it a point to see the Sungei Ujong tennis activities, to which more often than not, my uncle, the late Tunku Mohamad Jamil, would be playing tennis there.

It was natural and spontaneous for him to invite me to join in to play with his friends. Fortunately I played quite good tennis myself and hence my presence was readily accepted by the members. It was after several such uninvited visits to the Club that one day my uncle said I should join the Club. Joining fee was only RM 150.00 then ! Thus I became a Club member. Still as far as I was concerned, my clubbing was confined to playing tennis only.

I became a Lake Club member by coincidence too. All the while before that, I played tennis at the Sultan Suleiman Club in Kampong Baru and at the Jalan Imbi tennis courts. It was at the Sultan Suleiman Club that I first got to know and became close friend with the late Zain Azman, who by his real name was Aziz Majid. He was a heartthrob singer of the time with his Frank Sinatra songs rendition. Even when I was an undergraduate I never failed to tune in to the Saturday night radio star program to listen to Zain’s songs. As such, whenever I was in the bathroom at home, I used to imitate Zain’s singing style, to the extend that my neighbors children thought it was Zain himself singing !

Tennis then brought into focus a lot of close friends in my early life career. Strangely though, but for a very limited few, all of them have since passed away or completely untraceable. They were characters in their own peculiar ways. There were those who were bad losers, including me, who would curse and throw racquets on the ground or at the tennis net and at times over to the nearest trees to the delights of the winners who later on made fun of all of us.

There were some who never ceased to curse every stroke that they made, whilst others who always boasted on their agility and prowess in the game. Of course, you cannot escape from the ones who always cheated on line calls ! But all these antics were accepted without grudges by everyone and all in the name of fun ! Not the least of course there were the side bets on drinks for the winners or even mee goreng on the sides for the heavier betting. All in all it was great fun indeed.