after all these years part 3

Anyway coming back to my narration on my new school, our English lessons became very amusing to everyone at least for the first few weeks. Since Malaya
was still then under the British rule, English was the medium of instruction in all schools in the country with the College the uppermost since it had the most number of English teachers teaching us in almost all subjects. This was the first time ever in my life that I came to hear and know what the word 'discipline' means.

Our first Form teachers were Che'gu Hashim and Che'gu Lazim both of opposite characters though none-the-less spoke equally good English. Occasionally we had Che'gu Ariffin Nam teaching us but he was more on the Arts subject which was drawings and pottery works. I had my first tutelage in music and singing through Che'gu Hashim who could play the piano quite well for the songs that he taught us. Almost always before singing he would make us stand in line two abreast and did a warm up on our vocal chords by making us sounding off to the first vocal note on the piano - something like what we see in the film "Sound of Music". Thus we all began with DO followed by RAE and then ME and PHA, and SO and LA and TI repeatedly and loudly to enable him to hear all of at the same time. In the course of doing so, he would walk round starting from the first row and gradually moving on to the back row. I could not forget the one instant when he stopped at a Malacca student Amir bin Yaakub and commented in Malay " Engkau ni sumbang langsing", meaning he is completely out of tune or tone deaf ! Strangely to note in later life Amir Yaakub loved music and singing very much to the extent that he would never feel conscious singing any song that he fancied to a listening audience, who happened to be amongst ourselves in the dormitories. On occasions he enjoyed his singing so much that it brought tears to his eyes !

It is worthy to note that nowadays these out of tunes singers are regularly found at most Karaoke outlets singing away nonchalantly to the crowd and feeling happy with themselves. So far from my observation, Karaoke participants are the most tolerable people when it comes to singing. Nobody ever sound off his dissatisfaction with an off tune singer. At the Royal Lake Club we have a friend who was a film star of some sort who enjoyed singing and she sang almost always off tune. What struck me as strange is her husband never seemed to mind her singing !

I cannot remember disliking any of the lessons we all had in the lower Forms. The teachers always made the lessons interesting with their innovations and devotion to make good and gentlemanly boys of us. Of course we were taught and had to memorize many poems and poetry and famous English folk songs such as 'Auld Leng Syne',' Goodnight Ladies', 'Row, Row Row your Boat', 'Old Mc Donald had a Farm', ' Three Blind Mice' and even the ballad 'Oh Danny Boy' and many others that I now fail to recall but in those days there were all at my finger tips to recite or sing. Life is indeed funny. I can rightly boast that I knew by memory no less than a hundred songs when I was at the College, so much so, there was this Nik Mahmud , later life a Veterinary Doctor, who never ceased to praise and admire my singing ability to the extend that he wanted me to teach him the art of singing. Unfortunately I found him to be tone deaf although I never had the courage to tell him of it but instead I just made myself too busy to oblige his request. The late Nik Mahmud was a swell guy and a gentleman all through.

We all had very good grounding so to say whilst we were in the Prep School, which by the way means Preparatory School from which as we proceeded to higher Forms we were well prepared to be upgraded to the Big School of the College where all the seniors were. Our Prep School Prefects were very strict in discipline and many a times when the Prefects were changed with new ones from the Big School dormitories, we were taught new disciplines. There was an instance when a very strict and much disliked prefect ascended on us and he was from the state of Trengganu. This particular prefect would degrade us to that of a fish called 'blukang' - the fish commonly found near river estuary jetties and wallow in the mud and cannot be eaten by human - whenever he called any of us to his room for questioning on any breaking of a school rule such as urinating along the verandah which occasionally did happen in the middle of the night when we felt scared of going to the toilets which happened to be rather far off from our dormitories. He struck fear in all of us that we would be expelled from the College if we continued to break the College rules and he even meted some caning on some of us for stealing other people's bathing soaps, toothbrush and toothpaste or coming back later than the stipulated six o'clock pm from the town on Fridays and Sundays which were our weekends of those days. If we were caught eating at the forbidden shops or areas in the Kuala Kangsar town it was punishable too. Collegians were not allowed to loiter or be seen at the riverside area of the infamous "New York" as it was then called. This was the area where today there are a lot of good eating shops that sell 'Ikan bakar' - the embarking point for the boats that ply to Sayong, which is an area opposite side of the Kuala Kangsar Perak river. Thus we were guided and told to confine our town outings to a few shops for our stationaries , eating and drinking and even watching movies. At no time were we allowed to go outstation to the nearby bigger towns of Taiping or Ipoh without proper written permission by the Headmaster or senior teachers or teachers on duty on those weekends. If we were caught going outstation without permission, the punishment was very severe indeed. It could be caning by the Headmaster or be placed in the College Detention Class for at least two weeks during which period no outings were allowed and the corporal punishment would include cleaning the College lavatories, leveling the laterite tennis courts each evening or even intensive vegetable gardening around specific areas of the College premises. As you can see, this was all tough for all of us. Having come from pampered family background, I could not ever imagine myself being punished that way. Thus I tried my level best to be very good and well disciplined at all times then, something which paid off handsomely later on when I became the youngest College Prefect when I was in Form Four, when traditionally the Prefects were chosen from the Fifth Formers upwards only.

When it came to washing clothes we were encouraged to have them sent to the laundry contractor better known as the College Dhobi man who would come to collect our dirty clothes three times a week on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays during which times also our washed and laundered clothes would be delivered and placed on our individual beds by the dhobi man and his team of workers, who were generally his own children. Thus each of us had to have our special initials for our marked clothing's for proper identifications by the Dhobi. My initial was TF which remained till I left the College. However it was quite amazing how our Dhobi man seldom made mistakes with identical initial or dhobi markings on all our clothes which included the Big School 's too. Somehow it did not take long before the father who ran the Dhobi shop to find out that I had an elder brother there and from thence on my clothes were better ironed than the rest and I could even sent extra clothes at no additional charges. This generosity by the man continued till I was in the Big School but which I soon realize it was done with a purpose. Since it was sometimes quite difficult for him to effect monthly payments by the individual boys, he sought my help to do the collections for him especially on specific bad master payments who happened to be my dormitory mates or my Form mates. My most effective collections for the Dhobi took place when I was made Prefect in charge of the College Pocket money for the boys.
( TO BE CONTINED )