School Days

One of the hardship of living in a hostel is when there's no water! Only God knows how we suffered when the water is only enough for taking 'wuduk' and ehem..'tayamum'.. At these time, there will be lorries with water tank arriving every 2 or 3 days to supply us with water.. However, you must find your own 'baldi' or container to put the water in.

If the lorry parked right in front of the dining hall, then no problem. :) It won't be that far for us to carry the water container. But..it it's parked at the side entrance of the girls' hostel: Watch out! Big problem. It will be too far out to line up and to carry the container. Lucky are those who has 2 or 3 pails.

At the time that cat is writing this, Cat is trying hard to hide a grin. Ahh..memories of cat's loyal blue pail which has served cat very well during those years.. Well, cat is hardly a princess who has never done any manual work. But this was the first and the beginning of cat's experience in carrying a big pail of water for 2 km and then up 3 flights of stairs..

If you have never carry a pail full of water, try to do it. With water splashing each time you take a step, with the uneven grass field that you have to cross to get back to the dorm. If you are a senior, you can still bully those young ones from the lower forms. However, if you were a junior and in form 1, ouch..who would want to help you? Unless.. you have a network of 'adopted sister/s', then you can breathe easily.

Should you do not qualify for the above 2 groups earlier mentioned, please get ready to suffer in silence. No one will even blink an eye. It's the law of the jungle: Everyone on their own. Can you imagine..walking 2 steps, stop,,walking another 2 steps, stop again..then going up two steps up the stairs and stopping again. And when at last you reach the top stairs (murphy's law: you will get the dorm at the 3rd floor)..no! a quarter of the water is gone.

Why not leave the pail downstairs? Hide it behind the stairs? When there's no water, that little bit that you have is more expensive than gold. Try leaving it downstairs and you can kiss your pail goodbye.Taking a look at the palm of your hand, blisters are already taking form. You would feel like crying looking at the 3/4 filled up pail.

If you still got time, you can try to run back downstairs with an empty coke or 7-up bottle and try to fill it up with whatever water left. The horror of horror is if you got a stomachache.. How can you survive with just a pail of water for 2 continuous day?

Well, cat is taking this opportunity ..(blushing) to apologise to whoever that cat and a friend used to 'steal' some water from their pail during those 'waterless' period. At that time we were afraid to own up and apologise..(who knows..what could happen if you own up at that time.) And by this time that we have the courage , we already forgot from whom we took the water from.
*****

People keep asking Cat about the 'Water Tank' caper. :)
Only a few people knows about it and most of us has hold our tongue for years.Even the people involved in it, many seems to have forgotten the details. This is Cat's version of the whole thing. The 'Water Tank Mystery' as per Cat.

It started in the middle of the school year. The Water Tank in question was situated a few meters from the the teacher's apartment and around 200 meters from the girl's hostel. To really reach the top of the high Water tank, you would need to climb up 6 flights of stairs or if you are brave, you can just use the 'pull up, pull down' ladder by it's side.

In Cat's class, there were only 10 girls out of the 28 students. (For info, ours were the only 'Social Science' class amidst the sea of form 4 'pure science' student. Due to that fact, we kept mostly to ourselves in the beginning of the year and did not mix with the other classes that much.)

Bear in mind, we were not looking for trouble at all. Just searching for a place that we can mark as ours. And the water tank looks just like a tree house. High up in the sky. And when you look down , you can see the area outside the tall fences. If you live in a hostel, you would know how like a prison it is: you cannot go out from the school compound as you like it. Rules and more rules. It seems like trouble was just around the corner, waiting to pounce on us.

While the others were looking towards the outside of the fence, Cat was turning her head to the left, towards the teacher's apartment, looking from afar, through the open windows, the closely knit family inside. The serious teacher who became a loving parent when he's with his children. And further to the left was a sports team practicing throwing balls. Those were the 2 views that lightens a Cat's heart during the recreation period in the late afternoons. :)

Being at the top of the world, we thought that we were invincible. That we could watch people without being watched. We became careless, laughing and joking as if we were the ruler of the world. All those time, there were so many eyes watching us.

Things started to change one day when a paper plane flew and landed on the steps just below where we were sitting. It was from one of the local boys who lived in the nearby village. The paper plane had writings on it, and it was a request to be friends with 3 of our team members. Things started to change, and friendship was truly tested at the time. We still went to the Water Tank together but we did things separately. The 3 girls were occupied with the task of sending letters by return paper planes or noted wrapped around small stones. It was not an easy task and some people started to wonder what was happening as they were making lots of happy noises when the intended missile reaches it's destination.

One dark and gloomy day, we were all called to the girl's prefect room, all except Cat. It was the worst day ever. Cat was left out because..Cat's adopted sister, who has quite an influence then, vouched for Cat's innocence in the whole thing and Cat only knew about it afterward when the whole Q&A session was over. A few friends who were prefects were given the evil eye too for not giving us any warning. It was at this time that the gang broke up, a feeling of distrust and blaming others started. We did manage to patch things up a few months later but things were not the same.

We talked to each other but there were now secrets and barriers where there were none before. We were in that difficult period of growing up.

Cat was certainly guilty for not taking any action and try to get everyone to be friends again. As an assistant to the Class Monitor, Cat should have handled things with better tact. But at that time, Cat was lost in her own world: caught between her duties at the library, at the dining hall and at trying to understand the sudden blush that appears on her face each time she saw a firefly flew near the window by her seat..

Enough story for tonight. Someone else might tell you a different version about what had happened then, and it would be true also. Because memories are not 100% accurate. They sometimes have the tendency to adapt according to how we perceive things as time goes by..

******

Samura 1986

Well, this is the last day of school and you must be as happy as I am to go home. A long awaited time to see the family and certainly to eat mum's cooking. Oh, not to forget.. the joy of sleeping in my own bed. :) Blissful, kan? Eat, sleep, eat, sleep. Just like a bear hibernating in winter. hehehe

There are certainly lots of memories that we had shared together this year.
Among them : sharing the same dorm for a year. The largest dorm at the Girl's hostels that is. Some would say that we were lucky to get it, but for us it was actually bad luck. The dorm was so big and half of it empty. The bed was a double decker bed, but the seniors told us to each sleep on the lower bed. So as to fill up the row till the end of the dorm.

They were certainly crazy, kan. Who would in their right mind wants to be the one who sleeps at the last bed which is dark and does not have any exit doors. (The only door was the one right in front and it was like 19 beds away).

We were only form 1 at that time and with heads full of homesickness as well as scary stories that the seniors told us. Every night, without fail, when the 'off lights' sirens rang out, we would switch off the lights and shifted to the beds in front. Weren't we clever? :)

No, we were not. The seniors were much more clever than all 18 of us put together. One night, while we were dozing off peacefully, the seniors locked the dorm's door from the outside and started to make ghostly noises. Just imagine, lights were flashing and there were shadows that can be seen at the windows wearing caps (just like the japanese soldiers ghosts in the stories). We can't get out as the door was stuck!

Shrill laughters echoing here and there. We push the beds together as near as the door possible (so that if we could not get out, those ghosts outside would not be able to come in too. How silly it is when you look back at it now.) We grouped together under our blankets and said our prayers. One girl was crying wanting to go home while another was screaming.

Then we heard a voice telling us to be quiet. The door opened. Gasp ( we forgot that the door swings outward and not inwards. If it was a monster, all of us would have all been eaten up) :p We were very young :p It was the warden. She comforted and explained to all of us that it was only the seniors playing tricks on us. We were, of course, not totally convinced. We were told to push our beds back to their original places tomorrow. Tonight, the warden will close one eye and let it be. We pushed the bed closed together every night till the term ends.

We got 2 lessons because of that incident:

1) Before you scream out loud 'Ghosts!, always investigate first.
2) There's a reason why they do not allow you to sleep all on the same bed.

When 1 person has head lice ... grr, the whole dorm gets them too. The annoying itchiness and tedious actions taken. There were no medicated shampoo at that time. Kerosene was put on the head. The smell and the condition of your hair makes you just want to cry. And the fastest way to get rid of the lice were to cut your hair short.

We can never understand joy till we feel sorrow,
faith till we're tested,
peace till we're faced with conflicts,
trust till we're betrayed,
and love till it's gone...

******

Do you remember 'Cikgu Yusri'? The soft spoken teacher with curly hair, specs and taught us maths? Cikgu Yusri has been a warden at the boys' hostel for quite some time. Some of us (girls) called him "Cikgu Seri". He may look harmless but wait till you had your share of his anger. Ouch..you won't ever forget the lesson. Bak kata orang: Air yang tenang jangan dikata tiada buaya (betul peribahasa ni?). One of the reason we like him was: it was easier to get the chit to go to hospital from him than from the clinic supervisor "Kak XXX".

Well, we were supposedly, mm..told to report and get a written permission from XXX XXX if we were sick and wish to go to Hospital Muar. And this person in charge is an old dragon and the most powerful figure when it comes to health issues. If you only have a slight fever, don't ever think that you can go to the hospital. Even to stay at the sick bay, you need to think twice. Don't you even think of escaping the evening 'prep' class by hiding in there. Kak XXX will first check your forehead to verify it's really hot or not. If it's only a slight rise in the temperature, you don't ever expect her to sympathise with you.

She would even ask you to run 2-3 times around the hostel area. Can still hear her say: "Youth nowadays are so soft. Only a slight fever and you do not want to go to class.' Her best remedy: Exercise till you sweat. No sweat, another round around the block. Cat would say that it's definitely not worth the trouble. Better you go and sleep in class...or :D sleep in your locker like what some of the brave ones did.

Getting back to Cikgu Yusri. Do you remember the time teacher throw the duster out from the class? This was when cat was in form 3. That was the 2nd time that cat saw him furious. Usually, he likes to smile. Cool and steady. It must have been a stressful day for him.

The whole week was stressful to cat also. We, girls, were having a confrontation with the boys in our class. Why? Well, the boys are always trying to avoid doing their part when it comes to cleaning the class. One day, we just decided not to do our part also:p no matter what happens.

Can you imagine how the blackboard duster looks like after a week of erasing the chalk written board? It was full of chalk dust. A few teacher had complaint but we just play dumb. No one wants to clean it, unless the other party do their part.

When Cikgu Yusri wants to rub the board, the blackboard turns white! Miracle? No.. there's too much chalk dust. He turned and suddenly throw the duster flying through the door. Everyone was stunned. Then all of us had to stand up. No sitting down and class will not start until someone cleans the duster.

Silence..total silence.
No one moved. And teacher was just sitting there in front of us not moving at all. Staring at each and one of us. Cat was hoping that our class monitor would do something but he was just staring right back at Cikgu Yusri.

Oooo...what the heck. Cat just went out and search for the duster. Cleaning it properly and brought it back into class. The duster was so full of chalk dust that you can't see it's original color. Bringing it back into class and cleaning the blackboard.

We had a full lecture that day on 'Being a community, Duties and etc, etc, etc. The thing that made cat blush was when he told everyone to take cat as an example..and it's a shame that none of the guys wanted to do that. Ahh, should teacher just turn around a bit and look at the duty roaster.. he would surely notice that cat's name was on the list of duty on that day and cat was also not doing her job.

Hehehe..talk about a very red faced student that day. But it turned out alright in the end. That night, everyone (boys and girls)did the cleaning side by side and nothing was said on that morning's incident. The confrontation has ended...

A senior was telling cat that there was a student (whatever his personal reasons) who had chained Cikgu Yusri's motorbike (a black colored Yamaha RXS) when he came to the boy's hostel. It took Cikgu Yusri ages to unchained it.

Cat was wondering how old is he now. Must be in his early 50's (50-51 years old).His famous afro curly hair must be snow-white by now. (Unless he decided to go bald as the fashion is nowadays).. We do miss you, sir..