Reminiscence Trip
A few days ago, Atok received a circular email from my friends of OBAAM (Oxford Brookes Alumni Association Malaysia) that they are planning a trip back to our beloved alma mater this April. Apparently, this is the first alumni association of OBU to organise such trip back to the memory lane. The university will provide them free accomodation at the newest hall of residence for 2 nights and from the response I'm monitoring (officially, I'm not a registered member of OBAAM; you know... I'm here, they're there; kind of impossible to join their programmes... but I do keep in touch though), it has been a hot cake. I might meet up with them, depending on our schedules. Love to see the list of the delegate (most of the committee members are from my time there) that join this great journey back.Three years ago when I was last back home (it was my first Raya at home after 8 years), I met up with three of my schoolmates for a supper at the famous Mak Su Nab Nasi Air near my parents' house. Thinking back, strangely, we didn't talk about our school at all...mmm. I guess, it was a bit too long ago to go back. We were the pioneers of then not-yet-finished-with-no-CF-school back in 1982.
For instance, there was no playing field, all we had was a big area full of 'lalang', stones and god knows what. Every afternoon we lined up across the 'field' and with the fierce wardens guarding us, we walked and picked up all the stones and rubbish, filling up our 'baldi'. We even found tembikai in that field, and not to forget, a small tokong cina under the lalang. At the end of the supposedly 'waktu bersukan', all we did was brushing our full-of-kemuncup track bottoms. Soon, the school managed to make a deal with a daily school across the road and we took turns (according to 'rumah') to use their fields. Only on the second year of the school we managed to finish our job putting up a decent playing field for ourselves, a feat we are all proud to these very days. The day when the goal posts were positioned on that field was a very joyful moment for us. We then told adik-adik, "WE created that playing field with our bare hands". I wonder how my school looks like now.... not been there since I went to pick up my SPM result.
May be we, the pioneers, need to organise a reminiscence trip to the once upon a time (our time) a place the locals called 'sekolah PAS' [i'll blog about this next time; some shocking stuff].
posted by Atok @ 11:55:00 pm
