Adam's first day at school

Today is Adam's first day at school, for real. Last Friday we just went for a short 3 hours orientation so that didn't count.

Adam had no problem waking up early in the morning because he's already used to waking up early going to the kindergarten and nursery before. We left home very early at 7:00 AM today. Even Mia was excited to send Adam to school.

The road leading to the school was packed with traffic. Lucky there was some kindly traffic police directing traffic. Only staff and teachers were allowed into the school. School buses and vans can enter the parking lot.

Everybody else had to park outside and walk their children about 400 meters inside. I see they have finally cut the long field grass.

Every Monday there's assembly at the school hall. It was supposed to be 30 minutes program but the teachers had a lot to say today so it didn't finish until an hour later. I hope they don't spew too many 1Malaysia BS to my children like they did today.

After that they kids marched in line to their respective classes, lead by their teachers.

During my time back then in 1987, I remember most mothers including mine waited for their children outside the classroom for the whole day. I guess that is not cool anymore today because the teachers politely asked us to leave while she/he is teaching.

So we waited for Adam for a couple of hours at the canteen until recess. Thank God for iPad or else I would be bored to death.

Recess was around 10:15 AM and we taught Adam how to buy food at the canteen. As usual the canteen is overcrowded with children, parent and teachers. I'm sure the crowd would subside in a couple of days once the parents left. After that we let Adam resume his class. I mean another assembly. His teachers still has plenty to say apparently.

We had some big shot VIPs visiting the school today, some politicians and people from the district education office. No wonder we saw a bunch of coppers hanging out outside today. I saw the Serdang MP Datuk Satim and this one MCA guy who I have no idea who he is. Saw a couple of parent shaking hands and making small talk with them. I hope they would highlight the glaring huge uncovered hole along the some of the drains near the class room which is like a disaster waiting to happen. Or the fact that the kids would be soaking wet when it rains because there's no covered walkway from the school to the parking lot.

After recess we left the school since there's no point staying anyway. Came back later to pick him up when the school finishes at 12:40 PM.

I still remember vividly my first day at school some 23 years ago. Some relative of mine died overseas and the day of his shipment home coincided with my first day at school. Somehow my Mom decided to bring me along to the graveyard first for the burial ceremony before going to school. By the time I got in class my shiny new school shoes is plastered with mud and not so shiny anymore. I still don't understand up until now why my Mom had to put me through that ordeal.

After picking up Adam from school today we went to IKEA to buy some curtains which is on sale. At least Adam get to play at Småland instead of some muddy graveyard like I did. Kids these days are so lucky.

SK Taman Desaminium

If you live around Taman Pinggiran Putra, Taman Equine, Taman Lestari Perdana, Kota Perdana and Taman Puncak Jalil, you should know that two new school has opened this year in Taman Desaminium near here. One is primary school - SK Taman Desaminium and another is a secondary school - SMK Taman Desaminium.

Both schools are located at Taman Desaminium between Taman Lestari Perdana and Taman Puncak Jalil. The secondary school is beige and the primary school next to it is in bright orange.

Last year I registered my 7 year old kid at SK Taman Universiti because we have no idea when SK Taman Desaminium will be open. It was not until last week that we found out the school is indeed opening next year and the registration for students ends like a few days ago. So we rushed to register Adam and requested a transfer to the new school.

Thankfully Adam made it to the list. So today was orientation day at SK Taman Desaminium. The program starts at 8:30 AM but we didn't arrive until 9:00 AM despite the school being just 5 kilometers away from our place. I blame it on Mia who took forever to wake up and shower.

There was a some briefing by the teachers of the school but we missed most of it. There sure is a lot of students registered at SK Taman Desaminium because I can see every class has at least 30 pupils. SMK Desaminium meanwhile hardly has any students.



After the briefing, each class teachers took the children for a tour of the school.


Starting with their classroom.

I remember my old classroom had those huge naco windows on both side of the wall. The newly finished SK Desaminium has only one of those and the other side has these smaller windows which made the class looked like a bat cave.

Anyway at least all the table, chair and furniture are new. Adam got 34 new classmates today.

The kids sure are quiet and well-behaved on their first day at school. I'm sure they won't be so docile in a couple of months.

Being a new school and all I can see all the facilities and physical amenities are ready. Don't know about the teachers though because from what I heard some classes don't have teachers yet.

This is Adam's class teacher Cikgu Eimie. Hi Cikgu!

The canteen looked completely overwhelmed today with all the students. Meals start from RM1.00 a plate. I wonder how much I should give Adam everyday for school. Perhaps his mother would pack him lunch or something.

Although I can see Adam's school from my house, we still had to pay a school bus to pick him up after school and drop him at the nursery. That's RM35.00 a month.

SK Desaminium has only one session in the morning and class starts January 3rd that is next Monday.
All primary school in Malaysia has this new curriculum called KSSR which I have no idea what that's all about. But from my insider's information, students doesn't have to sit for exams like every month or at the end of the year. Instead their teachers will give an ongoing evaluation based on their performance and learning rate.

They will also be graded from Band 1 to Band 5 with the latter being the best. For Physical Education class (Pendidikan Jasmani), students can wear their sports attire the whole day at school. There's also some new subjects being thought such as Science, Technology, Music, Visual Art and Arabic language. I hope Adam will fare better in Arabic than I did. I still remember vividly how I flunk that subject in primary school.

SK Desaminium is not that easy to find since it's tucked quite some way in between the Desaminium condominiums and also because there are not a single signboard pointing to the school. You just have to look for the Desaminium condos then and find the school next to the condos and the driving range in Taman Lestari Perdana.

So if you're thinking of entering your kids into this school next year, better start now. Just register online at the state education department website, download and bring the application form to the school along with the necessary documents like their birth certificate, parent's identity card copy, marriage certificate, payslip of one of the parent and also some utilities bill.

The school now has a telephone number: 03-89413905

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Everclear - Sparkle and Fade

Everclear's Sparkle and Fade is one of my all-time favorite rock album that I bought when I was 16. Listening to this album again today, brought back fond memories of my high school years. There we were at a boarding school in rural Kelantan, surrounded by palm oil trees and secondary jungle, no Internet, MTV or whatever but still we were rocking to Everclear, Greenday and Weezer. How cool is that?
I don't know what happened to the cassete that I bought but even today, Sparkle and Fade is quite hard to come by. Nevertheless, I managed to get my hands on this album and put them up here for all the world to share. My personal favorite songs are listed in bold.

Everclear - Sparkle and Fade (1995)

1. Chemical smile

2. Electra made me blind

3. Heartspark Dollarsign

4. Her brand new skin

5. Heroin girl

6. My sexual life

7. Nehalem

8. Pale green stars

9. Queen of the Air

10. Santa Monica

11. Strawberry

12. Summerland

13. The twistinside

14. You make me feel like a whore

Once upon a time in SMACH...

My first time

It was post PMR and the form 3 students got no class to go and pretty much nothing to do except join some inter-classroom games held every other day while waiting for school term to end. So our teachers and wardens thought why not give the kids a break and gave us free access to the TV/recreational room in the evening. They even let us bring some movie tapes to watch during the weekend which proved to be too much for us. Why? Here's the story.

It was just a regular weekdays night and as usual I decided to hang out in the TV room to watch some TV (duh!). Anyway when I got there, the TV room was exceptionally quiet. Normally you can hear the boys chatting and making so much noise clearly from the next hostel's block. But not that night, suddenly the boys was very well-behaved for some strange reason. So I joined them and there they was watching a video tape. Soon I found out that the video was about a white chick getting humped by a white dude and they were making some pretty weird sounds. It doesn't take a genius to figure out what's that all about so I being a normal 15 years old the good student as I was back then watched the video with them to the very end quickly made my way out of the room and grabbed a book to read instead.

So yeah, that was my first encounter with porn. Of course I didn't make this up. Just ask any students of my batch (SPM 97) and they'll relate to you the very same story. Of course the kid who brought that tape in the first place got transferred to another school soon after that. He meant to kept it a secret you know watch it with his close friends but who was his kidding? I mean sooner or later the teachers/wardens will definitely find out. You can't sweep this elephant under the rug!


That's how my friends spend their free time. Of course this only happens at SMACH :)

Not that I'm saying I'm proud of all that. It's just a story to share :P

Once upon a time in SMACH...

The crush

When I was in form 2, I had my first ever crush on this girl named Rose Iriyanti Saidin (what is it with me and girls named Rose??). She was in another class and I've been keeping an eye on her for quite some time but I didn't have the guts to say hi to her or anything. So I just kept looking at her from a distance and smiled a little everytime we met. Being just an ordinary looking 14 year old with no special abilities to speak of, I'm pretty sure she didn't know I even exist. For the first time though I had that you know, flowery feeling like I'm feeling happy and rosy all the time - that kind of feeling? It's like I look forward to come to class everyday just happy to see her even if it's only for a while...

Anyway, for preparation (prep) class, the boys and girls were separated you know, boys in one class and girls in another. So I happen to sit in Rose's class and deliberately sat at her desk. One day I braved myself to write her a letter spelling out my admiration for her and stuff and leave it in her pencil case.

The next day to my delight, she replied my letter and wrote something like "oh okay" or whatever (I can't remember the exact details) and she also asked my favour to find her missing pen (or whatever). Encouraged by this positive start, I wrote her another letter pledging that I'll get to the bottom of the case of her missing pen (something like that)

The next day however, some pesky boy went through her desk and found my letter and before you know it, the entire form 2 knew about our correspondence! Embarrassed as I was but I kept it cool and acted like nothing happened. My close friends and classmates were less then sympathetic to us and like whenever Rose walked in front of our class or when we met at the canteen or wherever, everybody started making noise, calling out our name, whistling and stuff. That's sooo immature of them!!! Then again what else you expect from some 14 years old? Dating, couple-ing, boy/girlfriends were literally unheard of in my school especially at my age so no wonder they made so much fuss of it.

Anyway, I had to endure their taunt and teasing for a couple of weeks before it eventually died down. Let's say Rose and I never get further than that correspondence stage cause obviously she had an equally tough time with her fellow friends. I can totally understand her predicament so I decided to just forget about it.

That's how my first crush turned out to be and I learned a few valuable lessons from it like:

• Never-ever leave your correspondence in a pencil case (give it to her friend for goodness sake!)
• 14 year olds are sooo immature!

Of course I had several more crushes and infatuations after that in my school but I just kept it to myself. Sigh.

Mais ce qui si Rose lit votre blog aujourd'hui ?

Nah, I’m pretty sure Rose Iriyanti doesn’t read my blog. I doubt she even knew I'm alive heh!

Smach

Today I’m gonna start writing about my past memories, all 27 years of them. The good, the bad, the memorable and the forgettable times. I feel it’s important that I write about my history from now on before I forgot. I ain’t got no flash memory you know and if I didn’t write soon, all might be loss forever. That’s why I thought, why not write my memories here on my blog so that all my friends and my kid(s) could read it someday (and have a good laugh at things I did). I have so many memories of my school days I could write a book about them! Maybe I would but for starters, let’s put them on my humble little blog.

I know I should start at the beginning but today I feel like writing only about my high school days. I went to Sekolah Menengah Sains Machang, which translates to Machang Science Secondary School situated about 40 km from my home in Pasir Mas and also the same distance from Kota Bharu, the capital of Kelantan. Sekolah Menengah Sains Machang (Smach for short) is a full government sponsored boarding school (Sekolah Berasrama Penuh/SBP). During my days there were only 40 such schools nationwide and being able to get into one is a big deal back then. This was because such schools can only accept a handful of student every year so the competition for admission is very stiff. I never applied for this school, instead it’s the teachers of my primary school who submit our names to the Education Dept. Every year, they send in a few dozen names of potential candidates and I guess that year in 1993, I was among the lucky ones. I said lucky because I feel I wasn’t that good in primary school to warrant a place in such a prestigious institution. Yes I did get straight As for my UPSR but so did 38 others. Anyway, my family was very happy that I got accepted into Smach. There’s only two such school in Kelantan, the other one is SM Faris Petra in Kota Bharu.

It’s my first experience living away from my family and understandably I was nervous and a bit scared. The next five years was an unforgettable experience for me and also for all my school mates for that matter.

Going to a high school in the east coast is really tough. Going to a boarding school is even tougher and I assure you it’s not for the faint hearted. Kids in Kelantan or Terengganu are a lot different from those who hail from the west coast like Selangor or Johore or Kedah. Here it’s the Jungle’s Law, the survival of the fittest. Anyone outside of Kelantan who went to school there will experience a huge culture shock and many of them it’s not exactly a pleasant experience. I don’t really want to bad mouth the place I grew up in but the truth is, it’s tough going to school there.

Orientation week

I survived the orientation week in one piece. The school had this informal tradition of ‘sending back’ freshies who they think don’t deserve to stay at the school. You see during the orientation week, all the new kids have to behave really good and get signatures from their seniors to prevent them from being sent home. The kid with the lowest signature will be send back come weekend. Therefore all of us tried our best to get signatures from our seniors. Naturally, many of them seniors waste no time exploiting this opportunity to make us do errands for them before we get our signatures. Some of us (including me) have heard of rumours from a few of our seniors saying it’s just a joke and I personally didn’t believe any of them either. I thought it’s just not logical for the school to send back students just like that. Still I tried to get a few signatures and about half of my signature paper is filled towards the weekend. The entire school including all the teachers played along with this prank you know so near the end it seemed almost real!

So come Friday, I called home – teary eyed and sad telling mother that I might be sent home this weekend. Forgive me for being a disappointment to you, I guess I didn’t try hard enough. You can’t blame us really, we were young and naïve and it’s a first week in high school man and already we might be send back! For the Malay Kebudayaan (performance night) we were divided into groups and had to give a performance each. My group decided to perform a dance to the tune of a popular Malaysian rap group back then, 4U2C. Yeah I was a fan of 4U2C then (although I’m ashamed to admit that now!) so I volunteered to take part in the act. You see I was rather chubby and cute when I was 13 so just imagine me dancing to the beat of rap music on stage. The stage floor must have shaken violently by my weight. We practiced for 2 days but on the last day I had a fever and couldn’t possibly perform the next day so they replaced me with another boy. I was disappointed but come to think of it, I’d probably laughed myself hoarse seeing my performance that night. :)

Finally the weekend comes and we had this morning assembly where they announce the names of those who didn’t make the cut. The whole school was there and all our seniors were clapping and cheering and booing making it a festive like atmosphere and frighteningly REAL to us! We had to pack our bags and all and brought our stuff to the assembly place. The school bus were already fired up and ready to go as they announce the names one by one. Each of the unlucky kids was crying as they board the bus. I was relieved to escape the whole ordeal and soon enough found out that it was al just one big prank. Those we did board the bus were taken for an outing at the nearest town in Machang and returned back a few hours later. So that’s how we do orientation, Smachian way at my school. And they kept the tradition going the next year, and the next and the next and I wonder if they still do that today, hmm . A bit cruel you might say but that’s their way of nurturing our love for the school. My school days are a far cry from what you see on High School the Musical. Even so, if I were given another chance to do it all over again, I wouldn’t have it any other way.