T3 School News Try Train Teach Tribute To Teachers Semeling Malay School 1941-1947 The need to know and the need to do stay a lifetime; but learning and making have yet to keep pace for many million marginalised children of many nations impoverished by colonialism, imperialism and the barbarians' wars; and some well endowed adults have yet to learn restraint, let alone abstinence, from thinking war, wanting war, urging war, mongering war and making war. Sad stories of children orphaned by wars impigned on my childhood at Semeling - stories of war between Malays and Thais, Malays of one state and Malays of another state, Ghee Hin and Hai San Societies; stories of invasion by the Portuguese, Dutch, British and Japanese. Why so much cruelty ? This impressionable period was marked by the agony of wanting to understand and make oneself understood about needs as they arose. Our cats, dogs, goats, cows, fowls, hens, birds, flowers, plants, trees and fish didn't talk back. People didn't talk back somtimes. The Heavens too seemed indifferent. It was disheartening and the start of a painful process of making sense of signs. There was therefore some anxiety about my "bahasa Melayu" which seemed to come naturally but I could not get the results I needed. There was the agonizing need to understand what people were reciting so loud so solemnly and somtimes like droning or shrieking in frenzy and then murmuring in anticlimax. Hence I always felt impelled to learn Arabic. When relatives conversed among themselves in Thai it was painful to sit through the session feeling ignorant and stupid; decorum required that one never interrupted and didn't speak until asked. Every now and then some friends of the family would take us to see "Wayang China". I was fascinated by the dignified characters in colourful dress and one had a very long beard. That kindled an interest in Mandarin. "Ah Ba" who regularly came to visit us would draw a few characters in the sand for me. Why didn't I feel any need to learn English then ? We often noticed some "Orang Puteh" at the rest house; my grandmother said: not to go near; the "Orang Puteh" helped my great-grandfather regain the throne; and then contrived to have him exiled to Seychelles in 1876. A lone British planter with a walking stick never missed his evening walk past our home. That was just before the Japanese invasion. Japanese inspectors forced us to face the rising sun and bow; we often wondered anxiously where the lone "Orang Puteh" had gone. On my first day at school teachers looked fearsome. Some carried canes. We remeber them as "Cikgu" - Ali, Ismail, Rashid, Saad, Salleh, Samsudin........ "Cikgu" Salleh was so patient and dedicated. We usually adjourned after evening prayers at the mosque to his home to learn to recite the Qur`an. One night we were distracted and arrived very late; he woke up from sleep to oblige ! After school "Cikgu" Muhyiddin selflessly tutored a student bed-ridden for months following an accident with a gardener's scythe. The image or the name of the one who did the damage is forgotten; but the scars on both legs for life always trigger the memory of Cikgu Muhyiddin's kindness. Sultan Abdul Hamid College 1948-1956 We addressed our teachers "Sir" because all of them were as good as knighted. Mrs Fleur and Mrs Ramaswami were great teachers; yet we adressed them "Madam" instead of "Lady" ! Within a close circle we remember some as Pa' - 'Brahim, Zen, Chai, Hasan, Tong, Razi, Pak Leng, 'E, David; and others as Mr - Wong Ah Wah, Chin Kit Fung, Sheshedri, Stowe, Subramaniun, Lim Swee Ho, Howell, King, Ogle, Young, Menon, Koshi, Miller, Parkinson - and many more the memory of whom is retrievable as we browse our album and the college magazines. Pa' Zain nurtured in us our love of bahasa Melayu and "classics". Mr Stowe and Mr Parkinson interested us in English language and literature; even our "science master" Mr William Miller got us involved in putting up "Macbeth and the witches" for show. Pa' Razi gave us a sense of our history and a perspective of revolutions, bloodless or industrial or otherwise. He made us think hard why we lost Melaka to the Portugese in 1511 and how we should never ever let that ignominy happen again. Pa' `E encouraged even those among us without talent, without inclination, to draw and paint and laugh at ourselves. Mathematically Mrs Ramaswami was always prodding us to reason elegantly from premise to conclusion. Mr Menon taught us to write out briefly but precisely in simple English the results of our experiments and answers to questions of the sciences. We revered "To' Syeh" Halim and Ismail. They awakened us to the values of independence and courage and freedom from any empire. They urged restraint from hostilities. We were never hostile to British teachers in our school. We were intrigued by the coed experiment at SAHC but nevertheless happy to have Ma Min, Siew May, Gaik Lian and Kim Po join the class. We owe all our teachers without exception our habit of lifelong learning. SCHOOLS L3E2 after SAHC life labour learning exposure experience 1957 - I was enjoying life as a planter cadet with Leong Mun Wai in Port Dickson. With a bungalow on a hill and a Norton 350cc motor cycle NA712 work was fun on a Guthrie rubber estate under a Scots Mr Ross. Petrol was free. We started at 5 AM and by 2 PM we were off. Then it happened so fast. 1958-1959 London Wall. Without recourse to my diaries I remember names Neil, Horne, John Chapman, Howard, Carmichael, Biggs and having to rush after work straight to classes at Kings College, University of London in the Strand; and very little about econometrics. 1960-61 University of Edinburgh I remember the struggle to listen to and understand the torrent of words from Professors Anderson and Ritchie and colleagues. Either extra-curricular activities outside the quadrangle were too distracting; or the subjects - Political Economy, Audits and Investigation, Mercantile Law, Accounting and Business Methods etc were way over my head. 1962-1964 Price Waterhouse, Old Jewry, London EC2 Sir Thomas Robson was the principal partner. Mr H M Angus was the partner to whom I was "apprenticed or articled". Also apprenticed to HMA in 1962 was Viscount Coverdale, fresh from Trinity College, Cambridge. In the same year 2 more from Cambridge, 8 from Oxford and 6 others articled to the other partners met at "our HQ" for courses or lectures in Room 12 or Board Room 1 on the ground floor, bristling with bright prospects of "doing PW jobs all over the world". I could'nt get myself thoroughly absorbed in the unproductive and unappreciated work of "detecting fraud" or "messing around with mistakes" of principle, policy, procedure or practice. People were reserve but very helpful and ready to explain or enlighten. I had developed a distaste for our history of colonialism and imperialism and disgust with one arrogant "soab". That aside, there was never any occasion or incident to feel victimised by racial pride and prejudice. Living with the Stewarts at 104 Highgate West Hill, London N6 gave a differnet perspective. Lively interactions with Jim, Jessie, Philip, Mary and their friends and neighbours lifted the chips off the shoulder. Yehudi Menuhin had a home in the neighbourhood. Karl Marx was buried in a cemetery nearby - a great philosophy about nobility of work and dignity of workers of the world was so little appreciated and so much misunderstood. James Stewart, was under-secretary in the Ministry of Labour. Jessie was as intellectual as Jim. Philip went to Oxford to get 2 first class honours in Arabic and then Forestry. Mary wasn't so inclined but she had a great grasp of music and song. She said I could not forget the house number 104; that's the number of Haydn's compositions; I could never forget the red double-decker bus 214 to Highgate West Hill. That number always reminded me of a beautiful verse of "surah 2 of the Qur`an. From then and there, besides my domicile, home was where I found it; on duty at Makkah, Mina and Madinah; or on business in Asean, Japan and USA; or on vacation in Bali, Bangkok and Bornholm; or en passant across the world; or virtually in space with "kstars".