Pak Cik Reminisces (Part 8) – Tanah Tumpah Darah Ku

On the page for 31st August of my 1957 diary, my entry carries the following baffling line:

“Am I happy to see Malaya’s Independence?” – yes, MALAYA it was.

That was written 13,000 km away from where possibly the greatest national event of this country was being celebrated; Pak Cik at a young age, lonely and feeling being left out.




As I read and reread that line and try to fathom the depth of my feeling 52 years ago, I am convinced of one thing. I was being possessive. I did not want to lose MALAYA, tanah tumpah darahku. It did not matter who would govern it but I wanted that country intact as I had grown to love, enhanced by the distance that separated it from me at that very instance. I did not know whether Merdeka and Malaysia would carry anything meaningful to my future.

Today, my fortnightly lunch group consists of just four regulars, two Malays, a Chinese and an Indian. Not many years ago there were four Malays, two Indians and three Chinese in that very special and closely knit group. The number has whittled away. In time, like the ‘sepuluh budak hitam, there will be none. All of us would have been Malayans as much as Malaysians today. Nothing would change, needing no spirited slogan to keep us together with love and respect, drawing our spouses along.

And Pakcik would want my Almanar pupils to learn from that, patriotism in its essence.

Berkhidmat kerana Tuhan untuk kemanusiaan.

It’s AUGUST again. Let’s celebrate

August is just a month like any other month but is not quite like any other month – not to us, Pak Cik and Mak Cik. For a start our wedding anniversary ( never mind the number! One gets tired of counting, anyway)is in the middle of August. Mak Cik was born in that month as well. Unfortunately, Pak Cik – I missed it by just a couple of days, for an even better one, of course!

That is not all. Our daughter and our elder son tied the knot on 25th and 26th August respectively. Our daughter and our only son-in-law had their fourth child on their anniversary. Our elder son had his first boy born in August. And not to miss the fun our younger son had his second daughter in that auspicious month too. So IT'S ALL IN THE FAMILY.


So, true to being a loyal rakyat Malaysia Pak Cik had the Jalur Gemilang hoisted right to the very top of the flag pole in front of Almanar. We celebrate IT ALL, this month of August, with a prayer in our heart, humbly grateful to Him. For all these,

kita berkhidmat untuk kemanusiaan

Pak Cik reminisces (Part 4) - An old Friend resurfaces

Slowly and surely another month of August has crept up and caught up with us, making it the 51st Merdeka Anniversary. This is Pak Cik’s 8th posting since last year’s Merdeka golden jubilee. Without doubt the posting frequency has improved over that of previous years. It is Pak Cik’s hope to do no less in future. After all, this website and my e-mail are the most effective means of communication between Almanar and students associated with it.

During the course of this year Pak Cik had a very pleasant surprise, a message from one of my long lost friends of pre-Merdeka era. Those who have read Pak Cik’s postings a year ago - Pak Cik Reminisces, (Part 1)and(Part 2) - would realise that 50 years ago I was a lonely Malayan student in England, away from Malaya then and living in an English home with others who hardly knew where on earth Malaya was, Pak Cik had little choice but to adapt myself to the new environment. Over time Pak cik had many close friends from England itself. To my regret, we have lost touch with one another. By a stroke of luck, somehow, one of these old friends was able to contact me through the alumni association. He is Ian Sanderson, simply known as Ian among us. Apparently he migrated to United States, where he and his family are today.


Photo : 1961 Mechanical Eng class (L to R) - Peter Goodman, Harold Levy, Ray Perkins, Pak Cik, Anthony Roylance(dec) and Ian Sanderson


Ian sent Pak Cik a number of e-mail messages some extracts of which are recorded below:

“Hassan,

Hey, how are you- do you remember me, Ian [!] We are all well, Blair, my wife and I have been enjoying retirement-almost a year….. . I keep quite fit playing table tennis [ping pong] 4 hours a week with some retired men who are very good. Also I still bike 30 miles every few weeks and play tennis…. I like to sail- I crewed in a friend’s sail boat for a [ Block Island ] race. We came 5th overall. I also sing in a church choir…”

“…….I have 3 sons; Peter 39, Mark 36, Matthew 23 and 5 grandchildren ……”

“ ….I have no contact with our old class at Loughboro' unfortunately- but I do with people in the old cycling club. I have a lot of relatives in England, nieces, nephews, cousins, sisters- that I like to keep in contact with…. .”

“ …..The only person I was in contact with was Tony Roylance- alas he died 3-4 years ago…..”

“……Blair & I went on a great vacation to Italy & Greece recently ……..”

“…….I actually retired June 2007 ……..
From Ian”

That is Ian Sanderson who belongs to Pak Cik’s age group and was together with me for four years about the time Malaya became independent. It is apparent from the brief notes above that he is far more active and mobile than Pak Cik, professionally and physically. To all intents and purposes Pak Cik looked at Ian as a typical English lad during the years we were together. On that account I thought he was conservative enough to make his home in good old England. Instead he opted to migrate to America and be an American citizen. Pak Cik, on the other hand, have returned to my birth place – “.. belut pulang ke lumpur”.

Ian is a truly hard engineer to the core. He was active professionally until he retired in June 2007, a good 15 years after Pak Cik had called it a day. It is interesting to view Ian’s work background and experience. Before he retired last year he had been involved in most aspects of mechanical engineering work ranging from operations and maintenance to design and development, with designs patented to his credit as well. As a true professional he has, on top of it, authored several scientific papers.

Ian has three children, all boys, and is proud of them. Pak Cik have three as well but with a girl among them. Ian may say he is one up on Pak Cik since a girl is just a nuisance! I may indeed agree with him. My classes at Almanar are full of girls, shrieking, chattering, yelling, you name it, driving Pak Cik crazy at times! However there is a plus point in having a daughter, an opportunity to have a son-in-law!

Now allow Pak Cik to reminisce back to the Merdeka time, when Ian and Pak Cik attended the same lecture theatre, enjoying cups of tea served by the same tea lady during tea breaks and queuing up for lunch (of fish and chips for me) in the same dining hall. Ian was an avid cyclist and I was not. Cycling was a pure necessity to shuttle me between my house of residence and the college. Pak Cik can never forget an occasion when I was hurrying to college one morning. The road had an invisible thin layer of ice. That being the arrival of my first winter and inexperienced, Pak Cik soon found myself flat on the road surface with coat, overcoat, hat, files and all, after trying to make a clever manoeuvre on my bike. I knew a group of English school girls were across the road. Quite naturally Pak Cik expected humbling smiles and giggles. Instead they did the unexpected, hurrying across the road to offer help to a silly foreign student. That was a lesson in humility and civic-mindedness. I wonder how many of Almanar girls would react in such a manner under a similar situation – furtive glances and suppressed giggles at best!

Ian often enthusiastically talked about his hiking and biking with friends all over the country during weekends. And Pak Cik had to be contented with my hitch-hiking trips which were planned for semester holidays only. Pak Cik could never see the fun of sweating it out hours and hours on a bicycle. “These crazy English guys!” I used to say to myself. How strange it is that at my age today I have begun to appreciate it. Alas, I have none of the energy to pump up and sweat it out on the road. Now I sit to admire the likes of Ian. I am full of envy whenever I think of my Malaysian friend, Ramli, who takes it in his stride to cycle all the way home from KL to KB in Kelantan, calling at Almanar for keropok lekur. (To appreciate the true prowess of this Malaysian cycling enthusiast friend, Pak Cik would certainly recommend his website: When Less Is More)



Once, Ian told me that, when he was as young as 16, he had already been cycling with his cousin of 14 to places in the south of England, doing a distance as much as 140 km a day. I too was 16 once but my bicycle was for going to school, a distance of about 5 km! Now let Pak Cik ask how many of you have seen a penny farthing ( a bike with a small and a huge wheel – see photo ) being ridden? Pak Cik have and it was Ian who demonstrated it. He rode one during a college carnival week. It was a great annual event known as Loughboro’ Rag Week when students of our college staged a week of festival, reputed for a very sizeable sum of money collected for charity. Ian surprised us all riding a penny farthing! During the parade the traffic stopped. Guess how one makes a stop on a penny farthing! Ian deftly stepped off on to the hood of a nearby car. The driver didn't seem to mind. Few realised how much pain he took to be sufficiently good at riding that machine. On one occasion he managed to get up on it and soon found himself propelled unstoppable toward a nearby canal. Fortunately he fell off away from the canal. What a hilarious sight it was!

That was 50 years ago, a year after Merdeka.

According to his e-mail Ian still cycles on top of many other activities. He is in possession of an old bike, a rickety one indeed. Look at the picture of a proud man with his old bike – or should I say a prized bike with its old owner? (No offence intended, Ian, if you happen to read this.)

In his e-mail above he made reference to a Tony Roylance, another close English friend of ours, who has passed away. Tony too was a successful engineer. It is sad to hear of his passing. We were close those days (see photo above).

Pak Cik will end this posting a message for Pak Cik’s ‘anak buah’. I am sad to see that very few of you take up a hobby, a healthy co-curricular activity. I wish you would adopt one and learn to love and enjoy it.

Pak Cik reminisces ( Pt 2 ) – 50 years ago – Merdeka (b)

Two weeks after Merdeka I received a letter from a friend in K Terengganu, one of my several very close Chinese classmates in Form 5. Affectionately I called him ‘baba’, otherwise Wee Lian Hong. We were so very close at school that our mothers became friends. He was then about to be sent by his family to Australia to do medicine. Unfortunately, today, fifty years later, he is just one of those who live in my memory. A Dato’, having his own clinic and doing a lot of voluntary services, he passed away four years ago. It is fortunate that I still have in my possession that letter which reads :


Kuala Terengganu
31. 8. 1957

Dear Hassan,

Today is Merdeka Day. The time now is just 20 minutes after midnight. I have just heard ( on radio of course, in the absence of TV then) the last address by the former High Commissioner for the Federation, the National Anthem and the chimes of the clock tower in Kuala Lumpur, and a very short speech by Y.T.M Tunku Abdul Rahman, the Prime Minister now.

------------- The whole town goes gay as the day nears and now decorations are up and no house in Kampong China is without strings of coloured bulbs, flags and buntings. The whole town turns into a holiday resort where people from the ulu and across the river flock to see the bright lights of the festive K.T. -----------------

------------- I met Wan Adnan -------- He is the same old fellow – jovial and still retaining the sense of humour. He is a bit plump though. He may go to UK to do law at Lincoln’s Inn. ----------


Yours,
Baba


That is part of the letter, a voice from the past. Reference is made to a mutual close friend, Wan Adnan. The person is none other than the late Tan Sri Wan Adnan Ismail who passed away while serving as the President of the Court of Appeal. He did go to London as Baba’s letter hinted, and that was a real blessing to me. His presence there saw me visiting London at every available opportunity, to enjoy the company of a familiar face, to mutually compliment each other on how well we could prepare nasi goreng in his rented room, and without fail to do the short walk down the road to Malaya Hall in Bryanston Square. It was always warm and cosy inside that old building no matter how cold the weather was outside. What a joy it was to be among young Malayans, hearing the familiar lingo with ‘lah’, ‘hah’ and all. Smiles were offered generously and in abundance. Everyone was everyone else’s friend 8000 miles from home.

That was fifty years ago. The names Baba and Wan Adnan are recorded in the above letter. They belong to two individuals, decorated and highly respected during their lifetime. Looking back at those happy young days I cannot but be reminded with full humanity of these two individuals. Born and schooled before Merdeka they lived and they served with dedication, honour and dignity in independent Malaysia. They were worthy of being the citizens of independent Malaysia. And so should we all hope to be - kerana Tuhan untuk kemanusiaan.

Pak Cik reminisces ( Pt 1 )– 50 years ago –Merdeka (a)

It was September 1957. I was then living in a ‘digs’, a family house with spare rooms rented to students, in a town about 100 miles away from London, 8000 miles away from home (perhaps I should say 160 km and 13,000 km respectively to be more topical with the unit of measure). Three rooms were shared between seven of us: a Peruvian, a Jew from London, a rich son of a minister from Lebanon, a Christian Arab from Iraq, an Indian from India, an Irishman and the lone Malay boy from Malaya. Our English landlady, a widow with a grown up son working in London, served us daily breakfast and dinner. We were a happy mix, sharing our differences. Nevertheless, I was but a lonely lad trying hard to adapt himself to this strange environment. There were houses of worship everywhere and plenty of food and drinks, but almost none for a Muslim. There was no shortage of restaurants but one could not find rice and curry on the menu.

There were no cassette tapes or CD’s to hear the voice of Saloma and P Ramlee. My country was celebrating her independence and here I was, oblivious to the kind of celebrations being held 8000 miles away at a place called home. Today I realise those are the elements that can contribute towards building or destroying a character. And I survived.

How about a phone call to Malaya? We can forget that, let alone hand-phones. It was a great many years before the emergence of E-mail and sending SMS. It was at an era when it was fashionable for a young would-be engineer to show off a pocket slide rule sticking out in his shirt. Today a Form 1 pupil is expected to own a calculator, a device that would be the eighth wonder of the world then. If a young person now was to ask what on earth a ‘pocket slide rule’ is, a similar question would be asked then of a ‘pocket calculator’. So, sending and receiving news was all by air-mail letters which took about two weeks to reach. If you could not afford the cost of an air-mail stamp, the alternative was going by ‘surface-mail’, a slow boat that would take about a month, with the added risk of the mail getting lost altogether.

It is pointless to keep reminding myself now how lonely it could be then. Circumstances often drive one to discover happy alternatives. So life went on. Of some comfort to me was the news I received a couple of weeks earlier that I had just passed my University of London GCE ‘A’ level, a two-year course which I was made to accomplish in one year by my sponsors. Hence I was on course to begin my degree as planned. As I had already completed my first year in UK I could rejoice at the thought that in another year I would be allowed to take my holiday at home, all paid for by my sponsors.

So this time fifty year ago I heard of the coming historic event in Malaya. What did I record in my diary ? Here goes one page from my 1957 diary :

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

31 AUGUST, SATURDAY ( 1957)

M E R D E K A D A Y !

News in all papers
Headlines of BBC news too
The voice of T Abdul Rahman shouting ‘Merdeka!’ (3 times) and the response from people came out and clear.
Tears trickled down my face
Special BBC broadcast 10.45 to 11.00 pm
Slept very late , after 2.30 am

Am I happy to see Malaya’s independence?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Today I wonder why I deemed it important to end the brief note in my diary with that question. There seems to be a sense of disquiet, an echo of uncertainty in that young boy’s mind, away and alone among strangers, remote from the scene of the action. Today, wiser by 50 years, I understand it better. I had my independence at that young age, out of my family’s direct control. I had no need for their financial help. I could do just what I wanted, fooling around, spending my allowance, breaking all my religious rules and ethics and all. Nonetheless I needed love and affection. I longed to be with those who shared my childhood, rice and curry prepared by my mother’s loving hands. Without my sponsors I would not have the very opportunity to be at the heart of the world’s greatest empire, which granted Malaya’s independence.

Indeed I think I know it better today that ‘merdeka’ is just a great sound from an empty drum until one is able to break free from being at the receiving end to a position that others benefit from what he can contribute.

Let me take a break here. A sequel to this will follow in due course.

Pak Cik’s message – 31st August 2007 (50th Merdeka Anniversary)

It has been quite a while since the last entry was made. Pak Cik has always had in mind updating Almanarnuri regularly. This has failed miserably. Consequently, this site tells nothing of the current situation at Almanar, its failures as well as its successes. Pak Cik has every intention to put this right. Every attempt will be made to have a bit of news from time to time. Perhaps, this day being the 50th anniversary of our independence, it is as good a day as any to make a start.

In general Almanar has been able to live up to its motto, ‘ Berkhidmat kerana tuhan untuk kemanusiaan’. Single-handed at the helm Pak Cik has not failed to keep reviewing the effectiveness of materials and methods employed. Many quarters have seen Almanar as a unique non-profit-making venture. It has now entered the thirteenth year of its existence. Convinced of what Almanar has done, a number of families have given their votes of confidence by having their third children enrolled. In more than one way Almanar has developed into an institution in its own right. Most unfortunate is Pak Cik’s failure to attract voluntary teaching resource to expand the programme envisaged. Its enrolment is levelled at around 80 to 90 pupils attending the basic three-year course beginning at Form One. There are of course a number of those from Form 4 and Form 5, who find the familiar atmosphere at Almanar conducive to concentrated work. This is most noticeable during school holidays when ex-Almanar pupils return home from their boarding schools. Here they congregate to exchange experience and to work ahead together.

The year 2006 saw a great success for the 20 odd pupils sitting for PMR examination. Ten candidates obtained 8A’a. Thirteen were given places to continue Form 4 at MRSM, of whom five went to Pengkalan Cepa, rated among the top MRSM in the country. These boys and girls have given credits to their families. Almanar is proud to share their pride.

To all those who have shared parts of their student life at Almanar Pak Cik would wish this: “all the best to you, post Merdeka children. Pak Cik’s school days belong to pre-Merdeka era, a period in time with different kind of challenges, some greater than today’s. But your future will undoubtedly be no less challeging. Strive and, kerana Tuhan and in the spirit of Merdeka, keep on striving. I have often borrowed the saying that the measure of our success is the amount of effort we put into it.”