Nandakumar has been a good friend of mine since I was 14. Form 2 was when this newcomer to Sitiawan traipsed into our classroom and sat close to me along with the usual suspects, Teik Sing, Khoots, Warren, et. at. Despite being good friends, we rarely see each other these days. Life positioned us where it was difficult to meet, and inundated us with many other issues to deal with that meeting Nanda wasn’t the foremost on my mind. The last time we met was during Laskmanan’s wedding before Irfan was born. Until today. Ain and I met up with him at SS20’s roadside restaurant. (It was my idea to eat there, I hoped he liked the food.) He has to get back to work on shift at the oil rig next week. There were plenty to talk about and not enough time to talk about everything. We talked about […]

I leant of a very heartwarming news yesterday when I was having lunch with Tern Lik (or Tem Lik as his business card erroneously states, heh). Irfan’s Uncle Teik Sing and Aunt Michelle are expecting a baby! Michelle’s been pregnant 8 weeks. I can’t believe Teik Sing and I played in school when we were seven and now our kids will have the opportunity to play with each other. Congratulations to Teik Sing and Michelle! It’s going to be one thrilling ride.

What I miss most about Sitiawan can be summed up thusly: I miss watching movies (at the big screen and home theatre) and discussing them from a geek’s point of view. I miss cycling to Teluk Batik and walking back on foot because of a flat bicycle tyre. I miss going on adventures in and around the mangrove swamps of Kampung Acheh, looking at mudskippers and paddling rented canoes and avoiding water snakes. I miss camping out at the sandy beaches of Pangkor’s Coral Bay, taking the ferry to and from the island and lying on the sand at night to count shooting stars. I miss camping out behind the District Scout House at the mangrove swamps of Kampung Sitiawan, getting up early at dawn to cycle around Sitiawan before everyone wakes up and walking in the middle of the night to the nearby cafe to buy air sirap when […]

I was back on vacation from studies at the end of 1992 when Woon Seong, Shahar and I went on a trip to Pangkor. It was disconcerting times in those days, when I haven’t seen any of my Sitiawan friends for almost 2 years. When I met them during vacation, there was always the fear that things would not be the same as they had been in ACS. We were all experiencing new things at separate locations, far apart. My fears, I discovered, were not unfounded. It was true, things had changed. Not for the better or for the worse. It’s just that things were now different. But we adapted. Once upon a time, I feared that our fellowship might be broken after long periods of being incommunicado. Now I know that even after years of absence, one can still be as wacky as before, when meeting old friends long […]

PE time in ACS Sitiawan during our time was usually the PE teacher asking us football or hockey, or if you’re an Amerikaner, soccer or field hockey. I remember 70% of the time we opted hockey. Here is a rare photo of Form 3A1 in 1988 on the field during PE. This picture was taken using a disposable camera. I vaguely remember taking about a dozen pictures in school with this camera, and this was the only exposure that survived some sort of cosmic cataclysm. Because the lens quality of the flimsy camera was terrible, this was the best resolution I got on standard photo paper. From what I can tell, from left to right, we have (forget the guys semi-blocked off in the background) an unidentifiable Indian guy, Khoots, T’sing, Sathya, Keith Lee, another unidentifiable Indian guy (maybe Vernon), and Warren. Since most of the hockey sticks at the […]

Back in 1986, when I was a First Former, and a Scout, the yearly school session were divided into three terms. During the two term holidays of that year, 1st Troop Manjung organized camp outs in the school grounds. We usually camped out in front of the new canteen, where a new tennis court stands now I’m told. The first campout we I got the Keris Gangsa badge. The second campout I got the Keris Perak badge. I never got the Keris Emas badge. Well, those were the days. You want pictures? You got pictures. I wish we had more photos taken then.