Life is like wearing shoes. Some shoes you wear everyday, some shoes you keep for years and years waiting for the right occasion to wear them. Some shoes you are willing to forget, some shoes you refuse to throw away. Some shoes fit well, some bite you. Some shoes you buy just because. Some shoes are simply shoes that protect your feet and take you places.
I would not say my upper secondary school stint at MRSM Beseri was anything I look back with fondness except the fact that that is where I found my true calling, which was everything that did not require Additional Maths and Science subjects. I was an arty farty angsty feminist stuck in a junior science college popularly known as Serambi Mekah where heads had to be bowed 90 degrees to the floor just so that boys and girls could not main mata. Tough luck for a girl who just came out of a convent. I guess the fun bit was not what and how I did in class, where I slept through most of the classes,possibly due to low blood sugar, hey, Perlis was very HOT and the food was not all that good. Luckily for me, overzealous testestorone enjoyed leaving peanut butter jars under my desk for my snacking pleasure.
I was already actively writing chronicles of my adventures in a journal and managed to persuade an abang senior to write with me in a freewriting experiment. Ok, ok this guy thought I was the love of his life and we figured that if we were to write letters in a book and leave it under our desks, it would be inconspicuous. What do I know about love at 16. I just loved to write. Psst..psst, at the time I already had a off again-on again childhood sweetheart who wrote to me regularly from Southampton that there was always mail for me almost everytime I checked. And how I loved stamps from the UK. And he sent me chocolates too. He is now a good friend, happily married with a kid, and still a computer geek. I met the abang senior not too long ago at One Utama, he's married with kids, looking every bit like a bookish mathematician. And don't let me start on how many geeks I have dated, but decided to marry a rocker instead. But then he is a closet geek. Heh. And so am I. Perfect match upstairs. Alhamdulillah.
Oh, I digress.
Beseri had this weird MCP thing going on that girls and boys could not mingle socially without being thrashed at the surau if not under the hot sun. Suffice to say, I was royally miffed by the fact that we were treated like second class, so low that some holier-than-thou guys had to cover their faces with a book to avoid that sinful gaze when talking to you. We always got the bad seats eventhough we were called pelajar puteri, my glorious derriere! The happening tasks of deejaying, emceeing and stage performances were not privileges enjoyed by the girls.
I grabbed the opportunity to make a difference by collaborating with the English Department and organised a concert commemorating Earth Day( guess who became the lyrical Mother Earth). We had girls and boys masked and dressed androgynously just so that we would not tick the surau people. Yet I heard of mass solat hajat protesting our activities and a toilet bowl bombing when the show was going on. I didn't think, we did anything wrong , I still don't,but there were so many confused and constipated back passages then, who later became more notorious after we left school. Bah!
We also had a lil Speaker's Corner and by then I had already developed a proximity syndrome with the microphone, there were more and more girls involved. I was librarian then, in charged of newpaper clippings. And I loved it. I spent a lot of time there. Because I was anal about books and things arranged a certain way, some people nicknamed me Mama Bosan.
I had two other nicknames, P-Nut and Datin. The former is attributed to the fact that I love peanut butter(the food really sucked big time, ok? Save for the nasi lemak, after prep. Sadly, the guy who used to sell it to us suddenly expired recently) and the latter is between my larger than life attitude back then or it has to be because of the hand-me-down Datinesque baju kurung I wore. I was not very big on baju kurung back then, so I had too few and Mak let me use hers.
My father's friend, Hj Mat Din and family was my foster family with whom I spent weekends when it was inconvenient to go back to KL. They welcomed me in their massive home in Kampung Salang like one of their own, I feel that I am truly blessed.I first learnt how to make roast chicken there from Nicole Maree Mackay, a Kiwi who was an exchange student staying with my foster family. I remember rides on the maroon Jaguar which ferried me back to the place overlooking Bukit Gondol, feeling a little like a princess in the back seat.
I probably sucked academically, but it was there I professed a lifetime love for Edward de Bono and that has made me the person that I am today. The shoes I wore at MRSM Beseri were kept in the far end of my cabinet, because there were things I would like to forget. I would like to think I have moved on, but there are two teachers whose brains were in between their legs I really do not wish to meet again. Ever. And they are the very reasons why I would not send any of my children to boarding schools.
Above all, I cherish most about Beseri is the friends I gained, yet due to my own negligence, I have lost contact with them. Recently a guy from my prep (homework and revision time) gang found my blog, and that led to a visit from a long lost sister from my homeroom. Welcome to my blog Paroe and Aida. Incidently, they are the bloodline of our alumni, I look forward to reuniting with old friends again. I am glad my old shoes decided to see the light of day.
P.S: Positive blogging lagi Kakteh.
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