Nearly three months have passed since the academic year 2003-04 ended. the flowers have bloomed, lush colorful trees have come to abundance, the sun shining ever brightly, and the mighty summer hurricanes and raging thunderstorms constantly making their presence known...it is only a matter of time now before the leaves turn red & brown, the autumn breeze starts blowing and the Fall semester begins...
although school was officially over in mid-May, I’ve been taking classes all this while, hoping to perhaps boost my grades and do sth worthwhile to avoid total boredom during this entire season of heat. apart from the many online Yu-gi-oh! games with the fellas and that one time indoor rock climbing session a few weeks back (it was awesome but then I suddenly remembered why I never really liked high places and I only realized this when I was on top), my life these days pretty much revolves around attending my daily statistics class at 10.30. more than a month and a half went by since the second summer session began and now I dreadfully look forward to only less than a week of the damned stats class and that bastard Korean instructor of mine and his near-to-impossible-to-solve-exam-problems. after that, it’ll be abt 2 weeks before school reopens, but thoughts of classes & studying will have to wait as the guys and I have already made plans for our highly-anticipated 9-day road/camping trip during our well-deserved short break.
speaking abt school and classes, I was informed by an old friend that my high school batch held a reunion of sorts more than a week ago. gosh, I suddenly realize that it’s been 4 years since I left SDAR. I was never good at bidding farewells or saying good bye because I always thought sappy displays of emotion like hugging and tears were unnecessary (and in fact shameful) for men when parting. so under the morning light of December 2000, I left the school without telling anyone else, leaving my status as a student and every single aspect of my high school life behind, with only the many memories of the place I always thought of as my home with me. though I did meet some of my closer buddies before coming here, I never quite managed to properly bid farewell to most of the guys, so in some ways I have a sense of guilt forever plaguing my mind abt leaving them like that. and even when the SPM results came out, I wasn’t able to go to Seremban and meet everyone else because I had a goddamn driving test. well, I guess I’ll just have to look forward to the next reunion then...
yeah, I’ve had so many joyful and bitter memories in SDAR. I still remember that not many thought I’d survive in a boarding school. I was a spoiled-brat as a child, a “mama’s boy”…I guess those who doubted me had reasons for coming up w/ such assumptions after all. still, life in that sick, poor-excuse-for-an-academic-institution definitely changed me a lot. if it hadn’t been for that “toughening up session” by my senior back in Form 1, I would’ve prolly never gotten rid of my wussy image. before SDAR, I always knew that ppl perceived me as a “weakling”. hell, I thought I was weak. some of my close pals even truthfully admitted that they never thought I’d make it through. but I did. I beat the odds. I proved all of them wrong alright. SDAR may be a school with its own shortcomings but it was MY school. it was my home. it truly gave me a new life.
back in high school, I was your simple average Joe. I was no straight A student. I’m no nerd. I was no bookworm. I didn’t have any trouble w/ the seniors or the school officials. in fact, in my entire 5 years at that school, I was only caned twice for wearing dark blue socks instead of black (yes, you read that right. I was caned for not wearing socks of the right color. can you imagine that?) and for not attending a sports event that I was supposed to take part in (I was sleeping and no one bothered to wake me up. to this day I still believe that caning was unjustified). there were other times when I was caught doing sth clearly against school regulations (like going out on Sundays w/ your parents without asking permission. I know its dumb but rules are rules) but my mastery in the skill of telling half-truths have always spared my ass from the devilish rod of the school wardens. at most, I’d make fun or mock some of the teachers but I usually end it jokingly with a light note to avoid any real hard feelings (once, I told a classmate that if we fail in our studies in college, we could always end up as a high school teacher, and I did this in front of my own class teacher who immediately gave me a piercing glare. heh heh). in short, you could say I was nothing but a simpleton who minded his own business.
I’ve always been in the “problem class” in my 5 years at the school. we weren’t really troublemakers, we just loved doing pranks and making fun of the teachers. once, I remember plotting w/ the guys to put itching powder on our English teacher back in Form One just because she was pissing us off by giving a huge amount of workload compared to the other English classes. there was this one other time when I was caught not doing the homework given during the holidays, and she (my English teacher in Form One) got angry and told everyone who didn’t finish the homework to stand up in class. to my surprise (and delight), the whole class stood up, somewhat supporting/ backing me up. it was obvious she couldn’t scold every one of us, so she had no choice but to go through the homework exercises in class. we really didn’t like her and we were grateful that by the time we got to Form Two, another English teacher (a really nice but perverted Chinese fella) was assigned to our class.
my classmates during my final two years were the greatest bunch of nutcases I’ve ever been with. some of the guys were like constantly ridiculing the teachers every single minute (not that I approve of it but it was sure funny as hell). there was this talented classmate of mine, who actually wrote a semi-erotic essay for our BM exercise in class. our BM teacher, Pn. Karimah (who also happens to be our class teacher in those final 2 years) was seriously upset because it wasn’t exactly the kind of material she was expecting from her students. it’s even worse that the guys were always ogling at her daughter every time she comes for a visit. even though she can be annoying at times, Pn. Karimah was like a mother to us. I guess she must’ve been really proud that I was one of her very own students who actually made it to overseas. sadly, I was told she passed away due to some chronic illness last year…
actually, during my early years I was considered a “misfit” by the guys. I’m not the one who would easily conform to some of the stupid traditions or “ideologies” in the school and I’ve also been known to usually incite verbal arguments and quarrels (I guess this was the very trait that eventually got me into debating back then) which didn’t sit too well w/ the fellas. but over the years, I gradually earned their respect (or at least some of it) and many bonds of friendship w/ some of the unlikeliest ppl were formed. there’s a psycho who once put me in the Crossface submission hold back during SPM week and is now living his dream of traveling around the world on a ship (yes, I’m talking abt you Sard), a comic fanatic who can draw the most neat-looking pigs but also happens to be a former member of the religious committee who was once caught w/ a disk containing pornography (heh heh heh, you know who you are), a chubby, jolly dude who gave off the loudest fart I’ve ever heard in a mosque during a black out, an outcast with the thickest lips and many more. yup, these guys were some of my greatest friends indeed...
I remembered this one time when it was at the end of the month, and it was in the middle of the night and we were starving to death. the dining hall was already long closed and none of us had any money to go out to buy food. desperate for a bite in the wee hours of the cold morning, we poured some hot water into a pail we found (it was clean...well sorta) and cooked whatever remaining packets of Maggi we could find. after waiting for abt 3 minutes, we couldn’t wait for the thing to cool off any longer so we just dug into the hot piping noodles with our bare hands and scarfed whatever we could get to satisfy frenzied crave. we were men, we were goddamn hungry and we couldn’t care less the fact that we were eating instant noodles that was cooked inside a pail. trust me, when you’re that desperate for food, lack of hygiene is probably the last thing on your mind in that very situation. that’s definitely sth you most probably won’t experience unless you’re a guy and you’re studying in a residential school.
come to think of it, food was actually not much of a problem back then. sure, we had our share of maggot-infested burgers from the canteen, “lemon-flavored” tea (no thanks to the Axion dishwashing soap) and “iron-enriched” vegetables (I know they’re supposed to provide us w/ a balanced diet, but I sure as hell didn’t expect to find iron in the form of a screw in my veggies) but before the govt. decided to truly bastardize our meals by having our dining halls privatized by some schmuck, SDAR was definitely the school w/ the best menu I’ve ever seen!!! and I’m not exaggerating either!! ask any SDARian who studied there between 1996-97. get this… we had like 5 meals a day (breakfast, recess, lunch, dinner and supper), we pay like RM1.00 a day and what do we get? for recess, on Mondays we get mini-curry puffs, on Tuesdays we get hot dogs and baked beans, it’s cream-stuffed buns & Dutch Lady UHT boxed milk on Wednesdays, chicken burger (yep, free chicken burger served at the dining hall!!) on Thursdays and fried green bean cakes on Fridays. I can’t remember well abt other meals but I do remember having roti canai & fried rice for breakfast (like any other residential school), mee kari, chapatti and roti jala for supper, and the usual chicken rice for lunch on Fridays and not to mention the complementary ice cream cup on Thursday evenings. and we were getting all of these every single week throughout the academic year!! shit, by today’s standards even I can’t afford to eat all of those stuff every single week on my own allowance!!!
on a related note, personally I’ve always thought that my batch has got to be the most barbaric, uncivilized group of ppl I’ve ever met when it comes to eating. in my 5 years in that school, except for the time when we were Form 5, my batch held a record for devastating the doors to dining hall every single freakin’ year. I know that we had great food being served (well, at least for the first two years) but damn...it’s always a huge stampede when the bell rings, and yes...there have been many instances where some poor bastard gets crushed under the rushing mob. once, I had the unfortunate experience of coming late for the weekly Friday prayers and therefore I had to sit at a spot next to the door. as soon as the prayers were over, I couldn’t even get up and reach out to the wide open door because in a split second, I was immediately squashed by more than a 100 or so ppl running towards the dining hall. it all happened just too fast. 2 minutes later, I was still inside the mosque, my face flat on the floor and my back aching like hell from the massive trampling. and I thought things like this only happen in cartoons.
there were other things that happened back at the school which still haunt me to this day. one particular thing which still bugged me is the issue of homosexuality, especially in an all-boys school like SDAR. ohh...don’t give me that bullshit look on your faces. it’s a damn well-known fact that every (and I mean EVERY single) single-sex school in Malaysia has that very same problem (some of the coeds /religious schools have ‘em too). a contained environment without the presence of members of the opposite sex (except maybe the teachers). yeah, it’s a fucked up life I’d say. I’ve been there for 5 freakin years and I barely managed to survive being uncorrupted by the “gay-ish lifestyle” of almost the entire community of that school. I’m not talking abt an actual anal penetration or some sick shit that only those w/ the most perverted minds would engage in (although there ARE cases like that at the school, but they’re actually rarer than you think), but it really sickens me to see the some of the guys actually sleeping together (cuddling even. quick, get a barf bag), hanging out at the far corner of the corridor under the bright moonlight like some romantic couple and writing love notes and sending gifts of food and stuff to their so-called “beloved ones”. yech. and it saddens me even more that some of these ppl were some of my closest friends.
I’ve argued/debated countless times with the fellas abt their objectionable favorite past-time, only to fall on deaf ears. in fact, some accused of me of being a “rogue” because I was not adhering to the “traditional customs” of the school. the supposed logic behind this highly questionable practice is that we were living in an environment without women, and as young teens w/ raging hormones, ppl must understand it’s only normal that we had no choice but to go for the next best thing: men w/ feminine features. God, I can’t possibly imagine how a guy could possibly get turned on by another guy, even if he looked “cute”. it’s sick man!! I’d rather spend an entire night making out w/ a Category F girl than clash dicks like some sick swordplay w/ a dude. there was this concept of guavanism, a sort of homoerotic relationship between a senior and a his “pet brother” at the school. the “guava” (translated in Malay as ‘jambu’, which actually means someone w/ a baby face or has really cute features) spends most of his time in the company of his “older brother”, walking and doing stuff together, speaking softly to each other under the shrouds of darkness in the middle night... man, I swear it’s like watching a cheesy romantic teen flick every time I see them.
anyway, despite having spent abt half a decade in a closed society which reminded me of ancient Greece (during the days when the philosophers were keen of having relationships w/ young, cute boys), I remained “unscathed” from any form of vile homosexual influences. in fact, I made a bet w/ the guys that I’d never get myself into the “guava business” until SPM week and unsurprisingly, it turned out a success for me and my victory actually cost them a personal pan pizza from Pizza Hut (to those who made a bet that I’d remain single till 28, pray really hard that the same thing won’t happen to you guys). besides, I’ve always thought the idea of having a pet brothers/sisters is pretty much messed up...keeping humans as pets is just inhumane...
yeah, SDAR may have its own major problems, but I wouldn’t even trade for the world for my 5 years of life at that place. and although I always tell myself to just let it go and leave my past of that school behind, I guess some things are just not meant to be forgotten. the school has since been relocated to a new location in Sg. Gadut a few years back, w/ the old campus now turned into a new residential school (Sek. Menengah Sains Seremban if I’m not mistaken). when I think abt it, it’s kinda sad that we won’t ever get the opportunity to see our old school in the next reunion in years to come. to me, SDAR may have changed and the life I went through over there may be over, but the memories will forever be etched onto my mind, like the image of a naked chick seen for the 1st time by a prepubescent male. I guess, just like our school motto... ’Once a SDARian, always a SDARian’....
