tuan kob raja saring,hamid budaya-dikir teri.DAT

Dikir Teri - Tuan Kob, Hamid Budaya, Pak Ku

From Krai to The Bridge International School

One of the greatest moment in my life was to live my dream of studying in The United States and that moment came true when i got this scholarship offer from MARA to pursue my tertiary education in Colorado, United States.  After getting all the required documentations and processes including a short 3 days orientation at the University Malaya, the day finally came for me to say goodbye to my family and friends.

1) The Journey

Date: June 5th 1982 ; Day: Saturday ; Location: Terminal 1, Subang International Airport, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The beginning of the new chapter of my life.

The first leg of our journey was to Singapore using Singapore airlines. From Singapore, we all boarded China Airlines with  transits in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Honolulu and finally in Los Angeles. There were 20 of us in the flight, 15 x-MRSM students and only 5 from other schools including me. Ironically, with none of us ever been to USA, no MARA or government officials accompanying us in the flight.
 
I, finally set foot  in Denver  on June 6th 1982 via Stapleton International Airport, Colorado. After more than 30 hours journey including missing connecting flight from LA to Denver, it was very invigorating to breath Denver's cool sunday morning air. Many months later ( remember the great 1982 blizzard?) , i find out that the cool air was just an appetizer in this Rocky Mountain climate.  By then, we had become accustomed to the mountain climate and the sweet sound of Metro bus plying through Colfax Avenue.

There is story story behind this Minor identification card below 18 years old.

2) Manglish time !

All  20 of us were destined for the Bridge International School, Denver CO.  Before we left Malaysia, we appointed a leader amongst us, Bro Junus Suhid, a MRSM Kuantan student, an outspoken and a fun guy to be around. Obviously, he was to be responsible for the group's journey from Malaysia to Denver but with the missing connecting flight and the no show by the Bridge International School officials at Denver's airport, this put him in a tight situation.

The Bridge International revisit -1983

                                                 

Upon arrival in Denver and with nobody to receive us at the airport, we had to call the person in charge, Ms Judy, who's mentioned in the offer letter from the Bridge International School.  Since majority of us were still in the Manglish mode including Junus, the communication with the Bridge official was left to the 4 girls in the group. This time Hajar Raslin (Assunta girl) stepped in to contact Ms Judy and inform her of our arrival at the airport. It made sense to let the English speaking Assuntarian to do the talking. Not the MRSM boys nor the SAS boys!.

3) Judy , Judy , Judy

But as the group leader, Junus must have felt that it was his responsibility to get things right and Junus being Junus, he was having fun asking any woman passing by as if she was Judy. "Are you Judy?" , "Are you Judy?" He did it until Judy showed up one hour later to pick us up from the Denver Airport.

She later took us to Driftwood Motel on Oneida Street, off Colfax Avenue where she checked us in for the rest of  the day. We definitely having jet lag and it didn't take long for all of us to fall asleep until late evening on our first day in Denver, Colorado. Later we woke up to a new freedom in which we would never experience in Malaysia.

4) Living in America!

After 3 days stay in the motel, we finally moved into our own accommodation at  Woodland Apartment, #1093, 16th Avenue, East Colfax Ave, Aurora Colorado. Across the apartments blocks on the Joliet street and Colfax Avenue was Safeway Superstore and in between the apartment and Colfax Avenue was the Church Fried Chicken, now where the KFC outlet is. The same Ms Judy from the Bridge International took us to Safeway Super store and showed us around what to buy or not to buy in the store and one thing she said that i remember until today, " you guys are poor students and please avoid those Deli section where the goods are on the expansive side" Yes, with only USD 370 a month to spend while doing our English, nothing much we could buy then. Our pocket money was increased to USD 405 a month when we entered the universities. 

Put aside poor student status, I have to confess that living on my own was very exhilarating and beyond my imagination. Coming from the boarding school background with its rigid hostel disciplines and rules, the apartment dwelling was a quantum leap in my life style. No lights off, no warden, no early morning wake up call and no need to make up the bed were just one hell of new experience for me. Nevermind the absent of nasi lemak or cendol, my mind was only focussed on the limitless self indulgence in this new world called the United States of America....

With house mates in Denver circa August 1982

5) The Bridge International School

When i received the offer for the Bridge International School, Denver Colorado, the first thing that came to my mind was John Denver, the famous country singer with hit songs like, "Take me home, country road", "leaving on the jetplane" and many more. Then, came the images of Rocky mountain with its snow capped peak seemed to be welcoming me to be there as soon as possible.

Before i arrived at the Bridge International school,   i imagined meeting many international students from all over the world but I found out that the school was full with only students from the non English speaking countries like the South and Central Americans and a handful of Middle Eastern students whom majority had poorer command of English than the Malaysian. Even with our Manglish, we were placed higher grade of English classes which were divided from level 1 to level 5.. And it was obvious that the 4 girls + few other guys were place in the highest level class which almost guaranteed their place in the Universities of their choice based on their English TOEFL result or Michigan test.

my last visit to The Bridge International School in 1983- approximately 27 years ago!

 

Beside normal English lesson ( listening and writing) , we looked forward for the bumper pool and ping pong games in between breaks. The learning scenario in the classroom was more like  the BBC comedy sitcom "Mind your language" or "Oh My English " on Astro programme.

One of my favorite teacher was Ms Marion who taught mid level English class and also acted as our chaperon for some of the trips outside the school such as "the Renaissance Festivals" held in Colorado Springs every summer and few of the cowboy country dances in town. 

Also worth to mention about my 3 months experience there was the 2 weeks Metro bus strike which prompted many of us to purchase bicycles and eventually me and Jamaluddin Ahmad shared to purchase Datsun B210 model 1974 for a sum of USD700. I became the sole owner of the Datsun b210 when we moved to Greeley in September 1982. Finally, all the good times at The Bridge International school ended when we got accepted into various Universities for the Fall semester but the memories remain until today and i could vividly remember the laughters and the commotion in between classes especially when we were fighting to be the first to play pool or ping pong. Donde Esta La Vida  Raul, Mohammed , Unandar and the rests?


nota kaki: The Bridge International School is no longer at the 1800 Pontiac St and i wonder whether it ever existed anymore...

Boh sini, Boh sana, Hok to se nyo Nate Berok..

In the hand of kelantanese, Boh means Boss. So in my own Guchil,Krai media group, we have so many Bohs. Everyone is referring to each other as Boh. Boh Mat, Bok Li, Boh Soyi, Bok Pok Li, Boh ni , Boh tu.... So, who's the real boss?

As a matter of fact, all of us are the "boss" in our own definition. We are in control of our own doings and our own destiny. We have the opportunity to change our "Qada & Qadar" with our own prayers and nobody can change us but us. This is between us and Allah Al Mighty.

So when everyone starts calling each other with Boh before the name, there's a sign of respect for each other and since none of us has Datukship title, and what more Tan Sri or Dato seri, the aptly use of Boh in our communication is something unique.

But to cross swords with kelantanese does have repercussion when it comes to cursing language. So instead of calling you Boh, you will hear words like Nate Berok so and so, before your names. In this context, Kelantanese can be very nice and kind with their words when they respect you but the moment they lose respect on you, the Nate Berok  expletive will be your appetizer of the day.

Cheers!   

  

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SRSYP 1976 --Black leather shoes & mata Mat hilang.....

There were plenty of  memorable moments when i was studying in SRSYP or Sekolah Rendah ( jenis Inggeris)  Sultan Yahya Petra, Kuala Krai Kelantan from 1971-1976. As the the oldest English school in the Ulu Kelantan district, the school not only hosted many historic moments since its humble beginning in 1951 but also the pride for many of its illustrious pupils who set foot in the school before. I am not going into details about the school, i just want to share my lasting memory during my final year in the school.   

SRSYP  school building facing the playing field .  We  used this block for standard 1(morning) and std 2(afternoon).  It has now being  demolished  to make way for the  modern school block.

1) The Island Classroom 

As a standard 6 pupil, we occupied a one storey wooden building up the hill across the street opposite the main school complex. For me, it was a special location away from the mainstream students population and it gave us the freedom in noise decibel away from the headmaster and the teachers who occupied administrative building across the street. The wooden school block consisted of 4 classrooms and one science lab  (very rare to have a science lab in primary schools in those days). It was made of  high cement pillars with wooden flooring and walls. We actually had to climb up stairs to get into our classrooms and space underneath the classrooms was high enough for our playgrounds.

The standard 6 block, standing pretty away from the main buildings.

There were entrances at each end of the block. One entrance closest to the street was shared between Blue class (kelas biru) and Green class. The other entrance was shared between Red Class and Yellow class. Another entrance in the middle was for the  school lab. That was my earliest exposure to bunsen burner and test tubes.Too bad, none of us grew up to win a noble prize in science.

The administrative building housing the teachers' and headmaster's room. It started as a hostel for the expatriate planters' kids. 

2) The "abused" privileges 

The school allowed the standard 5 and 6  students the privilege of wearing black leather/PVC  shoes to school. Somehow, the same privilege had been abused time and time again by most of the students then. This came to the attention of our discipline teacher, Mr Lien ( aka Lion) ) who had enough of these abuses and decided to go after the "multi colored" and "multi racial" wearers during one Sunday morning school assembly.  Most of them wore their raya or deepavali shoes, not many in the case of chinese students during my time except a handful like Ho Kee Aik and Teo Chin Beng.

Well, those days the Indians in Kuala Krai tend to be a bit colorful and it was not difficult for Mr Lien to spot the offenders and lined them in front of the school assembly. I was praying hard that he didn't see my red brownish shoes, almost similar to the picture below and thanked to my lucky star,  i escaped the humiliation of being paraded in front of the assembly. Come to think about it, would he want to punish one of his star* student ? Nayy, cronyism was already taking place during those time.

3) The Pen Game

Beside the right to wear black leather shoes, as a standard 6 student, we were allowed to use pen with ink for our school works. Only black ink pen was allowed and not ballpoint for school works. Majority of us were using "Pilot" brand  pen, one of the cheapest and most reliable pen at that time. During our breaks between classes, we engaged in games using pen, geometry set or occasionally our steel school badges, unlike the soft badge currently in use.

Pilot Pen

One day, during one of the between classes game, I accidentally poked my pen's tip into the soft wooden flooring.  When i pulled the pen, the tip remained stuck in the wood flooring and my spontaneous reaction next was the laughing stock of the day. 

When i saw the pen without its tip, i started yelling " mata Mat hilang, mata Mat hilang...". It was a panic moment for me. Farid Hassan remembers well this incident and now of course i take it as a glimpse from the past. Our relationship among the classmates then was very close, we were like brothers and  we could address ourselves with our first names instead of saya or aku (too bad we were not that friendly towards the girls then, perhaps because of the rivalry since we were in standard 2). The boys and the girls rivalry can be detailed out in my next episode and of course with the permission from the main actors and actresses.

4) In Flood , we serve !

The island school block also was used as the storage to protect all the school furnishing and assets from flood water.  Before the end of the school year in November, we would carry all the school stuffs from the lower blocks across the street to the upper ground Island block. The whole student population took part in the migration process so that when the monsoon season started during the year end school holidays and the area got flooded, it would not affect the school assets in the lower ground.

new motto

Sadly to say, all these historic buildings are all gone with the modernization and over ambitious officials to convert old school buildings into a modern 3 storey school buildings as what you can see nowadays in Malaysia. We, not only lost our school buildings but we also lost our school identity. Our school name has been changed and our school badge has also being changed. Now we are only known as Sekolah Kebangsaan Sultan Yahya 1 with the school badge motto "Hidup Berjasa" what happened to the old motto of " steadfast in duty"?     

modern school labs

Kes Model tak menjadi......

This is my little secret. I was once a Management Trainee at Chujitsu Retail Store back in 1987 for about 4 months. Those who were staying in Taman Segar, Cheras then would remember this Chujitsu Superstore with its bright orange sunflower logo occupying Cheras Plaza Building at the top of Taman Segar hill . Now next to Cheras Plaza is where the existing Cheras Leisure Mall.

Chujitsu Outlet in Taman Segar, Cheras was the first Chujitsu store outside Japan and it was established in Malaysia with a joint investment between Perlis Plantation berhad and Chujitsuya Corporation of Japan in 1986. The store was to be its flagship store in Malaysia and they were planning to open more outlets with the success of this Cheras outlet.

The Star sept 17 1987

Chujitsu adopted everything Japanese from the Top Management to the retailing concept that end up not sustainable in Malaysia, especially during the great recession of 1987-88. During this period, people were very conscious of their spending and would not spend unnecessarily for their choices meat cut or fish in which Chujitsu had 2 meat and fish specialists from Japan for the fish and meat sections. Beside the Japanese GM, there were two other senior management from Chujitsuya Japan, the Operation Manager (Mr Furukawa) and Mr Ho ( my mentor). It was a wrong strategy considering that we end up with only the bargain hunters who were looking for discounted goods, and the kind who turned their backs on those fancy meat and fish cut. I know this concept will work fine with the current days Bangsar or Mont Kiara customers.

Beside choices cut of fish and meat, Chujitsu also engaged in weekly color concept whereby every week the apparel and clothings  department would display their goods based on the color of the week. Just imagine if you don't like certain color, you would never want to be in the place during the week.

The background songs were all Japanese, mainly repeated numbers by Mayumi Itsuwa. I liked the songs but not when they were played every day for the next 120 days i was there. But now , I could appreciate the songs again and I still consider the songs very energetic and refreshing even after 25 year on. You can listen to Mayumi's video below.

As a management trainee, I was moved from one department to another on bi-weekly rotation basis to learn the basic trade of retail business. I was under tutelage of Mr Ho ( a chinese Japanese ) who acted and behaved like pure Japanese than Chinese. I understand that my position was to legalize his working visa and one way to do it was to train malaysian management trainee. I even went with him to the immigration department   to verify that I worked and trained under Mr Ho's supervision.

Mr Ho didn't talk much on day to day basis but after my 3 months stint there, he sat down and reviewed with me his observation and comments with regard to my performance. True to his Japanese style, he said that as a trainee, I was not supposed to object or even provide opinion, but to follow the instruction given to me.This was new to me, and i was not ready for this kind of  rigid  environment.  I decided to quit the next month.

When people asked me what was my memorable experience working there, there were quite few. In the toys department for instance, i got the chance to test out those remote control cars and everyday i would play with my remote control cars until one day  i crashed a "ferrari" into a display rack and broke the car's front bumper. Quietly i glued the parts together and put it back on the rack. I didn't hear anybody making noise about this incident and i assumed everything was okay then.  Second,  when i got this opportunity to be the male model for Chjitsu Clothings promotion in sept 1987, for a first timer, it was not so bad afterall. But anyway, i will never try this again... ( It's me in the above advertisement)  LOL!

Enjoy The song by Mayumi Itsuwa




     

Remembering Wan Mohd Nor Wan Jusoh

It has been 18 years since Arwah Wan Mohd Noor left us for good. Recently, I was flipping through some old pictures and his images came strongly across my mind that I couldn't help but to write something about him.

Wan Mohd Nor was my roommate at #3, 727 E 800 N , Logan, Utah for about 9 months in 1986 before he graduated a quarter earlier than me. He was an engineering student in Utah State University and 2 years my senior by age but his graduation got delayed due to issues with his credits transfer from his former Canadian University.

Roommates at 727E 800N Logan,UT

He was known and remembered not because of his academic superiority, but he was the symbol of perseverance and "can do" attitude despite his hardship in college. In his final year in college, he had major financial difficulties because of  the delay of his scholarship's allowance payment. This was due to his transfer from Canada University a year earlier and the delay was causing him hardship to sustain his expenses there. I remember him making repeated calls to the Malaysia Student Department's office in North America asking for early release of his scholarship money but it was drowned into the bureaucracy and red tape process.

Wan Mohd Nor or Wan Jus as he was fondly called, came from a poor family in Dungun, his father was bedridden and the mom was doing odd jobs cleaning other people's houses to support the family. He was the eldest son in the family then. I was even told by someone close to his family that he used his scholarship money to put electricity and running water to his family home in Dungun. That was in the early 80's.

Nothing much we could do to help him during his difficulty period except to share with him whatever little scholarship money that we had. He had no where to ask for help except the friends around him.. And it was not easy to get a part time job in Logan then because almost all available jobs in campus were grabbed by the local students.

Despite all his difficulties, Wan Jus never gave up and always joined us in all our activities. He would tag along with us where ever we go and we also enjoyed to have him as company. He would join us for skiing trip but opted to wait for us at the foothill, not wanting to burden us with the ski pass fee or he would join us to shopping mall but pretended nothing interests  him instead of borrowing money to buy things for himself.

week end outing - spring 1986

Sport was his passion and i would say that in theory, he knew all kind of sports, mainly as a commentator and "strategist". When i played in the local tennis tournament, he formed a strong side court supports among the Malaysians to cheer for me. One day, we decided to host sporting games event among malaysian students from the universities in Utah and other neighboring state, Idaho and he started hitting the library to find out the rules and regulation about tennis, volleyball and other related games to be hosted for the event. Come to think about it, he would make a superb sports administrator and regulator if he were to choose that career path,

Golf- Summer 1986

With all his enthusiasm in sports, he was never a sportsman. He was a tall guy, about 6 foot in height but someone much shorter and smaller than him could outjumped him in a basketball game. I used to call him "Jus the Dunker" as a joke for his inability to use his height for his advantage in basketball games.

Ice skating Dec 1985

Another game that he loved to play was American football ( touch flag) game. We normally used him as a receiver but  most of the time he would be outrun by the defender and the ball got intercepted in the air. Vice versa, when he was defending, the opposing receiver would have field days catching and running the ball  right under his nose. For whatever shortcomings, he was a team player, never took offence on people mocking him on the field and best of all, he always tried his best.

After finishing his degree in Civil Engineering, he left Utah and came back to Malaysia during the height of Malaysia financial crisis in 1986. This definitely did not help him financially and emotionally. He failed to land decent job with his Engineering qualification and end up doing jobs under the pretext of graduate trainee program. He later signed up for the graduate Tax & Company Secretary Training Program and managed to open up tax  and secretarial practice in Dungun Terengganu catering for SME industries there. It was not a profitable business but enough to pay his bills. He also started to diversify in promoting local artists paintings in order to earn extra money. One day he told us that he bought a used fishing boat and the joke around us was that "Wan Jus bought a Yatch !" Once again, he just smile at our unwarranted remarks.

wooden boat

He later got married and had 2 young boys ( if i am not mistaken)  and never left Dungun to work somewhere elses. He led normal life until he started having bad coughs which lasted for a month. After frequent visits to Dungun Hospital, he was referred  to Kuala Lumpur hospital for suspected Tuberculosis (TB). He was held at Pusat TB Negara in which he was diagnosed later as having Malign Heart Cancer, a shocking news for everyone of us. He was never a smoker and never being diagnosed for any cancer related disease before.

From Pusat TB Negara, he was transferred back to HKL to start his chemotherapy treatment. Less than a week in HKL and right after his first chemo treatment, he passed away quietly in the hospital. Even his wife was not prepared to join him in KL yet during his chemo treatment. She was to join him later and opted to be with the kids in Terengganu for the time being.

To back tracked, 3 days before his death, he slipped out of the hospital to join me for a teh tarik session in Kampung Baru. There was still a tube inserted into his wrist for drips preparation and it did not stop him from joining me. I remember giving him a book titled " What they don't teach you at Harvard" for his reading pleasure while in the hospital ward.  Three days after that encounter we received the shocking news of his demise.. He was alone, not even his family or friends by his side when he passed away. He died at the age of 34 years old in 1996, relatively a very young age for a man to die for natural causes. But, Allah loves him more, Alfatihah to Brother Wan Mohd Nor Wan Jusoh.