Kampung Boy

Now that it has become a common knowledge, let me jot something about my hometown, Sitiawan. It was in the good old days, when as a kampung boy I grew up with the company of friends. Somehow, my dear dad enrolled me in the SRK ACS rather than the ones nearby my house. Thus, I had two groups of good friends, viz. the town boys and girls during school hours and the kampung boys and girls after school. 

At school, I was amongst the best Malay student. I managed to get at least the top 5 in the whole form. I represented the school in almost all of the reading contest, plays and sketches, recitation of the Holy Quran, you name it. After school, I did all sort of things with my band of kampung colleagues i.e. fishing, playing police-sentry, playing lala (something like rounders but with holes), hence nurturing my future cricketing skills, guli (marbles), spinning top, rubber band, self-made catapult, galah panjang, congkak, ad infinitum. I also joined the kompang group and made performances during weddings.

With our retro 70s bicycles, my kampung friends and I did the ‘round satu kampung’ rituals almost every day. The best of times were during the rambutan seasons. My house was surrounded by at least 13 different types of rambutan trees. There were sweet ones, sweet and ‘lekang’, slightly sour, etc. That’s why until now, I can’t stand to eat the rambutan bought from the fruit sellers, as the tastes are not to my liking and certainly they are not freshly picked.

My dad was a teacher in one of the school in Sitiawan. Every day he brought me two story books, of which I finished reading them in no time. In fact the whole collection of the 20 plus 20 volumes of the Grolier Encyclopedia and The Book of Knowledge respectively, in my house were my true close companions during the day and night.

By age of ten, I practically knew all the names of the 50 states of the USA and their respective details (flags, capital cities, rivers, flowers, birds, places of interest, population, etc.), and have read the abridged version of all famous literary works like Wuthering Heights, Huckleberry Finn, les Miserable (except I do pronounced Jean Valjean as ‘Jin Valjin’), etc.

Life then (with no Astro, no internet, no smart phones) was very interesting as all the international magazines such as Time, Newsweek brought by my elder brothers as well as all the Dewan Bahasa, Dewan Sastera bought by my dad, all of them were all accessible, and I read them all.

Then, there’s standard Five Assessment Test, and I managed to get good result. The next year, when I was 12 like all the other boys, I had my bersunat (circumcision) at the kampung health centre.

Later that year I was offered a place at a boarding school in Ipoh, the big city.