Rumah Pam Kemubu (Kemubu Pump House)

My gang sat for the Lower Certificate of Education (LCE) examination in October 1977. Nowadays they have PMR instead. I wouldn't say that LCE and PMR are equivalent, even though both are/were taken at the end of the 3rd year in secondary school. This is because in those days if a student got 6As or 7As (out of a maximum 8 subjects), he or she will be one of the top students in the state, if not nationwide, whereas now you can get as high as 85% of the students in a particular school getting 8As!

Anyway, back to Oct 1977, like the present students, after the LCE examination, we had a couple of weeks to spare before the end-of-the-year holidays.

The school had arranged some educational trips for us but there was the MAGERAN emergency so our "outing" stint was cut short. Click here for a bit about the MAGERAN incident then.

We only managed to visit a couple of places, and one of them was the Rumah Pam Kemubu.
[from http://www.fao.org/docrep/004/ac799e/ac799e03.htm:
The Kemubu scheme: This low-lift pumping scheme, designed by French consultants, adopted downstream control for the main canal and the pumping station and upstream control for the secondary system equipped with long-crested weirs and modular distributors^[17]. As in the Muda scheme, the operational problem is the difficulty of controlling flows in the minor system and meeting the requirements of increasingly diversified cropping. Different control structures were later adopted for an extension of the scheme, consisting of adjustable flow-dividing structures.]
We were taken into the pump house.

Inside the pumphouse, water being pumped above us!

Other poses:

3 Aplha Girls (Norita, Fauziah, Nury and me)

Latifah, Haliza@MekRock, me & Dr Rohana

Kelantan River in the background. Also Bukit Panau on the other side of the river

Finally, before we left, a group pic (courtesy of Sim Kay Loh):

The accompanying teachers were Miss Sathiawathy (extreme left) , Mr Hamdi (3rd from right) & Mt Lye Kim Yong(far right). I am not sure who the other guys at the back were.

Sim was my junior by 1-year. She was among the non-Muslim students who followed us. I think that day their classes were having exam for Agama Islam paper, so they were allowed to join us that day. Maybe if Sim is reading this, she can confirm it. My memory is fading....


Note: Recently I met Howard Yamaguchi in Acheh, and during our chat I found out that in the early 1970s, Howard was a Peace Corp member working for KADA (Kemubu Agricultural Development Authority)!

I strongly recommend that you read the comments below as they contain more info, thanks to Howard.

Untuk Cikgu Hasan Baseri :-)

These pix are from my school magazine, SEMASA, 1978.

Click on the pic to get a better resolution.

Persatuan Bahasa Malaysia (Menngah Rendah)

The School Staff Photo, 1978 - for cikgu Hasan Baseri

Extract from SEMASA 1978 (click on the image for better resolution)

Today, after a bit of searching, I've finally managed to get Cikgu Hasan Baseri's contact number.

I called him this evening, but it went unanswered. Later I sms-ed him to introduce myself. Minutes after that I received a call from him!

Cikgu said he has lost many photographs and also the school magazines (titled SEMASA). Since I have SEMASA 1978 handy, I've decided to get the staff pic of 1978 scanned :-)

Cikgu Hasan Baseri Budiman

I've written enough about this cikgu in my other blog, so I am not going to repeat it here. It's just that I'd like to put a record here, and also put up what cikgu has written recently in the e-group of my juniors (SPM 1980):

SUARA HATI SEORANG GURU

Terima kasih SABARIAh mohd Zain kerana mengizinkan
saya membuka blog SMSkel As I Remember. Semalaman
saya tidak dapat tidur kerana terlampau banyak
kenangan lama yang datang menusuk ke sanubari saya.
Saya tidak pasti apakah Sabariah masih mengingati
saya? (saya memang tidak pernah mengajar kelas Alfa)
Saya masih boleh membayangkan wajah sabariah dulu
serta murid-murid lain yang Sabariah paparkan dalam
gambar yang ditunjukkan. Dan rasa Cikgu Bahar lebih
bertuah daripada saya kerana dapat juga dia bertemu
dengan anak-anak murid yang masih mengenalinya. Saya
pun sebenarnya selalu memasang harapan untuk bertemu
dengan semua bekas pelajar SMSkel yang saya pernah
ajar. Tetapi sampai saat ini saya masih belum
berpeluang melakukannya (Saya sudah menemui Halim
Harun di Kuantan Oktober lalu). Insya-Allah moga
cita-saya akan termakhbul jua. Apapun Saya cukup
terharu kerana dapat melihat kembali wajah-wah Pak
Widodo, Cikgu Sharif, Cikgu Bakar, Cikgu Anuar dan
wajah Cikgu Bahar sendiri yang satu bertemu kali
terakhir dengan di USM pada tahun 2001 melalui
gambar-gambar yang dipaparkan oleh Sabariah dalam
blognya itu.
Saya melihat gambar di koop sekolah, Sabariah dan
Shukri (saya pasti pemain back tengah pasukan bola
sepak sekolah yang latih dahulu) serta gambar Zul
(mungkin Zulkifli Mohd Noor) yang saya sudah dua kali
bercakap dengannya di telefon tetapi tidak pernah
sekali pun bertemu dengannya selepas 30 tahu saya
meninggalkan SMSkel dahulu.
Saya tidak tahu apakah saya akan terus berpeluang
untuk melihat gambar-gambar lama (kenangan di
SMSkel)yang hampir semuanya sudah hilang daripada
simpanan saya. Saya pasti ada di antara anda yang
mungkin memilikinya. Kalau tidak keberatan paparkanlah
di e-mail ini. setidak-tidaknya kalau tidak dapat
melihat wajah-wajah terkini anda (sebahagian besar
gambar yang Sabariah paparkan dalam Then and Now
memang tidak mampu saya mengcamnya kalau saja berjumpa
mereka)dapat juga saya mengimbau kenangan lalu. gambar
Shah Reza memang selalu saya tengok dalam surat
khabar.
Semoga anda semua gembira bersama keluarga dan
berbahagia selamanya- Salam sayang daripada
saya:(cikgu Hasan Baseri Budiman)

Now... I need to look for an old pic of cikgu :-)
And cikgu has sparked my interest to continue with this blog :-)
Only that, I need to look for more old pix to keep my postings worth visiting/reading.

Chinese New Year 1976

I can't remember what day it was, but what I still remember is that the students were allowed to go home and spend the weekend with their families, so the new year must have been on Wednesday or Thursday. Since about 90% of the students were either from Kelantan or the nearby Terengganu, most of them opted to go home to their families. Only some of the hard-working fifth formers stayed back together with students from interstates.

Having lost my mum just the year before, and with dad working in Singapore, I decided to join them. Some of the interstate girls who were close to me are:

From Selangor (1-yr my senior):
1. Faridah Salleh - hailed from Teluk Panglima Garang; once I saw her photo in the newspaper, a senior police officer.
2. Nurliza Ramli - or was she from negeri Sembilan? No news from her
3. Talmiah - Hailed from Bt Laut, near Morib beach, she now teaches in a nearby school. Met her a few years ago.

Others are:
1. Dayang Latifah Aban Atong - A Sarawakian, she's from my batch; have not met her since school days :-(
2. (the late) Sharifah Aloyah Alsagoff - my classmate then.
3. Kuah Gek Yam - another Sarawakian, also 1-yr my senior.

and a few more whom I've forgotten their names.

I don't think there were more than 20 of us in the girls' hostel that weekend, because I remember us bunking together in one or 2 dormitories only, instead of being scattered in several different dorms.

We didn't have weekly morning inspections, and we took our own sweet time to go to the dining hall for breakfast. I remember that we really had a great helping of half-boil eggs! I think we kind of had a competition of who could consume the most number of the eggs. I know I lost, but I did actually take 6 half-boiled eggs! Initially was fine, but later I felt so bloated! I guess this was due to the coagulation of the eggs in my tummy. I really learned my lesson, and since then, I never took more that 2 eggs, most of the time I either gave it a miss or took only one.

The girls managed to get me to join them to play badminton in the school hall (i had never played the game before, simply because I could not afford the racket). I have to admit that I was never good at the game anyway :-(

I remember that we also had some mixed-double games, or rather it was the girls who had the games with the boys with me watching :-)
In one of the matches, Sharifah's partner (can't remember who) accidentally hit her glasses with his racket and broke them when both of them were going after the shuttle. Sharifah had to be taken to the hospital. She came back later that day with a bandage on her eye, and told us that the surface of her eye was scratched! Since then I became too scared to play in the doubles again.

This blog doesn't have any pic :-( but the memory of the special weekend is very special. We bonded well and these students became my buddies for my train journey down south at the end of every school term, and journey back to school at the beginning of the terms, since soon after that I decided to go back to dad's place (in JB) for my school holidays.