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.