Fasting Months

Oh, my memory is failing, and failing rather fast :(

Every time Ramadhan comes, I will remember Ramadhan in school, but each time, what I remember becomes less and less.

So, I'd better do a blog on it before it gets worse.

Let's see what I can remember so far:

For the first few years, berbuka was as boring as you can imagine. The kuih was most of the time unpalatable - too hard, too bland, you name it. The dining hall workers would put our kuih in the tray, most of time, mixed with spilt gravy from the main dish :(
They also gave us 2 or 3 pieces of dates (kurma), but most of the time, the students would just ignore them. Who would want to eat dates laced with curry gravy?

a few years later, the school decided to stop giving the kuih (which was supplied by outside contractors) and instead gave the money to the students :-) If I am not mistaken, it was 40 or 45sen per day (45 sen for the kuih). What I did was to use the money to buy Raya cards and stamps for postage! :)

When the school started giving the money instead, we were also given the "luxury" of sending a representative from each dormitory to go to (Kota Bharu) town to buy kuih! The students took turn for this special outing. The school bus would ferry these student to and fro. We took the opportunity to buy other food too. Most popular on the list were akok, solok lada, all sorts of drinks, curry puffs, and cream puff (Kota Bharu version, of course).


In 1977 I was in form 3, and the LCE/SRP (now they call it PMR, though the stnadard may not be the same) was due right after Raya.
(interestingly, now, 30 years on, PMR is also right after raya ;) )

We were in the midst of the "Disappearing Quran pieces" crisis. I'll try to write about this in a different blog. As it is, I remember I was too scared and too lazy to go down for the early meal (bersahur). Most other girl prefects had simply stopped going for bersahur. Kak Ros (the headgirl then) was the one who always pujuk me to go down with her. There must be somebody to recite the doa (before the meals) for the girls so most of the time it was the two of us who would obligingly go down for bersahur.

We were lucky that our sahur times were never before midnight, unlike some boarding schools that had their bersahur as early as 11.30pm! Ours was more like 4am, and I remember the dining hall workers had a hard time waking us up! LOL
They would use all sorts of techniques - rang the bell, blew the whistle, beat the huge pots with sadles, shouting, you name it! Hahaha!

After berbuka, we would have our terawih in the Main hall. The girls, at the back, and boys in front. Front here means the entrance of the school hall, and back means the side with the main stage. I remember how we girls would rush to the hall to get the best spot i.e. ON the stage! The fans work well, and somehow it felt good to be able to be on stage, haha!

After terawih, we had a brief prep session (we finished our prep at 10pm, and terawih finished at about 9.30pm). Terawih was not compulsory, but most of us just went for it to avoid the prep classes! furthermore, after terawih, we could go to the canteen to buy food such as ccolek, rojak mee, etc.

As far as I can remember, prep classes was indeed non-existent in Ramadhan. It was all chaotic. We only went to prep if we had not finished our homework.

In short, we had a good time in Ramadhan! :)