Time after time

Time passes by in just a blink of eyes. I could clearly recall my younger years especially my childhood - the best years of my life. Back in 1989, I was only 1o years old - standard 4, primary school, my father was still working for the Royal Air Force and we were staying in the spacious 'mat salleh' quaters. It was a semiD with small field which had enough room for me & my five younger siblings.

My days usually started off at 6.30 am, I rose and went straight to the bathroom. My mom prepared toast which I hardly touched for breakfast. Around 7.00 am (it was still dark), me & my younger sister headed off to the spot where the school bus dropped & fetched us. By the time we reached the spot, a whole bunch of at least 15 Air Force staff's children were already there waiting for the bus. It was no ordinary school bus, it was the air force staff's bus. Sometimes, the driver came with the big army truck if the bus wasn't vacant. I personally prefer riding the truck to school than the bus so did the rest of my friends. I never knew why but I guess it distinguished us (the Royal Air Force's kids) from the rest of the pupils at school & made us look more 'cool' than ordinary kids. Rides on truck was more fun & challenging. We had to climb up the truck coz usually trucks don't come with 'tangga'. We arrived at school around 7.30 am.

The school was special, that was what my last headmaster said. It was special because it was the only school in KL that was away from the city hustle while the rest of the school children around KL had to put up with traffic everyday. The only thing that bugged us during our school hours were the aero transports ie air force's helicopters & airplanes. Two other factors that made the school special were: (1) Chinese graveyard which was situated across our school field and (2) the Alice Smith's International Sch neibouring our school. I remember how my friends & I envied the facilities that our neighbour had, they had fully equipped gym & swimming pool. My friend & I always waited for an opportunity to speak to any one the kid from the school, just to practice conversing in English with a 'mat salleh'.

I couldn't really remember what I did during school hours, just focussing on subjects taught I guess coz the only thing that I could recall was that I hardly revised my studies at home. I'd finished my homeworks at school coz I didn't wanna bring them home, if I brought them home I wouldn't have time to finish them since I'd my own agenda after school.

After school hours, I waited for the bus to fetch us with my friends (I had a bad habit of abandoning my sister during school hours, I ignored her most of the time). We got home around 2.00 pm, then we had to change & prepare ourselves for 'mengaji' quran class. Sometimes when I didn't feel like going to the class, I'd pretend to be asleep so that I didn't have to attend the class. Anyway, the class was quite far - it was like a walk down the hill to get to the class. I didn't remember much of this also, all I could remember was I did very well for my 'jawi' writing. The quran class finished before Asar prayer.

By the time 'azan berkumandang', me & my 4 younger siblings reached home. We quickly changed. Then, we were all set to go to our favourite place - the public swimming pool for Air Force staff & family. The 'short-cut' route to the pool was tricky, we had to go thru bushes, back alley & an eerie looking temple just to get there. The challenging journey never stopped us from going to the pool. We always looked forward to swimming, well actually none of us were good swimmers, it was just that we liked to be in the pool.

After at least 2 hours in the pool, we went home. When we got home, we would play the 'kejar-kejar' game before we got in the house. Sometimes, if there were good tv programmes we'd skip 'kejar-kejar' game & dashed in to watch our favourite programmes. Some of our favourite were: (1) the English series such as Full House, Growing Pains, The Brady Bunch, 6 Million Dollar Man, and Bionic Woman (2) Animated series such as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle & Transformers (3) Japanese translated series such as Meoro Attack, Chiaki, and Satria Baja Hitam.

After watching one of the series, my father would have to drag us to the bathroom with his belt in his hand (marah le org tua tu, dh maghrib tp blom mandi & maseh dok ngadap tv). With tears running on our cheeks, we bathed & performed Maghrib prayer. The rest of the night was history coz I remember very vaguely of what we did at nights.