First Day at School: I've got bangs, bebeh!
The thing I remember most about my first day at school, darjah 1 at SRK Guru Nanak, was a picture that my father took of me in front of our ghost-laden house on Jalan Abdul Manaf, Ipoh. I was in a dark blue pinnafore, pony-tailed, and worked some serious bangs with even a seriouser look. It was an annoyed look, but cant remember lah what I was annoyed about. Everything was perfect, new.
See what I mean? This wasnt the pinafore picture but the look is the same :)We berjiran with an old couple, which I called Opah and Atok London. They’re known as the London couple because Atok speaks English like a Londoner. Opah, not so much. She wore a true Perak accent that I found amusing, cos Mak & Abah dont speak like that at all. On that day, Atok came out by the side of our shared pagar and commented (something like this la), ” Wah professor hari ni segak la nak pegi sekolah. You must study well okay! Ha ha ha!” (Well, he laughs a lot, this deep, sonorous laugh that’s contagious to his cucu, Abang Manap, and to my Abah too). He made it a habit calling me professor, my adik-adik - Wan:"doctor", Eli: "engineer", and the youngest, A'e : I cant remember, maybe he was too young to be assigned a career, hehe. But as magical as his laugh was, his words are even more. I think I am on my way to become a PhD doctor, Wan just passed his medic exam and is now Dr. Syafwan, Eli works with machines, though not really an engineer, and A'e, currently undecided (baru lepas matrix ni).
Abah must have sent me to school on my first day, but after that, I followed Mak to school on foot. It was a 15 minutes walk (one way) and Mak tried to hold my hand when she can cos the roads, though we used jalan taman perumahan a lot, were still visited by speedy cars. My first day to school was also my Mak’s first day to school. She transferred from her school in Tapah to the same school as I was enrolled in. She’s a teacher, you see.
I recalled that scene from Harry Potter the first movie, when all new students was selected into the “Houses”. “Griffindor!” the hat shouted. During my time, it was “Yellow!” or “Red!”. I was assigned the yellow house but later cried to my class teacher wanting it to be changed to blue. My friend from kindergarten (perhaps the only one whom continued her journey with me at SRK Guru Nanak) named Syarifah Nurul Akmam was in either yellow or green. But I know there was somebody in the class that got into blue, and I wanted to be with her so bad. This migration from yellow to blue proved to be a disappointing move 6 years down the road, where at the peak of my fame and glory as the senior in Standard 6, Blue House was sucking ass big time. And most obviously yellow won, with all my other cliques members championing it!
