1970 - the exam year (part 2) and a wee bit of 1971

or motivation, male bonding and team spirit


old turkey buzzard by jose feliciano


coconut woman by harry belafonte



The strength of the bonds of love, friendships, camaraderie and relations wax and wane throughout life. Between siblings, sons and fathers and daughters and mothers, and husbands and wives and old lovers, classmates and schoolmates.

When it endures for 40 years and more, then there's something special and magical there!

Nothing was planned that way. We did not have Steven Covey's 'The Seven Habits of Highly Successful People' or Jack Canfield's 'Chicken Soup for the Soul' to motivate or guide us. Most, including me, were not even aware of or had read Dale Carnegie's 'How to Win Friends and Influence People.'

Instinct and the VI spirit drove us.

I have been having an interesting debate with Jaspal Singh, an old classmate, and others about us 'meek lamb gathered for the slaughter,' lemming/herd behaviour and the influence on us, positive, negative or neutral, of authoritarian figures like legendary VI HM V.Murugasu and teachers like Valentine Manuel, Rajaratnam, Bernard Koay, E.J Lawrence, Ho Sai Hong, Yap Yew, Mrs. Yeap Kin Yin, Cheok Cheo Foh, Mrs. Balaraman, Terence Jayatilaka, Leonard De Vries, S.Peethamparam, Dharam Prakash, Mrs.Somasundram, Mrs. Teh and others.

Jaspal's honest and forthright opinion is that we succeeded despite, and not because of, Murugasu and his type; that, like Dr.Mahathir's 22-year premiership, we should perhaps judge by what more we could have achieved and not just what we collared, bullied and cowed as we were! Indisputably, some of the better respected and loved teachers provided us much needed balance and relief!

I have not put out a hit contract on Jaspal in London (I do have some Sri Lankan pro-liberation fighter friends from the old days there) because, quite frankly, I admire that kind of openess and confident assessment. Let's not pussyfoot around these things. Speak your mind because understanding these issues will do us all a world of good. Tomorrow you might have to go see the school HM because your son or grandaughter got into an entanglement with the school authorities or have to decide which school to send your wards to.

My opinion is that, on balance, Muru had a positive effect on us, though the memory of a vicious assault by Muru on Bryan Pereira in the school hall for skipping athletics practice, still chills me!! Maybe it's because I'm the Theory Y type. I have no doubt TODAY students, parents and society will not accept or tolerant that genre of headmasters; it was a totally different era. But I have run into Bryan here and there at the RSC in recent times and he wasn't moping about like a limping old wounded tiger or a depressed father with a chip on his shoulder who goes twice a week for psychiatric therapy waiting to pounce on unsuspecting old ex-VI HM's and satan teachers for a quick kill and blood-sucking! In fact, he looked quite the opposite - positive and chirpy!!

Then again, we have Abdul Hamid who says he still shakes whenever he thinks about the 6 strokes he received from Muru (the last of which was so severe he lifted Muru's desk off its legs with his bare hands) after Cikgu Shuib Kassa (much respected BM teacher and master in-charge of badminton) reported him for a misunderstanding over a rude gesture he made to a classmate which Shuib thought was directed at him! Apparently, Hamid kissed and made up with Shuib some years later, but has not had his day of reckoning yet with Muru!

Darwis Jamil too talks fondly about his dread of passing through the school gates towards the classrooms in the early years!! So too, a good lady friend from my F6 year, Tan Tiu Hang (Senior Chemistry teacher at Catholic High, PJ) who signed up for VI in L6; that's pretty weird given Muru and co had departed for better pastures by then!! I have not asked her (yet) what it was about VI that intimidated her so much!!

But the story which warms the cockles of my heart, or is it my by-passed and cholestrol clogged co-axial mitral bicuspid ventricular valve, I forget, has little to do with Muru or the teachers really.

In our quest to win the various inter-school sports championships - football, hockey, rugby - every year, someone came up with the idea in 1967 of intense centralised training. This meant a squad of some 18-20 players would be biouvacked for 3-4 weeks either in the School Hostel or the Junior Study Room opposite the Tuckshop for additional morning and week-end training sessions at the playing pitches of the school field to hone our skills, improve our stamina and build that oft elusive team spirit, which can oft turn a weaker team into world beaters! Or so they dreamt in their 'pursuit of excellence,' the sub-4 minute mile record and Olympic gold in 'Chariots of Fire' many years later!!

You not only had to bond with the squad members, but also your prime hockey stick, the hockey pitch, the school grounds and all the land as far as the eye could see because there was a national agenda as well to fulfil. And if the earth moved as well, there, you are now a man!!

The usual 3 days a week intensive training from 3.30 p.m. to 6.30 p.m. would have felled an Olympian like Usain Bolt or a mountaineer like Edmund Hillary! But no, we were Victorians and so by divine right deserved more punishment!

Such was the fate of the 1970 and 1971 U20 VI hockey squads. In those two years we were billetted in the Junior Study Room during the CT hockey season. There were only ceiling fans for ventilation, no air conditioners. We slept at night on study tables made barely comfortable with thin matresses, pillows and blankets comandeered from the School Hostel store, with the windows bravely open and defended by mosquito coils and burners. Some finicky guys like Yoong Fong, brought their own pillows, linen and dutch wives!!

For toilets, we had the (in)famous stinky 206 and the better one on the ground floor at the extreme end of the school's left wing, while for showers we rotated among the facilities at the School Hostel in the mornings, School Sports Pavilion and 206 at night as a last resort!

All meal costs were borne by the school. The energy and 6-pack muscle building breakfast menu in the school tuckshop comprised an unremitting conveyor belt of half and full boiled eggs, white bread with planta margarine, jam and liptons tea or nescafe or nasi lemak/mee hoon goreng! Not for us Victorians poncy cereals, power bars (did not exist then, though there might have been an Ovaltine or Milo bar, I'm not sure), milk, ham, bacon and sausages! For lunch at the same venue, we picked whatever we fancied from the same platter laid out for all students - fried rice, curry laksa, chinese fried and soup noodles (no pork), malay mee rebus, rojak with sauce and half a piece of boiled egg, rice, meat, potatoes and veg etc and a drink of calories oozing sugar laden rosewater syrup, syrup bandung or hot/cold milo (no 100 plus or red bull either, though some plunked for glucose powder dissolved in water).

Dinner was something we looked forward to. We pooled our allowance of $1.50 per head and headed for the 'Mushroom' open air eatery opposite Merdeka Stadium outside the back exit/entrance from the school or for the stalls near Rex Theatre near Foch Avenue for variety to suit all taste buds and preferences.

Our home away from home soon had that bull halting and gagging smell of a male jock machismo hockey herd. There was the peculiar scent of linseed oiled Karachi King Super hockey sticks mixed with the pungent 'Horse Brand' oil liniment for strained muscles and of course the waft of body sweat, BO, soiled stockings, thigh and ankle guards and unwashed sweatshirts, shorts and jerseys. Between training sessions, classes, homework and inter-class and society activities from none of which we were excused merely because of centralised training, we had no time for laundry which we sent home through friends or brothers and had them collected or delivered on Sundays!

But something miraculous slowly emerged from all this testesterone and male bonding. No, nothing gay that I recall!! At first we were not aware of it. The training sessions became more intense and competitive as fitness levels rose and we became more conscious of the looming opening game of the season and of places in the 1st eleven! Team spirit began to soar!

It all started one evening after dinner when we gathered round the tables and were chatting about the usual nothing and indulging in the tumuscent humour of physically fit and bursting and strutting teenagers like young stags in rutting season, whose free thinking time was usually preoccupied with only one thing - girls and sex about which most of us had as much knowledge or experience as half a teaspoonful of sugar, or less. And let's not palaver about anything helping the medicine go down in a most delightful way either!!

Suddenly 'Pedro' Hariharan who had been by himself, stood to attention on his table and broke loudly acapella into a rendition of 'Old Turkey Buzzard' by Jose Feliciano which was also a hit song from the western movie 'McKenna's Gold' starring Gregory Peck and Omar Sharif. Soon, others joined in the chorus of this impromptu jam session while thumping on the desks and pillows with their hockey sticks:

"Gold, gold, gold we just gotta have that gold,
Gold, gold, gold, we'll do anything for that GOLD!!"

and then ending it with a stirring,

"Gold, gold, gold just remember that gold,
Gold, gold, gold, we can't live without that GOLD!!"

as we carried Pedro who was in his sarong and dumped him on a cushion of goalkeeper's pads! We all fell about laughing till the tears rolled out, but Pedro was not quite finished yet! Without missing a beat, he launched into Harry Belafonte's calypso 'Coconut Woman":

"Coconuttu voman (woman) is calling out...Coconuttu vater, good for your dahter (daughter)...make you strong like a layan (lion)..." in a heavy Indian (not West Indian) accent with drum solos, duets and orgies manufactured from the chairs, walls and desks with hockey sticks, balls and testicle guards. Nothing was safe for indoctrination as musical accompaniment from the marauding mardi gras group. Pedro's storming improvised finale of "cokiki cokiki coke coke cokiki cokiki coocnuttu water, dahterr, hotter, got her, shot her, rotter, otter, potter, totter" was the stuff of legend which had them rolling in the aisles, though for a moment he had us wondering if he'd got a chicken bone or something stuck in his throat!!

It was a riot and a half as someone else broke into a punjabi favourite 'Main Shair To Nahin' and a song made famous by 1969 hocket captain, Daya Singh - 'Big Bad John.' Later, when the lights were out, no one slept for another hour or two as someone or other would burst out with "Old turkey buzzzzarrrd" to be drowned out by guffaws and hoots and when it died down someone else would trickle off with "coconnuttu vater, good for your yindian dahterrrr...."

Thereafter the squad trained, showered, ate and jammed as one. The team teacher-coachs, Mr. Oh Kong Lum (Arts/Asst. HM from 1971) and Mr. Daniel Chan (Biology) were both ex-Victorians. Though they were technically not as sound in hockey as their predecessor, Mr.Lenny De Vries (who left VI in 1969 to do his Sports Science PhD in Canada), they joined us in the practice games and followed our fortunes right through till we won the Cup. Different strokes for different folks, but the more personal involvement of the teachers got us pumping even harder.

As far as team discipline was concerned, Oh and Daniel left it pretty much to the prefect team captains like Surjeet Singh (1970), Eddy Chong Kwong Chin (1971) and other player prefects, viz., G.Tharmasegaran (Tharma), A.Balachandren and Raja Ahmad.

By virtue of his 1st team place in several preceding years, appearances for the Selangot State Sr Team and short-listing for the National Squad, Goalkeeper Tharma should have been the 1970 school hockey captain, but was first appointed 1970 school football captain. Cikgu Othman, the school football coach would not allow him to hold simultaneous captainships in two games whose championships were being contested at the same time. So Surjeet, playing at left inside forward, being the next most senior player got his hockey captainship. Surjeet was also appointed school cricket captain in the 2nd term of school.

The 1971 hockey squad was thrilled to have as coach Wong Choon Hin, then 1st choice Centre Half for M'sia's National Hockey Squad and working for PKNS in PJ. We did not apply to the MHA or anything like that. It just happened that WCH, originally from Malacca, had moved into one of the Shaw Road flats directly across the road from the main school gates and spotted us training from his loft. He then walked over to the school, picked Eddy at random and offered to coach us while keeping himself fit during his off season months. This was the hockey equivalent of having a Pele or Maradona as team coach !!

WCH opened up our eyes to the more robust and modern physical game. He tutored us about confidence by relating the majestic manner in which India's centre half would execute a penalty stroke by walking tall with a swagger and flick the ball into the net all in one motion while locking eyes with the opposing goalkeeper all the way! We then had to practice this John Wayne macho school of executing penaty flicks. It was a real hoot as shorter arses like me had to act like 6-foot tall mesmerising cobras!

In particular, we worked on scoring from dead-ball set pieces - free hits, short and long corners. A deadly and lethal move I was trained to finish was to pedal backwards at full tilt towards goal while waiting for 'thunderbolt' Eddy Kwong Chin to slam the ball from a short corner take straight at me and for me to deflect it past the goalkeeper into the net! I imagined I was 007, Bond the cold, ruthless executioner! That sure was the god awful theory of it. I succeeded mostly in fending off these killer zingers from offing me from the face of this planet for good! Oftentimes in my mono-maniacal pursuit of excellence, I would mouth grass as I twisted and fell while tangling on my own legs. I called it the Hirohito Kamikaze Harikiri Short Corner Stragedy (no error in stragedy there) because if anyone was going to die while playing in a hockey match that year, it was yours truly!! I informed WCW and captain Surjeet that in the event of my untimely demise, my wish was to be buried in the centre of the school hockey pitch and I wasn't kidding either!!

My other major contribution to the hockey squads of '70 & '71 and its morale was developing a very unique talking style we labelled 'Hockee Speeakee." It consisted of drawing out words to make them sound longer. Thus 'Let's go eat kway teow and nasi lemak lah brothers' might sound like 'Leetts gooo eeet kwaayy teowww and nasee lemaak laaah broddeerrs!" Now this hockey squad also had some loyal followers and supporters among whom were Bryan Pereira, Leslie Ratnalingam (Rattat), Hanif Abu Bakar (Ash Burn), Thevakumar, Sugunabalan, Reuben Chelliah, Tan Lip Ping and a few others who would not only join us for dinner but also hang about for idle chats or occassionally, overnight stays. These guys too got into Hockee Speeakee and soon many in Form 5 and Form Six were imitating and adding ad hoc to a new language I had the sole copyrights to!

More than that, boys being boys, we would raid the tuckshop at 2 a.m. and then haul the stash of coke, miranda orange, greenspot, fanta, biscuits and peanuts to the open roof top of the Pavilion for a late night scoffing party! But there were one too many tuck shop raids and we all got caught by a trap laid by tuckshopmanboss. I'm sure Pritam Singh, our talisman right winger will recall that pitiful night, though tuckshopmanboss was a gentleman and did not rat on us to the HM!

At other times we would crawl army style on our bellies to spy on lovebirds parked in their cars in the open area byond the school fence by the side of FAM House on Jalan Edinburgh (now Jalan Maharaja Lela). Of course there were the usual mass leap frogging, smacks on the back of heads and wedgie pulling, all taken in good stride and spirit. Things cooled down a bit, a wee bit only, after an incident affecting Rattat (a lovely fellow who's been with the Civil Service since graduating BEcons from UM and whose elder brother in VI, cadet corp Ampalavanar, a good chappie, later a CA and partner at PWC, inspired that international hit Cuban number 'Am-pa-la-vanar, Guajira Guan-tana-mera' which echoed throughout the halls of VI for many years)!! '

As we headed for dinner one night, Leslie Rattat, as a result of a mass wedgie attack, stumbled, fell flat on the road and sustained a deep gash over his left eyebrow. His spectacles snapped at the hinges. But fortunately for all, the lenses did not shatter!! For a moment, and just a moment, we stepped back in horror as the blood began to drip on to the tarmac. Next second someone pronounced amputation above the knee as the best cure, another buddy queried him if he wanted to have his will written while a concerned squad member asked him solemnly if he preferred cremation to burial! I have over the years tried to figure out my thinking on why I removed Rattat's shoes and wiggled his toes. But for the life of me, I just can't! But Eddy had the presence of mind to drive him over to the emergency outpatients' ward at KLGH for a quick stitch up and plaster bandaging job.

A fair amount of ragging of juniors took place but nothing really that could be termed truly vicious or spiteful. Though no one will forget what started off as a bit of splashing fun took a turn for the macabre and bizarre with V.Sitsabesan having his family jewels painted with hockey ball and pads chunam (quicklime) paint!! He was duly knighted 'Vellai Sunni' which loosely translated from coarse Tamil means 'Chief Dick White (though Chief White Dick is also acceptable)!!' I forget whether he was well hung or if it was 'wan hung low' or not, but no damage was done to his human right to further his lineage, as he's now the proud father of 2 kids (happily married as well)!!

I can now reveal the names of the perpetrators of that dastardly dark evil deed which took place in the junior study room - stand up G.Tharmasegaran, Eddy Chong Kwong Chin, Pritam Singh and A.Balachandren. Lol!

But I am guilty as well by association and more so as I was among those who laughed and hooted to glory. Sitsa shed a few tears then, but we've laughed about it countless times over the years over many barrels of beer just as they have ribbed me on my morale bashing name which I'm too embarrassed to divulge - I plead the 5th amendmend of writer's privilege not to incriminate himself!

No offence taken, none given - the true VI spirit!!

(to be continued soon - rebellion in the ranks, showdowns, poker and of romeo & juliet!!)

1970 - the exam year (part 1)

1970 was VI's  first full year without Mr. V. Murugesu who had served it as its first Asian Head Master from 1964 -1969. Towards the end of 1969, 'Muru' was given an emotional and fond farewell by all the students, teachers and staff for turning VI into a school/institution par excellence that was the envy of everyone in the country. He was replaced by the chain-smoking Tan Cheng Or who was himself a disciplinarian, though not of the same mould as Muru; he was not quite a "terror!!" Cheng Or continued maintaining the fine traditions of our 77 year-old school and secured the usual 100% pass in examinaton results as well.

The line up of teachers in Form 5B2 for the most important school examination of our lives - the 'O' level equivalent Malaysian Certificate of Examination (MCE) then - was:

Biology - Mrs. Leow/ Anandakrishnan ('young' Andy)
Chemistry - Mrs. Koh Swee Pheng
Physics - K. Durairajah
Maths/Additional Maths - Kok Lee Fatt/Cheok Cheo Foh/YW Cheang
Geography - Dharam Prakash
English Language - Mrs. Balaraman
English Literature - Mrs. Balaraman / Mrs. Yiap Khin Hin
Bahasa Malaysia - Cikgu Hassanudin/Puan Rohaty

Many would move on to Lower 6 and then Upper 6 for the Higher Scool Certificate (HSC) examinations. But Form 5 was THE crucial year for either going overseas (for the rich) for A-levels, moving on to Form 6 or entering the government or private sector work force. Without a MCE or equivalent qualification, the majority would struggle with employment in either the private or government sector. Of course these were the last few years when the curriculum was all English!!

Among that roll call of class teachers, Mrs. Yiap Khin Yin and Cheok Cheo Foh belonged to the "genius / brilliant" category. Mrs. Yiap not only brought Shakespeare's 'Julius Caesar' to life but opened up to us its relevance to contemporary life and death issues. If some 30 years later, I can still quote from Marc Antony's "Friends, Romans, countrymen..." funeral oration or Brutus' "There is a tide in the affairs of men, which taken at the flood leads on to fortune, Omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and miseries...." then you know how good she was!!

There was also the hilarious 'The Card' by Arnold Bennet, written in 1911 and made into a movie in 1952 starring Sir Alec Guinness and Petula Clark, which told the story of Henry (Denry) Machin, a washerwoman's son who rose through sheer chuptzah and opportunism to become Mayor of Bursely, an imaginary town England. Mrs. Yiap's priming us for the final exam is the stuff of legends!!

As for Cheok, rare is the day when you could hope to get a fully awake class of 45 paying attention while the maths teacher droned on about dy/dx and the integral of the differential,  the proof of why the angle on the diameter of a circle is always a right angle or the intial rules of probability theory  - in some 30 years of working life I have never once had to resort to these formulae!! Yet, Cheok not only had us looking forward to each of his classes, he also managed the imposible in securing full attendance and voluntary handing up of homework on time from the entire class!! If that's not pure genius, I don't know what is!!

Cheok replaced Kok Lee Fatt who left us after 1st term. Kok wrung a silent vow out of me that I would move heaven and earth to get a distinction in MCE Maths. I had been missing classes due to hockey centralised training when one fine day Kok lectured to the whole class that those involved in centralised sports training - Indran, Balraj and myself - were destined to fail MCE Maths. Glad to report none of us did!!

After Cheok, there were brief stints from Yap Yew, R.Selvanathan and Cheang none of whom I recall as being in the same 'class' as Cheok.

Mrs. Koh at Chemistry and 'young' Andy were good but not inspiring. Of the stern-faced Biology teacher Mrs.Leow, I have already written earlier. Chemistry lab sessions were always fun, especially when you mixed hydrchloric acid with anything, performed titration tests or 'salts' identifying tests. The 'brown ring test' for nitrates in particular drew much pointed jokes while for no good reason one remembers the silver nitrate test for chlorides, the barium chloride test for sulphates and the famous 'cloudy solution' and litmus paper tests for carbon dioxide

In Anatomy, the study, identification and drawing of bones and vertebrae proved to be fascinating. My free hand drawings were shit, but I could easily tell the ulna from the radius and the thoracic vertebra from the lumbar and cervical types. All these were tested in the final lab exams which contributed some 30% of the overall MCE marks for Chemistry and Biology.

K.Durairajah or KD as we referred to him, stank all the way to the end of Form 6 in Physics and prevented many an Einstein from blossoming later in copyright offices!! KD who lectured in a low frequency squeaky voice was oblivious to whether the students understood the subject or passed, let alone, aced it. How we managed to get through without failing Physics is a major miracle of our times!!!

Saree clad and fair Mrs. Balaraman who also lectured the Form 6 seniors was a past mistress at droning on even if there were no students in front of her, such was the mechanical approach she brought to english language and literature. But nevertheless classmates like Tan Seng Tee found her sexy enough to pay attention and score 'A's!!

Dharam Prakash and Hassanudin (whenever he turned up) were adequate. Though BM was a compulsory subject most studied just enough to make sure we passed and got our full MCE cert. Puan Rohaty, like Mrs. Balaraman, had fine pectorals, dressed sexily and boasted many admirers in all the Forms. So we stampeded to clases and managed to get through subjects where otherwise we might have played truant. Where Dharam was meticulous and conscientious but boring, Hassanudin was sloppy and boring and just muddled through the syllabus.

Despite which most (98%) never bothered with private tuition lessons which seems di rigeur nowadays even in $15,000 - $50,000 per year private and international schools!!! The VI system of monthly and term tests and intense revision programmes towards the end of the year kept us well oiled and performance oriented!!

And of course, whether the teachers were brilliant or sucked at their subjects, they still worked a fine sweat out of everyone under their charge. What more could parents or studends demand of them?

As for sports and extra-curricular activities, 1970 was another high performance/achieving year for VI. In particular, the carmaraderie among the hockey and football players was oustanding about which I shall write in more detail later.

- to be continued.

1969 - the truly honeymoon year (form 4, part3)

chariots of fire

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A smiling nod of appreciation from a senior, a “well done” uttered by a revered teacher or a pat on the back from a feared HM, this was all we boys needed to spur us to greater heights in our formative years in VI.

More than that, competition was encouraged, sloth discouraged and punished. There were the Lewis, Rodger, Treacher and Nugent-Walsh Scholar Awards to aim for, Sportsman of the Year, Captaincies and Vice Captaincies, Drum Major’s Post, Assistant Scout Master, School Librarian, Chairmanship of Clubs and Societies, Temporary Prefect and of course School Prefect and even the humble Class Monitor’s and School Bell Ringer’s position.

I wrote earlier about an incident that has stuck in my mind like forever. Paramjothy

was indoctrinated into Club 21 by HM Muru following his performance in a 4x100 inter-school relay held at Stadium Merdeka. Param had picked up his dropped baton and made ground for a medal position. Nine times out of ten, the runner would have thrown his hands up in the air and given up in exasperation! I am sure that “never say die” attitude would have stood well for Param throughout his life. More importantly, many, like me, took inspiration from Param’s tour de force.

That’s all about character which was part of the equation for TOTAL EDUCATION, as was that of students taking on the challenging position of leading from the front. There is also a very subtle but perceptible change in attitude and expectations when you move from Form 3 to Form 4. In the former you are regarded a junior at 15, while a few months later when you are not quite 16 yet in the latter, you are a senior pitted against guys who are 19!!

But all this did not matter. Either you took on the challenge and grew up very quickly or fell by the wayside.

1969, despite all the political turmoil in the country, was nevertheless a year of outstanding performances for VI. We swept the Selangor senior schools’ competitions in Football, Rugby, Badminton, Cricket and Hockey There were scintillating performances in Swimming and Water Polo too. But Athletics took a back seat with the cancellation of Sports Day!

Many did indeed lead from the front. None of that general from Washington radio-broadcasting to his troops in Saigon with “I’m right behind you, Sam!!” Captain Dinabandu (of Nestle fame, now Dato) coolly slotted in a penalty late in the second half to secure a nervous win over Royal Military College (RMC) in the Khir Johari Trophy Football Final played at Merdeka Stadium. But, the role played by goalkeeper Ee Beng Yew that day cannot be understated. In the dying minutes of the game, he called the dice correctly and saved an RMC penalty by diving right and pushing the ball away from a certain goal. Of such stuff are legends and heroes made!

Wong Fay Meng, Lee Kok Pheng, Lim Shook Kong and Yap Koi Meng smashed their way to the Asian Junior Championships, the King’s Cup and more in Badminton. Cricketers like Surjeet Singh, Sarjit Singh, Balachandren and Balakrishnan made it 7-in-a-row against RMC in the Vanderholt Trophy competition.

But that thing about character, sportsmanship AND education was nowhere more apparent than in the finals of the Selangor Schools U20 Hockey Finals where we encountered yet again our nemesis, Royal Military College (RMC). This was a year we expected to lose the U20 and win the U18 title from RMC. We were the proverbial underdogs. What transpired was the reverse and it all boiled down to the leadership, skill and commitment of our Hockey Captain, Daya Singh.

The U20 team that year included, besides Daya, stalwarts like ‘Bob’ Rajendran at right wing and goalkie G.Tharmasegaran who was regarded as a veteran even though he was in Lower 6. Tharma later appeared for the Selangor State Team as well as the National Team. This U20 squad paled by comparison with that of the all conquering squad of 1968. The juniors who graduated from Form 3 to the senior squad were Raja Azlan, K.Balraj, Hiew Heng Foo, Leong Wai Kim and yours truly. The regular fifth formers in the team included speedy whiz stickworking Pritam Singh, “Thunderbolt” Eddy Chong Kong Chin, Raja Ahmad, A.Balachandren, Zainal, Haniff, Satwant Singh and K.Jayaraj.

Zainal, like many in their teen years and some other members of the hockey squad, used to 'experiment' with cigarettes and was wrongly accused by coach Lenny as a "Pheet Kaki!!". It was Zainal (also called 'hitam' (black) burnt as he was from being outdoors a lot) who encouraged me to continue playing when I felt I was a bit out of my depth in the senior squad.

Haniff, who lived in Cochrane Road (as did Zainal, brothers Balraj and Jayaraj and Eddy Chong), was a character to behold in his sixth form years as he led a personal protest due to problems at home with his dad, by only showering and changing socks and clothes once a week!! And sometimes he wore no underpants!! You can imagine the stink this threw up in class and around school wherever he went in his dirt encrusted clothes. No amount of 'disciplining' by prefects, teachers or HM could change his behaviour, which he voluntarily altered towards the end of his upper six year!! But he was loyal to the hockey squad and would turm up for all the matches without fail. Hanif had a younger brother Haris who paid his own way for trials with the Manchester United Youth Football Squad, I'm told!

Of Raja Azlan's silken skills and deceptive quietness, I have already written earlier, while his elder brother Raja Ahmad was multi-talented (School Football and Tennis captain, prefect in 1971) and was joint Sportsman of the Year in 1971 with then School Captain Yap Kian Fui, both from Shaw House!

Hiew Heng Foo (second goalkeeper) was another "character." He was the equivalent of GI Joe in VI lore, a real tough guy whose specialty was Rugby. Once in a friendly hockey match, he was struck by the ball flush in the middle of the forehead from a short corner taken by our opponents. He was stunned for a second, no more, and then rubbed his forehead, laughed out loud and carried on where a brahma bull might have been done for a nice BBQ!!

Anothe player who blossomed overnight in form four was K.Balraj (ex-MAS Aircraft Maintenance Engineer, now based in Dubai). He shot up to six foot that year. Balraj was also a middle distance athlete, in especially the 800m, who started with me from standard 1 in Pasar Road English School 1. And in the 440 yards (2 round of the tracks) final in 1965 (standard six), he stunningly and unexpectedly snatched the trophy from all the favourites. It was a race in which I was eliminated ( I was not the favourite to win) when I fell after the start in the jostling to cut into the inner lane!

Balraj's determination and talent in athletics could also be seen when he (Shaw House V.Captain) took up Pole Vault in 1972 and won a medal as runner up for Shaw House, the winner being his close buddy, School V.Captain, Swimming Captain, Water Polo player, ASM and Shaw House Captain, Yap Chee Keong (Engineer). Balraj would go on to captain (at centre half) the VI hockey team in 1972 and play for the Selangor Schools hockey squad as well. It's extraordinary that Yap Chee Keong, who was not known as an athlete, could pick up Pole Vault just like that AND win the Gold. Yet it was not wholly unexpected. These were the only 2 guys who could be seen training evening after evening before Sports Day 1972, for that discipline which you either had a talent for or not!

Balraj's elder brother Jayaraj (JR) who played at right half, was a very quiet and reserved individual who was nonetheless quoted throughout his VI years for his extraordinary outburst of "Don't play the fool, that's Ginger Baker, you know!" which stunned his father (and us) when he ordered him to "shut the noise" as he lay on the living room sofa for his noon siesta. JR had then been enthralled, blasting his latest 'Cream" album. He also had a collection of all the rock albums of that era ranging from Led Zep to Deep Purple, Grand Funk, Hendrix and many more.

The team progressed smoothly to the finals, coached by Lenny De Vries. The training sessions were more rigorous and demanding than some of the friendlies and inter-school matches!!

But RMC was another kettle of fish! And watching the finals from the sidelines at the TPCA Stadium in Princess Road was very, very painful and agonising for me as I did not make it to the final eleven for that game!!

RMC attacked in waves from the word ‘go’. Their players, though not superior in stickwork, more than made up for it with speed and by attacking in numbers. Our strategy had always been to let the 3 forwards and two wingers do the goal scoring, while the midfield primarily supported defence and worked in Lenny's famous "triangles" in attack. Rarely would our forwards back up in defence or the fulbacks join the forwards in attack. The RMC marauders never let the VI players settle down. Overwhelmed would have been an understatement and RMC seemed to have won the match, leading 1-0 at half time and then went 2-0 up soon after the second half commenced.

That’s when the fight back began. Captain Daya Singh marshalled the defence superbly and at times seemed to be in two places at one time, repulsing every RMC attack in the midfield to thwart them from gaining any momentum. Daya also moved up with the forwards to attack in breakaways. He was like the Scarlet Pimpernel. “Here’s here, here’s there, he’s everywhere!”

Soon enough VI pulled one back and then equalised with a typical unstoppable thunderbolt to the roof of the goal net, unleashed by right full-back short corner specialist Kong Chin, from a perfectly executed short corner.

Pandemonium broke out as the RMC players protested ‘cut’ to umpire Kathiravale, meaning they felt Eddy Chong Kong Chin had illegally undercut the ball, which would have constituted dangerous and foul play! “Fiddlesticks!” retorted Kathiravale as he pointed to the centre circle. 2-2 it was as the VI voices now reached fever pitch with “Daya! Daya! Daya!” From that point on, RMC seemed to wilt.

With about 10 minutes left, Daya then produced a bit of magic with his stick and sent centre forward Leong Wai Kin (a staunch Christian) into the RMC ‘D’ with a perfect defence-splitting through pass. Now Leong was one with whom I competed for a place in the team. We did not get along too well as I regarded him a selfish non-team player. But this one time, I cheered and cheered as he sped through, took control of the ball, cared a damn about passing the ball to anyone else and flicked the ball into the net, past the onrushing RMC goalkeeper!

VI 3, RMC 2 was the final score of an epic match that deep in our hearts we never expected to win. But we produced that extra something that day, that RMC, perhaps overconfident as well that evening, could not. And we also had Daya Singh!

Kathiravale, always in all black referee’s uniform, was someone who knew me from refereeing football as well as hockey matches way back from primary school days. After he blew the final whistle he spotted me on the sidelines, winked at me and said smilingly, “You know, that was a magic clean hit. Nine times out of 10, the short corner specialist would have undercut the ball. Your Eddy got lucky that time!”

Lucky? Hell! It takes weeks and months and hours and hours of practice on the field under a burning sun to be able to get “lucky” when it matters most!

As the game ended a group of RMC supporters from among those rushing to board their special buses back to Sg. Besi surrounded me, demanding to know why I had insultingly shouted "Dayak, Dayak!" at the RMC team!! Fortunately, they accepted my panicked (but true) explanation that I had been cheering Daya Singh, our hockey captain and not insulting our aborigine brethren or the RMC players!

A week later, we lost 1-0 to RMC in the U18 finals played at the same TPCA Stadium in Princess Road. But that was not half as exciting as the U20 finals and strangely we did not feel despondent at all in losing the U18 finals.

- to be continued

1969 - the honeymoon year (form 4 part 2)

or 1969 and '69

69 was a word we used to guffaw over whenever any schoolboy uttered it in 1969. After all, we were pimply juveniles with hormones going berserk and zero sex. So what the hell did anyone expect from us anyway?

We’d laugh over jokes like:

What’s 6.9? Good sex interrupted by a period!

How are 69 and Add Maths related? I don’t get either one!

What’s the square root of 69? Ate something!

But what do you really remember about 1969?

“One small step for me, one giant step for mankind” and the moon landing by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin? If it happened today, we’d say “That’s awesome!!!!” But if you were anti-American and anti-Semitic like a (in)famous recalcitrant ex-Prime Minister, you might say:

“It was all filmed in Universal or MGM Studios, after all Avatar tells you 9/11 was a CIA/Mossad conspiracy, I mean the towers collapsed like a planned explosion and it wasn’t American Airlines 77 that hit the Pentagon but missiles from a Global Hawk remote controlled CIA silent stealth aircraft...”

If you buy these conspiracy hypotheses, that is, like a slim Elvis was seen last week at KFC in Bkt Bintang wolfing down chicken skin by the tub and man, (finally) the aliens (thank God) kidnapped my mother-in-law, but (as usual) I only have these fuzzy photos and video taken with my latest super duper digital supermulticoated lens Sony handycam which has 50x zoom function....

But ’69 was an eventful year. It was the year of Woodstock and that electrifying 2 hour finale of ‘Purple Haze,’ ‘Star Spangled Banner’ and others by Hendrix! It was also a year of shame for the USA with the exposing of the ‘My Lai Massacre’ and escalation of the Vietnam War by President Lyndon Baines Johnson who was taunted by peace protesters with "Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?”

We were shocked at the cult killing of American actress Sharon Tate by Charles Manson who was accused of conducting satanic rituals. Sharon, who had been 81/2 months pregnant when she was murdered in her home, was married to movie producer Roman Polanski of satanic theme movie ‘Rosemary’s Baby’. Polanski fled USA in 1977 after admitting to having unlawful sex with a minor, but was arrested in 2009 by Swiss police at the request of U.S. authorities when he travelled to receive a lifetime achievement award at the Zurich Film Festival. The US formally requested his extradition.

The Beatles released their ‘Abbey Road’ album with that famous cover of the mop tops at a zebra crossing. That album included ‘Something’ and ‘Come Together’ which was so apt for ’69!! Charles Manson, the loony bin Tate killer, was apparently inspired by apocalyptic messages contained in the Beatles 1968 ‘White Album’ song ‘Helter Skelter.’ Obaldi Oblada hell!! Oh of course, Manson was equally energized by that other Beatles album, the Holy Bible and its End of Days predictions!!

These were the formative years of the pioneers of heavy metal and hard rock. If you can’t recall Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, John Paul Jones and John Bonham - Led Zeppelin – belting out ‘Stairway to Murugasu’s Office?’ you must have been dead back then! Or of Ritchie Blackmore and Ian Gillan causing riots with “Smoke from Water On The School Pants While Going Back Down The Staircase from Muru’s Office?’ Deep Purple? No? Ozzy Osbourne of bat head biting fame, Black Sabbath and ‘Paranoid To Go To School.’ Surely, but surely, you could not have forgotten Carlos Santana and ‘Black Bayi Woman, Got a Black Bayi Woman?’ Oh, there were the Rolling Stones, Bee Gees and Grand Funk. Elvis struck No.1 with 'Suspicious Minds’ and Stevie Wonder with ‘My Cherie Amour.’

As far as movies went, we had a spate of them where one or more of the ‘heroes’ died!! It happened in Easy Rider (Peter Fonda), Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid (Paul Newman/Robert Redford), True Grit (Glen Campbell), They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? (Michael Sarrazin/Jane Fonda) and Midnight Cowboy (Dustin Hoffman). Easy Rider spawned the genre of chopper motorbikes and leather jackets donning counterculture (hippie/drug abuse) rebellious youth all over the world.

Homosexuality and male prostitution (that was a new one for me!) reared its head in Midnight Cowboy, made famous by Harry Nilsson’s haunting theme song ‘Everybody’s Talking At Me” while the cheerful ‘Raindrops Keep Fallin On my Head’ accompanied Butch Cassidy and partner to their graves. They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? was a depressing movie about the Depression era and the depressing story of two depressing no-hopers!

But you got full entertainment value from The Italian Job (the original with Michael Caine and the literally cliffhanger ending), Topaz (Hitchcock spy movie), OHMS (George Lazenby as James Bond), The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and Anne of The Thousand Days where Richard Burton (‘The Voice’) gave a riveting performance with his gravelly orations!

Barbara Streisand, who made ugly beautiful sang her way through Hello, Dolly! to stardom and international fame. But Streisand could not hold a candle to Louis Armstrong’s (another gravelly voice) rendition of the title song. She claims, or others claim it for her, that Warren Beatty, Barry Gibbs, Andre Agassi, Robert Redford, Prince Charles, Dodi Fayed, Richard Gere, Omar Sharif, Kris Kristofferson, Jon Voight and many others were her lovers. I think Dr.M should investigate this. After 9/11 and Avatar, anything can be manufactured, right?

Goodbye, Mr.Chips was about the life of an other worldly English teacher with whom we connected instantly in the same way Dr.M did with Bush, Blair and Israel. Peter O’Toole as Chips made it a life-long career playing other worldly roles such as in ‘Lawrence of Arabia’ and yet for all his brilliant acting, never once won an Oscar! But that’s a crying shame, because he really deserved one.

In books we had the brilliant ‘Godfather’ by Mario Puzo which spawned ‘sleeps with the fish’ and ‘make him an offer I can’t refuse’ while Michael Crichton, scifi author (Jurassic Park) who also wrote under under his nom deplume John Lange emerged, with ‘The Andromeda Strain’ about ET virus that invade earth. Kurt Vonnegut Jr produced his brilliant anti-war ‘Slaughterhouse 5’ about the 1945 3-days bombing of Dresden. In recent months Dr.M has hinted that perhaps Churchill and the Allies should have been charged with War Crimes in Nuremburg for the ‘collateral damage’ at Dresden estimated at some 30,000 German lives!!

Award winning Phillip Roth’s (American Jew) ‘Portnoy’s Complaint’ strangely also about a young Jewish man’s obsession with sex and masturbation was of course a subject most F4 boys in VI were unfamiliar with since they were told to ”always tackle the problem with both hands!!” I recall this book vividly because our major domo bibliophile, R. Pathmanathan, made it a point to graphically describe all the salacious paragraphs, though it could not quite match the juicy bits in DH Lawrence’s ‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover’ such as "Tha mun f..k!!??" There was also YCK who used to say in a serious tone that God intended us to masturbate since retaining it inside might cause a condition known as ‘Blue Balls!’ I couldn’t quite get my hand or mind around that one!

As stated in an earlier post, for English Literature, we had to wade through Shakespeare’s ‘Merchant of Venice,’ Camara Laye’s ‘The African Child’ and Gerald Durrel’s hilarious and poignant ‘My Family and Other Animals’ about his childhood adventures on the island of Corfu in Greece.

But 1969 was also the most momentous year in M’sia’s post-Independence political history and we were smack bang right in the middle of it!

MAY 13^th, 1969 !!

Daya Singh, School Prefect and Hockey Captain in 1969, has written in saying how on that morning he persuaded HM Murugasu to cancel all afternoon school activities and order all students to go home. Daya who lived near Indian Settlement and the adjoining Malay Settlement in Kg Pandan at the back of RSCG (Royal Selangor Golf Club) serviced by Toong Foong buses 117 and 118 had heard rumours of ‘restless natives’ and ‘agent provocateurs’ and correctly warned the HM of impending danger and mayhem.

I recall hurrying to Foch Avenue past Rex Theatre to the Central Market to catch the Sri Jaya bus for home in Jalan Pelandok, Pasar Road after school was closed at 1 p.m. My brothers, sister, father, grandfather and I all made it home before the riots began.

But what about the boys and girls at the School Hostel? And Cikgu Othman, HM Murugasu, the school jaga, mandors, swimming pool attendant and their families who lived within the school compound in Government quarters and bungalows?

- to be continued