It had been 17 years since my last good bye to MRSM Kuantan, the boarding school that I attended for 2 years, a school that had literally shaped me into how I am today (ehem!). The school means so much to me personally may be because I remember how hard it was for me in the beginning to deal with the fact that I was thousands miles away from my family – something that I had never done in my entire life before.
Everything turned into a slow motion as I pulled through the gate and took a glimpse of the school that looked so distant in my aging memory and yet so visually familiar. I remember how I was dropped off by the taxi from the airport and for a moment I was just standing there in front of the gate and amazed by the sizes of the buildings in red. It took me quite a moment to accept the fact that those massive buildings were the buildings of my new school.
After parking my car at the newly re-asphalted parking lot marked with ‘Parking for Visitors’, I walked over to the guard house to have my name registered.
The telephone booth nearby the guardhouse was still there and I remember how I called my mother on my third day at the hostel and I could hardly control my emotion no matter how hard I tried. It wasn’t like I had the intention of going home but I just felt like I was a world apart from my family and I wasn’t used to that thought.
I was horrified when the guards wouldn’t allow me to go any further than the front patio of the school. I explained to them that the visit was so meaningful to me and that I had come all the way from Sabah just for the visit (bohong sunat as they call it. LOL). When they showed little sign of compromising, I asked to see the headmaster.
I walked towards the office and pretended like I went to see the headmaster but I actually didn’t. I had no business seeing him since I knew for sure that he wasn’t the headmaster that I had had 17 years ago.
the playground
The students were having their afternoon ‘prep’, our short form of ‘preparation’ when students would do preparatory revision before sitting for an exam.
Everything suddenly came back to me in its vividness. I was choked with emotion as I walked further into the school compound and saw how things still looked pretty much the same expect for some changes in the classroom arrangement and all.
I remember how I used to walk back and forth on this long walkway from the hostel towards the school buildings almost on a daily basis.
A teacher who was probably on his way to a classroom stopped to look at me, who obviously didn’t belong there and I told him that I used to school there some 17 years ago. We had a little bit of chat before offering good bye to each other and I noticed how he turned to look at me one final time before he continued walking towards wherever he was heading to.
I walked around to the back of the buildings where I used to spend my time alone while the Muslim students were at the surau doing their evening prayer. One of two of them would sneak out to join me and they’d ask me to order for McDonald’s delivery not only for them but also for me. They’d usually offer to pay for my meal for that little help that I did for them. He.
I had hardly covered many of the areas that I wanted to go when one of the guards came up to tell me that my visiting time had run out. Again, I was a bit agitated.
Just then a woman in sport attire walked up and she introduced herself as the warden. Again I had to tell her that I was one of the students there 17 years ago and her face instantly brightened up. She told me that she knew some of the girls of my batch and she mentioned a few names that sounded familiar but whose faces I couldn’t really recall.
the hostel
“You haven’t changed much. Most people change a lot in 17 years” she said to which I flashed my smile of thank you. 😛
After buying some souvenir from the koperasi sekolah as they call it, I pulled out of the school compound promising to myself that I’d come back again soon, probably when I was more prepared to deal with the guards. I directed my google map to Teluk Chempedak, which if my memory had served me right was somewhere in the vicinity.