“Hurry Up! The Train is coming!” 
At the time when my sister entered English medium secondary school in 1963, she had to go through Remove Class as she was from a vernacular school which was Pai Teik Chinese Primary School. At that time the Methodist Secondary School in Nibong Tebal did not have Remove Class. The nearest English school offering Remove Classes was Bukit Mertajam High School which was 15 miles North of Nibong Tebal.
It was a financial constraint on the part of my eldest brother to send my sister to study at Bukit Mertajam as extra expenditure had to be spent on transport as well as food if she were to stay back for extra-curricular activities.
As my sister was very keen to study, my eldest brother had to tighten the belt to comply with her perseverance and insistence to study. She and a few other classmates were admitted to the Remove Class in BM High School. This was the first time the school tradition of BM High School was broken to enrol girls in the Remove Class; my sister happened to be one of the few girls to be enrolled.
At that time a total of forty over students from Pai Teik Chinese Primary School qualified to be admitted to the Government Secondary schools had to travel all the way to Bukit Mertajam to study. About six of them studied at BM High School while the rest at Jit Sin Chinese Secondary School.
The cheapest means of transport to Bukit Mertajam at that time was by train. The train fare was 35 cents per trip per student from Nibong Tebal to Bukit Mertajam. A student could also get a season ticket valid for one school term at a price of thirty odd dollars.
The students would catch the northbound train at 5.55am and reached Bukit Mertajam at 6.15am. If a student happened to miss the train, then he had to pay 75 cents to catch a bus to school.
For every school day it was not uncommon that the town folks were waken up early in the morning, not by alarm clocks, but by the rushing footsteps of the students heading for the railway station. Intermittently, the quietness and serenity in the early morning of the town was pierced by the yells of boys, “Hurry up! The train is coming!”[ "快点！火车来了！" ] One would wonder if the late Tan Sri Datuk Professor Ir. Chin Fung Kee, the country's most distinguished engineer, would do the same to rush for the train as he was once a boy at Nibong Tebal studying in BM High School.
In order not to miss the train, my sister had to wake up before 5.30 am in the morning. My mother would get the breakfast ready. Usually, she would prepare alternatively either, noodle soup, fried rice or egg porridge as our breakfast. My sister was given $3 a day by my father, $1.50 for transport and $1.50 for pocket money. After taking the breakfast, my sister and her friends walked to the railway station accompanied by my father as it was still dark on the streets.
My sister had a lot of stories to tell about the journeys on the train. The one that most amused me was about my next door neighbour by the name of Teoh Swee Leng. He studied together with my sister in BM High School. He had been fooled by his friends to take a free ride to Ipoh. As Swee Leng had to help his father to run a coffee stall at night and to wake up early the next day for school, he usually fell asleep in the train on his journey back to Nibong Tebal. Once, his friends decided not to wake him up when the train reached Nibong Tebal. The train brought him to Ipoh. From there he had to catch another train back to Nibong Tebal. By the time he reached home, it was almost 8pm in the evening.
After one year of rushing for the train to study in Bukit Mertajam, my sister and some of her friends applied back to Nibong Tebal to study at Methodist Secondary School. This saved them quite substantially, the time, the money and the trouble in traveling in their pursuit of knowledge. Thus, the episodes of their traveling by train came to an end.
At the time when my sister entered English medium secondary school in 1963, she had to go through Remove Class as she was from a vernacular school which was Pai Teik Chinese Primary School. At that time the Methodist Secondary School in Nibong Tebal did not have Remove Class. The nearest English school offering Remove Classes was Bukit Mertajam High School which was 15 miles North of Nibong Tebal.It was a financial constraint on the part of my eldest brother to send my sister to study at Bukit Mertajam as extra expenditure had to be spent on transport as well as food if she were to stay back for extra-curricular activities.
As my sister was very keen to study, my eldest brother had to tighten the belt to comply with her perseverance and insistence to study. She and a few other classmates were admitted to the Remove Class in BM High School. This was the first time the school tradition of BM High School was broken to enrol girls in the Remove Class; my sister happened to be one of the few girls to be enrolled.
At that time a total of forty over students from Pai Teik Chinese Primary School qualified to be admitted to the Government Secondary schools had to travel all the way to Bukit Mertajam to study. About six of them studied at BM High School while the rest at Jit Sin Chinese Secondary School.
The cheapest means of transport to Bukit Mertajam at that time was by train. The train fare was 35 cents per trip per student from Nibong Tebal to Bukit Mertajam. A student could also get a season ticket valid for one school term at a price of thirty odd dollars.
The students would catch the northbound train at 5.55am and reached Bukit Mertajam at 6.15am. If a student happened to miss the train, then he had to pay 75 cents to catch a bus to school.
For every school day it was not uncommon that the town folks were waken up early in the morning, not by alarm clocks, but by the rushing footsteps of the students heading for the railway station. Intermittently, the quietness and serenity in the early morning of the town was pierced by the yells of boys, “Hurry up! The train is coming!”[ "快点！火车来了！" ] One would wonder if the late Tan Sri Datuk Professor Ir. Chin Fung Kee, the country's most distinguished engineer, would do the same to rush for the train as he was once a boy at Nibong Tebal studying in BM High School.
In order not to miss the train, my sister had to wake up before 5.30 am in the morning. My mother would get the breakfast ready. Usually, she would prepare alternatively either, noodle soup, fried rice or egg porridge as our breakfast. My sister was given $3 a day by my father, $1.50 for transport and $1.50 for pocket money. After taking the breakfast, my sister and her friends walked to the railway station accompanied by my father as it was still dark on the streets.
My sister had a lot of stories to tell about the journeys on the train. The one that most amused me was about my next door neighbour by the name of Teoh Swee Leng. He studied together with my sister in BM High School. He had been fooled by his friends to take a free ride to Ipoh. As Swee Leng had to help his father to run a coffee stall at night and to wake up early the next day for school, he usually fell asleep in the train on his journey back to Nibong Tebal. Once, his friends decided not to wake him up when the train reached Nibong Tebal. The train brought him to Ipoh. From there he had to catch another train back to Nibong Tebal. By the time he reached home, it was almost 8pm in the evening.After one year of rushing for the train to study in Bukit Mertajam, my sister and some of her friends applied back to Nibong Tebal to study at Methodist Secondary School. This saved them quite substantially, the time, the money and the trouble in traveling in their pursuit of knowledge. Thus, the episodes of their traveling by train came to an end.
2 comments:
so we were lucky to be able to enroll into Removed class in Methodist school in 1964, saved the trouble of travelling to BM. Hi you know Chin Fung Kee is related to me ( 1st.cousin) but i have not meet him before. Many years senior then us.
Phaik Hooi, we were lucky in that sense.I was thinking of checking with you your relationship with Professor Chin. His father was a goldsmith next door to An Tong Ice Factory.He remains the pride of our town, Nibong tebal.
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