Another ‘Forty Years Later…’

This was yet another ‘Forty Years Later…’

Forty years later on May 3, 2009, I met some of my former classmates from the Technical Institute of Penang whom I have never met again since we left school.

This was during the banquet at the Berjaya Georgetown Penang hosted by my classmate, Mr.Tan Tick Lay, on the occasion of the wedding of his daughter, Ai Li.

It was very kind of Tick Lay to invite a few of us for the dinner. It was also very kind of Ah Chow, my fellow classmate residing at Bukit Mertajam to fetch me and my wife to attend the function.

Although Ah Chow and I are residing in the same neighbourhood at Bukit Mertajam for umpteen years, we seldom see each other. Only for a couple of times we bumped into each other when we went out for evening exercises; I was cycling and he was jogging.

Ah Chow is well remembered for his love of soccer during the school years at the Technical Institute. He represented our class in the inter-class soccer tournament for two subsequent years. I supposed he must have aspired to be a state soccer player but he ended up as an ‘estate’ player at Butterworth.

Even though Ah Chow failed to make it to Manchester United as a professional footballer, nevertheless he was successful in his career after he had left secondary school in 1970. At first he joined Malayawata Steel Factory at Prai. According to him, he had hopped six times before ending up as an executive factory manager before his retirement in the year 2007 earning a five-figure salary.

In my case, I ‘hopped’ and sometimes ‘was forced to hop’ from one school to another with an equal number of times as Ah Chow. But,with those subsequent hops that I had, I was eventually downgraded from a senior assistant to an ordinary teacher. This was how I usually joked with my friends, “If I ever get another transfer of school, most likely I shall end up as a ‘runner’, as a school office peon posting letters and collecting mail from the District Educational Office.”

At the wedding dinner, I met with ‘half a table’ of my classmates of the year of 1968 while the other half of the table was occupied by ‘our other halves’.

Cheng Liang emerged our ‘idol’ of the evening when we learnt that he ran two senior veteran marathons in the past few years. He has registered to run for two more marathons this year.It only occurred to us that we could only run a marathon in our dreams as anything insurmountable in real life would be made possible in slumber land.

Cheng Hock was another successful ‘turncoat’ when he opted from the teaching profession to become the director of a trading and transport company.

Jokingly, Cheng Hock was telling us, “At this very age of ours, there remain two roads for us to choose; one is heading to Kubang Saman for the bungalow lots while the other one is leading to Berapit for condominium units. Either place would be our future burial ground.”

So, it is better that we make hay while the sun shines; to chat over jugs of beer occasionally while we are still alive and kicking, than to become quiet and indifferent neighbours at those bungalow lots or condominium units later on.

The dinner was a great reunion of our classmates of 1968. This was made possible by our dear super-scale headmaster of DG 52, Mr.Tan Tick Lay; without his kindness and generosity we might have to wait for another forty years for us to catch up with one another. This dinner had made major inroads to our future get-together.