Remembering an old friend

Tunku Abidin, The Malay Mail

I share an alma mater with Raja Petra Kamarudin, Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein and dozens of relatives.

Friends with kids tell me that it remains a quality school and is better value for money than many others of similar description.

Of course, these days, the fact that I attended a private international school is used against me whenever I comment on our country’s education system.

Perversely, this handicap does not apply equally: policymakers who have never set foot in other types of schools apart from their own pontificate on them all the time.

Sometimes, this involves some kind of centralisation or abolition of certain schools to “streamline” the system, whereas my approach is to promote the benefits of decentralisation and variety within a state-funded system (while still using a national curriculum) that has been proven to improve educational outcomes in many countries.

Indeed, IDEAS is supportive of the government’s trust schools pilot project and the district transformation programme.

Anyway, I did go to the Kuala Lumpur Alice Smith School, where many indelible memories, good and bad, were formed and helped to make me who I am today.

Although there are a handful of lessons, class projects and outings I specifically remember (like learning about different religions and going to the Batu Caves), it is the friendships that I most fondly recall.

Last week, by chance, I found out that one of my closest friends from back then, Adam, had passed away just over a year ago. His father had told someone that I went to school with his “late son”.

And so I checked Facebook (where I have been inactive for years) and his page was full of obituaries.

Adam was always tinkering with gadgets, trying to fashion inventions from bits of scrap and usually causing mischief. Probably the most dangerous habit he had was using a magnifying glass to focus the sun’s rays to burn grass of the sports pitch.

I did not mind so much as I hated sports, but I did worry that the whole school would catch fire. Indeed he was rather naughty in the early years, and the only time I was hauled up the headmaster’s office was when Adam shattered a glass object with a projectile (probably a banana skin) launched from a surprisingly powerful catapult.

Collective punishment was imposed just because I was in the vicinity. Perhaps it was my first lesson in both the concept of individual responsibility and being loyal towards one’s friends even in unjust circumstances.

There was a close-knit group of us who remained best friends throughout school, but Adam and I together with a third friend Alam often stayed back together because of the compulsory Malay and religious classes we had to attend.

The big benefit of this was being able to enjoy the 20 sen Split lollies from the ice cream seller who would invariably arrive outside the fence on Jalan Kerayong after we finished the last lesson.

Sometimes the ice cream man was late, and we would bond by talking about our families (Adam was half-English, half-Malay and Alam was my second cousin), pets and video games (long before inane games like Flappy Bird and Candy Crush there were Super Mario Brothers and the highly strategic Bomberman).

So it was quite a blow for me when Adam and Alam both switched schools just before the equivalent of Form One. Those were the days before mobile phones, let alone email or Facebook, so over time we inevitably lost touch.

After a chance encounter when I was back from overseas, Adam and I met up a couple of times. We had taken divergent paths and were quite different people but we still recalled the good old school days. He had suffered a terrible motorcycle accident and he was undergoing a variety of treatments -some rather unconventional.

In the end, he never quite recovered.

I met Adam’s father a few days ago, and he told me that before his demise Adam had landed a good job that gave him much satisfaction and a great deal of respect from others, which I was happy to hear. Then he gave me something he had found amongst his late son’s belongings: A signed piece of card I had once used to label my tray of textbooks, which I had given Adam before we parted ways as 10-year-olds.

In today’s KL it is difficult to make good friends, when networking is so often determined by perceived status and profession. The most innocent and pure friendships are those made in youth, when there are no ambitions, no agenda and no prejudices. Regardless, I think, of what kind of school you went to.