A nostalgic trip..down memory lane...

8.8.10

Accompanied by the music of BFM 89.9FM in the background, I drove down the highway to Damansara as I drove down memory lane to meet up my school friends whom I have not seen for almost 30 years! (spare a few). Incidentally, BFM was interviewing an American DJ (a Carl Hemm @ DJ Carlito from Richmond, VA) who had endured half a globe's 25 hours' journey to visit Singapore and Malaysia to fulfil his ambition of meeting icons of the Malaysian 'Pop Yeh Yeh' bygone era and compile a DVD commentary. How appropriate! Me, down memory lane and a DJ going into the past! What coincidence. He was rattling off names of Pop Yeh Yeh artistes that even I, a Malaysian, have not heard of. (e.g. Adnan Othman, S. Mariam, Kassim Selamat* and the Swallows, Hornets, etc.) Amazing! It is just like a friend's daughter who is studying in Yale where some of her Caucasian lecturers would converse with her in Tamil as they had done Tamil literature or language. The irony was that my friend's daughter (a Tamil) could not speak Tamil!

Coming back to the reunion....

This background music set the pace to my trip down nostalgic lane.

The lunch was held at Lala Chong Halal Seafood Restaurant at Kayu Ara Damansara. The spread of food was the usual fare, nothing to shout about. Anyway, everyone was there for there for the fellowship, rather than the food. Since it was an impromptu last minute event, many could not make it. About 12 guys and girls (of 47 years) turned up at the event. Except for Mano, I have not met most of the attendees since I left PFS in 1982 - 28 years previously. Most of them who attended were quite trim, of course with receding hairlines, greying hair and rarefying mane! Some of the guys brought in their family. 

After the tete-a-tete which included declining standards of PFS and the good old times, we all went our separate ways into our respective separate lives, hoping to meet up again in near future. In the pipeline was a plan to organise a major reunion in Penang when we were 50!

It is interesting that the reunion was just chit chatting about old times; not for networking business prospects. It is just a congregation of people who felt secure and found comfort in reminiscing their childhood so as to rejuvenate their lives in the present time. Well, I managed to...
*P.S. For the die hard P. Ramlee fans, the name Kassim Selamat may ring a bell. In 'Ibu Mertua-ku', P. Ramlee took the role of a blind saxophonist - Kassim Selamat!

Kassim Selamat & Swallows