RIFLE RANGE BOY

Pistol ( Disney +, miniseries; 2022) Director: Danny Boyle Thanks to my English language in Form 1, my friends and I were exposed to this British punk band. That, I think, is the role of a teacher - to expose the young minds to the real world, not just what is in the syllabus. Most teachers just wanted to finish their teaching plan and ensure that students were prepared for the public exams; KSG (Kiss Some Girls, he boasts) went that extra mile. He would tell us quickly excitable 13 and 14-year-old pubescents about the birds and bees. Somewhere along the way came the story of 'The Sex Pistols'. That was my first exposure to the Pistols, but only in name. The fact it was banned by the British Broadcasting Corporation made it even more fascinating. The jester of class JL used to croak out 'God save the Queen' with an obvious sexual connotation, much to the annoyance of KSG. At that juncture, I wonder if KSG thought that he should have stuck on to the syllabus. To this and...

PFS 55 GTG 2018 A meeting of students honouring their dear teachers.  ©FG The excitement was palpably clear. Hints of tinges of moistening of the angle of eyes were there but they tried to suppress it. Laughter was free-flowing, so were the stories of an era so distant yet so near. It was a reminiscence of the memory of a bygone era of Malaysia that we yearn to re-live and re-create. Chatter interspersed with occasional bouts of schoolboy chuckling and heckling was drowning the background piped-in music. A student went, "Gagool (as we referred to one of the fiercest teachers in Form 1; after the character in Henry Huggard Ridley's 'King Solomon's Mines') told me that I stank." The speaker is now a former state football player, who, during school holidays, was forever seen in possession of a soccer ball. It appeared like his main intention of attending school was to play football. He could come to school early, at noon, for the afternoon session, just t...

Rasputin- A short life (2014) Frances Welch After reading this book, all I thought of was my history teacher, Mr LKK. Even today, I can still remember his theatrical antics and his story-telling techniques as how he tried to impress upon us the events that happened in the annals of history. Why I am saying this? Whatever Mr LKK taught us when he was covering Russian Revolution and Rasputin is clearly illustrated in the small book, the twisted preacher that he was; the mysticism that surrounded his prophecies; the devious ways that were employed to assassinate him as he was almost invincible and his scandalous affairs including the one involving the Tsarina. Grigory Rasputin must surely mark the beginning of the end of the Imperial family in Russia. The mysterious peasant man from Siberia who proclaimed to be a Man-of-God but with questionable personal hygiene, moral conduct and penchant for all the very activities that were frowned upon by the Good Book, must have not down well...

So you go around with a chip on your shoulder, with the nose so high up in the air as if you walk inhaling imported air. You straddle around like you are on Yudhistira's chariot, always two feet above the ground, quite full of air. You speak with such confidence convinced that your listeners are impressed with your command of the language. You think you produced a masterpiece that everybody would sing only praises of it. That is until you send it for proofreading. That is when your bubble bursts, your ego gets deflated, and you get down from your mighty horse and is brought down to the ground. You soon realise that the things which you had taken for granted mean more than what meets the eyes. You get an extra 'e' when you are a lady engaged to a man. A fiancée is to a female just what a fiancé is to a man. Everything seems watertight as if you have a foolproof system but your friends tell you that he has full proof that 'fullproof' is not even a word! I gu...

Dead Poet's Society (1989) All of us had that favourite teacher in school who could motivate and connect with you. He would have been that sympathetic ear that could understand all the teenage angst that you went through. He probably would have also changed the direction of your future as you had struggle through the aimless journey in those trying years. This coming-of-age film is one which depicts such a teacher.  In spite of all turbulences that Robin Williams had to go through as he manoeuvred through the crypts of life, he managed to inspire many a teenager to indulge in poetry and literature when he took the role of an English teacher, Mr John Keating, in this movie. Many still remember the verses 'Carpe diem' and 'O' Captain, my Captain'. Just like 'The Paper Chase' with Prof. Charles Kingsfield and his sarcastic remarks to his Year One Law Students, the dialogues exchanged between Mr Keating and his students is simply poetically entertainin...

There was a time, back in the days when the upper echelon of society would just exert their authority on the mostly illiterate, the helpless, the bewildered lower crust of society or natives. Words like 'you listen', 'I tell you', 'do as I say I say, not as I do' would be used with impunity to get things done. And the the elites, the one in power, the leaders could just get away with almost anything. The simpletons amongst the working class thought the elitist knew what they were doing. They thought everything was done in the interest of what they were sent to Earth to do. It was not their position to question. Some even believed that they had descended from the Gods. To disagree was cardinal  sin and treason of the highest order. Teachers, Rulers, Leaders, Heads of Family, professionals can do no wrong. Any mishaps were pure acts of God, predestined and misadventures. Things changed and change it did. In my mind, education and dissemination of information are...

PFS '63 GTG 50 (Penang) 14th December 2013 Another trip down nostalgia yet again but this time around a potpourri of different crowd which include teachers as well. The trip down memory was sweeter with the venue being none other than where it all started - the grounds of alma mater, more specifically the school canteen where many hours were spent yakking and interacting through the much anticipated times of school recess. The tuck shop, as it was known by the older generation teacher who were educated by educators from the British Empire, was also a hub for activities of the extra curricular type, i.e. uniformed and non-uniformed societies. In addition to supplying calories to the growing bodies, the canteen was also a place to prepare themselves for human interaction and survival skills in life later. 1976 If those days, there was an invisible fence that prevented free interaction between immature teenagers and the patriarchal (matriarchal) figures of teachers,...

We had a good set of teachers. To prove a point to the rest of the world who were mocking at the third Malaysian medical school for straying from the traditional teaching, the powers that be decided to equip the school with lecturers of high stature and calibre. To train some of the local lecturers, overseas dropped-out government scholars medical students were designated as trainee lecturers were excellent in making easy subjects more difficult to comprehend -and I guess they got a kick out it. Since they bungled up in med school, deep-seated psychological envy logically would drive anyone in their shoes (mortarboard) to do the same. Anyway, only a few of them remain in memory. The process of natural selection and natural body defence of engulfing distorted glial cells must have wiped off these painful, traumatic moments! Bacteriophage T4 Let me perambulate some of the lecturers that still linger in the memory bank. I guess they must have a permanent imprin...

PFS was a new experience for me when I stepped into its compound in the early days of the year 1976. Besides the super-smart students that I had mentioned in the previous posts, there were equally memorable and dedicated teachers to match that. The most striking teacher that awed me was the late Mr Koh Sin Ghee. In Form 1A, he taught us the English Language. But in reality, he opened my eyes to many other things in life, like divergent thinking and letting the mind wander as well as being verbose. He would come in dressed in his 'uniform' of a long-sleeved white shirt, black pants and crimson coloured tie, carry his briefcase bearing his initials KSG. He would try to humour our young impressionable minds by saying that it stood for 'Kiss Some Girls', contributing much to the class's commotion. We called him DOM (Dirty Old Man) instead.  He was a self-proclaimed walking dictionary as he tried to open our eyes to the plethora of words in the English Language that...

18.5.2010 To Sir & Teacher with love… Teachers’ Day Special (Primary) The Chinese proverb says, “If you give someone a fish; he will eat for a day but if you teach him to fish, he will not stay hungry a lifetime!” FG says, “You cannot teach anybody anything, you can help him learn.” My friend Regu in PPSP USM used to say that any student can learn something from even the most uninspiring tutor because of their (the tutor) superior experience in life. With that background let me indulge in a little of retrograde recollection of my school teachers, starting from Hutchings Primary School. This is about the time when the screen is supposed to be hazy and the plucking the harp strings is supposed to reverberate in the background and kaleidoscope of colours is supposed to twirl round and round… In Standard 1, Cik Aishah Abdul Rahman was my class teacher. Her fine curly hair used to be tied up into a bun at the back of her head, donning colourful fine floral baju kurung, smelling fresh w...