Add Some Water and Heat Gently...

The class reunion brought up some fond memories of the school which I shared with fellow ex-classmates and their families that night. Not that we are getting more senile but many have forgotten the funny details.

During our first English Composition lesson in Remove Class (1967), the teacher, Mr Chan Teng Hong, read to us works of previous students. These examples were NOT for us to follow, for instance the one that went: "On Hari Raya day, I second hand with my father."

Those who understood enough English laughed. Those who didn't, yours truly included, laughed too but didn't really get what the joke was all about. But that night at the Bukit Merah gathering, everyone laughed their heads off.

The original author was a senior from Baling, Kedah. In the North, we informally use seken, a corrupted form of "shake hands" instead of the formal Malay bersalaman. The poor guy must have anglicised it further into second-hand! Of course, "Hari Raya day" was wrong too; we only realised that later in Form Four.

And in Form Four, Solahuddin was caught napping during Physics class. The teacher threw a question to him and our friend Solah, still not completely out of slumber, looked left and right for assistance. Yusuf Mahmud who was sitting on his right whispered something and Solah confidently bellowed out: "Add some water and heat gently, sir!"

That brought the whole class down, including the Physics teacher. After regaining his composure, the teacher congratulated Solah for coming out with a common answer to all science questions!