Terkenang saat itu.. Pt2

Actually, I had planned to write about my Ramadhan experience during forms 4 and 5, when I was no longer staying in the hostel, but I remembered a few things I had left outta the previous entry..

Only 2 things came to mind when I think about it hehe..

1st ~ Cerite laksa

As I has said earlier, after Tarawikh, we usually had a moreh-like supper with all sorts of heavier-than-usual food. One that stood out to me was laksa.

Now, I'm not really a fan of laksa, but I don't mind eating it. The best way to describe my feelings towards laksa is 'indifferent'.. except when it was this laksa from a pakcik who sold it by bicycle la.. dia punye laksa mmg kelas! I remember one time Mama had ask me to call out to the pakcik s he cycled along our house to buy some laksa. I was waiting when he asked me, "Chek nak otak udang tak?"

I.was.offended!

Why, sbb I thought he was calling ME 'otak udang' (Malay proverb for someones who's 'slow'!) haha.. sian pak cik tu. Panic dia bile tgk muke sy nak nangis time tu hahaha.. Oppss, back to my Ramadhan tale. Though I'm not a big fan of laksa (klau ade, sy makan la.. tp klau takde, idak le sy nak gi cari), I realized that most Penangites really love laksa. Take for instance our canteen. Pak Cik Mat's laksa sold like hot cakes. For laksa alone, he had this really huge pot for the laksa gravy.. I loved the gravy but only ate it for bihun kuah laksa (Haaa, budak² Mashoor mesti ramai tau this favourite kan ~ ?)

So imagine how happy most of the hostelites were when the moreh for the night was laksa.

It was on one of these days that I went to the dining hall with one of my budak kamar.. don't remember who lah.. Aida ke Azimah ke Mawar ke.. hmm.. sape eh?

We sat in front of two Form 3 seniors.. kak Naca and her friend, kak No'en kot klau tak silap and both of them were really enjoying their laksa while us Form 1 junior ala² segan nak makan depan senior.

Tgh² makan tu, suddenly kak Naca asked us, "Sedap tak?", so my friend answered, "Sedappp, kak!"

Then kak Naca turned to kak No'en and asked her the same question, to which kak No'en also answered like my friend..

"Korang tau tak ape rahsia laksa yg sedap?"

To which, hati kecil sy berkata, I don't think I wanna hear this hahah..

So, kak Naca went on to say, instead of using flakes of fish meat, they used old newspapers that were soaked in water until they turned into pulp.. thats why the gravy that night was sgt pekat!

Though I knew she was pulling our legs, my appetite suddenly went AWOL.

Then she continued saying that the dark colour of the gravy was made from old unwashed socks (Okay, ni cam bleh byg la kan sbb kaler mmg agak seropa!) and she made gestures of wringing some old socks into the gravy siap ngan mimik muke yg tak tahan tuuu..

Di kale itu, sy trus tolak pinggan laksa sy ke tepi..

..and to be frank, I didn't eat any laksa until I was in my 20s hahah.. kak Naca nye pasal lah ni

2nd ~ Cerite kad raye

Dari dulu lagi sy mmg jenis org yg suke kasik kad raye.. but when I was in form 2 and form 3, we took the 'kad raya' giveaway a bit too far.. well, as far as the objective we had in mind la..

In form 1, some of my classmates had given raya cards to teachers who don't teach our class, like Cikgu Pah. I was a bit afraid of her and tho I'm the letter/card-sending kinda person, sy takde la kasik kat org yg takde kene ngene sgt ngan sy. However, towards the end of Ramadhan, we realized that these teachers don't reply our card (duhh.. of course la jarang ade yg nak reply) BUT, they 'replied' with duit raya..

Jeng³..

You can guess the rest la kot..

We had identified these duit-raya giving teachers (among them Cikgu Pah, Cikgu Nab, PO) so when we were in form 2, Operasi Duit Raya was put into motion haha..

You can see how tamak we were. I mean, Cikgu Nab already given us duit raya during the fireworks night at the hostel kan.. tp naaaaaaaaakk jugak kasik kad kat dia. Imagine, ONE card tu sampai 10 org kot sign.. and all who signed, dpt duit raye hokey. This project ws only aimed to the teachers yg sebegitu and I'm sure we got around 5 teachers kot yg camni.

It didn't help that our class teacher was Ustaz Rushaidi a.k.a Ustaz Shai. We loved him simply because he was so kindhearted and it was easy to bully him. Bkn la bully cam bangang style.. more like once a month, ade je yg mntk Ustaz Shai belanja.. and know what, thats what he did. He'd come to our class later, telling us to go to the canteen and tell pak cik Mat we were from class 2 Melati and our food would be paid by him.. and we did this almost every month.. giler manje ahh kitorg ngan Ustaz Shai time tu hehe.. dlm kelas pun we could korek² his love life (which, rumour was, at that time was with a pretty senior in our school.. err, kot! Hahah.. sile jgn marah Ustaz kitorg.. dia baik hokey!) sampai malu² dia.. and he's lefthanded, like me! <--Tp sy tak pandai B.Arab pun jugak haha..

So that year, we also got duit raya from Ustaz Shai (without the card trick) but some of us (me included) decided to see what he'd do if we sent him a raya card.. and voila, we got another packet of duit raya.. waaaaa, nakal giler kan kitorg.. amik kesempatan pulak hahah..

We did this until form 3 even though Ustaz Shai no longer taught us and masih la dia melayan student² mengade dia ni heheh.. Naik form 4 and form 5, most of my friends who were in the Operasi Duit Raya gang had moved to other schools. The only ones left were me and Ami je la kot. so maybe sbb dah takde gang, or maybe sbb kitorg dah MATANG (lah sangaaaaaaat!!) sikit, we no longer did the trick. In fact, nak anto kad raye ngan ikhlas pun macam dah malu.. boley?

3rd ~ Salam Jemaah

Ohhhhhh.. I said two things je kan come in mind? Actually, another one just popped up. It was the Salam Jemaah done on the last day of school before the raya holidays (actually, we also do this on the last day of school, but thats another story sbb yg Ramadhan punye lagik spesel.. and you'd see why in a while).

AlMashoor is quite a small school. We only have a total of around 500 students from form 1 to the Upper Sixth form so Salam Jemaah was easy to do. We usually did it after the morning assembly and it'll start with the first formers yg akan salam teachers first, then come up to the seniors.

This was the time kot nak mntk maaf salah ape² ke yg selame ni malu nak ckp, coz no matter if you want it or not, you memang kene salam with THE WHOLE SCHOOL (except male teachers la where we'd just apologize for our cheekiness haha.. and wish them a great holiday ahead). Mase ni jugak la seniors nak usik² juniors ke with imaginary faults just to make the juniors apologize dgn lebih panik lagi hahah..

Ehem.. this was also the time we got another packet of duit raya.. this time from the school. Yeayyyyy!!

Giler tamak kan hahahah..

But it was a fun time coz we also got to miss the first two classes la kot hahah..

*Aisyy.. makin rindu plak sy ngan zaman sekolah dulu*

Okay, nnt sambung.. wanna get ready for iftar jap dulu.. selamat berbuke ye! ☺