Coming Home: My First OBW

Ahhh old boys! That misnomer. And not a pretty sight, literally. Blank pates, bleached hair, bloated bellies, blurry eyes and beat-up teeth, we'd never be mistaken for make-believe male models. But we're real people and mortal mates, friends, fellows, buddies, boys and babes, who, by some twist of fate and fortune, share a common life-shaping experience of going to the same school. Our great and proud school.

Well, it's the annual Old Boys Weekends (OBW) on 16 - 17 July. Two days of communal reunion, it's time for sharing, reflecting, renewing, and paying back and forward. I'm not sure whether it's the 14th or 15th OBW, but I'm sure it's my first. Such a shame. I've been living quietly with this poetic pain and guilt of leaving the OBWs on the backburner. Four times is bad enough, but 14 times? It borders on criminal. Weekends and only once a year, even a triple heart bypass seems a poor excuse. After eight glorious years in the school, annual homecoming and a tip or two is the minimum payback. The occasional attacks of conscience just get louder whenever an old boy comes back with sad stories of toilets and tiles. Or tales of the more grateful sons who've launched noble projects to lift dear school, like giving free add maths tuition. (Admittedly the mere mention of add maths gave me another kind of attack). Azlan's constant loan-shark-level harassment paid off when I finally relented. Nothing new here. He's been hounding me and my laggard ways since he's made the head-boy in 1973. A head-boy is always a head-boy, with or without hair on the head.

Tiger Lane was damp and dark as we veered off Jalan Tambun at the Wak junction. It's dinner time when we (I was with Engku Aziz, a fellow old boy, not the more famous namesake) showed up at the iconic main gate. The old, oblong classrooms building was barely visible, but our poor eyesight couldn't miss the well-lit canopies, a make-shift stage and round tables all nicely set up on the field next to the former Green House. Not exactly a Hilton ballroom, but it's more spacious, and the all-round festive air was unmistakable. We saw Mat Amin Mahmud looking all lost without love, and he jumped with joy on seeing us. Familiar faces, finally. We're received by some of the best-looking current students who made us walk red carpet style to the dining area. On the way we'd to squeeze in between tables already packed with older old boys, most, like me, had physically evolved beyond recognition. Along the way we saw Azlan, Che Wan and Yuzer all comfortably caught in the company of 'strangers'. We found an empty table next to two groups of younger and loud old boys. The crowd was building up quite fast and soon we're surrounded by a sea of young old boys, old old boys and very old old boys, chattering away, cheering for no reason, or just exchanging glances. More than 500 old boys, according to the organisers, and a record turnout. We're about to settle down when Yahya Daud joined in. All three of us immediately mistook him for somebody else. Cikgu Ya was fit and fluttering, and he's apparently a bit of a celebrity here. You'd still see him regularly on the school track and field like the old days, training the school hurdlers into champions. A grandfather doing hurdles? Why not. Mat Amin was in his element, with trademark tirade and thoughts. Seriously it's hard to find anybody, old or new, half as literate and informed as him. Food was good, better than what Amri and the gang used to feed us 40 years ago. Time simply flew, and we're among the last to retreat. I called the hotel only to discover that they'd just cancelled my booking.

We're down at the school football field the next morning (Sunday) to watch the Under 14 football final between Blue House and Red House and the Under 16 final between Blue and Black. This was actually the culmination of the Striking Star project organized by Yuzer. My House in both finals? There's no better time to be back. With classmates Azlan, Yahya Daud, Rosli Mohd, Hamid, Che Wan, Engku Aziz prancing around, and Yuzer, of course, running the show, it's like PE time, only without the kindly Mr Lee Kum Choon to push and time us And there's Amran, a senior from Black House whom I'd not met for 40 years. 40 years and we still got each others' full names right. If I needed one more reason to be here, this had to be it. I found a chair right behind the touchline, next to Fadzil Man, a Blue House dorm mate, now a practising psychiatrist. We'd not met for 20 over years. One look at my skinhead and rundown image, he concluded that I was a Black Panther (the notorious Black militants of the Woodstock era). I'd been a dead ringer for dead kings and Hollywood has-beens, and now a Black firebrand. Dr Fadzil was completely casual: deep, Dutch orange pants and colourful, psychedelic belt (another Woodstock leftover). I didn't quite get his flashy fashion sense. I mean, he's the psychiatrist, not the patient. What had become of the boy with the beautiful mind? Male model? Only when he started talking golf with Hamid, the little mystery was unravelled. John Daly and all. Golfers get away with anything.

Now back to the finals. After a month of non-stop breathless World Cup football, you'd naturally be itching for EPL or La Liga, not under-age football. Blue versus Black Under-16 right after Spain versus Holland? Not a smooth transition surely. But the beautiful game is beautiful and sexy at any level. And, wait, this one was certainly different and even personal. Watching the Blue House boys running, passing and falling, I almost choked with deep deja vu. It's like watching a replay of my younger self playing on this very field ages ago. I used to play football for Blue House, running, passing and falling, just like these boys, only better! And how we beat the daylights out of Black boys. You ask Bain, Hamid or McGoing. Don't ask Basir. He, he. The Principal (an old boy and an old boy's brother) and Datuk Nasir, the new Old Boys President (an old boy, of course) were gracious enough to give away trophies and goodies. Grandpa Yahya Daud gladly received the trophy for Black House, prompting Che Wan to chuckle "Ini Under-16 ka Under -60?". Good one, Che Wan.

OBW 2011. Just can't wait.

The world at their feet 40 years on

I thought so. That sense of loss and deprivation now that the World Cup is done and dusted. Life has been blessed and blissful for the past thirty-one days with the relentless flow and flood of live actions, updates, commentaries and even prophesies. The World Cup has been the silver lining in a world of dark clouds. A cheery respite amid the global gloom. And one more reason to remain retired.

But I was wrong. It's Spain, and not Argentina. Even some seasoned experts, pundits and punters (legal or illegal) were way off the mark. I don't think Paul the Oberhausen oracle would've picked Spain if he were given 32 teams to choose from instead of just two teams at a time. I'm not trying to discredit Paul, not after all the ballyhoo and brouhaha built up by the hungry media. It's still a phenomenal feat foretelling eight right outcomes out of eight without the benefit of telltale clues like which team consumed more beer or which team had a philandering skipper. A head-to-head comparison with an octopus will reveal that I indeed have a superior brain-to-body ratio, but I still doubt whether I'd have performed better than Paul.

The World Cup has come a long way since my first World Cup experience in 1970. Media coverage then was almost non-existent mainly because media was non-existent. Match reports, written in staid and superficial language, shared the sports pages with the Malaysian schools athletics. No live games, no recorded games, no highlights, no 24/7 repeats, no Power Root commercials. Only the hard-core football freaks talked about the World Cup those days. I didn't watch games at 2.30 am in the comfort of a living room and LCD HD TV. I had my World Cup fix watching the World Cup movie 'The world at their feet' at a local cinema. Back-breaking wooden seat, sweaty air and stale smell of second-hand smoke, all for 65 sen.

The World Cup now is one huge commercial franchise propped up by massive media machinery. Its planning, organization and marketing is text-book Blue Ocean. When the World Cup is on, nothing else is relevant. As much as I enjoy the hard, physical battles on the pitch, it's the soft, journalistic sideshows off the pitch that fire me up. Match commentaries and game build-ups now are no longer run-of-the mill write-downs. ''Dull as ditch water" moaned an English tabloid when England was bombed out by Germany. Not to be outdone, coaches and players are constantly engaged in complex mind games. Ahead of match-up with Argentina, Bastian Schweinsteiger warned his German team mates of underhand tactics and gamesmanship by Maradona's man-kissers "If you see how they gesticulate....." . World Cup websites and blogs were jostling for space and reach, and there's so many that it's impossible even for a full-time retiree to read them all. Each one produced its own ranking or list of bests and beasts, hots and nots. FIFA released its official list and David Beckham jumped in with a Beckham's eleven. Competition finally got out of hand when one site ran a poll to rank footballers on the basis of their looks. The beast? Wayne Rooney, hands down. Journalism had never stooped this low.

I have my own World Cup list. The problem is, I'm not sure what to call it. It's a miscellany of World Cup magical and mediocre moments that kept me delighted and intrigued. Let's call it my list of ten World Cup whatever:
1.Top Five Goals: All the five goals by Diego Forlan. The one against Germany is cream of the crop. Ultimate artistry. The goalie just stood and watched the Jabulani.
2.Best Match: Spain-Germany semis. Open, flowing, expressive. Not a single card. So civilized.
3.Least Inspiring Team Nickname: No, not Italy and France. They're least inspiring teams, not team nicknames. For nickname, it should be Switzerland. They're called, hold your breath, the Swiss National Team.
4.Most Hilarious Miss: A toss-up between Yakubu (Nigeria) and Gyan (Ghana). I've seen plenty of penalty misses in my lifetime. So my vote to Yakubu's howler against South Korea. Emile Heskey's mother (or even dear Emile himself) would've tapped that one in.
5.Most optimistic supporters: Russians. A poll found that a significant 18% of Russians believed Russia would win the World Cup although the Russian team didn't compete.
6.Most Misspelled and Mispronounced Name: Schweinsteiger. (I saw Schweinsteigern in the Star and other mangled variants in Utusan). Nightmare compared to, say, Maradona.
7.Least Flattering Online Comments on Spanish Team: Cheats, Divers, Sissies, Babies, #%$@&?!
8.Least Flattering Online Comments on Dutch Team: Dirty, Kickers, Neo-Nazis, Skinheads Brutes, Rugby, #%$@&?!
9.Most Sporting Team: New Zealand. The only unbeaten team, they're theoretically better than Spain or Holland. So why no medals? Until today, no complaint or request for use of video technology from NZF.
The 10th is a killer. It's the Best Taunt. Worn out and weary of Schweinsteiger's mind-game antics, Maradona mocked the German winger in German accent "What's the matter, Schweinsteiger? Are you nervousssh?". That about made my World Cup.

Rating, Rigging, Ragging

Just in case you're interested, here's the latest PM's approval rating as announced by an independent opinion research group. It's 72% in May, up from 69% in April and 44% when he's sworn in in April 2009. At this rate his rating will hit 108% by May next year. Sorry, can't help a jibe. Apparently this 'contractor' has been secretly tracking PM's popularity on monthly basis, and has selectively made known the numbers. Secret and selective? I mean, have you seen this 44% published when it's 44%? As usual sycophants are braying for early polls. PM would be wise not to read too much into this feel-good statistics. His predecessor's approval was at 60% just two months before he lost Selangor, Penang, Kedah, WP and Perak. Bloggers and opposition hatchet men dismissed these numbers outright and on sight : misleading, meaningless, mindless, and the usual opprobrium. I've had some experience in marketing and consumer research run by research agencies when I was with Petronas Dagangan. The findings were so fraught with inconsistencies and outliers that we'd to normalise for the final report. The point here is that research, any research, is susceptible to a varying degree of rigging. Asking an opinion about PM of the day is even trickier. Granted Malaysia is not North Korea. But we're not New Zealand either. For all the One Malaysia atmospherics, the level of respondents' objectivity, frankness and sarcasm is a big blind spot, and this indeed should be an opportune subject for a separate and secret research.

I'm not sure why, but I just can't resist a take on ragging while on the subject of rating. Probably because of the rigging subtext just now. Ragging and rigging rhyme so bloody well. Incidentally both are evil. After a respite, ragging is back with a vengeance when an RMC student died in a botched ragging ritual. It sparked off fiery debates and clarion calls for stern and swift action. My stance on this issue is unequivocal: ragging, bullying, hazing, initiation and similar forms of abuse in schools, ivory towers, twin towers or anywhere is cruel, criminal, despicable and reprehensible. All the reasons and justifications advanced by some lame-brained ragging rogues are lame excuses at best. Ragging instills respect and humility? Bull. It's nothing more than a cheapish, thuggish and agricultural form of entertainment. No amount of research or study will ever show that ragging victims would be better off or more successful in life. The reverse is more likely. I know you'd suspect that Bung Mokhtar was a ragging victim in his formative years. Ragging is one last, meaningless and purposeless sentimental holdover from the bygone British imperialist streak. One only wonders how has this relic found its way into the bowels of our education system and left undone for so many years.

My own ragging experience is minimal. My first year in a residential secondary school at Tiger Lane (in Ipoh, not India) was a cakewalk. We're pampered and protected like rural princes. That's the way it was and all's well long after I left until about ten years ago, when the school somehow lost all its humdrum grace and glory, and turned into a hotbed of systematic ragging, extortion and gangsterism. Reading all the scathing media headlines and public condemnation, it's hard not to feel sad and angry. The school managed to recover but was never quite able to completely shake off this dark episode. When I enrolled at a local U, I skipped most of the two-week orientation program, and watched movies instead. There's no bigger misnomer. It's disorientation in disguise. I checked into campus when classes started and didn't really feel bad or uninspired like I'd missed something. I made a lot of friends and graduated, not at the top of the class, but enough to land a decent job and retire blissfully. Going by the raggers' rationale, I'd have become a humbler, more respectful and better person overall had I attended the two-week life-changing orientation program. A member of parliament, maybe?

So what do we do? Legislate against ragging, that's what we should do. Criminalize it. Don't generalize or dilute it under violent conduct or ungentlemanly behaviour (that's ok for football). Outlaw it under a Rag Act or something, or, better still, classify ragging as attempted rape, or just about anything that justifies strong police action and quality time behind bars, preferably with real and serial rapists. I'm sure a Rag Bill would have an easy passage and a minimum of debate in parliament!