Until now I can't figure out why I went to Buffalo, of all places.
It's hard to find a reason to go to Buffalo even if you knew that it's the second biggest city in New York. Perhaps it's hard to find a reason to go to Buffalo because it's the second biggest city in New York. The problem with the name New York is that 100% of non-Americans and 99% of Americans know only New York the city, not New York the state. So the second biggest city in New York state is only meaningful in the way that Democratic People's Republic of Korea is democratic.
Maybe I just liked the name Buffalo. There were easily more than 2000 colleges in US, so how do you sort the wheat from the chaff? There were no full-blown college rankings in 1980. The only scams those days were black money and scratch-and-win. So choosing a college was pretty much an art and a game of chance.
All I'd heard was a couple of really good colleges in US I shouldn't waste my time on because of my appalling physics and chemistry grades in form five. Harvard accepted only very quick geeks and gooks, apart from future presidents and prime ministers or future sons of future presidents and prime ministers. And everybody agreed that it's easier to go to jail than Yale. So I didn't apply to Harvard and Yale.
Good thing that Petronas had no problem with my school choice. A good friend named Zainal had his application to do MBA at Moscow approved with no fuss. Moscow was actually a town in Idaho, but I've no doubt that Petronas would've approved it even if it's Moscow in Russia. Getting scholarship at that time was roughly 100 times easier than it is now. The whole idea was, right or wrong, to encourage smart staff to get smarter, not the smartest staff to get smarter. All you'd to do was to fill a form and provide one good reason why you felt that you'd not been educated enough. Another friend wrote succinctly that " I just discovered that my current third-class degree in Malay studies wasn't cut out for all the challenges going forward". The committee immediately fell for this 'going forward' trick and approved the scholarship, with full pay and all allowances thrown in.
It's all different now. I heard that, on a scale of complexity, getting Petronas scholarship now is the midpoint between Yale and jail. You know, how you've to be clever and seen to be clever and how I hate this cliche. You've to be a potential Petronas president or son of a potential president or, better still, if you're the president himself. When you somehow met the criteria, there's still the small matter of an interview. There's no committee to interview you now, which is well and good until you discover that it's going to be a vice president instead. You and some maverick vice president, one on one or one to one, sizing up each other, over dinner. Lose your spoon, you'll lose your scholarship.
It's 1982 and it's annus mirabilis. I got married and we're breaking for Buffalo. My young wife (she's young at that time) admitted that she'd never been to Buffalo. She also admitted that she'd never been to Kelantan. At least, she's consistent. All the same, we're excited about the prospect of living through the next couple of years in the second biggest city in New York state, hahaha. We're further fired up by friends and former classmates who'd just come back from US with glowing tributes to US liberal education and cable TV. Most of them had attended schools in Athens, Troy, Syracuse and other ancient-sounding places, but none from Buffalo.
I don't keep any record of the exact date we left for US. But I'm sure it's either late August or early September 1982, just in time for the Fall semester. What I can still remember is losing all my sense of proportion after a long flight spanning over 12 time zones, three sunrises and four inflight breakfasts. And, of course, the long layover at Chicago airport and the smooth landing at Buffalo-Niagara Airport. Nothing striking about the airport. Those days an airport was an airport, not the whole kingdom. Immigration was fast, no body patting, no terror trivia, and we're allowed to keep our shoes and belts as part of our fashion statement. We picked up our luggage and eagerly wheeled out toward the exit just to see what's outside. As we pushed the door, gusts of cold air flooded in and froze my spine. My (young) wife smiled and shuddered slightly. She'd never been to Buffalo.
It's early evening, about six or seven. The sky was still bright, and cloudless. I was immediately overcome by the rush of fall foliage in the distance. What a pretty sight. All's fine, it seemed, except for one small problem: we had nowhere to go.
