During our school days, one of the avenues of making new friends apart from those in your own classes is the so-called co-curricular activities.
For myself, there was only ever one club that I REALLY wanted to join, and that was the Computer Club. But more on that later :)
There are basically two types of activities we could join then, sports, or clubs and societies.
A "kaki bangku" like me could never really be good at any games or athletics, but I still remember Bro. Albinus trying out the entire Form for rugby when I was in Form 2. So, there I was, weighing a paltry 45 kg trying to run with a rugby ball and passing it to the guy beside me. It came as no surprise that I did not make the shortlist :P
Nevertheless, I still managed to join the cross country and the 1500 m when in Form 2. I think the route we used to take for the cross country is now covered with houses and shops.
On the clubs and societies side, the big three then were the Red Crescent, Scouts and Junior Jaycees. There were numerous smaller ones like Kelab Lukisan, Kelab Fotografi, YCS, Legion of Mary, Chinese Society, Kelab Puteri, Kelab Catur, etc. From I saw during my last visit to the school a few years ago, most of these clubs still exist to this day.
So, anyway, back to my story of the Computer Club. I was aware of the club since Form 1, back then the computer room was situated in a room next to the SHS Primary School canteen. I used to hang around outside, just hoping to catch a glimpse of what's inside whenever someone opens the door.
The club was originally open only to those in Form 4 and above, but in 1986 me and Stephen Chung made an appeal to Mr. Ong Chin Kim to let us in, and all credit to him, he did! The Form 4 boys (Alex Sim and gang) were very surprised at this, but nevertheless welcomed us with open arms. After the SRP exams, Mr. Ong agreed to let me and Stephen run a series of classes for our peers while waiting for our results. I still remember some of the members of that gang - Paul Ting, Ngieng Sii Jing, Wong Yii Chiong, Kong Lieng Tee, Frankie Jeffrey, Eng Kia Hock. Apart from learning about Basic, DBase II and Wordstar, we were also exposed to the pleasures of Fruity Frank, Commando and Bomb Jack on the Amstrad.
The exposure I had during the three years I was in the club greatly influenced me, and today, I still do not wish to be anywhere else except in the IT industry.
Which, of course, made me a natural target of being asked to set up a website/blog for our alumni. But that is a story for another day :)
16 comments:
Hi Pat,
You missed me out. I am in the team too.
Hey William, you are right, I missed you out. Sorry, man! :)
Hi Pat,
That was the kick start for my gaming addiction and having a major in Comp Sci. I'm still very much into pc game (more on strategy type) despite diverting to Playstation.
I do play Fruity occasionally. Perhaps we can start a chart board on the high score or no of levels gained per game? Playing those games somehow relaxes me!!!
Hi,
It has been quiet these few days. Computer technology has advanced mile ahead from the very initial technology.
Beside the Amstrad, I remember we have the ICL networked computers. We are lucky that the computer club exposed us to the networking technology in the 80's. There is also Fujitsu computers too.
The basic programming language that we have learned at that time paved us a solid foundation to learn more advanced programming language.
I remember I had a better understanding in my computer lesson and programming in my first year of university due to the knowledge I gathered at the computer lessons before. I have no problem on understanding the operating system of computer and I could start programming in Pascal wihtout much difficulty.
I hope to see more activity in this blog. Have a nice weekend.
Heh heh...Pat, you have a habit of bringing to life old memories. I joined the club much later but bugged out much earlier. Somehow XOR/XON didn't appeal to me but LIFO did. :) The only codes I remember till now are:
10 FOR I = 1 TO N
20 S$ = S$ + "*"
30 NEXT I
or my personal favorite:
10 INPUT "What is your name: ", N$
20 PRINT "Hello "; N$
Somehow, my paltry knowledge in programming got me into more trouble than I care to remember. Among them:
1. Request by a fellow uni student to program a virus to destroy his mates data. I did not release what I wrote but did you know how easy it was to write a trojan masking as an antivirus program and have it wipe out entire hdd data while presumably scanning in the days of MSDOS? Heck, those days, antivirus was just scanning for viruses like Die Hard, etc. Sweet!
2.And the most painful one: Getting a C for BASIC programming course - all because I challenged my lecturer who couldn't tell an operand from his a$$.
Sigh! Congrats though to those who benefitted from the activities in school.
Among the computer technologies, internet is the most powerful. It keeps us communication with each other even we are half the globe apart. Beside that the future will depend very much on internet for entertainment like movies, music etc. Business will not fucntion withiut internbet nowaday.
Here's a sampling of my current extra curricular activity:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pRz0eh9mcY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6xv-m8zmMw&feature=related
:)
Hi Pat,
Nice to hear that all you guys have benefited from the computer club some 20 years ago. Thanks to you guys for making the club an interesting one. Sad to miss our late Frankie Jeffrey.
Cikgu Ong (dola@tm.net.my)
Hei Cikgu Ong,
Nice to hear from you! BTW, r u Cigku Ong Chin Kim? How do u find our blog?
Paul Ting
Hi Paul,
Yes I am Cikgu Ong Chin Kim. Just thinking of looking up how SHS has been doing after 10 years leaving her. Use google search to look up the school web site. This is how I landed up at SHS8890 blog site. It is nice to read up about yours and the group progress all these years. I fondly remember all of you guys. Very sad to learn about Frankie demise. So much for the time being.
Cikgu Ong
It is very gratifying to see a teacher come on to this blog, much more take time to write a comment.
Although not all of us girls had the privilege of being taught by Mr.Ong, but in my case, I have long heard of Mr.Ong's name from my elder sister & brother who are 6 and 2 years my senior respectively.
Mr. Ong, thank you for participating in our blog...the relationship you have with the boys is much envied.
Hi Ivy,
Thanks for your generous comment.
Don't be envious. You are still not too late to be in the real life classroom. It is better this time with two-ways communication rather than the one-way approach in our school life. I hope to share my thought later when opportunity arises.
As for others, I am now back to Northern Melaka this year, in SMJK Pulau Sebang.
................->
Dear Cikgu Ong, its a great pleasure to hear from you!
As mentioned, I never lost my love for IT and am now working as project manager in software development.
I don't know whether you remember David Hii, but he's the CTO of the company I currently work for.
The last I found on Google was you were in SMK Raja Uda Penang, good to hear you are now closer to home. I am staying in Puchong with my wife and kid, hope to visit you some day :)
Hi, Cikgu Ong, It's glad to see you here in our blog. 18 years...we have left our Alma Mater.
Pat, maybe we can organise a trip to Melaka during a weekend and visit Cikgu Ong.
I will be going to KL again tomorrow. This time might be longer than previous time....
Cikgu,
I don't expect you to remember me, but I do remember you(aren't we all!).
My memories of you include a vivid image of you negotiating a roundabout, in the ever so busy Sibu Town. And your passion for Physics!
Thank you for your patience with us!
Hanafi.
Hi Hanafi Ali,
I remember you very well; one of my students who had few words in class and who was one of the few Malay students in SHS. You have not changed much except your size!
Nice to read your comments after all these years.Thanks for liven up my life.
As for my passion in Physics, I have broadened my interests to include other branches of science but not duster-wielding stunts any more. Thanks for your good write-up about your descendents from Brunei as I was very keen to know the history of various ethnic groups in Sarawak then and now. In fact every where I go, I would take the oppurtunity to find out about the people and their sosio-economy backgrounds.
Cikgu Ong
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