Hank came Monday as we planned to visit A.K.Bear at his Gedung Lalang house. We heard that he's not in the best of health. Alas, it was indeed so, as he wasn't home, but was in hospital. The maid couldn't help with the ward information etc, and Bear's daughter's 'phone didn't answer Hank's calls, and so we agreed that he finds out more details later and pass the information.
In fact Hank came because he wants me to contribute one or two essays on our old FMC/RMC reminiscences. Nawi Desa is collecting these into a book.
We were the last batch of "budak boys" who were at PD and later moved to Sg. Besi. I understand the Sg.Besi camp has also recently moved, but I don't know where it is now.
PD was 58 years ago, and I can't remember many details about those early college days. But I do remember the close group of "B" Coy boys, several from Terengganu and Kelantan, that I joined in PD. Weekends would be spent canoeing on the beach front just 100 meters outside the college gates. We would get on a few small wooden rowing boats and paddled to the end of the cove and back. The Batu 4 beach was deserted and undeveloped then, not like now, and we had the beach to ourselves. The public picnic areas were, as they are now, on Batu 9 Telok Kemang. The sandy beach was unkempt but not rubbish-strewn like now, and we could laze all Sunday with no one else from outside in our "budak boy" company. The road to PD town separated the college area and the beach, but you could walk across blindfolded, so few were cars moving on it.
Our accomodations were single-storey barracks designed as different coy's from "A" to "H". There was a laterite airstrip between our sleeping quarters and the two-storey classroom buildings, and the mess hall. On parade days the sweltering airstrip served as our drill ground. Several Malaysian drill sergeants and one very large English sergeant-major from the British Army took care of these drills. When we moved to Sg. Besi later that year, they all followed us there. I remember that English sergeant-major because he stayed in one of the double storey staff-quarters with the barber on the ground floor, and some mornings the orang putih would saunter nonchalantly from the bath room to his living quarters with his bath towel over his shoulder and wearning nothing else, his large member swinging as he walked.
I remember the uniformed army officer who gave a talk in the TMS school hall in1960, inviting the students to join FMC. In 1958 I had been successful in the Seremban interview in 1957 to enter MCKK. 2 of us from TMS had been successful. But my late father had second thoughts when he saw the long list of stuff to bring to the college, and said my younger brother might want to join me later, and that would be further financial burden for him. So this time I didn't tell him that I'd applied for FMC, and only told him after I'd been successful. He didn't object this time.
The PD interview went for 2 days. This time 4 of us from TMS made it - Jalalludin, Gnanalingam, Sukdarshan Singh (calls himself Dillon now, minus the turban) and yours truly.
I'd won the 1960 National "Minggu Bahasa Kebangsaan" oratory competition held in Dewan Tuanku Abdul Rahman, Jalan Ampang, KL. This was after the earlier State round in Seremban, and the Regional round in Melaka. In Seremban, some FMC boys attended, because Khairuddin "Lion" remembered, and remembered me winning there when later I got to know him at FMC, being in the same coy.
We remained Federation Military College while at PD. The "Royal" came once we moved to Sg. Besi. But the PD atmosphere was right royal, too.
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