ZAHRIMAN WRITES: I WON MYSELF A BOX CAMERA!!!

 

The school was then named Tunku Besar Primary School Tampin

 

 It was in 1961, I was in Standard VI  and just got transferred to Tunku Besar Primary School. I was put into Standard VI (F), and that class happened to be the 2nd most stupid class in the whole of Standard VI. The most stupid class of course was Standard VI (G) where most of the students there could hardly read and write. But interestingly, my late father was instrumental for putting me into the 2nd most stupid class. Nonetheless, it was done on purpose.

Earlier in 1959-1960, I was schooling in Undang Rembau English School (URES) studying Special Malay Class I (SMC I) and SMC II. My father who himself was a teacher, wanted to see me learn really good English in school, and he could see not much prospect in URES due to the fact that most of the students there were Malays and all of them talked Malay in school most of the time. More so, my father personally knew Miss Joy, a good teacher who had earlier taught my sister, Siti Zubaidah in URES. It so happened that Miss Joy was already transferred to TBS. Thus without hesitation my father got me transferred from URES to TBS, regardless of the fact that Miss Joy was then teaching the 2nd most stupid class in Standard VI in TBS.

 I was very happy being put into Std VI (F) anyway. Why not? During tests and exams I always got no.1 or no.2 in class. In my class though full of stupid students besides me, there was yet another bright fella named Wahab Jantan. He was also a new student just got transferred from Singapore. He was my keen competitor in the class and we took turn to outdo each other in every test.

 Whilst in TBS I was introduced to a bi-monthly newspaper called Student News. It costed 50 cents then, if my memory doesn’t fail me. Glancing through it for the first time, I fell in love with it. Quickly I bought myself a copy. The section of the paper that I liked most was the quiz. I was always thrilled with quiz whenever I saw one. Thus in this very first copy of Student News that I bought, there was a quiz "quessing the object". There was this faint picture of something that looked like a school bag. I was thrilled when I saw that picture because I immediately could recognise it somehow.

I was then very confident that I could win the quiz against all other students from all over the country.  I could already imagine that I would win the prize for the contest, ie A CAMERA...!!! The reason being, I had only a week earlier learned the specific word for that object. I learned it from the dictionary. The truth was I loved to read and memorize words from the dictionary, and for this object that appeared in the paper, I just knew that every student would write "school bag" for the answer. Too bad for them because I was not going to write school bag. I had my own word, a specific one, and I had learned it from the dictionary...!!!

 True enough, after submitting my answer, within a month or so, I received a letter addressed to me from the Student News office in Singapore, informing me that I won the only prize for the quiz, the prize being a Fuji Box camera.  I was told to get my prize from the Post office in Tampin.

 

The former Tunku Besar Primary School Tampin, way before it was  named the Government Primary School Tampin. In 1961, Zahriman Alias, transferred from URES was placed in Std VI F (with a purpose?)

Without further ado, I went to collect my prize, but not before being told to pay for the tax amounting to $7.80. From then on, I was the most happy student in the school. I was very proud of my possession, and was snapping pictures all over the places with my friends, of course with money constraint to buy films and to develop them.....

Sadly, I lost the camera when I was in Form III. I was then staying in the school hostel. During one of the short holidays, I went home leaving the camera locked in my cabinet. Upon returning from holiday I found that my cabinet was broken and my camera missing.

Anyway, can anybody guess what was the word I used to win me a camera.....an object that resembled a school bag.....clue, it’s a one word answer: S…