A treasure I cherish

ROSELY AHMAD is someone we bumped into in the Down Memory Lane (DML) group on Facebook. Like our merry band of former schoolmates, he is a child of the 1960s. We were amazed by his fantastic recollection of a particularly memorable incident that occurred to him during his schooldays at Westlands School. He said we could use it in this blog and thus, here it is:

A TREASURE I CHERISH by Rosely Ahmad 

I got this when I won a “Pop Quiz”
contest in Primary 6 @ Westlands Primary School in Penang during the School Concert Day.

There were only four contestants representing the smartest from each class and Std 6 had four classes... A, B, C and D. I belonged to Std 6D. I wasn't the smartest kid in 6D however, but I was not the dumbest either (although I was among those few from my class running for that dreaded title). I was forced to enter the contest because the smartest kid in my class suddenly got food poisoning, and at that time I happened to be on stage.

There I was on stage with the other contestants and still wearing a “gown” (if you all remember, in those days girls loved to wear gowns. If you guys are wondering why I was wearing a “gown”, it was because we had just finished an act titled “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” and I was that kid that couldn't play the part of any of the seven dwarfs. Westlands was an “only boys” school.) 

Each one of us was given a question to answer, failing which he would be eliminated and the question passed to the other kid.

The teacher might have thought I would be eliminated in the first round, and yet I managed to survive till only two of us were left (me and the smartest kid of class 6A). 

I still remember the winning question. The teacher asked that kid. “Cassius Clay (at that time he wasn't called Muhammad Ali yet) is well known for boxing. What is the Malay word for boxing?”. When the “smartest kid” of 6A couldn't answer, the “not so smart kid” of 6D created history 😁

Anyway I got that book as a prize and the One Dollar note was from my dad. It still looks brand new.