My Alma-mater – SSSS
by Ir. Hj. Wan Mohd. Yusoff bin Wan Othman
The school was Sultan Sulaiman Secondary School in Kuala Terengganu, The Kingdom of the Faithful, Malaysia. The alumni, aka the Sulaimanians were indeed privileged to be part of the instrument that socially-engineered the people of Terengganu ( plus a handful of ‘orang luar’ ) in the last part of the last century.
Photo from Facebook
Sultan Sulaiman as we normally addressed it, was indeed part of the big design in the scheme of things that had shaped, textured and coloured my life. I would admit that if there were scratches and dents, hard knocks and short-changes, blemishes and permanent bruises, they were there only to add value and authenticity in the way an object becomes a valuable vintage.
I have been lucky to have come across wonderful people, they were not just teachers, they were people like Cikgu Razali, Khatijah Yong, the late Mrs Wee, Cikgu (Dato’) Bahari Atan, Cikgu Ainon Mardhiah, Mrs Soh, the late Ustaz Mahmood Salim, the pretty ustazah Noriah, the late Reza Piyadasa, the late Yusoff Majid, Gurunathan, Vijayakumar. And among the students from as senior as the late Kol Abd Ghani Hussain to as junior as Abd Karim Omar, not to mention my own batch 1969, Tuan Ngah, cousin Dr Nik Fuad, second cousin Flight Captain Nik Nordin and Datin Dr Nik Roswati, Kamaliah, Dr Syed Salleh, Dr Chua Giok Pien and one of them even became the Headmaster of our beloved alma mater, Daud. None of my friends went into politics which was very wise but they were in so many other professions (except one). Whenever I stray to a new area of expertise whereby I do not know anybody, many a time I would meet somebody who recognised me from SS, there would be a special moment of excitement, connection or commaraderie which allowed us to relate to each other. Its a kind of magic.
My achievements were manifestations of the visions created by my teachers during those formative years. When Mr Tay Soo Hock my Standard 6 teacher from Sultan Sulaiman Primary School talked about the “smoke” coming out of the mouth during winter months in Kirkby Liverpool, I actually visualised the scene, 5 years later I was in Brighton, 2 years after that I was studying in Liverpool itself. That was long before I read Maxwell Matz on visualisation.
Cikgu Razali introduced chess game in class when we were in Form 2. Some 15 years later I was the Vice President of the Malaysian Chess Federation. I tell you these things are related somehow.
On recollections, I must tell my teachers, despite the growing pains, I was not so bad after all. Maybe I have not said it before, but here it is – I LOVE you, my teachers from SS.
The Sulaimanians 