Old Jokes - A Reminiscence

I stopped writing for a while (in fact I thought for good - kaput) since there was no response to my jottings. I felt deserted in my attempt to interact with the cyber community. Now with better responses I somehow feel recharged and encouraged. I feel more urged to resume my effort to interact with those who love a little smiles and laughters here and there, now and then rather than debate endlessly over some hate messages. Hmmm...maybe I am too impatient as a beginner.

We were taught in school that Newton's Law Of Gravity was discovered after an apple fell on the head of this Newton guy. I heard another version though. It happened here in our country long before Malaysia is called Malaysia. Pak Hussin, a padi farmer was sitting under a coconut tree figuring out the effort needed to fight gravity in order to raise water from a nearby stream to his padi field. Unfortunately a ripe coconut fell on his head and he died instantaneously giving him no chance to finish his work on his Law Of Gravity. Just imagine if it was just a mango that fell on his head, today's Law Of Gravity could have been known as Pak Hussin's Law Of Gravity instead of Newton's.

A friend of mine, a government servant, served in Kedah for ten years before being transfered to Kuala Lumpur. While in Kedah he got married and was blessed with a cute little girl. By the time he was transfered to KL his little daughter was starting kindergarten. His child was bright and active. One day her kindergarten teacher showed a large picture of a spoon with the word 'sudu' underneath it. The teacher spelt out the word by syllables and asked the little children to repeat after her loudly. She went, "S-U...su" and everyone shouted "S-U...su". Then "D-U...du" followed by the children. Then the teacher asked,

"Who can read the whole word?"

My friend's daughter confidently stood up and said,"Camca". If you do not know it, in Kedah 'sudu' is ordinarily spoken as 'camca'. Similar thing happened when the teacher showed a picture of big red chili which in Kedah is normally called 'cabai'.

This reminds me of another school story. This time it's 'Kelas Buta Huruf'. These were classes organised for the benefit of adults who were illiterates. They were organised in villages with one or two teachers to a school. The Visiting Supervisor will visit such classes from time to time to see the students' progress and the effectiveness of the teachers.

One fine day it happened that the Visiting Supervisor visited one such school. He stood in front of the class intending to personally test the students whose average age was about 50. The class teacher respectfully stood behind the supervisor near the black board.

After a simple salutation the session started.

"I will spell a word each time and I want you to pronounce the word correctly", said the Supervisor and everybody yessed out loudly.

"Now the first word is B-A-J-U. Who can give the answer?", he asked.

The students went blank to the point of fainting. The class teacher was in trouble but suddenly a bright idea struck him. Out of the eyesight of the Supervisor who was standing in front of him, he tugged his shirt repeatedly and made eye signal to the students. The whole class lit up and "Baju!!" they roared.

The supervisor was highly impressed and he continued,

"Bagus! Now the next word is S-E-L-U-A-R. Who can give me the answer?"

The teacher quickly tugged his trousers made the eye signal and "Seluar!!" came the confident loud reply.

"Hmmm....I am extremely impressed". He continued,"The next word is G-E-L-A-N-G and who can give me the answer?".

The teacher who happened to be a male, of course did not wear a bangle. He knew he was caught this time but in his desperate last ditch attempt, he unwisely raised both his hands above his head and clenched the fist of his right hand and used his left thumb and index finger to encircle his right wrist to indicate the imaginary bangle on his right wrist. However without the real visible bangle on the teacher's right wrist, the students just could not decipher his signal. So again in desperation he wriggled the clenched right fist vigorously complete with face and eyes signal to attract the students' attention to his imaginary bangle on his right wrist. At last one student of about 55 years old with dentures almost falling off, stood up,

"Itu saya tahu Cik Gu. Haaa....itu... b?t?h... Cik Gu!!!".

Well, in Indonesia this word means 'perlu' or 'need' but here in Malaysia? It's not really a proper word to use in public even if you are extremely angry. Anyway, if you got plastic brain, you figure it out and if you got rubber lips, you may say it out but not too loudly and only when you are angry with yourself.

What else can I say? Maybe just bye and see you later.