Bila Kak Ramlah Bermain Bowling

The preparation for April's Batch Inter-House Bowling (one in a series of sporting events planned for the one year long Sukantara reunion) had begun in earnest since last week.

Of course the starting point to discuss the preparation was the male-ing list. And as expected, Md Shah - the kiasu house then and still kiasu now - resorted to so many dirty tactics to win the competition e.g. psycho war by belittling every other player from other houses with the hope to discourage them from participating (each participation earns points for the house), or misinformation campaign by deliberately bombarding the male-ing list with bowling jargons (again to discourage people from participating) or chest beating (to intimidate other houses).

However, none compares to the severity and kiasu-ness of this one tactic:

Allegedly they have employed the service of Kak Ramlah (Note 1); who due to her invisibility - can either push any pins left standing each time a Md Shah's player bowls; or even worse; holds the pins standing each time an opponent's player bowls so as to avoid pin drops!

This is of course possible because Nik Azhar; the you-know-what when it comes to Kak Ramlah - is from Mohd Shah!

A chorus of protests have been raised to the organiser but there is no guarantee that Md Shah will not resort to that tactic; after all there is no way in this world to ensure that Kak Ramlah is not present at Sunway on 7 April.

So if Sulaiman house suddenly found ourselves trailing behind Md Shah despite our level best efforts to prepare, don't tell us we did not warn you.

RBI

As a part of their scare tactics to nullify challenges from other houses before the competition begins (especially from Sulaiman), Md Shah's early campaign was based on the motto "Kami nak beat Ruff jer".

This leads to the consensus that in order to assess the progress of preparation leading to the actual event, a benchmark index of the worst score you must exceed should you want to perform better than Sulaiman (which as always is the favourite to emerge as the champion from the bottom) must be established.

Each week or fortnightly (depending on situation) the index will be updated at the Sukantara blog.

This index is officially called RBI (for Ruff's Bowling Index) and the first sets of RBIs are as follows (data as at 26 January 2007 midnight; calculated as an average of total pin drops over the total no. of games played):

Best of 3 games - 133
Best of 4 games - 127
Best of 5 games - 116


Note 1:
1) Kak Ramlah was never enrolled as an MCKK student (doooh!)
2) Kak Ramlah was only visible to Nik Azhar
3) Kak Ramlah could have been just one nickname she/it uses; she/it could have been known differently in a different world
4) The definitive form or being of Kak Ramlah was never known; though some of the speculations could have spawned so many urban legends and ghost stories in MCKK
5) Kak Ramlah was part and parcel of the daily routines of our batch in 1990 and 1991; which included sleeping in surau, reciting Yassin throughout the night, being sent on an errand to ascertain the truthness that she/it did exist at 2 o'clock in the morning, playing a Yassin tape in the dorm after lights off and so many more.