10 Reasons Why Our Batch Is (Not) Kewl

It all started when one junior made this remark on Facebook:

“…i think our batch thinks that ur batch was the coolest form fives that we ever came across in koleq..”

I had a feeling he was pulling my leg – many people do that all the time after all – but the thought that it could even cross anyone’s mind that we were kewl given how lame and under achieving we were (and are); got us a bit more excited.

We had some discussions in the Male-ing List and e-mails came and forth arguing whether we were kewl or not – but it was not long before all of us unanimously concluded that it was un-Earthly impossible for us to be kewl in anything that we did (most probably we were the most laughed at Form 5 that these guys could have come across).

Once we had admitted our lameness, we went a bit further to agree on why we were not at all kewl.

These are the 10 reasons we could come out – we have finally come clean with our under achieving records in MCKK ha ha.

Class of 94 is not kewl because (not in order of lameness):

1) While other batches would have had their stories of great victories in games and studies, or producing great statesmen or corporate leaders – our only claim to fame is the havoc we created for almost 2 years in 1990 and 1991 with this ghost we called “Kak Ramlah”! Kak Ramlah (and her human side kick Nik, ala2 Batman and Robin) was the cause of so many nights sleeping in Surau Prep School, ghost hunting at night, dramas in Dorm 10 and many others. For the bad publicity that Kak Ramlah had inflicted on our batch, we had decided to make her our mascot.

2) Errr…. We did not get 100% for SPM, one guy actually failed his SPM because he was too busy trying to collate spot questions from all over the country on our behalf (what a sacrifice he did). And the panel in Hargreaves Hall got it wrong – we actually passed our SRP with flying colours (one of the better ones in koleq’s history, yet the board put us as not getting 100% passes), screwed up SPM (we didn’t get 100% passes but there were quite a few straight As, yet the board put us as getting 100% passes but no straight As). The fact that I have to explain at length about our academic records just shows how lame our academic record was!

3) We would have liked if our years of breaking rules in MCKK was immortalised in unique crimes like Class of 93’s (hijacked the college bus in the middle of the night for a tour of KK, then parked it right in the middle of Padang Big School), but we had to settle for a commerce crime instead (kalau ikut Kanun Jenayah, crime besar2 fall under Kanun Keseksaan, kitorang masuk jenayah perdagangan je!). By the end of our stay in koleq, we had mastered the art of tapping into phone lines without paying – so during the SPM week it was like a free-credit weeks (only 10 years earlier ha ha). There were a few “hotspots” for free phone calls – New Hostel’s public phone, some idiot actually tapped Cikgu Sabri’s phone line ha ha and the most daring ones tapped HM’s line at the Admin Block. Many called their juniors and girl friends, Wong called his Japanese acquaintances in Japan, but one or two spent a lot of time trying to solicit leaked questions ha ha. Koleq finally figured out when the term opened; when the phone bill went sky-rocketing. One guy was decent enough to send Postal Order to Cikgu Nolita and Cikgu Sabri to partly reimburse all the phone calls made (so I was told).

4) If you see the list of Scholars of The Year in Hargreaves Hall’s panel, you should spot that Class of 94 is the only batch with 2 Scholars of The Year. We were so mediocre in our academic performance that koleq couldn’t decide one top student to be awarded!

5) We decided to leave a physical legacy in koleq so we came up with the Dataran Pemimpin (funded by Datuk Seri Effendi Norwawi and officiated by Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim). First, it received quite a strong protest for some old boys for supposedly ruining the big tree in between the blocks. Second, the workmanship was so bad (especially for the stage and mini sqaure that was meant to cater for a weekly Speaker’s Corner, which never materialised anyway). Thirdly, it got damaged in 1995 when koleq decided to re-build the canteen to make way for the current Medan Pelajar – that until today Dataran Pemimpin was left uncared for (with the leaves all over the place) giving the impression that it is “Satu Lagi Projek Terbengkalai Kerajaan XX”.

6) The most popular personalities from our batch are the musicians Loque, Kadaque (and Kalai at one point) from the band Butterfingers who are neither rich nor super-model like! They were not jambu when they were in koleq, and they are still not now despite being in the entertainment industry for almost 15 years already!

7) One would have thought that for all our lameness and under achieving record, at least God was fair enough to bless us with a bimbo who could go on and make it big on the screen – that would have salvaged something, at least people can argue that we were not smart because we were dominated by bimbos. Unfortunately we don’t even have bimbos – and the one who went to have an appearance on TV ads (he called it modeling, I called it misleading!) has so much pimples one would have confused that we was talking about facial cosmetics products, not Sensodyne toothpaste!

8) Being lame and under achieving put our feet on the ground when we were in koleq so we were very close to the teachers in 1994 (I always thought they liked us because we were dumb and therefore rarely objected much to anything). During our time (it started in 1993), koleq had this award called “Anugerah Pingat Emas” or Gold Award (yaaa haaaa) intended to be the equivalent to Colours, but where Colours was given to sportsmen, Gold Award was given to all rounders. When it was started in 1993, there were about 10 recipients of Gold Award. Koleq must have gone out of their mind when they decided to give Gold Award to EVERYONE in our batch in 1994 (most probably to help us in our scholarships ha ha since otherwise we didn’t have anything to show – or maybe a gesture of pity for our lameness and dumbness), including people like Aiwa ha ha (supposedly for his entrepreneurial skills through the nightly Order business!). When SPM results came out and we flunked big time, I am sure the teachers promised not to give anyone any Gold Award anymore – so we sometimes feel bad for devaluing the Gold Award so bad so much so that they decided to scrap it off ha ha (please see exhibits further down).

9) We had difficulty vandalising the school because we forgot to make a pronouncement of a scientific/latin name to associate our batch with (unlike earlier batches). I am sure when our juniors list down the name of each batch (from First Thoroughbred… to Crotalus, Esmarque, Eunectus etc. etc. ) they will be stuck at 1994 and have to leave it blank – what a spoiler ha ha!

10) KPKM in 1994 introduced a cheering t-shirt to replace the not so practical practice of wearing school uniform to cheering. Our design must be so bad that the juniors immediately after us (Classes of 95, 96 and 97) didn’t continue the practice and when it finally made its way again to koleq in 1998 (by our Form 1), they decided to change the design completely! I blamed it on Bochap who was partly responsible for the design, for the unprofessional choice of yellow for the colour just because he was in Md Shah!

EXHIBITS A – sijil GOLD AWARD and the accompanying school leaving certificate in 1994




Ha ha because I have a feeling the list of lameness associated with our batch is longer than this, I give you the readers the choice to vote so that we can come to terms with our un-kewl-ness :-)