Just another interesting episode (I think….) in my life that I felt worth written down, at least as a story to remember once I grew up to be someone later in life.
He already planned on not sleeping at all that night. It was 11.20 pm and he is right there in the school building filling in the forms he need to submit on Friday. It won’t be for another two days but he doesn’t have that. The plan was for him to leave in the next few hours and he will not be back until Saturday. Finishing up everything that needed to be, he signalled Wan indicating that he’s ready to leave. Wan told him to wait for a bit as he’s transferring soft copies of students passport photos that will need to be processed in the city. The photos are needed for students’ registration form for the Zone Level’s athletic tournament that is taking place next week in SMK Entilibon, 30 kilometres away from Tongod. As everything is all set and done, they switched of all the lights and fans and locked the door to the staff room.
It was quite dark that night, the first night of Muharram; the first month in the Islamic lunar calendar. Young crescent light could barely be seen amongst thousands of stars scattered around it. He trotted slowly behind Wan, letting the experienced one to lead the way. Wan has been teaching for almost a year and is a heck of an excellent teacher. From his limited observation for the last four days, Wan was always there at the staff room every single night, glued to his desk with numerous tasks and various ordeals that never seem to end. Admiration and envy. That’s what he felt about Wan. Just yesterday he was talking to the clerk when Wan’s name surfaced into discussion and she mentioned that he was the excellent teacher for last year. Not even a year in school and he is already the head of the Geography Subject. It was apparent so far that there’s no easy way to the top.
They reached the school quarters at around 11.40. It was unusually quiet. As they walked through the front door, the reason was clear. Karta, Mat and Seli were peacefully posing in their sleep. They were also planning to leave at 3 am that morning. Thus explaining why they get to sleep real early. He had a different plan though. He went to the kitchen and made himself a mug of thick hot Nescafe, just how he like it best and lay down in front of the television. He muted the audio of and watch the HBO channel. The movie was not the interesting but he watched it anyway. He’s not going to sleep. He will not risk missing the ride to the city. He realised though that the generator will be shut down in just a few minutes and he will be lying there in the dark with nothing to do. But he prayed that tonight will be just like the previous two nights. Somehow, the electricity was on for extra few hours in the morning. His prayer was answered and up until the movie finished and after few more channel switching, the electricity was still on.
Karta’s phone was the first one to ring. The next few minutes so was Seli’s followed by Mat. Evidently, those were their alarms but of all three, only Karta seem to respond towards his. He woke up slowly and headed to the bathroom….
Okay…. I think I’ll quit for now. Writing from 3rd POV is sooo difficult and confusing. Allow me to continue the story in my normal journal entry mode.
Haha… to cut the story short, we finally got ready and wait for the transportation that will take us to the Sandakan city which as I had previously mentioned, is about 200 km away. Here in Tongod, the transport come in the form of either 4-wheels drive pajero or pick-up and the local term for it is “Pirate”. Hehehe… nice uh? They charge RM 25 one way, which is not really piratey, considering the route that we’ve got to go through. On that particular morning, our pirate was Abang Din, a Tongodian who drives Nissan Frontier for a living. Due to the nature of my ‘greater size than others, I was the ‘lucky’ one sitting in front while the other 3 new teachers; Mat, Li and Aishah sat together at the back.
The journey started smoothly until we got into Tong Hup road aka Maxwell road; a jalan balak (timber woods lorries’ route). That’s where all the fun begins. We started to enjoy the rollercoaster ride up and down the muddy red-soiled road. And then…
....I can see that we are heading towards the steepy hill in front of us. It is clear that it is a well-trodden steepy route visited by lots of huge vehicles before. Abang Din shift the gear and start driving up the hill, everything seems okay in the beginning but halfway up the hill, the car stop moving upwards, but I can still feel and hear the tires spinning. Abang Din pushed the pedal to the max, but to no avail, we’re stuck! … Shifting the gear to reverse, we slowly move backwards – down the not-so-straight and all-over ‘holey’ hilly road. Thank god that we can still do that. I thought that Abg Din has given up and we’re going to have to go through other route. Shockingly, as we reach at the bottom of the hill, the car sped back up the hill! We did it! only mere metres more than we managed before and down we go again. At that point, I felt that I was the one to be blame. I am a freaking-heavy-almost-0.1-tonne-living-monster sitting quietly next to the driver unable to assist in any form. I was just about to courteously offer to excuse myself from the ride with hope of making the ride up the hill possible when I sense that we have been moving backward longer than before. “Maybe we’re really going for another route this time!” that was my thinking at that time. Poor me, I was wrong again, what abg din was doing is taking more distances from the hill to build enough speed getting up the hill. This time around, a lot of things crossed my mind, heck! I might die! I even promise to do lots of good deeds if we were to make it up the hill. Finally, after what I feel like the longest 60 seconds of my life, we made it up the hill. I was ecstatic. We continue our journey after a long grateful sigh by all.
The best is just yet to begin. To those who know me well, you’ll also aware that I’m the kind of person who can sleep anywhere in any condition, through any condition. So, I sleep. About an hour later, I woke up realising that we have stop in a middle of a Palm Estate. Apparently, the car was having a breakdown. We got down and check the condition of the car just to find that it was a major breakdown. It was around 6.00 am and the sun is slowly rising up. We waited. ‘Luckily’, another 4-WD passes by and stops. They got down and also try to help with the car. Nothing could be done about it. We were left with no other choice than to ask for a lift from the Good Samaritan. As generous as he was to give us a ride though, his car was full. Being adventurous (and desperate) we jumped on to the back section of the Hilux; the roofless section. So there we go again for an even more exciting rollercoaster ride at the back of a pick up.
It was a darn cold dawn. plus, we we’re moving quite fast. We have to either squat or sit in between petrol barrel and farming equipment. Not to mention, the floor was all muddy. I just don’t care; I positioned myself on the floor and rejoiced the fresh new scenery along the road for a while. I was quite worried about Aishah though; a lady teacher having to go through this adventurous orientation experience. I fell asleep… again, seriously!
We were up at the back of the Hilux for more than half an hour and we said our thanks and goodbye at the intersection of a main road. Apparently, according to Din (a Sandakan local), we have to wait for a bus to Checkpoint (another transit location in order to reach Sandakan – appropriately named so as it is a T-junction with each junction heading towards three different cities; Sandakan, Kota Kinabalu and Tawau). So, we waited. For almost an hour.
The bus arrived (despite the fact that it is not a bus at all, it’s just a renovated van with bells to ring). We paid RM 10 ringgit for another two hours trip. As we reach Checkpoint we board another bus (this time being a real bus-looking bus, despite the fact that it was made during the parameswaran era). We received a call from a friend while we’re on the bus, saying that he’s at Checkpoint and he’s going to give us a ride to the city. Down we go - off the bus and we hop on our friend’s van. From there onwards, we enjoyed a smooth journey to the elusive city of Sandakan arriving at 10.00 am, after an almost 7 hours of an understatedly amazing journey.
He already planned on not sleeping at all that night. It was 11.20 pm and he is right there in the school building filling in the forms he need to submit on Friday. It won’t be for another two days but he doesn’t have that. The plan was for him to leave in the next few hours and he will not be back until Saturday. Finishing up everything that needed to be, he signalled Wan indicating that he’s ready to leave. Wan told him to wait for a bit as he’s transferring soft copies of students passport photos that will need to be processed in the city. The photos are needed for students’ registration form for the Zone Level’s athletic tournament that is taking place next week in SMK Entilibon, 30 kilometres away from Tongod. As everything is all set and done, they switched of all the lights and fans and locked the door to the staff room.
It was quite dark that night, the first night of Muharram; the first month in the Islamic lunar calendar. Young crescent light could barely be seen amongst thousands of stars scattered around it. He trotted slowly behind Wan, letting the experienced one to lead the way. Wan has been teaching for almost a year and is a heck of an excellent teacher. From his limited observation for the last four days, Wan was always there at the staff room every single night, glued to his desk with numerous tasks and various ordeals that never seem to end. Admiration and envy. That’s what he felt about Wan. Just yesterday he was talking to the clerk when Wan’s name surfaced into discussion and she mentioned that he was the excellent teacher for last year. Not even a year in school and he is already the head of the Geography Subject. It was apparent so far that there’s no easy way to the top.
They reached the school quarters at around 11.40. It was unusually quiet. As they walked through the front door, the reason was clear. Karta, Mat and Seli were peacefully posing in their sleep. They were also planning to leave at 3 am that morning. Thus explaining why they get to sleep real early. He had a different plan though. He went to the kitchen and made himself a mug of thick hot Nescafe, just how he like it best and lay down in front of the television. He muted the audio of and watch the HBO channel. The movie was not the interesting but he watched it anyway. He’s not going to sleep. He will not risk missing the ride to the city. He realised though that the generator will be shut down in just a few minutes and he will be lying there in the dark with nothing to do. But he prayed that tonight will be just like the previous two nights. Somehow, the electricity was on for extra few hours in the morning. His prayer was answered and up until the movie finished and after few more channel switching, the electricity was still on.
Karta’s phone was the first one to ring. The next few minutes so was Seli’s followed by Mat. Evidently, those were their alarms but of all three, only Karta seem to respond towards his. He woke up slowly and headed to the bathroom….
Okay…. I think I’ll quit for now. Writing from 3rd POV is sooo difficult and confusing. Allow me to continue the story in my normal journal entry mode.
Haha… to cut the story short, we finally got ready and wait for the transportation that will take us to the Sandakan city which as I had previously mentioned, is about 200 km away. Here in Tongod, the transport come in the form of either 4-wheels drive pajero or pick-up and the local term for it is “Pirate”. Hehehe… nice uh? They charge RM 25 one way, which is not really piratey, considering the route that we’ve got to go through. On that particular morning, our pirate was Abang Din, a Tongodian who drives Nissan Frontier for a living. Due to the nature of my ‘greater size than others, I was the ‘lucky’ one sitting in front while the other 3 new teachers; Mat, Li and Aishah sat together at the back.
The journey started smoothly until we got into Tong Hup road aka Maxwell road; a jalan balak (timber woods lorries’ route). That’s where all the fun begins. We started to enjoy the rollercoaster ride up and down the muddy red-soiled road. And then…
....I can see that we are heading towards the steepy hill in front of us. It is clear that it is a well-trodden steepy route visited by lots of huge vehicles before. Abang Din shift the gear and start driving up the hill, everything seems okay in the beginning but halfway up the hill, the car stop moving upwards, but I can still feel and hear the tires spinning. Abang Din pushed the pedal to the max, but to no avail, we’re stuck! … Shifting the gear to reverse, we slowly move backwards – down the not-so-straight and all-over ‘holey’ hilly road. Thank god that we can still do that. I thought that Abg Din has given up and we’re going to have to go through other route. Shockingly, as we reach at the bottom of the hill, the car sped back up the hill! We did it! only mere metres more than we managed before and down we go again. At that point, I felt that I was the one to be blame. I am a freaking-heavy-almost-0.1-tonne-living-monster sitting quietly next to the driver unable to assist in any form. I was just about to courteously offer to excuse myself from the ride with hope of making the ride up the hill possible when I sense that we have been moving backward longer than before. “Maybe we’re really going for another route this time!” that was my thinking at that time. Poor me, I was wrong again, what abg din was doing is taking more distances from the hill to build enough speed getting up the hill. This time around, a lot of things crossed my mind, heck! I might die! I even promise to do lots of good deeds if we were to make it up the hill. Finally, after what I feel like the longest 60 seconds of my life, we made it up the hill. I was ecstatic. We continue our journey after a long grateful sigh by all.
The best is just yet to begin. To those who know me well, you’ll also aware that I’m the kind of person who can sleep anywhere in any condition, through any condition. So, I sleep. About an hour later, I woke up realising that we have stop in a middle of a Palm Estate. Apparently, the car was having a breakdown. We got down and check the condition of the car just to find that it was a major breakdown. It was around 6.00 am and the sun is slowly rising up. We waited. ‘Luckily’, another 4-WD passes by and stops. They got down and also try to help with the car. Nothing could be done about it. We were left with no other choice than to ask for a lift from the Good Samaritan. As generous as he was to give us a ride though, his car was full. Being adventurous (and desperate) we jumped on to the back section of the Hilux; the roofless section. So there we go again for an even more exciting rollercoaster ride at the back of a pick up.
It was a darn cold dawn. plus, we we’re moving quite fast. We have to either squat or sit in between petrol barrel and farming equipment. Not to mention, the floor was all muddy. I just don’t care; I positioned myself on the floor and rejoiced the fresh new scenery along the road for a while. I was quite worried about Aishah though; a lady teacher having to go through this adventurous orientation experience. I fell asleep… again, seriously!
We were up at the back of the Hilux for more than half an hour and we said our thanks and goodbye at the intersection of a main road. Apparently, according to Din (a Sandakan local), we have to wait for a bus to Checkpoint (another transit location in order to reach Sandakan – appropriately named so as it is a T-junction with each junction heading towards three different cities; Sandakan, Kota Kinabalu and Tawau). So, we waited. For almost an hour.
The bus arrived (despite the fact that it is not a bus at all, it’s just a renovated van with bells to ring). We paid RM 10 ringgit for another two hours trip. As we reach Checkpoint we board another bus (this time being a real bus-looking bus, despite the fact that it was made during the parameswaran era). We received a call from a friend while we’re on the bus, saying that he’s at Checkpoint and he’s going to give us a ride to the city. Down we go - off the bus and we hop on our friend’s van. From there onwards, we enjoyed a smooth journey to the elusive city of Sandakan arriving at 10.00 am, after an almost 7 hours of an understatedly amazing journey.
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