Flashback: SMK Derma (Part 1)

Whenever you mention SMK Derma in front of Perlis people, especially aunties, their reaction will be: “Wah… Derma ar… good school wor...”

Don’t be surprise by this kind of reaction because SMK Derma is one of the selected schools in Perlis. Selected school means that the school selects the students base on their UPSR results, one can only enter Derma if his or her UPSR result got more A than anyone else in the whole world. With rotans in their hand, I am forced by my parents to study hard during my primary school days, so I am fortunate enough to get into Derma.

So you might wonder how come a selected school got this kind of lousy name: Derma. Like the school not enough money only. Actually based on what I heard many many years ago from a Derma teacher, the founder of the school name it Derma because the school is set up from the donations and funding of the society, plus the founder is lazy to think of a name for the school, so he just name it Derma, and the name is used until today.

Undoubtedly, the time is Derma is one of the most memorable moments in my life, I spent 5 years in Derma, from 1998 till 2002, here I met lots of gila friends and some good teachers who threatened me to call my father if I still fail their subject papers.

Derma is the place where I had my first fight, my first experience of being a prefect, my first experience of bullying juniors with the help of my prefect status, first time to fail an exam (damn matematik tambahan), first time to be in the school basketball team (although I am selected as the last backup choice if the whole team is injured). So many first time in my life and made me the person I am right now.

I managed to go back to Derma a few months ago and glad to say that there are not much of changes going on after 5 years, Derma is still Derma.

Here, my fellow budak Derma, I present you the recent pictures of Derma.

The pondok is the prefect place to kacau cha bos

This pondok is the place where I and my friends gathered during recess period and ponteng kelas. We used to sit there hanging around until we really have to go to class or go home. We even created a record of sitting there for the whole school time, from morning till afternoon, that means us skipped ALL the classes, sorry cikgu. This place is also the place where love blossomed, many of my friends hang out there too long and ended up became couples, maybe they studied Kimia there for too long and there were chemical reactions between them.

The picture above is the canteen of Derma, this is the place where I can buy a plate of delicious nasi lemak with a piece of chicken, an egg and ikan bilis for RM1.50. I can say that it’s the cheapest in town, probably the whole world. So when the recess bell rings, everyone will run like hell to the canteen to buy one, because the nasi lemak is limited.

Beratur? apa tu? I tak faham lah prefect...

There is a tradition where students don’t queue up in the canteen and I am proud to say that this tradition is still practiced until now. As a former lousy prefect, I am quite proud to say that no one will listen to the prefect when asked to queue up to buy food, everyone is concentrating on how to squeeze into every inch of space available to get nearer to the counter to grab the nasi lemak. So usually fed up prefect like me will join the crowd to grab the nasi lemak and when the discipline teachers came, we prefect will act like very hardworking trying to control the crowd, then when the teachers is gone, its business as usual.

Chinese class is conducted here at Big Pondok as most class were occupied

During my days in Derma, there was no teacher who teaches Chinese, so all Chinese students who wanted to take Chinese paper in PMR or SPM pleaded the school for a Chinese teacher. At first we got Mr. Ooi Luen Thien who drove 30km all the way to Derma as a Chinese tuition teacher after school hour on every Friday, but some playful students including me tend to skip classes and play paper airplane in class, we all thought that he’s just a tuition teacher and couldn't care more (To Mr. Ooi, if you are reading this, I am sorry, I am just a kid at that time u know).

After some time, the school found out about our non-taking-it-seriously behavior and decided to conduct Chinese class on school hours and employed a permanent Chinese teacher. And so we got Miss Chow, she somehow managed to control us a bit but some still managed to skip class, including me. However, when SPM is just around the corner, we all got panicked as we still don’t know the format of examination after 2 years and decided to stay in class to study Chinese.