Flashback: SMK Derma (Part 2)

As a leading school in Perlis, SMK Derma has the best infrastructures and manpower among the schools in Perlis, it even got an ISO certificate many years ago. As a result of its fame gained from the ISO certificate, many other schools management teams visited Derma in order to learn how to manage an international certified school. Schools that visited Derma were mainly from Malaysia, at one time, Derma even got visitors from a Thailand school.

Whenever there were visitors, the whole Derma will be in a so call “emergency state” where everyone in the school including the gardeners dressed up nicely to welcome the visitors. Before the visitors arrive, the school will be cleaned and kept in a tip top condition so that the visitors can nod their heads throughout the whole visiting period. Students will act like very hardworking in class, some even raised their hands to ask questions whenever the visitors go pass the classroom. That’s the Derma spirit.
The other Derma spirit is that the students managed to fully utilize the infrastructure in Derma. Like go on a date with lover at the pondok where it is meant to be a studying place. Or even play football in the assembly hall.

Behold, the Old Trafford of Derma

Yes, this is what I did when I was in Derma. Our definition of football in hall is played using other smaller ball-like items, such as water bottle, small coconuts, bottle cap… you name it. And when we can’t find these things, we ended up stealing a proper football from the storeroom. Then the goals will be set up by putting chairs on each corner of our “football field”. The size of the “football field” was decided based on the number of players. Once we started the game, we can do it whole day, even after class and ended up go home late. Sometimes even got girls joining the game, no kidding.

Derma's motto: Berusaha Tetap Berjaya

Football aside, the assembly hall is actually meant to be the place where assemblies were held. The assembly was held every Monday morning and I bet that most of the students hate to go to assembly. For teachers and headmaster, assembly is the time when they got to instill some studying spirit and love towards the school to the students. On the other hand, for students, assembly is the time when they have to stand closely to each other for 2 hours in a hot hall without functioning fan and listening to crap like: “Kamu semua orang mestilah belajar bersungguh-sungguh supaya mendapat keputusan yang cermerlang dalam peperiksaan yang akan datang…”

But for me, I like assembly, because this is the time that I can unleash my evil prefect power and drag out students who were talking during the assembly. Students who were being dragged out will have to stand outside and cannot go back to their classes after the assembly until they were being questioned by the discipline teachers. However, I admit that I didn’t carry out my responsibility properly, I used to drag out more students when I am not in the mood, talked to my friends inside the hall when I am in the mood, and when I am sleepy, I just go outside, grab a chair and sleep. That’s why I didn’t got promoted as the head prefect after four years of service and the head prefect position went to a new guy with 3 months of experience.

And the above picture is the field of Derma, it is the size of 2 real football fields (not the assembly hall football field size). This is the place where 22 students fight for 1 football, and the place where students compare who runs faster. It’s a stupid place but I like it compared to a classroom with lots of matematik tambahan equations on the blackboard.

Among all these places in Derma, my favorite place is definitely the Kedai Kooperasi, in short we called it Koop. I like Koop so much because this is the only place that I can hang out with my kaki ponteng friends with AIR COND. Koop is like the mini Tesco in Derma, the Koop is only the size of a small living room but it sells anything that a typical student needs. The Koop sells exercise books, stationeries, junk foods, ice creams, and even toiletries for the hostel students (SMK Derma is a semi-hostel school). However, with so many cases of female students got pregnant, I think the Koop should start selling some condoms.

Me and my friends hang out too much in the Koop and enjoy too much free air-cond so we decided to contribute towards the Koop by helping Mr. Chew, the Koop teacher-in-charge to run the business. We became cashiers, cleaners and storekeepers in the Koop whenever we got the free time. In fact, some of us enjoy being in the Koop so much that we decided to come back and help even after we graduated from Derma. At one point that the Koop became the gathering place for us…

I am the nerdy guy in the middle with red t-shirt