Aaah....school holidays! School holidays for me now means less traffic in the mornings when i go to work, and more people in shopping malls at any time of the day and during weekends, all beach hotels fully booked and the kids at home trashing the house.

I remember it being very different when i was at school. For me it meant hot sunny afternoons under the rambutan tree playing ‘Planet of the Apes” or “Lost in Space”, yeah i’m from that generation....

And then getting money off my Grandmother to go to ‘Kedai Jabbar”, the local sundry shop to get those chewing gum in the shape of cigarettes (which was later banned for obvious reasons, life sure is no fun, eh?) with which we would play ‘grown-up’.... When it’s really hot, we’d sit in the monsoon drain under the wide ramp that connects the main road to our house, oblivious to the fact that it was a drain and hence not the most hygienic place to be hanging about. Rather we’d relax in it’s mossy coolness, buoyed by the gushing waters.

Or we’d climb the nearby hill and lie on granite rocks at the top, looking at the sky singing Sharifah Aini’s “Kau Tinggi di Awan Biru” (loosely translated as ‘you are high above on the blue clouds’) as we lamented on the tragic loss of the singer’s fiancé (a pilot, hence the blue clouds i guess), in an automobile accident.

On longer school holidays we’d go up north to my grandmother’s place in the state of Kedah where we’d run on the edges of each paddy field trying, but not always successfully, to avoid falling into the muddy and somewhat slug-infested paddy field. This is a big taboo with my grandma who would always scold us whenever we’d venture anywhere near a paddy field, which is almost impossible to avoid, since her house is on the edge of a very large paddy field. The only times we were permitted to be in the field was under her watchful eyes, as she went fishing for small fish to make ‘pekasam’ (my absolute favourite preserved fish) which she stored in large covered urns on top of the kitchen cupboard.

Sometimes we’d follow her to 'Tanjung' or the nearest town to do some shopping or to the local sundry shop “Kedai Syarikat” where we’d show off our newly acquired northern dialect, much to the amusement of the locals there but forgiven coz we were Che Tom’s grandchildren from the city.

Another memory was walking around with spiky 80’s hairdo ala Duran Duran only that our hair would go flat by the time we get to wherever it was we’re heading...coz at the time hair gels were not to be found in these parts (so we used hair cream instead)...

And when we were older, we’d use grandfather’s ancient heavy binoculars to spy the boys playing football at the nearby field. I remember the excitement of getting letters from the local boys wanting to get to know us better..ahem..yes, Lisz, remember Zul??

Aaah....school holidays...those were the days, eh?