Same road.....Long long time ago

Cruising down the old sim-sim road, I can't help but feel a little sadness. I had been passing this route so many time for so many years. So many years passed and it is still here.

I knew few people who had passed here and are not here anymore ... and yet the road is still here.
I too will be 'gone' one day and  I know this road will still be here.

Somehow with what I was feeling...i.e. sadness of getting to the 'end' by the day.... makes my mind wander to my memories of yesteryears.

We passed the school where I attended year one. Ah.. though so much upgrading and new buildings added through the years,  the old building where I studied was still there.

I don't remember the date but the year was 1969... my first day at school. The class was so crowded that they didn't have enough tables nor chairs for every student.

Mum send me to class along with a chair. I shared a table with another student. Those who didn't bring their own chairs were not allowed into class.

Memories of those days are vague but there are some moments that I can still clearly see in my head.

I had memories of being punished for not knowing my time tables and for being 'noisy' in class .

Those days the cane was allowed but I remembered my punishments were more to standing on the chair, pulling my own ears and walking around the class on my knees .

I have memories of one teacher who was very close to me . He had a house just beside the school.
I remembered we even exchanged photographs  for rememberance purpose before the family moved to Beluran a year later.
Years later ,I heard he got married but was still living and teaching there.

My regrets will always be the fact that I didn't  pay him any visit all the times when we moved back to Sandakan three years later.  He lived a very short life as I was told he passed away around that same time.
Looking back at mum's old album, I still have that photograph .

Wow...those are memories back to when I was just six. That would be forty-two years ago.

Crap....I can't help but feel so 'old' now.