PLKN : The People

Ok, we had commandant, vice commandant, nurses and doctor and part-time-pain-on-the-ass trainers (some of them, luckily!).

My company trainers were Cikgu Nora, Cikgu Awie, and Cikgu Cilabai Laut (I forgot this man name already)

Cikgu Nora was a sweet one ~ because she didn't yell and she was like a sister.

I can even laugh out when doing out my punishment (10 times star jump) for leaving my laundry more than a day out under the sun.

Cikgu Awie was a man with few words and thick moustache.

Why Awie? because he was always on the Harley Davidson like bike.

Cikgu Cilabai Laut, because he used this phrase a lot, there another Cilabai phrase of which the next word I already forgot.

edit another cilabai is cilabai ma'arib (read with idgham sil-vous-plait)

This one is a funny one.

He was strict but the Alpha company just couldn't put straight faces when he was in charge.

He would ask the whole company to lie down on the tarmac at the break of dawn and stare at the beautiful morning sky and cycle you legs off.

He makes us do things that we wouldn't do.

Before obstacles competition, we were made to drink some water, that he poured it down our throat himself, each one of us but we pulled the mark so that we were placed bottom in obstacles competition.

It was not us, it was the water!

Really.hehehehe.

Ya, and the chief trainer of Alpha company, already forgot his name but he was close to Jalaludin Hassan, a father figure himself.

I remember his last words to a fellow trainer on my final bus ride home from camp.

He told the teacher to get married early and get babies because when u will be 40, late night with babies crying is not that nice.

There are some trainers that trained my batch in this video.

So about the trainees.

We had Malays, Indians, Chinese and even Siamese.

PLKN is supposed to be an integration platform but throughout the 3 months, the divisions are clear.

Chinese would hang out and sit with their fellow Chinese friends, same goes for Malay and Indians.

Our company was somewhat special, the girls, regardless races blend together.

Seeing how we embrace each other differences was awesome.

And seeing our similarities is more than awesome.

There's an Indian girl who was sent to dancing classes.

She had these ankle band made off bells and they ring with every step she took and she danced very beautifully that tells me, there are some people who still embrace their culture and it makes me feel at ease.

There were Chinese girls who wore some sort of amulet to ward the evil off. You could see they were really terrified about these unseen things.

And I thought Chinese don't believe in Malay gory beings. Wrong!

They were dead scared of it.

The Kelantaneses were the one who introduced me to radio IKIM and budu.

I was excited to try budu, and I brought a spoon to have it.

"Mu ingak budu ni madu ko?" (do u think budu is honey?)

And the epic sentence when I was trying to pull off Kelantan dialect

"Mu kecek mace sie" (to my understanding ~ U speak like %#%^#%&. The real deal was ~ U speak like a Siamese)

Sie is sial in Northern dialect and it was very inappropriate word to say that someone is sial and I was furious to receive such remark and next second I realised she meant Siam not sial.

Talking about language diversity.

Chillies are cabai for us and are lada for Kelantanese.

One day, a Kelantanese for the umpteenth time ask, what is chilli called again in Northern dialect and she got a spectacular answer, cibai, and not knowing the vulgarity of the word, she innocently used it around.

One thing that boys like to teach their fellow friends that speak different language or dialect is vulgar words.

One day, in character building class, the teacher asked for a list of bad deed.

A Kelantan boy casually shout out "pelaq cikgu, pelaq".

It means penis and the teacher played deaf and the boy then found out about the truth of the word.

A boy from Bravo was keen on learning Northern dialect and went around for a few days saying "Ulaq melingkaq ataih pagaq.Ulaq melingkaq ataih pagaq."

The whole camp loved to sing, and they sang the 90s ~ rock kapak.

Whenever there's free time, someone would go out to the front, took the mike and sang.

There were four things that we can do when we were called onto the stage (they picked out randomly every evening) ~ crying, talking, dancing or singing.

I mean, my circles from high school do love music but this new society that I was in after high school don't love music, they are obsessed with music.

After 3 months, I don't fancy rock kapak anymore. I had had enough.

There were cheeky and hurtful remarks from boys too.

The anti smoking camping that was going on in Malaysia during that time adopted a picture of broke-into-two unused cigaretta.

And what did a boy say?

"Ala cikgu, boleh hisap separuh-separuh tu"

Being teenagers, it's unavoidable that teenagers send hormones flying around.

Cinta PLKN or as I prefer to call it, 3 months contract love was a nauseated sight to behold.

The girls were dumb and the boys were too disrespectful.

On the second last day of camp, I was talking around with a trainer and a famous couple was having their emotional goodbye.

The girl left with her parents sporting teary eyes and after sending the girl off, the boy came and join us.

The trainer asked how long would he keep the girl.

"It would be over when camp is over, it's a 3 month contract anyway teacher"

I restrained my hand from slapping him.

And the last group that I remember was latah group.

When I came into camp, there were only less than 5 girls who had this peculiar behaviour.

When I left there would be quadruple number of girls with latah.

The latah that was going around camp was the extreme one.

Girls like to poke these kind of girls all the time it's not funny anymore.

They sent book flying round and smashed on other full on the face, they spat dirty words and the most extreme one, when we were out for Eksesais Wira Jaya (survival camp), a girl went out of the tent to a baby cobra, and was shocked (latah) and cut the snake into 5 pieces.

And yes, I spent almost 3 months with these people.

My first step into the real world.