Virtus,
is a column by Nik Nazmi, full time student, part-time writer and
webdesigner, from class of 99 and the Mohd Shah House
So
many things have happened since this column was last updated.
The tragedy on September 11 and the subsequent American attacks on
Afghanistan have stolen most of the headlines throughout the world
for the past two months.
Then we had HRH Yang Dipertuan Agong Sultan Salahuddin Abdul Aziz
Shah of Selangor leaving us a few weeks ago. Let us all pray for the
late Sultan, al-fatihah. The popular and friendly Sultan was
probably be the last Malay College Old Boy to grace the throne at
Istana Negara as the three remaining Old Boys among royalty - Tuanku
Jaafar of Negeri Sembilan, Sultan Azlan Shah of Perak and Sultan Ahmad
Shah of Pahang have all been elected as Agongs before.
The
era when koleq was a royal institution has passed for quite some time.
Now princes and princesses from the nine Malay states would probably
be educated either overseas or in private boarding schools with the
likes of Kolej Tuanku Jaafar. Not long ago, I had the opportunity
to visit KTJ, and was seemingly impressed by the facilities, as most
budak koleq would probably be when he visits most schools in fact,
be it private or government, as facilities in MCKK is in such a deplorable
condition! KTJ had a very colonial, British feel to it. Although newly
established, the buildings were fashioned from the old premier schools
of the country. I cannot help but think that koleq was probably part
of the inspiration, as most budak koleq probably would, we see everything
in the universe revolving around us and koleq.
But
the magic of koleq goes beyond buildings. It goes beyond facilities.
Maybe a lot of the 'old' Old Boys would say that the standard of MCKK
students presently (my generation) are nothing compared to those produced
during the golden years of the College, but I believe there is still
a difference in MCKK products.
In
the past, life in MCKK inspired the students, which, following the
Second World War included a significant proportion from rural areas
and poor families, to excel and work hard as MCKK provided the best
facilities, facilities that they did not enjoy in their homes. Figures
such as Allahyarham Tan Sri Yahya Ahmad and Tan Sri Tajuddin Ali are
testimonies to this.
Now,
there is a more significant proportion of MCKK students from the Malay
middle class, children of the NEP. The age old toilets in the Overfloor,
or the bland food we get in the dining hall as well as the stuffy
and hot classrooms in New School are all sobering experiences for
students who hail from Taman Tun and Damansara. Negatively, it provides
a disincentive for students not to work hard. But positively, it is
an experience to these students, myself included, that shapes our
character and exposes us to the harsh realities of life, which many
fellow Malays specifically, and other Malaysians generally, experience
worse versions of it in their daily lives.
And
you know what? Several MCKK students have attended the A-Level programme
in KTJ. A colleague of mine told me about the expectations they place
on MCKK students; it is the budak koleq rather than the thoroughbred
KTJ students that become leaders in KTJ. The MC name may not be as
it was previously, but it still carries a great deal of weight.
Salam
Ramadhan and Selamat Hari Raya, from MCNET.
Virtus.
Virtue? Manliness? Wisdom?
I
am at lost here. My definition of �Virtus� � part of MCKK�s famous
Fiat Sapientia Virtus motto � Manliness Through Wisdom has been critiscised
by one visitor after another. Maybe I should change the name of my
column since my knowledge of Latin is basically like the rest of my
generation � zero.
Unlike
in the pre-War era, where the students would actually have understood
the motto although it was not yet introduced, even our English today
is under great scrutiny. Entering koleq, I never saw a wider
range of languages, dialects and accents intermingling in Prep School.
Some, including me spoke in the beautiful Kelantanese accent.
There�s the northern sound of Kedah and Penang and the weird-sounding
(at least to Peninsular ears) East Malaysian dialects. Some from the
posher families spoke English and those who just returned from overseas
spoke it with a British or American accent. There was even one student
I knew who would rattle in Urdhu every time he talks to his parents.
But
this enormous concoction of tongues was temporary. Within a year or
so, the Kelantanese would start mixing with the rest, and their accents
would disappear, just as the �kamek� of the Sarawakians. College vocabulary
would find itself into most of our conversations, which started to
sound like Kuala or Sayong Malay. Unless you want to stand out from
the crowd � usage of English is severely minimised.
Some
traditions still remain. English survives due to its traditional importance
in the College. The College Magazine is still largely English � but
the editors have an increasingly bigger role to play due to the burgeoning
mistakes that students commit in their English.
Language
issues aside, if you have visited MCNET before, surely you realise
the disappearance of the advertisement frame at the bottom of the
browser. We have paid for the forwarding address � hopefully with
your support MCNET can continue to survive despite running on a non-profit
basis.
The
teacher�s database is up and running, and we have included in there
the address of Anthony Harmer � a former teacher at koleq in
the 70�s. He even generously included an article for MCNET. Hopefully
more teachers can add their details to the database. We would like
to have everyone who have shared the wonderful opportunity of being
the Malay College family to see MCNET as their website.
MCNET
will continue to provide more articles, as well as the most-updated-possible
news from MCKK and MCOBA. Do surf to the site often to check out for
any additions!
A
final note, I have decided this column would still be called Virtus,
what ever that means!
Remember me writing that Virtus would be updated every other
week?
Most of you probably do not, and
that is good for me since there has been only one edition of Virtus
since the inception of MCNET.
MCNET�s first few weeks have been
a bad affair. There were some glitches, which drew much flak from
surfers who complained in MCKK-Comnet, and after a few days of over
a hundred unique users per day, the numbers fell to a consistent double-digit.
Netscape visitors (around 21% of total visitors) find the site�s tables
distorted. HTML bugs feature frequently on the site. Rehman Rashid
pointed out the numerous typos.
However, I must thank all the budak
koleqs, who despite all the shortcomings, visited the site, read
the articles, added their details in the database and offered constructive
comments. To Rehman, I highly appreciate your advice.
The weaknesses in MCNET speak of
the unfortunate facts about this portal. The people behind the site
are all full-time students. All work here is voluntary, and we get
no profits from the site. All we can afford are free web services
in hosting and content editing.
But all of us who are working on
this project believe in the future of MCNET. Hopefully, this modest
portal can slowly build itself into a satisfactory Malay College community
that serves the alumni and present students to continue the tradition
of networking (cronyism?) and get the latest MCKK / MCOBA news, since
both currently fails to provide the appropriate channels on the net.
I dream of a website that Collegians
and non-Collegians alike can share to find the history and facts about
an institution that has done so much for our country. There would
be passionate discussions and debate that the Collegians are so keen
about, to take place in the site just as it had previously taken place
in the MCOBA website and now in MCKK-Comnet.
Nevertheless, these utopian dreams
can only come true, with, well you guessed right, money! Despite my
despising of capitalism, the rule of the game states that to come
up with an effective net solution, we have to have lots of money.
If this site fails to come up with enough revenue to make profits,
what we need is the ringgits to cover the revenue from passionate
fund contributors. With all the bad publicity about dotcoms and the
price fall in technology stocks, it seems that the latter solution
is more realistic.
Originally the idea for a comprehensive
MCKK portal came from a group of old boys. 9599inc is trying our best
to talk with interested old boys to hopefully set up a more professional
web outfit. Pray that a workable solution will come out.
On a brighter note, congratulations
to the current crop of students for those well-rounded achievements
in sports and debate for the past few months. For the College that
is so addicted to winning, it could not have been better.
Koleq's
presence on the net is down right embarrassing. While TKC and STAR
have webpages for their students and alumni, we have none to be proud
of.
Way back in 96, there was the highly hyped about opening of the Infolab,
with due assistance from MCOBA. It was highly progressive, at a time
when most of the students were vague and clueless about the net (including
yours truly) and was greeted eagerly. Afternoon prep became a time
for us to rush to the Library and book the computers either to play
games or surf the net. Hoardes of budak koleq signed up for Hotmail.
That year saw the first koleq homepage came to life. It was highly
ambitious and albeit a simple layout, contained huge chunks of information
about our beloved alma-mater. The website was chosen for a homepage
competition among Asian schools and got a lot of publicity.
After that, things were no longer rosy. Whether from the hands of
those addicted Doom players, or those who spent weekends locked up
inside the Infolab to chat and surf, the PCsbroke down, while some
peripherals (read:mouse balls) got stolen. Whoever that was responsible
for paying the leased line stopped doing so, and the Infolab took
less and less of the Library space. The koleq homepage met a sudden
death. The MCOBA website which once housed interesting forums which
got a number of old boys arguing on finer points of an issue, also
died.
While several batches took the initiative and a few batch homepages
sprung up all over cyber space, four of my batch members, including
myself, had a dream. We thought of having a comprehensive, detailed
and well updated koleq homepage. We envisaged the prospect of paying
for our own domains-e.g. mckk.org.my, a website, like the 96 one,
that would truly be the pride of koleq. The four of us spent hours
writing a detailed history of the Malay College-in both languages,
English and Malay while we enslaved half a dozen juniors to compile
information about their batch-for a complete student database.
But reality hit us hard. The four webmasters were also involved in
other sports, societies and activities. The weight of the responsibilities
made all the hard work still stuck in the solitary infolab CPU. Four
months later, I took the initiative, and simply tweaked what we had
done and uploaded it in angelfire.com, a free web hosting service.
To update it regularly, I would have to go the few, inefficiently
slow and outrageously expensive cyber cafes. That was how most of
my Saturday outings were spent.
The website was quite unknown among the teachers, but it caught up
pretty well among old boys and outsiders. However modest the website
was, it recorded historic achievements in 99 week in, week out, much
more frequent than Warta KPKM or even Berita MCOBA. Nevertheless,
I grew tired and had to focus on my approaching exams, and again the
site met a premature death.
The year 2000 marked koleq achieving smart school status. But up to
this day, it has no website. And I kept hearing about MCOBA's website
being completed. When? I don't know.
You may ask, what's the fuss about having a website? Having a good
website which is regularly updated is an important feature for any
institution or organisation in this cyber era.
Other schools are making the best out of the net in every possible
way. A good example would be TKC's website, which is regularly updated,
has the support from the OGA and the school management, and despite
frequently having to cope with pictures of desecrated frogs in their
guestbook, is a good source of information for everything TKC related,
minus the frogs that is.
A lot of former Collegians, most of which are on the better side of
the digital divide, want to know how we fare against Clifford, STAR,
Vajiravudh or VI in sports, and against the likes of Alam Shah, St
Michael and TKC in debate. Old boys are interested about the College
redevelopment plan, and whether Yut Loy still stands. Sure, you may
say, even our Parliament website is grossly inaccurate and is rarely
updated, but I'm sure most of us are better than some tiresome bureaucrats
trying to compile the latest boring parliamentary debate.
Kudos however to Raja Petra Kamaruddin, who unfortunately is under
ISA right now, who have built up a truly online community with his
MCKK Community-Networking yahoogroups. That is the best koleq can
offer.
Well, action speaks louder than words. Let's see where MCNET ends.
I rest my case.