UPSR vs peperiksaan Penilaian Darjah Lima

Today , my niece, my friends' and relatives' children, and everybody's childrens, age twelve or less ( for those whose birthdays are in December....hehe..... ) in Malaysia will be sitting ( as we speak, it's 9 am ) are sitting ( and I think almost finishing their first paper in five minutes time ( just had the info thru Halim Othman via Sinar? or Suria? FM this morning.....that the first paper will end at 9.05 am ) for their UPSR or Ujian Penilaian Sekolah Rendah.



Wish everybody the best of luck , try to do your very best, this is just the beginning of your major exams or maybe not, if the proposal for the elimination of this and the other exam is approved, there wouldn't be anymore UPSR or PMR. but hey, I am not going into that in detail, I just want to go back three decades into the Seventies when I sat for my Peperiksaan Penilaian Darjah Lima when I was in Standard Five ( we called it Standard Five or Darjah Lima unlike today, they call it Tahun Lima or Year Five )except that UPSR is taken when they are in Year Six.Neither am I going to talk about the education system , I'll leave that to the expert.



this will be my thought, my notes, my diary ,sort of, perhaps I have not told my kids some of my childhood stories and by writing them in here, my kids can read and they can share a little bit of my past which is completely different from theirs.



My primary school was in a small village, Pulai Chondong, actually not really a village but not a town either , smaller than bandar Machang but bigger than Kok Lanas, but it has almost all the necessary amenities like my school, SKPC, which could accomodate students from the neighbouring villages, Kg Galang, Kg Bukit, Kg Merbau Chondong, Pangkal Gong, just to name a few that I could remember, the post office, pusat kesihatan kecil, police station, bomba i think, telecom if I'm not mistaken, a wet market right in the heart of the the 'town', a few convenient stores, goldsmith, Shell ,a small surau and one traditional 'bakery'!



the school was only a walking distance away from our rented house. Dressed in dark blue uniform and white shirt with a bag with few books ( unlike now ), two pony tails , my brother , my sister and I would walk gayly to school with packed lunch or if sometimes my mother did not have time to pack them, worry not, she would just pass it over the school fence behind the canteen which was just behind our house! how convenient was that?





I have to take a break. I got distracted by a movie on Star Movies Channel, "She's The One", Jen 'Friends' aniston and Cameron Diaz starred in this . It's getting interesting and I can't seem to stop watching it. I'll continue later.