Hazia’s Reflections

I attended an event at a prestigious private school this morning on behalf of a client. Of course, the students were smartly dressed, a pretty picture indeed. The chairperson, a Datin…well, she was very well-groom, but where manners were concerned…hmm…She reminded me of certain high society galas that I have attended (or rather forced to attend for work), where women greeted each other by kissing the air, ergg, I couldn’t stand that.

Since I got lost and arrived late, her staff didn’t manage to introduce us. However, I had been standing there for a while, and obviously I was a guest for the event. The least she could do was smile, if not introduce  herself. Oh no, I had to play the thick-skin hotelier and act as if I were the host. I held out my hand and spoke first. Funnily though, upon knowing who I was, her manner suddenly changed to sugary sweet, that fake kind of sweet you know, totally not genuine at all. She quickly ushered me to the lift, leaving her staff who was with me standing alone awkwardly, didn’t quite know what to do. Amazing, isn’t it?

Looking back, when I was a kid, someone told my mother that she should send me to this posh private school. She didn’t. Someone else also asked her to send me to a finishing school. She didn’t either. Furthermore, during primary school, my classmates were burdened with a pack schedule…tuitions, piano lessons, etc, etc. Their mothers told my mother that you should keep your children busy, let them get used to the pace and pressure, train them to be competitive.

My brothers and I were lucky, my parents didn’t agree to that concept. They thought children should play, have fun and not worry about matters of the world. I may be in A class, but I was always towards the bottom of the pool. Hey, I never studied.  This was unusual considering that my mother was a teacher. My teachers and her were good friends. Once, my mother even made an attempt to get my Headmistress to move me to B class to take the pressure off me. My Headmistress told her off and gave her a long lecture about teaching me to keep a high standard, so she didn’t bother trying it again, hehe…

A brilliant thing that my parents did do though was sent me to a junior science college, Maktab Rendah Sains MARA (MRSM) when I was 12. At that time, MRSM was still a niche college located at the end of the world, a boarding school where only the selected few got to go. Priority were given to excellent students from the rural areas. It was place to develop the leaders of tomorrow, but I think what it also did was gave me unique insights. I gained exposure that I wouldn’t have had otherwise. That took me a long way.

Nevertheless, looking at things now, more than 2 decades later…my mother said that if she were to compare me to her friends’ daughters, those girls whom their mothers planned their life for them eversince they could talk, I was no less successful. Well, at least I didn’t have to pay the price of childhood:)