Monday 14 March 2011

CRUISING ON STAR PRINCESS – COPENHAGEN TO ST. PETERSBURG AND BACK

CRUISING ON STAR PRINCESS – COPENHAGEN TO ST. PETERSBURG AND BACK

In the Summer of  2005  Dato’  Tajri and I together with our good wives went on a cruise from Copenhagen to St. Petersburg and back. It was me who suggested this idea to Dato’ Tajri and he readily agreed. I also invited the late Abu @ Ahmad Said. He brought not only his wife Kalthum (Chum) but also his son and daughter. Another old boy who joined us was Dr Rosli and his young wife. So there were ten of us in the STAROBA party. I have an old friend, Jimmy Kouk, with whom I play golf regularly. I invited him as well and he too was very keen and joined us with his wife Lian. Jimmy is an old boy of Chung Ling High School, Penang. He in turn invited four other old boys of his alma mater and their wives. So in the end there were twenty of us Malaysians in our group. Our cruise would begin in Copenhagen in Sweden and take us to the port cities of Tallinn in Estonia, St Petersburg in Russia, Helsinki in Finland,  Nynashamn ( Stockholm) in Sweden, Gdansk (Gdynia) in Poland, Warnemunde in Germany and back to Copenhagen.
It was truly as far my wife and I are concerned a holiday of a lifetime. Having watched Love Boat on television it was my wife’s greatest wish and dream to go on a holiday cruise. We have gone on other cruises subsequently but this Baltic Sea cruise from Copenhagen to St Petersburg and back was simply the greatest and one of the highlights of our life.

Our favourite place on the ship was Deck 14. The whole deck was one big restaurant to serve the passengers. It was open 24 hours. DT and I not only took our regular meals there together but met there for coffee or at other times such as after the various shows at night. We would inevitably be talking about our childhood days, our days in Sekolah Tuanku Abdul Rahman, (STAR) Ipoh, then our University days and our working life. We were surprised how almost very similar our childhood was. We both came from poor families in the rural area. He was telling me that he used to help his father tapping rubber trees and selling pineapples during the school holidays. I told him I thought my family was even poorer. My father passed away when I was very small so that I did not have the slightest memory of him. For a few years after his death it was my maternal grandfather who stood in loco parentis to me. When he died not long after that it was my mother who looked after us. Then things brightened a little when my eldest sister Che Wah or Zahrah whom we called Kak Long became a Malay School teacher and helped out. We talked about our time in STAR. We both agreed that we were very lucky to have been selected to go to STAR and to have secondary school education. Had we not been so lucky we would been in my case at best a Malay school like my sister and in the case of DT he said would have been a rubber tapper. We were both indebted to our “most unforgettable character” the late Tun Hamdan bin Sheikh Tahir (Tun), the first Headmaster of the school. In my case I am sure it was he who was responsible for me and Shukor Nagor who was in the same class with me in school to be awarded a scholarship to study in the United Kingdom. In the case of DT he became almost a member of Tun’s family after leaving school. DT has been very successful in business although he is very modest and humble about it. We felt we should write about our experience so that our children and their children know how we overcame our disadvantages in our earlier life so that they do not forget our humble beginning. We talked about many other things when we met on Deck 14. In fact even after the cruise we always talked about going to Deck 14 and having a chat. It is what we talked on Deck 14 that we hope to write in our Blog.

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