VANTO'S WORLD

Greetings again to all and 1. Its Officially Hari raya now and once again taking this opportunity to wish all my fellow Bretherens Selamat Hari raya Aidil Fitri.
Its time to bring forth more love to be spread around the world and renew old ties with loved ones near and far. This brings me to the year 1977 and 1978 when I found my self in vanto academy in PJ's road 223. Those were the years of Bellbottoms and afro hair-do. There I was a 20 year old dude who was disillusioned by the Govt sector ( I was working asa clerk in Lembaga Peperiksaan or Examinations Syndicate.) It was during the days of Operasi Isi Penuh where the government brought in thousands of half baked post Form 5 teenagers to the city and gave them jobs in the Government Sector. Oh this was the time where the public sector emploeyed 2 Malays for every non malay who was retiring. Have I got anything against that? No by all means bring it on. But please employ qualified ones. Not half baked kampung boys and girls. This also gave rise to illegal settlement mushrooming all over KL. I was a bit naive then but now I know that this was to ofset the Chinese and Indian population in Kuala Lumpur at that time. The Chinese were obviously voting in DAP to take the parlimentary seats available in Kuala Lumpur.
Anyway, back to Vanto. I joined in to take my Form six HSC exams which was going to be the last one held in full english sylabus. So there I was a senior by age surrounded by students 2 years younger than me. ( Oh I resat for my form 5 in 1975 coz I failed Bahasa Malaysia and passed it)
One of the 1st students I met was this Scotish gal by the name of Margaret Bell. Turns out she was also my age but a few weeks younger. We clicked well and ended up sitting next to her in class. Slowly I got t meet my fellow classmates and this crazy chinese guy with  a slight misai turned out to be a bit of a loud mouth just like me and I soon realised he was cool in his own way. Hey, if it turns out that my Vanto classmates are going to be reading this, you may want your names to be mentioned. There are so many of you but some names have to be mentioned here. Lizzie Thomas, Hew Kok Ming, Vatsala ( she passed away a few years ago) Serena Marsh(she and I share the same birthday) and Bonnie and Avilin (they got married a few years later). Hamidah and Mus even though they were not in my class, were such interesting people and the times I shared with them in school were to say the least: interesting.
This was also the time where I started getting involved in sports. Maybe I shouldnt have been so involved in sports. But I apparently spent a bit too little time on my studies and it turned out to be my downfall as far as passing my HSC exams was concerned. But, those were 2 of my best years as I got to meet people from different parts of Malaysia and of different stratas of life.That has probably helped me along the way in looking at life and people positively.  So if there are any ex-Vanto students out there, drop me an email or post a comment.