My early Sport

When I was in my primary school, I did not try much on sport probably because of my smaller physique. Because of my size and height I was always seated the 2nd row from the teacher. That always made me feel less inferior as I was still not the shortest in class! During sport day I remember participating one time in tying a handkerchief over one leg with another leg of my classmate of almost the same height and ran the event. It needed some leg work coordination but it was not that difficult, it was a team event though we did not emerge as the first and yet we were not the losers either.

One year, we had one special race of using the stilt, and I was very adept and skillful at it because every morning I arrived at the school the earliest and the limited stock of stilts was made available on first come first serve basis. Walking with the stilt around the school compound everyday was a great past time while waiting for the teacher to come into the class. Racing by walking on stilt was supposed to be an event that I had the greatest confidence because I practised the use of it day in and day out. I was selected for the race but my over eagerness to win and making too wide a stride had made me fallen off from the stilt at the early part of the race that forfeited my chance to win. I was greatly disappointed because I was supposed to be the best in stilt walking!

My mum had bought me a badminton racket and the net after Malaysia had won the world championship of Thomas cup in 1963. The winning team of Ng Boon Bee, Tan Yee Khan, Tan Aik Huang etc was driven on an open roof coupe on parade in the village. If I remember correctly, the brand of the racket bought was Champion, with a red winning gold cup logo as the brand. At that time we were yet to have Yonex or Dunlop rackets in the market. The racket was so precious that a special double wooden frame with 4 screws on the 4 corners of it were used to sandwich the racket such that the pulling tension of the string would not warp or distort the racket. I did practise a few times and brought the racket and net to the courts near to the school to play with some of my more senior village folks. However I did not manage to grasp the skill of playing it well mainly because the shuttlecock was just too expensive. It was then 50 cents per shuttlecock and that was my one week budget. My parents only gave 5-10 cents per day for my expenditure to go to school.

I had tried table tennis because some of my seniors could play very well and one of them at later part even emerged as the Perak state player. Again I found that table tennis was not my cup of tea!

Subsequently the village caught a craze on basket ball and everybody inclusive myself were playing basket ball. It was probably the cheapest sport and most popular game for the Chinese schools in those days. I started playing since standard 5 and became fairly skillful at it after playing for many years and I attained my peak in higher secondary school. It is a game I like very much till this day. I gracefully gave up basket ball again because I know that this game would not take me very far because of my physique and I later switched to playing squash when I graduated from university and started to work.

By far, the greatest sport achievement for myself in school was the ACS Kampar school open cross-country event, and I managed to win the 3rd placing representing the Kampar district.