Today I went out with the epitome of a teacher.

I may not be able to remember his words exactly.

I once had a teacher that taught me in form 4 as a substitute, for my BM tuition but only two lessons.
Today I went out to watch Frozen (2nd time for me) with him.
I remember his teaching... The gentle, understanding warmth in that lesson, I still remember it.

I remember after the lesson, two years ago, we exchanged phone numbers and he offered me a chance to help Tenby with

their camping project, as a facilitator. (It never actually happened, though)

Ever since then, he had been SMSing me, always the initiator of the conversation. He would always just say "Hi", "What are

you doing now?", and I would usually reply the same things (because I usually do the same things) ; "Playing games".

The texts weren't creepy. It was odd and awkward, but it was warm. Very warm. We never met after those lessons, but I

would always remember his smile.

Today, finally I get to talk with him. He fetches me to Gurney Plaza and back.

I will now share all the conversations we had today:

In the car, I asked him, "Hey, how do I spell your name?"
"R E D Z U A N"
"Oh... I'm sorry I got your name wrong... This CD, I burnt it for you."
*The CD was 47 Ronin and Frozen OST*
On the CD wrote "For: Cikgu Ridzuan <--- I hope I spell correctly :)"
(it literally wrote "I hope I spell correctly :)" )
"Ahh takpe.. Every day at the school, people call me Ridzuan until biasa d.... Same one lah, Ridzuan Redzuan"

At a traffic light stop, finally the sensitive question came up
"so... are you anti or pro?"
"ahh of course lah i'm an ubah kind of person"

"What age do you teach ah?"
"Last time I teach form 3... But i feel like want to heart attack, so i say BETTERRRR i teach primary. So I told my principal

that i'm teaching primary starting this year."
"Was it the students... or was it the paperwork?"
"The paperwork lah, every day also stress"

-random joke-
"Once, I was fetching my students and we were at the parking lot, and i tersilap pronounce, saya cakap "Where can we find

fucking?"... mereka semua gelak gila-gila tak habis-habis"
-random joke ends-

We then go up Gurney Plaza, into the car park. He looks frantically for a spot, and I point to all the green lights and tell him

about them, but he doesn't understand.

After a while, he did.
"Ohh lampu-lampu semua tu ke?"
"Yeaa.... they'll shine green if there is a free spot."
"ohhhh baru tau... setiap kali student saya naik kereta saya tak pernah cakap punn"

We got off and we stood in front of Old Town.
"Eh, you choose where you want to eat la. Cikgu belanja kamu."
At that moment we were frantically walking around 'cause I really couldn't decide where to eat.
I said, "Okay lah, Old Town... Since we're next to it anyway"

We sit down, and i don't know how, he confirms what he want in less than a minute. Meanwhile, I hold the other menu

saying "hmmmm looking for the cheapest"
He said, "Don't look at the price lah, cikgu belanja kamu, pilih mahal pun tak pe"

He tells me that the Wantan Mee and the bread is very good in Old Town
So okay, I pick one.
The waiter takes our orders. Later coming back saying that the one that redzuan ordered OK, but the one that I ordered

cannot add the drink.

Redzuan tells him some stuff, and suddenly cannot
Later he contains his laughter and whispers to me "The reason why I can pick so fast... is because OLD TOWN IS MY

FAVOURITE RESTAURANT! I've tried every single dish. I was hoping that you would pick it, but if you didn't I would be like ok

oso lah..

Also, I took the set menu and gave you the a la carte menu, because the best dishes are not on the set menu... Did you realize

the wantan mee isn't on the set menu? They wouldn't put promotion on the hot selling dishes."

So what basically happened, is that i ordered the RM8 rice, thinking it was a set that came with the drinks, but he knew that

it didn't, and the drinks would add another RM5 to it.

"Remember to remind me to pay for your movie tickets"
"Ah about that, my mom insisted that i do the buy 1 free 1, so I went this morning and we got tickets d"
"waaa so kesian"
"Nah, my mom insisted that i do the buy 1 free 1, and there was once I didn't, she would scold me for not saving money"
"That's good... I remember Cikgu Majemin always told me, "Whatever your mother's training, that cannot be found in the

syllabus. Those are the teachings brought down from generations to generations"

Then, I ask him:
"Cikgu, kenapa tak mau add kat facebook?"

He says,

"I don't have facebook."

...I ask,
"Why don't you have facebook?"
"saya anti-facebook"

....

I asked, "why anti-facebook?"
"Usually I say 'anti-facebook' so that my students don't ask me after that. So that they think its a sensitive topic for me , like

"oooh cikgu kata anti-facebook, lebih baik jangan cakap pasal tu" but actually i just lazy. Last time i used to have facebook,

but every day I would have keep getting messages from my students. Before i could reply to one, i would get another. Then

suddenly there is a post and i feel like need to comment something.....

Before I knew it, the books that i had to mark, i had to put on hold to do facebook until I became a facebook addict...

So that's why i stopped using facebook"

Now that made me appreciate the outing more. I felt like this might be the only chance for interaction besides just SMS all

the time.

I ask him, "Why do you always insist that the teacher always pays for the student?"

"It's because the teacher has a salary, but the student does not. I take all my students out ... Every single student in my class

has at least went out with me at least once, some even went out with me for 2 to 3 times, got some go until 10 times already"

Inside, I cried of immense appreciation. It's like he cares about every single one of his student. He did brag about it too.

He said,
"I remember besides you, there was one more boy at that tuition... I really like your batch... That day, I met Cham Seng, and

he waved and said "haii cikguu" " <--- Yes, he remembered the name wrongly

I then asked him, "where.. do you learn your teaching from? How did you get until like this?"


"I went to study teaching at Cambridge"


Whoa. He didn't pay through it either. He got a scholarship, Highest grade (the system was different at the time) in SPM, and

STPM .

He explained:
"after i got the certificate, I didn't go back to teach at PFS like most teachers who were once PFS students. My friends and

colleagues were like "What? are you crazy?" .

I was bored of PFS. I wanted to see the other cultures. So I taught at chung hwa, chung ling, ramakrishna ashrama, al-

masyhoor and eventually at international school. That's probably how i become so open-minded. I've seen all the cultures"

=random joke=
"When you teach something, you need to *shows sprinkling* add a little bit to make it stick.

Once I was teaching about imbuhan apitan, so i was like
Do you all know what is kapit? like when you have a sandwich and you kapit it , bread meat vege bread...
or when you have a hotdog, you kapit the sausage with the bread...

or when you watch the movie, the 'blue blue' one, you see the woman got one line *point at his breast* and then that one

realllly 'kapit' "
=random joke ends=

I ask, "How do you deal with the gangsters in your school?"

"You just be nice to them. And you believe them. A lot of teachers, when they see a notorious gangster student and another

kid in a fight, they'll always start scolding the gangster student.

You just need to believe them when they say "he hit me". Even if they're the one that's sensitive and buat pasal about it.
They're the ones that need attention from their parents, so you should give it to them."

"Do you believe them even if they're wrong?"

"Yes. Like for the first time you ask them "kamu rokok ke? oh tak ah... okok".. eventually you ask them 10 times and keep

believing them, they'll eventually feel regret for lying"

=

We rush to see Frozen, (we were late) and he
[spoilers]
could already notice that Kristoff was the actual true love before the plot twist. He would already know the reason why anna

is thawed before the movie explained it to the audience.
[/spoilers]

Yes, these may be things that a normal person could realize because it's a cheesey Disney film.
Then, he expressed how much he likes the film, the music especially. At that point i felt so much satisfaction because I

passed him the CD of the OST. At least I gave something back.

During the credits, I was trying to explain to him that there is the extra little scene after the credits. I trying to give an

example of other films that do this, and i asked him if he watched a marvel movie before (because MARVEL movies always

have the post-credits scene)

"uhhh i watched.... batman ?"

LOL (MARVEL fans understand)

=

After that, he knew exactly which door to come out of to reach his car.

"I may not be good in technology, but I am very 'memerhatikan'... Everyone that go camping always invite me, because as long

as i'm there they can never get lost. It's like God has given me the gift to be observant"


I realize, that this must have contributed to how amazing of a teacher he was.

In the car,

we talk about politics,

"one joke my students tell me , is 'cikgu, cikgu perlu jadi politician la weyh... semua budak cina , melayu india akan undi

cikgu... dan akan bagitau kawan mereka untuk undi cikgu'

but i don't want to be a politician. When i'm a teacher, I can say what I want. When I'm a politician, maybe i'll have to look at

Kit Siang and he'll be like "oh nonono you cant say this, you cant say that" or if i'm in UMNO i'll have to look at <forgot the

name he used> telling me what to say, all the nonsense tuff lah"

I told him, "However, you should realize that politics are what affects our lives the most. --

he interjects, "ya, dalam malaysia laa"

I say, "nono, even outside of Malaysia. Even in USA, how politics have affected education and law, in terms of evolution and

marijuana... But in USA it's also the business affecting the government affecting the politics affecting the other things."

And he responds saying

"oh... mm it's good to share these things, we become more open-minded. Thank you."



we talk about race,
First, I tell him that i'm taking matric, but I don't think that I won't get it, and I'll just go form 6 if I don't.

"Matrix is just a gamble," I said

"Yeah, I know about the race thing. Last time, the university students betul-betul PANDAI... now not so much, since they

simply pick.
During my time, the malay people of PFS, realized that majority of the school students were Chinese. The Malays grew up

together. It's like you know, when you study and grow up together, you learn to put importance into peace. no need to claim

this land or any of that political things*."

*I'm not sure if that's what he said after 'study and grow up together'.

Eventually, I had to break the news to him that the demographics and culture in PFS had 'degraded', and there was serious

racial polarization (leading to racism) going on.

He said, "One of my friends, who manages a company, says, "When you hire a <race censored to avoid blogspot rage>, you can

only hire a few of <race>.. you hire too much and they'll group together and make problems."

I said, "Nah. It's only when you hire all the uneducated ones, when they group together that will cause problems. But if you

hire lots of educated <race>, there will be no problems. "

I started rambling, " I have many <race> and <race2> that are so different from the rest. They strive to be different. They're

the ones that actually try to make it better. They don't do the typical bad things that is associated with that race."

"I agree with you."

At many of the stops, I would stumble to express my appreciation to him; not for teaching me, or taking me out today, but for

being the kindest teacher I've ever seen. The fact that I meet him personally had already touched my heart.

When we reached my house, he remembered that he wanted to belanja me for the movie.
He took out RM20 from his wallet, for me to take it.
I said, "Nonono, it's a buy 1 free 1, so it's only RM 10 total...  at most, you just pay RM 5..."

He said, "Aiya just take it, then the extra money you can count as pocket money."
"I can't take the money."

He said, "Money is temporary. Kindness is rare."

I said, "I wish there would be more people like you. Maybe I'll try to be the next. "

"I'm sure you'll be."

Cikgu Redzuan, <--- Yes now I know how to spell his name

In his presence, I feel like he's an incarnation of Gatsby, but with people appreciating him this time.
I felt overwhelmed even as I write this, because I cannot express how much appreciation I have.
Not once has he asked for anything in return. And that is what's so heart-wrenching for me. That I feel like i'm not 'balas'-ing

enough to his kindness.

I said to him, "Next time we go out, can we go out as equal friends, rather than a student and a teacher?"

I don't mind if it's TL;DR. I'm writing this for myself, so that i'll get it off my chest.