REMEMBERING MR BARRY WATSON

He came with a bag full of khaki military clothings. Arriving at KL International Airports Subang, he was surprised finding out that KL was a modern city not like he had first imagined.

As a young man yearning to do good to fellow human beings in some remote country, Mr barry Watson was very pleased to know that he had been accepted as a VSO English teacher in a school called Sekolah Dato' Abdul Razak, Tanjung malim, Perak, malaysia.

"Where is Malaysia?" He asked himself. Using a globe, he searched frantically for a country called Malaysia, first in the African continent.

He could not find Malaysia in Africa! A friend later told him that Malaysia was somewhere in South East Asia, between Singapore and Thailand.

There was very little info on Malaysia in Brighton (if my memory is right), his hometown. The only thing he could find was a poster showing an Orang Asli using his blowpipe.

"So, Malaysia must still be very backwards," he thought. That explained all the khaki clothings.

In Kuala Lumpur he had to replace all his shirts and trousers.

He found that SDAR was quite a big school, perhaps much better furnished than many of the schools back home in Brighton.

To his amazement he found out that most of his students (my batch that was) knew very little English.

He could not help but laugh everytime he remember one of his student and himself communicating:

"Whose book is this?" he asked

"Book I, Sir"

"What?"

"Book me, sir"

"What?"

"My book, sir!"

or

"Sir, sir, your tyre has no wing!" (Sir, your tyre is flat)

or

"Don't drop my water face." (Don't embarass me.")

Mr Watson was a very good English teacher. Everyone liked him very much. I learned a lot from him. He even followed us to our kampung during school holidays.

He amazed everybody when he put on his sarong and for the first time tasted our budu.

In a talentime night, he surprised everybody when he sang "Selamat tinggal bungaku"...

His unique way of disciplining us was: "take out your shoes, bend down and you can guess what happened next. We didn't mind him walloping our backs like that.

Now we all missed him very much. We tried to find him but so far failed. So, if anyone out there knows somebody from UK by the name of Barry Watson, please let me know. We, his former students, would like very much to meet him.