The shaping of my destiny

A rice field at a kampung I grew up in.

I wasn't a particularly bright student in school. I played around a lot, never believed in the system and wasted plenty of time. I went against every rule there ever was.
 The perimeter fencing at the boarding school then known as Sekolah Menengah Sains Negeri Sembilan in Kampung Gentam, about two kilometres outside of Kuala Pilah on the road to Bahau, couldn't keep my yearning for freedom inside. The only reason I was there was my late mother.
 Mother, while technically an illiterate, knew very well the importance of providing sound education for all her children. My sister before me was at the time doing magnificently well at the Sekolah Tun Fatimah in Johor Bahru. At the time, enrollment in a boarding school was a passport to sure success.

 But not for me. I hated being confined in that space we called the hostel. I hated being in a dormitory with twenty other people I hardly even know.
 I also missed my good friend and younger sister, Roziah and most of all, I hated being constantly told what to do.
 I was always looking forward to the holidays, so much so I began to mark my days to 'freedom', quite like what prisoners do in their prison cells.
 At home I roamed the bushes behind my kampung house. I was so adapt to the place that I knew every sound any creature made and most importantly, where they came from.
 At 14 my late father allowed me to fire his Remington shotgun and when he knew I could handle the weapon, I became the official 'shooter' in the house. And so now with the weapon in hand, I roamed even farther into the bushes.
 I developed my shooting skills quickly and soon constantly hit my mark, which comprised among others, monitor lizards that often terrorized chickens my mum reared, birds, squirrels, wild boars and at least once, a lone monkey. Later I developed a steady stance that I was able to shoot even with one hand.
 The gun stayed with us until my father died in 1984. We had to surrender the weapon to the district police headquarters. Nobody claimed it to this day.
 Those days that I roamed the bushes and jungle behind my house also taught me how to be resourceful and to have a single-minded approach to whatever I'd be doing, things that I don't think being in a boarding school taught me. They also taught me be to be patient and never to panic in whatever situation.
 These qualities would later prove invaluable in my profession as a journalist. As a young reporter I sometimes had to wait for weeks to develop a story. Rejections were normal in my line of work and so too were foes.
 Largely, people don't like journalists and I will write about that later. I have faced threats of bodily harm from people who took offense to my stories and I have been threatened with multi-million ringgit legal suits on several occasions.
 Once on an assignment in Conakry, capital of the West African state of the Republic of Guinea, I checked into a rundown hotel and found out that my room did not have a power point. A single electrical chord just came out of the wall and was connected to a table lamp.
 I could not connect my notebook computer, and without the computer I would not have been able to file my stories.
 I always carry a small Swiss Army knife in my backpack and with that, I cut the electrical chord to the table lamp, connected it to my notebook computer and covered the bare connection with chewing gum. Soon I was in business although for five days the only lights in my room came from the bathroom.
 I could easily have panicked had I not trained myself to stay calm in whatever situation. Whether it was the legal suits, the threats or that episode in Conakry, I took them all in a stride.
 And I am quite sure that I developed the ability to keep my composure and to remain in control of whatever situation, from those days that I roamed my kampung freely. No school could have taught me that.

ENDS