It is hard to remember the unimportant stuff when you are a year seven boy. Your head is full of all the important stuff like what you have got for lunch, Guinness world records and how many bubbles are on the best glass of the tarik. The unimportant stuff includes things like homework, packing all the right stuff for the day and, today’s big challenge, water bottles.
As regular readers will know Edwin has gone through more snack boxes, lunch boxes and water bottles than most people do in a lifetime during his short stay in Malaysia. As Edwin knows he has also bought more replacement boxes and bottles than he hoped he would ever buy too. Recently though he has improved a little and has stopped losing so many, maybe the message is getting through? But thanks to today’s happenings I am beginning to understand his new modus operandi. After school he arrived in Drama land ready-ish to set off for his evening dance lesson in central KL. He was on-time and in the right place. All good. Knowing that he drinks through gallons of fluid at dance lessons I asked him the reasonable question: had he filled up his bottle. No, he had not. He had not brought it with him today? Apparently, no. That was a sure-fire way not to lose it I suppose, but that did not solve his impending water problems. Fortunately Dramaland is place where lots of children lose water bottles so, on my instruction, he borrowed one from the lost property collection. Standing next to the water cooler in the Dreamland office he diligently washed and cleaned it in the Dramaland sink, I filled my water bottle and we set off. All was well, I thought.
Not so.
The great man had somehow managed not to remember the final part of the process: filling the newly borrowed and lovingly washed, bottle with water. How did he expect to quench his thirst, I wondered. He told me that he hadn’t thought about that.
There was plenty of water about this morning, thanks to a very heavy rainy season storm. Normally in the rainy season it pours between 4.00pm and 8.00pm for some or all of those hours. So this morning was unusual. The downpour meant dashing from the car to the school entrance, allowing me the opportunity to observe with a group of year ten girls that such weather played havoc with my hair.
The other factor affected by rain this morning was that it stopped bollard man doing his important daily duties. Bollard man is, as the name suggests, a security guard who is in charge of moving a specific bollard, specifically between the hours of 6.30 and 7.30am, that carefully blocks the path of traffic leading to the car park neighbouring my school. Due to my school not having enough parking I and thirty other drivers have been allocated car park passes for this handy facility and so use it everyday. Great. However fellow motorists and I have to wait for bollard man to move the bollard, the bollard that blocks our way into the car park before we can enter, drive up to the barrier, yes the barrier, flash our car park pass and gain entrance. Ever diligent, the bollard man obviously moves the bollard for all cars that want to drive up to the barrier begging the question of why bollard man is there in the first place given that he moves the bollard for every car. I am sure that if I asked the relevant authorities this obvious question the answer would be something like “He is there to move the bollard.” Anyway he wasn’t there this morning and neither was the bollard and there didn’t appear to be any traffic crisis because of the combined no show due to the weather. All very strange.