Back in school!

Well, I haven't been back at the school for six months! It's about time I do. 

The previous occasion I was here at Penang Free School was on the 21st of October last year when I was one of the very few people - you can almost call me a gate-crasher - to attend Speech Day. But before I could even mount the stairs, someone called out to me that Speech Day in 2021 was at the nearby Digital Library. So I changed direction to the Digital Library, thereby bypassing the main school building.

Yes, it has been six months since I last stepped into the grounds and 18 months since I was in the main building itself. Climbed the staircase to the headmaster's office. New headmaster for the school, name of Syed Sultan bin Shaik Oothuman. He's not a newbie at the school, actually. He had been teaching here for more than 10 yeas, then left on a transfer to another school in Penang. Then when his predecessor, Shamsul Fairuz bin Mohd Nor, suddenly requested for a transfer from Free School last December, the Education Department's search for a suitable replacement landed on Syed Sultan. 

So there he was, back on familiar ground when I visited him in the headmaster's office on Monday. He was just 71 days into this new job. Syed Sultan and I are not unknown to one another. I've known him since 2017. That was when my friends and I first conducted the PFS Leadership workshops. Thus, we're quite comfortable in one another's presence. And you know what? He was eager for my friends to resume the Leadership workshops! Let's see how it turns out.

By the way, Syed Sultan is not an Old Free in the strictest sense. He studied at Methodist Boys' School but because of his already long association with Penang Free School as a teacher and a Senior Assistant, I guess he knows the school culture very much better than most people. He's the right person to continue with the school traditions and steer the institution through the difficult times as the pandemic changes to endemic.