Virtus, is a column by Nik Nazmi, full time student, part-time writer and webdesigner, from class of 99 and the Mohd Shah House


So many things have happened since this column was last updated.

The tragedy on September 11 and the subsequent American attacks on Afghanistan have stolen most of the headlines throughout the world for the past two months.

Then we had HRH Yang Dipertuan Agong Sultan Salahuddin Abdul Aziz Shah of Selangor leaving us a few weeks ago. Let us all pray for the late Sultan, al-fatihah. The popular and friendly Sultan was probably be the last Malay College Old Boy to grace the throne at Istana Negara as the three remaining Old Boys among royalty - Tuanku Jaafar of Negeri Sembilan, Sultan Azlan Shah of Perak and Sultan Ahmad Shah of Pahang have all been elected as Agongs before.

The era when koleq was a royal institution has passed for quite some time. Now princes and princesses from the nine Malay states would probably be educated either overseas or in private boarding schools with the likes of Kolej Tuanku Jaafar. Not long ago, I had the opportunity to visit KTJ, and was seemingly impressed by the facilities, as most budak koleq would probably be when he visits most schools in fact, be it private or government, as facilities in MCKK is in such a deplorable condition! KTJ had a very colonial, British feel to it. Although newly established, the buildings were fashioned from the old premier schools of the country. I cannot help but think that koleq was probably part of the inspiration, as most budak koleq probably would, we see everything in the universe revolving around us and koleq.

But the magic of koleq goes beyond buildings. It goes beyond facilities. Maybe a lot of the 'old' Old Boys would say that the standard of MCKK students presently (my generation) are nothing compared to those produced during the golden years of the College, but I believe there is still a difference in MCKK products.

In the past, life in MCKK inspired the students, which, following the Second World War included a significant proportion from rural areas and poor families, to excel and work hard as MCKK provided the best facilities, facilities that they did not enjoy in their homes. Figures such as Allahyarham Tan Sri Yahya Ahmad and Tan Sri Tajuddin Ali are testimonies to this.

Now, there is a more significant proportion of MCKK students from the Malay middle class, children of the NEP. The age old toilets in the Overfloor, or the bland food we get in the dining hall as well as the stuffy and hot classrooms in New School are all sobering experiences for students who hail from Taman Tun and Damansara. Negatively, it provides a disincentive for students not to work hard. But positively, it is an experience to these students, myself included, that shapes our character and exposes us to the harsh realities of life, which many fellow Malays specifically, and other Malaysians generally, experience worse versions of it in their daily lives.

And you know what? Several MCKK students have attended the A-Level programme in KTJ. A colleague of mine told me about the expectations they place on MCKK students; it is the budak koleq rather than the thoroughbred KTJ students that become leaders in KTJ. The MC name may not be as it was previously, but it still carries a great deal of weight.

Salam Ramadhan and Selamat Hari Raya, from MCNET.


Virtus. Virtue? Manliness? Wisdom?

I am at lost here. My definition of ‘Virtus’ – part of MCKK’s famous Fiat Sapientia Virtus motto – Manliness Through Wisdom has been critiscised by one visitor after another. Maybe I should change the name of my column since my knowledge of Latin is basically like the rest of my generation – zero.

Unlike in the pre-War era, where the students would actually have understood the motto although it was not yet introduced, even our English today is under great scrutiny. Entering koleq, I never saw a wider range of languages, dialects and accents intermingling in Prep School. Some, including me spoke in the beautiful Kelantanese accent. There’s the northern sound of Kedah and Penang and the weird-sounding (at least to Peninsular ears) East Malaysian dialects. Some from the posher families spoke English and those who just returned from overseas spoke it with a British or American accent. There was even one student I knew who would rattle in Urdhu every time he talks to his parents.

But this enormous concoction of tongues was temporary. Within a year or so, the Kelantanese would start mixing with the rest, and their accents would disappear, just as the ‘kamek’ of the Sarawakians. College vocabulary would find itself into most of our conversations, which started to sound like Kuala or Sayong Malay. Unless you want to stand out from the crowd – usage of English is severely minimised.

Some traditions still remain. English survives due to its traditional importance in the College. The College Magazine is still largely English – but the editors have an increasingly bigger role to play due to the burgeoning mistakes that students commit in their English.

Language issues aside, if you have visited MCNET before, surely you realise the disappearance of the advertisement frame at the bottom of the browser. We have paid for the forwarding address – hopefully with your support MCNET can continue to survive despite running on a non-profit basis.

The teacher’s database is up and running, and we have included in there the address of Anthony Harmer – a former teacher at koleq in the 70’s. He even generously included an article for MCNET. Hopefully more teachers can add their details to the database. We would like to have everyone who have shared the wonderful opportunity of being the Malay College family to see MCNET as their website.

MCNET will continue to provide more articles, as well as the most-updated-possible news from MCKK and MCOBA. Do surf to the site often to check out for any additions!

A final note, I have decided this column would still be called Virtus, what ever that means!



Remember me writing that Virtus would be updated every other week?

Most of you probably do not, and that is good for me since there has been only one edition of Virtus since the inception of MCNET.

MCNET’s first few weeks have been a bad affair. There were some glitches, which drew much flak from surfers who complained in MCKK-Comnet, and after a few days of over a hundred unique users per day, the numbers fell to a consistent double-digit. Netscape visitors (around 21% of total visitors) find the site’s tables distorted. HTML bugs feature frequently on the site. Rehman Rashid pointed out the numerous typos.

However, I must thank all the budak koleqs, who despite all the shortcomings, visited the site, read the articles, added their details in the database and offered constructive comments. To Rehman, I highly appreciate your advice.

The weaknesses in MCNET speak of the unfortunate facts about this portal. The people behind the site are all full-time students. All work here is voluntary, and we get no profits from the site. All we can afford are free web services in hosting and content editing.

But all of us who are working on this project believe in the future of MCNET. Hopefully, this modest portal can slowly build itself into a satisfactory Malay College community that serves the alumni and present students to continue the tradition of networking (cronyism?) and get the latest MCKK / MCOBA news, since both currently fails to provide the appropriate channels on the net.

I dream of a website that Collegians and non-Collegians alike can share to find the history and facts about an institution that has done so much for our country. There would be passionate discussions and debate that the Collegians are so keen about, to take place in the site just as it had previously taken place in the MCOBA website and now in MCKK-Comnet.

Nevertheless, these utopian dreams can only come true, with, well you guessed right, money! Despite my despising of capitalism, the rule of the game states that to come up with an effective net solution, we have to have lots of money. If this site fails to come up with enough revenue to make profits, what we need is the ringgits to cover the revenue from passionate fund contributors. With all the bad publicity about dotcoms and the price fall in technology stocks, it seems that the latter solution is more realistic.

Originally the idea for a comprehensive MCKK portal came from a group of old boys. 9599inc is trying our best to talk with interested old boys to hopefully set up a more professional web outfit. Pray that a workable solution will come out.

On a brighter note, congratulations to the current crop of students for those well-rounded achievements in sports and debate for the past few months. For the College that is so addicted to winning, it could not have been better.


Koleq's presence on the net is down right embarrassing. While TKC and STAR have webpages for their students and alumni, we have none to be proud of.

Way back in 96, there was the highly hyped about opening of the Infolab, with due assistance from MCOBA. It was highly progressive, at a time when most of the students were vague and clueless about the net (including yours truly) and was greeted eagerly. Afternoon prep became a time for us to rush to the Library and book the computers either to play games or surf the net. Hoardes of budak koleq signed up for Hotmail.

That year saw the first koleq homepage came to life. It was highly ambitious and albeit a simple layout, contained huge chunks of information about our beloved alma-mater. The website was chosen for a homepage competition among Asian schools and got a lot of publicity.

After that, things were no longer rosy. Whether from the hands of those addicted Doom players, or those who spent weekends locked up inside the Infolab to chat and surf, the PCsbroke down, while some peripherals (read:mouse balls) got stolen. Whoever that was responsible for paying the leased line stopped doing so, and the Infolab took less and less of the Library space. The koleq homepage met a sudden death. The MCOBA website which once housed interesting forums which got a number of old boys arguing on finer points of an issue, also died.

While several batches took the initiative and a few batch homepages sprung up all over cyber space, four of my batch members, including myself, had a dream. We thought of having a comprehensive, detailed and well updated koleq homepage. We envisaged the prospect of paying for our own domains-e.g. mckk.org.my, a website, like the 96 one, that would truly be the pride of koleq. The four of us spent hours writing a detailed history of the Malay College-in both languages, English and Malay while we enslaved half a dozen juniors to compile information about their batch-for a complete student database.

But reality hit us hard. The four webmasters were also involved in other sports, societies and activities. The weight of the responsibilities made all the hard work still stuck in the solitary infolab CPU. Four months later, I took the initiative, and simply tweaked what we had done and uploaded it in angelfire.com, a free web hosting service. To update it regularly, I would have to go the few, inefficiently slow and outrageously expensive cyber cafes. That was how most of my Saturday outings were spent.

The website was quite unknown among the teachers, but it caught up pretty well among old boys and outsiders. However modest the website was, it recorded historic achievements in 99 week in, week out, much more frequent than Warta KPKM or even Berita MCOBA. Nevertheless, I grew tired and had to focus on my approaching exams, and again the site met a premature death.

The year 2000 marked koleq achieving smart school status. But up to this day, it has no website. And I kept hearing about MCOBA's website being completed. When? I don't know.

You may ask, what's the fuss about having a website? Having a good website which is regularly updated is an important feature for any institution or organisation in this cyber era.

Other schools are making the best out of the net in every possible way. A good example would be TKC's website, which is regularly updated, has the support from the OGA and the school management, and despite frequently having to cope with pictures of desecrated frogs in their guestbook, is a good source of information for everything TKC related, minus the frogs that is.

A lot of former Collegians, most of which are on the better side of the digital divide, want to know how we fare against Clifford, STAR, Vajiravudh or VI in sports, and against the likes of Alam Shah, St Michael and TKC in debate. Old boys are interested about the College redevelopment plan, and whether Yut Loy still stands. Sure, you may say, even our Parliament website is grossly inaccurate and is rarely updated, but I'm sure most of us are better than some tiresome bureaucrats trying to compile the latest boring parliamentary debate.

Kudos however to Raja Petra Kamaruddin, who unfortunately is under ISA right now, who have built up a truly online community with his MCKK Community-Networking yahoogroups. That is the best koleq can offer.

Well, action speaks louder than words. Let's see where MCNET ends. I rest my case.

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