of presents and kindy times

this morning i walked with dah to his exam hall
at the moment the fella would either be
a) pleasantly surprised at how easy the paper is
or b) not happy about the paper at all

everyone please hope for him that it will be a) that is applicable

anyway, walked with him to the location
it is currently winter where i am
and he walks pretty fast
so the cold winter morning air was whooshing past my ears
and i had not brought out my beanie
so my ears were cold and they started to ache

so once we were at the exam location
he went upstairs to face the exam
and i sat downstairs to wait for my ears to stop aching

i sat on an old wooden bench
it looked rather like a bench that one would find outside an old british headmaster's office
it was made of dark wooden slats and looks rather like a pew
except it had arm rests
so the bench is broken into about 5 individual but connected seats

the bench was outside of a lecture theater
in a grey carpeted wooden corridor
facing me were two blue painted wooden doors with a cream painted frame
the old type, tall and with glass windows above them
one had a sign saying "staff common room"
the other said "disabled toilets"

i looked to my right
at the end of the corridor was another blue door,
cream frame and the glass window
above it through the glass window
i could see another higher window with white chiffon curtains

looking to my left
at the end of the corridor
it makes a turn and leads to presumably more blue doors and rooms behind them

sitting there watching the students walk up and down the corridor
i was suddenly very much reminded of my kindergarten
it was much the same
old buildings with wooden floors
that make that rather satisfying thummp thump sound when you walk on them
windows with chiffon curtains
old tall heavy doors with glass windows above them to let some light in

it was, in short,
a very nice place to sit
and wait for one's ears to defrost

i went to a british styled kindy
the building it was housed in was an old colonial style building in the heart of Kl
the teachers were mostly british
the deco was large based on the old british fashions

this building at which dah is currently having his exams
is one of the older buildings at the uni
it was built in the old colonial style
so perhaps it is not surprising that sitting there brought back such memories to me

i found myself thinking,
hmm... i wouldn't mind working in a building like this
it would be quite nice really
a comfortable place to work
the building was so old
perhaps if you looked hard enough
you could almost see the students of old hurrying through the hallway to get to class

funny the things that one can think about sitting on an old wooden bench in front of the disabled toilets..
is it not?

or perhaps..
i was just putting off having to leave the warmth of wood in a familiar style
to go back out in the winter morning to get to my state of the art lab
in its cold steel and concrete building about a block away

funny how the canggih,hi tech, impressive building
decorated in a matrix like black and white style with perspex glass
silver grey steel panellings
with it modern black and white state of the art computer lab
pales in comparison
and all of a sudden
doesn't look that great anymore