‘I’m blind without my glasses.’
– Adam Ant, English musician and actor
Just imagine if you are short-sighted and the pair of glasses you are using breaks or one of the lenses falls down or worse still the whole set you are wearing falls down to a deep river or – in the worst of scenarios – at sea.
These are some of the common occurrences involving short-sighted or long-sighted individuals using glasses, not for decoration or declaration but out of necessity.
In 1982, during our Woodbadge Part 4A Scouting Leadership eight-day course at Santubong, using the government rest house at Santubong village as our headquarters, I was ‘privileged’ to experience one of the aforesaid predicaments.
While on our way back to camp after an overnight stay at Telok Belian, next to the present Damai Beach Resort, I tripped and broke the frame of my flimsy ‘John Lennon’ glasses – right in the middle of the jungle with trees as high as Petronas Twin Towers.
It rendered me almost impossible to walk but just managed to reach a spot where the beach was just about 50 metres away. One could easily smell the perfumed scent of casuarina trees from the path we were using.
Luckily, the youngest participant in our group of eight, a Chinese male surnamed Goh, 19, was sporting enough to go ahead to the camp base with the hope of getting help in bringing me back safe. He said he would be able to make it within less than two hours, whereas the group’s speed would be no less than three hours from the spot where I tripped – it was found out later that my scout name tag was also missing and possibly dropped somewhere in the forest there or it could have dropped when we crossed a stream using a rope tied at one end with a scouting knot called ‘Fishermen’s Noose’.
The moment I managed to reach the seaside safely, I discarded the feeling of wanting to declare war on the unfriendly jungle path.
In fact it was as if it was a blessing in disguise though at times I felt ashamed that I didn’t complete the journey which was a prerequisite of passing the course which is the last part before we could submit a thesis to obtain the two-bead Woodbadge and an automatic membership of the global Gilwell Union.
“Ahha..kitak sik dapat manikayu (woodbadge) lah tok, sebab sik abis jalan kaki balit khemah (so you are considered failing the course, as you do not complete the journey back to camp),” then Chief State Scout Commissioner Datuk Safri Awang Zaidel (now Tan Sri) jokingly said to me at the speedboat that came to my rescue on the beach – where I was easily spotted after putting on my colourful shirt on a casuarina twig. Also in the boat were our Course Leader Peter Lim and then State Organising Commissioner Simon Lee (now deceased) and nineteen-year-old Goh.
In fact I felt I was given VIP treatment being fetched by Sarawak’s top scouting official. Many jokes were created out of my predicament by the scout commissioners involved in lecturing us during the course, many of whom were or were to become my friends. After all, out of those attending the course, I was the only one who made it to the state’s top level leadership.
Before going back to Kuching using a specially chartered motor launch – there was no road connectivity from Kuching to Santubong then – I went around the small town of Santubong and managed to get my broken spectacle frame repaired/connected for free, thanks to the fine work of a goldsmith, whose daughter happened to be my former student (trainee teacher) in Rajang Teachers College, Bintangor.
A colleague of mine said that during his trip from the city to Sematan recently, his spectacle slipped and dropped into the sea while he and a few friends were bathing. They tried in vain to trace where the glasses could have dropped.
Without a spare pair the poor guy had to drive without his glasses to Lundu and managed to buy disposable lenses at RM10 per pair. One can imagine the horror of driving without glasses for a guy who has been depending on them for nearly forty years.
Another difficult and infuriating moment is when you misplace your pair of spectacles, especially if the room is a bit dark. It happened to me a few times before but one incident stood out from the rest. I was alone at our home and was in a hurry to get dressed for an Elvis gig in town. It took me several minutes to locate and trying to recall where did I place my glasses but in vain and fruitless.
So, I opened my special bag where I used to keep my performance accessories, including the glasses with EP special frame. When I put the EP glasses and looked at the mirror, I took pity on myself for forgetting that my usual pair of glasses was already on me, albeit put over my head in typical 1950s celebrity ad. If a hidden video had captured the scene it could have sold higher than any of the Mind Your Language’s class scenes.
The views expressed here are those of the columnist and do not necessarily represent the views of New Sarawak Tribune.
