Breaking The Record

In conjunction of the 50th Merdeka celebration this year, my school aimed for the record books and created this giant 'Jalur Gemilang' kolam measuring 73.3m x 41.3m . Months ago, when Dr. Kathiresan, a teacher, spoke of this project, some of us actually doubted if this is going to work or not. The aim was to raise money to improve the school's facilities.

Creating this big piece of kolam wasn't an easy task at all. First of all, the drawing which the form 6 students did.. I think it's amazing that it matched so well. I'll never know how hard is it to sketch the whole thing out but I heard it was dreadful. Then, the colouring the rice. Next, gluing the rice on the polystyrene sheets. We, Form 5, weren't not given much opportunity to be involved as mostly were done by the form 6. But we, indeedly, knew how crazy and tiring this project was because we did the gluing too. For 2 days, we left our classrooms behind and stayed on the field during school hours. Under the hot scorching sun, we had to paste the coloured rice on the polystyrene sheets. It seems pretty easy at first. But think of it, 2040 sheets of polystyrenes and we were fighting against time. I had to say, doing one row of the kolam can wear you out for the rest of the day.

Furthermore, we had to forget about cleanliness as all of us looked dirty and crappy at the end of the day. You know, glue and colour stains everywhere. It was awful.

When we thought everything was done, we found out that mould were growing on some the sheets. No joke! The sheets were greenish-black and it stinks. We did a full rehearsal and the whole thing was amazing but ugly. So amusing.. After all the hard work, we thought we created a mess. But luckily, we mended everything back in time. In the end, we, ACS Ipoh students and teachers of year 2007, are in the Malaysia Book of Records.

It wasn't that overwhelming for me. Some of us, Form 5's were not as spirited as the Form 6 in this. But it's really satisfying to see the end result of the kolam and to see it ended up in the main page of The Star.