Samuel of St. Nicholas, Penang

I was reading a fellow blogger's article about unsung heroes and heroines in our everyday lives in :

girl on the bus.  It reminds me of two ex-classmates, Samuel and David, who studied with us in lower secondary classes in SXI.  They came from St. Nicholas School for the Blind (now called the Visually Impaired) in Penang. 

 

Some of the rest of the class took turns to read to them what the teacher wrote on the blackboard while they typed it into their Braile machines.  Samuel was the one with the more cheerful personality and he would chat endlessly with us whenever we had some free time.

 

Many years later, while splashing around in the water near the beach in Tanjung Bungah with my family, I noticed a familiar figure from among the crowd.  He was spotting his usual crew-cut.  I went over and took a closer look and called out, "Samuel?  Are you Sam from SXI?"  He turned his head around, nodded slowly and flashed a big smile in my direction and called out my name!  I said, "Sam.  You're fantastic!  You can recognise my voice!"   I don't know how he could do that.  Perhaps the lost of sight helped to sharpened his hearing.  For me, if I don't see the person's face, I wouldn't be able to remember him.  Maybe some people are more "audio" than "visual".

 

We spent the rest of the time exchanging histories on what happened to us since the days at school.  Unfortunately, I couldn't think of any way we could exchange addresses or other means of keeping in touch with each other.  We were out there on the beach, no pen, no paper.  So we parted company with the hope we would bump into each other again, sometime, somewhere, somehow.....