Operasi Payung

Umbrellas doing a waltz of their own

There is a place where government officials carrying colourful umbrellas would waltz around to offer to walk petrified looking students stuck in the rain (one official per student) to their examination centres. No, I have not watched any musicals in awhile, but come on, what else are you supposed to imagine when you hear the words 'Operasi Payung' (Operation Umbrella?) on an otherwise mundane Monday?

For some strange reason, the rainy season (yes, although it does rain most of the time, there ARE periods with even more rain than usual, especially around the east coast where it floods like crazy) always seems to coincide with the SPM (equivalent to O-levels) examination so much so that at one point while I was still in school the government decided to tackle the problem by shifting the school year from January to December so that the exam season was just slightly ahead of the rainy season. That didn't work either as the rainy season seemed to have a mind of it's own and shifted to once again coincide with the exams. Finally, after a few years, the government threw in their towels in disgust and changed the school year back to January.

On Monday morning, while I was listening to the news on the radio, the newsreader announced that the exams had started, Monday being the first day and all, and how the Education Department had decided to use "Operasi Payung" (literally translated to Operation: Umbrella(!!!)) in order to help kids stranded in floods to sit for their respective papers. Now, although the newsreader said that this meant that the students would be directed to different centres to sit for their exams in case their original exam centre was flooded or their path to said centre was blocked, my imagination (as can be seen in the first paragraph of this post) had a whole different idea.