Thirty years ago, studying at UM was very different from today. If we wanted to find information for our studies or do an assignment, we could not simply open Google. In fact, there was no internet. Finding one piece of information could take days, sometimes even weeks.
The library was our heaven. I once fell asleep
between the bookshelves. Finding reference books was not always easy. Many
times, we had to reserve a book because someone else was already using it. We
also had to know how to use the catalogue cards. The catalogue was a big piece
of furniture with many small drawers, filled with cards arranged according to
the Dewey Decimal System. If you got the number wrong, you could walk around
the whole library looking for the book. When you finally found what you wanted,
kembang hidung it felt like finding treasure.
And sometimes, once we found useful
information, we went straight to the photocopy machine. Not just one copy. We
made extra copies for our close friends too. In those days, if you had a friend
who was good at finding information, you would happily follow along and share
the materials. Salin membantu. Gituew.
Lecture notes were like gold mines. My
lecturers would usually “bring back” news and information from all over the
world. They read a lot, including newspapers from different parts of the world,
and shared what they had read with us in the lecture hall. So even though there
was no internet, we could still get new information quite quickly.
We would write down almost everything
that came out of the lecturer’s mouth. That’s why we could remember where the
lecturer coughed, where he laughed, or where he made a joke. We even remembered
which paragraph it happened in. He he he.
And when a friend came to class with some new
knowledge, we would open our eyes wide and think, “Wow, how does he know all
this?” Suddenly, we thought he was very clever, and we wanted to be his
friend until the end of the world. Sampai kiamat. He he he.
Bestnya masa lalu…
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