Ops Selongkar

The end of term has finally arrived for the undergraduate students. The 2004-2005 session ended on the 20th. The undergrads have left the campus in droves and vacated their hostels. The only people left in our Uni are the postgrad students, the security personnel, and during the day, faculty staff. So, my friend started a project and i later coined it "Ops Selongkar". Two of my friends have done this for several years, i only joined the team this year.

What is this Ops Selongkar you ask? Well, when the undergraduates leave for their long awaited break, they have to pack all their belongings and keep it in a storeroom, a friend's apartment or lockers provided in their hostels. This is because they will not be staying in the same hostel room once they get back from the hols. They will be given different rooms and be paired with different roommates. The final year students will have to cart all their belongings back home, and herein lies the problem.

Most of them are in such a hurry to get back home, or their exams end very late, that they pack in a hurry and sometimes do not plan things very well. This usually happens especially with the final year students. They pack in a hurry and find that they can't fit a lot of stuff into their parent's cars or vans. So what do they do with the stuff that doesn't fit in the cars or boxes or lockers..... well they just leave those things behind in their hostel rooms. Some of those things are still brand new. Hence, Operation Selongkar was born. Selongkar means to rummage or to search for something untidily, and that's what my friends and i do.

We go to the vacated hostel rooms and search them. The amount of things those kids leave behind is surreal. They leave behind computer monitors, printers, radios, calculators, books, clothes, bags and sport shoes. They also leave behind a lot of coins, stationary, umbrellas and other trinkets. The most surprising find was 5 ringgit stashed away in a discarded backpack. Think of the money the cleaners make from selling the stuff they find in the hostels every time the term ends. It's mind boggling! A 2nd hand printer in good condition could still be sold for a minimum of 100 ringgit! What were those kids thinking when they left all those things behind.

When i went on the Ops Selongkar caper, i settled for collecting only stationary, because i admit i was rather uneasy about using things that other people have used and besides i'm not having financial problems. I went along with my friends just for the fun of it.