WE wanted our reunion to be up
close and really personal. So we decided not to inflict speeches
on ourselves. If you could not reach out and touch someone, then
don’t talk to him. If you still wanted to talk to him, go over and
shake hands first. Reaching across the round dinner table was
acceptable. Hugs were OK, too. So touch, then talk!
Talk we did! There was no
shortage of words. There were smiles aplenty, too. And memories
still so fresh they needed to be blurted out. Also forgotten names
and escapades suddenly recalled, and recounted there and then.
Faces, we discovered, were never forgotten though it had been half
a century since we last lined up together.
Figures
of the tangible kind, aka body shapes, were visually audited. Some
fared not too well, others more than passed muster by being still
very trim and athletic. Hairdos and hairlines … well, we could
talk about something else, though it should be noted that all
black and luxuriant on top would have aroused suspicion.
The 50th anniversary reunion of
the ACS Class of ’56 energised the Executives Club in the highrise
OCBC Centre on 18th May 2006. After the cuddly camaraderie, the
feasting and the free flow of soft drinks —soft drinks, so like
schoolboy functions! — what would some of us have said if we had
dared to go up to the mike and breached the no-speech protocol?
Foo Chee Jan would have regaled
us with his stirring “This is the group” recollections:
“This is the group that
collectively beat Raffles Institution in the 1956 Senior
Cambridge examination results. This is the group that yelled
‘Forty Years On’ under the baton of Earnest Lau.
This is the group one of whose teachers was taken to London for the
Singapore Self-Government talks with the British Government for
weeks and yet we passed our exams with flying colours.
“This is the group whose New
York Herald Tribune Youth Forum winner was summoned to the
Principal, Dr Thio Chan Bee's office to explain why, in a
newspaper article that he wrote about a classmate, he said the
pupil “excelled not because of his teachers but in spite of
them”. His explanation must have been very convincing as he got
off scot-free.
“This is the group that had players in the ACS Basketball Team which
caused a stir in the basketball arena which hitherto had never
heard of English-language schools playing basketball. We gave
Catholic High School and Chinese High School a run for their
money, and even participated in the Singapore Youth Basketball
Championships, which at the time was the domain of the Chinese
schools.”
We would like to add that
This is the groupp that includes
Tan Wah Thong, the irrepressible
Chairman of the ACS Board of Governors. The Anglo-Chinese Schools
have made so much progress in his watch!
Yeo
Tock Soon remembers Yeo Kim What “known as Nat King Cole for his
singing or the Lexicographer for using bombastic words in his
essays. Here is an example of bombastic words from our English
teacher, the late Reverend T R Doraisamy: ‘Ornithological
specimens of identical plumage congregate invariably at the
closest proximity’. In other words, birds of a feather flock
together."
Leonard Tan Kim Tuan recalls maths with a sprinkling of sex: “One of the most memorable lessons
we ever had was in Standard Seven. It was M J Singh’s Mathematics
class on the last day of the school year. He started the class by
saying: ‘The more beautiful a woman, the more dangerous she is.’
Not yet streetwise, we roared with laughter. Then he told stories
about the ladies of the night in well known red-light districts.
He also described in vivid detail the painful experiences of those
who got infected with venereal disease. He had heard the agonising
screams of patients receiving the painful mercury and arsenic
treatment for syphilis in those days. The treatment was not very
effective. According to Mr Singh, some wretched patients were so
badly perforated that, when they went to toilet, it was like
turning on the shower!”
Maybe
it was just as well that such stories were not retold at the
reunion. With us that night were two venerable former teachers and
ex-principals. Freddy E Keng Goon says of our two VVIPs: “I was
most surprised to note how young Mr Earnest Lau looks. He puts a
number of us to shame. The independence of Mr Lee Hah Ing at the
ripe old age of 90-plus really gives some of us hope. I wish that
those of us who manage to live to that glorious age will be like
him, still walking around without a walking stick!”
Kwok Ken Doh, one of those who
came for the reunion from Canada, China, New Zealand, the United
Kingdom and the United States, says: “Having left Singapore 50
years ago and with the perspective of an outsider, I was impressed
by the achievements of many, and that seems to mirror the
tremendous changes and progress of Singapore itself. You can be
very proud of yourselves. More prosaically, many people were
little changed physically and were instantly recognisable as they
walked through the door. Success, I believe, is in large part due
to our good fortune in having had a good education at ACS (I still
appreciate Latin!).”
The
65 sexagenarians who attended the reunion have Tony Chan Wing Khei
and his team to thank for getting us together. Thanks, too, to the
former classmates who were not just attendees but also sponsors.
Most of us have been friends
for over 60 years, meeting for the first time in ACS Coleman
Street in that distant year 1946. We were in Primary One then. ACS
Barker Road was where we parted company as classmates in 1956. But
we remained friends. Some of us lingered on in Barker Road for a
couple more years, befriending the pre-U girls. After 18/05/06, we
now have refreshed memories plus a CD of photographs and video
jointly produced by Edwin Tan, Alan Lau and Freddy E. It is
awesome that the images come with the memorable music and lyrics
of What A Wonderful World. Because it has been a wonderful
life, too, and we are really saying “I love you” to our alma
mater, our former classmates & lifelong friends, our ACS teachers
and principals, and all ACSians past, present and future.
— Peter LIM Heng Loong
