Read all about it here. - Methodist Girls` School

Linda Lim’s MGS SCHOOLDAYS
My Family at MGS
The first person from my family to study at the Methodist Girls‟ School (MGS) was
my great-grandmother, Siauw Mah Li. The daughter of a Kapitan China (leader of the
Chinese community) in Medan, Sumatra (then colonized by the Dutch), she was
"adopted" at the age of six by Sophia Blackmore, the Australian missionary who in 1887
founded the Methodist Girls' School in Singapore for the American Methodist Mission.
Mah Li‟s mother was ill (and died shortly thereafter), and her father wanted her to have a
proper education and to learn English, so he “brought her to Miss Blackmore”. In an
article in the April 1899 issue of Malaysia Message about Nind Home on Mount Sophia,
where Mah Li, and later her daughters, boarded while studying at MGS next door, Miss
Blackmore wrote:
Two of our girls have married from the home. The first was Mah Li, who was
brought to me by her father in 1887. She grew up in our home, was baptised on
Christmas Day 1892, and was one of the first members of our Malay Church.
For several years Mah Li has been a successful teacher. Her husband is an
earnest Christian and an active worker. His mother is not a Christian, and her
friends tell her that her children are lost to her because they are Christians.
“I cannot see how that can be”, she replies. “First, my children do not gamble.
They do not smoke opium. They do not go to places of iniquity and my daughterin-law does not spend all her time dressing up before a looking-glass, but keeps
her eyes open to see how she can help me.”
Miss Blackmore‟s report is cited in my ACS teacher Earnest Lau‟s column, A Page
from the Past, entitled “Training for life: Young girls picked up skills to be good
homemakers”, in the Methodist Message, April 1998, with the photo below of Mah Li
with her eldest daughter Kim Neo. Footnotes note that Mah Li was the first Chinese girl
at MGS, that she taught there, and that her husband, T.S. Kung, “was an active preacher”.
Siauw Ma Li, 1899
Empire Cinema, Kung Tian Siong at left
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Siauw Mah Li with daughter Kung Kim Neo
Mah Li apparently met my great-grandfather, Kung Tian Siong, in church. He was born
in 1876 in Malacca, educated at the Anglo-Chinese School in Singapore (the male
equivalent of MGS), and set up the first cinema in Singapore, the Empire Cinema in
Tanjong Pagar. Before he died in 1958, he was an occasional lay preacher at the Geylang
Methodist Church in Singapore, where he gave sermons in English and Malay.
My great-grandparents had three daughters: Darling Kim Neo, Susie Gin Neo, and Edna
Gek Neo, my maternal grandmother who died in Singapore in October 2003 at the age of
93. My grandmother and her two older sisters spent only a brief time in Nind Home. By
the time I was in school in the 1950s, the house was used for other purposes by the
Methodist church which owned it, and was rumored to be "haunted". Mah Li later became
a schoolteacher at the Ipoh MGS where, according to my grandmother, she apparently
gave evening lessons in “Arabic”—perhaps the Malay Jawi script--to Chinese and Malay
men. Her letters to my grandmother that we have are written in perfect English and in the
most beautiful handwriting script. She died in Ipoh in 1934.
Darling sent her daughter (my Auntie Happy), to MGS, which Susie‟s two daughters,
Dorothy and Barbara, also attended for a time. But my mother‟s father, R.B. Ooi (Ooi
Chor Hooi), a journalist and newspaper editor who had been educated at the ACS in
Bukit Mertajam followed by the Penang Free School, would not allow his daughters to go
there as he “did not want religion crammed down their throats”. More importantly, he
wanted them to speak “proper English” and not the “Malayan English” spoken by the
Peranakans (Straits-born Chinese) who spiced their English with Malay words. So my
mother Irene and her sisters Violet and Sylvia ended up attending Raffles Girls‟ School.
There my mother was a classmate and friend of Lee Siok Tin, my friend Min‟s mother;
they had both received “double promotion” so were younger than other classmates. When
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Auntie Happy‟s granddaughter, Joy-Marie Toh, graduated from MGS in 1989, she was
the fifth generation of our family to do so. That year, she was Head Prefect and I gave the
graduation speech as a “distinguished” visiting “Old Girl” from America.
MGS Classroom circa 1918
Edna Kung is the girl sitting in front of the girl standing at the back
Left to right: Darling, Edna and Susie outside their family home in Emerald Hill (later
occupied by the Singapore Chinese Girls’ School)
My father‟s mother, Lee Yew Teck, was also educated at the Singapore MGS. Her
father, Lee Wan Loke, was a Presbyterian minister who had come from China to
proselytize among the Chinese in the Nanyang (southern ocean). His wife (my greatgrandmother) Sarah Goh Sat Lap, was a “Bible woman”, who went from house to house
to teach the scriptures to women who could not read; she herself read classical Chinese in
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Hokkien, the family dialect. The Lees were founders of the Presbyterian Church at Paya
Lebar Road in Singapore. All their nine children, six daughters and three sons, of whom
my grandmother was the eldest, were schooled at MGS (for the girls) and ACS (for the
boys). My grandmother later became a founding member of both the Telok Ayer
Methodist Church, and with her youngest brother Lee Teck Hock, and her three ACSeducated sons (my father Lim Hee Seng and his brothers Hee Yang and Hee Chin), of the
Paya Lebar Methodist church.
Miss Sophia Blackmore (center) in black, Lee Yew Teck (third from right, front row).
Edna Kung (second from right, back row), 1935
After she retired, Miss Blackmore returned to Singapore in 1935 for a visit and a
reunion with her former students, with whom she was photographed in the garden of
Nind Home. An article with the photo entitled “Old Girls of Nind Home Fete Miss S.
Blackmore” appeared in the April 12, 1935 issue of The Straits Times. My paternal
grandmother (whose name is wrongly listed in the news article) is seated in the front row,
wearing a loose cheongsam and not the Chinese “Bible woman‟s” garb (a mandarincollared jacket with a long full skirt) that she wore all her life, her hair pulled back in a
tight “bun”. Standing in the last of three rows of Miss Blackmore's former MGS
students, is my maternal grandmother, who was twenty years younger and dressed in a
more tailored cheongsam, with short permed hair. They were both MGS girls, a
generation apart.
"
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Primary School
I was to start primary school in January 1957, three months after my sixth birthday.
But unfortunately, I could not get into a “good school”. Admission preference was given
to students whose parents or siblings had been to the same school. Thus my elder sister
Laurette had got into Raffles Girls‟ Primary School as our mother had gone there, but the
school then decided to phase out its primary classes, so there was no Primary One intake
the next year, when I would have entered. Instead, my parents enrolled me in a small
private school called The Clifford School, which rented the premises of Wesley Church
for its classes during the week. My class was taught by an Englishwoman, nearly all my
classmates were foreigners, probably mostly English, and we didn‟t have school
uniforms. At recess or “elevenses” we had “Gem” biscuits—plain round biscuits topped
with hard sugar icing in pastel colors—which I loved. Every Friday I received a pin
saying “FIRST” which I then wore for the whole of the next week. The student who
ranked second wore a pin saying “MONITOR” and got to help the teacher with various
classroom tasks, like erasing the blackboard and distributing the Gem biscuits during
break, while the student who was third just wore a pin saying “THIRD”. Every week I
got the “FIRST” pin except for the last week, when I got the “THIRD” pin instead. I was
quite oblivious about the whole process, and nonchalant about wearing the “FIRST” pin,
taking it for granted until the day when I suddenly did not get to wear it.
I stopped attending Clifford School when a place was finally found for me in MGS.
My grandmother Edna‟s daughter (my mother‟s half-sister) Vivien Cheah had been
admitted to MGS because her mother was an alumna. But their family was now moving
to Penang, as her father, Uncle Cheah Guan Chye, had been transferred there with his
employer, Malayan Airways. So her place in MGS‟ Primary One B class was “given” to
me, no doubt because of the “family connection” with the School. My first day of school
was March 1, 1957, which I remember because it was Laurette‟s birthday. The class
teacher, Miss Ho, exclaimed that I was “very tall” ( a fact that had previously escaped
me), and sat me in the back row of the classroom, next to Rachel Zachariah, a “shorthaired” Indian girl (“short-haired” Indian girls tended to be Christian, while “long-haired”
and especially “two-plait” Indian girls were usually Hindu—Rachel‟s family were
Christians from the Kerala Mar Tho Mar church founded by Jesus‟ disciple St. Thomas
when he went to India). Rachel invited me to accompany her to recess, and gave me a
locket with a cow‟s head on it the next day. We have been friends ever since.
MGS was located at the top of Mount Sophia, named after the wife of Singapore‟s
“founder” Sir Stamford Raffles, and not Miss Sophia Blackmore. Mount Sophia was a
hill in the center of town, high above the busy junction of Serangoon Road and Orchard
and Bras Basah Roads. The “Hundred Steps” stairway led down from the School to the
Cathay cinema building, one of the earliest multi-storied buildings. The drive up was
through Sophia Road, which also led to several other smaller schools in the
neighborhood. Mount Sophia was a leafy shaded side-road lined with old colonial
bungalows and other Methodist institutions, including Nind Home, and Trinity
Theological College, where many years later I was to give political economy classes to
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radical Christian pastors-in-training, one of whom, Vincent Cheng, ended up in jail as a
political prisoner in the 1987 mass arrests.
The Lower Primary (One to Four) classes were located at the lowest elevation of the
School‟s property, in a long two-storey, tiled-roof building with a balcony on each long
side. On one side, stairs down a slope led down to the toilets. From time to time, the
toilets were also suspected of being “haunted”, including by “Oily Man”, a perhaps
mythical naked Indian man covered in oil who occasionally made “appearances”
elsewhere in Singapore besides school toilets. Although I never saw him myself, I was
once deputed by the other girls to report his appearance to our Primary One
schoolteacher Miss Ho, who was distinctly unimpressed, despite my adding “and he has
blue legs” to the report. Below the toilets was the barracks-like housing of school
caretakers and their families.
On the other side of the Lower Primary building was a green lawn edged with a thick
hedge interspersed with tall leafy “saga seed” trees (these hard red seeds were used to fill
bean bags that we used in sports), and furnished with a couple of see-saws. Each
classroom had four doors, two each opening out to each balcony on the second floor, with
windows in-between. All were always kept open, to cool the room with cross breezes.
Each classroom accommodated about forty-four students, who sat at wooden lift-up desks
with attached chairs, arranged in long rows. The teacher‟s desk was raised on a small
platform in front, with a chalk blackboard occupying the entire wall behind it.
In Primary One, Miss Ho taught all our classes, except for Chinese, which was taught
by Miss Yuen, also a “maiden lady”, as was Miss Foo Sah Moi, the Primary School
principal. Like most of our schoolteachers, they dressed in loose cheongsams, like my
mother (who herself was frequently mistaken for a schoolteacher). Miss Ho had adopted
a daughter whom she named Mana (Malay for “where”), and was a few years younger
than we were.
We all wore school uniforms. These were loose tunics, with a sleeveless white top
sewn on to a navy pleated skirt that reached to mid-calf, and topped with a short-sleeved,
pull-over blouse with a collar that ended in a vent that was pinned shut with the school
badge. This was metal, about an inch long, with the intertwined letters M, G and S in
curly script. We wore white canvas lace-up shoes which were stiff from daily
applications of a thick white paste called “Blanco”, and white ankle socks. “Permed”
curly hair and any jewelry, except for watches and pierced ear-rings, were forbidden. For
outdoor sports or P.E. (physical education) which we had once or twice a week, we wore
large navy bloomers—like our school uniforms, they had to be specially ordered and
made by a seamstress.
Schooldays began at 7:35 am with the class standing up and chanting in sing-song
unison, “Good morning, Miss (teacher‟s name)”, and ended at 12:30 pm with a similar
“Good afternoon”. At 1 pm the afternoon school session began in the same classrooms.
“Morning school” students were considered to be better students, perhaps only because it
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was harder to get into, and preference was given to girls with familial or Methodist
church connections, who tended to be from more well-to-do, English-educated families.
After Primary One, annual promotion based on academic performance meant that “A”
class students were better than “B” class students. The school year from January to
November was divided into three terms, each separated by a one-week break, with five
weeks at the end of the year. We received report cards at the end of every term which
noted our numerical scores for each subject, our class rank (out of 44), our “conduct”,
marked as “very good”, “good”, “fair” or “poor”, and any additional comments by the
teacher. Great excitement attended the delivery of report cards, which had to be signed
by a parent before return to the teacher.
Since this was a Methodist school, even though the vast majority of students were not
Christians, there were daily devotions read by the Primary School principal over the
intercom or public address system that was in every classroom. On Monday mornings,
there was Chapel. The whole Primary School filed down to the open-sided sports hall
where we sang hymns accompanied by a teacher on a piano, prayed, and sat cross-legged
on the floor listening to the principal give lectures on good behavior—such as her
frequent retelling of how she once washed a student‟s mouth out with soap when she was
caught using “bad language”.
When I joined Primary One at age six, I was one of the youngest in the class, which
had girls born in 1949 and 1950 (my birthday was in September 1950). Given my prior
education at Sunnyway kindergarten, I could already read, write and do arithmetic
(multiplication up to the five times table only!), but the class was being taught the English
alphabet (many of the girls were from Chinese-speaking families), numbers and basic
arithmetic. I do not know what I did in class, but my class rank at the end of the first term
was 13/44 (it subsequently went up to within the top ten in the next two years), with my
conduct “very good” (the only time—subsequently it fell to only “good” as I had a
propensity for talking in class). I found Chinese difficult, however, as we were learning
Mandarin which I had never heard before, and it proved to be my weakest subject every
year.
The scariest things about school for which you were punished were, first, arriving late
in the morning, after classes had started, and second, forgetting to bring a textbook or
homework. I cannot remember what the punishments were, so they can‟t have been very
severe; it was the “shame” of being scolded by the teacher in front of everyone which
provided the terror. Once, after arriving in school late (perhaps the only time that
happened), I sat in my seat and cried profusely, in anticipation of the punishment or
shame. Miss Ho gently tried to find out what I was crying about—which took a while.
There was a twenty- to twenty-five minute recess period in the middle of the morning,
when everyone rushed to the “tuck-shop” to buy a snack. Our tuck-shop was an opensided shed with cement floor and tiled roof; when it rained, heavy “chicks” (bamboo
blinds) were lowered to keep the rain out. Inside the tuck-shop were various stone tables,
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each occupied by a different food vendor. There were long tables and benches in the
center of the tuck-shop where students sat while slurping down noodles from the hot-food
sellers. As soon as the recess bell rang, there would be a massive rush of girls to the tuckshop to line up to buy food, all of which ranged between five cents (e.g. for a packet of
peppermint sweets) to thirty cents (for a bowl of prawn noodle soup).
My friends and I usually made a bee-line for the kacang puteh man, an Indian who
sold an assortment of local dry snacks, such as sugar-coated peanuts, broad beans (boiled
and soft in skin or shelled, baked and crispy), water-melon and parrot seeds, chickpeas,
salted crispy green peas, and various other nuts and pulses. Upon taking your order, the
kacang puteh man would deftly roll a sheet of discarded exercise book paper into a cone,
filling it with a fistful of the desired snack from one of his large glass jars, then hand it
over while pocketing the requisite payment of five or ten cents. Sometimes he would ask
us for old exercise books to replenish his stock.
Besides kacang puteh, I often snacked on a pink-and-white nonya jelly, sold in slices.
After a while, my parents thought I should have something better than this “junk food”,
so sent me to school with a buttered brown bread sandwich. I was embarrassed to eat a
sandwich from home instead of tuck-shop food, however, so the sandwich usually
languished uneaten in my schoolbag, once even turning mouldy, when it was discovered
by my mother. Since the bag did not accumulate multiple sandwiches, I must have
thrown some out, but do not recall doing so. Anyway, after the discovery of the mouldy
sandwich, I was spared from taking them to school any more.
After snacking at recess, we would play around the classroom building, either running
around on the grassy lawn, or sliding down a smooth concrete slope adjacent to the
stairway which led up to the school drive and Primary School principal‟s office. The
Malay and Indian girls did not have to take Chinese lessons, so during that period they
would run and play outside, occasionally distracting those of us who would look
longingly at their antics through the window. Unlike other cohorts, ours had a large
number of Indian girls, so they made up quite a troupe. Once, in an attempt to stop their
play from disturbing the rest of us, a teacher assigned them to picking up trash in the
grounds around the classroom building, which so incensed Mala‟s father A.P. Rajah (a
lawyer-politician and future chief justice and ambassador to the UK and Australia) that he
had it stopped. According to Chum, who had known Mala since they were in
kindergarten together, Mala directed most of their Chinese-period play sessions, with
“Indian funeral” wailing being one of the noisier activities.
1957 was a significant year in a couple of ways. Soon after I arrived, we celebrated
the School‟s 70th anniversary. At the weekly Primary School assembly in the sports hall,
Miss Sah Moi recounted Miss Sophia Blackmore‟s founding of the School. She then
announced that one of the students in the school was the fourth generation of her family
to attend MGS, and uttered my name. Everyone turned to stare at me. I was caught
completely by surprise, and only confirmed that this was so when I went home and told
my parents about it.
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During that week, we also had a celebratory show. I remember Shadiah Alkaff, an
Arab girl in Primary One, and some of the Indian girls, doing acrobatics on the stage in
the School auditorium, which was for the Secondary school, so we hardly ever went
there. But the highlight was a pageant on the founding of the School, with Shadiah‟s
older sister Shams, who was very fair and European-looking, dressed up in 19th-century
garb as Miss Blackmore, and several of my class and year-mates dressed up in Indian
dress (short blouse and long gathered skirt) as the “nine little Indian girls” who were her
first pupils, as Chinese families at first refused to let their daughters go to school. The
comment was made that the pageant could not have been staged at all if we did not have
such a large crop of Indians in Primary One; it was more typical for there to be at most
one or two in each class.
Founder’s Day pageant, 1957
Shams Alkaff with “nine Indian girls”
Mala at extreme left and Benita on Shams’ left, next to Leela Subramaniam
1957 was also the year when Malaya became independent of the British, on August 31,
but without Singapore, which the British insisted on holding on to, to protect their
considerable plantation and mining assets in the peninsula. No doubt repeating what I
had heard in my pro-British home, I became a scare-monger, telling my classmates that
on August 31, people of different races would have to fight each other, “Malays against
Chinese, Chinese against Indians” etc. which we somehow excitedly imagined would
extend to fights among ourselves. When the day came and passed without incident, I lost
a lot of credibility.
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Acrobatics at Founder’s Day concert, 1957
Shadiah Alkaff on extreme left, on the floor.
Sometime in the year we were visited by the Ministry of Health school doctor and
nurses, who gave us all a check-up, which required us to undress down to panties only.
When my turn came, the nurse started speaking to me in a language I did not understand,
but instead of saying so, I just nodded or shook my head at the end of every apparent
question. Only when she examined the mottled skin on my left shoulder, muttering to
herself, did I blurt out “scalded”, referring to an incident when I had run down the
corridor at home before dinner and crashed into our servant Ah Sam who was carrying a
bowl of hot soup from the kitchen to the dining table. The boiling soup spilled on me and
Dr. William Heng was called. He removed the burnt skin with a butter knife, then put
some sort of dressing on the wound. Only after several hours of crying would I deign to
see Ah Sam, who had been weeping herself at the mishap. Eventually the wound healed,
but left the scar that the nurse exclaimed over. Taken aback when I said “scalded”, she
complimented me on my “very good English”, and proceeded to ask me questions again,
this time in English instead of Hokkien (which she had assumed I spoke based on my
surname Lim); it turned out that one of the questions I had unknowingly said “Yes” to
was, “Do you have worms in your stool?”
In those days, Singapore was still poor, tuberculosis was endemic, smallpox was still
around, and there were periodic epidemics of cholera and typhoid. In and out of school
we received vaccinations and inoculations from time to time, and in Primary One and
Primary Six received TB tests and, when required (i.e. no previous exposure or immunity
to TB), the dreaded “BCG” inoculation which left a big bump on your upper arm.
The film “The Ten Commandments” starring Charlton Heston was released in 1957,
and class trips were organized to Cathay cinema down the hill for students to see it
(presumably because we were a Christian school). My older sister Laurette got to see the
film, but I did not, my parents having ascertained that I would be “scared” by parts of it,
particularly the coming of the Angel of Death and the drowning of the Egyptians in the
Red Sea. I recall feeling rather aggrieved at being one of only a handful of students who
had to stay behind in class while the others went to the cinema.
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In Primary Two, I moved to the “A” class where our teacher, Mrs. Tan, was very
skinny, with a thin, high-pitched voice and glasses, and I picture her always wearing long
loose yellow cheongsams. I do not remember much about that school year, except that I
continued to sail through my lessons without studying, and enjoyed singing class, where
we learned songs like “My bonnie lies over the ocean”, and played games like “Lucy
Locket lost her pocket”. This involved girls sitting in a circle and one walking around the
outside of the circle with a handkerchief, that she would surreptitiously deposit behind
one of the seated girls, who had to get up and chase her until she sat down in that girl‟s
vacated space, when the game would continue. Mala and I were appointed class monitors
or prefects, as shown in the photo of what were called “Teacher‟s Little Helpers” that
appeared in our school magazine.
Nirmala Rajah (fifth from left), Linda Lim (sixth from left), Low Seok Ching (next to LL)
During recess in Lower Primary school, groups of girls would get together to play five
stones (seed-filled cloth pyramids), jacks (played with a bouncing ball and four small
metal jacks), kuti kuti, (which involved using the thumb and forefinger to flick little
colored plastic tokens in the shapes of various figures, mostly animals, “against” each
other—you won if your token “went over” the competing token, which then became
yours), and marbles. We also played “obeysom” (for three or more) and “chiam chiam
pas” (for two), which involved “bird-stone-water” and “stone-scissors-paper” as means of
selection. Some girls played versions of sepak raga, a Malay game where you bounced a
rattan ball, or a shuttlecock, or a blow-up multi-colored Japanese paper-ball, on your foot,
knee or shin, without touching it with your hands, trying to keep it going as long as
possible. Once in a while, daring girls would go down to Adis Road, which was just
behind the school and “out of bounds”, to buy ice-balls—balls of crushed ice flavored
with sweet “Rose syrup” which we were forbidden to eat as they were considered
unsanitary.
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Our Primary Three teacher, Mrs. Soon, wore shirtwaist dresses and doted on her only
daughter (who was quite a bit older than we were). From time to time, she would tell us
stories about the Japanese occupation, including how the soldiers would try and take
away young girls to be their “comforters”. Classmates then recounted to me their
mothers‟ tales of being locked in the basement wearing black and with hair pulled back,
to try and avoid this terrible fate. The war had ended some time ago, of course, but there
was still evidence of it around, not only in family stories, but also in the huge piles of
worthless green “banana notes” that we used to play with as kids.
Mrs. Soon appointed Mala and me as class monitors again. I, but not Mala, promptly
turned into a fascist dictator. Being monitor simply meant that we were to keep the class
in check whenever the teacher had to leave the room, which could otherwise result in
bedlam and mayhem. I did this by writing down the names of any girls who talked or
otherwise misbehaved, and handing the list to the teacher when she returned to class.
They would be punished, usually by “writing lines” like “I must not talk in class” over
and over for, say, fifty times, in the “Marian Richardson” cursive script we had been
taught. I was very strict on this, whether out of conscientiousness or power-madness, I
cannot say—even the slightest whisper would earn your name on my “list”. Once, Mrs.
Soon was amazed to find the names of fully three-quarters of the silent class on the list.
Another time, I had everyone write “I am sorry (for misbehaving) and promise to resolve”
(which I was informed was incorrect use of the word). I suppose I must have eventually
tired of this, as I did not continue this behavior into subsequent years; strangely, it did not
seem to earn the rancor of my friends—I was not ostracized at recess or anything like that
that I can remember.
Two other significant events marked my year in Primary Three. First, I started
wearing glasses (prescribed by our gentle eye-doctor Dr. Oh), at the age of eight—and
was perhaps only the third or fourth girl in class to do so. The others called us “Four
Eyes”, but as the years passed, the same thing happened to the majority of the class.
Second, for the first time, I did poorly in my academic work, falling to the unheard-of
rank of 33 out of 44. Fortunately my report card with this information was brought home
by Laurette (who by this time had also moved to MGS) when I was sick in bed with the
mumps, so I escaped any punishment. My sense is that by Primary Three, I started to
exhaust the “human capital” of knowledge I had built up in kindergarten, which had
enabled me to do well in class without studying at all. I particularly remember never
studying for spelling or dictation, my strongest subjects, until some time in the middle of
Primary Four.
Our teacher in Primary Four was Mrs. Taye, younger sister of Miss Seow (who also
taught us), and mother of Mervyn Taye who became friendly with some of us much later
in ACS. Both Mrs. Taye and Miss Seow were shirtwaist dress wearers, though
occasionally on some special occasion Mrs. Taye would show up in a slim cheongsam.
That year, at the annual end-of-year school concert, Sing Chee and I sang Chinese songs
with a group of other girls from our class. I must have been the only singer who was not
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good in Chinese, but I remember one song in particular, about how throughout the whole
world, only mother is good.
Singing Chinese songs at MGS annual concert, 1960.
Back row: Linda Lim (third from right), Ling Sing Chee (second from right).
Middle row: Liang May Yue (extreme right,) next to Chou Onn Kee
Our Primary Five classroom was in a different building—a square two-story building
behind the Primary School office building. We were on the second floor, and from the
windows on three sides of the room overlooked much of the school compound, which
could be a distraction. Our class teacher was Mrs. Soh, who like Mrs. Soon dressed in
shirtwaist dresses, wearing cheongsams only on special days like Founder‟s Day.
Unusually for that time, she was divorced and wore thick pink make-up.
Early in the year, Mrs. Soh highlighted me twice. First, after we had turned in our first
writing assignment, she said to the whole class that she had been told my handwriting
was terrible, but was pleased that in this exercise it was very neat (a deliberate special
effort which mostly went by the wayside soon enough). Second, after we had been taught
how to tack or hem in sewing class, she held up my work as an example of what should
not be done; I was confused about what the end result should be so had made the stitches
on the “back”/”inside” very small and those on the “front”/”outside” very large, when the
reverse was required. That year we made navy blue shorts to wear during sports. In an
earlier year, perhaps Primary One, we had sewn “cross-stitch” patterns on to thick cloth
which was then backed and made into the cover of a folding stool (this also occurred in
Sunnyway kindergarten).
Despite my untidy work and bad sewing, Mrs. Soh rather liked me because my
academic work was good, and she used to lend me copies of her “American version” of
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Readers‟ Digest magazine to read (my family only subscribed to the “British version”
which was much thinner). Many years later my father became her accountant and she
became quite close to my parents through their church. According to them, she was
vigorous and independent, every day walking up five flights of stairs to her apartment
where she lived alone. By then she wore “blouse and slacks”. She died in her eighties,
knocked down by a car while waiting to cross a road.
MGS Primary School Teachers 1959
Front row: Mrs. Soh (extreme left), Miss Sah Moi (center), Miss Seow (third from right),
Mrs. Soon (second from right), Mrs. Tan (extreme eight)
Back row: Miss Ho (extreme left), Mrs. Lau (fifth from left), Mrs. Taye (fifth from right),
Mrs. Koh (fourth from right), Miss Yuen (third from right)
By this time my friends and I had begun to be somewhat competitive over our
schoolwork, though in a friendly fashion. For example, whenever our exercise books
with our weekly essays in them were returned, we would immediately share what we had
scored. I usually had the highest, or one of the highest, scores, 9 or 91/2 out of 10,
because I wrote well and had virtually no grammatical errors. The language “bible” we
used since Primary Three was “First Aid in English”, a blue textbook with a black cross
on it that had grammar and idioms which we loved. I was also good in mathematics, but
my overall class rank was usually between third and fifth, being “pulled down” by belowaverage performance in Chinese and sewing.
There was a library (several locked cabinets filled with shelves of books) outside our
Primary Five classroom. By this time we had outgrown much of Enid Blyton, our
previous favorite storyteller, though we still read some of her series like the Famous Five
(schoolboy and schoolgirl detectives). The Primary Five library contained a wealth of
schoolgirl stories like Nancy Drew, tales of fourth and fifth form English girls‟ boarding
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schools, and a series by one Eleanor M. Brent-Dyer, called The Chalet School, about an
English boarding school in the Tyrolean mountains of Austria. I fell in love with this
series and even joined “The Chalet Club” which gave me a little metal pin and sent
newsletters a couple of times a year. The only other girl in MGS I knew of who also
belonged to “The Chalet Club” was Vivien Goh, a talented violinist a couple of years
older than we were, who became Head Prefect and also “top girl” in her year.
Primary Six was our one and only year in “afternoon school”, due to a new system
whereby you alternated years between the day and afternoon session. Our teacher was
Mrs. Koh, who was very fair and wore pastel cheongsams. She turned out to be the aunt
of Cinda‟s future husband Chua Boon Chye, and died early of a stroke. Our classroom
was in the modern secondary-school building, just above the sports hall where we had
Chapel and played during recess. That year, a group of girls other than my friends and I
put on a second play (besides ours) at the end of the year. It was “The Princess and the
Pea” with Jennifer Ng in charge, and Esther Lim (whose family soon emigrated to
Australia) took the part of the Princess. Marguerite Liang, Ong Yong Bok, Liang May
Yue and Lee Yoke Teng were also involved. They did a wonderful job.
Every year, Founder‟s Day was usually commemorated with a school-wide concert
and special assembly featuring speeches and “Old Girl” visits and reminiscences. It was
probably at one of these concerts—I believe when we were in Primary Four—that we put
on a play in Chinese, “Six Blind Men and the Elephant”. Cinda made an elephant out of
cardboard and it stood on a table while six of us Chinese girls, dressed in Chinese
pyjamas, walked around it with our eyes closed, feeling different parts of the elephant—
its trunk, sides, legs, etc.—and proclaiming it to be, respectively, like a snake, wall, tree
trunk etc. Sing Chee (who among us was the best in Chinese) fell down and was nursing
a bloody graze on her knee throughout the sketch. Concerts also featured classical piano
pieces by some of our highly talented students (like Jenny Wong), and a couple of times
Cinda‟s oldest sister, Esther Lee, dressed up in flowing Chinese costume and did a
spectacular “ribbon dance” in the school driveway outside the auditorium.
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“Six Blind Men and the Elephant” (1960)
Left to right: Linda Lim, Lim Kay Han (behind elephant), Cinda Lee, Watt Yoke Lan,
Ling Sing Chee
“Six Blind Men and the Elephant” (1960) from school magazine
Left to right: Linda Lim, Seah Guay Choon, Lim Kay Han, Watt Yoke Lan, Ling Sing
Chee, Cinda Lee, Jennifer Ng Seok Chin (sighted elephant keeper)
Once a year, we had Sports Day, where we were divided into four teams named after
various early missionary teachers, such as “Blackmore” and “Olson” (the Olson sisters
from Wisconsin). The teams competed in various games involving running, and using
hoops and balls. The winning team would receive a “silver” cup or trophy decorated with
navy blue ribbons, the school color, and members would also get small trinkets for
prizes—all awarded by some “V.I.P.” or other. Not being good at sports, I rarely if ever
brought home any prizes. Sometimes our P.E. lessons included learning to do English
folk dances, to recorded music. I think it was in Primary Five that our class got picked to
learn the maypole dance. Somehow the School had acquired a genuine maypole, a tall
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wooden pole with long colored ribbons attached to the top. We danced in pairs (in our
white blouses and navy bloomers), each holding on to a ribbon and skipping over, under
and around each other until we had woven one of several patterns with the ribbons. Mala
was my maypole dance partner since we were arranged by height
Maypole dance, Sports Day, 1961
Linda Lim and Nirmala Raja to the right of the maypole, at the back
There was also an occasional “Fun Fair”, when classes set up individual food and
handicraft stalls and sold tickets to raise funds for the School. For some years, my
contribution to Fun Fair stalls, as well as to the class party at the end of the year, was
coconut candy made by my mother from former MGS principal Ellice Handy‟s recipe
book—cut in squares, the brown candy was chocolate-flavored, the green one mintflavored, and the pink one vanilla-flavored. They were always a great hit.
Friends
It was in Primary Two or Primary Three that a group of us began to coalesce as friends
in the “A” class. Nirmala Rajah (Mala) joined Rachel and me at the back of the class,
due to our heights, as did Cinda‟s cousin Bette Lee, who paired up with Mala at recess
time. Benita Catherasoo, who was short and sat in front, was Mala‟s cousin. Geh Min
(Min) and Bharathi (Rose) Vaithinathan (Chum) were a pair at recess time; sometimes I
joined them and we made a threesome. Chum got to know Min in Primary Three when
Mrs. Soon sat them next to each other as Min was “quiet and good” whereas Chum was
“noisy”. They discovered they read and liked the same books, especially the legends of
Greece and Rome, and the stories of Ancient Egypt. Min would draw pyramids and
hieroglyphics, and the two of them even devised their own secret “Egyptian” word,
written in a special way. Min had a wonderful library at home, from which she lent
Chum many books. Cinda Lee I knew from Wesley Church Sunday School. I believe
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Mala, Chum, Benita and Cinda had all gone to the Good Shepherd Convent kindergarten.
Min, Lim Kay Han and I went to Sunnyway kindergarten, although we were in different
classes there. I remember Min as the quiet “good girl” who was brought from another
class to join in my class‟s Christmas party, where she was given an extra party hat for
“being good”, and I remember Kay Han as the “bad girl” screaming away as a teacher
dragged her along by the arm in the hallway.
I‟m not sure how we got together. We were all “good students”, and Cinda, Min,
Chum, myself and Ling Sing Chee (Singo) used to rotate the top few positions in class,
followed by the others. From time to time, we also as a group intervened when Kay Han
terrorized a girl named Liang May Yue (see Chinese song photo), who was fair, pretty
and prone to tears, or as Kay Han herself once said, “like tau fu—white and soft and
when you press it, water (tears) comes out”. The “tough” (sporty) girls—Mala, Rachel,
Shadiah (below) and Low Seok Ching (Socker)—would fight (wrestle) Kay Han one by
one at the front of the class, if she picked on May Yue when the teacher was out of the
class. It was like a gladiator‟s match, with hand-to-hand combat, but its desired deterrent
effect must have been limited, or it would not have happened repeatedly.
Another big fight with Kay occurred over the casting of Cinderella in one of our class
plays (see below). Kay had been cast as an ugly sister and wanted to be Cinderella
instead. She proposed that the fairest way to resolve the issue was to have a wrestling
match, with the winner taking the role of Cinderella. Min, whom everyone had in mind
as Cinderella, was obviously not going to fight Kay, so Mala and Shadiah were appointed
as her champions, fighting Kay in turns. It might have been this fight in which Kay bit
Mrs. Soon by mistake when the latter rashly tried to separate the two contestants, and the
school principal was sent for.
Around this time, after Primary Three or Four, Shadiah Alkaff left us to return with
her family to Aden in the Hadramout (now Yemen) on the Arabian Peninsula. She was
the youngest of four Arab sisters whose mother had died in a car crash in Singapore when
Shadiah was three—one of the older sisters wrote a poignant poem about her which was
published in our school magazine, while the eldest, Shams, worked in Miss Sah Moi‟s
office after she finished school, since they were “not allowed to work outside”. Shadiah
was a tomboy, and life was hard for her when they returned to her father‟s mother‟s care
in the desert. Her older sisters soon escaped to Aden to be married, so Shadiah was left
alone in the desert. For a while she wrote us mournful letters about her longing to eat an
apple—“Here there is nothing, only dates”—and about being locked up indoors in a
chador, watching the dust from sandstorms. Later, she said she was ashamed to write
because she had forgotten her English, though once she mentioned she had become “quite
pretty”. At fifteen, she sent us her wedding photograph--she had been married off to a
28-year-old man, who in the photo was clad in a Western pin-striped suit, while she was
in a white Western wedding dress. The letters stopped coming, but many years later,
before we were thirty, we heard that she had become a grandmother!
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Fights with Kay aside, we most likely got together to organize end-of-year class
concerts, which I do not think other classes had, so I am not sure why we did. There were
usually several acts e.g. Mala and/or Benita would perform Indian classical dance,
Josephine Teng (Josie) would dance ballet in a white tutu (she later performed with
Martha Graham‟s dance company in New York for a while), I once played my recorder,
etc. The main act, however, was always a play of a fairy tale—like Cinderella, Snow
White, and so on. Min, who was fair and pretty, was always the princess, and I
(presumably because of my height) was always Prince Charming. Mala had the liveliest
roles—the villain or a witch—and Chum and Cinda played mothers or older women.
Over time, our audience expanded to include other Primary classes, who were invited to
watch us perform in the sports hall and, later, in the big auditorium.
I have a vague recollection of our group getting into trouble with the Primary Four
teacher, Mrs. Taye, and being punished by having to stand outside the classroom in the
corridor for a while. I remember this because Bette told me that Cinda said, “Let us
pray”, which Bette, not being Christian, did not care to. This might have been the year
that our end-of-year concert and drama production was “upgraded” to the sports hall and
other Primary classes were also invited to it. By now my group of friends (the future
“Nuttes”) was tighter, playing together at every recess period. I particularly remember us
holding hands while standing on the see-saw, moving ourselves to make it bump hard
when it hit the ground on each side, at which point we yelled loudly. While on the seesaw we would sing “Boney was a warrior”, a ditty about Napoleon Bonaparte that we had
learned in singing class. Other favorites from singing class at this time included “Oh
Susanna”, “Barbara Allen”, “The Ash Grove” and other English and American folksongs.
In Primary Five I became close to Bette Lee, who sat next to me at the back of the
class and talked to me all the time, mostly about “grown-up” movies that her older sister
had taken her to see. To me, she seemed very sophisticated, and had a glamorous family
connection. Her father, D.C. Lee, was a brother of Cinda‟s father, T.F. Lee. They were
Shanghainese who had escaped from China in advance of the Communist takeover in
1949, and her father‟s first wife (they later divorced) had published a book about her trials
during World War Two. Her daughter (Bette‟s half-sister) had been lost at sea when the
ship they were in sank south of Singapore. She was later recovered on an island,
identified in part because she wrote capital E backwards—I read the book and was most
impressed that Bette was related to someone who was in a book. (Later, in Secondary
School, Bette would talk to me about Dostoevsky‟s Crime and Punishment and similar
books she was reading. Bette studied journalism at college in the U.S., after which she
and another classmate of ours who went to university in Australia, Yoke Lan, were
recruited by Pan American Airways to be flight stewardesses. In the big local media blitz
accompanying this, it was emphasized that those chosen had to be university graduates
who knew European languages other than English, and were thus highly selected.)
The highlight of every schoolday was recess, and our large group played together
every day. By now it comprised myself, Mala, Rachel, Benita, Chum, Min, Cinda, Kay
Han (whom Cinda had taken under her wing), Sing Chee (who was usually top student in
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class as she was very good in Chinese as well as other subjects), Jennifer Ng, Marguerite
Liang (Maggie), probably Josephine Teng, and occasional others. While most girls
walked about quietly in pairs, we played vigorous games in the sports hall. “Police and
thieves” was a great favorite, and so rough that occasionally uniforms were torn, and even
someone‟s (Esther Lim‟s) arm broken once. The “Indian girls” were usually consigned to
form one team of “thieves” while the Chinese, more numerous but less athletic and less
adept at fighting, were the “police”. The year of the China-India border war (1962), we
had a tug-of-war between the Chinese and Indian girls.
One recess in Primary Five our group managed to get nearly our whole class to
participate in a “funeral” for a beautiful navy-blue-and-black small butterfly that one of us
found lying on the grass as we walked out to recess. It was probably Mala‟s idea. The
details escape me now, but I believe we found a small box in which to encase the
butterfly corpse, then dug a hole in the school garden where we buried it, with a large
crowd standing around wearing our white handkerchiefs on our heads “as a sign of
respect”. I think we also installed a small wooden cross and may have prayed or sang a
song before quietly filing back to our classroom.
Another game we played that involved two teams was rounders (like softball).
Almost invariably, the rounders ball would bounce over the fence into the grounds of the
uninhabited Eu Tong Sen villa next door, a 1930s folly known in some quarters as
“Bluebeard‟s castle”, complete with turrets and shuttered windows, and looking definitely
“haunted”. We would then line ourselves up against the chain-link fence, chorusing
“Thamby, thamby” (a term used for Indian workers) until the Indian caretaker emerged,
picked up the ball and threw it back over the fence to us.
We also played “Robin Hood and his Merry Men”, a game which we continued into
Secondary School. Mala was Robin Hood (of course), I was Little John (of course) and
Min was Maid Marian (of course). Poor Benita, who was smaller than the rest of us, was
forced to be the Sheriff of Nottingham, and given at most one or two hapless assistants.
We would hide and she/they would have to “raid” us but given the unequal numbers (and
size) the game inevitably ended with the Sheriff being chased, overpowered, and on
several occasions, dumped into a wicker basket in the storeroom which normally held
sports equipment. We also played “Farmer in the Dell”, in which Benita was invariably
chosen as the cheese which would then be violently patted on the head as we sang “We
all pat the cheese”. I suppose we bullied Benita but not because we did not like her—she
was very much a friend and “one of us”, and Mala‟s cousin to boot (Mala‟s line remained
Hindu but Benita‟s became Christian so, like Chum and Rachel, she had short curly hair).
Cinda introduced us to the game of “Sardines”, where everyone closed their eyes, and
the designated first girl would go off and hide—usually in a storage closet somewhere on
the primary school premises. Min invented the game “tortures and deaths”, which
involved imaginary hits by cars when we walked on the school driveway during recess.
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Outside of school, Cinda and I saw each other weekly at Sunday School at Wesley
Methodist Church, also attended by Esther Lim. Later, in Secondary School, Min joined
us to sing in the girls‟ choir, which also included my sister Laurette and Cinda‟s younger
sister Ruby. Min and Kay Han used to have mathematics tuition classes together, and
Kay Han, Jenny and Josie also had some organized home activities together.
Other than that, we sometimes visited each other‟s homes—mostly bungalows with
lawns--for birthday parties. Everyone would wear some frilly party frock and bring a
wrapped gift for the birthday girl, who would unwrap them all after we had sung „Happy
Birthday” and enjoyed our birthday cake, other snacks and a fizzy drink. This would take
place toward the end of the party, after we had run around the garden or the house
vigorously playing games like “hide- and-seek”, “tug-of-war”, “treasure hunt”, “pin-thetail-on-the-donkey” or “musical chairs”. We would depart with a small party favor each.
One year, for Min‟s birthday, a group of us went to a movie, with her mother and her
cousin Fiona. I remember that Min was in a beautiful new dress that her aunt had sent
from New York—a pale green sleeveless shirtwaist with a pink rose on a large white
collar, quite unlike anything the rest of us wore. In the cinema, the butterscotch ran out
before Fiona could get a piece, to Min‟s mother dismay. Later, at the end of Secondary
Three in 1965, Cinda had a Christmas party for us at her house.
Cinda’s house at Christmas, 1965.
Left to right: Chum, Mala, Cinda, Yoke Lan, Linda, Rachel, Singo
Secondary School
My friends and I started Secondary School in January 1963, after all successfully
passing the important national Primary Six School Leaving exam and winning promotion
to the MGS Secondary School, which consisted of three day and three afternoon classes
in each of four years of school. Here we were joined by new girls from other schools,
notably Ho Ai Lian, Mah Choon Hong and Katherine Liao from Paya Lebar MGS.
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We were all still together in the “A” class, where our Secondary One teacher was Mrs.
Goh, remembered mostly for the “maths incident”. One day while she was teaching us
mathematics, she made a wrong calculation which some of us noticed, and Min brought
to her attention—unfortunately after the offending sum had been erased from the chalk
board! Mrs. Goh then asked who else agreed that she had made an erroneous calculation,
and most of our group raised our hands. Furious, she made us stand outside the
classroom (a much more humiliating punishment for “big girls” like we now were),
refusing to let us back into the class unless we retracted. Later, Cinda (who had not
joined us) was sent out to the pavement to plead with us to retract, but we refused. I
cannot remember how the issue was resolved then, but Mrs. Goh never forgave us (and
vice versa). She gave us “Poor” marks for Conduct that term, except for Min who got
“Very Poor” instead of the “Very Good” she usually received. The written comment in
my report card for the term was “Talks unnecessarily during lessons”!
Mrs. Mendis and the School Magazine Editorial Board, 1966
Left to right: Front row: Cinda, Linda
Back row: Chang Shook Ling, Min, Mala, Singo, Chum
Another Secondary One teacher we liked a lot was Mrs. Mendis, who was very nice,
and years later told us that we had been the brightest class in the school. She also told my
mother once that we were the brightest but also the naughtiest class that she had had, but
that she enjoyed teaching our rowdy lot more than my sister Laurette‟s year-older class
who were very quiet and well-behaved and seldom raised their hands in class to comment
or ask questions, which we apparently did all the time. (In the photo above, Mala has
what we call her “Hiawatha” look—chiseled face, noble and proud—we loved the
Longfellow poem that we had read in class for English literature.)
Some teachers said we were “naughty” because many of us had been born in the Tiger
Year (1950), believed to be bad for girls, who if born during “Tiger time” (midnight to 2
am or so) would end up “devouring” (causing the early death of) their parents or their
husbands. For that reason, in “olden days” many girls born in the Tiger year were given
away to other families, or never married, and to this day birth rates in Chinese societies,
22
including Singapore, fall in a Tiger year. One teacher also told us to be careful to marry
only men born in the year of the Rabbit (one year younger or 11 years older). But most of
our group were Cows, born in 1949, the same year as Laurette. Only Mala (March 1950),
Benita (August), Kay Han (December) and I (September) were Tigers. Min, however,
was born a few weeks early, at the end of January 1950, just before Chinese New Year, so
could be really a Tiger and not a Cow. Cinda was the oldest of us because her mother had
her repeat Primary One in Good Shepherd Convent kindergarten in order to keep her
younger sister Ruby company there, and there was no place in Primary Two when she
finally came to MGS. Besides myself, Cinda, Sing Chee and Rachel had older sisters in
MGS, and Cinda and I also had younger sisters in the school.
We now had different teachers for specialized subjects, many if not most of whom
were among the earliest women graduates of the University of Singapore (previously
Raffles College). In those days teaching was about the only occupation open to educated
women, so our teachers were drawn from the educated elite of Singapore women. By our
time, women graduates much more readily became doctors, lawyers, diplomats and,
especially, bankers, so that the brightest women tended not to become schoolteachers.
In Lower Secondary Science, we adored Miss Yeong Poh Yee, a fresh University of
Singapore graduate from Ipoh who was in her first year of teaching when we were in
Secondary One. She team-taught together with Mrs. Chen Su Pin, the Penang-born wife
of Dr. Chen Chi Wei, whose entire family of doctors were accounting clients of my
father‟s. It was in her biology class that we first observed the dissection of a
chloroformed rabbit—which led Mala to exclaim, “Let it live!” when the laboratory
assistant subdued the animal.
Compared with our other teachers, Miss Yeong was young and lively, wore sheaths
rather than shirtwaists, and was “daringly” frank, speaking to us openly about
menstruation and other such usually taboo topics. She was engaged to Wong Nang Jang,
older brother of Wong Sing Chee, an older girl in MGS whose family ran the Nang Heng
music company on Selegie Road, selling pianos and other musical instruments and books.
He was plump and jolly and seems to have been the only teacher spouse we ever knew,
perhaps because he sometimes drove her to and from school. We thought he and Miss
Yeong were a most romantic pair, as they remain to this day. Miss Yeong stayed our
teacher through her marriage, when she became Mrs. Wong, and had their first child, a
boy named Kevin. Then she left to accompany her husband on his tour of duty as a
banker with what was then called First National City Bank, in New York
All this seemed exciting and glamorous to us then. Mrs. Wong was the first teacher
we ever had whom we saw as a “role model”—meaning we could imagine ourselves
being “career women” like her. However, several years later she had become
disillusioned by life as a banker‟s wife in New York City, complaining that she had to
“wash toilets” there (a task always handled in middle-class families by household
servants in Singapore and Malaysia at the time), and saying to us girls, “Why study so
hard? You will only end up like me, washing toilets in New York.” She and Mr. Wong
23
went on to have three more children after Kevin. Later, they returned to Singapore and he
became president of the Oversea-Chinese Banking Corporation (OCBC), when I began
seeing them again as part of my parents‟ OCBC social circle. They are as lively and
humorous and close to each other as ever.
Most of our own mothers were “housewives”. The exceptions were Kay Han‟s
mother, the Ministry of Health school doctor, Chum‟s and Benita‟s schoolteacher
mothers, and Min‟s mother who was an English lecturer at the University of Singapore
and occasionally came to MGS to evaluate student teachers for their Diploma in
Education. Our fathers were mostly “professional men”—schoolteachers (Chum‟s and
Benita‟s), other civil servants (Rachel‟s), doctors (Kay Han‟s and Josephine‟s), a lawyer
(Mala‟s), an accountant (mine), an architect/engineer (Cinda‟s) and various businessmen
(e.g. Min‟s and Sing Chee‟s). What seemed to distinguish our group was that all our
parents were English-educated, then only a small minority of the population. Looking at
the “Father‟s Occupation” column in our Secondary School teachers‟ attendance book
revealed that most of the other girls‟ parents were “merchants” and, probably, Chineseeducated. Most of us also came to school in family cars, either driven by chauffeurs or by
one or the other parent. My mother was the first and most consistent mother-driver, but
several other mothers (Min‟s, Cinda‟s, etc.) also drove, whereas most of our classmates
came to school by public bus, or by taxi. Our lack of familiarity with taking the bus was
embarrassingly revealed one day when we walked down the Hundred Steps to Orchard
Road and decided to take a bus down it “for fun”. Unused to the normal lurching of the
vehicle, some of us lost our balance while hanging on to the ceiling straps, and were
glared at by the other passengers.
Many of us took private music and dance lessons, learning to play the piano (most of
us) and dance ballet (fewer). We loved our singing lessons in school, where our most
frequent and well-loved music teacher was Mrs. Lau, the wife of Earnest Lau who later
taught some of us history in ACS (and became its principal). Mrs. Lau‟s older sister,
Mrs. Cheah, wife of Mala‟s father‟s law partner and their neighbor, also taught us in the
Upper Secondary School. Another sister, Mrs.Yong Nyuk Lin, wife of a PAP cabinet
minister, had been our family hairdresser when I was young, with a beauty salon in
Cairnhill, and yet another, Mrs. Lee Kuan Yew, the wife of Singapore‟s Prime Minister,
handed us our „O-level‟ Cambridge school certificates when we graduated from
Secondary Four. Mrs. Lau was very sweet, but she was sickly and died relatively young,
some time after we had left MGS. All the sisters—from the Kwa family--had studied at
MGS. Whenever my family visited the Yong Nyuk Lin family in Emerald Hill, Mr. Yong
would try (unsuccessfully) to persuade my father to join the People‟s Action Party (PAP),
while my sister Laurette and I played “paper dolls” upstairs with the two Yong girls, Siu
Lian and Siu Li, who were also at MGS many years ahead of us. Siu Lian did her dental
degree at the University of Michigan, which her son also attended. When I met him in
Ann Arbor in the 1990s, he greeted me with, “You know my mother and my
grandmother”.
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Assistant Librarians with Mrs. Cheah, 1966
Front row: Mala (extreme left), Min (third from left), Cinda (fifth from left), Linda (fifth
from right). Second row: Rachel (second from right)
The most momentous event of our Secondary One year was Singapore‟s independence
from British colonial rule and its merger with Malaysia, which occurred in September
1963. As part of the School‟s celebration of the event, our class staged a Malaysian
version of the music suite, “The Persian Market”, which we renamed “The Malaysian
Market”. This was a pantomime-pageant featuring characters dressed up in various
ethnic costumes interacting in a marketplace. For example, Rachel was an Indian snakecharmer all swathed in white, while Mala was all in black as her “snake”. Min and I
dressed up as a Malay bride and bridegroom respectively, whose wedding procession
moved through the crowd. Singo was a “gypsy woman”, Chum a sari-clad Indian
woman, and Josephine and Cinda wore Chinese samfoo. Most memorable were Kay Han
dressed as an “American gangster” in a dark man‟s suit with penciled-in moustache,
slicked-back hair and a panama hat, puffing on a cigar, and Benita clad in rags as a beggar
eating a banana—unfortunately the banana she got was rotten but she had to eat it on
stage anyway. The production was very well-received and we even had an inquiry (I do
not know from whom) about the possibility of our reproducing it for the national
celebration that would take place on the steps of City Hall in front of the padang.
Alas, two years‟ later, on August 9, 1965, Singapore was ejected from Malaysia to
become an independent Republic. I do not recall if we had any celebrations at that
unwilling birth, but we all remember hearing the explosion of the bomb that Indonesian
saboteurs placed in the McDonald office building on Orchard Road just down the hill
from the school. President Sukarno of Indonesia had launched a “Confrontation” against
the formation of Malaysia (including Singapore) in1963, and this lasted till he was
overthrown by a military coup in 1966, which we cheered because he was a “communist”.
North of us, Vietnam was about to burst into full-blown war for the rest of our schooldays
in MGS and ACS, and our undergraduate years.
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“Malaysian Market” September 1963
Left to right: Front row: Rachel Matthews, Kay Han, ?, ?, Augusta Naw
Second row: Miss Naby, Fadilah Alwi, Marguerite, Min, Linda, Josephine Teng, Cinda,
Mrs. Goh
Back row: Sing Chee, Rachel, Esther Lim, Mala, Ong Yong Bok, Chou Onn Kee
“Malaysian Market” September 1963
Esther Lim more clearly seen, Benita with rotten banana added
Also in Secondary One, a group of us got together to take private French lessons from
an Australian nun, Sister Alfonsa of the Maris Stella Convent on Holland Road. This was
initiated and arranged by Min‟s mother, and the motivation was to prepare us to take “O”
26
levels in French since a foreign language was required for application/admission to
Oxford and Cambridge Universities, and at that time Chinese lessons--at which none of
us was very good anyway--ceased after Secondary Two. Cinda recalls that we hated
Chinese so much that in Secondary Two we became more defiant and bolder, and would
quite often skip Chinese class to hobnob with our lucky Indian friends who still had their
“free” period then. I have no such recollection, however, and it is possible--though not
likely--that I did not do this while she did.
Thus it was that every Saturday morning five of us—Min, Cinda, Chum, my sister
Laurette and myself—would gather at a raised colonial bungalow in the extensive
convent grounds of green lawns and thick shady trees, for French with Sister Alfonsa,
who frequently reminded us not to confuse French with the Malay that we had also
learned in Primary School (especially “dan” for “et”). She had a bad stutter about which
Cinda remembers us giggling and making faces behind her back, but I do not. It was on
one of these Saturdays that one of us brought the others the news of President John
Kennedy‟s assassination. We did end up taking French as an extra “O” level subject, and
I also studied Latin individually with Sister Alfonsa while in Pre-University—I recall I
was the only student in the hall being proctored by three teachers when I took the
Cambridge exam. In the end, I was the only one who ended up at Cambridge from
Singapore (after Pre-University at ACS). Kay Han went to Oxford from English boarding
school the same year, and Mala went to Cambridge a year ahead of us, after doing her „A‟
levels in London. The others did their undergraduate and medical studies in Singapore
except for Cinda and Benita, who went to Canada, and Maggie, who studied accountancy
in London.
Our Secondary Two A class teacher was Miss Wong Hee Hua, whom we called “twoplait Wong” to distinguish her from Miss Wong Lan Eng, the Upper Secondary
Geography teacher, also known to us as “Geog Wong”. Miss Wong Hee Hua was one of
a number of sisters who apparently vowed when they were starving during the war that if
they all survived, they would not cut their hair (or so legend had it). All kept their hair in
long plaits which they wound around their heads, dressed plainly in long cheongsams or
shirtwaist dresses, and wore no make-up. All but one (I think) were unmarried. The most
famous, Dr. Ruth Wong, had a Ph.D. and was Director of the Institute of Education. Miss
Wong taught us mathematics and history, and was a creative and enthusiastic teacher.
Once, she had us perform a skit on American history, which we staged at the main
auditorium to an audience of one—her.
27
Music Society Committee with Miss Wong Hee Hua, 1966
Left to right: Front row: Min, Ruby Lee, Cinda, Miss Wong, Chum, Benita, Linda
Our skit started with the slave trade from Africa to the United States. Roles were cast
according to skin tone. One half-Chinese, half-Indian girl, Evelyn Pung, and a darkskinned Chinese girl, Maureen Kwee, were cast as Arab slave traders. They pranced
around with white cloths affixed to their heads with circular wood embroidery frames,
cracking whips at Indian girls who played African slaves by sitting on long benches and
“rowing” their slave-ships. The slaves were clad in our white school blouses and navy
bloomers, each with a white handkerchief tucked into the front of the bloomers and
hanging out to simulate a loin cloth. When the curtain came down on that scene, I peeked
out and saw Miss Wong sitting in solitary splendor in the front row of the big hall. She
was shaking with silent laughter and tears were streaming down from her eyes. I took the
role of Abraham Lincoln, no doubt because of my height again. This was further
enhanced by my wearing black men‟s boots with elevated heels, borrowed from the
brother of Hooi Lai Hoong, a Malaysian girl who had recently joined our school. I also
wore a top-hat. It had been made by my mother, a faithful producer of many of our props
through the years. She used a cylindrical Menglembu Groundnuts tin as a mold for the
hat which was made out of stiff paper, and painted black, with a black rim. Min was
Mary Lincoln. When I was shot by John Wilkes Booth (played by Kay Han in yet another
“American gangster” role), I crashed to the floor (hurting my back or leg in the process),
and Min ran screaming off stage. Miss Wong continued to tremble and weep with
laughter.
Probably our most memorable collective theatrical effort, done for the Christmas
concert at the end of Secondary Two in 1964, was Louisa May Alcott‟s Little Women,
which was one of our recreational reading favorites together with Anne of Green Gables,
books by Jane Austen and the Bronte sisters, and other similar “girls‟ classics”. I cannot
remember if we performed Little Women from an established script or whether we created
the dialogue and screenplay ourselves. Casting was done by personality: Cinda was
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Marmee (of course), Singo was Meg, the oldest sister, Mala was Jo (of course), Min was
Amy (ditto), and Chum was Beth. I was the stern but rich Aunt March (with wrinkles
drawn on my forehead, and allowed to wear my glasses on stage), and Rachel was
Hannah, the maid. Our costumes all came out of the backstage cupboards in the
auditorium. Presumably sewn or otherwise acquired by previous generations of MGS
thespians, they were long 19th-century European ladies‟ gowns complete with frills and
padding, and definitely helped transport us to another place and time.
“Little Women”, 1964
Left to right: Two poor children (Barbara Chee on right), Ng Hwee Miang, Cinda, Min,
Singo, Linda, Mala, Chum, Rachel
“Little Women” 1964
Left to right: Min (Amy), Mala (Jo), Cinda (Marmee), Singo (Meg), Chum (Beth)
29
Beginning in Secondary One, our recess-time play became more “organized”. Our
most constant game played on the Secondary School playing field was “Netstone”—
which was netball played with a stone wrapped around with exercise book paper and a
rubber band. Fortunately no-one was ever hit in the head with this. The game required us
to be organized into two teams. Min and I were the worst players, so we were put in
different teams and assigned to “guard” each other at distant points of the field. Often we
were chatting and missed the “ball” when it whizzed by us. Another time, we were
playing “twos and threes” when I slipped and fell running around the circle of girls when
I became a “three”, and broke my collar-bone. We also continued with “Robin Hood” and
other games which required us to roam around the school grounds.
One day, in Secondary Two or Three, the famous “banana tree incident” occurred.
While wandering through the grounds we happened upon a banana plant with a bunch of
ripe bananas hanging from a tall stalk. Probably at Mala‟s instigation, we tried to bring
down the bananas, by shaking the plant, throwing stones at the branch, trying to jump on
it, etc. Finally, the branch broke off and crashed to the ground, whereupon we all fled,
pretending that nothing had happened. The next day, the Principal (Miss Lau Miau Eng)
warned all girls over the intercom to “be careful”, since “vandals” had been in the school
grounds. We kept mum.
We were now fourteen to sixteen years old, and as “tomboyish” as ever. Wearing
make-up and going out with boys (or even being seen with them) was anathema. Once, in
Secondary One, someone (Jennifer?) reported that Cinda had been seen “wearing lipstick
and kissing a boy” at the Island Country Club Teenage Ball (something like that). We
decided to ostracize her, refusing to talk to her or acknowledge her presence during one
recess period when we were sitting in a row in one of our favorite places—the passageway between the Science and Domestic Science building and the Secondary classrooms,
where we could enjoy the hilltop breeze, looking down on Cathay Building and the city
below. Cinda got very upset and burst into tears, so we decided to “forgive” her.
It is difficult in retrospect to identify who most often orchestrated our group play.
Much of it was spontaneous, based on someone‟s idea of the moment. My recollection is
that Mala most often came up with the ideas (especially “naughty” ones), followed by
Cinda, who tended to suggest more sedate activities like rounders or Sardines. Min and
Chum were also occasional instigators. I was mostly an enthusiastic follower. Our
behavior, especially our physical antics, were apparently considered unusual for girls of
our rapidly advancing years. In Upper Secondary, we heard that some of the girls in
younger classes—particularly Min‟s ladylike cousin Fiona‟s classmates who were two
years‟ our junior—even complained to the teachers that our behavior was “disgraceful”
and especially that we did not wear petticoats under our uniform tunics (which would
have been too hot as well as hampered our mobility). Once, in Secondary Four, I clearly
recall Mala removing her half-petticoat on the balcony outside our classroom during
recess, because she was too hot.
30
It was also in Secondary Four that during one recess we decided to perform a songand-dance routine from the movie musical The Sound of Music, which we all loved (but
not as much as Serene Chia, one of our classmates who saw it thirteen times!). The song
was “I am sixteen going on seventeen”—our age at the time. We sang lustily as Mala
danced on top of a bench outside the auditorium building as “Liesl” while I was the
“boyfriend”. Imagine our surprise when suddenly a window of the building opened and
Mrs. Cheah‟s head appeared, causing us to scatter in embarrassment. Somehow, she did
not look very surprised.
Secondary Three marked the first split among us. At the end of Secondary Two, we
were tracked into the “Science” (“C” class) and “Arts” (“A” and “B” class, with “B” class
having the better students) streams. Most of our friends went to “Science” class but
Mala, who was not too good in mathematics, was going into “Arts” and I wanted to go
into “Arts” too (at the time, my favorite subject was English and I thought I might
become a writer). But the School needed one additional student to go into the “C” class,
and I was chief candidate, having the highest mathematics and science scores of the
remaining girls. I cried, threw a tantrum, and was sent to the Principal‟s office, remaining
adamant all the way. Eventually another candidate (Ng Hwee Miang) was found instead
and she turned out to be very good in science and mathematics. In the meantime, Kay
Han left us to go to boarding school at Cheltenham Ladies‟ College in England, which we
all thought would be wonderful, based on the English girls‟ boarding-school stories on
which we had grown up.
I joined Mala, Socker, Chang Shook Leng, Ida Ow, Lai Chew Fong and others in
Secondary Three and Four B where, with less academic competition, I was routinely the
top student. Our class teacher in Secondary Three was Mrs. Cheah, while the Science
class girls had Miss Ellen Crabbe, who was part-English and part-Malay and whose
brother Harry was a well-known news broadcaster at Radio and Television Singapore. I
cannot remember who they had as their class or “form” teacher in Secondary Four, but we
had Miss Wong Lan Eng, who was quite chic and shapely, with a girlish manner despite
her middle years, dressed in cheongsams, and sported a white streak in the front of her
upswept hair.
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Geography Society Committee, 1966
Front row: Mala (second from left) next to Miss Lau Biau Hee (Mrs. Pok) and Miss Wong
Lan Eng, Singo (extreme right), Maggie (second from right)
Back row: Linda (center), Jenny (second from right)
School Prefects, 1965 with Mrs. Tan Yong Tai
Second row: Cinda (third from left), Singo (fourth from left), Linda (center), Min (fifth
from right)
Mrs. Tan Yong Tai taught art. She was tall and elegant, always carefully made-up
with the thinly-arched penciled eyebrows and black beauty spot popular with her
generation (my grandmother‟s). She too dressed in long cheongsams and had upswept
hair. One day, there was an announcement over the intercom that she had lost her
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precious opals, which were her birthstones and which she had worn in her hair. Mrs. Tan
was considered to be very “fierce” and was known to rap girls on the arm or hand with a
stick if they misbehaved or failed to do an accurate representation of whatever was the art
object of the day (I remember gladiolus blooms). I was not good in art—my worst
subject next to Chinese and Domestic Science—but she knew my grandmother Edna and
was always civil and kind to me.
Besides our academic lessons, we also had to take Domestic Science. On alternate
weeks we did sewing (with the best work exhibited on Founder‟s Day or sold off at Fun
Fairs) and cooking, which was in a large kitchen on the ground floor of the auditorium
building, next to the Science labs. We were in teams of four, selected alphabetically, so
Kay Han (another Lim) and Singo (Ling) were my team-mates, with another girl I forget.
None of us was very “domestic”, so our products usually did not turn out well. We
seemed to cook mostly desserts, like blancmange, following mostly colonial-era recipes
from Mrs. Handy’s Cookbook. Our cooking teacher, Miss Kam, always dressed in a white
uniform, loved to give us long lectures on hygiene, including repeated exhortations to
refrain from using tooth-picks, a Chinese habit which she considered disgusting.
Secondary School Teachers 1965
Front row left to right: Miss Wong Lan Eng, Mrs. Tan Yong Tai, Mrs. Cheah, Mrs.
Mendez, Miss Lau Miau Eng (Principal), Mrs. Goh, Miss Kam, Mrs. Soon, Miss Wong
Hee Hua
Back row left to right: Mrs. Gaw (school clerk), Mrs. Tan (domestic science), Miss Ellen
Crabbe, Mrs. Anna Tham, Mrs. Chen Su Pin, Mrs. Cheong, Chinese teacher, Mrs. Wong
Poh Yee, Mrs. Pok (Lau Biau Hee)
The Singapore school system was changing, and I believe it was in Secondary Three
that “points” began to be awarded for official “extra-curricular activities” or “ECA”. The
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School had always had student clubs, like the Girls‟ Brigade, and sports teams that
competed with other girls‟ schools, but now new ECA clubs began to proliferate.
Suddenly all the activities that we had done spontaneously became “organized” and we
set to work establishing clubs, each under the watchful eye of a teacher advisor. In
Secondary Three and especially Secondary Four, most of the club committees were
dominated by my friends and I. I think I must have sat on four or five committees,
including as President of the brand-new Literary, Debating and Dramatic Society, having
been nominated by Mala and “voted” in by all my friends—I was so stunned that Mala
stepped in to give my opening/acceptance “speech”. I was also Vice-President, Secretary
or Committee Member of other clubs like the Music Society (Cinda was President),
Geography Society (Mala was President, selected by Geog Wong who said she wanted “a
live wire” in that role), etc. Like several of my other friends (Cinda, Min, Chum), I was
also a Prefect (Cinda was Head Prefect), meaning we had to go around with neckties
down the front of our white blouses and “police” the other girls (making sure they did not
talk too loudly or drop sweet-wrappers and other rubbish on the grounds). Many of us
were also Librarians (meaning we staffed the School Library which Mrs. Cheah ran), and
members of the Editorial Board of the School Magazine, to which we all contributed.
Min, Cinda and I also played in the Chess Club.
Chess Club, 1966
Front row: Min (center) Back row: Cinda, Linda
To our amateur concerts was now added an annual “Talentime” or talent contest. For
one such event, six of us formed a group we called the “Jim-Jams” and sang Schubert‟s
“Trout” song (“I stood beside a brooklet……”), dressed as “fishermen” complete with
fishing net and rod. Sing Chee, Chum and Rachel sang soprano, and Cinda, Min and I
sang alto. Our signature song was actually “Glowworm”, but I cannot remember when we
34
sang it. In the Secondary Three Talentime, I was missing from the “Jim-Jams” who were
a Secondary Three C entry.
“The Jim-Jams”, Talentime 1965
Left to right: Cinda, Min, Rachel, Singo, Chum
A second group, with Jennifer strumming on the banjo, and including Maggie, Hooi
Lai Hoong and Augusta Naw, called themselves the “Jailbirds”, and sang an American
folk song—perhaps “She is coming round the mountain”. They tied their hair into two
bunches and wore striped mini-skirted sleeveless sheaths. This must have been in
Secondary Two, because the next year they were clad differently as a Secondary Three C
entry. That year, as Secondary Three B entries, Mala did a jazzy pop-song solo with a
male band (I don‟t know where it came from), while I crooned a low-pitched song whose
lyrics I have forgotten.
“The Jailbirds”, Talentime 1964
Left to right: Augusta Naw, Hooi Lai Hoong, Jennifer Ng, Marguerite Liang, Lim Kay
Han
35
,
“The Jailbirds”, Talentime 1965
Left to right: Jenny, Maggie, Lai Hoong, Augusta
Mala singing solo at Talentime 1965
We had also begun annual drama competitions, when different classes presented plays
to be judged by a panel of usually teachers and “Old Girls”. While still all together in the
same class (in Lower Secondary), we used to take trips down to the United States
Information Services (U.S.I.S.) library at the U.S. Embassy in Armenian Street, where we
would pour over plays and borrow books with scripts in them. I cannot remember any
specific plays, so they cannot have been very memorable. I do remember one of the
judges telling us once that it was better to do a good play badly than a bad play well. In
Upper Secondary, we were split up into the Arts and Science classes, and for the first
time were on opposing sides of the competition. I cannot remember the details, but there
was an occasion in Secondary Four when the competition got quite ugly and some sort of
altercation occurred between the Arts and Science girls, I believe because we both wanted
to use the stage at the same time for a rehearsal. Somewhat appropriately, the play the
Science Nuttes put on was called Strained Relations.
36
For our Arts class, Secondary Four B, Mala and I decided to write an original play,
entitled Strange Happenings, which was set in (what else?) a British girls‟ boarding
school during the Second World War. I was an English male teacher with pipe and
bowtie, Mala a female French teacher (complete with chignon and accent), and Chang
Shook Ling the portly male German teacher who turned out to be a spy for the Nazis.
Tham Ying Peng played a histrionic female teacher, and Linda Tung and Lai Chew Fong
were two other female teachers. We did a good job and won first prize in the school
competition. Thus it was that we became our school‟s entry in the National Drama
Festival held at the old National Theater in (then) King George V Park. Alas, we were
judged third of the three entries. Our intimate “staff room” play did not at all translate
well into the cavernous National Theater. During the same National Youth Festival, our
school choir was a finalist. The song we sang was “I think that I shall never see/A poem
lovely as a tree…..” but I do not recall how we fared in the competition.
“Strange Happenings”, First Prize, Drama Festival 1966
Left to right: Shook Ling, Mala, Linda, Linda Tung, Ying Peng, Chew Fong
Secondary Four was the year we took our “Cambridge School Certificate” (soon to be
called „O‟ Level) examinations. Every year, for English literature, we would study a
Shakespeare play, and that year it was Julius Caesar. Once, earlier, the school had
engaged a traveling troupe to perform excerpts from Twelfth Night. The troupe turned out
to be a British family—father, mother and daughter—who were itinerant play-makers in
India whose story was subsequently made into a black-and-white movie, Shakespearewallah. One of the scenes they performed was Malvolio‟s “yellow stockings” soliloquy.
Another year, a group of us went with Miss Wong Hee Hua to distribute “white
gifts”—items wrapped in white paper--that had been donated by girls at the School to
“underprivileged” Malay fishing communities situated on the southern islands of
Singapore, where they lived in typical kampong “stilt houses”. We stopped at two
islands, where we distributed the gifts at a local community or school hall. We were
quite taken aback at the furious rush of the children and adults who practically snatched
the “gifts” out of our hands, without any thanks. . It was all quite awkward, and later
became scary when it rained and the sea became very choppy just when we had to transfer
37
from the sampan on which we had rowed into one of the islands, back on to our
motorboat for the ride back to the “mainland”.
“White gift” distributors, 1965
Back row from left: Min, Linda, Mala, Miranda Chua
Nuttes
Once our schooling at MGS was over, we would be scattered, as indeed some of us
already were e.g. Kay Han and Josie to girls‟ boarding-schools in England. In particular,
Mala would continue her „A‟ levels in London, to which her father was being posted as
Singapore High Commissioner (ambassador), and Marguerite would take her „A‟ levels
(then still called “Higher School Certificate” or HSC) at St. Andrew‟s Pre-University
instead of at ACS, to which the rest of us were bound. Cinda was also going to spend a
year away on a Rotary Club scholarship in New Zealand.
With the upcoming separation in mind, we came up with the notion that we should
create an identifying moniker for our group, which was the “Nuttes”. Cinda thinks she
was the one who first broached the idea, but I clearly recall that it was Min who suggested
it to Mala and me while we were sitting on some steps during recess, at the end of
Secondary Three. Min and Cinda may have discussed it beforehand. Anyway, each of us
would be a “nut” which represented something about ourselves. Cinda was dubbed
Coconut, because of her smooth, round, shiny black head of hair. Min became Chestnut,
since she was “nuts” about chess. I was Walnut, because it “looks like a brain”. Chum
was Hazelnut, because of her lightish brown eyes (versus the darker browns the rest of us
had). Mala said she wanted to be “the most expensive nut”, so became Cashew-nut,
while Maggie wanted to be “the toughest nut to crack”, which was Brazil-nut. Rachel
was christened Peanut because of her relatively small head on top of a long beanpole
body, and Singo was beetle-nut because she liked the Beatles pop singing-group. Benita
was Doughnut (because we were rapidly running out of nuts we knew) and Jennifer was
“Ginger-nut” (because of her lightish brown hair and freckles), which probably does not
exist. Kay Han was away, so she became “Un-identified nut” when she returned on
holiday.
38
Somewhere along the line in Secondary School, we had also invented silly songs for
each of us. Mala‟s was a Mala-variant of the scouts-and-guides campfire song that would
no doubt be considered politically incorrect today, “Ratnasamy fond of toddy”, and went:
“Nirmala Rajah fond of kacang/Yan-ah-lay, yan-ah-lay/Got her Tony from Pulau Ubin/
Yan-ah-lay, yan-ah-lay/Father‟s name was A.P. Rajah/Mother‟s name was don‟t-knowwhat/Father mother fond of Mala/Yan-ah-lay, yan-ah-lay”. (Tony was the name of a boy
that Mala and Min met when they went to Outward Board camp on Pulau Ubin in
Secondary Three, from which Min returned much more boisterous than before.)
Singo‟s song went: “Singo loves Ringo/Ringo loves Singo/Mug and Swot/
Mug and Swot …..” --instead of “Twist and Shout”, referring to the fact that Singo was
very studious. Ringo was Ringo Starr, one of the Beatles.
I cannot remember any of the others, but mine went like this, sung to the tune of a
popular song of the time, and revealing the problems of collective composition: “Oh
Linda Lim/Her dear Bin Sin/Is feeling low/‟Cause he‟s no dough/To hurry home/To
Singapore/To see her more, to see her more/When he held you/He stuck like glue/ Pelican
brand/Oh, it was grand/He had to scrub/With soap and water/But it didn‟t matter/ For he
grew fatter.” Goh Bin Sin was the name of the organist at Wesley Church, chosen by
Cinda for its rhyming quality. He had just left for London to pursue music lessons, which
provided some of the inspiration for the lyrics. I also had a second song, invented by
Mala, which went thus: “Oh Linda Lim Yuen Ching Ing Ing/She can dance, she can sing,
she can fly/But she can never ever never ever never ever tell a lie.” I am not sure if the
tune was original, but the lyrics I am sure were.
Post-MGS
Before the Nuttes scattered, we returned to MGS as a group to get our School
Certificate („O‟ level) results after they came from Cambridge in late January or
Februrary 1967. I was so disappointed that I only obtained seven distinctions (4 A1‟s, 3
A2‟s and 1 C3 for French) out of the eight subjects we took, and had only the second
highest “aggregate” (sum of best six grades) in our year, though the highest among the
Nuttes, that I cried publicly. Some people thought I must have failed! The “top girl” was
Tan Swee Sim, not one of the Nuttes, whose family emigrated to Canada shortly
thereafter. Decades later, I heard from Cinda‟s husband, Chua Boon Chye, that Sunny
Menon, an ACS cohort mate who worked on Wall Street, was still recounting my
“crying” incident (though he was not there and I do not know how he heard about it). But
all was forgotten by the day that we returned to the Old School for our “graduation”.
“Old Girl” Mrs. Lee Kuan Yew, wife of the Prime Minister and sister of our teachers
Mrs. Lau (primary school) and Mrs. Cheah (secondary school) handed us our diplomas on
the school stage. At the time, the wives of four Singapore Cabinet Ministers, including
the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister Toh Chin Chye, had been educated at
MGS, in those days when turning out “good wives and mothers” was a matter of pride for
the School. That evening the Jim-Jams sang at the Founder‟s Day dinner evening concert,
probably the medley of Caribbean calypsos and “Negro spirituals” that we had performed
at the ACS Talentime, when the boys‟ catcalls totally drowned out our voices.
39
MGS Graduation, 1967
Left to right: Singo, Min, Linda, Rachel, Maggie, Cinda, Chum
“The Jim Jams”, MGS Graduation, 1967
Left to right: Front row: Min, Singo, Chum, Back row: Cinda, Linda, Rachel
Our next scattering was in 1969, after we had finished our Cambridge Higher School
Certificate (HSC) examinations at ACS. Some of us were already studying at the
University of Singapore, while the rest were preparing to leave for university studies
overseas. Sometime then Cinda had a tea party in her home for the Nuttes and some
other girls from ACS.
40
At Cinda’s house, 1969
Left to right: Front row: Benita, Linda
Second row: Min, Chum, Singo, Kay Han, Maggie
Back row: Rachel, Cinda, Mala
The next time a large number of us met up was after our first graduations from
university. In August 1972, we had a sleepover at Kay Han‟s house in upper Bukit
Timah. There was also a dinner we had at a Chinese restaurant the same month,
probably organized by Cinda since her sister Ruby was with us, as well as Ng Su Sane
and Chou Onn Kee.
At Kay Han’s house, August 1972
Left to right: Singo, Rachel, Cinda, Kay, Linda
41
At Kay Han’s house, August 1972
Left to right: Linda, Singo, Min, Kay, Rachel
At Kay Han’s house, August 1972
Left to right: Benita, Linda, Min, Singo, Chum
At this time, Rachel (economics and English) and Singo (economics) had obtained
their BAs from University of Singapore. Min and Chum were still in medical school at
the University of Singapore, while Kay Han had her Oxford degree and was doing
clinicals for her medical degree in London, and Cinda was in medical school at the
University of British Columbia. I had my Cambridge BA in economics and was about to
leave to do my MA at Yale. Benita was studying economics at the University of Calgary
in Canada. Jennifer graduated from the University of Singapore and was about to start
doctoral studies in biochemistry at the University of California-Davis.
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Lunch or Dinner, August 1972
Left to right: Linda, Cinda, Su Sane, Singo, Jenny, Kay
Lunch or Dinner, August 1972
Left to right: Min, Ruby, Benita, Onn Kee, Rachel
The Nuttes Today: Forty-Plus Years On
In 2006 our 1966 graduating class from MGS celebrated our fortieth “anniversary”
with a reunion in Singapore that the ones overseas could not attend. Here is what has
happened to all of us since 1966. Sadly, none of our daughters attended MGS. Subsets
of us meet up occasionally, usually in Singapore when Mala or I visit. Min‟s and my
family have taken many holiday trips together over the years.
43
Benita Catherasoo obtained her BA and MA in economics at the University of Calgary
in Canada. She lives in Singapore, helping her Australian husband with his professional
practice as an arbitrator in maritime disputes.
Dr. Geh Min is in private practice as an ophthalmic surgeon. She obtained her medical
degree from the University of Singapore and did her specialist‟s training in London. Min
has served as a Nominated Member of Parliament, and as President of The Nature Society
of Singapore. She is married to a Singaporean heart surgeon and has one daughter.
Marguerite Liang (Maggie) trained as a chartered accountant in the UK, and has been
involved in various businesses since then, including accounting, software, restaurants and
nutritional supplements. She and her Singaporean husband are in business in Singapore,
but make frequent visits to the U.S., where they lived for 10 years.
Dr. Cinda Lee-Chua obtained her medical degree from the University of British
Columbia, and is in private practice in Toronto as a pediatrician. Her Singaporean
husband, an ACS classmate, is a psychiatrist and they have three children.
Dr. Irene Lim Kay Han graduated from Oxford and qualified in London as a medical
practitioner and radiologist. She is married to a British-Canadian radiologist and has
worked in private practice, non-profits, and various hospitals in Singapore.
Dr. Linda Lim graduated in economics from the Universities of Cambridge (BA), Yale
(MA) and Michigan, where she is Professor of Strategy at the Ross School of Business,
and Director of the Center for Southeast Asian Studies. She is married to a retired
American professor and has one daughter.
Dr. Ling Sing Chee obtained her BA in economics from the University of Singapore, her
MBA from Michigan State University and her PhD from the University of Western
Ontario. She retired from her academic position at the National University of Singapore
Business School to devote herself to church and other volunteer activities.
Dr. Jennifer Ng graduated from the University of Singapore, obtained her PhD in
biochemistry from the University of California-Davis, and is Professor of Pediatrics at
Georgetown University in Washington DC. She is married to a British-American White
House security analyst and has one daughter.
Nirmala Rajah-Bamford (Mala) obtained her BA in archaeology and anthropology at
Cambridge University, then qualified as a solicitor in the UK. She has worked in the law,
and in the antiques and property businesses. Her husband is a British lawyer and they
have three children.
Josephine Teng (Josie) studied dance in New York, performing in Martha Graham‟s
dance company and in other Broadway shows. She interrupted her practice as a massage
therapist in New York, to spend his last years with her father in Singapore.
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Dr. Bharathi Vaithinathan (Rose/Chum) obtained her medical degree and her Masters
in Public Health at the University of Singapore and served in several senior positions in
the Singapore Ministry of Health before retiring in 2008. She is married to a MalaysianSingaporean medical professor and they have two daughters.
Rachel Zachariah-Menon graduated from the University of Singapore and recently
obtained her MA in early childhood education. A former foreign service officer and
educational entrepreneur, she now teaches at a polytechnic in Singapore. She is married
to a retired Singaporean foreign service officer, and they have two children.
Revised 21 March, 2010, Singapore
Left to right: Rachel, Josie, Singo, Chum, Benita in Singapore 2003
Left to right: Maggie, Josie, Linda, Benita in Singapore 2004
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Left to right: Linda, Cinda, Katherine Liao, Fiona Chew in Stratford, Canada 2004
(Standing) Rachel, Chum (Sitting) Linda, Sing Chee, Benita, Maggie with assorted
spouses and friends at Rachel’s son’s wedding in Singapore, 2007
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Left to right: Singo, Linda, Min, Chum, Rachel at The Old School at Mount Sophia, 2008
(old MGS premises converted to commercial use)
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