Meeting of the minds

2004-03-14 6:24 p.m.

It is a small world after all. Today at the church's welcoming tea session I met up with some old faces. Gabriel Cheong for instance, the brightest GEPer in my time (and he still is amazingly intelligent.) Met up with my old Peer Support Leader Lincoln Mah and exchange stories of old times. Other poeple filtered in and called out my name even though they were strangers to me. Heh, ACS and church does wonders to you.

Anyway, this is a short entry. Do check out this article by Colin Goh, ACSian,lawyer, cartoonist and unconventional columnist.

MARCH 14

Reality cheques and school get-togethers

Colin Goh

IN MY first year as a lawyer, I was sitting at my desk drafting something that only seemed like it was in English when the phone rang.

'Colin?' came the voice on the other line. 'This is Mrs Wong, your history teacher from ACJC.'

I was a working adult, but in an instant, I was 17 again. My first thought was, die, die, die, did I forget to return a library book or something?

'Colin, we're having our usual fund-raising funfair,' said Mrs Wong. 'Now that you're a lawyer in a big-time firm, surely you're going to contribute, right? Buy a cake lah. Only $200.'

I said yes immediately to buying the country's most expensive black forest cake. After all, when your teacher has the resourcefulness and drive to track you down seven years after you left JC just to sell you overpriced pastries, there's no telling what else she might be capable of.

Well, six years after I stopped lawyering and moved to New York, it happened again. I was at my computer when I received an e-mail.

'Dear Colin,' it said. 'A group of US-based ACS alumni want to hold a Founder's Day dinner in New York. You're there, so help, leh!' (Note to the Internal Security Department: You might want to recruit people from ACS and its affiliates. They clearly have innate surveillance talent.)

I figured this was some sort of karmic payback for my slamming of old school ties in an earlier column, so I agreed to help them book a venue.

Besides, I was curious. How many ex-ACSians were there in the American Northeast? Who would be hard core enough to travel hundreds of miles just to meet fellow school members?

So anyway, two weeks ago, just over 40 alumni from the various Anglo-Chinese schools packed a private dining room in a well-known restaurant in New York's Chinatown.

A school flag was pinned to the wall. There were programmes bearing greetings from the various principals, as well as updates on the progress of the various schools.

Old boys and girls from different generations - the eldest were in their late 50s and the youngest was 14 - sat round the tables eating, joking and reminiscing.

Some had driven in from Boston, New Hampshire and Maryland. One had even trekked down from Montreal in Canada. Many were wearing old school T-shirts. There was even a guy with a vintage ACJC tracksuit which made him look like Uma Thurman out of Kill Bill. (Well, not like Uma Thurman, but you get my drift.)

I gave an after-dinner speech, titled 'From Lee Block to TalkingCock: How ACS warped my sense of humour', recounting seminal school experiences such as the time someone pooped in the school pool, the classmate who could break wind on demand, and the teacher who made students with dirty shoes tie them around their neck.

We had a school trivia quiz, a bottlecap elimination game, and of course, a lucky draw. We then sang the school anthem, and called it a night.

On the way home, my wife (who was not an AC alumnus) remarked: 'You know, these gatherings are strange. Everyone comes out thinking they have this big thing in common. But really, it's just this tenuous, abstract concept of 'school'. It's like nationalism.'

'You're not getting cheem on me just because I beat you at bottlecaps, are you?' I said.

'Listen. Maybe four people in the room knew the teachers you referred to in your speech. Many went to the independent campus, which is like, an entirely different school. You know as well as I do that this stuff about school history and values filtering down is just romantic hype. Didn't you read the programme? ACS is now doing well in ECAs like Chinese storytelling and astronomy. Chinese storytelling! Why would someone drive all the way down from Canada to indulge in a fiction of shared reality?'

I sat in silence. My wife's logic seemed unassailable, good post-modernist that she is. Was there really nothing of any substance linking us? Yet...

'You're wrong. We still have one big thing in common,' I eventually replied. 'We had to rely on you, the Nanyang girl, to decipher the Chinese menu.'

She rolled her eyes. I smiled.

I knew that even this would probably change in a few years, but for the moment, there was unity.

And who knows? Something else might come along to keep that unity going.

I can't say what it is, but I suspect it'll be a piece of cake.

Colin Goh is the editor of Singapore's most popular satirical humour website, TalkingCock.com

http://straitstimes.asia1.com.sg/columnist/0,1886,2491-240059,00.html

previous - next