Primary School Days

Primary School days

In this next posting Yakkity Yak carries on with his account of Primary School days. Teachers, good or bad, male or female leave a lasting impression on the groiwng boy.

“First to P1, then to P2”

Yakkity Yak


School life may be tough, even if classroom life isn’t. Unlike the fortunate kids today, school life was never one of “First to Bata, then to school” We went to school with some nondescript tennis shoes. If Bata was the Reebok of the day, then Sin Wah or Blue Arrow were the crumbs that were brushed off from the table by the rich kids. We had only one pair of uniform and one pair of worn-out shoes that was stitched and re-stitched ten times over. Then, we were also very much at the mercy of the weather and the elements. Deprived of a rain coat and too self conscious to drape ourselves over with a plastic sheet, our uniforms and shoes would be drenched through. This, however, wasn’t the problem. The real problem was that we have to go to school the next in wet or at least damp shoes and clothes. My ever caring mother tried to save the day by asking me to carry my shoes in my bag. Sometimes, she would give me a pair of slippers which was co-owned by many in the family. Ocassionally, if I could take it, I walked bare-footed. But often times, I rather a wet pair of shoes the following day, than to risk walking bare-footed , all the way to school, from Kallang Rd to McNair Rd, off Balestier Rd.

Classroom life was not necessarily humdrum even in those days. Far from being lifeless, there was more than the usual classroom drama and excitement. It must be so because the impression I had of teachers in those days was that they had the license to ‘teach and beat’. They really spared no rod and probably spoilt every child, too. It was mostly the stick approach, very little carrot! If you forgot your multiplication tables, it was whack! If you failed to recite a poem word-perfect, it was also whack. And if you misspelt, you get the whack treatment, too! If you froze at mental sums, you bloody well got whacked, too! You got whacked with the ruler. You got whacked on the head with the blackboard duster. You got whacked anywhere on your anatomy with anything which the god-damned sadistic teacher could lay his hands on. Invariably, these treatments were meted out to those who happened to be not so scholastically blessed. At least, that was the style of some of my teachers.

The drama and excitement, was, however, blunted a little by the fact that I had the same teachers twice in the same year up till Primary 4. These robbed things a little of the shine, the variety and the fun. My P1 teacher was better known to me as ABC. These initials were emblazoned on everything, his record book, the class register and on the class time table, which was incidentally neatly framed and hung up! He was actually “Chua Ah Bah” to be precise. But I supposed since he was English-educated and can speak and write “England”, he decided to anglicise the way his name was to be formatted- surname at the end. So “Ah Bah Chua”, it was to be! And this translates into ‘ABC’ as his initials (QED!).

I had ABC for P1 and P2. That might as well be the case. Nearly all in my cohort first learnt their ABCs in school; save for those privileged ones whose parents (or at least one of them) came from the gentry -class and had an English-based education themselves. These people with silver-gilded mouth could speak English when they were first inducted into school. They were even more competent with the letters of the alphabet than Professor Higgins could teach Mary Hopkins to the tune and the sounds of music! But strangely, the first thing anywhere close to English which I leant in P1 was not ABC, but “Please, Sir may I go out (to the toilet)?”

If ABC was a stern school master, he was extra nice to me. I gave him no trouble. I even had the privilege of frequent rides in his car, not all the way home but up to the main road so that I walk all the way back. During Sports Day, I had extra cakes and ice creams. I need not have the necessary coupons to exchange for these items. He would seek me out from the stands and ushered me into the Common Room, and everything was laid out for me. Humility forbids me to recount but I was more than a model student. He was immensely proud of me and would show me off the teacher in the next class when I did something which he impressed him. Once, for example, we just finished a reading lesson in which the phrase ‘out of reach’ was in the text. He explained the phrase to the class and I believed we all understood. Not long after (say an hour or so later) he asked me to remove a chart which was pinned on the board at the back of the classroom. I helplessly told him that it was ‘out of reach”. He was so pleased with my apt application and usage of the phrase, that he came up to me, hugged me and brought me to the teacher next door and recounted the entire episode to her. On another day in P2, he told me to ask my father to see him. This usually forebode ill. It is always the case when a teacher wants to see you parents. I did not have the courage to ask for the reason and did dutifully what I had too. It was only when my father came that I knew what it was all about. It was about double-promotion which I did not want. Being a little kiasu, I told both ABC and my father that if I go for double promotion I may not top the class. I rather be a big fish in a small pond than a small one in a bigger pond! I was the only one who could bring library books from the little library corner home. He was more than convinced that I would read them, not just look at the ang kong, (Hokkien for pictures and illustrations) like the many others.

I cannot help but say a little more about the teacher next door, after mentioning her in passing in an earlier paragraph. She is Miss Yap. Miss Yap played the piano and fittingly, taught us music and singing. More significantly, she exudes style and elegance. Chauffeured driven to school, she definitely had the pedigree and a distinct aristocratic lineage. It would be an understatement to describe her as pretty as she is more beautiful than pretty. Endowed with great sartorial sense, she is elegantly suited up in cheongsam.

Cutting an imposing figure, she is quite an adornment in front of the otherwise dull and drab classroom. However, as the pupils then were only P1, it could also well be a case of “a flower wasting its scent in the desert air”

“Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air."

But no. I was naively mistaken. She flaunted her plumage more for the benefit of her male peers. Sadly too, this Miss Yap was perhaps a little hopelessly helpless and a trifle incompetent, too. Once too often, she would scurry over to my class, Primary I D, to consult ABC and sought his frequent but unwise counsel. ABC, naturally found her misfortune his opportunity!

Primary School

The Child is the Father of Man

As Wordsworth rightly points out,

''The Child is father of the Man;

And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.''

William Wordsworth (1770-1850), "My Heart Leaps Up When I Behold (l. 7-9)" .
In his next posting, Yakkity Yak ruminates on the signficance of a balanced childhood education in the intellectual, emotional and moral growth of a person.
 
Those Primary School Days: The Classroom Years
 
Yakkity Yak
 
                                        “What ails education?”


                                               

Childhood games and the out-of classroom activities have an often-slighted educational value. Sadly enough, there is still, a not insubstantial number of people who erroneously regarded ‘education’ and ‘literacy’ as mere semantic twins. And how wrong! Obviously they are not the same thing-in as much as the nit-pickers distinguish ‘education’ from ‘training’. These out of classroom activities may be activities outside the curriculum. Further, they may even not fall within the official extra-curricular-activities. But they still form part of the ‘hidden curriculum’, helping to shape and mould minds and attitudes. For the reason that attitudinal training is educational, the moguls, the nawabs and the sahibs of our present day educational system have now renamed extra-curricular activities as ‘co-curricular’ activities. I ask if there is anything wrong stretching things a bit further and re-designate them as ‘co-educational activities’? “Co- curricular” suggests that they are part of the curriculum, co-existing in a compatibly comfortable fashion with one another. Isn’t it true then, that anything that is part of the curriculum must further the larger educational objective? Co-curricular, therefore, is all at once, co-educational as well.

I know I don’t sound compelling. So, I feel compelled to turn over, the yellowing pages of my silverfish infested collection of essays to track down Robert Louis Stevenson’s “Apology for Idlers” to support my case. This classic was beyond my full comprehension when I was first introduced to it as a bumbling, wide-eye, wet-behind-the-ears and ignorant Sec 2 student. It certainly makes more sense to me now, in my more matured years. Robert Louis Stevenson said it all when he declared:

“Sainte-Beuve, as he grew older, came to regard all experience as a single great book, in which to study for a few years ere we go hence; and it seemed all one to him whether you should read in Chapter xx., which is the differential calculus, or in Chapter xxxix., which is hearing the band play in the gardens. As a matter of fact, an intelligent person, looking out of his eyes and hearkening in his ears, with a smile on his face all the time, will get more true education than many another in a life of heroic vigils. There is certainly some chill and arid knowledge to be found upon the summits of formal and laborious science; but it is all around about you, and for the trouble of looking, that you will acquire the warm and palpitating facts of life. While others are filling their memory with a lumber of words, one-half of which they will forget before the week be out, your truant may learn some really useful art: to play the fiddle, to know a good cigar, or to speak with ease and opportunity to all varieties of men. Many who have "plied their book diligently," and know all about some one branch or another of accepted lore, come out of the study with an ancient and owl-like demeanour, and prove dry, stockish, and dyspeptic in all the better and brighter parts of life. Many make a large fortune, who remain underbred and pathetically stupid to the last. And meantime there goes the idler, who began life along with them--by your leave, a different picture. He has had time to take care of his health and his spirits; he has been a great deal in the open air, which is the most salutary of all things for both body and mind; and if he has never read the great Book in very recondite places, he has dipped into it and skimmed it over to excellent purpose.”

So you can clearly see that contemporary educational-policy has turned full circle. “Apology for Idlers” was first published in the Cornhill Magazine, in as early as July 1877. That was a good 133 years ago! Apparently, the views held were as valid today as they were then.

For far too long, classroom education tended to be a laborious and incessant process of downloading knowledge into our cerebral-void; and needlessly so, too! Often, the process takes a preachy, didactic route. Just as often, the process involves knowledge assiduously transferred by the teacher and voraciously sponged-up by the students. Once again, it will be apt for me to quote R.L .Stevenson as he, more than a century ago, lamented that:

“A fact is not called a fact, but a piece of gossip, if it does not fall into one of your scholastic categories. An inquiry must be in some acknowledged direction, with a name to go by; or else you are not inquiring at all, only lounging; and the workhouse is too good for you. It is supposed that all knowledge is at the bottom of a well, or the far end of a telescope.”

But don’t get me wrong! I am all for education and the good that it brings. I am all for “education for education sake”. I am equally comfortable with those who champion the utilitarian value of education and its by-products. The upshot of all these is that I am an advocate of scholarship and learning and everything pedantic! Yet much of my account of the classroom years shall dwell on the less pedantic aspects of the classroom scene.

More light on Hantum Bola.

Additional Light on the Game of hantum bola

Victor Neo points out that another version of hantum bola which he used to play is as follows. Players would make a series of depressions in the ground in front of them. They would take turns to roll or throw the ball. Woe betide the person whose depression the ball landed in because the thrower would run up, picked up the ball and "hantum" (i.e.throw it) the unfortunate victim with it. I remembered seeing this being played. Most people would run away with the thrower in pursuit but a fewer of the braver or more foolhardy souls would charge at the thrower. When this happened, a fight would usually break out.

So indeed as all the writers point out, creativity ruled the day. Given a simple tennis ball many different permutations were possible to entertain us.

Here is the additional informtion that from Victor,

Hi Ban

I have read the post on hantum bola.


Below is a brief description of the game. But there are many variations to the game as played by boys of different groups and areas.


1. The ball we used is normally soft rubber ball which is about the size of the tennis ball.


2. The game is normally played by six to ten boys. Each boy owns a depression and the depressions are dugged near to each other and are within a somewhat circular area.


3. Each boy will have a turn at rolling the ball from a distance away , normally about ten feet away. The rest of the boys will cluster around the circumference of the depressions.


4. When the ball is roll in, each boy will try to see if the ball is coming to his depression. If the ball goes into his depression, the boy will pick the ball from the depression and throw it at one of the other boys who are running away.
My thanks to Victor.

Ho Swee Suah comments

A Comment from the Past.

I received an e mail from Ho Swee Suah (or Bukit Ho Swee), an old class mate from Bukit Merah Primary North School. He has retired or as he puts it, "retreated" to the border province of Chiang Rai in northern Thailand.

Bukit Merah North was in those days regarded as a bit of a "gangster" school although as Richard Ho points out not so "gangsterish" as Bukit Merah South.  The school was located deep within Ang Suah or Red Hill (that is, Bukit Merah) and students had to walk some distance in from the main road unless you could afford the fare for the Number 8 Hock Lee Bus that passed through the narrow lanes before its terminus at the SIT flats and the coffee shop. Very few could afford to do this.

The distance from the school  meant that much more fun for those of us who wanted to continue playing - you could take part in fighting spiders, gamble at marbles, stopped to kick at chapteh or jump around playing hopscotch (sometimes called tengteng) although it also meant that it was difficult to prevent oneself from being ambushed bu determined enemies.

Here is Ho Swee Suah's comment on reading Yakkity Yak's post on hantum bola.


Hi KC



I can’t put face to those who are writing but the choice of “Yakkity Yak” as a pseudonym is good. He is informational about many things. I recall in particular the game of hantum bola he writes about. When we were in school at Bukit Merah North hantum bola was played nearly every day in the hot afternoon sun sometimes before afternoon school. There were different forms of the game: we all play among ourselves throwing the ball up in the air and then catching it followed by hantuming the one nearest us with the ball. Then, we had different cliques (I think nowadays some would say “gangs”) and you can pass ball to your kaki who would then hantum an opponent with the ball. There were also games made up of class against class. These became quite serious and often ended in the fights that your writer mentioned too.


As far as I can remember there were three schools – Bukit Merah North, Bukit Merah South and at that time the one at the end called Bukit Merah East although on this I am not very sure. Somehow although the schools share the same field each had its own territory and hantum bola rarely involved different schools playing. This was lucky otherwise there would be more fisticuffs. It was common to ambush your opponent as he walked out to the main road. Frankly I never saw a single policeman or teacher in all these fights but also to be honest nobody ended in hospital although I think you can recall the guy whose shirt got torn and spectacles broken.


I wonder if you remember the “help” some of our classmates got. These were mainly the pai kia, the gangsters from around the area. If you live in Delta or Bukit Ho Swee you have to make it to your “home” to be safe. I don’t think you played hantum bola seriously as you were quite quiet but I remember you kick a football out of the class window and broke something. I think Mr Khoo whacked the hell out of you for this. Those were the days!

Ho Swee Suah"

A Trek Into The Past Part Two: Leaving Primary School

Primary Six

Yakkity Yak

Things came to a head when we reached Primary Six. By then, we were the oldest in the school. That automatically vested us with certain self-bestowed privileges. And rightly so, too, as were also the most matured and inevitably, the bravest in the school! Typically in those days, the class was somehow splintered into various rival groups, with each group having its own ‘champion’. The champion is, needless to say, the bravest, biggest and arguably, the best fighter in the group. Soon school life was marked by fist fights, either during recess, before or after school. The most popular venue for these fights was Alkaf Garden, now completely erased from the map of Singapore. It gave way to Willow Secondary School, which, I am not too sure, however, if it is still standing there. Anyway, these fights got so bad that at least one member of the groups, felt that it was prudent for him to voluntarily change school before his misdeeds caught up with him. There was also the Alkaf Lake within the garden which claimed the lives of quite a few swimmers. Rumours had it that the thick sea weeds in the lake impede the movements of swimmers and were therefore, responsible for the deaths.

Even when school life was less intense in those days, we still were driven enough to make sure we got the best out of the system. Like many others, we were self-starters and did most things, self-initiated. Our parents were too preoccupied with the more mundane task of house hold chores and eking out a living. Still, I thought it would be good to embellish my primary School Leaving Certificate with some entries on games that I represented the school in. Hence, I fought tooth and nail to get into the school’s soccer and badminton team. I did not care how strong or weak the school teams were. I just wanted to be part of that team. I remembered distinctly that I played second singles in the school badminton team when I was in Primary Four. We were badly thrashed 5-0 (3 singles and 2 doubles) in the first round and in the process, were eliminated from the tournament. Of course, I lost my game but so did others! The rub of the matter, however, is that I lost twice, not once. By default then, they banded the first and second singles to form the first double pair. Since we lost all matches to register the 5-0 score-line, it goes without saying that we lost the doubles as well – in fact both doubles.

The tournament was held at the Haw Par Badminton Party Hall in Rangoon Rd. It was, by modern day standard, more like a cow shed than a badminton hall; with tin-roof, wooden walls and all! Badminton in those days, certainly, evoked certain memories. No, it was no longer the Wong Peng Soon era. Malaya, then, (of which Singapore was a part) was represented by the likes of Eddy Choong (who is still alive and kicking and quite deeply immersed in the affairs of Malaysian badminton), Teh Kew San, Ooi Teik Hock , Johnny Heah etc. A racquet was quite expensive in those days and they are not like the sleek and light ones which we now have. They were heavy wooden contraptions which must be held in clamps when they were not used, so as to prevent warping. The more prestigious brands then were: Flight Commander, Silver Grey and to a lesser extent, Blue Bird.

Badminton continues to be a favourite sport in schools.

I cannot, however, let one thing get past. I made allusion to the Primary School Leaving Certificate, a paragraph or two earlier. It is indeed, noteworthy that my cohort was the first to take the, by now, very familiar PSLE examinations. It was in 1960 when we were in Primary Six, that they decided to abolish the erstwhile Entrance Examination and renamed it “Primary School Leaving Examination” or the dread PSLE. Hitherto, under the Entrance examination System, it was a case of taking the examination to seek entry into Secondary School. My cohort took the examinations as a rite of passage out of primary school. It is about leaving primary school, much less entry into secondary schools. Wittingly or otherwise, we were written off and implicitly, deemed ineligible for secondary schools. Whatever it is, the stage is now set for me to next talk about my secondary school days.

A Trek Into The Past Part Two: Those Primary Schooldays

Second Installment

Here is the second installment of Part Two of A Trek Into the Past.



                   Hantam Bola, Marbles and Table Tennis

                   by

                   Yakkity Yak

Talking about mass-games, besides the usual marbles, we had “hantam bola”, which is, I am reliably told, mysteriously banned from schools today. It was played with a water-soaked tennis ball and hurled with great might at whoever was within firing-range. Not surprisingly, often times our white shirt or pants would bear the mud-stained stamp of the bola. We, however, played this game with greater relish when we were in secondary 1, with a football. We progressed from the rudimentary and somewhat primitive ‘aim and hurl’ routine to ‘aim and shoot’ sequence. This is definitely a more adult-game. We have raised the already quite macho-game to the equivalent of the present day extreme-sport, at least comparatively if not absolutely. But what made the game more appealing then, was that our opponents were a class of ‘matured’ students, assembled from various Chinese schools to form a special School Certificate Class or the present day O-level. They wore long pants and so presented us a larger surface-area for us to stamp them with the much dreaded soccer-size ball-print.


I often silently deride those who make such a boast about their ability to keep their white school attire spotless and without any ball stains after a hectic bout of bola hatam. Little did they realize that their much vaunted reference to their pristine-white uniform betrayed the fact that they were never in the game at all. Just in case they still do not know after all these dreadful years, let me remind them that it is a trite and stale fact (as stale as last night’s nasi goreng) that to be in the game you must make a real scramble for the loose ball. Since only one man can win in this mad melee, you will inescapably be within striking distance of the person who eventually won the ball at the break-down. According to the yet to be written playing-manual, the technical phrase for this is: “To be able to hantam, you must risk being hantamed.” This is the first canon of the game of bola hantam. Come on, accept it! This is that sacred, immutable law of the game!

As for marbles, (also known as “Go-li”) there were the game of glass marbles and the regular stone marbles. A ‘goondu’ glass marble is much sought after and held a premium over the lesser others. Stone marbles were played in two ways. The first is “benda” (or something that sounded like that) in which those who ‘pasang’ would have their marbles placed within a rectangular shaped box drawn on the dirt-filled playground while the ‘Chyak Bak’ (literally the ‘eat flesh’) group will shoot these marbles from a line drawn some distance away from the rectangular box. The second version of the game is “lobang” or “hole”. This is quite a complicated process, and I cannot remember all the details.

I stand corrected but I think at the start of the game everyone had to twirl the marble towards the hole. The one nearest the hole earned the right to start the game. The starter’s objective is to strike all the other players’ marbles in succession. If he can, he wins. He stopped at the point when he failed to strike another player’s marble. The opportunity then goes to the player whose marble is second nearest the hole, during the start-up of the game. It then goes on in this fashion.

Marbles were a hazardous game when I was in Primary Six because there was a certain player we all feared. He had such a tempestuous streak in him that he would not hesitate to hurl the stone marble at any one who displeased him during the game. He was distinctly the prototype of the present day school bully. He carried this peculiar streak with him into secondary school where he became a top rugby wing-three and a champion school sprinter. He was variously known as “Ruffian” and “Mongolian” as he has thick angular bushy eye brows, to boot. He was the infamous Attila, the Hun as well. We aptly gave him these monikers.

For some reasons, table tennis was another game we liked in those primary school days. There was however, only one table tennis table in the entire school. We had to come early to ‘chorp’ or stake our claim to the table. I think I contributed immensely to this task of staking claims on the table. I went to school exceptionally early, literally before day break, when most would still be sound asleep. I was so early that my exasperated mother, once, asked me in all seriousness, whether it was also my sacred duty to open the school-gates. Coming back to the more serious business of staking claims, I must say that instead of planting a flag to stake our claims, we did so by placing the thickest book we had, on the table. Invariably, the thickest book in our school bag, then, was the legendary bluish ‘General Mathematics For Malayan Schools Vol. I’, by C.V. Durrell. We needed a few of these books to form the net at the centre of the table, probably around six. These books were laid spine-up in the middle of the table. Whoever is early enough to contribute a book, earned the right to play. If six books only were needed, the 7th person automatically forfeited his change of playing. We adopted the elimination-system which we called “King”. The winner stayed on to become the king and the others tried to knock him out. The one who succeeded will be crowned the new king. If you are a competent player, you invariably stayed on as king for a considerably longer period before anyone knocked you out. If you survived the first serve delivered to you by the reigning king, you would earn the right to compete with him in a game of 3 points. We have to keep the games short so that many could play. If you win this 3-point game, you would have dethroned him! If you cannot even survive the first serve, you get floored straight away, and in the process forfeited the opportunity to play this 3-pointer!

A Trek Into The Past Part Two: Those Primary Schooldays

Schooldays and Games: Postings by Yakkity Yak

In the next three postings, Yakkity Yak regales us with his account of schooldays. Despite the very real daily hardship when earning a living and struggling to make ends meet preoccupy nearly everyone, school  had an innocent and enjoyable colouration to it. There was, in the first place, little of the stress of needing to succeed, to score more distinctions or make it to ever better grades. You try to perform well but there was no guilt or pressure in enjoying oneself in or out of school.


Even more, school was a break, a world apart from the poverty of the home or the many (often financial) problems that the child grasped instinctively even though he or she was not fully aware of the issues. Indeed, it was this that often gave a completeness, an added dimension to school life and friends.


As Yakkity Yak candidly puts it, "If school was fun, it was because it provided me some sort of diversionary therapy. It was a welcomed break from the usual home and house drudgery...."


I think this insight is worthy rivalling that of many sociological studies! For those of us who lived in that period it was a world of enchantment, never to be repeated.


Read on and discover once again this enchanted world of games and delight amidst difficulties.

Those Primary Schooldays

                  "School was where the fun was”


                  by

                  Yakkity Yak

Primary Schooldays

Going to school was never a given, when the preoccupation, then, was really one of subsistence - finding the next meal. It was all about eking out a mere existence; definitely not a case of living. Living is invariably a grade above mere existence. I remembered that when the time came to registering me for Primary 1, my father agonized long and hard, over whether I should be sent to school at all, even though my two elder siblings were already in school. “Do you want to go to school?” my father would ask in real earnest. “Don’t know”, I muttered with deliberate nonchalance. I knew the question had more than rhetorical significance, and at once felt that the best answer was a non-answer. Till today, I reasoned that he was partly trying to deflect any blame for not sending me to school should it ever come to that. Surely, should I say “no”, I would be an inevitable party to that decision!

If school was fun, it was because it provided me some sort of diversionary therapy. It was a welcomed break from the usual home and house drudgery. Being a diffident little fella (and I think I remained so till today), I never really enjoyed the company of others. Fun, to me, especially during my initial years in school, never had a social dimension to it.

I have never hankered after companionship or fellowship. Instead, I often enjoyed solitude of Wordsworthian proportion. I possessed that trademark reclusiveness that is exclusive to the ascetics. I very much shunned the glare and fuss of inclusivity! So, a change of environment was itself, a prized diversion. For one thing, even the vast expanse of grass in front of the school was therapeutic. Given this propensity of a hermit, it was much later when my self confidence grew that I find some joy in mass-games with classmates. That was probably around Primary 5 or so. Things built to a crescendo in my Pre-U days when my self confidence moved up by some slow degrees.

Singapore Kampong Days

"In the Good Old Days..."



We think of kampongs as being idyllics retreats located in rural areas and the countryside. Indeed the vry word,"kampong" or "kampung"conjures up strong emotions of nostalgia, of days gone by, of country side living and of closed knit communities. Images of the kampong are very strongly imprinted in the cultural memory of many of us.

An archetypal image photograph of the kampong.

Y K Lai spent his childhood in a Boyanese kampong almost in the midde of town one might say. His account provides  insight into life in a kampong where different races lived harmoniously together. The Baweanese or Boyanese came from the Bawean Island in the Dutch East Indies. They built the Kampung Boyan (Boyanese Village) by the banks of the Rochor River, between Jalan Besar and Syed Alwi Road as early as the time of Munshi Abdullah and Stamford Raffles.

According to records, there was also a village within the town area that was inhabited by the Boyanese called Kampung Kapur (literally ‘Lime Village’) in the western part of Kampung Boyan (Boyan Village).

Here is Y K Lai's recollection.

Kampong Days

Y K Lai

I grew up in an area of saints. St Francis, St Barnabas, St Lawrence,St Wilfred, St George's and St Michael's -- roads, that is. This area, off Owgang Sar Koh Cheok (third milestone Serangoon Road) was known among locals as Hong Loh Yeow (translated literally as shaking stove).

Today, only St George's, St Francis and St Michael's roads remain. What was once an enclave with a large Boyanese (immigrants from Bawaen, East Java) kampong, flanked by single-storeyed civil servants' quarters, raised detached house and the St Francis Girls' School is no more -- replaced by ubiquitous Housing Board flats.

It was in this Boyanese kampong that I spent my childhood and teenage years.

The kampong, the size of about four football fields, had about 50 Boyanese families with a sprinkling of Malay, Indian and two Chinese familes, including mine. Home was a huge zinc- and attap-roofed wooden structure which was sub-divided into three.

A kampung house with the ubiquitous zinc roof.


My parents and the ten children lived in one section, roughly the size of a tennis court, while my paternal grand-parents and three bachelor uncles lived in a smaller section. The third was rented out by my father to a Thai bomoh, whom I addressed as "uncle". He made a living by helping women working as bar girls and nightclub hostesses to be more attractive to theircustomers. This he did by chanting spells and bathing them with scented water.

The house was always filled with the scent of sandalwood incense and kemayen (a kind of resin that gave off a sweet-smelling fragrance). "Uncle" had a daughter from Bangkok who often visited him and she was a typical Thai beauty with flawless skin and a radiant smile. She taught me how to sing Loy Krathong, which I remember till today.

The kampong was bounded by Serangoon Road, St George's Road, St Francis Road and part of St Michael's Road. The civil servants' quarters (housing mainly lower-salaried PWD workers) was in an area that is now St George's Lane while the better-off Chinese, Eurasians and some Caucasians lived in what was then St Barnabas, St Lawrence and St Wilfred Road.

The area had four provision shops, two run by Chinese shopkeepers and two by Indians, along St George's Road. In their midst were a tailor shop and a Malay barber shop. These shops provided almost all the needs of the residents. Nearer the outside world -- Serangoon Road -- was a coffeeshop which still stands today at the junction of Serangoon and St George's roads.

For me, life as a young boy and teenager revolved around going to school and returning home to mingle with my neighbours. In kampong life, all our homes were open to our neighbours. Race was never an issue because we did not see each other as different. I remember that I could walk into any of my neighbours' homes and partake in any meal or dessert they were having. Likewise, my mother always welcomed my Boyanese, Malay, Indian friends or the children of the other Chinese family into the house. There wasn't food aplenty but sharing was second nature for all of us.

The favourite family must have been that of Mohd Jan's. He was a Malay who worked as a driver for the Guthrie company. He moonlighted as a wedding caterer for Muslim weddings on weekends.

That was when he would bring out huge aluminium pots to cook mutton rendang, curry chicken, achar and Muslim fare over charcoal fires in his front yard. Invariably, there would be extra food that he prepared and he would give this to the kampong kids. To poor kids like me, it was the only real feast to be had for a long while and it is not difficult to understand why my love for Muslim food remains till today.

A favourite pastime was to go on spider hunts and my companions were always two of the boys from theChinese family. A secret spot where fighting spiders with red mandibles -- prized catches -- were to be found was the mangrove swamp along the Kallang River nearby. It was quite lucrative as I sold the spiders to classmates in school who had no inkling where these could be found.

Kampong life in the evenings would involve almost all of the boys trotting down to the BODCA (British Ordnance Depot Civilians' Association) field in St Wildred Road for a game of football. There were kampong footballing heroes aplenty -- players like Matmoon Sudasee and Buang bin Napiri who turned out for Singapore.

When night fell, residents would gather at a makeshift sepak takraw court in the middle of the kampong. Out came the kerosene pressure lamps and they would be hoisted on tall poles to light up the court. On windless night, the court was used for badminton. The jagoh kampong (kampong champion) was a man named Suri. He taught me the finer points of the game and I am indebted to him for helping me become the RI singles champion in 1966.

I left the kampong when I started working. My parents and my younger siblings too moved on to a five-room HDB flat in nearby Geylang Bahru in the early 1970s when the kampong land was slated for development into a HDB estate. To this day, I still meet up with some of my former neighbours, whether Malay, Boyanese, Indians or Chinese, many of whom had opted for flats in the same area.