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.
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