I'd been wishing to go visit my alma mater for a long, long time now.
After all I'd not stepped back through the gates since the day in 1997 when I collected my results and walked out the small red gate together with The Parent- and my friend from class.
The intervening years were spent building the life that I thought I'd build. There was no Facebook and I wasn't in the Alumni, so other than a bit of news here and there, and there and here, I'd gotten few updates of The School.
What I did know was that the long-serving School Principal with the laser eyesight that could penetrate three buildings behind and three floors up to announce over the PA System that this one girl in this class was not standing at attention had retired and the VP had taken over. What I did know that school rules had lengthened the girls' hair lengths and no longer did the girls need to keep it above the collar line. What I did know too, was that they'd renovated, adding more buildings to the structure that had been there 'in my time'.
And then, the School turned 100 years old with a joyous October celebration at Marriott Tang Plaza Hotel where the Prime Minister was the Guest Of Honor, and where the alumni, old girls, Principals past and present, Vice Principals past and present and Teachers past and present went.
Me, all I wanted to do was to celebrate her 100 years in my own quiet way... to visit the PL Museum in the secondary school campus. :)
Which I did.
I made a trip down to Lorong Ah Soo one afternoon, told the security guard where I was going and he gave me a pass and directed me to the General Office where the clerk whom I vaguely remember from 'my time' got me to log in and then I waited as she got another staff to unlock the museum doors.
The PL Museum is much nearer to the General Office now. It used to be at the Ebenezer Block- the Block Sec 4 students in 1996 were plonked at, and from where we spent 8 months gazing out the windows at the digging equipment turning over our field and transforming it into a stadium track that we had raised funds for- with a fun fair- in the previous year. Now it's just fifteen steps away at most.
Strangely though, once through the doors and you feel like you've entered the school grounds of Boundary Road.
You're greeted by two adjoining walls of pictures and I stood there and stared for a bit of a time, just looking at the faces and wondering how it were to be a student in the school back then, and were any of my teachers there as students, and getting fascinated by the pictures of the school canteen and the courtyard and the girls gathered there.
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| the Boundary Road canteen and courtyard |
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| from the graduates' collection |
Then there were the replicas and the exhibits brought over from Boundary Road. There were two desks. There were a couple of exercise books from the 80s and which I was quite tempted to flip through, but didn't. There was a sewing machine which was a much more vintage one than the one I used for Domestic Science class. There were the pens and chairs and a very white mug.
There were the stools, and the various outfits worn by the girls for various activities. I still own the jacket, the school uniform and the PE shirt and shorts. And the red tie, which somehow came into effect in the last year of school.
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| historic desk, present day mug |
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| polished stools |
On one side there was a chair brought over from the chapel and the Cliff song sheets with short choruses. The chapel chairs used to be green and they looked rather heavy if needed to be carried about.
And in the middle of it all were these scaled models that showed the school compounds from Boundary Road to Lorong Ah Soo to the new additions at Lorong Ah Soo. I had great fun measuring the distances between the blocks.
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| scaled models |
And below these models were wide drawers filled with the written material. There were the song books from the various years. There was the program brochure from the School's 75th Anniversary Operetta and which I participated whilst still being a student 'on top of the hill'. And there were the large class registers and lists and more registers and lists.
But I didn't have time to see them all. -_-