You don't drop in to visit the museum of your alma mater without dropping in to visit your old classroom, and that is precisely what I did when I dropped in to the PLMGSS Museum a year or so ago.
It was actually 2017- that's close to two years- and although in the span of time it can seem rather long- after all, much can happen in even a year, but consider that this classroom has been here for more than twenty years, and time is no longer as distant as it seems anymore.
If you have ever wanted to know how some Singapore schools built in the 80s looked like, the first picture would be it. A good number of our schools had courtyards that were basically a square field of grass, a few plants here and there, and little else. The Primary side of my alma mater had a nice little pond and bridge. The Secondary side didn't. Just what you see above- the same as it was when it was constructed more than twenty years ago.
Amazingly I don't remember any one of us cutting across the courtyard in an attempt to save time.
NO ONE.
Maybe because our hawk-eyed P had her office behind one of those shuttered windows, and none of us wanted to be singled out as the "girl cutting across the courtyard" over the intercom loudspeaker.
To this day I wonder why it was forbidden.
The picture of the classroom is in fact the actual classroom where I spent five days a week over a span of two years in Upper Secondary. My seat was close to the window where the centre pillar is- not directly next to the shutters- that seat was occupied by my friend WW- I sat next to her along the aisle and right in front of the teacher's desk, three rows from the front.
And I was a fairly different person then.
At least I think so.
Some of my closest peers might say that I'm more or less the same. Others might wonder how this bespectacled, short-haired, hack-fringed girl who didn't talk much turned out to the long-haired, selective-speaking gal today.
I'm not sure myself.
But what I do know is that, as quiet as I used to be, I do have fond memories of my last two years in this very classroom. It was here that I managed to read a whole bunch of fashion magazines for the first time. It was here that I got to know my friends better and with a close pal, raced to the canteen for a prolonged recess on Mondays.
And not only was it the time of the Casio Baby G craze, the Ant and Dec craze, the Take That craze, the TCS craze, the Cantopop and Mandopop craze, it was also the years that we ploughed through balancing Chemistry equations, algebraic formulas, the history of Thailand and WWII, the complicated (but also not so complicated) diagrams of the heart and respiratory system, and the sentences of Shakespearean plays alongside with the characters of Bathsheba, Gabriel and Troy from the writing of Thomas Hardy.
It was actually 2017- that's close to two years- and although in the span of time it can seem rather long- after all, much can happen in even a year, but consider that this classroom has been here for more than twenty years, and time is no longer as distant as it seems anymore.
If you have ever wanted to know how some Singapore schools built in the 80s looked like, the first picture would be it. A good number of our schools had courtyards that were basically a square field of grass, a few plants here and there, and little else. The Primary side of my alma mater had a nice little pond and bridge. The Secondary side didn't. Just what you see above- the same as it was when it was constructed more than twenty years ago.
Amazingly I don't remember any one of us cutting across the courtyard in an attempt to save time.
NO ONE.
Maybe because our hawk-eyed P had her office behind one of those shuttered windows, and none of us wanted to be singled out as the "girl cutting across the courtyard" over the intercom loudspeaker.
To this day I wonder why it was forbidden.
The picture of the classroom is in fact the actual classroom where I spent five days a week over a span of two years in Upper Secondary. My seat was close to the window where the centre pillar is- not directly next to the shutters- that seat was occupied by my friend WW- I sat next to her along the aisle and right in front of the teacher's desk, three rows from the front.
And I was a fairly different person then.
At least I think so.
Some of my closest peers might say that I'm more or less the same. Others might wonder how this bespectacled, short-haired, hack-fringed girl who didn't talk much turned out to the long-haired, selective-speaking gal today.
I'm not sure myself.
But what I do know is that, as quiet as I used to be, I do have fond memories of my last two years in this very classroom. It was here that I managed to read a whole bunch of fashion magazines for the first time. It was here that I got to know my friends better and with a close pal, raced to the canteen for a prolonged recess on Mondays.
And not only was it the time of the Casio Baby G craze, the Ant and Dec craze, the Take That craze, the TCS craze, the Cantopop and Mandopop craze, it was also the years that we ploughed through balancing Chemistry equations, algebraic formulas, the history of Thailand and WWII, the complicated (but also not so complicated) diagrams of the heart and respiratory system, and the sentences of Shakespearean plays alongside with the characters of Bathsheba, Gabriel and Troy from the writing of Thomas Hardy.