Simpang Lima Reunion

Mr. Wong trying to get everyone to sit still before the pictures are taken.


Two Sundays ago, I went to my primary school reunion. Yes, my primary school. There weren’t many of us, eleven of us showed up. That’s not bad considering that we only could contact about twenty-three of our friends.

To make matters a bit lopsided, ten teachers showed up. Mrs. Ng, my Standard 2 teacher and Miss Nages (then Miss), my Standard 5 teacher was there. I wonder what happened to Miss D’Cruz (Standard 1) and Miss M. Losam (Standard 3). Mr Ngoh (Standard 4 and Standard 6) has migrated to Australia. But his nephew Alex was there and he promised to inform us should Mr. Ngoh comes back to Malaysia for whatever reason.

There was Mr. Jeyaraman, who was the headmaster, Miss Maheswari, Miss Tan, Mrs. Ng, Madam Ee, Mr. Richard Samy, Mrs. Ong and Mr. Wong. Mr. Wong is also the father on Chin Hee, who passed away while he was in Form 1, from a brain tumor, if I got that right. Mr. Jeyaraman looked pretty much like he was then, except that he was a bit thinner and some grey hairs were evident. Most of us are larger than the teachers, hahahaha.....

I haven’t seen Alex, Peng Hwee, Arumugam and Meng Wah since we left school. I know Alex is a commercial pilot. Meng Wah is working in one of the big private firms in KL and Peng Hwee has a successful real estate business but I did not have the chance to speak to Arumugam. But then whatever we are doing for a living, to each his own, it does not matter.

I mentioned that Miss Nages have the distinction of being the teacher who presided over the only word I ever got wrong in spelling in primary school. The word was “tomorrow “ and I wrote it as “tomorow”. To this day, I am gently reminded of her each and every time I use that word. It was good to see the teachers again.

That school was out of the way from where I lived but my brother went to that school so I guessed that was why I did too. We lived on the other side of the river and it was quite a distance away. The monthly bus pass with the KL Kelang and Port Swettenham Bus co. costs RM 3 then. If I were in the morning session, I’d reach home at about 2.30 pm and that was that. There were no tuitions nor music lessons nor anything else. If I were in the evening session, I’d reach home at about 7.30 pm, after the bus had dropped the kids off at Kampung Jawa, Connaught Bridge Power Station and Johnsen. Then that was that too, no tuitions nor music lessons nor anything else.

School was very uncomplicated then.

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