Thirty years after graduating from high school, over 80 ex-students and their families returned to Singapore from their current homes all over the world, to the SIS/UWCSEA reunion between 29 December 2005 and 3 January 2006.
The challenge was set five years ago when James Alexander was visiting me and Amanda on one of his annual Christmas visits. During one well-wined barbeque, James and I were talking about how much Singapore had changed and what fun it would be to visit with a group of old school friends to ooh-aah about the changes. Amanda suggested we organise a reunion and get our friends there, suggesting 30 years was a nice round number - hence 2005/2006.
It seemed so simple at the time.
Well, five years later and after the last three years of hard-core organising, we were there.
The core group around which the reunion was organised was Stanie's Fourth. This was the Third Year of 1971/72, the year SIS opened. When we were in the Fourth Year, under John Staniforth, we called ourselves Stanie's Fourth. This core group consists of those who left before we graduated in 1976 as well as those who joined us in the years in between.
The reunion however was open to all years above and below us - the main criteria being that as long as they would not feel left out if their year was not well represented.
The reunion was organised around three core events, being the opening evening on December 29th at Modesto's Restaurant for drinks and nibblies, the visit and lunch at school the following day, and the New Year's Eve dinner at the Miramar Hotel. The rest of the six days was left free for people to catch up, shop and see the changes in Singapore.
Before I go on, I must thank several people for their help.
Considering the reunion was organised via e-mail, and that at the beginning I had only nine e-mail addresses, considerable thanks must be given to the network of people who forwarded my e-mails or sent in others so that, like topsy, it grew and grew.
Particularly thanks to Bob Strachan who could not be there himself due to work commitments, for finding a crowd of people; to Katie Shaw who not only gathered a list of names from Australia but brought ten of them herself; and to Bill Lodwick, the Google search king who patiently fed names into Google to see what came up.
Especially, thanks must go to Mucki Tan who was the only person "on the ground" in Singapore and so, apart from the small matter of running his business had to visit several venues and negotiate for us. Modesto's was Mucki's find. Thanks too for his generosity in welcoming us non Singaporeans back to the city we grew up in, dinners he organised and paid for, tea at his house, just the sheer amount of time he gave up - his contribution and generosity was monumental.
Thanks too to Jane Warren, who organised the school visit and lunch from her home in Canada.
My initial plans had been to organise accommodation at school, to take advantage of the boarding rooms and common rooms as off-event gathering places, but due to security issues this was not to be. Plan B involved lunch at the school around the swimming pool. Over time it was seen the swimming pool was out due to insurance reasons and Plan C evolved which was the tour and lunch.
As Plan C evolved there were several hiccups and as I threw my electronic arms in the air to Jane, she, a professional mediation counsellor stepped in last year and calmly took over and smoothed out all the "issues".
Amanda and I arrived late at the first event at Modesto's Restaurant in the Elizabeth Hotel, arriving to a party in full swing. To this day, the first night is a hazy memory. After so many years of organising, negotiating, cajoling, writing newsletters to encourage interest, dealing with disappointments and changes of plans, to arrive to a roomful of memory was overwhelming.
I remember smiling a lot. I remember hugging and kissing friends I had not seen for 10, some 20, some 30 years. I remember seeing Jane Warren for the first time since we were both studying in London in the late '70's, and meeting her husband Bob with whom we had been corresponding since we hosted their daughter Nicole on her Australian visit. I remember hugging Carole and meeting her husband Richard. I remember seeing Jeevan and Vasugi, whom we last saw a few years ago in Perth. I remember chatting to Jenny Ferrie, Jenny Pawley (Gough) and her daughter whom I last saw when she was knee-high to the proverbial grasshopper, Robert Royal, Kim Ivey, David and Harriet, Carol Lynch (Tasker) and David Tasker. In the milling and circulating I think, nay, I'm sure I didn't introduce Amanda to many and left her marooned somewhere with the people she had met before.
I remember being surprised that there seemed so many people who filled the room, happy to see some unexpected faces, trying to circulate to say hello to everyone. It was an impossible task.
As some have said after the event, I'm sorry if I didn't get to spend enough time with you during the week, it was not intentional; we tried to ration out and rationalise as much as possible, to speak to as many as possible. But it was an impossible task.
Mucki had organised a table for us at Modesto's and some of us broke off to join him. The rest of the party broke off about 9PM and people went off to dinner at various venues.
Most, although not all of us were staying at the Miramar Hotel on Havelock Road, just across from the river, and the next morning, people gathered for breakfast and caught up there on various tables. Bill Lodwick turned up then - I have a picture of him laughing and laughing as people came up to him to say hello. Bill was Bill.
After breakfast, people made their way to school in small groups, on their own steam. Amanda and I travelled in a group that consisted of Jane and Bob, Rob Prester and his wife Patty, and Carol and David Tasker. We went by a combination of the MRT and bus, arriving at the bus stop just outside what used to be the school gates.
Getting off on Dover Road was a shock. On both sides of the road were Polytechnic and University buildings and luxury apartments mixed up with HDB flats, and Dover Road is now a busy main road. Gone was leafy, quiet Dover Road with the (newish) intrusion of the two HDB blocks across the road.
The old road into school is now a public road into flats and building sites putting up more flats where Senior House and the netball courts used to be. The entrance and guard house is now about 100m further in than it used to be, opposite the old Headmaster's House (now derelict and looking forlorn).
Arriving in the school grounds we were met with the sight of a multi storey administration block over an undergroubd car park, an Olympic size swimming pool roughly where the old one used to be, and all weather tennis courts, again where they used to be. We had to walk up ramps and quite a way before we recognised anything - the "sails" of the old Main Hall, now opposite the Junior School where the old teachers' offices used to be.
We gathered in the quad where the fountain had been, now a dry quad area with benches and tables and covered by a huge tent for shade. Taken on a brief tour of the newer parts of the school we walked between the old Science and Humanities Blocks towards what I think used to be the Domestic Science Block, except this was now an Astro turf football pitch. Under this was an underground complex of drama halls, music rooms and a purpose built exam hall.
From there we walked through to where the former girls' and junior boarding houses were. Both buildings have been demolished and new ones built. Some went for a tour of the rooms as the others retired for lunch at the fountain.
Lunch was catered by the company that now does the meals - and it was excellent. It was a buffet meal including satay, curries and other Asian goodies we had all missed.
It was a hot, hot humid day - surely it was never that hot 30 years ago? I remember wearing jumpers! Either we were no longer acclimatised or global warming was showing us the effect in Singapore.
That evening people went to dinner in groups at various places. Amanda and I followed David Hanna's group.
Now for those of you not aware, David appreciates good food and fine wine. When we holiday together in Australia, wherever we are, David has done his research and found the best restaurants.
Singapore was no different - David had read up. As Rob Prester said, wherever we go in the world, I want to be with David for meals!
David took us to the No Signboard Seafood Restaurant in Geylang. With David and Harriet and Amanda and I were Jane and Bob, Rob and Patty, Carol and David and Kappei. David and Harriet ordered, being the only Mandarin speakers (I hid). We had pepper crabs, big fish, big prawns and other big seafood. It was good.
The next day was a free day and Amanda and I indulged in some serious "Pretty Woman" retail therapy that involved carrying inordinate amounts of plastic shopping bags back to the hotel. I bought out the local Timberland store and Amanda made a serious dent in the island's stocks of handbags and shoes.
That evening, New Year's Eve, we met up at the bar in the Miramar for pre-dinner drinks. Americk and Dee and Wan Hisham had also arrived by then.
At dinner, we did not have a special room but joined the other hotel guests, although we represented well over half the diners. The hotel set up a "mobile disco" and there was a dance floor, which, as the night wore on, saw some action.
The DJ was also MC for some dubious competitions - to which Patty Prester became judge and prize-presenter, awarding a bottle of wine to some under-age winner. At some stage, for some unknown reason ("I didn't sign up for this") Rob and Patty, Jane and Kappei (Bob hid) and Amanda and I ended up on stage for some adult form of pass the parcel that eventually involved shirtless, sockless men running around the room retrieving items of clothing. I think we won something.
Just before midnight, some of the group went upstairs to view the fireworks at Marina Harbour, while another party walked down the river to Boat Quay to see them from there. This is where the night became seriously hazy for me.
I remember a lot of singing.
As we walked back to the hotel after the fireworks, Kim Ivey passed us and the next morning he said that he could hear us singing before he could see us, and that we were "happy".
Before we arrived at the hotel another group emerged with new and late arrival, Ismail Sharif, so we about-faced and ended up at a bar across the river from the hotel. There, the evening moves from hazy to black.
We sat and drank and talked until one by one we hit the wall. I can't quite remember when Amanda and I left, or the walk back to the hotel; but it was obviously uneventful as we woke up the next morning unscathed and in our own beds.
Over the next few days people moved in and out of groups and spent the days sight-seeing, shopping or just catching up in the bars, coffee-shops and restaurants. The last big event, this one "unofficial" was a dinner at Holland Village where almost everyone turned up on a seriously rainy evening. Again people moved around tables trying to catch up with as many people as possible.
One of the worst aspects of a reunion can be the reminiscing - "do you remember when" to the exclusion of everything else, possibly even to the exclusion of spouses and partners; or reminiscing in the groups you always stayed in, repeating adolescent stresses of belonging to the right crowd. I can't say I felt any of that.
Perhaps it is that we caught up again when we were in our forties, when the context of our lives now, is larger to us than the context of the past. Perhaps we showed that our friendships and shared experiences were so deep that we did not need to voice memories - only that we enjoyed them, each other, and our collective formative years.
Whatever the reason, my impression was not one of harking back. Instead it was one of celebrating where our lives had taken us from a common childhood, apart but together. It was happiness in reforging old friendships, of saying "hello" to people whom you knew intimately, but were also newly met. It was good to meet husbands and wives and children (despite the rude shock of knowing that some of the children are older than we were when we left school) and to include them in the most touching period of our young lives.
For our part, Amanda and I see David and Harriet, and Bill and his wife Caroline regularly. We have recently seen Kim and Jeevan and of course our Christmas is not Christmas if James Alexander does not spend it with us.
However, I am so glad to have remade my close friendship with Rob Prester and to meet his effervescent wife Patty. I remember how close I was to Rob now, even though I may have forgotten it in the intervening years. We will stay in touch.
Amanda and I left Singapore to holiday with Jane and Bob in Penang. Jane was Vice-Chairperson of the School Council when I was Chair. Although I had not seen her for over 20 years we were very close then. We will stay in touch.
I hugged Kappei when he left, my old dorm-mate and fellow Sharp House Prefect, my fellow Sharp Sharks Football Team coach. He said "I have been out of contact for so long, I hope we won't lose contact again". We will stay in touch.
Finally, for those who were unable to come for family and business reasons, those who sent us their best wishes, we remember you too. We will stay in touch.
And for those with whom we can no longer stay in touch - John Staniforth, Joe Young, Tom Clarke, Tim Mirams, Bridson Cribb, Mandy Coles, Ann Bentley, Mark Sherwin, these are the ones I know of - we remember you too.
Recent Comments