Childhood

This is my first blog after much encouragement by my cousin Ivan Chew. I notice that most blogs are by young people. I am already 72 years old and my cousin is less than half my age. Anyway, there must always be a start and here I am Ivan! To begin with I like to talk about my primary school days. As a school boy, I had to study and pass the exams year after year, and I would be at peace with the adults at home. In the early post war days, all schools had only one session in the morning, so afternoons were free
and so it was play time until sun set. I remember fishing in the streams and catching spiders in bushes and hedges. I also played marbles and won a lot. I was not good at kite fighting and alway had to carry the strings for my elder brother. There were a lot of other games that children played then. One of them was called 'Chiang Kuda' in Malay (ride on horse back). The loser would carry the winner on his back for a distance. The alternative was for the winner to pull the ear lobe of loser to the distance agreed in the game. I like my primary school which was the Telok Kurau English School at Lorong J Telok Kurau. It was a 2 storey wooden building with a staircase at both end. One was near the canteen and the other nearer the hall. There was a large school field stretching from the school building to Lorong H Telok Kurau. The school servants' quarters were within the school compound, next to the school hall and keeping poultry was not a health problem then.

Picture shows a class (Std III) outing at the Botanic Garden.
The class teacher was Lee Keng Yew and the woman his wife.
I was on the extreme left.