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weren’t as bad. Mrs Foo beckoned Shashi and I to the front of the class. When she asked us if it was true that we had inflicted the injuries, I didn’t lie. I said yes. She stared at me for some time. Then she asked me if I was a hooligan. That was a new word to me and I wondered for a moment what the right answer was. As I had said yes to her first question, I decided to be consistent and say yes again. As soon as I said it, Mrs Foo slapped me. I didn’t have time to duck. I don’t think teachers are allowed to slap students these days, but when I was younger, it was not an issue. Teachers could hit us on the knuckles with rulers, pull our ears and grab our hair without compunction. It was all part of the character-building process. My face stung with pain and I knew I had given the wrong answer. She turned to Shashi and asked him whether he was a hooligan. Without hesitation, he said yes too and received an even harder slap. As Shashi was fair-skinned, his face soon turned red. Later I asked Shashi why he answered yes, knowing that I got slapped for that same answer. He told me he hadn’t realised that. Shashi was a great kid, if not particularly bright. I bumped into him a few years ago. He was driving a taxi for a living and looking very well. We laughed over the incident. However, I must say that Mrs Foo was a fair lady. She made her own inquiries into why the monitors had been assaulted and discovered their bullying nature. They were removed from their positions and we spent the rest of the year with no monitors. That was the end of the indiscriminate bullying.
    I did well in primary school, gaining a double promotion from Standard I to Standard III. I was almost given a second double promotion from Standard III to Standard V, but it was vetoed by the Principal, Mr Thambapillay. He said I was too young to be in Standard V. By the time I reached Standard V, our school was transferred to the Naval Base School, and Admiralty Asian School ceased to exist. From then on, we were in a properly run school under the Ministry of Education.
    While my primary school days were fun, I think I spent the happiest times of my life in Naval Base School. At the time, it was the only government, English-medium school in Singapore with pupils from Primary 1 to Secondary 4. It was also a co-ed school with morning and afternoon sessions. Children from the greater Sembawang area went to the school, creating a rich mix of students from different backgrounds. Some of them came from families who were so poor that they found it difficult to pay school fees. They often didn’t have enough money to buy even the cheapest items in the school tuckshop. I remember some of them living in attap huts in the Sembawang area. Conditions were squalid in those days, with families living in small partitioned rooms within each hut. A common kitchen served all the families. The toilet facilities comprised an outhouse which nightsoil carriers cleared each day. Many residents still used well water to bathe but there were PUB standpipes serving villages. I don’t think they had electricity, telephones or street lights. The roads were muddy tracks that would become rivers of flowing mud when it rained heavily. Kerosene lamps were the brightest source of light and these usually lit up the common verandahs of the attap huts. Inside their partitioned rooms, residents had to make do with candles. I felt lucky to be living in the relative comfort of Block 9. The circumstances from which the poorer students came drove some of them to work extremely hard at school so they could escape the poverty trap. Many succeeded, going on to become lawyers like me, and doctors and engineers. Some went into business. But the same poverty also drove others to crime. Many of my friends joined the triads of the time, with some becoming powerful leaders in them. Some of those who had chosen crime went to jail while others just vanished from Singapore.
    Along the way, there were some