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wonderful teachers who genuinely cared about us. Names like Oliver Seet and Gabriel Pillai ring from my past. They were the kind of teachers who went the extra mile for us and inspired us to think about our futures. Former young ‘hooligans’ like me will forever be grateful to them. Unfortunately, we had many more teachers who were not particularly interested in teaching us. They just went through the motions. Some openly told us we didn’t have to aim high in our exams but to just do well enough to find employment within the Base. Perhaps they felt that it was noble to follow in our fathers’ footsteps, but I’ve always felt they should have given us more to aim for. They should have allowed us to dream. When the bell rang at the end of each school day, some of these teachers raced off in their Volkswagens or Morris Minors or motorbikes.
    I was at Naval Base School throughout my secondary school education. From a personal viewpoint, Secondary 1 and 2 were terrible years academically. I only just managed to pass those years and was usually propping up the rest of the class in our tests. It didn’t help that my disciplinary record was also among the worst in my class. We got into trouble for a range of things, including fighting, truancy and playing jokes on our teachers and other students. In Secondary 2, I was nearly expelled for hitting a prefect who I felt was dishonest. My instincts about him were later proven to be correct. Mr Pillai, who knew my family, came to my rescue. He gave a guarantee to the school principal that I would behave. It was an incredibly risky thing for him to do. Looking back, I think that represented a key crossroads in my life. I had to change my ways or I was out of school. My deepest fears relating to my parents reverberated around that misdeed. Mr Pillai’s faith in me also had an impact. I decided to change my ways insofar as a young boy can make such a momentous decision. It was helpful that many of my cohorts in misbehaviour had by then left school to start work. It made it easier to concentrate on my studies as there were fewer people to distract me. I started to be more attentive in class and stopped playing truant. I took exams seriously, actually making an effort to study for them. The teachers were happy with my progress and their mantra of “Must try harder” gradually became one of “Has shown good progress”.
    My turnaround from being a chronic troublemaker in school was complete when at the end of Secondary 3, I was nominated by the teachers to be a prefect. It was a terribly embarrassing moment for someone like me who had shown scant respect for authority, apart from my parents, for much of my life. I decided to accept the nomination only because my childhood friend, David Cheng Lai Beng, who had also been nominated, said it would look good in our testimonials if we were prefects. I can remember vividly the first day of the new school year walking through the gates of Naval Base School wearing my prefect’s badge. I was jeered. Things soon got worse as Lai Beng left school after only about a month to become an apprentice at the Base. I was alone with my prefect’s badge.

TWO
PREFECT
     
     
    I think I was born to be a prefect. I remember minute details of my duties. The disclipinary master would send me to admonish the most notorious characters in school. In fact, my proficiency as a prefect got me appointed as assistant head boy of the school. I was really flying in those days. I was also elected house captain and chairman of the drama society, and I won school colours for athletics, hockey and soccer. I participated in all these sports at combined schools events too. These activities certainly helped mould my character, and I still look back at my youthful achievements with tremendous pride.
    Though my star shone brightly in the second half of my secondary school years, I didn’t forget the friends I used to get into trouble with. We remained supremely loyal to each