By Sylvia Toh Paik Choo

ON first receiving notice of a reunion for a class of '59, you should be ashamed if you think out loud, 'oh dear, sure all oldies'.

With particular attention to this group of 'oldies', there were never more 'goodies'.

Good stock, of sound young hearts and crackling agile minds, and the liveliest sense of humour my fortune to encounter.

This was a special cohort, the Arts Faculty of '59 (year of admission) of the first year of the University of Malaya in Singapore. (By the time they graduated, it was the University of Singapore.)

Typically, Robert ran into Denis, in a jazz pub, he said, 'Eh, why not get together.' Denis said, 'Okay, I organise.'

And perhaps untypically, it did come to pass.

Last week, almost to the day of their first day in Bukit Timah campus, 30 of the pioneer batch met over dinner in Guild House (BT campus), their recollections and memories rich enough to fill an adult boys' own book.

The old boys and girls reunion - average age a youthful 70 - was entry to a world half a century away from here and now.

Many are retired from their professions and top civil servant posts, but fortunately, not from the art of story-telling. It is unconfined joy to listen to people who express fluently in full sentences.

With affection, they recalled lecturers like 'the flamboyant Ceylonese Salgado, who would turn up at tutorials in bathroom slippers, lie on the table, with his notes scribbled on his palms!'.

Or 'the history (professor) who, on a digging trip to Kelantan, produced a stone he said was 16th century. We took it as gospel only to find out later it was from Alexandra brickworks!'

Teachers

Great teachers, like Prof D J Enright, 'who got into trouble with the government' and Prof Kiang Ai Kim, 'sometimes see him in the supermarket, a simple man'.

Mr Richard Gomez, who represented Singapore in hockey, said: 'Three things we had: sports, politics, arts - our strengths.

'The education we had was superb, we had to think independently, parents never pushed us, sink or swim, everybody swum on his own.'

Except the one who copied from another's essay and was confronted by the lecturer who noted, 'great minds really think alike, these two are identical'.

The copyist said: 'I went to class the first and last day and the rest of the time I was in the canteen.'

Great college mates, with whom you took the Green Bus directly from campus to Bugis Street for cheap eats and rubber-necking.

Playwright Robert Yeo recalled: 'We would be back by 10pm, and it was customary to pass Eusoff College (girls' hostel) and christen its walls, the one who took the longest was the winner.'

Mr Denis Tay, a retired business bigwig, interjected: '(If) we were better off, we took the pa hong chia (pirate taxi) to Bugis Street.'

Miss Felicity Oh told of how $50 a month 'took care of everything, including dating'.

(Fees were $150 a term of 10 weeks.)

Did many couples pair off? Not really. The men said boys would tease the girls at most, but were too self-conscious to ask them out.

Miss Oh laughed: 'You know, how the boys would shout my name, the initials, across the quadrangle, 'Hey, FO!'.'

Dinner was sit-down but nobody did, too many anecdotes to verify, how one morning all the Eusoff College girls had showed up for classes looking dead tired. 'Because one of the boys had turned off the mains and they had no water to wash.'

Who wore the shortest skirts? (Elizabeth Sam.)

Who broke the toilet seat in Raffles Hall? (Banker who shall remain nameless.)

What was the name of the principal we had to call when someone in protest of colonial food threw a piece of toast and it landed on who's turban?

One left the Guild House with the distinct feeling of having been in the great company of more than a few good men. And women, of course.

This article was first published in The New Paper.