The Naughty Boys

  The old Beatles song played on, bringing back memories of our bus rides to school. Many of us crammed like sardines, into hot rickety buses. Nevertheless, these buses dutifully brought us to old RI at the junctions of Bras Basah, North Bridge, Stamford and Beach Road. We came from kampongs faraway or from old Chinatown nearby.  Lionel Lee, Amos Koh Ah Meng, Alec Lim, Tan Boon Tee and Cheong Moon Foo lived in the Airport Road-Lorong Tai Seng area. We trudged for two miles along the gangster streets of Tai Seng, Malay kampongs, passed smelly soya sauce factories and dirty pig sty to meet at the Singapore Traction Company (STC) bus stop along Airport Road. We clambered onto the #12 STC bus which took us about 10 miles and 45 minutes through MacPherson, Serangoon, Jalan Besar and North Bridge Road. and alighted at the bus stop opposite the old Odeon theatre.  It took us a long time to get the school. We didn't mind so long as we got there in time for at least 30 minutes of football b

Lee Cheong Hoh left us on the 26 January 2021. Most of us recognise the fighting spirit in him ever since he was a member of the Raffles Institution rugby team. When he left us in the late afternoon, he fought the fight against an aggressive cancer. We visited him in the hospital ward, in fact so many visited that Johnny Pang had to set up a visit roster wherein each of us would enter our names, like making an appointment for the visit. Some have to wait in line as during this Covid period the number of visitors were restricted to three at any one time. So many of us prayed and we kept passing notes to each other as we visited and kept a rotating vigil by his bedside  Why did so many come to see Cheong Hoh make his last journey, run his last race? Because he was a very good friend to us and in the last few years he was very active in all our class gatherings and meetings. We set up a chat group reminiscing about what he meant to us. All of us mentioned that Cheong Hoh was a generous ma