Got a Ticket to Ride?
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 ...