The Naughty Boys

One can understand why soccer took on a feverish pitch in Sec 3B Science when one realised that 1966 was the year of the 8 th FIFA World Cup.  England hosted the tournament from 11 to 30 July 1966. The final match was played at Wembley Stadium between England and Germany. Rafflesians rooted for England since we were at that time, quite anglophile. Players like Bobby Moore, Bobby Charleston, Geoff Hurst, Gordon Banks, Martin Peters and their manager Alf Ramsey were household names. When England beat Germany 4 to 2 to lift up the Jules Rimet Trophy, our class went ballistic. The 1966 World Cup probably triggered a life long penchant for soccer among many of the boys in Sec 3B Sc. Even today, some of us continue to follow the English Premier League on TV. We have rivalries between supporters of different clubs, Manchester United, Liverpool, Arsenal and others among us and these rivalries sometimes become vocal during our reunion parties. Chen Wen remembered the 1966 world ...

We like to say that those mischiefs the boys of Sec 3B Science did to our teachers are now looked back with fondness.  Upon deep reflections about why we did what we did to our poor teachers, we rationalise, having now grown much older, that  playing practical jokes, including verbal jokes, on the teacher was a way expressing our affection for that teacher. If it was, it is 1966 Reverse Psychology! Since we were so used to playing verbal jokes on him, Mr. Egypt treated every remark by students who had a habit of arguing with him with suspicion, even when remarks were meant to be serious. There was a amusing interaction between Chan Yau Seng and Mr. Egypt. During one lesson, Egypt said bridges were typically made of wood or metal.  Yau Seng added a very innocent comment "they can also be made of ropes" - second nature for some of us to pass comment either out of convoluted friendliness or out of love of giving him a jab every now and then.  Mr. Egypt th...

When we were promoted to Secondary 3, we were streamed into the Science or Arts Classes. We had no choice, it was decided for us by an aggregate of three subjects, Mathematics, Science and English from the results of the final examination of Secondary 2. Some were unhappy because based on the total final examination results some would have been in the A class instead of B or C class. Their positions in standard at he final examinations merited them to be placed in the better classes. For those of us who were disappointed to be assigned to Sec 3B Science, we soon realized that we were placed into a fun class, the most memorable class in all our many years of education. Serendipitously, the cheeky boys congregated into that one class, now infamous for the havoc created in the classroom.   Sec 3B  was strongly and diversely represented by Sec 2A and Sec 2C.   Mathematically, the a verage of A+C = B. Physics was a new subject for us. Many of the boys liked it and...