Ode to my alma mater

I DON'T remember much of my first year of formal education. After all, Primary 1 at Singapore Chinese Girls' School was a blur to me - a joyful blur, to be sure, but a blur nonetheless.

I remember bits and pieces in vignettes: Tracing dotted-line handwriting guides in workbooks, ordering my favourite 50-cent bowl of "Ah chek meepok", lacing rubber bands together for a game of zero point at recess.

There's one thing I do remember clearly, though - I distinctly recall learning to sing my school song. I was an eager student, yearning to become so well acquainted with the words that I, too, could join the rest of the school in belting it out with gusto. (Of course, this was much before I became a teenager and, like the rest of my cohort, decided that actually singing one's school song was irredeemably uncool.)