CLASS OF 71 REUNION - NOVEMBER 1998

by Wong Chee Liang.

RUN-UP TO THE REUNION

For the last few years, many of us have been talking about organizing a get-together of old classmates and teachers from the three Form 5 classes of 1971, Methodist Secondary School, Sibu. We all have many happy memories of our school years, but the Form 5 year of 1971 occupied a special place in the hearts of many of us. We had good teachers, good friendly classmates and for me at least, it was probably the happiest time I had experienced as a student.

Since our Form 5 days in 1971, our alumni have been scattered all over the various towns of Sarawak, and quite a few are in Singapore, Peninsular Malaysia, Australia, U.K., the USA and Canada. Some of us have managed to keep in touch with a few old friends and teachers from all those years ago, but we have lost touch with many others. We all wondered how nice it would be if we could get together one day, talk about old times and relive old but fond memories.

In late 1997, the plan started to take shape. During the visit of Wendy Gregory (Clive and Carlene Gregory's second daughter) to Sarawak in the summer of 1997, at one of the dinners in Kuching, where six of the old Form 5S students were present, the idea of a reunion was proposed once again and this time it was taken more seriously. Some of us here in Kuching managed to cajole and persuade Stephen Lau Lee Kiong to take charge and to form a pro-tem committee to organize the reunion. Stephen bravely accepted the challenge and formed the first pro-tem committee in early 1998. The first task of the committee was to gather data about old classmates and teachers, and this took several months to do, and even now, the data is still not totally complete. Stephen Lau then decided to compile a Class of 71 student directory, with photos and current addresses of all members of the 3 classes of Form 5, 1971. It was decided that a preliminary trial reunion would be held in Sibu in November 1998, just after the start of the school holidays, and that this trial reunion would be aimed mainly at old classmates from this region, i.e. from Malaysia and Singapore. It was planned that at this preliminary reunion, a proper reunion organizing committee would be elected and would then plan for a bigger and grander reunion gathering in Sibu for the end of 1999. We would invite members from overseas and also old teachers, both local and overseas, to attend this full reunion at the end of 1999.

The Kuching-based pro-tem committee held a number of meetings, and appointed coordinators in all towns and regions in Malaysia to help in the task of contacting old members and also gathering data about members. We also asked Sibu members under the leadership of Lau Hui Bean to form a liaison committee to help in the organization of the reunion function.

STUDENT DIRECTORY

The first edition of the student directory of the Class of 71 was prepared by Stephen Lau and his capable staff, led by the untiring Ms. Chiong Hie Ling. It was sent out to all old members and teachers for whom we had mailing addresses. This was a great success. We received many letters, especially from members overseas, who were so thrilled and excited to be able to re-establish contact with long-lost friends and renew old friendships and acquaintances, through the data published in the directory. Quite a few of the members have got Internet email access, and that helped tremendously in re-establishing old ties and rekindling of old friendships. It is so easy, cheap and convenient to type a short note and with just one click of the mouse, send the missive thousands of miles away to a distant friend, who will get the message in a matter of minutes. After the publication of the directory, some of us managed to establish and maintain contact with old friends in Canada, Australia and the USA on a regular basis via Internet email.

There then followed months of hard work, organizing meetings, designing and ordering souvenirs (like T-shirts, mugs, car-stickers, pens, key-chains and photostat copies of The Hornbill 1971 edition), countless letters and emails to old members asking for updated addresses and photos (new photos to update the student directory and old photos of our schooldays to prepare for a photo exhibition at the reunion), asking for people to respond to the many reunion calls sent out by Stephen Lau, plus many other tasks. Although hard work, it was good fun, and it enabled us to get together more frequently and to work together as a team. The Kuching pro-tem committee even flew in to Sibu a couple of months before the reunion and had a very fruitful meeting with the Sibu liaison committee to work out the final details of the reunion. The second, updated edition of the student directory was prepared and printed just before the reunion.

FRIDAY 20 NOVEMBER 1998

The Kuching committee members all boarded an early morning flight to Sibu. After a quick breakfast in Sibu, we went to the Tanah Mas Hotel, which was to be the site of the banquet dinner and the venue for the class meeting the following day. There we set up the photo exhibition and made preparations for the sale of souvenirs, etc. After that we broke off and agreed to meet again that evening.

FELLOWSHIP SATAY PARTY, FRIDAY 20 NOVEMBER 1998

This was the first event of the reunion and was held in Wong Chee Liang's house in Jalan Tun Haji Openg, or Queensway, as it was called in the past. Lei Sing had made a lot of preparations for this event and had enlisted the help of some Sibu lady members to help in the catering and the supply of food for the occasion. It was a buffet party and tables were also provided for members to sit down and chit-chat.

The guests started to arrive at 7:30pm, and the party went on until after 10pm. It was a very exciting, exhilarating and joyous occasion for many of us, for as old friends and classmates strolled into the room, all of us would be looking hard and trying to guess who this man or woman was, after 27 years! Some old friends were easily recognized, others had to introduce themselves for they had changed so much. To be able to meet so many old friends after so long, to be able to mix and chat about old times was truly a very happy event. There were gasps and screams of excitement throughout the evening, as old friends recognized one another and finally managed to meet again after such a long interlude. We would marvel at how young some of our old friends still looked; we would also be amazed at how much hair some of the men have lost in the interim 27 years! Even for members living in the same town, some have not met one another for years until they bumped into each other that evening. We were truly fortunate to have quite a few members who took all the trouble to travel back (by plane, by bus and even by car) to Sibu from Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Miri, Bintulu and Kuching, just to attend this reunion and share our fellowship.

Small groups of friends would form in different parts of the room and people would move from group to group to meet up with old friends and keep up with the news. The air was thick with questions like "Were you in Form 5A or 5M?" "Whereabouts in the class were you sitting?" "Do you remember so-and-so? What has become of him/her?"

For me personally, it was a most exciting and happy occasion. I was so excited that I ate hardly more than a few mouthfuls of food that entire evening. It is impossible to describe in words how nice and happy it is to be able to meet so many old friends once again, people whom I never thought I would see again. Some examples:

Wong King Tai, whom I thought was in USA, has been working for an American firm in K.L. for the last few years.

Lau Ai King, a staff nurse in Sibu Hospital. Despite having done relief duty in Sibu's Lau King Howe Hospital for countless times between 1983 and 1991, I somehow never managed to meet her until that night.

Dayang Soraya, whom I remember from her roles in all those school plays, drove all the way from Miri to Kuching with her 2 daughters, just for the reunion.

Lau Hien Kong, my good friend from Form 1C till Form 3C, came back from Miri with his grown up daughter, and it took me until lunchtime the following day before it finally clicked who he was.

The presence of Wong King Tai, Sim Siau Chung and Ling Choon Ming brought great joy and relief to the face of our committee chairman Stephen Lau. Now he has finally found some old classmates who have even less hair on their heads than he has! He kept bemoaning the absence of Malcolm Ding Sing Ning, who would have relegated Stephen's position yet even lower in the Class of 71 baldness stakes.

During the satay party some of us wore our special Class 71 reunion T-shirts. This aroused great interest and Jenny Hii Wei Ming (in charge of souvenirs) started doing brisk business selling the T-shirts for members to wear during the school visit the next day.

SATURDAY 21 NOVEMBER 1998

VISIT TO SCHOOL

We all turned up at 8:30 am at Mandarin Hall, suitable adorned in our reunion of Class 71 T-shirts, and after a quick but hearty breakfast, we set out for our old school. The Headmaster, Mr. Poh Kee Eng, was there to greet us, as were some teachers and members of the Alumni Association -- Mr. Hii Yu Ho, and Dr. Ting Chek Ming, the Principal of Pilley College. We were shown round the school and were impressed at the great changes which had taken place there since 1971. The number of pupils has more than tripled. In 1971, there were 800 odd pupils. Now there are over 2700. A large new main block has been built, with a large auditorium-cum-sports hall, an audio-visual lecture theatre (albeit without much audiovisual equipment), new classrooms and laboratories. This new block is situated where the old basketball court and girls' hostel were. Since 1971, a Science block and a 3-storey building housing the canteen and classrooms had also been constructed. It was fun, peeping into our old classrooms from the l960s and 1970s. Some of the chairs, desks and old wooden cupboards seem to be legacies from our time nearly 30 years ago! The old school assembly hall is now a well-equipped library. The boys' toilet is new, cleaner and even has tiled floors. When we got to the old senior block, groups of us posed outside the classrooms of Form 5S, 5M and 5A for remembrance photographs of our old classrooms. This stroll down memory lane really brought back lots of fond old memories for many of us. Some of us have been back to the school since leaving, some are in fact teachers at the school (like Lee Siew King), but quite a few have never stepped inside Methodist School since 1971, so the visit was very nostalgic and meaningful.

We then proceeded to a tea party given by the headmaster and had a dialogue session about the school's progress. We also discussed with him about a possible project which the Class of 71 may be able to do for the school, ahead of the grand reunion of 1999, provided we are able to raise the funds.

CLASS MEETING

After a quick lunch at Mandarin Hall, we adjourned to Tanah Mas Hotel in the afternoon, where the photo exhibition and souvenir sales were in progress. Lei Sing had done a very good job in collecting, enlarging and arranging over 70 photographs from the old days onto 5 display boards. All the members had great fun looking at old photos from 1971 and many of them placed orders for copies and enlargements for their own albums. Wei Ming and Hwa Kie were also busy selling our special souvenir T-shirts, mugs, keychains, pens and car-stickers. Proceeds from the souvenir and photo sales were to go towards funding the school project and the reunion of 1999.

At about 3pm, the class meeting started. Stephen Lau as chairman gave an account of what the pro-tem committee had done up to that point, and Jasnah Obeng as treasurer gave an account of the committee's finances. We then proceeded to elect a new committee to prepare for the reunion of 1999. The same committee was returned by popular acclaim, and we decided that the 1999 reunion would be from Friday 17th December 1999 until Sunday 19th December 1999. This is to avoid clashing with the dates of public examinations in Malaysia and Singapore, and these dates will also coincide with school holidays in Australia so that members there will be able to come back and attend. We are also inviting all old Form 5 teachers to attend the 1999 reunion, and we sincerely hope that as many as possible will be able to make the trip.

BANQUET DINNER

The banquet dinner at Tanah Mas Hotel started at 7:30 pm, and we had 7 tables of members and families. Charles Tiong Yong Liek was the Master of Ceremony and he did a marvellous job. There was music and singing provided by Martin Ho Joun York and his musical family, karaoke singing by various old classmates from each of the tables, and then there were several fun competitions for old classmates. The prize for the largest waistline went to Martin Ho Joun York with 43 inches! Dr. Wong Ging Yeen won the prize for the smallest waistline - less than 30 inches. The Gentleman of the Evening prize went to Stephen Lau and the Lady of the Evening prize went to Wang Lei Sing. Unfortunately there was no prize for having the least hair on one's head.

After a thoroughly enjoyable evening, we broke off at about 10:30 pm and agreed to meet again on Sunday morning for the farewell breakfast.

FAREWELL BREAKFAST - SUNDAY 22 NOVEMBER 1998

We all met again for the last time for a light buffet breakfast on Sunday morning. Small groups were sitting around tables, chatting about the reunion and about their own lives, exchanging addresses and promising to keep in touch with one another more frequently. We also poured over the photos which had been taken during the reunion. We resolved to meet again in a year's time, and we all hoped that this time, many more of our classmates, both local and overseas, will be able to share fellowship with us, and in addition, we fervently hope that our old teachers from both near and far would be able to make the journey to Sibu next December in order to be with us for this, the final reunion of the present millennium.

We said good-bye and left for our respective homes. Although this was supposed to be a preliminary and a trial reunion, it was actually a very fruitful and gratifying experience for many of us. To be able to see so many old friends together under one roof, after 27 years, was something we had dreamed about but had not really believed would one day happen. After 2 days of fellowship, we parted, but with a lot more knowledge of what had been happening to our old friends all these years, and with great anticipation of an even nicer reunion in December 1999, when we hope that even more old classmates and teachers would be able to join us.

End.

Participants in the reunion gathering of November 1998.

Form 5A

Dayang Soraya Jasnah Obeng Lau Ai Kin

Ling Choon Ming Ling Sing Ai Tang Hei Ngo

Regina Teo Kim Leng Mary Ting Hie Huong Philip Ting Sii Tien

Sim Kiong Teck

Form 5M

Chua Hiong Kee Kiu Hieng Tiong Lau Hien Kong

Lau Hui Bean Lau Kueng Suong Lau Nai Chiu

Sim Siau Chung Soo Yii Chiong Pau Kiew Ee

Wang Jing Letty Yong Hie Ding Ling Sii Kiong

James Wong King Kheng

Form 5S

Chong Thin Kiong Jenny Hii Wei Ming Martin Ho Joun York

Stephen Lau Lee Kiong Lee Leh Yew Lee Siew King

James Leong Chiew Seng Ting Hwa Kie Ngu Ung Ing

Maria Tang Pik Ling Ting Check Ing Ting Sii Chiong

Charles Tiong Yong Liek Tze Man Sum Wong Chee Liang

Wang Lei Sing Ting Kai Hoon Yew Tiong Kui

Wong Ging Yeen Wong King Tai Chiew Pick King

Form 3B of 1969

Anna Chee