Raffles Girls’ Primary School at Holland Grove was a very cozy place, with everything a school needs packed into a small premise. My fondest memories of my beloved primary school was playing catching and hopscotch in the Maths Funland. Our favourite phrases whilst playing were “Chope!” and “Twist!”. There was also this snake game painted on the ground and we would wind around the body as we scissors, paper, stone each other.
Then in the hall, whilst waiting for assembly to start, we would play silly hand games like Ping Pong Ping Pong Ping Pong che and Si Si My Baby. What glee we derived from simple things. And the Wednesday assemblies were always a laugh generally, with different classes putting skits on different topics, such as when there was Racial Harmony Day or other special occasions.
In class, we wrote on A4-sized jotter books, with scratchy yellow pages. I still remember I had a Word Bank jotter book, where I wrote the meanings of words that I did not know. There was once I used an inky pen to write (even though we were only allowed to use pencils), and it seeped all the way to the back of the book. Our school song and the national anthem together with the 5 National Education messages were printed on all our exercise books.
During recess I would eat the 50 cent guo tiao or mian from the nice noodle uncle and aunty, complete with a 50 cent Ribena in a white plastic cup. We were always given a cap during Aces Day, and we would get a day off from classes. We were so happy! Those were the days my friends…
Article migrated from original My Story Portal 2007.
Author. Claireho