Tanglin Hill Reminiscence

A couple of days ago, I got an e-invite to attend the launching of a book about the history of the former government hostel in Singapore or known as AKBS (Asrama Kerajaan Brunei diSingapura) to be held at Rizqun Hotel in a week’s time. Hopefully I could attend it as I should be back then. The book is produced by Pusat Sejarah, but regretfully not many former students knew about it till late. Mr BR said most of the contributions were from the older generation of students.

Nonetheless it was a place where I spent a good part of my younger years away from family. It was then part of the government scheme to send selected students both from Malay, English and Ugama streams to study in Singapore from the age of 12. The scheme started sometimes in the 50’s but was stopped in the mid 80’s as Brunei had rapidly developed its local education institutions and built enough capability.

While on transit in 2001, I took a taxi to see how the place would look like after last seeing it for 20 years. I took a few snapshot of the place I called home from the limit of the gate. Indeed the place has been neglected and in disrepair. I don’t know how it looks now whether the government has done anything with this site – whatever - this highly valuable asset must be worth a fortune in land scarce Singapore. Indeed we are blessed with all the richness but not able to keep or look after things like this.

Has the scheme worked? Looking around nowadays, they are not many familiar faces that I know that really feature in both the Government and private sectors apart from a few. So where have these guys gone? These were supposed to be the cream of their time. My assumption is if you do an art stream, you would end up becoming an administrator and would have a fairly good chance to progressed quickly up the ladder. But most of the English stream guys end up doing science subjects and indeed many have excelled in these fields and remains in that fields. For me, I am happy with what I am doing and keeping my grey matter useful, whilst helping another developing nation and a big profitable company happy. That company made 7.9 billion dollars profit in the last 3 months.