Seated from left: Mr. Ong Ling Gin,Che Gu Abd. Rahman, Mrs. Chooi, Mr. Boonlert Somchit, Mr. Khalid Halim (Form Teacher), Mr N.A. Ogle (Headmaster), Hashim Osman (Monitor),Mr. Anas, Mr Venkataraman, Mr. Edgar Augustine and Mrs. Ogle. Except of our Monitor, Hahsim Osman, every student of the class wore long pants. Hashim wore short pants as his late father, H.A. (Dental) Pak Man did not allow his son to wear long pants as he believed that students which were in Form V and below should not wear long pants. Although with his short pants, yet Hashim has proven himself to be a popular monitor.
We owed a lot to Mr. Khalid Halim who was our Form Teacher. It was a fresh appointment for him when he came back with an M.A. from the Cambridge University. He was in England for eight years before he came back to Malaya at the end of 1962. Initially he was very strict with us. He even slapped 10 of us in one go. Ironically the 10 of them achieved Great One in the Cambridge School Certificate Examination 1963. Some of them rose to become prominent academicians themselves. In fact our class scored 100% passes for the year.
After the slapping episode, then we began to understand each other. Our relationship began to foster and we do respect him until today. Although we are already grandfathers, yet we do maintain the respect in not smoking in front our teacher, Mr. Khalid.
A few years back, I did asked Mr. Khalid what were the reasons that made him to treat us so strictly when he took over as our Form Teacher. He told us that being new to the game, he has asked some advice from the other experienced teachers. The teachers advised him to be strict with us since our class was noted for its unruliness. The initial strictness was a tactic to frighten us. Later on, he did realised that we were not that bad after all. Then our realtionship began to develop into a new dimension. Thank you Mr. Khalid.
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