Haig Girls' School

This is for all the Haig Girls' girls who remember:

- going to school at Jalan Tembusu
- our yellow/orange/AMBER pinafores
- having PE class in those brown bloomers (before they had shorts)
- Mrs. Hardip Singh towering over us in one of her flowing punjabi suits (did she ever wear the same one twice?)
- the entire school squeezing into our 'school hall', which was little bigger than a basketball court, for Monday assemblies; cheek by jowl doesn't even begin to describe it
- singing 'Assembly songs' like 'Count on Me Singapore' at the top of our voices
- belonging to either Topaz, Sapphire, Emerald or Ruby house (we were such gems!)
- Sports Days in the oftentimes muddy school field we shared with TKGS and Haig Boys (haunted school that some of us got into trouble for 'exploring')
- Mrs. Jeanne Lim's unmistakable voice announcing the Sports Day winners over the PA system
- Wari, who probably had one of the worst jobs cleaning up after us (throwing up after recess etc)
- saying the pledge in English from Monday to Wednesday, Mandarin on Thursday and Malay on Friday
- learning the words to 'Muneru Valiba' with Ms. Irene Wee in the Music Room which always smelt of socks
- the dinky canteen with the two aunties selling drinks of susceptible hygiene standards (most days you'd get ants or even a bee along with your chin chow drink), Malay makcik selling 30, 40 and 50 cent mee siam and of course the grouchy Indian lady selling ice cream and kacang putih at the end
- brushing our teeth after recess with the red plastic tumblers over the little drains outside our classrooms
- having 'mental sums' with Mrs. Eusope in those 20 cent blue notebooks
- how our school turned into a swimming pool after particularly heavy rains
- the chickens/ducks in the corner shed - we used to push grass for them to eat through the metal fence
- writing in English workbooks which had top quality, super thin, shiny and highly reflective paper - if you erased it (esp with those slim blue ink erasers), you'd get a big hole in the paper
- Maths textbooks with the clowns carrying umbrellas a la Mary Poppins on the covers
- playing catching during recess in the basketball court
- going through the various 'seasons', i.e. when it was cool to play hopscotch/fivestones/badminton etc
- the teachers' staff room on the ground floor where no one had their own desk, they all just sat around a big table in the centre of the tiny room to do their marking
- the Malay Room (converted from shed) that could probably win the world record for 'World's Most Poorly Ventilated Space'
- how when it rained/flooded, we had to walk one by one across a bench to get across from the porch walkway to the Malay Room (even Cikgu Rohani hiked up her baju kurung to do it!)
- being terrorized by various moths/bumble bees/flying creepy crawlies that would swoop down randomly during assembly, interrupting Mrs. Singh and sending the Primary 2 kids at the front into shrieks
- prefect duty involving 'catching' girls running along the corridors and writing their names down in the same 20cent notebooks
- having to do 'corrections' (in green ink if the teacher was fussy) *cough* Ms. Jamilah
- the tree with the ginormous roots that grew on the side of our school front porch
- Ars Potens Est: Knowledge is Power
- First in the class, and first in the field/ strive to the last girl, never yield/ Hard through the struggle, stronger our will/ Through life's test, we'll pass with zeal!