Mr Ng Chee Meng has fond memories of his Chinese High (now Hwa Chong Institution) and Hwa Chong Junior College days. Hwa Chong gave him a balanced education on top of an academic foundation and allowed him to develop his passion for sports and the outdoors.
“Chinese High was a defining period of my life… It’s part of my view that education is about life, not just books.”
Several memories of Hwa Chong culture and school life remain prominent in Mr Ng’s memory. He recalls fondly the Chinese High School canteen fried delicacy, ‘蛇心雕首’, which was a school favourite, in addition to the stipulated morning jogs around the Chinese High estate down to Duchess Road. This was perhaps a means of compensating for all those delicacies! Nonetheless, Mr Ng has nothing but praise for the regimentation and discipline that such a school practice instilled in the students.
Joy and laughter was also a vital part of Hwa Chong life for Mr Ng. A chalk fight that occurred in his Secondary 4 classroom on Teachers’ Day, with the classroom barricaded and a Laser-Tag-like arena set up, was characteristic of the propensity of students in his day to have fun and be boisterous in their youth. This continued in junior college, where his class participated in the lantern designing competition for the Mid-Autumn Festival and produced a creation intended as a green dragon but which turned out more like a caterpillar! Needless to say, they all passed it off as a caterpillar, declaring that their original intentions.
Mr Ng engaged himself in three ECAs during his time in Hwa Chong Junior College, the Junior Flying Club, Taekwondo and the Science Club. Of the Junior Flying Club, he reminisces fondly,” I was chasing my dreams.” It took up a sizeable portion of his time but was ultimately a rewarding endeavor. In fact, he even obtained his pilot’s flying license before his driving license! He would fly around Singapore in a plane before landing at Seletar Air Base to take a bus home.
He also fondly credits the teachers who have impacted his Hwa Chong journey. Among them, he thanked his then Physics teacher, Dr Hon Chiew Weng (now the current principal of Hwa Chong Institution), for his vigour and verve in educating students, even recalling how they were expected to do push-ups if questions were not answered accurately. Looking back, he laughed that it probably helped his Physics!
Values-wise, Hwa Chong left a lasting impression on Mr Ng. In the routine aspects of life, the guiding values imbued in him by the school motto, ‘自强不息、学以致用’(tireless self-improvement for the purpose of ready application) gave him a passion for learning that never ceased.
“The day you think you know it all is the day you really falter.”
As a result, Mr Ng now reads widely and seeks to understand as many perspectives as possible. In his line of work, it is imperative to marry pragmatism, from the experience he has gleaned, with idealism, the optimism of the next generation. The end goal, he says, is to guard against the formation of permanent mindsets, and to continually engage in self-strengthening and self-renewal, an outlook which stands him and many other Hwa Chongians in good stead.
Narrated By: Mr. Ng Chee Meng (Hwa Chong Junior College S62)
Year: 1981-1986
Written by: Joyce Sin
