Basket.

DAY ONE

06:50 - Reach school
07:00 - Sign in attendance file
07:10 - Pleasantly introduced to other teachers
07:20 - Go down for assembly
07:24 - Get to assembly area
07:25 - FIRST COMPLAINING PARENT

Off to a great start, I'll say.

But honestly it wasn't a bad day. Got settled in nicely and have some very kind and helpful colleagues. It felt rather odd attending school not in uniform, though. It also felt rather odd being greeted by students along the corridors because in my school days I didn't even bother with doing my teachers that courtesy.

Anyway, I did no teaching today. First day of school and there will always be things to settle with the students - and that more or less took up the whole day with the form teachers handling it (thankfully, I am not one). Instead, I sat in the staffroom the whole day poring over textbooks.

Seeing all the students file in for assembly really brought back memories of school though; from the authority figure at the rostrum booming an amplified "Eh that class there... hurry up get in line" to miming the national anthem and pledge to all the still-prepubescent Secondary One kids milling about in shy confusion. I read the school rules and they are tighter than any I ever were under: white shoes only, for instance (RI allowed 70%, in my day; now I'm not sure they even care) and male students compulsorily clean-shaven (RI didn't give a damn - or if it did I never heard of it and never got any stick for it). Their demerit point system is an unbelievably complex framework (RI's was quite jumbled, or maybe I simply never got caught enough) that promises public caning for the worst offenders over the various terms. How many of these rules are actually followed, I have no idea - but first day of school and they had a spotcheck for the usual stuff: shoes, hair, piercings etc. I didn't participate. I think I would be lenient anyway; can't be bothered with little things like that. If they want to stick holes in themselves they can go ahead, really, it doesn't matter to me at all.

I suppose I could understand more or less how the various levels felt. It wasn't so long ago I was down there on the RI astroturf listening to boring announcements of which about one in ten occasionally slightly affected me, and not understanding cricket scores or why rugby is such a damned big thing. The Secondary Ones, especially; they had that familiar look of apprehension in their eyes, which we all must have had way back then, a teeming, confused all-white crowd on the astroturf our first morning as students of Raffles Institution. A great number of you who read here were there with me that first morning, and were to hear our dear then-new Headmaster deliver the immortal tale of how Napoleon ordered his men to switch underpants with one another, supposedly a fable for change. After that we were promptly dragged off for SS tests and learning the school song and batch song and etc, which we found was the easy part, because what was to follow was three days and two nights in the mud, rain and giant insects of Sarimbun. Conversely, the Secondary Ones this morning got a day camp with icebreakers. It is easier, I suppose, but maybe it doesn't bond the batch as well. In any case RI doesn't do what it did to us anymore - meaning no more arbitrary numbers of push-ups in rain or sweltering shine, no more evil vacuum mud of Sarimbun (now the camp is held in school), no more packed and decades-unclean dormitories (air-conditioned classrooms are the standard accommodation nowadays) and definitely no more push-up position on gravel waiting for each class to take its turn around the parade square.

It is better, in a sense, that RI's Orientation isn't anymore this boot camp for thirteen-year-olds, but these are the experiences that really stay with you. I am certain that all of you who were there with me tasting the mud of Sarimbun in half-left position would agree.

Day Two tommorrow. We'll see how it goes.