Serangoon/Montfort/St Gab History

  Education in Montfort and St. Gabriel's (1959)  1. Mr Tay Keng Hock: Teacher, School Leader and Pioneer@Montfort)   1959 Montfort School Annua l: https://www.nlb.gov.sg/main/book-detail?cmsuuid=d2de6706-2e02-4d2e-9bae-f486adf54f8e In the pages of an old Montfort School Annual (1959) , a farewell tribute to Mr Tay Keng Hock (郑景福) flips. He was a pioneer teacher at Holy Innocents' English School (later called Montfort School, 1961) and he had joined the school in 1923 at the age of 19. The photographs and accompanying text tell the story of a man whose life was closely intertwined with the development of education (especially Montfort) in Singapore and his work in other areas with the Singapore Techers' Union (STU) and his foray into politics. By the time of his retirement, he had served the school for 37 years; his contributions stand out. The tribute described him as a familiar and enduring figure in the Primary classes—someone who had taught generations of children. ...

  DAN [Coach] CROSSWELL/ BILLY Coach remains, and always will remain, simply Coach . Some titles are earned. Others become permanent. Thirty-three years after dragging a handful of expatriates and exchange students onto the scorching afternoon fields of NUS, the founder of this curious movement has somehow created something far more enduring than a weekly softball game. What began as a few homesick North Americans searching for a taste of baseball has quietly evolved into a community spanning continents, cultures and generations. Like every successful missionary, Coach spent decades converting unbelievers, berating skeptics and persuading complete strangers that they desperately needed to embrace the religion of baseball. Looking back, nobody has sacrificed more for the Game. He found the fields, organised the players, coached the teams, argued with umpires, chased equipment, recruited newcomers and somehow convinced hundreds of people that giving up every Saturday afternoo...

  Thirty-Three Years Later To Hell and Back …. And the Game Refuses to Fold Three decades have slipped by since World Series games were watched at Al's place in Clementi, when mobile phones still belonged to science fiction (they probably still do for some of us), and getting from Serangoon to Clementi required a heroic ninety-minute expedition across Singapore. Empires have risen and collapsed. Governments have changed - occasionally for the worse, more often proving that history has an unfortunate habit of repeating itself. Pandemics arrived threatening to wipe out civilisation, social media empires have risen and collapsed, and Artifical Intelligence now promises to solve every problem except how to hit a curveball. Yet through it all, one question has remained stubbornly unchanged: "Who's bringing the bats and bases this week?" Many of the original conspirators have long since departed this humid ex-British colonial outpost. Cricket still refuses to die, w...

  SATURDAY AFTERNOON SOFTBALL (2000), Dan Crosswell: https://saturdaysoftball.blogspot.com/ SECTION ONE: THE ORIGINS OF OUR GAME Six years ago (in 1994), an intrepid baseball evangelist set out to bring the Grand Ol' Game to the idolater Singaporeans, still held in thrall by their infatuation with the unregenerative game of soccer—a legacy of their great misfortune of having been ruled by the British. At least that is one of the creation myths. Others argue the origins of our softball association lay in the psychological need for North American expatriates to distance themselves from their voluntary exiles in Asia by playing the game of their youths. The Singaporeans are merely unwitting tools; their labor and enthusiasms manipulated to serve the selfish needs of disingenuous Westerners. Another school maintains the Saturday afternoon gatherings serve precisely the opposite function—as a vehicle to build cross-cultural awareness and social bonds. Naturally the cynics di...