Sharing by Our New Principal - Mrs Lucy Toh

Dear alumni and friends of NJC,

So many memories of my own time in College have been flooding back since the start of this year. Here’s one.

Back in the day, when we were at the foot of the hill on the site on which Nanyang Girls’ High now stands, we were subject to the flooding for which the Bukit Timah and Dunearn Road area is famous. Even after the rain had subsided, large parts of the College would remain under water for days.

I recall watching the biology students lined up alongside the ‘padi fields’ that comprised the College courtyard – a large patch of grass crossed by two paths which stood between the iconic lecture theatre block and the science labs. The grass was flooded, of course, and in the mud and among the grass stems were great big bull frogs. The bio students, squatting not unlike the objects of their admiration, gawked at these creatures in their ‘natural’ habitat and, no doubt, tried to catch them as dissection specimens.

Then there were the canoeists. After one particularly heavy downpour, unable to throw medicine balls at each other in the corridor to LT3 (on account of it being submerged), they had brought out this vast raft built for a recent Singapore River regatta event they had taken part in. We all stood on the canteen benches (and tables!) to catch a glimpse of the doughty canoeists plying their raft out of the flooded school carpark and onto Linden Drive where they proceeded to row it steadily up the street to the loud cheers of all of us.

We would walk down staircases gingerly sometimes shoes in hand as the rain turned them into cascades. We would sit for hours in the canteen playing grabble (a violent form of scrabble) or watching friends play chess (violent too, the way they would hit their clocks) until the rains subsided and the waters retreated permitting a stuffy bus journey home (no aircons then).

Up on the hill now, we still have interesting moments with water (Mrs Toh! The LT/library/classroom is leaking again!). As the new principal, I will rest assured, like my predecessors, fight the seemingly endless war with the elements. Torrents aside, what is exciting to me now is the way in which students continue to throw themselves into the things they love – whether it’s their art (Baby Tropical Lab in Nov was my first intro to their talents!) or creative story-planning for orientation experiences (complete with zany videos and games and outfits!) or a delightful afternoon tea of Tamil folk arts and traditional snacks or a moment of sheer bliss listening to our musicians during their lunchtime concert or nascent research attempts to solve global oil pollution or our own NJC wildlife watch – pictures of bees, snakes, hornbills, pigeon orchids or the serpent-headed eagle which frequently joins us for flag-raising.

Every generation of NJCians has their own crazy stories to tell in an ecosystem that, I think, only we really get (to the rest of the world, it’s those people in grey uniforms). May the College always be filled with the high jinks and shenanigans that such confident and creative young people devise in their passion for learning and pursuit of fun. That’s the kind of College we are – best kept secret in Singapore!