Uniform and badges

Uniform units always attracted me during my school days. Be it Boys Brigade, Boys Scout, First Aid Ambulance, school band or even police and army! Other than the good appearance of those uniform attires, the drilling and the training of such units were interesting too. Of course by joining such units, the interaction with other members would also be the greatest fun part of the whole idea. School children or students need such extra-curricular activities to boost their skill in interacting, socializing and dealing with other fellow students. Such units would incorporate some of the basic skills that could be acquired through training, practice, test and the awarding of different achievement badges etc., in additional to the regular meetings and other activities organized for the members.

I was once in the Pei Yuan school band that played the clarinet instrument. The school band normally practised every week on some of the songs such as "The Longest Day" , "Chan Mari Chan" , "Negara Ku" etc. but the peak of the performance only came on the sport day! For all the hardwork we practised the whole year through, and the band was only on display once, the most glorious moment was on the sport day which attracted a lot of the audiences! Probably the greatest satisfaction and fun were derived from performance "on stage"  and show off our skill to the crowd. A few of the school band members that played different instruments that I still could remember their names are: Wong Kok Lam, Tho Thong How, Ng Meng, Choo YK, Chong SY, Kok Zhao Lin etc. The band instructor or teacher was from Ipoh and I bumped into him a few times as he happened to be the same coach for St. Michael Ipoh school band when I studied my form 6 there. I remember him as a short and stout guy and spoke funny mandarin, but he was real good in giving the right coaching for a high standard school band.

I joined the boy scout when the team from LSS joined ACS doing our form 4 together, mainly for reason persuaded by my buddies Kong Kam Sang, Kok Hon Seng, Lau Tong Hong and Chong Yok For. It was some sort of friendship and comradeship when your friends were in that unit, you just wanted to join them together. Started with the most junior rank without a first class badge could be demoralizing for a egoistic person like me at that time. All the rest started somewhere during their lower secondary days and Kong Kam Sang was the troop leader in his former LSS school while Chan Yew was the overall troop leader then in ACS.

The beautiful boy scout badges always fascinated me. I did borrow a first class badge to paste on my uniform during the ACS sport day from Lee Chian Shui of Pei Yuan just to boost up my ego a little bit. We learned how to tie different kinds of knots, setting up of tent etc. One of the scout master teacher told us to climb up the flag post and did all the adventurous stunts so as to get ourselves tested for the adventurer badge. But after doing all those, I did not remember him ever awarded us that badge at all! Chong Yok For and I decided to seek out that scout master who happened to stay in the same village as we are and wanted to go through more tests or examination through him with the intention of enhancing more badges to be pasted onto our uniform, but we were somehow nicely refused. Heard that he brought some of the students up to Kampar waterfall, a drowning incident occurred and that discouraged and demoralized him so much that he decided to quit scouting activities. We were the eager and serious students then but there was no way out for us to upgrade ourselves to become better scouts.

When we went to St Michael school, a lot of our schoolmates such as John Ooi, Wong Kam Tong etc were king scouts, though in ACS we only know that Yoon Kok Choon's brother was a king scout then! It was a big thing then to receive a king scout certificate from the Agong or sultan of the state!

By the way, I had drawn up and colored my scout log book very well based on the idea from another of my Pei Yuan classmates Choo Jian Meng. That log book was passed onto my younger brother KM Lee, and he was a better scout than me! That log book is now in the old house and perhaps could be kept in the museum for display one day!

Those were the things of the past. We did seriously thinking of going into scouting then as students, but the weak organization and the lack of skills and dedication of scout masters were the main constraints! We missed the chance and I believe we could do better if the school management had put in a little bit more effort in this! Who knows we could be king scouts too!