Thomians meet again after 41 years

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A snapshot for the album after dinner.

KUCHING: There are times when we find ourselves pining for ‘the good old days’, and that is especially the case when we think about our school days.

Such a nostalgic reminiscence can make us fantasise about travelling back in time to re-live all the fun, the thrill, and even to re-experience the ordeals of some of the past episodes in our lives. We remember very well particularly the mischievous and the silly things we did together with our classmates or schoolmates of those past days.

Turning back the clock is never possible. But about the next best thing that old schoolmates can do to satisfy their yearning for such bygone days is to try to search out one another and arrange for a get-together.

And that exactly was what a group of year 1973 students of St. Thomas’s School did recently.

Fifty-nine of them united at a leading restaurant. Needless to say the ex-Thomians were now all old men in the late 50s.

Among them were three teachers who were at least already in their 70s.

A participant commented that quite a few still looked ‘sexy’, never mind that some had their foreheads already quite bald and shiny.

It was literally an all-boys affair because St. Thomas had been a school only for boys up to Form 5 ever since.

A reunion participant said the fun of being at an all-boys party was that ‘cheeky jokes and naughty stories’ could make the rounds freely.

There were guys who confessed they had actually totally lost trace of any memory of the existence of certain individuals; which was certainly a case of ‘out of sight out of mind’.

It was only the sighting at the dinner that prompted the lost memories to come back.

Even then some found it almost impossible to recall many chronicles which had seemed to have totally disappeared with passing time.

“Well, 41 years of not seeing each other; what is one to expect?” conceded one of the Thomians.

But what was certainly true of everyone at the dinner was that they all had contributed a lengthy part of their lives to society through their respective vocations.

Be they engineers, lawyers, teachers, doctors, architects, administrators, bankers, entrepreneurs and what not, they all had their valuable personal experiences and wisdoms to share with one another.

In fact, the available several hours for an all-out chatter over a dinner was certainly not enough time for the participants to share all their stories of their lives after leaving school.

As each participant was passed the microphone and given a chance to speak, apologies and confessions were freely released from the bottom of their hearts.

One, who could not hold in his emotion, broke down when he said he would not have been around at the reunion dinner if he had not been saved from drowning by a fellow classmate during an outing.

When it came to the only woman’s turn to speak (she was a literature teacher), she was asked the question of whether or not she was still available.

“Well, I’m always available. But that depends on your needs,” she replied.

One of the member organisers for the event said he did not expect response to the event would turn out to be so good; which was why he had to resort to changing the dinner venue when the number of interested participants got bigger.

Several respondents were so delighted about the event that they generously chipped in their personal sponsorships for the dinner such as drinks and souvenirs.

A Thomian member who owned an empurau fish farm at Asajaya sponsored the highly priced fish as one of the dishes for the dinner.

Earlier on during the day, 20 of the Thomians made a trip to the ‘empurau’ fish farm.

The owner briefed the visitors on how he managed his 10-acre high-tech modern farm and he also got his workers to demonstrate how they fertilised and spawn the fish eggs.

He said his ‘empurau’ which locally fetched RM750 per kg was mainly exported to China. The biggest fish he had at his farm were at least 30 years old and weighed some 18 kg. He revealed that his dream was to see the day when ‘empurau’ fish would be declared as a national fish of Malaysia.

Another thing of interest found at the farm was a durian tree that was more than 100 years old and it still faithfully bears fruits every season.