Ngui Thiam Khoon - my dynamic and proactive classmate for 7 years

I first met Thiam Khoon in Form 1 in 1959. He was from Pasar Road School and I was from Batu Road School but we became good friends almost straightaway. When I was still finding my way around joining the Scouts, Thiam Khoon was already active as a formidable Chess player and, in fact, became the school Chess Champion in Form 2, a feat never ever repeated! He was very active in extramural activities while also maintaining his academic excellence. Little known fact: he topped the list of boys in the Selangor Standard 6 Exams gaining entrance into the VI!

Thiam Khoon was the restless initiator of events and organisations. As a Fourth Former, he founded the V.I. Civics Society in VI as a counter to the apparent threat of misbehaviour and nascent gangsterism in schools (VI was no exception!), which was immensely successful. Every year he led the Society in organising a Charity Campaign to collect funds in aid of the needy in Kuala Lumpur. Thiam Khoon was the Chairman till he became a Sixth Former and a School Prefect - another school record!

Thiam Khoon served again in another capacity after he graduated. He was a teacher in VI from 1980 to 1996 and became the school Senior Science Master. After retirement, he was still active and he, together with his former classmates, organized the VIOS Alumni 125th Anniversary Dinner in Genting Highlands in 2018. It was a very successful, enjoyable and well-supported event.

Unfortunately, Thiam Khoon passed on after a short illness in 2022.

Farewell, Thiam Khoon. You will always be remembered and tributed by all who met and befriended you.

Victor Foo Yeow Leong
VI 1959 - 1965

Ngui Thiam Khoon - A Man of Charity

Thiam Khoon was very involved with the Chess Club from Form One. He urged me to learn to play chess and coached me in 1963/1964 for a school tournament. I became the second runner-up for 1965, thanks to him!

In his lower forms, he saw the need for schoolboys and schoolgirls to do charity and to spread civics ethics and conduct. Prior to 1962, Thiam Khoon and I had already been organising our own informal charity activities. It was when he was a Fourth Former in 1962, that Thiam Khoon hit on the idea of forming the V.I. Civics Society to do the job more efficiently, roping me and others to assist him as Chairman.

Thiam Khoon loved reading up on all subjects, even on various ideologies like Karl Marx's, but not on religion. Thus the talk subjects for the Civics Society that he founded all originated from Thiam Khoon's wide reading tastes, after which our committee would fan out to recruit speakers for them. The varied subjects included the life of President John F. Kennedy, civic consciousness, Supreme Court procedures, socialism, and - smallpox!

I remember, in one year, our Society organising a campaign to collect used stamps from all the big companies in KL over six months for back-to-back sales to a stamp dealer, the monies earned being donated to charity. The Civics Society held charity campaigns in 1962 and 1963. In the latter year, our charity campaign which was launched by the Minister for Agriculture and Cooperatives, managed to collect over $2,900.

In our working lives, Thiam Khoon and I organised a reunion for our Form 6 classmates at a KLCC location. Following its success, he initiated another V.I. reunion at Putrajaya which included Victorians of all years. Lee Chee Kuon was appointed as organising chairman for this reunion with Thiam Khoon as secretary and myself as committee member.

Then in 2018, Thiam Khoon approached me to help organise a three-day super-reunion, this time at Genting. I declined, protesting I had too much work. After about five persistent attempts by him, I was finally "persuaded" to accept! Thiam Khoon also managed to rope in other ex-formmates as well, whom I had lost contact with.

The Genting Reunion was a success due to Thiam Khoon's never-give-up attitude with problems such as financing, recruiting the participants, and the procurement of the venue, among other things. Such was the measure of the man.

Chin Lik Suan
VI 1959 - 1965

Ngui Thiam Khoon - a memorable leader and classmate

Top LCE Candidates of 1961
Ngui Thiam Khoon (extreme right), Quah Chek Jwee (third from right)

I first met Thiam Khoon when we both started our secondary school life at the V.I. in 1959. He was from the Pasar Road School and I was from the Batu Road School - the traditional "feeder schools" to the Victoria Institution.

From that early stage he was showing his intellectual and leadership capacity - dominating the chess scene through winning the school championships even in those early junior years. At the Form Four level his leadership and initiative was showing through as he started and ran the V.I. Civics Society, a sign of his maturity at an earlier stage than most of his classmates.

Thiam Khoon was appointed the Head Prefect of the Temporary Prefects Board when we were at Form Four and subsequently appointed to the permanent Prefects Board a year later.

Thiam Khoon has always been a participative and friendly classmate, and a true Victorian. He will be remembered for being very active in maintaining the esprit de corps of the VI, right through his adult life.

He has been a good friend and a great personality who is missed by all who have known him.

Quah Chek Jwee
VI 1959 - 1965

Thiam Khoon was a very friendly, good-looking young man, very affable, always dignified and polite, a true gentleman.

It was a pleasure to work with him in Shaw House for two years. Thiam Khoon was the Captain and I, the treasurer. He was very capable, committed and provided excellent leadership.

Thiam Khoon and I served on the VI's Prefects Board, and I remember how well we all worked together, carrying out our duties. I saw our role as prefects more as ensuring rules were followed so the school functioned well. Discipline was what the teachers did.

Thiam Khoon was very unassuming and I only recently learned about him being a very skilled chess player and that he was involved in community work.

Those who knew him will always have warm and happy memories of him. I cherish those I have.

Vale, Thiam Khoon, RIP.

Rosemary Jesudason
VI 1964 - 1965

I remember Mr Ngui for always having a friendly face and a smile for all the students during my time at school even if he never taught me personally. I also remember that Mr Ngui was the teacher advisor for the inaugural Computer Club that was set up around 1983/84 if memory serves me right - a club of which I was a member. I recall his telling us how computers would someday be the tool of the future and how we needed to embrace the technology. How right he was!

He was also frequently present at our VIOBA Annual Dinners and always loved to catch up with his ex-students and find out what they were doing. A gentleman to the core, Mr Ngui certainly influenced my life and - I am sure - countless Victorians during his time as a teacher and a friend after we left the school.

A few years after leaving school, I was seated at McDonalds with a girl. Mr Ngui happened to pass by and recognised me through the window. He tapped on it to get my attention and jokingly wagged his finger at me, as if he had caught me doing something wrong. I was delighted to see him and ran outside to greet him. After a firm handshake and asking how I was and what I was doing, he told me to go back inside as it wasn't proper to leave a young lady alone.

He also reminded me to treat all women well and always be a gentleman. The educating and advice never stopped with such teachers, even after leaving school. Strangely enough, Mr. Ngui's face at the window and his advice is still vividly etched in my memory, although I can't quite recall the girl I was with!

Dharm Navaratnam
VI 1980 - 1984

My favourite teacher was Mr. Ngui Thiam Khoon, my economics teacher, and he was a very good teacher. He played a very huge role, I would say, in terms of driving me towards economics and helping me understand that economics is based on supply and demand.

If you master that, it's not so difficult. Eventually, I did a degree in economics as well, thanks partly to him. I'm not sure about the current syllabus, but in those days, A-levels was SPM converted from English to Malay. Mr Ngui was very influential in teaching me the basics. Through his teaching, I found it much easier to study for my degree.

Shaw House 1993
Sitting from left: Rahazi bt Yusof, Ahmad Fazreen, Rubendra Gnanalingam,
Mr Ngui Thiam Khoon (House Master), Yeoh Phee Leong, Alan Mak, Hani Kartini

The other major influence was that he was the Shaw House Master. One of the key reasons why we did very badly before was that we always had an election for House Captain. In my Form 5 year, after we had assembled for the first House meeting of the year, Mr Ngui announced that there would be no election for House Captain. "Ruben is the Captain, and that is final!" he declared.

Then he proceeded with elections for the House Vice-Captain and other lower positions. To be fair, I think I could have won if there had been an election for House Captain, but Mr Ngui made it very clear that his decision was final. His actions gave me a lot of confidence in the sense that he believed in my leadership abilities.

That became one of my key motivators as Shaw House Captain. I didn't want to let him down. In those days, you had to manage a budget to construct a House tent and a mascot. Since the previous years were so diabolical, Mr Ngui had actually saved up a lot of the money and told me that I could spend it all that year. That's another reason why we had a budget: It was to teach students how to manage funds.

Ruben Gnanalingam
VI 1989 - 1993

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Mr. Ngui was my teacher for Economics in Form 6 back in 1986. At that time I didn't realise that he was a former student as well as a Prefect. What I remember about him back then was his economics lectures. Mr Ngui was definitely a dedicated teacher and tried hard to help many students. Perhaps what was less known was he was trying to write an economics textbook for Form 6 students as an introduction to economics.

He roped me in to help him transcribe his notes after school into the computer for him to edit. I was doing this for a few months before the final STPM exams, so in a way it helped revise my own understanding of the subject. We would travel in his car back to his house in Old Klang Road where we would work for about a few hours.

Sometimes we will drop by the music centre where he would pick up a CD or two. I still remember him buying a copy of Bob Dylan's hits. Naturally, back then I could not appreciate that kind of music. After the exams I didn't follow up on whether he had completed his book.

Personally, I always felt that Mr Ngui was destined to achieve many more things and he showed the drive to do so. Perhaps opportunities just eluded him. I kept in touch with Mr Ngui when I was in the VIOBA and always ensured that he was part of the teachers group to be invited for annual dinners.

We met occasionally to catch up and he always appreciated the time spent. It was a real shock to me to have heard of his unfortunate demise. Many students remember him fondly and he had always told us to refer to him as Thiam Khoon, but he was always Sir to me.

Kwek Keng Chye
VI 1980 - 1986

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Ngui Thiam Khoon, a fourteen-year-old student of Form Two A, Shaw House, became the V.I. Open Chess Tournament Champion for 1960 by defeating opponents much older than him. Ngui also won the Junior title.

In an exclusive interview with the Seladang, Ngui, described by his classmates as "fairly scholarly," disclosed that he had been playing chess since he was eight when he was in Standard Three in Pasar Road School. A youthful start is what he believes in. "Chess is not difficult to learn," he said.

After much practice and many hours of concentration, Ngui eventually became a player of serious standing. From 1957, he played consistently at the SCRC premises on Thursday nights and Sunday mornings. For a change, Ngui sometimes practices at the Y.M.C.A.

"Since the seventeenth of June this year," he informed us, "the SCRC Chess Section has been renamed the K.L. International Chess Club."

Ngui's victory in the V.I. Chess Championships is only one of many. In 1958, for instance, he entered the Malayan Class One Chess Tournament and ended up third, a remarkable showing for so young a brain. In the same year, he came out fifth in the SCRC Open Chess Tournament. In 1959, Ngui registered for the Young Friends Chess Championship and easily emerged the Champion. He was also in the SCRC team which played against the Technical College, and he won his game.

This year, Ngui played for the KL International Chess Club against both the Malacca Chess Circle and the Selangor Club and won both his games.

The Seladang would like to quote the Headmaster in urging "all those who cannot run, swim or play rugger, football or any other game well, to earnestly try to play chess!"

Victorians interested in the game should get in touch with the Chairman Oh Kong Lum of the V.I. Chess Club or with our Chess Champion Ngui. They will be only too glad to help.

From the Victorian 1960, 1962, 1963

The V.I. Web Page