VIOS SYDNEY

First, a bit of advertising for the restaurant.....

The restaurant is at a little suburb just north of the Harbour Bridge. The cuisine is Indian which suited everyone I suppose since almost all of us would have tasted Indian curries from our Malaysian days.

Our annual gathering of 'old' VI boys and girls for the Sydney folks attracted also Venu Sarma (1964) from Adelaide, N. Ganesan (1964) from Melbourne, and also as far as the U.S. of A. in the form of the Koh brothers, Tong Bak (1962) and Tong Chui (1964).

As usual, our redoubtable MC, Daniel Chan, kicked off the proceedings. He did not dwell on unnecessary verbiage as everyone was raring to tuck into the yummy food. Of course the ladies were given the usual head-start, in case our hungry boys did not know their manners. But there was food galore and it was very tasty, too, from the comments passed around.

The school song was sung with the usual gusto - all three verses too - with the help of printed song sheets produced by Wilfred Lazar, who managed to persuade 1959 School Captain Krishna Rajaratnam to lead start. I don't think any of us were able to remember anything beyond the first two lines of the first verse, let alone the whole song, without any help. Well, age is catching up but the fervour still burns in us.

Kee Yio conducted a little VI trivia quiz to stir up those memory juices. Even though the questions were really unexciting and sometimes grammatically questionable, they were taken in the right way, namely, light-heartedly and open-mindedly. One such question was: "Name one Victorian of the Year Award winner who would have had close association with the wives of many of us here."

That brought reactions like "Really, ah! I'll hantam him, lah!" to "Hmmm...., maybe he was an obstetrician and gynaecologist...??!" and that immediately triggered the intended answer of "Dr. Ronald McCoy".

Then we had our most senior Old Boy of the day, Lee Choong Keet who was also the school captain in 1956, (I shall not reveal his age) tell us some of the most hilarious jokes. What drew the most laughs was the way he delivered the punch line of a joke about someone's wife being worth much less than a Paris street walker.

Methinks Dr. Lee (a medico) would have made more moolah as a stand-up comedian!

Finally, it was Professor Norman Foo Yeow Khean's turn and he gave us an insight into artificial intelligence (which is why he is a Professor) and natural intelligence which he has plenty of. Sorry, I made this up as I was not paying attention to the lecture. One of his robots would probably have more attention span than I could muster.

After all the food was consumed, we posed for the obligatory group photo. Don't we all look happy and contented?

After the lunch we adjourned to the coffee shop next door, which was owned and run by Rohit (VI 1974), for light refreshments and more stories and tall tales of school day capers. And as the afternoon cooled to evening, the event slowly tapered off as some of us had further engagements while others had some long ways to get home. We hope that there will be more such gatherings to come.

Report by Wan Kee Yio