For three years, Jurong Institute was part of my life. Jurong Institute used to be a school where we studied for the A-levels to head to the university. When JI closed its doors in 2003, many of us felt sad. Personally for me, my JI days was one of one of the most memorable days of my life, especially for the people and the friends that I made.
See if you can spot me 🙂
So when my JI classmate, Hong Boon sms’ed me about the the class reunion, I instantly replied back that I would be able to make it. It would be so nice to meet the gang again.
Sat, 29 Dec 2007
Cart and I decided to head to Geek Terminal for some coffee before going to the meet. Having always hearing me gush about how lovely their coffee was, Cart wanted to find it out for himself. Unfortunately when we reached there, it was closed!
We both left dejectedly and went to ‘Coffee Club’ instead, where we had some coffee and shared a really delightful Chocolate and Coffee Mud pie ice cream with Oreo powder and fudge drizzled onto it.
Yummy! It was so good that I felt sorry when it was finally gone.
After realising the time, we took the train to Orchard. Being a city area, it was a very popular place to be which tends to be a congested place. Both Cart and I had to walk against the week-enders crunch, like salmons swimming upstream.
We finally reached Ngee Ann City and stopped a while to admire the beautiful 4 storey high Christmas tree before heading to the Family International Buffet Restaurant. I was surprised to see only Melvin and then Juli, BK, William and his wife arriving shortly after.
Apart from Juli, it has been ages since I’ve seen them. They were still as friendly as ever and we chatted amiably while waiting for the others.
But the others were so late! We could not take it any longer that we decided to enter the restaurant and have a seat. And that was when the rest arrived one by one. Over an hour later than the time stipulated -_-”
The restaurant looked like a nice place. Being voracious eaters, all of us couldn’t wait to attack the food there. And there were plentiful types of foods to choose from. Here are a few of the sections that I managed to capture :
From different types of rice and savory food.
To steamed food.
Colourful desserts.
At one point, Xiang Long said, “Stop taking pictures! You look like a tourist!” to which I replied, “Come on, I’m a BLOGGER!” 😛
But there were loads loads more like the seafood (like lobsters, sashimi and Salmon) section, that I neglected to take a picture of because we were all raring to eat!
Hello? Sorry darling, but I want to eat now. Callyoubacklater!
In the middle of our meal, Hong Boon, took out the class Time Capsule. This was where we added in memorabilia of our school life all the way back in 1997. And now that 10 years has passed, each of us were curious to see what was inside it.
This is our time capsule made out of a coffee canister. On top of the time capsule reads, “This remains as 97G property to be rediscovered on 06112007” It turns out that we were one month late 😛
It was really cool to see the things inside the time capsule, mostly hand written old letters, photographs and we poured over each and every one of them. Truth be told, many of us have even forgotten about these items.
Like this excuse card. I don’t even remember putting this into the time capsule. I don’t even remember carrying it around! But since it had my name on it, it should be mine :
See! Never skipped class, never left school early, never pretended to be sick. I’m such a good girl.
Here Max is showing the handwritten letter of one of our classmate. Briefly it says, “I have a wish to become a member of the parliament. I would like to be an officer in the Army or the Navy. And I would like to marry Karen Tee Wen Chi”
It was just so lovely to go through old memories together.
After our dinner, on a whim we decided to get a new time capsule to be opened in the next 10 years. I wonder how we will all be like by then? 🙂
Next : Meeting Geri and monkeying around in the zoo!
In this series :
I was in Ji for the first three months in 1998 and one of your classmates was from my secondary school. Small world huh? For the life of me I can’t remember what he’s name is right now but I remember everyone at JI calling him Dicky or something.
Dicky is such a horrible name … hahahaha But I think you must be talking about Shahim right?
It sure is a small world! I’m sure I’d stumble into someone from cyberspace in real life every now and then! Hehehehe!
Shahim just recently got married last month by the way 🙂
01/21/2008
Rinaz:
Almost in the middle of the back row behind one of the guy’s head! Were you trying to hide?
Why did they close the school?
Wow 10 years?
Cartcart it’s a good thing your back home with all the food you have had while you were in SP! Being a diabetic I just live for your next post to enjoy at least with my eyes – THE FOOD! (and the bad ‘D’ word)
Tell Xiang that we live for those pictures!
Thank you and Cartcart again!
By the way how did he get that name?
Gary
01/21/2008
omg i really love the idea of a time capsule! it’d be interesting a capsule from 10 years back.
wow, the time capsule is a really fab idea! 😉
Gary
Hahaha, good guess 🙂 I wasnt hiding, its just that Kah Yang was much taller than I was!
10 years! Can you imagine that? Looking at that class photo, we hardly changed that dramatically even. 10 years passed by surprisingly quickly.
I’m sorry to hear that you are a diabetic. What a bummer not to be able to eat the things that you like.
Cartcart is a nickname that I give him. We met through Secondlife and his avatar name was Cartridge Partridge, so I called him Cartcart 🙂
Malique
Lets do a ping.sg time capsule 😀
Ophelia
Will you be doing one too? 🙂
Google is soooo powerful. I actually dug this out!!!. Was a pity I was outstationed in Shanghai then. If not I’d definitely be there. We should do this one day again.
Hi Rina, i used ur pix of the JI card as a profile pix for a JIan gathering im holding next month 🙂 Hope u dun mind….
From 98G minah