My homesickness for Malaysia continued until 2014.

That year, for the first time, I was able to return to my former home. I was given the most wonderful and generous gift – a holiday with my son, who was then 18, travelling from the UK to Singapore, Melaka, Kuala Lumpur, Penang and Langkawi and then back through KL to Singapore. In an extraordinary co-incidence (or maybe not, who knows?), five weeks before I was due to go on this trip I received an email from a former classmate, Theresa, who had found me on the internet. We were able to meet up in KL and you can read about it here. This was the beginning of my re-connection with Garden School mates and the beginning of the end of my homesickness.

KL was unrecognisable. Most people will be familiar with the Petronas Towers, shown below. It was the first time I had seen them and, for the most part, the city was like a place I had never been to before. Every now and then a familiar landmark would appear. I managed to find my old house but didn’t have time to visit the new Garden School.

What I did discover, however, was … Read More »

After we’d taken our O levels we all went in different directions.

I went first to boarding school in England which wasn’t a happy experience. I looked and sounded English but I didn’t know anything about the country or teenage culture and I didn’t have the right clothes. I tried hard to fit in but really the only thing I gained from that experience was to discover rock music and of course the late 70s was a great time for music in England!

Somehow I got to university and for a few months before that I lived in London, volunteering and hanging out with music students, trying desperately to become English so that I could feel a part of things at university. I had learned from boarding school that it wasn’t a good idea to mention that I had lived in Malaysia or gone to a different kind of school so I got into the habit of never mentioning it.

This went on for decades.

Although I had returned to England for my education I had assumed that I would be returning to KL for vacations/holidays. Unexpected family circumstances, however, dictated that after I started at university my home in KL was … Read More »

After 40 years some memories feel like yesterday and others are hazy. During the last weekend in June, reunited with our classmates from the late 70s at Garden School, Kuala Lumpur, we reminisced together. There were some things we all remembered and others that appeared out of the shadows with a nudge from a friend who was there at the time.

In this post I’m remembering the school from 1975 to 1978 but the history goes back further than that. The school was started in the garden of Sally Watkins, in Kuala Lumpur, in 1951. Mrs Watkins, needing a school for her sons, started one herself on her veranda and gradually other children joined. That’s why it was called the Garden School. More of this fascinating history can be found on the school’s website.

If you read my last post, you’ll know that despite the tropical heat and humidity there was no air conditioning at the school. Every classroom had a ceiling fan and the windows were kept open wide. We had to weigh down our papers with anything heavy. Wooden pencil cases came in handy! During the short morning break we would flock to the Coke machine where a glass … Read More »