prof & mrs thumboo

edwin thumboo is emeritus professor at national university of singapore's english dept (& i'm sure he does not approve that i do not use CAPITAL LETTERS for proper nouns & at the start of new sentences!). his list of academic achievements is nothing short of astounding, as you can read here.

i have never met the good professor but i do know mrs thumboo, who happened to be my class teacher when i was in primary 2 & 6, & with whom i had lost contact, until 2 years back. i chanced upon a review on the professor's work in the online edition of s'pore's NST & contacted the writer, who graciously provided me prof thumboo's office tel no. & , oh so cliche, the rest is history.

i soon met up with mrs thumboo in s'pore & as we reminisced upon the good old days, i enquired if she remembered a poem prof thumboo wrote about me that was published in one of the english books used for primary 2 those days. i gathered that i was accorded that honour because, at that time, i resembled their son julian (who surprise, surprise is also a medic). that book is no more in publication so i asked mrs thumboo if a draft of that poem still existed, perhaps amongst some old newspapers in her storeroom. that was 2 yrs ago.

lo & behold, when mrs thumboo came to town a few days back, she brought with her 2 volumes of "child's delights", the professor's collection of childrens' poems, personally signed, & gave them to me.



what touched me even more is that, God bless her good heart, she even remembered gifts for my 2 kids - jane austen's emma (very appropriate) for the daughter & a dinosaur toy/book for the son. i joked with her that in 50 years, when the 2 volumes become rare collectors' items, they would be worth a million bucks.

of course i jest. i would never, ever part with those classics................ for less than 10million apiece.


class photo, 1966. on mrs thumboo's right was the class monitor, who...er...happened to be me.


THE poem. this is probably as close as i can get to seeing my name in print. the prof also wrote about his kids julian & claire in the collection.

ps. prof thumboo, if you are reading this, please feel free to correct my grammar, punctuation, sentence construction etc., as you see fit.