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violent. But my mother was a courageous woman who was determined to hang on to the jewellery, wedding gifts from her parents. A strong character with great energy and resourcefulness, she had been married off too early. In her day, a woman was expected to be a good wife, bear many children, and bring them up to be good husbands or wives in turn. Had she been born one generation later and continued her education beyond secondary school, she could easily have become an effective business executive.
    She devoted her life to raising her children to be well-educated and independent professionals, and she stood up to my father to safeguard their future. My brothers, my sister and I were very conscious of her sacrifices; we felt we could not let her down and did our best to be worthy of her and to live up to her expectations. As I grew older, she began consulting me as the eldest son on all important family matters, so that while still in my teens, I became
de facto
head of the family. This taught me how to take decisions.

    My maternal grandmother had strong views on my education. In 1929, before I was 6, she insisted that I join the fishermen’s children attending school nearby, in a little wood and attap hut with a compacted clay floor. The hut had only one classroom with hard benches and plank desk-tops, and one other room, which was the home of our scrawny middle-aged Chinese teacher. He made us recite words after him without any comprehension of their meaning – if he did explain, I did not understand him.
    I complained bitterly to my mother, and she made representations to my grandmother. But a young woman of 22 could not overrule an experienced matriarch of 48 who had brought up nine children from two marriages, and was determined that I should receive some education in Chinese. My grandmother allowed a change of school, however, and I was sent to Choon Guan School in Joo Chiat Terrace. It was a mile away from home, and I walked there and back every day. This school was more impressive, a two-storey wooden structure with cement floors, and about 10 proper classrooms with desks for 35 to 40 pupils in each class. The lessons in Chinese were still tough going. At home I spoke English to my parents, “Baba Malay” – a pidgin Malay adulterated with Chinese words – to my grandparents, and Malay with a smattering of Hokkien to my friends, the fishermen’s children. Mandarin was totally alien to me, and unconnected with my life. I did not understand much of what the teachers were saying.
    After two to three months of this, I again pleaded with my mother to be transferred to an English-language school. She won my grandmother’s consent this time and in January 1930 I joined Telok Kurau English School. Now I understood what the teachers were saying and made progress with little effort. The students were mostly Chinese, with a few Indians among them, and some Malays who had transferred from Telok Kurau Malay School.
    My parents were concerned at my lack of diligence, and my mother gave Uncle Keng Hee the task of making sure I was prepared for the next day’s lessons. Three evenings a week before dinner I had to sit with him for an hour. Even then I thought how absurd it was that the least scholarly of my uncles should be deputed to see that I did my homework.
    I was given a double promotion from primary 1 to standard I, leapfrogging primary 2. At the end of standard V, after seven years of primary education – six in my case – we all sat an island-wide examination to vie for places in government secondary schools. In my final year, 1935,I made the extra effort. I came first in school and won a place in Raffles Institution, which took in only the top students.
    Raffles Institution was then, and still is, the premier English-language secondary school in Singapore and carries the name of its founder. It turned out small groups of well-educated and outstanding men, many of whom won the Queen’s scholarship to go to Oxford,