Mabel Chiew and TLS culture

To a young boy, a nice, clever young lady is always impressive.

I can still remember Mabel wearing her prefect's badge and how she would stand there directing the to-ing and fro-ing of students for class or for makan. Her voice was firm, kind and loving. Her sisterly attitude was a real "force" in a strong well meaning character. To me her presence was the epitome of responsibility.


At that time I did not know very much about the Foochows being a special breed of determined people who only wanted to do well in life. Today I know them just too well. You can never stop the Foochows who are like runaway trains. They excel in everything and with the speed of lightning.

Once my little boy asked,"Did the Foochows invent everything, like the bullet train in Tokyo?" I answered,"Yes, they can invent everything because they are really smart."

Mabel was a like a big sister to every boy and girl in Tanjong and to me that is what a model headgirl should be like. Mabel should write a book on "How to be a Head Girl and Inspire the students to do well"

She is of course, a no nonsense person. And she has a fantastic brain. I believe when she went to MU , she must have been the top student in her class.

This was what TLS did for me...to have been given the opportunity to study and have models like Mabel and others to follow......to stick to the desk and study and study. We could see our teachers, our head girl and head boy studying hard and having good results. We could also see that the seniors get along very well with each other, helping each other in and out of the classrooms.

Apart from Mabel and her fellow seniors setting a good example in studying and sticking to their desks, I still remember hearing Mr. Lynn practising his Chinese words at night whenever we passed by his hostel after our night prep.

Observing how our seniors study,lead the students,and help everyone including the teachers, had very positive effects on all of us juniors. I consider this a great school culture. And if you carefully map out the career of a good student like Mabel, you would definitely see an ascending graph to great heights. Goals were achieved by TLS students like Mabel. And every day, I wish more and more people can succeed like her so that we do not have so much human wastage.

A school culture like TLS, will defnitely not create any human wastage. The seeds of goal achieving,future orientation and self determination are planted early. The school climate of the 50's,and 60' especially was ideal for human resource development. 50 years later we are still beneficiaries of that legacy. The products like RM, ZAM,UKI,SAM,HAJI ,LLW,DC,and MABEL,DOC CHH,(certainly a long list) the YBs and so many others are still highly PRICED!