Moving House

Moving House

Bear with the indulgent language used in this one. Epiphanies were aplenty through this post, and yet it feels so incomplete, as if I have more to say about our home in the west...

I've been affectionately recognising Dunman High as my second home for the past four years. I'd fully embraced its humble yet stirring ideologies that have been passed to us through various seemingly pointless assembly talks, and had turned down the opportunity to take the well beaten path to VJC's IP simply because "it felt right". It wouldn't be absurd to claim a moral attachment to my school.

As luck would have it, I was in the batch which had the privilege of being in all three campuses we've had since Year 1. Tanjong Rhu itself was a place where we started a educational journey that was more than educational. Its familiarity was something I couldn't help but notice in many seniors and teachers alike, where identifying locations of rooms come as second nature, almost a reflex. It turned out to be contagious.

So it was with reluctant, longing fingers that most of us had finally pried ourselves off the Tanjong Rhu campus as it underwent its makeover in fair '06. I believe I speak for many when I say that every moss covered rock, paint peeled wall, shoe marked tile and rusty door was pure, uncontaminated heritage. Yet improvement was necessary to make way for growth, and 800 more students was the number that the campus couldn't accommodate. We had to relocate to the faraway land of Buona Vista.

"Buona where?" was the first thing that came to mind. The second was whether the MRT was ever going to reach that stop. DHSSC Street Chase was at full steam ahead, and upon reaching the campus grounds, I was wondering if there was any chance the school management might change their mind about the whole upgrading thing.

Upon reaching, the school was a dreary sight - the ivy clung to the walls desperately, almost screaming at me to leave them alone. Windows lucky enough to remain in one piece held its dust like a curtain, hiding the rooms behind them. We searched for the rooms that we were told to look for, but only found nothing but rooms filed with debris, depression and dread.

The second time I reached that campus, it had gotten a slight facelift, and looked a tad more pleasant. Yet its corridors and rooms remained somewhat a labyrinth. Half an hour of catching with people who arrived for DHShine planning early (Of course we were early - who knew how long it'd take to get there from the East?) later, we still couldn't find our way around.

Why were there half-stories everywhere? Why are so many rooms underground? Why is my classroom so far from the canteen? Why is my classroom so far from anything? Why are some floors so uneven? Why are the staff rooms so far apart? Why is the canteen so small? Why is the hall even smaller? Why is the foyer so hot and stuffy? Why are the toilets so smelly?

Why on earth did we come to this campus?

Yet slowly, almost imperceptibly, a map of the school was forming in each of our heads. It wasn't long before we started to remember which science labs we had to go to. People had their own shortcuts, their own paths they always insist on taking when walking from the basketball court back to class. We had to pass by the path. We always walk past 2A-D when we go to the staff room. Slowly, it was Tanjong Rhu all over again, but somewhat more.

Loving the campus was something that grew on me. Event by event different run-down locations in the school like the Lecture Theatres 2 and 3 held fond and painful memories for me. Till now I feel I could sit in a room alone, and spend simple fleeting hours remembering what the campus had provided us with, despite its declining exterior. The warmth was never left behind in Tanjong Rhu - through teachers, through students, through (personally) councillors, Buona Vista became a home.

On the final days of my Year 3 years I felt a certain unexplainable longing to remain there. Lunch at Ghim Moh with classmates and other friends had become a ritual that I couldn't shake off. The homeliness of the campus now stuck to me stronger than moss on the walls. Something about the uneven tiles disturbed by thick roots had an old charm to it, as with the trees that shed their picture-perfect brown leaves around the basketball court. So many rooms that we inhabited, even the tiny SC room, was so precious. We couldn't leave this place - it was home.

Cruel fate uproots as and places us back into Tanjong Rhu's campus. Yet it mysteriously becomes a stranger to us, where upon entering we had to remember our manners. After 2 years of making ourselves at home in the laidback Buona Vista, decorum was asked from Tanjong Rhu - sit up straight, smile politely and use the right cutlery. Don't burp, laugh too loudly or you might get a stern look from the host. We had to behave prim and proper, yet it was the same campus, only bigger and newer.

Perhaps that warmth that we had hasn't fully permeated the whole campus itself yet. Perhaps a few more orientations, a few more camps, rule-breaking adventures, studying sessions and ball games might do the trick. Perhaps in another decade, we might find ourselves clawing to stay in this campus as it undergoes yet another transformation...