TRIBUTE ABDUL - Perdana Library

An Autobiographical Fragment
When I was a Boy at School
(and satay cost one cent a stick)
(by Tunku Abdul Rahman)
(In a speech to the Penang Free School.)
This is a great day for me having for the first time the opportunity
to address the boys of my old school. Naturally 1 feel excited and
proud but to you boys, the occasion may be regarded just a normal
prize giving day affair because year in and year out some persons
have come to address you giving you all kinds of advice and giving
you talks on all kinds of subjects.
But to me, it is a different thing. T have come here as an old
boy to talk to students of my old school. Therefore whatever I will
say to you will be in the nature of a heart-to-heart talk.
1 felt as I came in that the atmosphere of the Penang Free
School is still here, but the school building and its surroundings have
gone.
Gone are the familiar old dome, the passage way, the old
classrooms and the familiar faces.
Perhaps the old school bell still remains: the bell that used to
herald the beginning of school lessons, leading to the heart-breaking
task of having to answer questions which we were supposed to have
learned; the task of having to work out the answers to Arithmetic,
the task of having to spell the words correctly in a spelling or
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