I took this photo on Tuesday afternoon, just before a seminar at the Singapore Management University. I’ve decided to write a bit about it ‘cos I noticed quite a number of people have viewed the photo.

Many many years ago, the ground I was standing was an open field. My primary school – Saint Anthony’s Boys’ School – used it for the occasional inter-class football games. No goalposts or painted lines or anything. Just an open field.

Even though I never attended school in the building across the road (SJI had already moved to its Malcolm Road premises), I feel connected to it and to SJI alumni stretching back more than 150 years.

Perhaps the topic of a yesterday.sg post? The Former Lives of Museums & Monuments. Can even be a podcast series, with ‘soundseeing’ tours (apologies to Fr. Roderick).

I remember being brought around old SJI before it was handed over for redevelopment. It was during a Secondary 3 Leadership Camp. Brother Michael Broughton showed us around and regaled us with stories from his school days and stories from even further back. Maybe the yesterday.sg crew can get him to record the stories for posterity.

As with most of my SJI memories, I have no photographic evidence of the pre-redeveloped building. My friends and I were somehow quite averse to documenting things on film. Case in point: almost my entire batch went for OBS and no one brought a camera. Not even a cheap plastic point-and-shoot.

We would have had photos of the attic. Photos from the dome. Photos of the chapel with missing tiles. Photos of grass growing a circular border in the courtyard – evidence of a World War II bomb crater. It would have been very interesting.

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