I learned that everyone has a story to tell - of dreams and nightmares, hope and heartache, love and loss, courage and fear, sacrifice and selfishness. I learned a lot from the stories my mum, dad, and grandparents told me: that no one is perfect but most people are good; that people can't be judged only by their worst or weakest moments; that harsh judgments can make hypocrites of us all; that a lot of life is just showing up and hanging on; that laughter is often the best, and sometimes the only response to pain. I have been graced beyond measure by all the good things in life that GOD had provided me with during my childhood. Like every other child, mine is not perfect, but it has been wonderful.

Those years in high school were an important time for me, as indeed they were for all of us who had taken such a risk by going to a school where a teacher literally demonstrated Newton's Law of gravity in practical. The late Miss Lau didn't survive her vertical challenge; an uprooted woman, she found earth that was natural to her. With her suicide, she took root in it forever.

In school, I always tried to keep things moving in the right direction, to give fellow students a chance to live their dreams, to lift their spirits, and to bring them together. I was a precocious but a naughty little one, always good at my studies but not as brilliant as the school's "Einsteins" in Sec.4A. I was not very studious; but almost always clever enough to fool the smart ones. Those who are familiar with Mark Twain's works will understand when I say that I was something of a Tom Sawyer, with the difference that I went to school happily at fifteen.

I had more than my fair share of energy, and it had to be expended somehow. It had to find outlets outside the school; burning it upside down was not a viable option. Of course, in those days there was no internet, which has turned many of today's boys into sex predators. I said earlier that I tried to keep things moving in the right direction, to give fellow students a chance to live their dreams, to lift their spirits, and bring them together - and so I became my own "Enterprise." My "Enterprise" indeed lifted their spirits, and brought people together; but whether or not it gave my fellow students a chance to live their dreams, the question was pretty much subjective. Unlike school's syllabus, my "Enterprise" has its own syllabus with an "angel in the centerfold." Porno didn't come easy back then; but I was indeed moving in the right direction with my colorful collections of adult library - "Color Scala," "Penthouse," "Playboy," "Hustler," "LOLITA," "Vivid," "Pornograffitti," "Hot Bod," "XxxTREME," - anything from dirty magazines to naughty paperback. I know that many would call it "sick" ...but I called it SEX. Whatever it was back then, I have many a happy friends. At fifteen, you could not have asked for better, with these books in hand and a little bit of imaginations, the rest of the sex were pretty much D.I.Y.

Talking about this, I remember an old Bras Basah with great affection, a place particularly popular with book hunters. Among the rows of pre-war shop houses, "Oriental Bookstore" stood to my fancy. Strange as it seemed, the joint was owned by one big hairy Gujarati. Mr. Jaswant was a very good man. I was to be the only boy in school uniform with the privilege of a back door access to his shop. I appreciated his kindness; but not without any worry. I was worried that there might be an unspoken treaty in his gesture of goodwill; like his back door for mine. As it turned out, Mr. Jaswant was a better man than I thought. And as it turned out, I was one lucky boy. "Porno Or Never, Porno Forever" was to be my slogan. At "Oriental Bookstore," the value of fair trade was not all about "centerfold." Mr. Jaswant also made it absolutely certain for the good of his business that all tradable materials must be free from 'accidental ejaculation.'

If from all this, you have concluded that I was not intensely focused on my studies, you would not be far from wrong. There were moments when my education was resting on the brink of terrifying possibilities. School was such a chore and I had too many flaws that made it increasingly improbable that even a convincing grade could do much more than prolong what was becoming an agony. In Secondary three, I was fast becoming a mediocre student; and I was threatened with expulsion on more than one occasion. I was beginning to reconcile myself to retiring from school as a failure. Salvation was nowhere within sight; my education was in a state of inertia, and the malaise that was afflicting this student was pushing me deeper into the pitfall of juvenile delinquency.

Hope was a daunting task; but I was ready to resurrect myself as I looked for the result that could ease the pressure on my beleaguered past. I was merely a young boy with a ravenous appetite to get on with life. On a whim, I briefly put aside my preference for education just to sample every particles of dirt on the earth that I walked on. I confused some of the luminous moments of my childhood with that of a grand plan of my future. The brutal truth was that, with ever diminishing success, I appeared to have been attempting to impose my own increasingly bizarre version of reality. By the third quarter of 1977, I started re-strategizing my priorities. It was the most mundane solution to a developing crisis but at least I was beginning to see the difference between 'Grand Plan' and 'Egotistical Fragments.'