David Nee (Ngai) 1964-65

1) A year before my arrival in 64, I was told, there was a Chinese boy from Hong Kong and he was tall and knew martial arts very well. He broke all the rules; when he was caught smoking behind a tree, the prefects were going to cane him, instead, he fought and beat the prefects. Needless to say, he was expelled. So when I arrived in 64, all the boys thought I also knew martial arts, and gave me some space. They did say "here is a tall Chink" . My English was quite inadequate and I did not know what Chink meant and since I did not react to that comment, they stopped using the word.

2) My English was fairly poor and there were so many rules to follow; I presume you all remember them, such as no hands in the pocket when walking, etc. So I did live in fear but it was quite an experience.

3) I had a sewing kit. When the boys in my room knew I had it and they all came to me to sew their loose buttons as they were afraid to ask the mistress to do it. By the end of my stay at King's, I was quite popular.

4) It seems that most boys were not very good in math and they called our math master 'farmer' as he was a bit rigid. He was very good to me though since I was rather good in math and he let me take the 'O' level exam while still in Form 5. I did pass it. The reason why I left King's was because the school at that time was mainly doing 'O' level material, there was very little chance of passing enough 'O' and 'A' levels to continue to the university. I left King's to a tutorial college in London and later moved to the U.S. to study architecture and then immigrated to Canada.

5) There were two S. African boys in my class, they were Drew and Swan (very few of the names I still remember); they were inseparable. One term, suddenly Drew got close with a prefect, who was also from S. Africa. Every time when we saw Drew and the prefect walking together outside, we would call up Swan to see, just to upset him, and he would say "F**k them".

6) In '65, when the school cricket team was going to play in Bristol, we, the foreign students, were able to tug along in order to see a bit of the country. While we were sitting in the coach, the geography master was sitting at the back of the coach, and he shouted out loud: "Curtis, come sit with me." (Curtis was a Form 4 boy) and everyone in the bus ...had a good laugh.

7) Also in 65, we had a new Japanese boy, his father was the general manager of Yashica camera for the whole U.K. and he gave headmaster Mosey a fancy camera. But he was very nice and had no special privileges.

8) The boys changed the lyrics of The House Of The Rising Sun by The Animals to:
'Well, there is a house in Sherborne Park
They call the Ki-ing's School
And it's been the ruin of many a poor boy
And God I know I'm one'

9) My family name is Nee, based on Mandarin and while I was at King's, it was spelled Ngai, as was pronounced in Cantonese and all the English boys had trouble pronouncing it; so they switched the letters g and n and pronounced ge nai, and sometimes they would say good night, ge nai.


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