111 Middle Road, there she stands. Hardly celebrated now but you can’t ignore her.  She was part of my secondary school life in the eighties.  Coming from the vast space at Canossa Convent Primary School, I marveled at the limited space that had to accommodate both SAC Primary and Secondary.  In time to come, this small area grew on me.

It was here in the open-air quadrangle where celebrations came alive. In any class performances, the quadrangle is the ‘live’ stage.  You would have hundreds of your peers, juniors and seniors looking at and down on you, the Sisters enjoying from the fifth storey and the canteen uncles and aunties taking a break and watching the performances. 

One can never forget the many celebrations that have taken place at the quadrangle, the many voices that have sung the perfect hymns, the melodious choral voices that reached for the skies, the dance steps that were choreographed and not forgetting the many push-ups and sit-ups that were meted on those grounds.  Bonds of friendships were forged, the sounds of laughter and silence rang through the school quadrangle.  The list goes on and I wish that the current incumbents at Bedok North can also experience that warmth.

In a recent article titled Old School, New Ideas in LIFE! (Straits Times, 8 November 2007), the Arts reporter referred to this site as the former Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts campus instead of properly referencing it as the old SAC.  It is a pity that an inadequate reference has been made in the national newspaper but it is still not too late to correct this historical oversight.  What is the fate of 111 Middle Road?  Do we have the passion to preserve this heritage site, now that the National Arts Council is making the site available for 10 years in a tender exercise?   What are your thoughts?