Soon Keong
Soon Keong: Three Functions, One Life Soon Keong has a way of telling stories that makes you laugh first, and only later realise you’ve been shown something serious. He begins with understatement—almost always. When asked about his years in Raffles, he shrugs it off as “not very exciting”, and then, as if accidentally revealing the real centre of gravity, adds: except that he played rugby all the way through school and university. In that single “except”, you hear the whole blueprint. Because with Soon Keong, rugby is never merely sport. It is pedagogy. It is fraternity. It is the early training of leadership in a world where bodies collide and excuses do not hold. It is the place where boys learn what a classroom sometimes forgets to teach: responsibility has weight; commitments cost; and belonging is not a mood, it is a duty. He remembers the arc of institutions the way an old map-maker remembers coastlines. There is a trivial fact, he says—yet it isn’t trivial at all. His cohort ...