I picked up smoking sometime around my O Levels, when I was 16- but I never really bought my own cigarettes and carried them around until Junior College, when I was 17. I don’t remember smoking in NYJC- it was the first few months of that year that I must have started smoking more seriously.

When did I have my first cigarette in school? Wow, I can’t remember. I remember smelling smoke on the breath of a senior girl that I sorta had a crush on, and asking her about it. But I hadn’t started smoking in school then. But I imagine that she and her friends asked me along for a smoke the next time. That probably must have been it. Through her I must have gotten to know most of the regular smokers in school. We used to smoke in the handicapped toilet beside the canteen, and on the upper floors of a HDB block across the road from school. Sometimes there would be 6 or 7 people crowded into the toilet, and you’d literally see the smoke coming out from the ventilation.

What did I smoke then? Marlboro Reds, sometimes. Pall Malls, maybe. Occasionally a Viceroy Menthol Lights, perhaps. Those were the days before Ice Blast and the other ultra-cold cigarettes. It’s hard for me to separate my first year from the next two- (I repeated a year).

The second year, I had a Korean classmate who smoked too, and we’d have smokes and long chats over soggy fries and bubble tea across the road from school. He was partial to Mild Sevens, and he once brought me back some Parliaments from S. Korea. Sometimes he’d invite me up to his place- he lived alone in a partitioned area of a HDB flat- and we’d drink beer, smoke cigarettes and play video games. He introduced me to Guinness Stout for the first time. We’d talk about girls, playing in a rock band, and make fun of each other for being so lazy in school. Sometimes I’d fool around on his bass guitar, even though he had no amp. I found his perspective on Singapore quite refreshing, because he was an Asian who studied in the States before coming here. (I had another Korean classmate in the first year who was a brilliant soccer player, who was in a soccer academy at Sao Paulo or something before coming to Singapore. Man, that guy was ripped.)

There was one time I remember very clearly- I was taking a nap in the Student Council room (yes, I was a councillor for a while) and a bunch of girls came in making a huge ruckus. I couldn’t explain why, but I felt terribly angry and frustrated at being interrupted- and I grabbed a cigarette from my bag- it was Surya, Gudang Garam- the Indonesian kretek cigarette that lasts forever. I went to the toilet below the auditorium- it was after school hours, so nobody was there. I turned off the lights, sat in an empty cubicle and had a long, slow smoke by myself in absolute darkness. It calmed me immensely. I will always remember that moment, with the crackling of the cloves in the cigarette and how my hands lit up slightly as the flame brightened every time I inhaled.

Smoking was a great way to break the ice with people, but my favourite cigarettes in TPJC were almost always the ones I had by myself. Sometimes I’d climb up the spiral staircase by the Cafe, sometimes I’d go up the stairs by the Guitar Ensemble Room to where the library’s emergency door would be. In the second and third year, I’d often meet up with random smokers after school at the void deck across the road from school. We even had a plush armchair for a while. Sometimes I’d meet them before school too, if I was early.

I was never caught smoking- my civics tutor once smelt smoke on my breath and reprimanded me for it, but I was never caught in the act. I think it’s because I usually preferred to smoke alone- most of the guys who got caught smoking would go in big groups, and end up spending far longer than they ought to.

I never really had any real friends in TPJC, not the kind that you forge a spiritual understanding with. Well, maybe that Korean guy. But nobody much closer than that. My smoke breaks were sort of my little way of learning to spend time alone by myself, my little meditative sessions away from the ridiculous mess that is a Junior College education. I miss them, more than I miss any particular person from school.