When we “re-branded” Welcome Tea to the current Homecoming Reunion, our intention was to build a “home” for the NOC community, one that brings people back, one that brings warmth, one that binds us, one that keeps the fire in us going. Not only for the recent returning batches who are readjusting back in NUS and Singapore; but also a growing number of us who have been roughing it out since we were back. Therefore, we are really excited to have more than 50+ senior alumni (on top of about 48 from the returning batches) who came back for the Homecoming.

As some of us stood at the back of the function room to hear representatives from each of the returning college share their journeys for the last 1 year,

Bronson (from BV 4th batch) turned to me and said:

“This is just so awesome. The energy, it’s phenomenal!”

And I understood fully what he meant. It reminded us of our days of being young and dangerous – and when you bring 100 such high energy people together in a room with only standing space left, we feel the live wires in us cross fires.

I am really glad that Jason (pioneer batch of NOC in 2002 at SV), Yiping (BV 2nd batch) and Varun (SV 3rd batch) agreed to step up and share with everyone their startup experiences during the sharing sessions. Later, when we adjourned to the rooftop for BBQ, Teck Hiong (BV pioneer batch) asked me if I knew of any other alumni starting up and looking for people to form a team. Since I sat beside Haoning (SV3 and with McKinsey now) , I asked if it has rekindled some inner desire to do something exciting too. How can it not have? As I ventured into the Shanghai camp, KC volunteered again to put together an informal sharing session for alumni interested in the China/Shanghai culture.

Many thanks to the NOC Office for their kind support financially and logistically. (The price per person is heavily subsidised.) My thanks also goes out to the organising team who led the effort and made all this possible:
Huay Hoon
Aileen
Naef
Timothy
Darius
Ahmed
Mingyeow
Yiping
Vidhya
Jason Quek
Phebe
Eric
Melvin
Bjorn
Special thanks to Prof Teo, Sarah and Huimin too!

Without these alumni stepping up to lead, we would not have pulled off a lot of these events. We will continue to post such calls for help on the googlegroup and if you would like to join such adhoc teams to shape and put these events for the rest of the community, do drop us a note. If you have any feedback for us, drop us a note too.

Last but not least, welcome back, welcome home and thank you for keeping in touch and keeping this fire going.


First row: Varun (SV3), Prem (SV2), Darius (SV3), Haoning (SV3), Akshay (SV2)
Second row: Teck Hiong (BV1), Edric (SV2), Bee Thiam (SV3), Maria (SV1), Jason (SV1)


Weisheng (SV6), Amos (BV3), Boon Han (SV4), Praveen (SV5), Benjamin (SV4), Francis (SV4)(standing) Bee Thiam (SV3), Ruey Feng (SV4).

Admin Note: The writer, Bee Thiam, is from NCSV 3. He’s also the founder of the Asian Film Archive (www.asianfilmarchive.org) and current President of NOC Alumni.