First Grade Animal Science

I was channel surfing yesterday and watched a snippet of the variety show "Who is Smarter than a Fifth Grader". The contestant chose the category "First Grade Animal Science" and the resulting question was something like: A doe is a female species of which animal?

Ha! I know the answer from the song from the movie The Sound of Music. Bet you did too. You could probably sing it as well: Doe, a dear, a female dear.

For me, I heard the song when I was in Primary 1 or 2, but not from The Sound of Music. My mum had told me then there was a fantastic movie called The Sound of Music and she herself had only watched it once or twice. Those were the days before VCDs/DVDs were available so the only opportunity to watch such movies was when SBC broadcasted it.

I remember the scene vividly. It was a singing lesson and our teacher offered the opportunity to anyone in the class who would sing. One of my classmates, a girl, I remember her name, Chen Xingping, a Malaysian girl who commuted to Singapore daily to school, sang this song.

I was mesmerised by the song, because of the simplicity, the intuitiveness in teaching the listener about music notes. When I finally saw the movie a few years later, I loved the movie as well and subsequently bought the soundtrack and the VCD (it was still before the DVD era).

Anyway, back to Xingping. I remembered she had a best friend (don't we all have best friends then) called Peiqi whom, in later years, someone mentioned she took part in the Miss Singapore competition. Although a group of us from primary school still keep in touch, we have not been able to contact Xingping or Peiqi, even in this Facebook and Google age.