"There was always an amateurishness in colonial administration, and even in technical specialisation, which was deemed desirable by the British, who have never trusted professionalism. Sir Frank Swettenham, one of the founder Malayan administrators, laid down succinctly the qualities desirable in a new recruit to the service - good at games, not so good at studies, unmarried and amoral enough to employ a sleeping dictionary, not too matey otherwise with the natives, clubbable. He might have added something about artistic taste, or lack of it, but that, like a fear of intellectualism, is probably implied in the first two items. If I had hoped to find intellectual companionship among my white colleagues it was because I expected a transferral of the grammar school atmosphere to a college celebrating fifty years of academic glory. But there was little glory, except on the rugger and hockey fields. Jimmy Howell announced with satisfaction at a staff meeting the installation of a hundred stout locks for the library bookcases. "One for each book," I unwisely said. The extra-curricular lives of the teachers reflected the lack of academic ambition in the school itself. They had their long-playing record-players and their shelves of book club novels, golf clubs in the hallway and stengahs on the tray. They took trips to Ipoh to shop at Whiteways and take a bit of decent makan in the Ipoh Club (ikan tinggeri belle meuniere). They had their decent little cars."