OFA coffee table book, part 9

We've just had a meeting of the editorial board of the Old Frees' Association coffee table book project this afternoon. The book is progressing well enough. I would believe that by now there is enough material to fill about 176 pages although after today's meeting with the company that's doing the layout designing work, the book may get closer to 192 pages.

If this is indeed where we are heading, then I must say that our initial projections have been proven wrong. Not to say that we are unhappy about this but far from it, the whole editorial board is excitedly happy. At the start of the project, we had wondered whether we could have enough response for a 96-page book.

So what's the latest status today? For a start, we went through the guidelines with the layout designers. After viewing his first draft of some selected articles, we have now decided that having a two-column book will afford us greater leeway with designing the pages. We have also streamlined the number of sections in the book, reducing them to four. I think that was a rather good suggestion by the OFA president.

The four sections of the coffee table book will now cover the Penang Free School, the Old Frees' Association, prominent alumni who are now deceased and personal reflections from present Old Frees who continue to make their marks locally and around the world.

Among the prominent Old Frees that have passed away, we shall be featuring Tuanku Syed Putra Jamalullail, Tunku Abdul Rahman, Dr Lim Chong Eu and Dr Wu Lien Teh. We've also lined up short biographies of people like P Ramlee, Zainul Abidin bin Sultan Mydin and Husain Abdoolcader. Old Frees that contributed to modern Singapore would be their four distinguished judges: Wee Chong Jin, Tan Ah Tah, AV Winslow and AWD Ambrose.