The Victoria Institution, a secondary school founded in Kuala Lumpur in 1893 by the British administration in close collaboration with the leaders of the three major communities: Malay, Chinese, and Indian in the capital, comes closest to upholding the British public school tradition in the region. Widely recognised as the "premier school" of the country, its established traditions and ties have stood, it might be said, the test of times. The overwhelming role of former alumni in public life attests even today - though the school has lost its former pre-Independence reputation - to time-honoured British educational policies. This collection of eleven vignettes by a former pupil of the school who rebelled against this "strict inflexible tradition" as interpreted and transmitted by the local staff, who had not themselves wholly and intrinsically imbibed the spirit of the colonial tradition, borders on satire, expressed in a rebellious debunking attitude towards his fellow alumni who mistakenly or otherwise assumed the importance of their nurture in an older, well-grounded heritage, both in Malaysia and in England where many or some among them went to qualify later on. To this end, Wignesan has even, sometimes, recourse to ribald language and humour, but always with tongue in cheek. The vignettes also sketch a veridical toile of times gone-by when other socio-political standards held sway in a land still in the making, so to speak. His insights into his fellow-school mates and the long-arm reach of a government over its young in a foreign territory all speak of a Kafkayesque microcosm and makes one wonder if inculcated intrinsic cultural values may triumph over a closed-circuit world of political shenanigans. An air of earnest light-heartedness pervades this collection of vignettes, especially the "not so tall tales" related by Timmy, the Malaya Hall cat in London; perhaps this approach might make palatable what is most unsavoury to the indigene (who were/are somehow deprived of an intellectual life) and make him/her now more willing to accept criticism or adopt the chastening habit of being auto-critical.