The Missing Month

Left a gigantic hole in my heart.

It was this very month that the year's final exams were held, when I learnt more than my head could cope with, and saw the bigger picture in life.

Early in October (1st October), there was this 7-year boy who went on a killing spree in a zoo somewhere in Australia (was it?). Then, we celebrated my mother's birthday on the 3rd October.

After that, I learnt many things about Egypt's lost pyramid and the Forbidden City in Beijing, China.

Egypt's Lost Pyramid
There was this funny site on a hilltop that was covered in ruins. Egyptologists found out that once upon a time, on this very site, a great pyramid stood tall, a well 60 feet higher than the Pyramid of Giza we marvel at today. Rumours went about that the 3rd king of the 4th dynasty was a cruel king and therefore, people have tried to smear his name and torture his soul by breaking his statues. Back then, the statues were to be the body of those who passed on to the next world. By breaking them, you condemn their spirits and put them in unrest. The king, Djedefre, was thought to have killed his older brother and have since been shunned by his family. Just recently, Egyptologists found out that ALL the rumours were untrue. Djedefre was actually a good son. He made a ship (Egyptians thought them as holy) to his father, the builder of the Great Pyramid of Giza. Even the sphinx was dedicated to his father. It used the face of his father. Once thought to be torn down by the unsatisfied citizens of Egypt, the GreatER pyramid of Giza was actually torn down by the Romans, who, being from a different place in the world, saw the pyramid as a mass of junk. Blame Octavian (or is it Octavius?) and Julius Caesar for this. We could have very well had something better to admire today....

China

Qin Shi Huang Ti wasn't the one who created the Forbidden City. It was in fact, also a paranoid Zhu Di, who used the name King Yongle. He was so frightened about prophecies that should say that he wasn't the rightful king or something like that. He extended the Great Wall of China by 1400km. He also wanted a great city specially for good fengshui and instructed a eunich, Ruan An, to carry out this task. The whole thing was to "establish himself as the rightful king". King Yongle himself was quite fussy about the design for the Forbidden City. He wanted something unique. Then one day, he couldn't take the wait anymore and gave Ruan An one more day to get a design which he liked, otherwise it's off with the head. Ruan An actually gave up the designs and spent his whole night designing a new cage for his pet cicada instead. The next day, the king saw him in his room and pretty ironically, liked the design for the cicada's cage. And so, Ruan An lived and the city is what we see as today.

Then there was the Chinese armada Dragons of the Sea. This was ALSO under king Yongle in an effort to broaden China's knowledge.

Monday 6th Oct
The funniest day and probably the last day I would ever enjoy myself in the science lab. Firstly, GheeK flipped a pencil on top of Ishwin's head. By chance or with accurate calculations, it was an amazing thing to see. Apart from that, everyone in the first table cracked and started to pretend to be each other. Everyone who played Emily was "Oh, I'm so emo...", those playing GheeK was "Scrabble, scrabble, scribble scrabble!", those playing me had some trouble with my Daffy-laughing, and those playing Cas was "No....hungry...I. NEED. FOOOOOOOODDD!!!". Then this time, things got too out of hand and almost half the class was standing up. The first table, albeit being the noisiest (we think), only had the ghost standing up. You got that right. The teacher doesn't pick on us nerds. I initially got called up to stand when I tried to teach the table how to laugh like me. Unfortunately, I got called to stand. But I WAS eager to study.....so I sat down and no one noticed. Haha.

Tuesday 7th Oct
There was this form one guy who came to school with gravity-defying pants. They were so low that none of us could find an explanation as to why his pants don't fall off. As he came in, all 4 prefects standing at the gate bombarded him to pull up his pants. Before anyone finished their sentence, the boy did an extraordinary thing. He has developed a special reflex to retaliate any prefect order to readjust his pants. Before we knew it, he pulled his pants chest high. Yes, you read right. You can't find this special breed of humans anywhere else in the country.

During class, Sha Lynn and I came up with this hypothesis that Encik Rosdi, our BM teacher, doesn't notice our behaviour, especially when he's engrossed in the school magazine. The only way to test the hypothesis was to try it out. Sha Lynn started waving frantically in his direction. Just as we had suspected, there was no reaction whatsoever. So, I said "Hi" in his direction. And it was still safe!! Ishwin tried next and waved the highest, thanks to her long hands. Nothing happened. Thus, our hypothesis has been proven acceptable.

Thurs 9th Oct
DJ was invaded by bees!! I gigantic beehive was discovered in the Canteen Garden. Bees were flying everywhere. When I reached school, I was surprised to see the firemen there. There just locked the front gate and I was asked to enter through the small Gate C. I couldn't make out what the problem was at that time (sad...). Xie Wen and I didn't know and walked straight to the Garden. Then the firemen laughed at us. Okay...After that, I followed Xie Wen to take care of Gate C. I almost tricked Delon and Justin Ooi into using the canteen way....but Xie Wen was too honest. Many funny people walked through the gate, especially some of the morning session students who were cursing at the prospect of having to use the small crummy gate. There were some students who still used the dangerous front gate since it was half-opened that time. The firemen and Uncle Bala were quite mad at that. There was this boy who yelled loudly, "I can't believe I came all the way here JUST to find out that EVERYONE is still using the front gate!!!!!". Yea...odd. Then Rui Sheng passed by and was laughing like mad at something....pre-exam stress, I guess.

In class (or more like the science lab), a bee made it's way from the canteen to Cassandra's shirt. Our table freaked out and the bee continued buzzing on to Jhia Yim's fringe. It soon buzzed off though.

Tuesday 21 Oct
The prefect interview was today. I was in the last group with Kean Lynn and Syn Yee. And gosh, we all thought Daniel was supposed to be the last one to finish the interview. But no....3 of us were...and while we were waiting, the form 4 debating team came into the waiting room. It was actually their practice room. Keefe said Kean Lynn and I looked alike....and after that, everyone broke into singing a cake song. Entertaining. DJ debators....they're like that?

Wednesday 22 Oct
I actually dreamt that exam would start on this day and that I flunked everything because I forgot.....

Thursday 23 Oct
The first time in the whole form 2 year when I did not enjoy myself in the science lab or engage myself in nutty conversations. I was sending out negative vibes almost the whole day and people thought I was sick. What happened, you ask? Go and ask New South Wales. I flunked the English paper to get a Distinction. Wow, that's pretty good, isn't it? No, it's not. Ghee Ken had 4 mistakes and was top ONE PER CENT in the country. How about Gary Yeo? 8 mistakes. ME? 10 freaking mistakes!!!!! What was your standing in the country? Top 5%. But that's still good, isn't it....seeing how some from Balau even got a certificate for participating only? No, that's not good. I could have got less mistakes if it weren't for my terrible understanding of symbols. I couldn't understand why "summer night" was chosen for the setting.

Saturday 25 Oct
I can't believe it!!! Ker Jen Ho goes to the same piano teacher as I do!!! And he's going for the coming Chopin competition. Scrabble AND piano....

Wednesday29 Oct
KH. It was okay and no mistakes found so far. SO FAR. Seems that there were too many ambiguous questions to be sure of. Maths was alright, although I suffered from calculator madness. I just couldn't trust the calculator. There was even this question when I counted over 20 times just to make sure the calculator wasn't out of whack. Geography was nuts. We were told to focus on the Canada map but all teachers are liars. Only one question came out for it....and you know what? It was just asking us about the name of the Trans-Canada road. Smart. The common sense questions were crazy because they were ALL ambiguous.

Thurs 30th Oct
Moral, the most unbearable and stupidest subject that all sad souls who do not worship the same lord as our Education Minister have to study. The worthless subject which requires all your brainpower to be drained just by memorizing so-called "categorized moral values" does not even help students to apply moral into their daily lives, what more improve morality??? There are 36 Moral values to be hammered into your head along with definitions solely created to kill students. Worst of all, each definition of the moral value has to be memorized word for word, leaving behind no grammatical errors nor even allowing word synonyms to be used. This is how faulty our education system is.

No doubt I only memorized the values and left out the definitions. After all, the questions leaked and the rumour was that only one question on definition was coming out. So I didn't bother to study 24 definitions just to prepare myself for one teeny question. Instead, I came to school early to get clues on the One Question and my search boiled down to 2 possibilities. Good enough. So I memorized the 2 definitions and VOILA!! ONE of them DID come out!! Hallelujah! If that wasn't crazy enough, I actually started out my exam by writing all the values on my paper so that I could refer to them as I did the exam. That was 10 minutes wasted from my exam time, but the trouble saved me and helped me think straight!!

Melindungi Hak Pengguna
= Membela dan memelihara hak individu supaya menjadi pengguna yang bijak, mendapat perkhidmatan serta barangan yang berkualiti dan tidak mudah dieksploitasi.

Yup. THAT long.

I can't believe who was dumb enough to categorize all moral values when some of them could even be considered as one similar value or even INVENT definitions for them.

I had 2 mistakes so far, thanks to the stupid values with close meanings.

BM paper 2 was ......rather terrible. The summary was quite irritating as the points were hard to spot. I also just realised after the exam that I forgot to write which question I chose in Question C.

Friday 31 Oct
The first thing I thought today was BASKIN ROBBINS!!! English paper 2 went well, though I think I could've ended better.

Original excerpt
Should have been written
".....Let's nip the problem in the bud, or very literally, nip the problem in the butt...."

I was also tempted to give my title "The Garfield Disease". But then that would be an insult to my favourite cartoon comic strip. Everyone stuck to the same old "The Causes of Obesity Yadayadayada....". It was supposed to be an article for the school magazine anyway....Science was out of whack. I forgot to apply the principle of moments....and I wrote "wax" instead of "plasticine". Crap.

Monday 3 Nov
Maths went smoothly.

The guy with the great reflex Han Nian is back again with more funny issues. He didn't wear socks to school and kept changing his mind as to which gate he should enter from. He chose to avoid us prefects, the ones that irritated his sad soul. Unfortunately, we were too mean and kept "stalking" his moves. I mean, really, who avoids prefects??? In the end, he gave in to us. When Rodney checked his socks, he wasn't wearing any. Gosh. Such people. Close to extinction.

Then there was this whole thingy about science paper 2 whereby some people complained about the credibility of pH 8 being purple in colour as the teacher says so. Well, after looking up in the Internet, pH 8 is GREEN. Okay, so green is the actual colour for pH 8. And that means blue and purple is out. So is light purple, my dear brain. So, is this all for the sake of education or exam marks? I stand for education. So here is the table. From the Internet, mind you. And yes, it's UNIVERSAL INDICATORS. Mind you it questions the credibility of the information given to us. Everything is COMPLETELY DIFFERENT.

1= red
2= orange-red
3= orange
4= pale orange
5= orange-yellow
6= pale yellow
7= green-yellow
8= green
9= dark green
10= light blue
11= blue / mauve
12= blue / mauve
13= blue / mauve
14= blue / mauve

Yes, I'm a nerd. If you don't believe what you see, click HERE. I hope that you know you were looking for UNIVERSAL INDICATOR. This puts the teachers in an awkward position. Now, no student can argue. We all get wrong!! YAY. The government got it wrong too. So, we're all learning the wrong universal indicators. When we grow up, they'll be communication problems.

Tues 4 Nov
Exam stress starting to sink in, especially one day away from History exam. Point proven when a sea of true blue prefects swarmed all over 2 gates to make sure nobody goes out of school to see some dumb handphone promotion thingy. Then it started raining and all the prefects got stranded in the rain. A few funny souls like Shu Wen and Rodney voluntarily stranded themselves together with another 5 prefects under the guard house......and they started posing there. Wow. Then, Rodney started "cleaning" the pavement by using his shoes to push the water into the drain. Shu Wen and I followed suit.

I got 99 for Maths. The one mark....FLUNKED!!!!!! Looks like I misundertsood an objective question. Crap. CRAP!!!

BM was alright....until I figured I had 2 mistakes. Crap. 2 and counting. Physical Education: Just finish the damn paper. Not bad since everything was learnt via the newspaper and fervently studying science. Science Paper 1......it was alright....until...there was no such thing as carbon dioxide in liquid form in our year apart from Air Pressure chapter. Nuts.

Wednesday 5th November 2008
An epoch-making moment in the world. The day that changes the world. Obama is the NEWLY ELECTED AMERICAN PRESIDENT!!!! WOOHOO!!!!!!!!!!!!

I was listening to John McCain's speech....then I had to go to school....ladflasjdfhasjf. History was terrible and made my brain all mushy. This made matters worse since I couldn't concentrate during English.

Timothy, Zhong-Yuen, Hui Yi and I were discussing History answers during recess. Hui Yi left after working out that she had roughly 5 mistakes. The rest of us continued killing our minds. I joked with Zhong-Yuen that if he got higher marks than me, I'll trade marks with him. They thought I was cracked. Sooner or later, due to reasons unknown, Zhong-Yuen and Tim had some violent spasm, which scared Cas as Zhong pushed Tim in her direction, hitting her.

Thurs 5 Nov
Art...was really really crazy. Out of 30 questions, 19 were unsure of. Nothing from quesiton 11 onwards were from our books. Terrible. Everyone was really turning nuts thanks to this. For Section B, I got creeped out by the guy we were supposed to colour. So, I coloured his background greyish-black and made him seem to have the devil's horns and tails. Very amusing....I even DARED to do this during an exam.....Wow. Hey, but at least I think it's nice. I think....

After Art, prefects all went to a meeting. The final outcome to whether we would pass our prefect interview was nearing. We all sat in the meeting room. Praying. Everyone got their certificates. Tension rising. Suddenly, Overture 1812 started playing in my head. I just couldn't help it. Then, they finally announced that only 17 prefects out of 28 who went for the interview got through. Big number? Wrong. There are 13 AJKs. 2 AJKs didn't get through. One AJK resigned. The 17 names were read out and they left the room. Pn Mary-Anne, the school counsellor had a talk with the other 11 who didn't make it. It was so touching that some even cried.

So, come on, tell me. Are you wondering whether I got through the interview? You are? Well, aren't all of us? Let's put it this way: Learning piano and playing scrabble isn't projecting enough leadership qualities.

The verdict: You all have not been chosen because you do not show enough leadership qualities.

Yea. Just say that the ancient scrabble case is still against me. If you don't know, there was this once when I missed an official assembly while practising scrabble. Apart from that, I missed roughly 2-3 prefect meetings due to attending my piano class. So, as Cas said, the message sent across is : Representing the school for scrabble is bad. Playing piano and missing a few meetings where the teachers only condemn the bad prefect's behaviours is also bad. Looks like the 2 things I aspire to be good in has come back to haunt me.

Maybe it's a blessing in diguise in preparation for next year. Maybe it's saving me my time. But it doesn't matter. I consulted them after the meeting to "pinpoint my weaknesses in carrying out my duties". The shocking thing? They showed me the paper with "complaints" and I saw just those 2 haunting reasons. No "Bad hair style", no "Statue of Liberty" label (it means just standing somewhere and not telling the students to abide by the rules), no "Eating in class", no disciplinary action taken except the Scrabble Case.

Just those 2. So THAT's leadership, huh?

I mean, some of those who were chosen had attitude problems, eat in class and there was even one who rarely told students off. But just because she was such a great apple polisher, or should I say, suck up person, that she managed to impress many teachers by appearing diligent. But when it came to prefectorial duties, did she tell the students off? No. But she got through. Leadership qualities? Missing in the eye of the students.

It really is a shock that such things should occur. My days as a prefect is numbered.

Luckily, Pn Choong said I could get in next year when they open up again. Thanks to my clean record apart from Scrabble Case, she says she can recommend me (Then why not in the first place?). I'm definitely reapplying. Such horrible reasons. Ah well, there's time to polish up on several things only a normal student can do.

When you feel the world needs changing, change yourself first.