Young in the Yellow City (Fiction, Episode 2)

The Queen was wearing stilettos as usual. Today she wore her brown heels with a fabric upper in a floral print of red, brown and teal over a white background. To match those heels, the Queen chose to don a white floral lace dress, bearing the flesh on her wrinkled and spotted arms. Her lip was dark red, and she wore a pair of big, matching dark red ear studs. Her hair is short, wavy and neat. Her crow's feet are obvious, but she only puts on light make-up, showing no intention of concealing her age. Perhaps that's her true rationale, to make her seniority known to the students, to induce respect and fear in her students. The white Prada bag that she carried completes her graceful appearance, but Ignatius ought to know better. She's like Miranda Priestly, the Devil who wears Prada, although Ignatius was not quite sure if that white lace dress she is wearing now is Prada.

The Queen is Mrs. Rose Ang. She is Ignatius' GP tutor.

And Ignatius has forgotten about the essay that is supposed to be due today. Three questions, one on environmental protection, one on the influence of mass media, and another one on euthanasia. Suddenly euthansia seemed like the only option for Ignatius to take. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, but a woman scorned hath no fury like Mrs Ang knowing that you have forgotten to do your homework.

After the daily routine of flag-raising ceremony, Ignatius checked his timetable for the day. Great, the first period at 8 A.M. is Chem lab. Perhaps I could find some cyanide to use, Ignatius thought. He felt queasy, the kind of queasiness one would get when they know that doom is looming.

After spending two hours in the poorly-lit, underventilated and depressing-looking laboratory, Ignatius gets an one-hour break. He mentally add a new item to his to-do list.

Chem lab was dull, especially the person whom Ignatius is sitting next to is Eva Fan. Boring, average Jane from China. her hair is thick and wavy, which reminds Ignatius of Goldilocks, another PRC girl from SCGS. The only difference is that Eva ties the waves on her head in the most humbling way using the most boring hair band one can ever find, while Goldilocks is proud to display her waves in the most exagerrated manner one can imagine. Either she's oblivious to all that snickering behind her, which would indicate a dumb blonde personality, or she just happen to have a bad hair day, every day. Or maybe she's the spokeperson for fashion (not!) wigs.

Ignatius and Eva set up the experiment together. There was no much chemistry between them. They quickly allocated the tasks between themselves and set off to work. They obtained results, recorded their observations, and discussed briefly on how to describe the observation seen when they heat unknown, white, powdery compound Q "until no further change is observed." Miss Grace Chua, the Chem tutor went through the experiment with them. Bell rings. Lesson's over. Ignatius heads back to the class bench.

"Lend me your essay."

"You never do, huh? Haha!" Lim Yan Yun teased. "Yeah, I didn't. I totally forgot about it. Did you do yours? How long is your essay?"

Ignatius' heart sank when he saw that Yan Yun wrote on euthanasia. He knew absolutely nothing about euthanasia. Plus, euthanasia is such a sensitive issue to be tackled in GP, too many grey-areas, too argumentative. He's only good at regurgitating facts, so he needs a sample essay on environmental protection.

"Xin Wei, which essay question did you choose?"

"I wrote on the environemtal protection thinggy." Ignatius' heart lit up with hope again. "Lend me! Puh-leeeeez! I am desperate!"

"Okay.. but don't copy blindly," warned Xin Wei, who cautiously handed over her essay to Ignatius.

Ignatius grinned. He knew exactly what she meant, and knew exactly what to do. He will not plagiarise, and he knows how sensitive the Queen is to plagiarism. She can detect the slightest plagiarism in her students'essay, effectively knowing whether or not her students have been copying each other's work. What he needs to do now is to read through Xin Wei's essay, pick out her arguments, paraphrase them and substitute the examples and case studies with those he had memorised by heart. Wind energy in the Netherlands. Solar energy in Germany. Tidal energy in Southern France. Stupid Xin Wei, Ignatius thought, All she can give is the Kyoto Protocol.

Ignatius' Nokia vibrated. One new message is received.

"ECACO formals at 330. A306." It was from Lucy Liu, the secretary for ECACO, which is the committee that Ignatius is in.

Yet another meeting. Ignatius took a deep breath and decided that he need a break from the homework-copying. Potato wedges from "Asian Fusion" and a small pack of Marigold's mixed fruit and vegetable juice. Bell rings. Ignatius, now with one less worry off his mind, dragged himself to the classroom where the Queen awaits. He made sure that when he enters the classroom he must appear non-chalant, and kept psychoing himself that he has completed the essay -- by himself, so that he would radiate this aura of self-confidence. The Queen is very sharp. She can detect the slightest form of flusteration in her students, so he must really cover his emotions well.

... To Be Continued. Stay Tuned.

Young in the Yellow City (Fiction) (Episode 1)

There was no else at the class bench when Ignatius Heng arrived. After all, it was only 6:52 A.M. on his Nokia 6233. Ignatius was never fond of watches. Who needs watches when there is a clock on your mobile?

Ignatius threw his white Zinc bag onto the wooden table. A random piece of flyer got blown away from the table-top. There were still more pieces of paper strewn on this brown antique. A pamphlet on Wednesday's Ice-cream day organised by the netball team (to raise funds for some third-world country), exercise worksheets based on the TIME magazine (which was issued more than three weeks ago) that the school had subscribed for them, a detached piece of tutorial on Complex Numbers (which Ignatius didn't bother to attempt, or submit to Mrs. Gwee for marking) that looked like Christina Seow's work, a set of H2 Economics notes on International Trade which had a suspicious-looking size-10 footprint on it. The flat and cheap-looking cardboard box on the table was initially inaugurated to store such papers neatly. However, whenever the box got filled to its brim, people started using it as a paper-weight; pretty soon, it is used as a paper-weight regardless how much of it is filled with papers. Nowadays, the bulk of mass of this "paperweight" comes from the dog-eared "Angels and Demons" by Dan Brown, which still has the iconic sticker that reads "College Library" on its spine.

Ignatius sat on the rickety class bench and the wooden structure shifted its equilibrium to the side away from where he was sitting. Immediately Ignatius was reminded of the Le Chatelier's Principle. The next second, he shook that disgusting thought off his head, half-bewildered and half-cocky by this display of ingenuity.

He took out his tutorial on Circular Motion in attempt to attempt the questions. He gave up after three glances at the question paper; in between those glances were distractions of people-watching. The first distraction was Tammy Chen. She has reached school. She sashayed as she made her way to her class bench located on the other wing of the horseshoe-shaped building. He was captivated by the curves on her body. She isn't exactly what you would call voluptuous, but her curves are... perfect. Like perfect symmetry of each other. Like the sine curve. And it's not just any sine curve. It's your standard "y = sin x" curve, with an amplitude of 1 unit. Nothing too humongous, nothing too negligible. Anything bigger would be like Fong Wei Ling, like "y = 435281 sin x"; anything smaller would be like Aileen Tan, like "y = 0 sin x".

The second distraction was the arrival of Lam Dao Tang. He's just simply too big to miss. At more than 130 kilograms, one might assume that he's the star judoka of the school's judo team, but alas, he blows the flute in the Chinese Orchestra. What a pity, Ignatius thought, each time he sees Dao Tang. He could probably be the only JC student who can give that Indian RJC female judoka the same size as him a body slam. Ignatius was reminded of the scene in the finals of the 'A'-Division Inter-School Judo Championship last year, where the College's best (probably because she was the heaviest in the team) female judoka, got her ass whipped so badly by that ridiculously over-sized Indian judoka. It was like seeing Oprah Winfrey trying to wrestle that girl who lip-synched in the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony. It was literally David versus Goliath. Unfair. Mis-match.

But that was almost 6 months ago, and Ignatius is relieved that now is not the competition season for the sports CCA. Two seasons a year, lasting between two to three months each season, Ignatius and his fellow councillors have to attend these sporting events to cheer for the athletes. Ignatius love to watch those matches, but he hates cheering. Or rather, he hates to lead the student population in cheering. The College students never cheer during a match. They only do so when the team has won the match, which is frustrating because on one hand you need to get the supporters to cheer so as to motivate the athletes, and on the other hand, when the supporters refuse to provide such moral support, the athletes conveniently blame the Students' Council for not doing their job.

On that note, Ignatius decided not to buy ice-cream from the netball team this Wednesday.

It's now 7:02 A.M. The 7 o'clock 151, 156, 174 and 961 buses have arrived. Following closely are the 7:01 74, 171 and 852. Students began to stream in and fill up the empty seats on the class benches. Their dull brown uniform, which is a complete fashion disaster, makes their infiltration into the void decks look like a giant Milo spillage.

Lionel Tay has arrvied, with his signature Deuter bag packed to its maximum capacity with every single sheet of notes and tutorials since last year and the usual can of chilled Nescafé on his right hand. Marcus Li was beside him, probably talking about Bleach anime with Lionel. Both of them sat down on the class bench, opposite Ignatius. Both of them took out their Circular Motion tutorial. Both of them saw Ignatius' blank foolscap paper and question paper. Both of them put the tutorial back into their own folder.

Clack, clack clack. Oh shoot! The familiar clacking of stilettos brought about a gush of warm blood up Ignatius' spine and into the blood vessels of his brain. A sense of deja vú, followed by random bits and pieces of Friday's conversation with Lau Xin Wei and Alicia Ng, then all perplexity became recollection. There was a brief, a very brief, moment of jubilation when Ignatius remembered. Then he quickly realised that it was actually better for him not to remember it. At least he would be living in ignorant bliss for a couple more hours before the Queen's lesson.

Oh! Shit!

... To be continued.

Mrs Ang Lai Kuin

I happened to chance upon some of Mrs Ang's comments on the Council's Facebook's Wall, and the image of Miranda Priestly flashed across my mind.

Elitism

I've got a confession to make. I'm an elitist.

I went back to school for the Students' Council campfire on Saturday. To feel like a student again. To see the new faces that will make up the next batch of Students' Council. To see my old friends again and catch up with them.

Meeting fellow Hwachongnians has never felt so invigorating before. I felt at ease and liberated -- feelings which, I suddenly realise, were missing in my life for the past year or so.

And it just dawned onto me that I am not exactly clicking with my platoon mates. I don't speak Naruto, Playstation, Left 4 Dead, or DOTA. Neither do I sing BTT, FTT, clutch and first/second/third gear.

I speak scholarships (overseas, local, and bond-free), scholarship interviews, university applications (local and overseas) and JC-life.

I belong to a different league from them. The atas league? In my opinion, yes, I belong to the atas league.

You can call this culture shock, even though it took one year for this to come as a shock to me. I spent two years in an elite JC, surrounded by people who aspires to enter globally-renouned universities, dreams about obtaining the most prestigious scholarships, and strives to get that string of As and Distinctions on their result slip. The next two years that follow have me ejected from the social circle that I am so attuned to and thrown into the opposite end of the spectrum, where people aspires to enter a local university, dreams to do acourse which they would like to do in that local university and strives to pass their 'A'-Levels.

Never in my life did I imagine myself befriending this group of people. I mean, having obtaining awesome grades and spending 6 years of my youth mixing with other equally academically-inclined students of my calibre have misled me into thinking that at least entering a local university was natural. I didn't think that people would have to struggle for a place in these institutions.

So for the past year or so, I didn't really know what to say to them. I can't engage a discussion with them on the various scholarships available, introduce them to BrightSparks, or advice them on which foregin university to go to.

So I gave a shot at playing Naruto on Playstation 2, attempted to play DOTA using Windrunner, and tried to remember that there's a Witch and a Tanker in Left 4 Dead. It was difficult trying to assimilate into their league.

Aren't there others of the same league as you in your platoon? You'll be surprise. The only Rafflesian in my platoon scored the same number of Bs as the number of As I've gotten for 'A'-Levels. The VJC-ian, whose results (of 7 'A'-Level distinctions) was second to mine in the platoon, didn't even consider applying for any scholarship, or overseas university. After all, what can you expect from someone who wore a cheap-looking, corporate polo tee emblazoned with various company logos (obviously it was a freebie retrieved from some corporate goodie bag) for SMU's Business interview? The least he could wear was a Goldlion formal shirt, right?

I don't look down on them. I never did. But given a choice, I probably won't choose to befriend them. We are just... totally different. Like how a 183-cm tall, blonde supermodel would never fall for a 165-cm tall (or short) Zimbabwian farmer who can only speak Afrikaan and knows no calculus. Heidi Klum was an exception, and I am no Heidi Klum.

It felt good seeing all my council mates again, talking about Liu Lu's entrance to this French university whose name proves to be more challenging than "Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled pepper", discussing about boring university modules and the constant drive amongst current university students to be on Dean's List, gossiping about his/her break-up and envying/frowning upon how fast she could get herself a protective boyfriend.

It felt good.

New phone

I need a new phone, because my current phone of 3 years (or was it 4?) snaps pictures that are erroneous. Imagine your friend's face (or worse still, your own face (gasp!)) gets covered by unidentified green, pink, yellow or blue pixels/grids/squares. Or that yummulicious spread of Japanese cuisine on the dining table just refuse to appear on the screen.

So, I am checking out these new phones:

BlackBerry Storm 9500:


LG KF900 (Prada II):


Nokia 5800 CwM: