Sick
Tap, tap, tap. The tip of his pencil slammed against the paper impatiently, synonymous to his agitated tapping foot. How to solve this question? He bit his pencil as the hand on the clock ticked by each mark, intensifying the urgent yet silent atmosphere. His eyes bore into the paper, furiously filtering through the chunk of formulas systematically stored in his head. Which one, which one. He tilted his head, eyes still plastered onto the question. Ah! With a sudden jerk, his hand flew into the air and the tip of his pencil barely scraped across the answer sheet –
*SNNIIFFFF*
That *SNNIIFFFF* will belong to ME. Why? Worse luck, I’m down with the flu, and exams begin the day after tomorrow. I’m going to be one of those annoying students who sneeze, sniff and noisily and revoltingly blow mucus into tissues. The silence will break upon my sneeze.
This sucks big time. I hate falling sick, nostrils deserve to be free and unclogged. Throats deserve to feel smooth and supple when we swallow. Foreheads deserve to be free from headache spells and heat. Ugh, I can foresee an unfortunate week full of sniffles and distress in store.
*sad face*
China, China, China…
“Look at herself lah. She’s yellow too.”
“Yellow” as in Chinese. My [subject] teacher never fails to boost my already immense disgust for her. She’s already deemed me as a “slacker”, which is false, from the New Zealand school trip 2 years ago. But long-held vendettas aside, she just sucks ass. God, I wonder where the hell they find teachers like her these days. There’re some teachers who really ought to leave us as we are and stop acting as though they care, because it’s obvious that they don’t. They despise kids, I can tell. They are the sort who wouldn’t come to work if it weren’t for the salary.
Anyway, about this teacher. I learn nothing which isn’t already printed in the notes or textbook from her. In fact, I’m learning something new about China every lesson. Yes, China. No, scratch that, I’m learning something about how cunning and merciless China is in every lesson.
China this, China that. China’s copying Singapore’s method of improving the economy, China’s people are killing animals for chuckles and giggles, China is the epitome of ripping-off products, China tourists are rude and loud, China still practices communism, China’s contributing so much to pollution, China’s people eat cats and dogs, China copies Starbucks, yadidada.
Today was the real clincher.
“They [China people] kill bears for gall you know. Dunno why people in China keep killing animals and eating dogs and cats, maybe that’s why they die easily. It’s retribution for killing those animals.”
What. The. Fuck.
She has just brought my disgust to a whole new level – Disrespect.
I couldn’t believe my ears when I heard that, she had just flippantly accused China’s high mortality rate [whether or not it's high, I don't know. She would say it's high] due to karma for killing animals. The problem with her statement is that she assumes she’s morally superior than the China people because she doesn’t kill animals, thus she won’t “die easily”. She’s no a vegetarian. How is eating a dead animal, killed by those very China people she loathe so much, more superior than killing it?
I hope her words will come back to haunt her in a form of a cruel irony, like choking on a piece of $90 New Zealand steak which was slaughtered by a 90 year old Chinese peasant.
Then I realised that all the little, seemingly harmless judgments that she had slipped – such as concluding that the people who leave behind popcorn in cinemas are stupid, thus wasting a whole half-hour of the lesson – all hit the same bottomline: She thinks she’s better. She boasts about her parenting skills and accuses others for harboring elitist prejudice while hypocritically, she practices prejudice herself, no matter how “rational” she may try to reason.
Oh, and does the word “responsibility” ring any bells to her? It’s unethical to influence your students’ judgments with your own biased ones. You may say it’s what the students make out of her words which count, but there’s no freeing her from fault. She’s still carelessly revealing her ideas which she is probably unconsciously trying to instill in us.
Not that I’m defending China. All of what she says about China is probably true, but it’s her intentions behind it and the lack of open perspective that is the problem. Every country, including the most developed ones, has their own screwed-up shit, I don’t understand why she’s being particularly critical about China. China people may eat dogs and whatever other weird things, but there’re crazy people in places like Germany who practice cannabalism, so why throw all the crazy talk on China? Maybe some China tourists like, I don’t know, accidentally bumped into her while she was on her luxurious trip to the Alps, and her fur coat got dirty or something.
She portrays China as some copying-crazed country. But whatever. I believe China has some good qualities too, take that and smoke it, anti-China teacher.
So Sarah said, “She seems to have forgotten that her ancestors were from China too. And she’s yellow lah, she thinks she’s so ang moh.”
If she reads this and complains to the year head, I don’t care, because I have every right to lose respect for her.
Where have all the good teachers gone?! Teachers who don’t disdain China.
Class Jersey Hoohaa
Haha, apparently there’s a a hulabaloo about our class jerseys.
Looks very ugly leh, looks like Korea flag leh, logo looks very 3-for-$10 pasam malam kind leh, nag nag nag.
Okay, we get it. Your class jerseys look Godly compared to ours. Your jerseys will burn the eyes of anyone who sets their eyes on it because it’s just too holy to be seen directly by us common, ungainly mortals. Your jerseys are worth being plated in gold and being displayed in every art museum in France. Your jerseys are the king of class jerseys. Hell, your jerseys are so good, that they are fit to be eaten by high-class epicureans. Your jerseys deserve to be shagged. Your jerseys can rule the world, your jerseys possess the power to separate the Red Sea and attack every field with locusts. Your jerseys are Gods. Your jerseys can defy the laws of Physics and bestow pigs with the ability to fly, et cetera. We geddit.
AIYOH. This is one of the times where I feel the need to use Singlish here to express my utter exasperation. This is exactly the sort of imbecilic and nonsensical actions which further breeds ethnocentrism between classes, it’s no wonder classes are establishing non-empirical preconceived judgments of other classes. Get over it lah, are your egos so insecure to the extent that you need to effusively criticise our class jerseys?
I’m just glad that Teng Hui managed to get us class jerseys. I think he shouldn’t have asked for the class’s opinion and should have just gone straight ahead to do what he thought was best, because even after asking us for our opinions, classmates are still complaining anyway. Idiots.
Yay! I finally have a shirt with my name on it! *beams* Who cares if we look like a North Korean political party?
Mid-year exams are creeping up, and I’m still unable to comprehend simple physics rules. Chinese O levels are creeping up, and I’m still unable to utter a full sentence without the occasional, “Umm,” or “Then..” or awkward pause. Sometimes I think I let my mum down by not being able to do well in Chinese. Teachers and friends think that I’m indolent when it comes to studying Mandarin, because how can a child of a Taiwanese be poor in Mandarin? Nag nag nag. But that’s not true, I’m not lazy, I don’t know why I can’t do well, but at least I’m trying.
Sigh, back to studying.
Navin, Yi En, Noel and I went to VJC today to participate in the humanities quiz.
It was a great yet god awful day for me. I’ll explain later.
We had the preliminary round, which I completely flunked at because who the hell knows what “Chaebol” means? The only questions I could answer were the Literature questions and “Which one of the following is NOT part of The Beatles? (Mick Jagger, hyuk)”. Needless to say, our school didn’t get into the top 4. SJI, Maris Stella, Hwa Chong and RI were the top 4. Isn’t it curious how no girls managed to be in the top 4?
Anyway, as the quiz progressed, I realised that they really are smart-asses. Our mental capacity is inferior to theirs. Maris Stella, unexpectedly, won; leaving RI in the dirt. Hah. Eventually, I began to day-dream about soup, when a booming voice flooded the room:
“And the Gold individual prize goes to Samuel Lim of RI.”
I raised my eyebrows in surprise as I saw one of the RI boys, who had been in the RI team and answering the questions on stage all along, walk across the stage to accept his prize.
Why was it a great day? Well, Samuel Lim was my first and biggest crush. I used to practically obsess over the guy when I was in primary three, all the way till we were in primary 6. 3 years wasted on obsessing over him! He was my neighbour, and we used to play badminton and talk to each other. Finally, he moved out of his house and I didn’t get to say goodbye.
He was obviously oblivious to my gargantuan crush for him. Anyway, I just felt pleasantly surprised because I haven’t seen him for 4 years now, and of all places, I finally meet him again by coincidence at some dumb humanities quiz. Unfortunately, I hadn’t been able to recognise him throughout the entire quiz, until the speaker announced his name, so I actually thought he was a not-too-good-looking [Ugly is such a harsh word. Anyway, he doesn't look ugly. Just nerdy.] RI boy who probably has an IQ of 300 and is ridden with acne.
Oh, and he was the top scorer for PSLE in our year. His face was plastered all over the newspapers.
Now, why did I feel like chicken shit subsequently? After 4 years of day-dreaming [sometimes] that I’d meet him by coincidence one day, I could not pluck up enough guts to approach and talk to him. I couldn’t even pluck up a single courageous gut from the swarming pool of cowardice in my stomach to simply walk over to him and talk to him, and say, “Hey, I used to be your neighbour, we used to friends.” I couldn’t break out from my shell of imagination to actually realise that I’d just missed the chance of a lifetime.
God, I feel like such a cowardly piece of shit. I’ll probably be brooding over this for weeks and attempt to gorge my weight in chocolate.
I feel like hitting myself, why am I such a coward? Stupid Julia, stupid Julia… Christ, I don’t think I’ll ever get over this in my LIFE.
He probably doesn’t remember me anyway. His mind is probably on more important things, like who’s the President of Timbuktu, or what sort of mysteries NASA is hiding, or the enigma behind the Bermuda’s triangle, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. While I’m struggling to understand elementary physics like Forces and Electricity in TK, the school for retards [Yeah I said it], he’s probably busy rebutting top debaters in Singapore about Locke’s Philosophy and Plato’s work. He can probably eloquently and thoroughly justify atheism more than I ever can and his idol is probably John Milton or Bach. His mental capacity is 100 times more superior than mine, which explains why he entered RI while I entered this ulu, remote school by the name of TK.
Why, why, why. Why couldn’t I be a brilliant student who can comprehend Physics with ease and discuss about Philosophy? Speaking of Physics, I’m considering to drop the fucking subject. Apparently I am unable to comprehend the natural laws of the Universe and should just stick to delving into my stupid imagination, which has always been a barrier between dreams and reality for me. I’m incompetent in the world of science.
Anyway, back to Samuel. He’d probably be freaked out if he saw this, like, why is this unknown girl obsessing over me?!
My self-esteem just plummeted way down. Into chocolate.