CRRP talk

It comes once a year, and yesterday was the last time they'll be talking to us. Ever. Kinda scary once you think of it like that. 3 years have passed so quickly, and the fourth is a third of the way through. Ah well...

We talked about alot of things though; what's wrong with the school, what you think could be improved, what's your best subject, what you enjoy the most... But the weirdest question was what would you most remember or basically take away from this school. At least that was what I thought the question was.

It's weird, the way I've ended up here. Took a test, went for a camp, got a letter. I guess I decided on impulse then; Forensic science was wayy too fun, maybe. Either ways, I found myself starting a new life somewhere far away...

If you're thinking it's an exaggeration, well, it's not. Since whenever I've been going to a school that's around 5 bus stops maximum away? And then I had to travel halfway across the island to get to school. Not only that, I suddenly wasn't able to go to malls after school, or slack off before going home, and still have still to do homework or stuff. I guess the first problem was the people; not many of us live in a single area, and if you're spread out like that, it's hard to find a common place to hang out where's it's comparatively near everyone else. Secondly, no one really goes and loiters at McDonalds in this school. It's a basically go home mug/computer/sleep kind of school.

Thirdly, I didn't have time to even think about hanging out somewhere before heading home. If I "hung out" anywhere, it means home at 8 or 9pm. Which is kind of retarded, really.

Anyways, with this sacred time now totally different, changed and mostly interrupted, I started life in NUS High.

I really don't know how I survived those first few days... It's hard to leave friends behind, and I found myself really irritated by the fact that they could still be together. Yet, it was still my choice, said something in the back of my head.

Over the years, I've thought of many things; I regretted coming here, I regretted leaving, I hated this school, I loved studying what I love, I thought of leaving the school in Year 4... yet right now, from where I stand, I guess I can clearly see what has always kept me here, despite everything that went wrong, or felt wrong.

First of all, was my friends. The people that I meet here will always be a part of me, whether at NS, at work, or if I end up teaching their kids or something like that. I realised in Year 4 that if I left then, I would be starting a weird trend of having 2-year friendships. In a sense that I would be spending full-time with the same group of people for only two years each time; from Sec 1-2, Year 3-4, JC 1-2. And I didn't want that, because I felt it would dilute so many friendships. And evidently, that was one of my greatest pulls keeping me here.

I guess I was also lucky in having really great teachers here. Not that I didn't have great teachers in Temasek, of course I did. But another of the great pull factors which kept me here were the teachers from NUS High.

We were very fortunate to have gotten such a great combination of teachers. When we first stepped into this school, I had a mentor; obviously his name was (is still?) Mr David Ng. I don't know what to say about him, but I know he is one of the most inspiring people I've ever met. Or at least adults. Well, he's also the only mentor in the cohort to have stayed with us the longest XD. Our mentor group was the most (I would obviously assume, some of you might say) united and basically the best, mainly because of him. (Unlike now). It was always easy talking with him, whether in person or on MSN (and who would forget how we found his MSN in the first place...). He made life a lot easier for me, and frankly I was devastated when he left. It's like the earth moving below you, get it...?

Moving on, I guess he had to too. At least we have the dubious honour of having the class with the longest single mentor reign. So there. XD

We had teachers like Ms Seah, Ms Teo, Mr Ang, Ms (Step) (Sharon)Tan (Ee Ling), Mr Lee, Mr Chia, Mr Tang, Mr Tham, Ms Lee, even Prof Lai; (after typing this I realised alot of them aren't Mr or Ms anymore. And it's not that they got married) all who we could talk to or at least felt we were equal to them. Whatever the reasons, they were willing to lower themselves to our level and just take the time to know us, or chat with us personally... even if the conversations were kind of meaningless or time-wasting in themselves. And all these people have been instrumental in my life, in one way or another, and have one way or another, helped me pull through and still be here right now.

Of course, you might be wondering where a certain person that's supposed to be on the list is. I thought him meaningful enough to me to have his own paragraph (again, not as if the others were not meaningful to me... -.- I hate having to do this; it's retarded and it makes life difficult for everyone. But I think it's sort of mandatory nowadays unless you wish to be sued for something. It's terrible the way people can manage to misconstrue something that you say. It's like being told you can't say you're normal because if you're normal, it implies that someone else is "abnormal" and that's politically incorrect. I mean, isn't it stupid. Because of your hypersensitivity to innocent phrases, you take it as your personal mission or something to get everyone to stop using "politically incorrect" words. Actually, I think it's more like whenever someone uses words like smart or normal or "good adjectives" to describe you you just feel guilty because you automatically associate you being "normal", with others (disabled/impaired whatever or otherwise) being "abnormal". So to solve your guilt problem and your shame at automatically and unconsciously making that connection, you take it upon yourself to force others to call the disabled/impaired/whatever person or thing by another ridiculously ungainly term, so that others may soon follow and develop your psychosis; hypersensitivity to a word which accurately describes a condition. Let me tell you, calling a piecemeal function "linearly impaired" isn't going to change a fact that it's not a straight line, or it's broken, or it's bent. It's probably going to insult him that you're seemingly trying to cover up his illness or condition with a smoke screen, or give it less importance, or even downplay it. Just tell it straight as it is; the only time you should be moderating your words is if it has the potential to hurt others. Don't smoke because you can. Anyways, on to the real story... -.-)

After that long paragraph, here we go back to the beginning again. Obviously, things started at year 3. Joining astro was probably the best thing that happened to me. Not only was it great fun in Years 3 and 4, but I had the privilege to have a great teacher guiding me throughout 3 years there. Of course, it's Mr Lim. I learned alot from him. Not just astro things like lens cleaning, though there was a lot of those. Not even just how to be a good leader,  even though there were many of those lessons as well, formal or otherwise. The only words I have to put it in is that he inspired me to do things. In things like IR, or CCA, competitions, planning for Astro sessions, just being a good person... I've learned alot. But because of him, I finally settled on some goal in life (which I'll probably talk some other day, because it's getting late now). And if I had known this would happen when I first came here, I think I would have done it with much less hesitation.

Well, you may notice that many of those teachers above have left, which kind of says something about the school.

However, I realised after all that talk about teachers and such, I haven't talked about the other great reason why I'm still here. I think I'll leave it for tomorrow. It is getting late, but luckily I don't have school tomorrow. Still, I want to sleep early. Get a chance to mull over what I'll do tomorrow.