Propagator

It all started with a simple entry in the ‘Today’ Newspaper Forum, on the undue stress applied to students in the GEP. Somehow, it caused reactions that seem to have no direct connections with the main arguement that ‘GEPers are under undue stress’. Whoever first replied the first letter was a student who have ‘benefitted’ from the programme and was extremely interested in telling the world that GEP students do interact with main stream students – also as an attempt to rebut the first guy’s claim that the GEP students are somewhat isolated from the others.

So soon, the net, and webcomics, are talking about the GEP – so many years after its implementation. Dumb, I must say, but people are starting to realised that GEP isn’t that special at all. For once, the students in GEP are torn between 2 camps: the first supporting the argument that they are ‘gifted’ and different, thus special enough to obtain special ‘trainning’ or whatever, defying the laws of meritocracy our dear ministry have been trying so hard to promote about our education system; the second supporting the fact that GEP isn’t really that different except the students have took the challenge to undergo more intensive intellectual grilling, that will probably make them better persons – nothing beyond that.

If you are in the programme, which would you support?

In fact, I know of students who flunk in the programme but decide to stay around, or was forced to stay around for a couple of dumb reasons; these reasons got to do mainly with ‘face’, and reputation – not worth elaborating. I also know of students who excelled and aced, and trashed everyone, earning the nicknames he deserves – ‘mugger’, ‘nerd’, ‘study-type’, ‘GEPer’, ‘Study Saiyan’, etc. It is all about the path you want to take. I have understood the whole idea of ‘living with the system’. Yes, there is such thing as GEP in our education system, so accept it or not, it is your choice. In a way, those who are in the mainstream are simply gifted students who are rejected by the programme (or you can say you reject the programme).

Apparently, ‘GEPer’ is somehow similar to the term ‘workaholic’, they can be negative or positive, varying from person to person. The fact remains that such programme is some kind of eugenic marginalisation that should not be tolerated in the ideal society. Unfortunately, nothing ideal exist, and we must accept that.

I seem to have been gone the last few days because of the ‘holiday-start’ busyness that is caused by an influx of responsibility from adults. There are teachers who engage your help in their personal projects, then there are parents who suddenly thinks the colour of the walls of my room (that has been the same for the past 4 years), is getting too familiar, and tells you to re-paint your room. As if that’s not enough, the school made mistakes in my examination result slip, and wanted to call in my examination papers for inspection, thus making me go to school on 2 occassions where I simply step into the school office, and collect a piece of paper, or pass a piece of paper to the admin staff.

I am pretty much surprised that Mib didn’t make any comments on the news of Japan importing 80% of the world production of Tamiflu (perhaps he had no idea that occurred). It appears that they have learnt the art of ‘Kiasuism’ from Singaporeans (so much for Singapore taking after them at the population aspects). Apparently, there is a fair exchange of culture within the highly diversified Asia, unlike what some may think (either about Chinese ethocentrism, or about imposing Chinese culture, or maybe I got everything wrong).

Even better, Koizumi was ‘dao-ed’ by President Hu during the APEC conference in Busan (I thought it was ‘Pusan’, my history textbook said so). I guess President Roh would have done the same if not for the fact that Korea was the host to the conference.

Singapore Polytechnic is starting modules on public toilet maintenance to make sure we produce sufficient ‘talents’ in this aspect so that we get the best designs of toilets and manage toilets better, and as usual, they have a nice name, ‘Ecological Sanitation Course’. See news here. Looks like our public sector is expanding after all the laying off (I mean retrenchment), and they have decided that they shall have more of our ‘Local Talents’.

By the way, Mib hopes that people will support him to take on adminship on Wikipedia. I was intrigued by Mib’s braggy user page and decided to sign up on Wikipedia to act as a check against him (and also support him when the need arises).

I have always been appalled by the school’s plans to use the ‘free time’ saved from not preparing for a particular national exams. These ‘free time’ are distributed into nice slots at the end of terms, nicely named ‘Sabbaticals’. Of course, these are lame course that had nothing to do with vacation at all. This is an article I wrote in my blog on 21 February this year that describe the stress you are under when Sabbatical selection comes.

I believe no other would face such immense stress before going on a Sabbatical (defined as ‘vacation course’). Our school, as usual, is conducting these lame courses once again. Here is a description of what happens to a typical student.

As registration opens at 6pm, rush home immediately after school. If you have any EP3, extra lessons or remedial, don’t bother, just go home. When you reach home, exhausted, you realised that it is 3pm, quite early as compared to the usual time; but extremely late for such an important event – registering the sabbatical of your choice. You turn on the computer, seconds is ticking as your index finger touches, apply pressure, then release the boot button. You check your digital watch, it is 3:10:46pm.

The ‘Windows XP’ splash screen appears and you stare at the loading bar. ‘What the hell?’ you shouted at your computer, and went to the kitchen to make yourself a drink. You return, realising that the computer is at the login screen. You lament about the few seconds wasted for not logging in, while you are in the kitchen. Time is 3:16:39pm.

The Windows XP took another 5 minutes 43 seconds to load before you double-click on the ‘Dial-up connection’ icon. 5 beads of sweat trickled down your forehead, making a right turn and drips on to your glass frame. You click ‘Dial’ and hear the ‘to-to-to’ sound. The 5 beads of sweat combine to form a huge drop which dangles on the edge of your spectacle frame. You took a sip from the Orange juice you poured for yourself in the kitchen. You realised that there is nothing in the cup – you spilled all the juice on the floor while rushing back into the room. Time is 3:28:23pm, there is still time to pour another cup. You rushed to the kitchen.

The strange sound from the computer dies down and you are connected to the net. The Internet Explorer window appears lagging the whole computer with it. Now there is a huge white patch on the computer screen caused by the IE lagging. While rushing to return to your room, you slip over the orange juice you spill previously, spilling even more orange juice on the floor. Time is 3:32:43pm, you realised that even if there’s time to pour another cup, you probably slip and fall again, so you decided to clean up the mess. You return to the computer to type the URL on the address bar though IE haven’t even loaded the homepage. You become pissed off when the status bar shows ‘Done’ right after you click the ‘Go’ button. You scream the F-word and hit the table with your mouse. It is now 3:40:55pm.

You fetch the cloth and start wiping the mess on the ceramic tiled floor. You lament at the fact that your parents did not put a carpet at the passage leading from the kitchen to your room. The lamenting took about 64 seconds. A carpet would have helped to absorb all the orange juice, leaving not much trace and prevented you from falling the second time. By the time you finished cleaning up the mess and pouring yourself a cup of lime juice (there is no more orange juice), the time is 4:02:39pm. You managed to log into Online CHS after hitting your CPU for about 22 seconds. You forget that it is not the CPU’s fault; IE simply sux. It is exactly 4:12:40pm at the point of logging in.

Unfortunately, because you are still using Singnet’s Dial-up plan, it took more than 16 seconds for the ‘Sabbatical’ link to appear. You click it immediately after you see the link appear. Unfortunately, due to the way IE functions, the loading stopped and you have to refresh the page. It took away another 30 seconds. You learnt your lesson in the hard way – it is 4:18:30pm. The Sabbatical page took just 14 seconds to load; a breakthrough in Singnet’s Dial-up connection speed. You feel so happy that you forgot to select the Sabbatical you want before clicking ‘Register’. Nothing happened because there is still 1 hour 39 minutes and 28 seconds more before registration opens.

You scolded the computer after peering into the Dictionary of Profanities which set beside the printer. You then said, “Early 1 and half hour also dun lemme register. Steven Sux!” Frustrated, you gulp the whole cup of lime juice and went to the kitchen to pour more. “Damn it.” You realised that the lime juice has expired (no wonder you feel that it tasted especially sour). You spend another 5 minutes trying to vomit all that has just been consumed. Out of the 350ml you drank, you managed to puke 230.2145 ml of it. You smile at the toilet bowl, thinking that you have puked everything. You are gravely wrong…

Looking at the time – 4:26:54pm. There is still so much time left. You started playing Little Fighter 2. At exactly 5:34:20pm, you feel a pain in your abdomen. You realised that it must have been the lime juice. You perspired profusely as you struggle to tolerate the pain. You figured that you can hold your rectum to about 6:08:23pm so it is not a problem. You look at the Online CHS time, there is still 54 seconds. You have checked the Sabbatical you are interested in, looked at the requirements thoroughly and checked that the instructor is your favourite teacher. Now there’s 34 seconds more. At exactly 5:59:53pm, you farted. It caused the room to stink and it dawned on you that this pain in the stomach is caused by the mixture of the expired lime juice and the indian curry you ate at your neighbour’s place yesterday night.

7…6…5…4…3…You scroll down to the ‘Register’ button and count down, 3…2…1. You click the button. You are uncertain whether you are in the course because the page is loading too slowly. You farted again and your rectum is going to release all the waste matter on to your chair if you do not go to the toilet in time. You decided that the registration should be alright and happily went to the toilet. After causing the whole house to stink, and feeling much better with the relief, you went to the computer, shocked to find that it is at the ‘This page cannot be displayed’ page. You shouted at your computer again and the whole computer hanged. It is 6:12:45pm.

You rebooted the computer and went through the whole process of connecting again. It is 6:34:23pm when you reach the Online CHS Workspace. You clicked on the ‘Sabbatical’ link after everything is loaded. ‘Whew’ you are in the course of your choice. You sigh relief and discovered the house is getting smellier every second. You figured out that it is cause by the diffusion of smelly gas from the toilet to all around the house – you did not flush!

Okay, many think this ending is not very good. It is in fact, in my opinion, too abrupt. Those who are free enough may like to give some suggestions for an ending when you meet me on MSN.

Apparently, I am quite disgusted with what I have wrote, in retrospect. Well, that’s what happens when you are in certain school. By the way, the character ‘you’ in this post is absolutely ficticious.