Propagator

I’m in the process of building a personal creed and I just got my first line today:

Never hesitate to show contempt for procrastinators, lazy people, and poorly motivated individuals.

I realized that I treat these people too kindly most of the time.

It’s Hari Raya and I haven’t got any commitment in particular so I got down to packing my stuff, an event planted on my calendar 2 months ago. I’ve initially wanted to change the layout of my room but then the plan failed because I didn’t have time to do up a proper floor plan and too many things needs to be cleaned.

As I dug out relics of the past from my drawers, my Mum told me to dispose of the ‘Childish Stuff’ that were still with me: nice keychains, nice stickers from propaganda campaigns, pictures for Chinese oral examination that I didn’t throw away because I find them too cute, souvenir badges from more campaigns, and more. I had to confront the realism of keeping these stuff for too long. When I was really young, and with an overly inflated ego, I thought I’ll make it big someday and open a museum to showcase my life: every little thing will be featured, the pencil case I used since Primary 2, the backpack that lasted 7 years of use and still looks new to this very day, the little badges I earned for reading lots of books and such. Today, when I see some of those ‘artifacts’, it dawned on me that if they’re really going to make it into that museum (assuming it’s going to open at all), I’ll still have to keep them for a really long time.

I wondered to myself, ‘how I wish I could just open a portal to the future and dump all these stuff to the future self’. Then I thought again in the perspective of my future self: a grown-up, busying with family or work and then all of a sudden his place is filled with all these junk of the past. His typical response would probably to dispose all of them, or if he’s still keen on the museum, he’d procrastinate, open another portal and throw the junk further ahead in the future. The idea just won’t work out. In the end I just threw the useless stuff away.

The other thing I uncovered was a huge bunch of unprocessed stamps. I’ve been a stamp collector since 9 years old and was super active with stamp collection, pestering uncles and aunties to keep a lookout for used stamps at their workplace. Eventually even when the interest somewhat died down, people continued giving me stamps and I kept them. By P6 or so, I probably have 5000 over stamps in my collection. The work involved with stamp collecting can be quite intimidating: I’ve to soak the stamps which are still on envelopes on water, wait for them to peel out, harvest the wet stamps, discard the loose pieces of envelope paper, then put the wet stamps on a plastic sheet and leave them to dry. After the stamps are processed, I’ll still have to arrange them on my albums and that explains why I’ve loads of stamps that were processed but still in a box, untouched.

So after most of the packing of the room is done, I sat down to classify the stamps according to countries or at least region, guessing that ‘Magyar Portal’ is probably some European countries’ stamp. I eventually sorted out the everything, place them in separate envelopes and stuff them back into the box. Someday I’ll get busy arranging stamps again. Meanwhile I might have to decide between exhibiting the stamp collection in my museum and selling them away.

I was chatting with my Mum about how my experiences in school have shaped my thinking about life and I realised I’ve much to thank The Chinese High School for what I am today; if I’d be able to pen a letter to my alma mater, this will probably be it:

A Zillion Thanks
As one gets on with life one often forgets what was that makes what is and what will be; cause and effect is never clear but there is little doubt my life have changed positively as a result of my Chinese High experience.

Thank you all the wonderful teachers who have demanded high standards of coursework, integrity and conduct from me and rest of the boys studying with me. It was the teachers who appreciated my potential and helped me maximize it; I was talkative but hardly confident of speaking to a crowd – Mr Yap Meen Sheng spurred me on with his praise of my ‘good voice’; I wasn’t exactly interested in Mathematics because I couldn’t see its applications in the real world – Mr Png Kiow Leong made me interested in the subject with his funny antics; Physics was the science I had least confidence in but Mr Lam Yong Koy’s passion in the subject fueled my courage to take on it; I never believed I was an English person, but Mdm Ong Lay Peng’s selection of my essay for the Commonwealth Essay Competition ignited a passion for writing that will continue through my life; Geography’s study of lifeless landforms and the anonymous ‘society’ would remain that way without Ms Esther Cheong; I was inspired to organize my notes and study systematically because of Mr Lim Teck Huat’s great systems of personal organization and his treatment of the subject of Chemistry. The list might not end if not for my poor memory.

Thank you, the school’s focus and pursuit of excellence. The school’s emphasis on skills beyond typical Secondary Education benefitted me greatly. Oral Participation points was a system that incentivized contributing in class discussions that will make it natural for me to participate in all sorts of lessons I attend in future. The Major Research Paper paved the way for me to pick up research skills from Ms Esther Cheong as well as on my own; it also gave me to confidence to handle humanities research papers. The Thinking Programme in lower secondary and the course in Edward De Bono’s Six Thinking Hats introduced me to the world of ‘thinking about thinking’ that I deem extremely life-changing today. The Arts Elective Programme that I eventually became part of offered me a foundation in fine arts, digital media and art history I would never have gained anywhere else. And the 4 years of participation in the Projects’ Day Competition have created experiences where I picked up management and communication skills that I’ll never have known about in a typical Secondary School.

It was Chinese High that offered those wonderful memories of being a boy in a boys’ school: rushing down for a 25 minutes recess where 10 minutes is spent queuing and eating within 5 minutes so that we can play chapteh; irritating each other by hitting each others’ backs between lessons; writing bad remarks about teachers on the whiteboard at the end of each lesson; using the classroom clock as a frisbee and end up damaging it; kicking a football in the classroom and end up causing a piece of concrete to chip off from a pillar; wrestling with each other in the classroom at the end of a tired day; imitating the gestures and accents of the teachers. Thank you my fellow Chinese High boys for all that jokes, class habits (adding a ‘b’ behind everyone’s name; which explains my screen name ‘Vib’, from ‘Kevib’), and bullying that made me stronger.

At the point when I left Chinese High, I was glad – because I was tired of the competition, of the flawed system of assessment (penalizing students who were specialist in certain subjects and heavily biased towards average but all-round balanced students). But eventually I benefitted from it all and when I stepped out of the school I realized how valuable my education there was. In JC, my Service Learning project experience made it possible for me to organize community projects; my project and research experience made my Project Work smooth and earned me an ‘A’; my rigour of discussion in humanities essays as a result of grilling by humanities teachers in Secondary school earned me the position of being a writer for model essays.

A zillion thanks to you Chinese High, the peers who’ve gone through the entire journey with me, and the teachers who have guided me on the way. I’ll probably never thank the school enough and today, I’m proud to be one of the pioneers in the Hwa Chong Alumni Youth Chapter and offered a chance to contribute to the school even after graduating.

Regards,
Kevin

I wasn’t the perfect model student, nor a great one in the eyes of the teachers and the school but I am happy with the place I have in the school – I’ll use my potential wisely to do the school proud eventually.

So the bone scan results was confirmed and I’ve got a stress fracture at the lower 1/3 of my left shin at the distal tibia. Medical Officers says I need to be downgraded to PES E9L9; administratively, things are going to get a little messy…