| by comrade commissar | Thomas | @ Tuesday, October 04, 2005, 2:03:00 AM | permalink |
|
I woke up feeling phelgmy last Friday.. luckily rest and some meds did the trick. I felt better later in the day and decided it was a good day to go back to school to finally collect my A' Level cert. You won't believe the monster truck deja vu that hit me when I walked through the gates. For the rest of the day I keep feeling that I'm in a world of trouble for coming to school in a flaming red shirt and bemudas. Walking past my old classroom I met the curious eyes of dozens of students. I had to consciously remind myself to stop asking in my head and out loud "Why are these goons in my classroom?" Collecting my cert was a "Hi", "Sign" and "Bye bye" 5 minutes affairs at the General Office. And then I decided to go walk around the school for nostalgia's sake. That "short walk" turned out to take an unexpected 4 hours. I first dropped by the library. I was greeted by a pleasant surprise outside  That banner was done by my classmate Iris. Maybe its cos' the school's been laid back in getting new decor up, I don't know. But you have no idea how much of a warm fuzzy feeling I had to find out that our class banner was still around. I went in and found that good old Mr. Mastor (school technician) & Mdm Tahna (school librarian.. spelling correct?) was around. I chatted with them for quite a while before I found out that my history teacher Mrs J.T. was still around. Mwaha. Thankfully, even though it was quite late in the day she was quite happy to see me. Conversation was surprisingly easy and we merrily chattered over a myriad of things. There was Mr Raj's (My economics teacher + form teacher) table located on the left of hers. I thought my observation that his table's contents seemed to have taken on a life of its own and overgrown to cover the entire platform like some tropical paperwork rainforest explosion bordered on exaggeration until she agreed and went on with some disparaging comment about malekind in general. Sheesh. She then showed me some photos of her 2 kids. While looking at shots of her 2 chubby boys and listening to her gripe about the challenges of being a teacher and parent I thought about our class' first impression of her back when we were still fresh-faced Year 1 students. Maybe motherhood did a good job mellowing/tiring the woman, or that she maintains an tough emotional shell towards strangers, or maybe we were just a bunch of idiots. But try convincing me 3 years ago that I would be casually looking at baby photos with whom I thought was an "evil cold #$%@", and you'll have me in a fit of laughter. "What's baby no. 2's name?"Then the topic changed to the prospects of this year's Year 3s. (aka the people who'll be facing the A' Levels gauntlet very soon.) Almost immediately the buoyant mood left. JT gave me 1 of those looks that teachers always do - They look like they are trying very hard to suppress something, pursing their lips. When they finally mouth out their views, their words come out staggered, as if they had to rephrase and reprocess their original thoughts. Then she realised that she no longer has any teacher-student responsibility over me, and her straightforward honesty on this year's batch got even me scared. Then she mentioned that Taufik was still upstairs at the MPR doing history essay work. -_O   When I walk in, the poor dude was racking his brains over the essay plan. Obviously putting in many hours at 1 go only burns the mind out. Bad flashbacks man.. bad flashbacks.  I tried to scare him with my own experiences of cramming for the A's (JT's orders) but I think I did a crappy job of that (opps. ;P) I ended up being a complete distraction to the guy by finding about everything that has changed or happened this year. "You know those security cameras around the school? And the guards?" "Yea?" I said, having to get a visitor's pass from the people. "Well, these things were introduced after a laptop got stolen in school. (!!!) ... I dunno.. the new intake of Year 1s is very big. They're very.. different from us." I think by different, he meant it negatively. True, during my 3 years there, the school's student population was very small. But from this small quantity we built solid relationships of trust and friendship, even with the teachers. In the end its the quality of my experiences with my peers rather than the quantity of social connections I had in school that really counts. I tried to ward off the feeling that with the event of the blantant laptop theft, a little part of the "heart" of the campus died. I continued to be a distraction to him and talked about other things, until JT came up to do a spotcheck but ended up joining in too. Eventually we packed up and left the place.  Stepping outside, the yellow rays of the 5:30pm sun cast down the corridor of the top level. Its a happy-sad thing, but I no longer walk down this all too familar path as a student. |
PS: If you're commenting Anonymously please sign off with your name/nick. Thanks.
[+] Post a Comment
...
