I was taking my shift at one of the games stalls set up by my JC class for the funfair when I overheard a comment shared between 2 guys who were patronising the stall: “Ay, let’s spend all our coupons at this stall and try to burst the water balloon. The girl is wearing a white T-shirt!”
I turned around and saw that the next classmate who was due for a turn under the water balloon was a female classmate who had unwisely chosen to wear a white T-shirt for our water-based game…
Not sure why, but I thought it would be healthy to walk to and from school everyday even though it took about 20 to 30 minutes. So that was my daily routine for 2 years…
One thing I liked about walking to school in the mornings was the mist from my breath in the cool morning air.
After a PE lesson, I was unjustly punished by an Indian PE teacher for some reason (I can’t remember what now…) and he gave me a ridiculous punishment of doing 100 pushups before walking away.
Think it was the crazy adolescence hormones as well as pride (not to mention fury) that drove me to complete the 100 pushups simply because that teacher thought I could not do it. Although I managed to hold on to my pride, my arms did ache for quite a few days…
This incident happened in JC where a group of us were gathered in the canteen having our ice milos and just having a small gathering in between lessons. The moment we stood up to go, the grumpy old lady in the canteen shouted at us to remind us to pick up our cups. This was uncalled for as we always picked up after ourselves and never left any cutlery or utensils behind.
Unfortunately for us, the VP happened to be in the canteen at that time and he immediately thought the worst of us and sent us to the office to be dealt with. As we knew that we did nothing wrong, we had a standoff with the VP and things remained at a stalemate until our form teacher came to the office to vouch for us and we were allowed to leave.
One day I sauntered to school after the first bell as I didn’t have any lessons in the morning. As I casually rounded a corner, I heard a voice behind me, “Boy! Come here!” That voice was instantly recognisable because the school VP had a slight nasal twang. Not wanting to get into trouble, I quickened my pace and took off on a run when I got around another corner.
That was a close one…
I discovered to my horror during my JC years that Physics in the “A” Levels is nothing like Physics in the “O” Levels. Although I had aced Physics in Secondary school, I was finding that Physics in JC was a totally different story…
Thank goodness I didn’t fail…
There was this once in JC when I started on my walk home and it started pouring heavily. Not sure what came into me, but I decided to take a slow walk in the rain, sans umbrella.
Needless to say, I got totally wet, but it was somewhat memorable — since I’m recounting it now…
I didn’t really learn swimming until late, even though I was from a Secondary School that excelled in swimming sports.
I endeavored to skip all the swimming lessons in my JC days, but it eventually caught up with me and I was forced to spend Saturdays in a swimming pool for private “catch-up” swimming lessons…
When the exams came close, a bunch of us would gather at Ian’s place to study. There was a function room where we would all immerse ourselves in our books, interspersed with the odd prank.
At around 2am, we’ll all get hungry then drive down to the nearby prata shop to get supper before heading back to sleep.