And inspiration strikes...

Was in a relatively BAD MOOD today when returning home from school because of a couple of reminders that there were A LOT of people getting FULL MARKS for their maths test. Where does that put me? Over the hills and far away... at some untabulated corner of the bell curve.

I would like to say I hate people who are too smart to be sitting in the same class doing the SAME SIMPLE PAPERS with us but decided that it is neither diplomatic nor logical, and it will be wiser to keep my mouth shut.

Then again, I always keep my mouth shut whenever I'm at the peak of my anger. Leaves me breathless and full of bad feeling.

And of course above all the unhappy musings all the way back home, the moment I wanted to get down the bus the bells attached to every pole in the bus refused to work, so I was driven down an extra stop where I had to get down from the front door and walk an extra stop. Bleah to that, too.

BUT. I found my autograph book on my table when I reached home, and while being relatively determined to blog all these bad feeling away and repeat to myself furiously that this doesn't mean you're stupid, you idiot a million times and explode into a LOUD ANGRY entry that will eventually make me decide not to post at all because of my innate diplomacy, I decided to read a couple of autograph entries before I start to type.

So I read. and read. and read and read and read.

And I forgot all the bitter things I wanted to type. Well okay, not forget, I still have an inkling of what I intended to say, having revised them all in the bus ride home, but I realised that those thoughts weren't worth thinking, weren't worth getting angry over, weren't worth spending too much time upon.

It seems that in the midst of fretting over our grades and getting so angry and distressed over little things like that, we've forgotten what it's like to be ourselves.

We're not like that. Angry people, that is. We put too much stress on ourselves, set up ridiculous expectations that we don't know if we could even meet, and then demand that we exceed them. We slog through tutorials and projects and panic for tests and then do terribly, we impatiently jump into homework without taking time out to understand them fully first, because there's no time... We mug, and mug, and mug, and mug...

What for? To get a decent CAP score so that your three years' cumulative can get you into honours so that you have a nicer piece of paper to present, a supposedly better future, and higher salary? Well, yes, I guess. Guilty as charged. Sad huh.

Then again. The beautifully sweet entries brought back lots and lots of memories that told me that all of school life is not about studying. Had your life in NY been painful then, full of tears and sorrows and failed tests and undone homework? Or had it stretched beyond that? Lectures spent gossiping with your friends, designing and perfecting beautiful pieces of art at the top-right hand corner of your lecture notes where we write our names, group work spent during tutorials discussing what's totally un-related to the topic at hand, times after lessons during choir singing and laughing non-stop, and even crying together at worse moments, too (Gosh. we were such an emotional bunch of people ;P)

Jeremy deserves an award for invoking the most vivd and varied memories of the most ridiculous times we spent in NY. Whoa, even those awful moments sounded deadly hilarious now. I couldn't stop laughing at the memories of stacks of econs lecture notes [predictably, the ones lectured by Mrs T or Mr B] with caricatures of all the tutors we disliked, complete with speech bubbles and uh... lots of unnecessary comments. Or the maths lecture when he walked out because the pissed off maths lecturer told him "either you shut up or you get out" -_- or the awful uniform issue... or the bad canteen food... or the delightful antics of A3A, that one class that I love best... the movie preview video clips that Mr N screen during econs lect breaktimes and his deadly lame comments--"Don't punish yourself by watching this", he'd declared firmly halfway thru the preview of a horror show, then laughed uproariously when the credits for THE PUNISHMENT rolled. hahahahha... and the memorable time when he showed us an email of the "Amazing facts in the world"--apparently, the email stated, "In every eleven people, one is a homosexual", to which Mr N did a gleeful headcount on the unsuspecting people in the front row-- "One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, HOMO!, twelve..." causing the unfortunate eleventh guy to jump involuntarily. Heh. Poor fella.... Or lit lessons with A3A with our beloved Lit teachers, and the--uh-- subversive outing we had with Ms Tan & Ms Chew after farewell assembly... a-corn-a-day for every maths lesson becos of the terrific corniness that ensues in the dullest moments... further wicked antics during GP where toilet breaks last longer because of unnecessarily long detours we take to reach the toilet, walking past other classes and beaming at the teachers or waving at the students we know... Civics lessons where everyone looks like it's the end-of-the-world... The day before teachers' day eve when A3A went to bake cookies for all our teachers and pretended to "walk down the stairs" on the perfectly level road past the window of Mrs T's class in a single file, resulting in much befuddlement... Or those horrific afternoon PE relieved only by the company of Clara or Gek or Mas... Or awful awful assembly periods when me and Shell will hiss simultaneously at the horrific pronunciation and grammer of three quarters of the announcements made... Or the choir com meetings at the student lounge with all my dear com members sprawled any-ol-how over the cushions, yet still getting things settled efficiently (up to the point when Simon and Alfred starts to suan Maria or Eme or Grace or Xue Ying and Clara starts to bully either Tracia or Gek Tiang or Dyana -_-) Heehee... Or that day at cool zone where Jeslyn was determined to marry all her sisters off of Jeremy's brothers and their in-depth discussion of who should go to who... and all the dances Azura and Mee Mum taught us amid all our crazily wrong moves... working together during Cadenza and SYF and having a remarkable share of ABCD secrets *wink wink*... that one emotional break point just before SYF that had the girls huddled at the front of the LT sobbing as a group (and scared the security guard uncle silly when he came in to lock the door... haha! I've never seen him look so shocked before)... Or the mornings when I'll come flying in half a minute before the bell, cursing Mr H or whoever's in charge the day I'm late, where the security uncle number 1 will call out gleefully "oi! chang ge de zu xi! yao chi dao liao! ni hai you liang fen zhong" each morning...

What a lot a lot of memories. And what touched me most were the entries of so many of my choir girls going I never regretted joining choir... Life in NY would have never been the same without you all. Kudos to you too, girls. Never forget these moments that make you such wonderful a person and a friend.

*Sigh* Okay. Not more fretting. We shall do what we can, and move on. And everytime we get mad we shall remember that we're not created to be miserable and act as slaves to our grades. We mean more than that. We possess more sense... and more talent... than what marks define us to be. We shall just take pride in the hard work that we put in. And... *in true Mrs-Ho style* Namyarn will prevail! We will not fall! *shakes fist* (*rotfl*) Heeheehee... sorry... just couldn't resist... ^_^

So when things are at its bleakest, look not in the shadows but beyond it, to where the sun shines still. And at the awful awful times when you feel like screaming your head off, pick up your autograph and read through them, and know that you have friends behind you always, and be reminded that these people love you not for your straight As, but for every quality penned down in all sincerity within your book. That's who we are, and our current pragmatism and our need to align ourselves in society's expectations must not, will not, change it.

*breathes out* Whew. Okay. I'm done preaching. Just a last note, adapted from what was told to a certain cousin of mine ^_^ We all have big hearts, we just sometimes forget where we put them. My take on this: Don't lose sight of that. It scares me, when I reflect upon my thoughts sometimes, how close I've come to losing sight of it altogether when I'm frustrated, bitter, angry. Bounce back, then. We'll all be fine, because we are such loveable, brilliant creatures, yes? *winks*