Photo


Found this photo on my mum's phone. It's me on the scout structure thing I posted about a few months back. The quality's not too good, sorry.

The RI boy who hawked pancakes

Read this in the paper today… First reaction: Whoa.

It was about this boy who grew up hawking pancakes, because he was really poor. Then he secured a place at RI, which at that time would have probably been very expensive. His dad wasn’t too happy when he heard about this… Still, he went to RI. His home was kind of far away from school, and he had to take a bus every morning, which meant more expenses for his family. So he had to go home after school and sell the pancakes again. But after completing his education at RI, he was unable to afford to go to university. But today, both his daughters have Masters’ degrees. He is happily retired today. The writer met him recently at an inter-school basketball game and he asked the writer if he still remembered him. You see, he was in fact, the person who inspired the writer to go to RI. Basically, what the writer is trying to say is that today, we are much more privileged than people were back then. Now, we have a lot of children on scholarships. The Public Service Commission gave out 82 scholarships and The Defence Science & Technology Agency gave out more than 100 scholarships.

For those of you guys who want to read it, the article’s title is “The RI boy who hawked pancakes”, the writer is Koo Tsai Kee, and it’s on page A28 of The Straits Times.

A Quote

"Dream as if you'll live forever, live as though you'll die today"
- James Dean