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.

Annual Camp!

On Monday, I went to RJ for 01 Scouts' Annual Camp 2009! This was supposed to be a 'fun' camp, so we could bring handphones, iPods, etc. So basically the idea was to set up a campsite, with a sleeping tent and kitchen tent for each patrol (Kestrel, Eagle, Hawk, Owl, Falcon and Kingfisher), and a structure made of poles in front of the tent (no photos, sorry). Overall, the camp was real nice except for the fact that I managed to get the structure to fall on my knee (I got totally owned after that. It kept hurting randomly), kept getting heartburn, etc, etc. The food was really good, considering the fact that we cooked it ourselves. We had black pepper chicken, fried rice, srambled eggs, french toast, and a lot more stuff. But what I'm really proud of is our structure, cos it was really tall (about 3-4m I think), and had a pulley system at the top which let you pull yourself across. Lotsa people said they were damn scared up there, and I have no idea why. Cmon, it's just 4 metres! Oh wait. No safety harness. Anyways, whenever I went up, I tied a rope to my waist, just to be sure. No, it's not stupid, cos I fell off almost twice. Then we had to climb up and tighten our knots. Very easy, you say? The problem is, we have only 2 hands. So with 1 hand holding on to the structure, the other doing the knot, the knot doesn't really get tightened. So I tied myself to the structure, leaving both my hands free to tie the knot. Then on Thursday, I started getting heartburn, so Mr Tan discussed with my mum and so I went home 1 day early. Ah well, nothing else to say.

RI Prejudice!

RI Boys (and Girls now, too) are seen by the public as the elite (Raffelitists, lol), the goody-two-shoes and the best of the best. So everyone has this image of RI students being nerds and academicky people. So if we make a mistake, everyone is shocked as though Rafflesians aren’t allowed to make mistakes. I remember Deep told me that during a Skatezone reunion, a security guard came after them while they were playing DC and told them something about them being Express students, being from good schools, yadayadayada. So now it’s a crime for Express students to play, is it? Seriously, to all the non-Express students out there, place yourselves in our shoes and think how you would have felt.

Blog, or not to blog?

After about 2 months of not blogging, I was forced have decided to blog again after repeated nagging from my mum and Aru. Well, first of all there’s like so much to say! For starters, I’m not in India anymore, cos I totally hated it there, you know, everyone is so… dumb-ish and beating everyone at every test is so easy! So you know, there wasn’t much of a challenge. So I told my parents. Then they got  ticket back to Singapore. And they did all this without me knowing. My mum contacted my Mr Pang, who told the whole class. Then Rav told Skatezone, and HF asked me on Facebook if I really was coming back. As I didn’t know at that time, I told her something to the effect of my Leave of Absence ending, yadayadayada, you get the point. So I came back here, and now my mum is working again and Tanya is going to school again. My dad, however, will still be in India. He says that his project will be over in 6 months. So, right now, I’m really busy, but I expect the workload to get heavier as the year progresses. What do I mean by “really busy”? Well, in the 4 weeks that I’ve been in RI, I’ve been working on 2 projects, written 4 tests, and going for 01!

But still, all of the above is part of being a Rafflesian. Note that I say “Rafflesian”, not RI-er. From what I’ve heard, RGS is a lot harder. Can you believe they actually have to learn cooking!? *scoff* But anyway, back to what I was saying. Being in Raffles isn’t easy. We don’t have free time for ourselves cos we’re like so darn busy. What do I mean? Skatezone had arranged for a reunion a few weeks ago, but we couldn’t cos like EVERYONE (except Rach and Rav) was busy on every suggested date. So, to all the Primary School kids thinking about going to a Raffles School, think twice. It’s not that you’re going to regret joining a Raffles School. Contraire! You’re gonna have a hell of a time!

Medal!

On Thursday, the Academic Coordinator called me up on stage and said some stuff which was totally not true (like bringing laurels to the school, etc, etc). Then I got the medal and she made me show it to the school and all... Then they pinned another medal onto me. My teacher told me to keep it on, but I took it off anyway. Here are the medals:

Chikkamagalur

First of all, apologies.

Recently, I had gone on a trip to this place called Chikkamagalur which is about 7 hours away from Bangalore on a school field trip. We stayed at this place called Woodway Homestay owned by someone who owned a coffee estate of about 300 acres (about 1.2 km²). We didn't do much on the first day except that I was assigned to a dormitory and not a bedroom, but it wasn't as bad as I thought it might be. We all got double-decker beds and I got to sleep on the top, so one afternoon I was bored, so I called over a few friends and jumped from bed to bed as "The Human Mario" with one of my friends singing the theme song. We went on a tour around the owner's coffee estate the next day and guess what? You have to wait for 9 years before the coffee plant actually gives you something! And it has to be between 18 to 30 years old so that its harvest is somewhat stable. That morning, I tried a whole cup of coffee for the first time. One of my friends was like UGH but frankly, I liked it. So helped myself to bit more... and had quite a lot more at night, and then I couldn't sleep. Stupid coffee. That was it really. On the bus trip I watched movies on Saif's iPod like Blades of Glory and such. I got some coffee back from Chikkamagalur and I get a cup a week if I keep begging.

Topper!

I can't believe it. I just went online to check the scores for the UNSW Examination results, and guess what! I was the Indian Topper for the Computer Skills exam! And no one else had as a score as I did (which itself wasn't very high either (37/40)), so I was the only topper for Grade 8. Not only that, I got High Distinctions in every subject (English, Mathematics, Science, Computer Skills (obviously lah)). So when I told my teachers, turned out that they knew about this weeks back and they just wanted to keep it as a surprise for me. But too late. The Great *coffcoff* Tharun outwitted them! Oh I can see you all ing at me. Thank you very much, you may arise.

December

As you may know, my mother reads my blog regularly to see how things are going on it. After her routine check, she pointed out that I had 26 posts in November but only 5 in December. Oh, I know... I can even hear all you guys shouting "Booooo!" at me! My excuses? Well, I have a number of them! 2, to be exact.

The first one - The dreaded word. Something all most of us hate. Doomsday. It is: EXAMS!!! Da-dah-daahhh! If you guys think "So what?!", you're wrong! I had 11 exams and only a week to prepare for them (OK, the procrastination bit was my fault). So, in my fervour to do well in the exams, I totally forgot about R&B.

The second one - The holy word. Something all most of us worship. The day(s) of our lives. It is: HOLIDAYS!!! Ta-da! If you guys thought that that gave me an opportunity to blog, you're wrong! The first few days, I was in Mysore, without using a computer (despite my dad having his laptop, the hotel being a Wi-fi zone, and there being a computer room downstairs XD). I was too caught up in um... having fun and didn't blog until New Year's Day.

P.S. As I write, there are 3 dead mosquitoes on the table.
P.P.S. I'm using my grandma's laptop
P.P.P.S. I'm taller than my mom (lol)

Award!

So today, after a totally uneventful morning (ask Naman and he'll tell u otherwise (but don't, anyway)), I wuz called up by some 10th std (equiv of sec 4) guy and he told me and this other girl in my class to go downstairs. There wuz a teacher there and he took us up to the Director of Academics room and she gave us a briefing abt an award we were gonna get on Monday. Different students were getting it for different reasons, some got for Academics, some for Athletics, some for Music. I knew I was gonna get the award beforehand, and I thought I'd get it for Academics, having topped my class twice in the previous tests/exams.

 

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