Somewhere, Beyond the Sea
Well, my previous update was meant to chronicle my so-called "difficulties" with the Chinese Language. Also known officially as my "Mother Tongue" and as well as the one subject that I didn't do well in school in for 12 solid years in a certain particular family of schools. However, I would say that even though my first six years were filled with nonsense as well as poor attitude towards my studies. I would not say the same thing about my following six years. I would say that when you mingle growing up with studying hard as well as attempting to live up to the expectations of other people AND at the same time try to upkeep an artificial exterior posterior. Thence comes about a demand to succeed in a subject that hath eluded me since Primary 2.
Ok, in the meantime and as a side track. I would like to announce that I will be sticking to Nikon Cameras for as long as I can think. Due to the fact that it will be just too expensive to switch over to a Canon EOS system. This means that I'll likely never get to have my very own EOS 1D Mark II camera. At the same time, the good news is that my formerly dream dSLR's price has dropped by a whopping two thousand dollars in one week. Perfect time for me to upkeep and hopefully upgrade to professional photographic equipment on my birthday next year. Somebody please sponser me a Nikon D2H as well as a Nikon D90. Ah. the love of photography! Just that its a very expensive hobby. So I really need to get down to doing some real assignments that pay good money to support this nonsensical hobby of mine. Thank you all those who have so kindly given me their encouragement and actually appreciated my photographs. I've got a super long way to go after viewing the jaw-dropping portfolios on Pbase.com as well as Photo.net. They are the two sites where really, the best of the best is featured.
Coming back to my personal reflections on my life as a secondary school as well as JC student studying chinese. Things were very much different this time. What happens is that my parents manage to hire this super-strict chinese tution teacher. Think of a chinese old woman in a horror show and more or less you've got my tution teacher. I mean she was so fierce and so strict! And made me learn every drop of chinese and literally shoved it down my throat. Well, I guess its really bitter medicine in a sense because I had no choice but to memorise the entire chinese handbook (Ci Yu Sou Che) that listed all the new characters we had to learn. I had to memorise every single nonsense bit from the definition all the way down to the example sentences. Even the hanyu pinyin. So those of you who often wonder for some weird reason or other, I can recall all sorts of minute details from long time ago. This is more or less my foundation to a memory that I could stuff copious amount of knowledge into. In English of course, for chinese, the effect was temporary.
I would be able to memorise continous sequences of spellings, hanyu pinyin(s), example sentences with utilised the words as well as all sorts of other rubbish the publisher decided to include into the chinese handbooks. This was really nonsense, because I don't enjoy myself learning the language. Its a complete chore. I would be able to do my work flawlessly for one or two chapters first and then forget everything that I had learnt after that. Sort of a unconscious "delete" and "reject this knowledge" button was hit by my brain repeatedly after each mindless tution session. I really never understood how those guys from DUH chinese high school (Sekolah Tengi Cheena) would be able to spout "liu li de hua yu" (Smoothly-Spoken Chinese Words). I'm glad that I speak much better english than a vast majority of them. It used to be a joke amongst ACS people that duh chinese high people were more or less a bunch of communists. I still fondly recall going behind the chinese high school contingent at one of those athletic championship meets at the National Stadium and with a bunch of other like-minded ACS people, jeering "Hey, Communists!" before scampering off. And yes, the short pants were always something we could laugh at.
Because I had chinese tution that was so drery and seemed to produce the results in theory - a pass for my chinese spelling and mo xie (writing from memory) almost every week in Secondary one. I guess that it had the intended effect of producing the result, but to no ends the proper usage of the language. I still spoke freely in English in chinese class. And the fact that I had chinese tution only made me slack off in class as my then chinese teacher struggled to control a class of screaming 13 year olds rather than to teach us. I fondly remember my chinese teacher screaming so hard that we could see all the veins in her neck dilate viciously. She was this particular teacher from china. And thus had very traditonal outlook in terms of what she expected from students in her class. Oh man, she didn't like me as well! Because I spoke english during her chinese lessons. There would always be the "Jiang Hua Yu!" (Speak Chinese!) command given to me during lessons for which I often ignored. My spoken chinese was a complete disaster by this chinese teacher's standards and I often had to see her in the staffroom almost every recess for extra "tutoring" to "brush up" my command of the lanaguage. Once again, it was the "You must know your roots" and "Chinese people must know their chinese culture" as well as "Chinese man cannot speak chinese very shame shame one you know" kind of lecture that would drag on an don. It sucked big time. So at the end of the year, we got our good friend whose dad had high connections to depose of this teacher. And my class never saw her again! Yeah! To be honest, I don't even learn anything in class. She speaks so fast that I can barely catch 3 words out of 20. And is often screaming her head off trying to control my class. To what ends? Sad to say, this particular teacher was also extremely unpopular with the upper secondary boys. And you could see her various "nicknames" in liquid paper vandalised on the floor of the corridor of the school. I should have taken up photography 8 years ago...
I had the same super-strict chinese tutor for my 4 years in secondary school. Most of the time this particular teacher eventually softened her stance towards me as I grew older, believing that I could take care of myself and needed less "correction" on her part. Nevertheless, as I grew older, I could see through the guise that all my parents paid this particular tution teacher was actually just to go through the chinese handbook with me, give me some spelling tests and writing from memory tests and to read through the textbook in advance of the lessons yet to be covered in class. That was about just enough to eat up the 2 hour tution slots about once to twice a week. So that was it. My school teacher in secondary school was quite an interesting one. For starters, she looked seriously anorexic. Theoretically, we calculated her weight to be in the region of 39 to 41 kgs. The worst thing was that she was tall. A pretty bony teacher that reminded me of the starving people in Africa. Her lessons were very dry. Very boring. But ok, she didn't do much to "mark me" or else make life difficult for me. Of course, I never did her work and for that I often got all manners of scoldings. But really, I don't do my work because I don't want to do it. I don't do my work because I simply don't understand it. Its easy to fill up the multiple choice questions. Just tikum-tikum and agar-agar pick a number that I feel I'm happy with. No difference in probability if I used a 4-sided die to decide my choices. I left all the sentence construction as well as comprehension passages that required written answers blank. Only after several scoldings would I actually go take a friend's already-marked workbook. Copy his answers during recess and then hand it up. The cycle would repeat itself all the way throughout the year until we got a new Lao Shi.
This new Lao Shi was really nice. I'll name her as Mrs Siow. She was a really different teacher that treated us like her little sons and gave us quite alot of freedom in class. Making noise? No problem. Didn't do work? No problem - extra help. She was so good that I started looking forward to my chinese classes every day. Her introduction to my class was really funny, as a former classmate once went up to her in the canteen and said "Hello Aunty Siow...", thinking she was a canteen vendor! The joke pepertuated all the way until Mrs Siow came to teach our class on our first day, and then my classmate got the shock of his life when he realised that the person whom he thought to be "a chicken rice seller" was actually his new chinese teacher.
Mrs. Siow told us that she was formerly a mathematics teacher from RGS. And that really perked us up knowing that we have a teacher who used to teach in a star instituion 3 bus stops away from the Anglo-Chinese School. Bus 603, at that time, "bus number 3" to be very exact. I've got a good classmate who used to live in Orchard road and we'd take the bus home together. One fine day as we passed by RGS, he casually mentioned me:
"eh, look at that school there. Imagine. Every single girl in that place got at least 265 and above for her PSLE. And I can't even get into ACSI!"
Quite true. At that time I thought RGS was "just too smart" to be considered a school We could rename it into a school akin to skimmed milk - where the cream of the crop of our education "produce" every year is herded into for all sorts of special programmes and advanced study classes unavailable to the ACS Independent rejects like me and my classmates.
Aunty Siow was really helpful. That year, we had a mathematics teacher SO BAD that he killed my interest in the subject in its entirety. He couldn't teach, he could mark, he set tests that we never knew the answers to and his lessons just plain sucked. I couldn't even solve a quadratic equation at that time. I was frustrated knowing that its not that I can't do it, its just that I was never properly taught the methologies of solving the equations. We asked Mrs. Siow to help us in our maths work during her chinese lessons and she obliged totally. We would randomly fire off questions from our silly assignments and she's solve them as examples to teach us the principles of mathematics. Imagine that. A Chinese teacher teaching maths in class because of an incompetant maths teacher! And she instructed us in chinese, so that was all the more interesting. We tried to ask her questions in chinese in order to practise whatever knowledge we had of the language and it was fun! Chinese classes were always about laughter and learning mathematical sequences. The most encouraging thing she said to my whole class was once that she mentioned about us being as good as RGS and RI students, just that we weren't so strong in our 2nd language. That's all. And my class really loved her. And gave her the loudes applause that year during our teacher's day celebrations. If you want a teacher that can inspire. She'll be one of them. I think she still teaches at ACS Barker today. And all her students say that she's simply fantastic.
HOWEVER. We still cheated in our weekly chinese spelling tests! I guess I myself was afraid to let her down by handing in crap answers. So during our spelling tests, where she'd take like an hour to give out the words to only 10 chinese words as well as instructed us in mathematics in-between the various chinese words to be tested for spelling that day. We'd have so much time, in fact, ample and sufficient time to pass around our ting xie books around the class just so that we all wrote the words correctly. Loved it man. But I have to admit, while I still did badly for chinese that year. Around a D7 grade. I attribute the increase in my attitude to the 2nd language to Mrs Siow and in part, my chinese tution teacher. I was very very happy with chinese classes that year. No scoldings, LOTS of extra help, true dedication and patience. Woah. Rare teacher indeed.
I'd like to bring everyone's attention now to the GREATEST chinese teacher in the Anglo-Chinese School (Barker Road). He is so good that I can proudly proclaim him to be the best chinese teacher for my 10 years in an All-Boys school. ACJC not counted because its mixed! He is no other than the FUNKY CHINAMAN. Mention the words "The Funky Chinaman" to any ACS Barker Road boy. And chances are they would either 1) Smile and Burst into laughter. 2) Say he's really funky!
We gave him the nickname "Funky Chinaman" because he truly deserves that title. For the whole of secondary three. Chinese classes would NEVER, NEVER, NEVER, NEVER be the same as compared to the first 8 years in school.
I will never forget the first day of secondary three. Where we were wearing our long blue pants for the first time. And waiting for our chinese teacher to enter the class. This teacher, the Funky Chinaman. Also known as Mr Chia. Also called CCK by some. Walked into class. Our class was pretty noisy at that time. He came in, slammed his books on the teacher's table. Stuck up his index finger, pointed at the whole class and shouted at the top of his voice:
"Ni men yi ge yi ge, Quan bu dou feng liao!" (Each and every one of you is crazy!!!!)
We were so startled by his introduction that we laughed and laughed and laughed and laughed. We laughed so hard that he went on to say:
"Ni men siao se mo? Feng liao shi ma?" (What are you all laughing at? Have you all gone crazy already?!"
He said that like a mad chinaman. So my whole class stood up to greet him "lao shi zao an" (Good morning, sir!) and then. He waved his hands in a downward motion while making funny noises "ai ai ai ai, bu yao! bu yao zan!" (don't stand! don't stand!)
It would be the same for the rest of the year. We needn't stand up and greet him before each class and lesson. And his lessons would consist of 10 minutes talking about the textbook. And half an hour "free period". In those days, one period was about 40 minutes or so. And he was super slack. No need to hand up work, no need to do anything. No need to even greet him goodbye when he left the classroom. Chinese classes were tragically funny. So funny until I think I laughed myself a six pack that year. If you came to school and attended chinese class and you didn't laugh. It usually meant that 1) You're mad 2) teacher take MC 3) You skipped class (which meant you'd be laughing anyway!).
Ok. In a more advanced fasion. Chinese spelling classes would no longer require an exercise book. The Funky Chinaman proposed that he hand out worksheets where certain blanks in the setences were the words that came out in that week's spelling test. He said that this was better as it would make us think more as well as give us practise into our chinese reading skills.
We didn't need to study.
We could put the chinese handbook (Ci Yu Sou Che) on top of the table and copy blatantly from it. Somehow or other. All the guys sitting by the windows next to the corridor would automatically close the sliding windows that allowed the free roaming discipline master to peek into our classroom during chinese spelling tests. We were more afraid of being caught by cheating by the DM than we were by our very own chinese teacher. He was the greatest! Even during the tests, we could walk around liberally and talk to other people. If the Funky Chinaman asked us why we were walking around, we usually replied "Orh, Lao Shi ah, Wo zai jian cha wo de da an" (Teacher! I'm checking my answers!" and he'd nod his head in approval. So you've guessed it. 100% for spelling. And virtually the whole class got A1 for every single chinese test they took! I'm sure the princple must have taken notice. My parents were utterly happy that I was doing "so well". Naturally, my chinese tution teacher "took all the credit" some way or another. It was nonsense.
Until the mid year exams when the whole class failed with the exception of like 7 persons. 7 out of 42! This was an utter disaster for a class that got 100% for almost every spelling test and A1 for every chinese test collectively. I forgot to mention that during tests, I could actually not do anything for like half the duration of the test. Then I would swap test papers with the person sitting next to me, who happened to be a chinese expert and he'd fill in all the blanks for me and write out all the answers to those questions that required written answers. So that was wonderfuly, only that it could not be replicated in exam circumstances.
For secondary 3. I managed to eek a pass for my chinese. With the weightage on my continual assessments (being A1 in grades) and the constant drilling of my tution teacher gave me a D7 once again. I managed to actually pass overall with a C6. For the first time in my life. C6. Chinese classes were so cool. So funky. While I mentioned in my previous blog post about a classmate who was very good in science who eventually made it to NJC. He too was in my class in secondary 3 and 4. And we had a whale of a time together. Once, he threw my entire pencil case down three stories. Without asking for permission, both of us dashed out of class, ran down 3 stories on opposite sides of the school block and raced to see who could retrieve my pencil case. I got hold if it first. Not before both of us collided heavily upon impact in a real human life example of the conservation of momentum. This particular classmate was tall and heavy. About 90 kg at that time. So I flew backwards and landed on the floor. I looked up and saw my chinese teacher with his head outside the window yelling, "Ni feng le shi ma?" (Have you gone crazy already?). Of course, with the rest of my classmates looking out in turn.
When we got back to class. He scolded us like crazy! But because the two of us were too amused and too exhausted after all that running to hear him out. We had to see him in the staffroom later on. When we saw him, I thought he was gonna give us both detention or the like. In reality. He told us that if we wanted to play during his class in future. All we needed to do was to ASK him for permission first. And then we can go do our nonsense together. After both of us walked out of the staffroom. We slapped high five with each other and realised. That truly, this is the "funky chinaman". That year would see so much things from throwing water 3 stories down at other people, all the way to playing rugby on the corridor while other classes were having lessons, throwing liquid paper into the fan and the bottle broke apart, playing with the fire extinguisher,f skipping chinese class entirely to eat chicken wings at the shaw pool and having a mini paper-bullet war in class. All during chinese class time. Talk about creatively expanding our energies. I salute my chinese teacher for the miseducation I had. It was very well worth it.
And I still remember my first day of secondary four very fondly. We had already met all our teachers for the various subjects. Hardly any change. All that my whole class was concerned about was who the chinese teacher was. Our hearts sank when this chinese teacher, known to be very fussy in her requirements with regards to work and even more fussy in her teaching style walked into class. My whole class collapsed in despair. I was really sad too! I felt cheated! My secondary 4 life rotting away to another lousy chinese teacher.
Then this teacher realised that she had walked into the wrong class! So all of us breathed a huge sigh of relief. A really huge sigh of relief.
Then the Funky Chinaman walked through the door.
My class went berserk. I was was banging and slapping my table and cheering. My classmates just started to celebrate by yelling all manners of cheers and huge smiles. And in usual fashion. He started the year with those great words that still ring through my years when I think of that day:
"Ni men yi ge yi ge, quan bu dou feng liao shi ma?!!!!"
I nearly fell of my chair laughing. It was so funny. The first thing he asked us was to rearrange the tables in class because he didn't like it. And we started throwing our tables and chairs all around the place and havoc just broke out. This is truly chinese class in ACS.
Secondary 4 chinese class was the greatest. Because we were at the holding campus next to SCGS while the Newer Barker Road Campus that stands today was being built. My class used #02-03 of 1 Dauntless Heroes Lanes in the Nagel Building. It was formerly a very large technical workshop that was converted into five classrooms by means of recycled paper partions that stretched from the ceiling all the way to the ground. Chinese classes were great. This time round, we had baseball in class during the test. Broke several windows during chinese class and the Funky Chinaman didn't care. He was more concerned about us making too much noise that would attract the principal's attention. Like a good ACS friend quoted: "seems like chinese teachers have this morbid fear of the principle".
Once, we brought electric guitars and amplifiers to school. Plugged them into the wall socket. I kid you not. And we started playing rock and roll all during chinese class. The Funky Chinaman didn't stop us. He told us "Xiao Zhang Kan Ni!" (The principal is looking at you!). The funniest thing was the NEC himself had announced that he would be going off for a 3 day visit to Thailand to visit various educational institutions in Bangkok. So we carried on playing. That was my first guitar lesson! We drilled holes in the floor. We drilled holes in the partition just so that the Air-conditioned air from the class next to ours - 4A1, would leak into our classroom. And the most interesting of all was that, because of the tremendous space of the classroom. We had like at least one normal classroom's worth of extra space at the back of class. This place was used for discussions.
Literally, a few of us would gather around every chinese lesson, sit in a circle and talk and discuss freely about everything under the sun from politics, schoo life, girls, religion or just share jokes. And it was fantastic. Other than such very intellectual discussions where we would really debate and talk about the failures and fallacies of our educational system (pretty much everyone sucked at chinese, so they felt they were very marginalised there and then by the education system) and lambast the MOE on a daily basis. We also talked about our future, our goals, our dreams, our aspirations as well as shared common jokes that really gave us a deep sense of bonding and camaraderie. My secondary 4 class in ACS Barker was really fantastic. And I keep in touch with many of them today. Memories just keep flooding back everytime we see each other at reunions or on the street or at other ACS organised events.
Let's not mention tests and spelling once again. Exact same format as secondary 3. Extremely good results for both, but a good number of us failed our chinese examinations. But who really cared when the Funky Chinaman would let us off for recess 30 minute early? Especially since most of the time, his chinese periods would fall just before recess. 10 minutes into our 40 minutes class and a whole bunch of us would gather at the doorway begging him like crazy to let us off for recess (no shaw pool this time). All this so that we could rush down the slope to the canteen to order like 20 to 30 plates of the very coveted fried chicken rice at our ACS canteen at one shot. Often, my class was spotted by the assistant disciplinary master and he chased us all back to class. But of course. The funky Chinaman didn't care and let us take cover for a while, before we went on our rampage to buy 30 plate of frien chicken rice again. In fact, on our class timetable on our noticeboard. "Recess" was re-written as "RefriEd ChickEn Rice SS". The caps in the words originally belong to the words "recess". And the rest of the small letters later added in by a creative fellow classmate. Chicken rich was an immensely popular recess food gobble. Because the rest of the canteen couldn't make it as far as food standards, quality and quantity was concerned.
I really miss those days at Barker. The AC environment, being with friends I had grown up with for over 10 years. And the fact that all of us were rejects from "our brother school" and that 94% of us were from a feeder primary school. It was great as far as unity was concerned. I preferred the easy going, laid back, very fun environment of Barker compared to the relatively stiffling, studious, muggerish place that ACJC wanted to be. ACJC should remain, ideally, the oppposite of what one of our former principal's proudly declared.
"I dunch want my cowage to be a playin' cowage..." - the truth is, people come to ACJC to play lah. You can tell an artist who has drawn horses all his life to start painting elephants. Of course it wouldn't fit well! Likewise, the push to make ACJC an "intellecutually stimulating environment" were academic elistist ideals are being propped up isn't really in the Spirit of what the place has been for the last 20 plus year till the time the Great Mr Wan stepped down. Come on, even that principle plays shares on the stock market in his office!
Well to conclude off my secondary 4 year. I got an F9 for my mid year O-level results. For ACS Barker alone, I think that year our pass rate (including D7 as passes) hovered around 58%. Lowest in the nation. Our neighbouring school, SCGS - had a whopping 99.8% passes counting D7 as a pass. Only one girl got an E8. The funky chinaman kept repeating this to us as he read our our scores. F9, F9, F9 for a whole slew of people. With the exception of 15 persons. The rest of the class had really horrific grades. For my final O-Level chinese examinations. I got an F9 once again. Let's remember that I still had a strict chinest tution teacher who was drilling me in my chinese.
I'll reserve the adjoining continuation of this story, followed by the JC1 and JC2 experiences with Chinese, and their conclusions to the next concluding post. In the meantime. Well. I really miss my secondary school days...
Well, my previous update was meant to chronicle my so-called "difficulties" with the Chinese Language. Also known officially as my "Mother Tongue" and as well as the one subject that I didn't do well in school in for 12 solid years in a certain particular family of schools. However, I would say that even though my first six years were filled with nonsense as well as poor attitude towards my studies. I would not say the same thing about my following six years. I would say that when you mingle growing up with studying hard as well as attempting to live up to the expectations of other people AND at the same time try to upkeep an artificial exterior posterior. Thence comes about a demand to succeed in a subject that hath eluded me since Primary 2.
Ok, in the meantime and as a side track. I would like to announce that I will be sticking to Nikon Cameras for as long as I can think. Due to the fact that it will be just too expensive to switch over to a Canon EOS system. This means that I'll likely never get to have my very own EOS 1D Mark II camera. At the same time, the good news is that my formerly dream dSLR's price has dropped by a whopping two thousand dollars in one week. Perfect time for me to upkeep and hopefully upgrade to professional photographic equipment on my birthday next year. Somebody please sponser me a Nikon D2H as well as a Nikon D90. Ah. the love of photography! Just that its a very expensive hobby. So I really need to get down to doing some real assignments that pay good money to support this nonsensical hobby of mine. Thank you all those who have so kindly given me their encouragement and actually appreciated my photographs. I've got a super long way to go after viewing the jaw-dropping portfolios on Pbase.com as well as Photo.net. They are the two sites where really, the best of the best is featured.
Coming back to my personal reflections on my life as a secondary school as well as JC student studying chinese. Things were very much different this time. What happens is that my parents manage to hire this super-strict chinese tution teacher. Think of a chinese old woman in a horror show and more or less you've got my tution teacher. I mean she was so fierce and so strict! And made me learn every drop of chinese and literally shoved it down my throat. Well, I guess its really bitter medicine in a sense because I had no choice but to memorise the entire chinese handbook (Ci Yu Sou Che) that listed all the new characters we had to learn. I had to memorise every single nonsense bit from the definition all the way down to the example sentences. Even the hanyu pinyin. So those of you who often wonder for some weird reason or other, I can recall all sorts of minute details from long time ago. This is more or less my foundation to a memory that I could stuff copious amount of knowledge into. In English of course, for chinese, the effect was temporary.
I would be able to memorise continous sequences of spellings, hanyu pinyin(s), example sentences with utilised the words as well as all sorts of other rubbish the publisher decided to include into the chinese handbooks. This was really nonsense, because I don't enjoy myself learning the language. Its a complete chore. I would be able to do my work flawlessly for one or two chapters first and then forget everything that I had learnt after that. Sort of a unconscious "delete" and "reject this knowledge" button was hit by my brain repeatedly after each mindless tution session. I really never understood how those guys from DUH chinese high school (Sekolah Tengi Cheena) would be able to spout "liu li de hua yu" (Smoothly-Spoken Chinese Words). I'm glad that I speak much better english than a vast majority of them. It used to be a joke amongst ACS people that duh chinese high people were more or less a bunch of communists. I still fondly recall going behind the chinese high school contingent at one of those athletic championship meets at the National Stadium and with a bunch of other like-minded ACS people, jeering "Hey, Communists!" before scampering off. And yes, the short pants were always something we could laugh at.
Because I had chinese tution that was so drery and seemed to produce the results in theory - a pass for my chinese spelling and mo xie (writing from memory) almost every week in Secondary one. I guess that it had the intended effect of producing the result, but to no ends the proper usage of the language. I still spoke freely in English in chinese class. And the fact that I had chinese tution only made me slack off in class as my then chinese teacher struggled to control a class of screaming 13 year olds rather than to teach us. I fondly remember my chinese teacher screaming so hard that we could see all the veins in her neck dilate viciously. She was this particular teacher from china. And thus had very traditonal outlook in terms of what she expected from students in her class. Oh man, she didn't like me as well! Because I spoke english during her chinese lessons. There would always be the "Jiang Hua Yu!" (Speak Chinese!) command given to me during lessons for which I often ignored. My spoken chinese was a complete disaster by this chinese teacher's standards and I often had to see her in the staffroom almost every recess for extra "tutoring" to "brush up" my command of the lanaguage. Once again, it was the "You must know your roots" and "Chinese people must know their chinese culture" as well as "Chinese man cannot speak chinese very shame shame one you know" kind of lecture that would drag on an don. It sucked big time. So at the end of the year, we got our good friend whose dad had high connections to depose of this teacher. And my class never saw her again! Yeah! To be honest, I don't even learn anything in class. She speaks so fast that I can barely catch 3 words out of 20. And is often screaming her head off trying to control my class. To what ends? Sad to say, this particular teacher was also extremely unpopular with the upper secondary boys. And you could see her various "nicknames" in liquid paper vandalised on the floor of the corridor of the school. I should have taken up photography 8 years ago...
I had the same super-strict chinese tutor for my 4 years in secondary school. Most of the time this particular teacher eventually softened her stance towards me as I grew older, believing that I could take care of myself and needed less "correction" on her part. Nevertheless, as I grew older, I could see through the guise that all my parents paid this particular tution teacher was actually just to go through the chinese handbook with me, give me some spelling tests and writing from memory tests and to read through the textbook in advance of the lessons yet to be covered in class. That was about just enough to eat up the 2 hour tution slots about once to twice a week. So that was it. My school teacher in secondary school was quite an interesting one. For starters, she looked seriously anorexic. Theoretically, we calculated her weight to be in the region of 39 to 41 kgs. The worst thing was that she was tall. A pretty bony teacher that reminded me of the starving people in Africa. Her lessons were very dry. Very boring. But ok, she didn't do much to "mark me" or else make life difficult for me. Of course, I never did her work and for that I often got all manners of scoldings. But really, I don't do my work because I don't want to do it. I don't do my work because I simply don't understand it. Its easy to fill up the multiple choice questions. Just tikum-tikum and agar-agar pick a number that I feel I'm happy with. No difference in probability if I used a 4-sided die to decide my choices. I left all the sentence construction as well as comprehension passages that required written answers blank. Only after several scoldings would I actually go take a friend's already-marked workbook. Copy his answers during recess and then hand it up. The cycle would repeat itself all the way throughout the year until we got a new Lao Shi.
This new Lao Shi was really nice. I'll name her as Mrs Siow. She was a really different teacher that treated us like her little sons and gave us quite alot of freedom in class. Making noise? No problem. Didn't do work? No problem - extra help. She was so good that I started looking forward to my chinese classes every day. Her introduction to my class was really funny, as a former classmate once went up to her in the canteen and said "Hello Aunty Siow...", thinking she was a canteen vendor! The joke pepertuated all the way until Mrs Siow came to teach our class on our first day, and then my classmate got the shock of his life when he realised that the person whom he thought to be "a chicken rice seller" was actually his new chinese teacher.
Mrs. Siow told us that she was formerly a mathematics teacher from RGS. And that really perked us up knowing that we have a teacher who used to teach in a star instituion 3 bus stops away from the Anglo-Chinese School. Bus 603, at that time, "bus number 3" to be very exact. I've got a good classmate who used to live in Orchard road and we'd take the bus home together. One fine day as we passed by RGS, he casually mentioned me:
"eh, look at that school there. Imagine. Every single girl in that place got at least 265 and above for her PSLE. And I can't even get into ACSI!"
Quite true. At that time I thought RGS was "just too smart" to be considered a school We could rename it into a school akin to skimmed milk - where the cream of the crop of our education "produce" every year is herded into for all sorts of special programmes and advanced study classes unavailable to the ACS Independent rejects like me and my classmates.
Aunty Siow was really helpful. That year, we had a mathematics teacher SO BAD that he killed my interest in the subject in its entirety. He couldn't teach, he could mark, he set tests that we never knew the answers to and his lessons just plain sucked. I couldn't even solve a quadratic equation at that time. I was frustrated knowing that its not that I can't do it, its just that I was never properly taught the methologies of solving the equations. We asked Mrs. Siow to help us in our maths work during her chinese lessons and she obliged totally. We would randomly fire off questions from our silly assignments and she's solve them as examples to teach us the principles of mathematics. Imagine that. A Chinese teacher teaching maths in class because of an incompetant maths teacher! And she instructed us in chinese, so that was all the more interesting. We tried to ask her questions in chinese in order to practise whatever knowledge we had of the language and it was fun! Chinese classes were always about laughter and learning mathematical sequences. The most encouraging thing she said to my whole class was once that she mentioned about us being as good as RGS and RI students, just that we weren't so strong in our 2nd language. That's all. And my class really loved her. And gave her the loudes applause that year during our teacher's day celebrations. If you want a teacher that can inspire. She'll be one of them. I think she still teaches at ACS Barker today. And all her students say that she's simply fantastic.
HOWEVER. We still cheated in our weekly chinese spelling tests! I guess I myself was afraid to let her down by handing in crap answers. So during our spelling tests, where she'd take like an hour to give out the words to only 10 chinese words as well as instructed us in mathematics in-between the various chinese words to be tested for spelling that day. We'd have so much time, in fact, ample and sufficient time to pass around our ting xie books around the class just so that we all wrote the words correctly. Loved it man. But I have to admit, while I still did badly for chinese that year. Around a D7 grade. I attribute the increase in my attitude to the 2nd language to Mrs Siow and in part, my chinese tution teacher. I was very very happy with chinese classes that year. No scoldings, LOTS of extra help, true dedication and patience. Woah. Rare teacher indeed.
I'd like to bring everyone's attention now to the GREATEST chinese teacher in the Anglo-Chinese School (Barker Road). He is so good that I can proudly proclaim him to be the best chinese teacher for my 10 years in an All-Boys school. ACJC not counted because its mixed! He is no other than the FUNKY CHINAMAN. Mention the words "The Funky Chinaman" to any ACS Barker Road boy. And chances are they would either 1) Smile and Burst into laughter. 2) Say he's really funky!
We gave him the nickname "Funky Chinaman" because he truly deserves that title. For the whole of secondary three. Chinese classes would NEVER, NEVER, NEVER, NEVER be the same as compared to the first 8 years in school.
I will never forget the first day of secondary three. Where we were wearing our long blue pants for the first time. And waiting for our chinese teacher to enter the class. This teacher, the Funky Chinaman. Also known as Mr Chia. Also called CCK by some. Walked into class. Our class was pretty noisy at that time. He came in, slammed his books on the teacher's table. Stuck up his index finger, pointed at the whole class and shouted at the top of his voice:
"Ni men yi ge yi ge, Quan bu dou feng liao!" (Each and every one of you is crazy!!!!)
We were so startled by his introduction that we laughed and laughed and laughed and laughed. We laughed so hard that he went on to say:
"Ni men siao se mo? Feng liao shi ma?" (What are you all laughing at? Have you all gone crazy already?!"
He said that like a mad chinaman. So my whole class stood up to greet him "lao shi zao an" (Good morning, sir!) and then. He waved his hands in a downward motion while making funny noises "ai ai ai ai, bu yao! bu yao zan!" (don't stand! don't stand!)
It would be the same for the rest of the year. We needn't stand up and greet him before each class and lesson. And his lessons would consist of 10 minutes talking about the textbook. And half an hour "free period". In those days, one period was about 40 minutes or so. And he was super slack. No need to hand up work, no need to do anything. No need to even greet him goodbye when he left the classroom. Chinese classes were tragically funny. So funny until I think I laughed myself a six pack that year. If you came to school and attended chinese class and you didn't laugh. It usually meant that 1) You're mad 2) teacher take MC 3) You skipped class (which meant you'd be laughing anyway!).
Ok. In a more advanced fasion. Chinese spelling classes would no longer require an exercise book. The Funky Chinaman proposed that he hand out worksheets where certain blanks in the setences were the words that came out in that week's spelling test. He said that this was better as it would make us think more as well as give us practise into our chinese reading skills.
We didn't need to study.
We could put the chinese handbook (Ci Yu Sou Che) on top of the table and copy blatantly from it. Somehow or other. All the guys sitting by the windows next to the corridor would automatically close the sliding windows that allowed the free roaming discipline master to peek into our classroom during chinese spelling tests. We were more afraid of being caught by cheating by the DM than we were by our very own chinese teacher. He was the greatest! Even during the tests, we could walk around liberally and talk to other people. If the Funky Chinaman asked us why we were walking around, we usually replied "Orh, Lao Shi ah, Wo zai jian cha wo de da an" (Teacher! I'm checking my answers!" and he'd nod his head in approval. So you've guessed it. 100% for spelling. And virtually the whole class got A1 for every single chinese test they took! I'm sure the princple must have taken notice. My parents were utterly happy that I was doing "so well". Naturally, my chinese tution teacher "took all the credit" some way or another. It was nonsense.
Until the mid year exams when the whole class failed with the exception of like 7 persons. 7 out of 42! This was an utter disaster for a class that got 100% for almost every spelling test and A1 for every chinese test collectively. I forgot to mention that during tests, I could actually not do anything for like half the duration of the test. Then I would swap test papers with the person sitting next to me, who happened to be a chinese expert and he'd fill in all the blanks for me and write out all the answers to those questions that required written answers. So that was wonderfuly, only that it could not be replicated in exam circumstances.
For secondary 3. I managed to eek a pass for my chinese. With the weightage on my continual assessments (being A1 in grades) and the constant drilling of my tution teacher gave me a D7 once again. I managed to actually pass overall with a C6. For the first time in my life. C6. Chinese classes were so cool. So funky. While I mentioned in my previous blog post about a classmate who was very good in science who eventually made it to NJC. He too was in my class in secondary 3 and 4. And we had a whale of a time together. Once, he threw my entire pencil case down three stories. Without asking for permission, both of us dashed out of class, ran down 3 stories on opposite sides of the school block and raced to see who could retrieve my pencil case. I got hold if it first. Not before both of us collided heavily upon impact in a real human life example of the conservation of momentum. This particular classmate was tall and heavy. About 90 kg at that time. So I flew backwards and landed on the floor. I looked up and saw my chinese teacher with his head outside the window yelling, "Ni feng le shi ma?" (Have you gone crazy already?). Of course, with the rest of my classmates looking out in turn.
When we got back to class. He scolded us like crazy! But because the two of us were too amused and too exhausted after all that running to hear him out. We had to see him in the staffroom later on. When we saw him, I thought he was gonna give us both detention or the like. In reality. He told us that if we wanted to play during his class in future. All we needed to do was to ASK him for permission first. And then we can go do our nonsense together. After both of us walked out of the staffroom. We slapped high five with each other and realised. That truly, this is the "funky chinaman". That year would see so much things from throwing water 3 stories down at other people, all the way to playing rugby on the corridor while other classes were having lessons, throwing liquid paper into the fan and the bottle broke apart, playing with the fire extinguisher,f skipping chinese class entirely to eat chicken wings at the shaw pool and having a mini paper-bullet war in class. All during chinese class time. Talk about creatively expanding our energies. I salute my chinese teacher for the miseducation I had. It was very well worth it.
And I still remember my first day of secondary four very fondly. We had already met all our teachers for the various subjects. Hardly any change. All that my whole class was concerned about was who the chinese teacher was. Our hearts sank when this chinese teacher, known to be very fussy in her requirements with regards to work and even more fussy in her teaching style walked into class. My whole class collapsed in despair. I was really sad too! I felt cheated! My secondary 4 life rotting away to another lousy chinese teacher.
Then this teacher realised that she had walked into the wrong class! So all of us breathed a huge sigh of relief. A really huge sigh of relief.
Then the Funky Chinaman walked through the door.
My class went berserk. I was was banging and slapping my table and cheering. My classmates just started to celebrate by yelling all manners of cheers and huge smiles. And in usual fashion. He started the year with those great words that still ring through my years when I think of that day:
"Ni men yi ge yi ge, quan bu dou feng liao shi ma?!!!!"
I nearly fell of my chair laughing. It was so funny. The first thing he asked us was to rearrange the tables in class because he didn't like it. And we started throwing our tables and chairs all around the place and havoc just broke out. This is truly chinese class in ACS.
Secondary 4 chinese class was the greatest. Because we were at the holding campus next to SCGS while the Newer Barker Road Campus that stands today was being built. My class used #02-03 of 1 Dauntless Heroes Lanes in the Nagel Building. It was formerly a very large technical workshop that was converted into five classrooms by means of recycled paper partions that stretched from the ceiling all the way to the ground. Chinese classes were great. This time round, we had baseball in class during the test. Broke several windows during chinese class and the Funky Chinaman didn't care. He was more concerned about us making too much noise that would attract the principal's attention. Like a good ACS friend quoted: "seems like chinese teachers have this morbid fear of the principle".
Once, we brought electric guitars and amplifiers to school. Plugged them into the wall socket. I kid you not. And we started playing rock and roll all during chinese class. The Funky Chinaman didn't stop us. He told us "Xiao Zhang Kan Ni!" (The principal is looking at you!). The funniest thing was the NEC himself had announced that he would be going off for a 3 day visit to Thailand to visit various educational institutions in Bangkok. So we carried on playing. That was my first guitar lesson! We drilled holes in the floor. We drilled holes in the partition just so that the Air-conditioned air from the class next to ours - 4A1, would leak into our classroom. And the most interesting of all was that, because of the tremendous space of the classroom. We had like at least one normal classroom's worth of extra space at the back of class. This place was used for discussions.
Literally, a few of us would gather around every chinese lesson, sit in a circle and talk and discuss freely about everything under the sun from politics, schoo life, girls, religion or just share jokes. And it was fantastic. Other than such very intellectual discussions where we would really debate and talk about the failures and fallacies of our educational system (pretty much everyone sucked at chinese, so they felt they were very marginalised there and then by the education system) and lambast the MOE on a daily basis. We also talked about our future, our goals, our dreams, our aspirations as well as shared common jokes that really gave us a deep sense of bonding and camaraderie. My secondary 4 class in ACS Barker was really fantastic. And I keep in touch with many of them today. Memories just keep flooding back everytime we see each other at reunions or on the street or at other ACS organised events.
Let's not mention tests and spelling once again. Exact same format as secondary 3. Extremely good results for both, but a good number of us failed our chinese examinations. But who really cared when the Funky Chinaman would let us off for recess 30 minute early? Especially since most of the time, his chinese periods would fall just before recess. 10 minutes into our 40 minutes class and a whole bunch of us would gather at the doorway begging him like crazy to let us off for recess (no shaw pool this time). All this so that we could rush down the slope to the canteen to order like 20 to 30 plates of the very coveted fried chicken rice at our ACS canteen at one shot. Often, my class was spotted by the assistant disciplinary master and he chased us all back to class. But of course. The funky Chinaman didn't care and let us take cover for a while, before we went on our rampage to buy 30 plate of frien chicken rice again. In fact, on our class timetable on our noticeboard. "Recess" was re-written as "RefriEd ChickEn Rice SS". The caps in the words originally belong to the words "recess". And the rest of the small letters later added in by a creative fellow classmate. Chicken rich was an immensely popular recess food gobble. Because the rest of the canteen couldn't make it as far as food standards, quality and quantity was concerned.
I really miss those days at Barker. The AC environment, being with friends I had grown up with for over 10 years. And the fact that all of us were rejects from "our brother school" and that 94% of us were from a feeder primary school. It was great as far as unity was concerned. I preferred the easy going, laid back, very fun environment of Barker compared to the relatively stiffling, studious, muggerish place that ACJC wanted to be. ACJC should remain, ideally, the oppposite of what one of our former principal's proudly declared.
"I dunch want my cowage to be a playin' cowage..." - the truth is, people come to ACJC to play lah. You can tell an artist who has drawn horses all his life to start painting elephants. Of course it wouldn't fit well! Likewise, the push to make ACJC an "intellecutually stimulating environment" were academic elistist ideals are being propped up isn't really in the Spirit of what the place has been for the last 20 plus year till the time the Great Mr Wan stepped down. Come on, even that principle plays shares on the stock market in his office!
Well to conclude off my secondary 4 year. I got an F9 for my mid year O-level results. For ACS Barker alone, I think that year our pass rate (including D7 as passes) hovered around 58%. Lowest in the nation. Our neighbouring school, SCGS - had a whopping 99.8% passes counting D7 as a pass. Only one girl got an E8. The funky chinaman kept repeating this to us as he read our our scores. F9, F9, F9 for a whole slew of people. With the exception of 15 persons. The rest of the class had really horrific grades. For my final O-Level chinese examinations. I got an F9 once again. Let's remember that I still had a strict chinest tution teacher who was drilling me in my chinese.
I'll reserve the adjoining continuation of this story, followed by the JC1 and JC2 experiences with Chinese, and their conclusions to the next concluding post. In the meantime. Well. I really miss my secondary school days...
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home