Monday, February 28, 2005

GCE O levels

An interesting event occurred today whilst i was on the bus home at around 12 pm. okay, some of your may be thinking: what the hell? HE TAKES THE BUS? for you information, i do take the bus. infrequently. and others might ask: YOU GET OFF WORK AT 12pm? Yeah. I do. especially when i'm on leave and i have to get back to camp to get interviewed by my CO.

anyway, i was on the way back, taking SBS bus number 12 (single decked, unfortunately) when a group of JC 1 students boarded the bus and started to yack about their GCE 'O' level results.

"Aiyoh! I got 17 points. Wonder which poly i should go to?"

"Nanyang looks fun, but then Temasek Polytechnic closer to my house le."

"Eh, remember this bus stop, this is where we were at when we "pon-ned" school for the first time"

And so the rambling continued while i listened with one ear and my iPod shuffle stuck into the other ear. this JC in the far eastern side of singapore did indeed have a reasonable crop of students, ranging from DHS to Maris Stella and some other girl's school with a dark green skirt and sheer, threadbare tops, presumably to expose their latest bra design to the male population. i digress.

and lo and behold, a few stops later, another O level candidate boarded the bus. and proceeded to take out her testimonial from her bag, and passed it to her companion who plonked himself right beside me. *mutter* (he was fat somemore). and there it was, right on top:

RAFFLES GIRLS SCHOOL. Tada.

Premier institution in the central part of Singapore, garnering 12 out of 21 high scorers (1 of whom happens to be my sister's classmate). For the record, my alma mater only managed to secure 8 out of the 21 slots, with dunman high school securing that last coveted spot. ah, the perils of grades competition.

and dammit, my sister got 6 points, 1 better than me. *mutter*. But i got 1A2, 1B3 (for languages, no less) while she got 2 B3s! Yay! That's what i called sibling rivalry.

anyway, the RGS girl in question (She has a name, which happened to be platered right on top of her testimonial: we shall call her JT), happened to have quite a longish testimonial. (and no you creeps, i didn't read any of it.) The ruckus that the other group of students made suddenly was replaced with loud "shushes" and plenty of finger pointing at the testimonial being read by the big fat guy sitting next to me.

I bet they were thinking: "Wah RGS, must be damn smart". low whispers followed, and they were having a soft but unmistakable conversation about JT definitely. all this while, JT was sitting there demurely, looking at her nails, looking straight ahead, looking left, looking right.. but not looking at the other group of students.

haha. i caught intellectual elitism in action.

and so, after a few stops, a guy among the group managed to conjure up enough courage to ask: "eh RGS Girl, you how many points for the O levels ah?"

i half expected her to smugly reply "6 points la, but i got 1 A2, shit cannot get nice result card, and my teacher wrote that i was an exceptional student. NO NO NO! the word is BRILIANT! GENIUS!..." you get the idea.

"16 points".

or somewhere in that region. ah well.

you can be a big fish in a small pond, or a small fish in a big pond, or any fish in any sized pond, but then, at the end of the day, grades really don't matter. really. People matter the most.

so stop condemming geps. cos we suck as well. at least i know i do:)



lip
ranting

2 comments:

Lulu said...

what? i thought o level is scratched and people only do A level :s

lip said...

the system only in place from this year. so that RGS girl and my sis are the last ones to take the O levels:)