les trois mousquetaires: sin, cos, tan

2xy + 3z = 9

I miss the minute mint-green squares of graph paper, equations that mean nothing, jabbing the calculator with vigour, combining fat and thin strands of eraser dust into grime balls, the sound of a pencil drawing a long line, the dizzying blank cosmic world of (a + b)², numbers, letters, pi the eternal amount, models please, three significant figures and if Ahmad took 3 hours from point A to B at 70km/h, how long did Devi take at 54 km/h?

(Not the end, obviously! The uncontrollable sentimentality of a cancerian knows no bounds!)

I miss the pious share-the-love chime of the school bell, ice milo, the deep right-hand-side pocket of the pinafore to hide ham-and-cheese sandwiches from prefects, the warm chewey sandwich that mists the plastic and warms the thigh, the crazy feeling of Romeo and Juliet in a classroom, the long classic denim skirt of Mrs Sushilla, 听写, blanco mounds on hard tables, highlighted fingernails, crawling spidery ink on soft skin, the scrawl of the gray classroom chair if you scratch it, the long indent at the head of your square table, chalkboards and the floaty migration of fairy chalkdust clusters before they were arrested too, physics, chemistry, biology (xylem and phloem), trigonometry, the romance of a dark orange classroom, the sleepy soft whirring of the ceiling fan after recess, awkward bodies at PE, the dank saliva smell of the band room, bubbling test tubes of crimson and forest-blue, hijinks, laughing till we keeled everyday, the warmth of the OHP, the possibility of your entire, awaiting life.

I think OHPs have been replaced with visualizers.

Sukiyaki tears crash on...pubescent eyelashes!

x= [-b±√(b^2-4ac)] / 2a

half of what i say is meaningless, but i say it just to reach you

I march into school at 7.20 as the speakers blare a warbly, sorrowful, heavenly instrumental version of Somewhere Over The Rainbow. People, including me, smile with their mouths but seldom their eyes. Off-white, gray and emerald.

**

Last week:

"Mervin!"

"HO YEAH." (intonation: HO4 YEAH3)

"Can you read the cloze passage?"

"HO YEAH HO YEAH"

"Ok, go"

"....SDU....Sexual Development Unit....sex parties..."

**

(girl raises hand during exams)

(me bringing her extra paper)

"can you ask gregory to stop shaking his leg? it's very distracting..."

**

Invigilation puts one in a daze. Up, down, up, down, stand, sit, lean, watch. Nervous students glancing at the clock. Someone has two correction tapes. Someone else has 6 similar pencils (maroon with gold words), and 4 similar black pens. I've found my invigilation calling. It's hard to daydream and be present, so I've taken to peeking at handwritings as I walk past the tables. How does she do her 'a's, why are his letters so long and skinny, nice prawny words.

**

After the first day of exams (english compo) I walked to the school gate to leave. In front of me were a group of boiz from my sec one english class. (I call them the kopitiam gang because during class they talk non-stop like chatty uncles of different shapes, sizes and lengths) Finally one of them noticed me as they passed the gate, started murmuring/exclaiming, "Miss Ng, Miss Ng" and the rest followed suit and suddenly, all but one of them were screaming like little girls and running away. The only one who stayed, the coolest of the gang, with a semi-mohawk on his tiny, pre-pubescent head, came up to me and coolly but sincerely said, "Hi Cher" and started discussing the compo topics. In a year he'll be taller and will melt the hearts of girls. For now, I'm glad the rest behaved like such silly poo-poos.

"Cher, chill."

1. (having returned from the toilet where I chased him to because he had a stomachache after recess and just sat there groaning) "Cher! I go toilet ah, then pooooot, then no more already. Nothing come out. Inside got wind only..."
"Why are you telling me this?!"
"Cher can I eat lollipop? Please?"

2. "Cher you know what's fetish?"
"Yes."
"You got fetish?"
"I'm not about to tell you what it is."
"OH means you got lah!"
"Everyone has fetishes."

3. "Cher, so you going to join SDU lah?"

4. "Wah Cher who taught you to write cursive?"
"No one! Do people not write cursive anymore?"
"Yah. But I write cursive."
"I like cursive."
"Yeah...!" (with cool rocker hand signs)

He-who-everyone-fears. "I want everyone to take out a book and be doing something meaningful in the next minute! Do you know how many of you can be promoted from Normal Technical to Normal Academic at the end of the year?! Do you know you need an average of 70 marks for your CA? By the looks of it, none of you will make it."

(I nearly burst out laughing, the boys were making faces behind his back)

Oliver James, lost in the rain...

I want to surprise myself

If a person feels that he hasn't really lived, but this person has incredible dreams every night that take him to impossible places, and if life is what we perceive of it, and memory is what we wish to feel and remember, then has this person lived?

I marked about thirty comprehension passages today and felt so sick calculating the marks (8/45, 33/65...), scrawling them big and red, cross cross cross cross my heart that I dislike comprehension and sorry I would rather let you read your love letter with orange highlighter hearts the girl from the neighbouring class gave you. I felt like I let them down by caring about comprehension and what it stands for (part of a chain effect that will possibly eventually repress them and prevent them from realising how great they are as people), but then I thought about it and realised it was (mostly) Singapore that has let them down. Just like it lets all of us down (the razing of Green Meadow is enough to make me throw myself at a wall AND MY FAMILY HEIRLOOM ROSEWOOD DINING TABLE SET WITH OPAL FLOWERS SPRINKLED-SET-IN HOW DID I LET THAT HAPPEN) but we may eventually stay here forever because we believe in something though people like possibly your own brother that you love and grew up with drives and honks with hatred and anger, and wants to be rich, and thinks a perhaps certain way about those students and those prcs and you can't help the fact that you love him and grew up with him though the days of toasted-bread-with-peanut-butter-and-sugar-and-milo are nothing more than a saccharine memory that glows in a space of broken teeth and unscrubbed smelly tongue.

But I'm glad I did not try hard enough to get a job and am going to wake up early to go to school tomorrow.

Everyone here is mad!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! My grandmother cannot stop asking if the lights are turned off at midnight and the new maid brought her up empty bottles and thermos of no-water because she forgot.

'Cher's rubber band collection

My pride and glory!

These days I wake when it's still dark, have breakfast with my school-going sister, and take the bus with NS boys towards yishun. Work clothes are kept conservative, personality is reined in somewhat. The pen I hold the most now is a red one; the tone I adopt a stern-friendly one in the face of hoards of hot-blooded adolescents not sure what to do with their restlessness and newfound lust, and girls unsure of the attention they are receiving from the rascals. I am called 'Cher a million times a day- one of the best nicknames ever.

FUN, FRUSTRATING TIMES.

The system has reduced the beauty of what language really means (the love of reading, of telling stories, of understanding each other through words) to commodified vocabulary lists to be memorised and applied in contrived manners, comprehension questions to be categorised and tables of letter-writing formats. This is what is focused on as exams draw near. Throw them with a Revision Package, why don't we? These contain proverbs like Still Waters Run Deep, when some don't even know that it's = it is. D'you think, if teachers somehow manage to show children, from a young age, that reading can be one of the most beautiful things -to escape into another world, to hear a tale, to feel things you can hardly feel in daily existence- then the love for english would become a most natural thing? A neighbourhood school student can love and appreciate harry potter as much as a top school student can, and if he can't do as well for the exam because he may not grasp grammar or sentence structures as well, his love for the language will probably mean he will be more patient and open to learning these. Thoughts?

"My childhood is was a happy one but when I was younger, my grandma used to chase me with the cane."

I wish I could join the boys in having rubber band wars!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (You've never seen such experts in making bullets, manipulating rubber bands around their fingers, shooting secretly)

Instead, I confiscate them for my infinite bangle.

CHER, HE SHOOT ME FIRST!!!!!!!!

p

p

P.S. Trying to relief-teach english in a school where hardly any students speak proper english has only increased my loyal love for the glory of Singlish. Maybe one day, there will be Singlish Lit and the first book will be one that can make Singaporeans feel like never before; it will replace the pro-pah British English used to describe Singaporean life thus far. Written in a stream-of-conciousness way, no heed will be paid to singular/plural words, proper use of past tense, or varying vocabulary whatsoever. It would be a thoroughly real feeling. Sample portion: Mummy ask me if I want to eat dinner then I say I want lah but I kind of shout. Then after that she get angry and say I always think her dinner not nice so she go toilet and cry then wah lao, I don't know how to feel so I just lock in the room and cry also.