I met up with my secondary school friends today and it was fun because its just different when you're around old friends again. It was especially so because we were playing "taboo" which is like verbal charades where you have to describe a word without mentioning any of the words on a list below it or the word itself. An extremely memorable example was the word "lollipop", for all the wrong reasons.
Here's how my friend described it. "You lick and suck it."
After awhile, we started talking about old days, and some really funny stories came out. As everyone knows, I'm from a "communistic" school. So inevitably we talked about ah tiongs. And my friend asked "Do you remember that time we all failed that maths test and we couldn't get it moderated cos some PRC got full marks?"
Oh how could I forget. The official explanation? It would crash the system to moderate full marks as it cannot accept more than 100 marks. Wow thanks. Why couldn't they just give him full marks and a medal that says "Maths God", then moderate the marks for the rest of us mere mortals?
Or another story. There used to be this guy who would come out of a test and go "Chor! Wo you san fen bu hui zhuo!" This basically translates to "I dunno how to do 3 marks"
Guess what he gets? Yes, 97 marks. Bloody hell.
Then we talked about that soldier who went AWOL with a gun. And a friend of mine said "The shit is going to hit the fan. The SAF is the king of knee-jerk reactions." Basically, what he means is the SAF is going to be very very anal about guard duties in this period of time while the public wonders how a person with a loaded gun could have just walked out of a camp. Lucky I'm out of there. It will not be fun doing guard duties chained to the guard post.
Which reminded me of a time I did guard duty. I was doing sentry duty at the gate guard post. I had been standing there for almost 2 hours, and I hadn't slept all night. I was tired and not exactly vigilant.
This warrant officer came up to me and started observing me, and being shit tired, I ignored him. Next, he walked up to the back of the post, and started pacing in a circle around there. I ignored him, thinking he was just a weirdo, and continued watching the gate in front of me like the responsible soldier I was. Guess what?
He actually lectured me, and said "If I were a terrorist you'd be dead. Why aren't you doing your duty properly? Just now I was walking around behind your guard post. Why you didn't check what I was doing?"
Hello! This was wrong on 4 counts.
1) I'm supposed to be guarding the gate, not the back of my post
2) I already saw him walking there, so what terrorist was he talking about?
3) I'm not supposed to leave my post.
4) Which terrorist would be so dumb to pace around in circles behind my post?
It turns out he was from MINDEF doing a test on guard duties in my camp. Guess I failed it big time. I would probably only have passed it if I jumped at him like a crazed madman, went "AIYEE!" and marched him back to the guardhouse with my rifle firmly stuck in his back. Never mind the fact that he, as a warrant officer in uniform is obviously my superior and not a terrorist. Of course, I would be just as likely to end up in IMH. Stupid.
As all gatherings go, we eventually started talking about now. And my friend mentioned something that I felt was very true. He said, "I don't mind participating in class or learning. I just don't enjoy being graded for it." And I'm like yeah so true. Why should we be graded on how much we talk in class to the extent that people start talking just for the sake of talking?
Its actually very obvious when someone takes what the lecturer just said and paraphrases it into a question. Its fine if someone genuinely has something to share, but just trying to get participation marks for the sake of it reminds me of dogs fighting for food scraps. Maybe I'm being too critical here but I fail to see how I am. Bah.