I don't usually enjoy French lessons. It's probably because I usually arrive 15 minutes late, so by the time I do, the teacher is well into the lesson. In fact every lesson, I will hear a gasp from all my classmates who are surprised to see me entering, although you'd have figured that by now they'd know its me.
But I particularly enjoyed the last lesson. Our topic this week was true or false. So what the textbook had was a series of questions with two statements, and we had to tick the one that was true. So every time we reached a question, the teacher had to explain why it was correct in the context of France.
Like they showed this really old ruin, and asked how it got there. Option A was something ridiculous about the French having imported Italian architects. I think the French would sooner kill themselves first, if you knew what they were like.
Option B was the right one, about them being remnants of Roman conquest. So after a question like that the teacher would launch into an account of French history, which was really interesting to listen to. Anything compared to French grammar would be.
I was really surprised to learn that nobody in my class has read Tintin or Asterix before. All them iconclasts, ectoplasms and gerbils! In case you were wondering, those are a few of Captain Haddock's choice swear words. Captain Haddock is my favourite character from Tintin, because Tintin is a shit boring do gooder who makes you eat your vegetables. Ok, that's Popeye but he's also about as interesting as Mickey Mouse.
I found it sad that nobody has read those books. Like seriously, does anyone even read nowadays. A few days ago, someone actually asked me who Wee Kim Wee was. I felt an utter sense of shock, then I reasoned that people like me who actually read books are now relics of a past generation.
Well, most people now probably assume that Old Man Lee built Singapore on his own, with a hammer and chisel. I had a classmate once who was supposed to write an essay on the history of Singapore. He wrote an essay about how great Lee Kuan Yew was and failed by one mark. I think its actually quite surprising how he didn't get a zero.
But then again, how could any teacher in Singapore give an essay about the greatness of LKY a zero? They are probably weeping at how they had to fail it because it was out of point, despite agreeing with everything that was said inside.
Okay I've totally rambled out of point here. To end this off, I shall now demonstrate why I usually don't enjoy french lesson. As I usually come in late, I end up in the 4th row, which is really far back. And every french lesson, we have listening. There was an occasion when I couldn't catch what the tape said. My french teacher was real nice about it.
"Of course, Wei Li's totally in the wrong position to be doing listening isn't he?" (smiles)
Harhar. Very freaking funny.