Ballroom Dancing

During my first year (Year 9) of high school in Down Under, every Friday afternoon we had activities instead of school.

During the first semester, we went bowling. I cannot recall what we did during the second semester. And during the third semester, we did ballroom dancing.

I attended a Catholic girls’ high school. There was a Catholic boys’ high school (De La Salle College, Bankstown) three train stations away from my school. The boys who were in Year 10 were going to have their graduation ball at the end of year.

My school provided free buses for the more than hundred girls in my year to go to De La Salle College Hall and we practiced ballroom dancing with the boys. There was a teacher/instructor instructing us on every step to the accompaniment of music blaring across the hall including songs like Beat It and Billie Jean from the King of Pop.

The hall was insufficient to accomodate us if we were to stand in a circle and therefore we had to stand in the shape of a horse shoe.

During those times, the Aussie girls would look forward to meeting their boyfriends or hoping to find one while we mixed around with the boys. I never had the thought of finding one.

I remember distinctly the tallest boy, an Australian Born Chinese (ABC) who did not give face to me, not that I cared that much. Sometimes he would not want to dance with me, maybe simply because I was the shortest girl.

Towards the end of the year during one of the practices or after practice, one of the Italian boys asked me whether I could be his partner for the graduation ball. I did not hear clearly what he said and therefore I did not answer him back.

On the way home while walking from the hall to the train station, one of my Aussie classmates asked me why I did not agree to be that boy’s partner. I told her I did not even know what he was talking about. She said the boy must be feeling very sad.

Subsequently after that, the boy did not ask me anymore. I must have broken his heart. Poor guy.

At the graduation ball, I did not end up being his partner. And I cannot remember who was my partner. But I still had a great time.

Hmmm such good memories to relive.

Winning

Lately I have been thinking about the word winning a lot. I am not in any kind of competition whatsoever right now but I am just thinking that the main objective of any competition is to win.

In my opinion, the notion that it is not winning that is important but playing fair and to the very best of your ability, are totally incorrect. Usually the coach will tell this kind of crap to the losing team just to console the players while the winning team would be rejoicing at their win to the nth degree.

When I was growing up, I never win any medal be it academically or in sport. I may be in the top 10% in school in Sandakan but I never won anything that deserved a medal. I was the type that had to study to excel. In another word I had to work hard. Unlike some of my classmates who were so smart and did not have to study but can get better marks than me.

Being the shortest one in class meant that I could never shine in the sport arena. The closest I got to represent my primary school in sport was in table tennis. For those of us who were representing the school, we had to practice a lot during class time and as a result we missed a lot of classes. But in the end i could not remember now but we did not get to represent our school at all. Or was I the only one who got kicked out from the team? Haha. Either the competition was scrapped at the eleventh hour or it clashed with our examination time.

When I was studying high school in Down Under, my classmates and I entered Maths competitions. During those times I did win some certificates.

The only medal I won in my entire life was in senior high school for an inaugural Asian Studies Award. For that the school gave me an individual small plaque and my name was inscribed on the school plaque for that award.

In 1 Corinthians 9:24, the Apostle Paul had this to say “Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize.”

So winning is definitely not everything, it is the only thing.

The Wonders of Technology

I am extremely happy tonight. I finally had the chance to chat through Facebook with one of my favourite high school teachers whom I have not seen for more than twenty years.

Indeed it was great to catch up with her.

VISA Credit Card

When I login to Facebook this morning at work, I had a pleasant surprise. One of my favourite high school teachers had finally joined! I was so thrilled. I have been trying all kind of ways to be in contact with her and finally my persistence paid off.

After one of my colleagues came to the office, I drove to the main Post Office to collect a registered letter from Standard Chartered Bank.

The previous week the postman had tried to deliver the letter to my house twice but mum was at the backyard and did not hear the postman honking his motorbike.

I arrived at the post office slightly after 8a.m. and I was glad I did not try to drive in the car park at the post office. There were so many cars circling the car park and some cars were already double parking. I parked at Segama and walked over.

I had to give the person attending to me my Identity Card. He went inside the building to find my letter and I was happy to finally had the letter with the Standard Chartered Bank VISA Credit Card inside.

Sometimes if people do not collect their documents after a fortnight, the post office would send the documents back to the sender. They should give consideration for a longer period of time because sometimes people may be outstation or have gone overseas.

Most Memorable April Fool’s Days

My most memorable April Fool’s Days happened when I was a Form One and Two student at Sung Siew Secondary School, Sandakan. Both Form One and Two classes were in the afternoon.

Mrs Sylvia Alsisto – Form One
We had a disciplinary teacher called Mrs. Sylvia Alsisto. She is a Filipino but she has been in Malaysia for a long time. When I was in Form One she taught my class English and History while in Form Two English only.

She actually taught us to sing the National Anthem ‘Negaraku’ (my country) during our History lesson and each of us was assessed on it if I remember correctly. In fact I think she assessed us on everything, from reading out loud a paragraph, to every exercise we were given to do, to answering a question, etc.

At the beginning of the year when she gave us a map of Malaysia to draw for our History lesson, most of us only passed up shoddy work because we did not want to waste our colour pencils. When she returned our work after marking them, this was what she told us ‘Warna cincai, markah pun cincai’ (shoddy colouring, shoddy mark!). From that time onwards, we made sure that our blue colour pencil remained the shortest because we needed to use it a lot to colour the sea on the map.

During April Fool’s Day that year, I forgot whose smart aleck’s idea was that to sing the National Anthem instead of our usual good afternoon (in Malay) greeting. Anyway, when she entered the class, we started singing but there was no emotional response from her. She was so cool and the whole thing backfired on us. We automatically reverted back to our good afternoon greeting without any prompting. She did not say anything about the whole episode during that class at all.

Seniors told us that she liked to set her own subjective questions for exams. All we had to do was to memorise the whole book inside out. Yeah, that was some kind of revelation! Anyway, I did not know why I did not follow that great tip. I studied and memorised answers from past years Government exam papers and there were all objective questions.

I was so elated when the History exam paper was passed to me. I spotted nearly every question. I felt like I was winning the lottery. After she had marked our exam papers, when she was passing back the result to us, she looked so angry when she passed it back to me because I obtained 94%. I think nobody had ever obtained such a high mark in her class before. She must be cussing herself for being lazy once for not setting her own questions.

Trainee teacher - Form One
We had a trainee teacher from the Teacher’s College teaching us in Form One during that April Fool’s Day. She was a short Malay lady and a couple of boys decided to put the duster on top of the blackboard. When she finished writing on the whole blackboard, she could not proceed with the class and she did not ask any of us to assist her. Poor lady! She let us did whatever we wanted for the remaining of the class.

Science Teacher – Form One
He is descended from royalty since his name has a Tengku in it. Whenever we cannot answer his question, he would tell us to stand up on our chair and then our table. On April Fool’s Day another smart aleck told us to stand on our chair to greet him when he entered class. He had a smirk on his face upon realising our prank. One of those occasions that we can actually see his teeth!

Form Teacher – Form One
I forgot what her name was and I also forgot what prank we played on her.


Spinxie's Form One Class

Form Teacher – Form Two
A day before April Fool’s Day we decided to nominate a person for our prank. The person had to go to Encik Zamri’s staff quarters to find him and tell him that the Principal wanted to see him pronto! The person had to make sure he went there early and the best time would be when he was having a shower before our afternoon class session started. What evil minds we had!

On the day itself, this was carried out and Encik Zamri forgot it was April Fool’s Day. We had never seen him ran so fast before. Haha! And the thing was that he was not angry with us when he came to teach us Mathematics that day. He just laughed. That's why our class liked him so much.


Spinxie's Form Two Class

Both of these classes were top class in the respective form out of six classes in each form. And yet we can be so naughty!

HP Deskjet F4185 All-in-One Printer, Scanner, Copier

HP Deskjet F4185 All-in-One Printer, Scanner, Copier


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St. Peter Chanel High School, Regents Park 1984, Year 10-7


St. Peter Chanel High School, Regents Park 1984, Staff

Last Saturday I called my company’s computer technician Mr. Ang to ask him to recommend me a scanner because I have a lot of photos to scan. I meant to buy one long time ago but I did not get around to doing it. Eventhough I solely have a scanner to use at work, I did not want to borrow it home to use.

Ang recommend me this All-in-One Printer, Scanner and Copier which can save me some money and storage space since I can use one thing for three purposes.

Today he delivered it to my office and I brought it home.

The first two photos I chose to scan were taken during my Year 10 – one is the photo of my class and the other one is the photo of the staff at my school in 1984. Why did I choose to choose to scan these two photos first?

Well, a promise is a promise. I have promised a schoolmate I would do it a few months back but I only got to do it now. Better late than never.