Thursday, November 20, 2008
Assemblies suck
My parents and sister are holidaying in Hong Kong at this very moment. Or maybe they're in Shen Zhen. Or Macau. Whatever it is, the 3 most important persons for this occasion are not available to collect my sister's PSLE results. Being the nice sister and responsible grown-up family member, I went to her primary school to pick it up. Well and of course I'm on leave so I'm free to run errands like this.
When I arrived at 12 sharp at the school hall, it was already packed with students sitting on the floor in the front part, and parents seated on chairs at the back and there were also parents hanging around the corridor outside of the hall. The press release said to collect at 12pm, but I'm sure everyone arrived at 11am or something. Seriously KS. Not knowing what to do since I cannot remember how it was like back in 1996 when I had to collect my results, I just went in the back of the hall and was directed to a seat.
It then occured to me that I don't miss school assemblies, and I was reminded how much assemblies suck. This particular teacher was standing in front of a laptop and projector and talking at the top of her lungs through the microphone, to the kids sitting in front of her, and to the parents of course. She was explaining how the forms and stuff look like, how to exercise the option to choose secondary schools, deadlines etc. I guess the OHP is now obsolete and loud hailer is out of fashion (I can remember Ms Goh from Hai Sing speaking through loud hailer in the school hall and I can't rem why she did that). Anyway, it was hot and sticky in the hall, but the atmosphere in there was like fans at a concert anticipating the appearance of their fav pop star. When the teacher flashed the overall results of the school, announcing top students and their aggregates, the crowd went crazy clapping their hands off and students were just making a din as usual. It was very interesting to watch and the whole process was quite amusing to me. I guess I'll be like one of those parents some time in the future. I was pretty excited, trying to spot my sister's name on the big screen but her name didn't appear cuz the high scores were quite out of the ordinary. The parents of those kids whose names and scores were flashed had their anticipation overtaken by joy I suppose. They stood up when their children's names were called. Must be one of their proudest moments ever.
During the speech thingy, I was pretty worried about getting a parking ticket cuz I only placed a 50cent coupon and it was already exceeding half an hour. Then I had a bigger problem, I realised I don't know what was my sister's class. So while the parents and children were having the time of their life in the hall clapping, I smsed my brother and asked if he knew my sister's class and all I got was a negative one-liner reply. Didn't have a choice so I made an overseas call and luckily the phone was turned on. The children were sent back to their respective classrooms and so I just followed along and managed to find my sister's classroom. Stood at the back of the classroom door peeking in and listening to what her form teacher had to say. Seems like everyone made it to secondary school and I was so damn happy when she said "the top student of this class is Alethea...". The class went wow and I heard someone muttered shit. Funny stuff. So I waited around and collected her result slip and report book and came home sweatily but happily. Oh, I didn't get a parking fine fortunately.
Labels: Whatever
janet at 2:16 PM
