Saturday, May 15, 2004

And the truth unfold...
It is official, the girls found my blog.

Great news for me though, that means that I will be able to make condescending remarks at girls whom I will and should criticise and hope her kaypoh friends would relay to her. It also mean that i am not subjected to even more possible complaints from parents and students and guardians, and MOE alike.

Anyway it gave me even the more incentive to update the blog since that last time I did so was like about 10 days ago.

Anyway to update, I took my driving test on friday and I .... FAILed. Hit the bloody kerb even before going to the road. And the most important thing was that I was already extremely careful. The stupid tester was sniggering at my lack of psychomotor skills and was even expresing mock concern of whether I would like to go on the road. Well seriously, short of pointing him the middle finger I really had no answer to the stupid question. But as a civilised civil servant ( That's why we are called CIVIL servants) I decided to swallow my pride, guts, and others and ask to stop the test. At least I know how the girls felt when they walk out of the Add maths paper totally distraught. I should pray hard for my next test which will be coming up in about the next month.

Talking about the above incident I decided to ramble on the courtesy and of course the bad english I heard today. Not that I am REALLY that good in English, (but ahem I did take English language in the University just to get the record straight) but the recent standard of English and courtesy is quite atrocious.

Just to highligh some examples in school, students walk past teachers as though we are phantoms or spirits, totally oblivious of what's happening. In fact their actions sometimes bring to mind the show the Sixth Sense, I was left wondering whether the teachers or students are alive as they seems to be totally absorbed in their own world. But then again being courteous is not really an outstanding trait of an IJ girl. Well for most of them except for a small, minute group.

As for the issue on the Bad English thingy, it was actually an incident that happen this morning. Some fo the teachers were doing some recee on the route of the walkathon. As we were doing the "Long March" back to IJ there was a young teenage girl who literally skipped towards me. She had a sweet smile and I should refrain from telling you which school she is from. But then I heard her say to me, "Kiss me, want to do it?" It was enough to raise the eyebrows (at the very least). Halfway up, they went down. Why? Perhaps it was because this took place in broad daylight and very much in the public eye. Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that she was in school uniform. More likely, it was because she had a bunch of stickers in one hand and a donation can in the other.

What she had said was "S'cuse me, want to donate?" An English teacher might have corrected this to "Excuse me, would you like to donate some money to [name of charity]?" But being efficient monsters, Singaporeans naturally abbreviate everything to a barely functional level. But then again if you think about it, if you speak too well in Singapore now, you may not be understood at all! (Why else does our PM give the National Day speech in as many national languages as he can?) If you speak really well, you may instead come face to face with the "HAH?!" monster more often than you like.But if that sentence was uttered in under different circumstances (and to a different person, of course), the outcome might have been quite different. That is my two cents worth (which is less than the girl got for her troubles).

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