the only day that still manages to stay in my mind vividly this week is definitely thursday. it all began when you wake up in the morning and find yourself alarmingly fresh... while you were standing obediently at the track listening to short and interesting announcements from your great vice principal, you suddenly feel a pair of slimy hands(or should i say paws?) tug at your belt. you grimace. not in pain, but at the person standing in front of you. she is none other than the most renowned and benevolent teacher, also called a "form teacher". words flew out from her mouth jerkily and you wonder when will she begin to speak fluent english and stop calling your classmates "hooligans" and "terrorists". of course, she does not seem like someone who will have a hidden agenda or motive for calling them that so you don't bother. then you catch something that sounded like "loose" "tight" "low" "high" "see" and you nod your head obediently without actually understanding a word of what she had just said. when assembly finally came to an end, you walk back to class. alas you caught "the one"s attention by merely walking past her. you silently curse as she trailed you all the way back to your seat. as you plomp down on your chair, the infamous red mouth reopens again. this time she spoke clearly enough. thank goodness. "seline, you will see me later at recess to sew your belt right?" she says, all parroty. then a snap topped off with a first class glare at "the one" from the classmate in front of you was heard, "her belt is ok!!" grateful, you nod your head eagerly. you wanted to see as little of her as possible. unfortunately, the snap went ignored and "the one" continued pressing you for an answer. swallowing hard to prepare youself for the inevitable argument, you say with gust "i cant see you during recess because i've got to do duty for my CCA. it is extremely important so i cant waste time on this thing." "what CCA is that?! what duty?! you can come during lunch too! give me your name tag!" a fiery exchange was now guaranteed. you could no longer tolerate her constant blatter. well but you know that you are prepared. feeling surprisingly confident and sure of yourself, you retort back as feistily as you can "it is library duty. if we librarians become irresponsible and skip duty just to sew a belt which we can easily do at home, then who is going to mend the library during recess hours? oh and i have duty during lunch as well and won't be able to meet you." "never mind! just give me your name tag! sewing a belt takes a short time!" "sorry i won't be able to come. sewing a belt does not take a short time, especially when you are not good at it. i can't give you my name tag because my CCA teacher is very particular about our attire." "never mind! i will write her a note!" "but miss xxx, if you are going to take my name tag away so that i can come to you tomorrow to sew my belt, i might as well keep my name tag to go home and sew it myself! it can also save you from writing that note or whatever. i can also get it done quicker." looking stunned for 1,2,3... she stuttered "ok la! then you make sure you go home and sew la!" "yeah. ok!" you hear yourself say in the most irritated voice. after she walked away without taking away your name tag, you could hardly believe it. there she was, the experienced glarer and arguer in front of you and she could not even talk "the one" into giving her name tag back and there you were, the usually meek and submissive student to the teachers and you managed to save your name tag by just uttering whatever which came out from your mouth. how.. fantastically fabulous. you feel great talking back to a teacher you will never be fond of. a few of your classmates eyed you incredulously and your sitting partner was quite impressed. hah, but you know that it was not because you argued incredibly, you know that it was because of the tone of your voice when you argued and the fact that nobody has ever seen you talk back to a teacher before except for the small bust up you had with your geography teacher last year. you pat yourself on the back and say: "job well done, student who hardly talk back to teachers". ok, so actually that was my story in the morning. believe me, it was so shiok talking back to "the one". i was like, shi fok shai when she finally left me alone after about 5 minutes. i felt so erm glad when her unworldly presence disappeared from the class after some time. it was the first time i ever spoke back so confidently without missing a beat to a teacher. there is no way, absolutely no way you could talk back to ms lim like that. trust me, she will eat you up. i experienced it before. but that was a long time ago and i dint even make an effort to argue. anyway, my rantings does not just stop here. i shall move on to a nicer topic for students like myself. when geography lesson came around, i felt as though our entire class got sucked into "i not stupid one". issues such as education and stream discrimination were brought into the picture and we spoke about the unfairness of certain issues. for once, here was a teacher willing to listen to us, willing to sacrifice her lesson time to get us in the right frame of mind and at the same time, reassuring us that students from the express stream are no different from students from the special stream. i have been in both situations before. both in primary school and in secondary school so i understand what it is like to be in either shoes. sad to say, i didnt exactly take to the em2 classes when i was in primary school. of course, my mindset changed when i reached secondary school. in any case, i felt really glad when she talked to us about that. there's absolutely nothing wrong to be in the express stream. in the future we might even surpass everyone with our achievements. now is finally the time for me to stop being so harsh on myself and for the matter stop regretting for that one mark which would have made a hell of a difference. it is not the results that count. it is the learning journey that really counts. when you finally learn the true meaning of somethings, you will be blessed. after all, life is a journey and it is better to learn things than to just get results because then, you will just live in your comfort zone and it won't be as meaningful without challenges. it was quite a fruitful lesson i must say. (:

anyway, down to the last interesting thing which happened today. during cca time, we were having our election of the office bearers. guess what.. yuxi became the president! it was quite unexpected in a way... i expected priscilla to be the president... but i heard that their votes were quite close... anyway, i got nominated for the sec 3 posts. it was no stranger to me. the 8 current sec 2 nominees had to go out for the votes for 5 committee posts. there were 14 people in my level anyway, not a lot. the eight nominees were roxanne, xinying, zhuwei, yuheng, jodie, natalie, jamie and myself. afterwards, we entered again and the names were written accordingly on the board:

Vice Secretary: Seline
Vice Treasurer: Roxanne
Display board head: EL - XinYing CL - Yuheng
Sec 3 Level Coordinator - Zhu Wei

wah man. surprise surprise. I am secretary?? Which means I’ll be under zhen ying. Roxanne will be under xin yi.. haha, the scrabble team voted for her plus quite a lot of other people. Anyway, one thing I am glad of though. I am no longer level coordinator. Phew. I am just not the type to chase money. Uh oh.. I just realised something.. It’ll be my second year in the committee already.. will expectations be higher?? I certainly hope not.. I am not a good leader and I accept that.. I am glad I don’t really have to exercise leadership since being a vice secretary means doing your work efficiently and drawing up the duty lists and attendance lists. I hope I can do that well. J anyway, I got the shock of my life when I talked to my sister when we were waiting for our father. She told me that practically the whole library voted for me except for one or two or three or four. Uh oh, that’s not le guan. In fact, it’s scary. I had previously thought that only the committee members and people whom I know will vote for me.. never did I expect…. Ah well, some things just turn out unexpected. Huisy says that she’s bent on making me president next year, Jocelyn calls me future president, my sister says I will definitely either be president or vice president. Please please, dun ever let that happen… I know it will be tough if their prediction comes true and I certainly dun want to get into that situation because I know that I am not good enough.. I am sure people have their doubts about me and I do not want to be in a situation whereby I get criticised for my lack of leadership qualities. But never mind, for the moment my fears are unfounded. At least there’s Roxanne.. now I am bent on making her the future library president. Yeah! J

wow, that sure is a long post.. anyway, I am glad xinyi and xinying joined the comm.!! Yay.. finally people I know well. But too bad Jocelyn wont be there anymore. No more “bu shuang ah? Yao da jia ah?” and “harllo seline”.. L haha never mind, I shall write all my sec 4 seniors notes to them during the farewell. I will probably write extra long notes to jeridyn, Jocelyn and perhaps huifang and samantha. Maybe to angelique too.. dunno.. shall make up my mind again later.

Anyway I just thought of something.. the way the Italians lifted up their world cup in sheer jubilance.. why didn’t we hoist our scrabble trophy up like they did??? Haha..