Shenanigans

It is MUET class again and the whole class is involved in a lively discussion about the lower six. We do this in order to do as little class work as possible. It succeeds every time.

"I think the girls this year are more beautiful." Mdm Kong says. She appears not to notice the girls in my class; they stop whatever they're doing to stare at her. "Look at L6S2 - some of them very sweet looking."

"Yah." says Teck Chaw, "the girls in our year all so ugly wan."

The class erupts into protest and laughter and Nyuk Choo shouts "KILL HIM!" in Mandarin.

"Teacher we still haven't seen your niece." I say. This is pure cheek - she was boasting about Melissa's beauty before the mid terms and naturally we were all curious as to what kind of beauty this was. (Later we find out that it is the fair skin, big eyes, slim and willowy kind, but for the moment we have only a description to work with).

"Eh?" Mdm Kong says. She does not understand the angle I'm taking yet, but the rest of the class are grinning like idiots, even the girls.

"Teacher I think I fall in love already." says Teck Chaw.

It clicks now and Mdm Kong lectures us about the futility of relationships in Form 6 ("You know all the - what yuu call it? - emotions. Very distracting. Yes."). She tells us it affects us emotionally and she hopes Melissa will only get a boyfriend after university. Then, after we have exhausted the topic, she starts on how she doesn't like men who sweet talk.

"My mother always told me don't trust sweet talks -" (Tay chuckles as she says this) "-my husband never say I love you. Of my two boyfriend last time the first one like to sweet talk a lot. Don't like it."

"So teacher you only got two boyfriends?" Teck Chaw asks.

"Yes."

"And the second one become your husband?"

"Yes."

"So when did you have your first boyfriend?"

The features on Mdm Kong's face suddenly rearrange themselves: they switch from surprise to discomfort and finally settle on embarrassment.

"Uh." she says. "In Form 6."

Mortality

It is midnight. The air is cool and the clouds are white against an iron sky. Is there a moon? I do not know. The boy leaves his house and he carries his school bag - black and heavy, the kind you have to carry by hand because there is no strap. It is the same one he put down on a stone table before mock-sparring with Garrick two years ago. Tonight it is filled with medication. His pills. He closes the gate and he walks.

He makes steady pace, thinking - maybe talking to himself? - walking past roundabouts and down deserted, quiet roads. Kuching is silent at this time of the day - people are either away celebrating Gawai or sleeping, enjoying the mid-term break. Is the boy conscious? Does he know what he is doing? Is he being chased by things we cannot see, or is it because he just wants to clear his head? I do not know. I can never know.

He keeps walking.

He might have passed St Thomas's in the hours that follow. If he did, what had the silent school said to him? What memories did he indulge in? Did he think of the laughter, the ISCF meetings? His Taekwando black belt? The homework and the teachers; Cikgu Elin who protected him so fiercely in Form 3? Or was it only the taunts and the isolation that stuck to his mind - the lab sessions where nobody wanted to sit next to him in the front?

It isn't far now.

The pavement under his feet changes: it is no longer gravel but actual cobblestones. Pools of yellow on the occasional metal sheet, printed with Sarawakian history. Far above him in the morning light is the Dewan Undangan Negeri - a half completed monument to the State Government. He probably faces it, but if he sees it we cannot tell. He is staring at the river, brown and gentle, lapping at the base of the Waterfront.

A waitress is looking outside and sees him as he jumps.

Does he splash? Does he scream and shout? Does he try to swim? The water is dark and it swallows him, but he clings on to the bag - this we know. A silent, disconnected tragedy.

36 hours later he is bloated and dead. A SinChew reporter snaps a picture of his body, face down, dripping wet, and mistakenly writes a piece about a drowned 40 year old man. He has no identification on him - it is only later when they search a bag nearby that they find his pills. Scribbled across the prescription bag, in a doctor's lazy scrawl, is his name.

It takes a week before the news spreads in my school. I am in a Chemistry lab doing Chromatography when Pn Eng asks me: "Do you know Voon Hian Cherng?" A face pops up in my head - it is smiling, he was always smiling. He had sparred with me once in ISCF, we were playing and he had pushed me down and had gotten on top, fist balled up. I remembered the pride he took in his kicks, the laughter as he told me and Garrick about his uncle who did Aikido. "I couldn't even get near him!" These are the things I remember of him. "Yes." I say.

"He's dead."

News spreads quickly in St Thomas: teachers piece together what they know and what they remember of him in their classes. Word of his death flies through a huge grapevine primarily powered by school staff, tendrils snaking down to the students. To the classes. A rumour mill. It is a few days before I know the whole story: his father had gone bankrupt years back and both of them got depressed. His father recovered, he didn't. The trouble, the teachers say, had begun in Form 2 - maybe it was a certain oddness about his speech, or the way he was prone to rages. The class shied away from him. Mocked him. In lab for science subjects nobody would want to sit next to him - the teacher would force one of them to pair up and the class would laugh at whoever it was - How unlucky! How perfectly horrible!

When I heard this story I was reminded how often high school could be hell. St Thom was merely a subsidiary: it was one with flowers and boys.

What struck me the most then was how lonely he must have felt. How painful it must have been to have gone through the whole of secondary school without friends - without people he could talk to and people he could trust. And how he had smiled whenever he saw me, whenever we passed in halls and I would say hello and he would say hi. How could he smile? I definitely wouldn't be able to, if I were in his shoes.

But what do I know of him? I had not known he was taking anti-depressants since Form 4. To me he was a 'friend' - one of countless I would greet as I passed in corridors, whom I talked to in the canteen, whom I laughed with at ISCF. Touch and go; no more than that.

Life can be so fragile. We are caught up in the droll, the mundane - is that a pimple? My shirts aren't ironed and my performance is on Tuesday! OMG why my sms no reply?! - and we forget that the little things we take for granted are often the things that keep us sane. Acceptance and friends and funny moments. Voon didn't have that. He didn't have much of high school and he stopped it all too early, too fast.

If you hear this, Voon, I hope you're in heaven. Be truly happy for once when you smile. No more hiding now. You deserve it.

Slowdown

I find myself in an old world. The faces are different, the belts new. But the laughter and the joy and the smell of sweat … these things, so precious to me, are still here unchanged. This is a world I told myself no longer exists, simply because the people who made it real in my mind had long left. But here I am, looking at it – some God has chipped off a piece and hidden it safe under the earth, silent behind my back. I find myself old in it.

As I change into my gi I scan the dojo – the white belters are resting in the front, on oversized fitballs we used to throw at each other. They are still doing that today – except it is no longer me and Garrick and Desmond throwing them. At the other end of the dojo there is a pile of boys, laughing. As I watch one runs and jumps and lands – bang – into the pile, and soon they are all a mess of knees and elbows.

When I spar with Tang later the Thomians sit and watch. Tang has a bone to pick with me – he once represented Sarawak but has since declined. He is my president and he is one of the most flexible fighters I have ever encountered – three of my Osotogaris whips him downwards, but like a snake he twists and never concedes a score to me. Tang throws me with a loosely controlled footsweep and I get up and we laugh.

There are two new ones today. Jeryl, Jylene’s brother, impresses all of us with a jump and a hard landing on the floor – I never dared to do anything like that before I started Judo. Carlucci sits by the windows throughout the sparring – he is panting and for once I don’t push him to get up and fight. I am beginning to realize not everyone comes to Judo to push themselves. Some, like Carlucci, just want to have fun.

Later in the class we all shout at him because he is spending too much time in the toilets.

There are some things in life that never change. I am surprised that the Thomian judo class – 10.30 to 12 with boys and laughter and body piles – is one of them.

It feels good to be back.

Vivian

This is her tag.

游戲規則：被點到名字的要在自己的博客裏寫下自己的答案，然後去掉一個你最不喜歡的問題再补上一個你的問題，仍然組成20個問題，傳給其他10個人，列出其他10個需要回答問題的人的名字，還要到這10個人的博客裏留言通知對方----你被點名了，被點名者不得拒絕回答問題，完成遊戲的人將會永遠得到大家的祝福。這10個人要在自己的博客裏註明是從哪裏接到的，並且再傳給其他10個人，讓遊戲繼續下去，不得囘傳。被點到名字的人將會得到大家的祝福，並且所有美好的 願望都會在不久的將來實現。

1. 如果你有特异功能， 你会干什么？
Ching chong ching chong ching.

2. 最满意你身体的哪一部分？
Ching? Ching chong chong chong.

3. 认为自己哪一个优点最讨人欢喜？
Ching. Chong.

4. 希望有个怎样的恋爱？
Ching! Ching chong chong ching!

5. 你最想去哪个地方？
Ching ching ching chong.

6. 最受不了自己哪个缺点？
Chong.

7. 如果有不开心的事情，你会怎么办?
Chong chong chong chong.

8. 最害怕失去的东西？
Ching ching chong.

9. 现在最想做的事？
Ching ching ching! CHONG CHING CHONG!!!!

10. 若遇見喜歡的人，你會怎樣做？
Ching chong chong ching?

11. 说出点你名的人的3个优点。
Ching lol. Chong chong chong lol ching.

12. 你最希望你的另一半对你做的一件事？
Chong chong chong! lol

13. 爱在心里口难开时, 你会怎么办？
Chong chong ching ching! XD

14. 你最讨厌怎样的人？
Chong.

15. 你最难过的事情?
=( Chong chong ching ching.

16. 你觉得最美的事物是什么？
Ching ching chong!! Ching chong?!

17. 你认为遇到什么样的事情才会令你觉得人性很黑暗？
Chong. Ching.

18. 如果能让你实现一个愿望，会是什么？
Ching ching chong chong ching chong chong chong ching! Chong chong chong.

19. 至今，你最遗憾的是什么？
Chong chong chong cilaka chong.

20. 觉得人生最重要的事情是什么？
Chong chong ching ching chong chong chong ching. o.O



Ya. Saya seolang Cina.

Perfection

Abraham and I are at Math tuition, and we're bored out of our minds because we have forgotten to bring graph paper and the whole class is doing ogives. I cannot remember exactly what we were talking about before, but somehow Abraham says: "There's a lot of BL students in this class."

I look around. There are two girls busy sketching their graphs behind Abraham, there's a noisy bunch at the back joking in Chinese, and then there's Nicholas in the front, busy and hunched over his desk.

I lean over to Abraham and say: "BL produces a lot less jerks than Green Road."

Abraham makes a face. He is the head boy of Green Road so he cannot reply to that without incriminating himself.

I cut in: "You don't count, even if you're head boy - you're not a pure Greenian."

Abraham stops making the face.

"And anyway, it's the same with how Thomians are gays and Thresians are snobs and Marians are bitches."

"And Josephians?" Abraham cuts in.

A pause. I rack my brain for a generalization to apply to them.

"Shit." I say, comprehension dawning, "they're perfect."

And Abraham cannot stop grinning at me.

Times like this and I wonder why I'm a Thomian to start off with.