Unwritten

Things are changing and most probably, staying for 2008. The most obvious change - I'm Secondary 3.

One thing, I moved to the second room of the second floor, which places me opposite to Chernyuen's room and next to Leong Hui's room. Across my window, would be the room of Wen Yi, Kai Rou, Shu Shien.

Changes are bundled with obvious pros and cons. For example, 2nd floor is much more convenient in location, wireless is faster in 5th floor, shower in the bathroom of the 2nd floor is weak, floor in my new room is uneven causing the door to be stuck unless being forcefully pushed.

Actually, at first, I took the room change matter very seriously, I didn't want to change rooms, not after 2 years being on the fifth floor. Somehow, I have a 'feeling' with my old bed there.

Moving on, the boarding school adopted a few changes as well, not all I'm satisfied of. The most prominent matter is the new pillow they got from I-don't-know-where. Those pillows are (too) soft and low, causing my neck to ache for many days, even until now. Many of my friends felt the same way about those pillows.

Also, boarding school adopted using the EZ-link card, though that I have no comment. Security and rules tightened a thousand folds.

Thirdly, my school. Chosen as one of the five Futureschools in Singapore, many changes took place. Such changes would be CSE - Centre of Scholastic Excellence. Actually, I feel very fortunate as this whole new system of grouping students is piloted on our Secondary 3 batch. In Mrs Ke's words, we are the 'pioneer batch'. Although the whole system is rather complicated, especially with the new timetabling system's subject groupings conflicting with clusters and teachers etc., but I'm positive that we'd get there sooner than we think.

I'm in the school's Humanties Programme now. The reality of being a Secondary truly kicked in just merely after a few hours of schooling. We were having orientation so as to suit ourselves with the new system. Though that essentially means no homework, that very afternoon, two stacks of History notes were thrown at us, and an essay was to be written. Thanks to Mr Samuel Lim, who chose that day to be the annual meeting of HP students, and seized that advantage to give us homework. Seriously, Secondary 2 seems mild now, when you compare with this year. But I'm not complaining, I chose Humanities Programme myself, when I clearly know that this programme is the most demanding. As Samuel Lim chooses to put it, joining the Humanities Programmes means you have to have a 'paradigm shift'.

Looking at my new timetable, I realised that there are much more lessons than last year. Somehow, I don't feel anything about that. In fact, I felt that the lessons given for each subjects are just sufficient. The only thing I wondered was "how did we manage to get through Sec 2 with just so few lessons last year..."

One thing unique about CSE are the cluster and mentors. Each cluster consists of about 27+- students, and 3+- mentors* would be assigned to 9+- students*. (* = depending on cluster size) My mentor is Miss Gwee Hana, someone I only know by name and looks, having done two Resource Development project for the last two years, with her being that category's coordinator. For the last two year, I always had the impression that she's stern and I'd-rather-not-say-this-word. However, after the meet-the-mentors session, my view of her very much changed. She's talk-able, quite friendly, and very experienced, and apparently had her degree in Humanities, but a Masters in Business. This makes her an able and flexible mentor, even though she teaches only Geography. She stressed that she was interested in many topics, so I think that she would ake a very good mentor. Oh and she's my Geography teacher :) So far, all my Geography are friendly, maybe a little humourous and experienced. And they are (in order) Miss Sunita Nair, Miss Yap Hui Boon and now, Ms Gwee Hana.

Moving towards CCA, there are two new teachers, 谢丽香老师 and a drama expert cum Chinese teacher from Shanghai, a certain 周老师. About the change of teachers, generally I have nothing to say about it, as I don't really care much for my CCA. However, what's certain, that me, Zhihao, Shien Yang, and occasionally Cui Sheng, will get lots more of 马来帮s from Ms Shieh, since she seemed to have taken a liking to call us that name since the Ong Teng Cheong performance, where someone told her that we're Malaysian scholars (though Cui Sheng is a Chinese, she doesn't seem to know). You know, we wouldn't mind that name so much if it weren't for the “马来”in there, I wouldn't mind “大马帮”or “马来西亚帮”because I am indeed from Malaysia, but come on lah, we're not Malays... =.=

All these changes mentioned above, be it good or bad, like it or hate it, we still have to adapt to it, and I think I had done a rather good job adapting for now. That's all for now, later...