TKGS - 2/1

I was posted to clas 2/1 after final exams in Sec 1. I was rather sad because this would mean that I would have an almost total change of classmates! Only 3 of us from 1/7 (all MEP girls) were posted to 2/1; the majority of the others (technical girls) remained together and were promoted to 2/7 'as a class'. The 2 other girls were Weixiang and Zimin.

Fortunately, many of the 2/1 girls were alright in the sense that although they already had their own cliques, most were friendly and 'hospitable' to us, the newcomers. I remember that only one girl once blurted out that if it had not been for the 3 of us from 1/7 joining the class, 3 of their 1/1 classmates wouldn't have had to go to another class!

What a thing to say that was! It wasn't as if the 3 of us had had a choice either! I was rather upset at her outburst but I got over it soon after. I never became a close friend of that girl although we remained largely cordial to each other.

Because we were 2 of the 3 minority 'outsiders', Zimin and I decided to sit together. We formed a good partnership, reminding each other of tasks we had to complete and homework we had to do etc.

Zimin had an excellent singing voice. She had great musical talents and was always helpful. Her big square-rimmed glasses made her look extrememly studious (which she was). But at times, she was very gila, too.

2/1 was a class full of academic talents. MEP girls formed half the class; homec girls formed the other half. Whenever I think of the one year I had spent in 2/1, the 成语: 高手如云 would come to mind.

The top girl in the class was this girl called Fu Xiaoping. She always topped the class in almost every subject, including MEP. I was very humbled by her academic performance all the time. Once, some girls in another (rival) class made certain untrue remarks about us, and word spread to our ears. Most of the 2/1 girls were very indignant about it and some 'vowed revenge', rallying for the whole class to go for a tit-for-tat thing.

But out came Xiaoping (who was monitress for that school term), calming the agitated ones down. She said to the class, "They do bad and spread the untruth; they do wrong. If we do the same to them, then we would also likewise be doing wrong. We don't need to stoop to their level!"

How wise, I thought. And she finally convinced the girls that no retaliation of any kind was needed on our part because the untruth will just melt away by itself. And it did so in no time.

Years later, I read from the papers that Xiaoping was awarded the prestigious President's Scholarship. I was very happy for her because I think she truly deserved the award.

Some special names that I remember of my classmates in 2/1 include: Huang Yu (the 1 st time I heard it, I thought it funny that anyone would be called 'Yellow Fish'!), Ai Qin (this sounded like 'Love' in Chinese!) and EZ (this girl's name is Eileen Zheng, so she was called 'EZ' for short.).

All the girls in 2/1 were very fun-loving. And cheeky. I remember our CL teacher was an elderly lady called 吴老师. She was quite adorable although she could be really l--o--n----g-winded.

One day, we discussed the Chinese saying:

老吾老，以及人之老；
幼吾幼，以及人之幼。

and 吴老师 wrote the saying on the blackboard.

Just as she finished writing it, the bell rang and the class was dismissed. The moment 吴老师stepped out of the classroom, one girl called Chen Haoming walked up to the blackboard and took a piece of chalk to underline part of the saying.

老吾老，以及人之老；
幼吾幼，以及人之幼。

There was one single second of silence in the class, and then, we all broke into loud and uncontrollable hilarious laughter!

And .......... the din we created sent 吴老师 marching back to our classroom!! Haoming quickly erased the entire saying, saving us the lecture we would probably have had in addition to the scolding we got that day for laughing so loudly.

Another of the more memorable things that I remember of 2/1 was my participation in the interclass talentime. Quite unlike these days, talentime in those days means singing competition only, no dance or other talent show etc. So, a handful of us (I think there were 6-7 girls, all MEP) came together and sang 'Teacher's Pet', a cappella style, for the talentime held in conjunction with Teachers' Day celebration. And we came in 1st and won for the class some special fund which we later used for come class party.

Many of the 2/1 girls proceeded to the one and only pure-Science class (called '3 Science 1') the following year. '3 Science 1' was in the morning session while the rest of the Sec 3 classes were in the afternoon session. The girls in '3 Science 1' offered Physics and Chemistry as 2 separate subjects. Apart from this, there was no difference between this special pure-Science class and the other Science classes.

Apart from those going to '3 Science 1', all the girls being promoted to Sec 3 were grouped based on the Religious Knowledge (RK) subject that we chose. Many of my 2/1 classmates who did not go to '3 Science 1' opted to read Confucion Studies as our RK subject in Sec 3 and Sec 4. I was one of them, too.

And so, many of us from 2/1 remained as classmates the following and the year following that.