I'm getting sick of playing mind games with people. For every sentence there's a lingering meaning behind it. And whoever said it is of the positive kind?

You don't need to use cover lines for your own needs lah. Don't go pretending to be coy and being shy like you're some demure young highly priced virgin until men set eyes on you also they feel like devouring you whole. No such thing.

You only want an excuse to do something you THINK people will look down on you about if you do it at your own will. Please lah, you get to do it everyday and you don't see US running for cover because we are shy? I'm SO allergic to bullshit.

Sometimes, some people set all these so called rules for themselves only to break it later and claim that they are never going to throw away their moral values. They think that they are god's gift to the opposite sex and every little attention thrown their way they blow it out of proportion. It reflects on the kind of person that you are. Don't go around waxing lyrical about all these noble traits of yours. 

You cannot assume that things will go your way. You are the typical youngest child.

You whine to me that you should not put yourself out there like you did. You worry about the way people look at you. Yet you do what you do. I thought you were different from what I assumed you to be. But then, you went and confirmed everybody's allegations about you again and again. How am I supposed to stand on your side?

This is my territory. Get out.

You should hang your own dirty laundry. You have stepped on my tail(by doing what you did), and I've already hated your slutty friend for doing what she did that really pissed me off somewhere last December(oh! a hint!) and now I dislike you too. But I cannot show it! No! Because I must maintain the fucking peace.

I will continue disliking the both of you. Even though I'm so far away. Disliking from far far away.

Child, people are like that. Deal with it. You need to take the shit-faces that they throw at you. But maybe it was their own face from the very beginning and you and your skewed brain perceived it like that. Not everybody will come to your every cry and your every slight-plea, and it doesn't mean that nobody's care. Really. Grow up.

I am your senior and will always be your senior. I was civilised enough to smile at you and you gave me that slight cock of the head and painfully pressed smile. Now I remember why we hated you so much. OH BECAUSE YOU HATE US TOO. Can't remember why we hated you so much...then I remembered. It's your attitude. We tried to be nice. Too bad.

You cannot be the constant star. That's not how it works. You win some, you lose some. You cannot demand to win all the time. And don't come whining and making noises about how you're definitely gonna lose out this time around. Because we know that you're gonna be the star again. And that is just plain annoying. Because you know it is in your hands...yet..... *sigh* I also malas to say already.

And whoever said this was about YOU?

Ceh, perasan.

Ah, I feel better now.

Don't worry, loved ones - family, boyfriend, dahlings - are left out of this.

By the way, I came out in the papers today.

It's not often you get to see your name in SUCH a flattering light ... as the headlines somemore.


I love grape flavoured gummies! This is just like Sugus but a bigger version of it! I know I'm supposed to be a dental student... but I'm not at that stage where I've studied the extreme evilness sugar can bring.

|
Tough cookie though. Difficult to chew. My teeth marks so cute right.


Managed to chew a piece. Stuck it back on the main stick for your visual pleasure.

You know WHAT makes me happy? Buying SIX ink cartridges for RM45. Fake lah of course. But I bought one original cartridge colour for like RM45 after bargaining with the guy from a high price of RM59 before so this is like a major achievement.

10 years since the government experimentally implemented a compulsory examination for 9 year old students nationwide. It was called Penilaian Tahap Satu(First Grade's Assessment). Doesn't make sense to me, should be called Tahap Tiga, since we were in standard three.

Born in 1987, I was one of the many pioneer students who sat for the examinations somewhere in September 1996. The examination's purpose was to assess a student to see if he or she was fit to skip a grade and proceed to standard 5 instead of standard 4.

When all the other kids were outside playing in the playgrounds or sitting at home playing masak-masak or climbing into abandoned homes to burn dried leaves, I went for tuition to PREPARE for my Penilaian Tahap Satu examinations.

I remember I was so excited that I was finally attending tuition. Oh, I've heard so much about tuition! I finally get to go for something called tuition! I bought nice exercise books for 20 cents from my school bookshop and anticipated the ride to Bandar Sunway every Tuesday evening.

My teacher taught me IQ questions and simple essays.
The types of questions asked in the PTS MCQ examinations were such as:-

1) Spot the odd one out:

A) Banana
B) Coconut
C) Equator
D) Apple

....

Honestly,majority of the nine year olds must've not given a shit about the examinations or else that would not have been a single standard 4 student in Malaysia circa 1997.

The essays were ALWAYS about Berkelah Di Tepi Pantai(Picnicking by the beach). The difficult ones were about being Sebatang Pen(A Pen).

I was actually nervous about sitting for the examination and puked out mushrooms during my grand aunty's birthday celebrations at a restaurant two days before the examinations. I even had diarrhoea because I was so afraid to face the examinations.

The format of the paper was 50 Multiple IQ choice questions and an essay!(Berkelah Di Tepi Pantai came out! Yay!).

-

So, duh, I passed the examinations.

My class teacher called me out of computer class one day.

"Uh oh," I thought. Maybe she wanted to scold me about playing Mario Brothers on the school computer... but everybody's playing it too!

I went up to my class teacher who was leaning against the balcony.

"Pei Shan, you're the only one from the class who passed the PTS examinations."

"Huh?"

"You're going to standard 5!"

"Oh. okay. Thank you!" I was shivering with excitement. I always tremble when I am extremely happy. Don't know why...some physiological effect, perhaps. Body more receptive to cold..?

All the 33 students of SRSS19 Subang Jaya were called to the principal's office to be given a pep talk/to be congratulated. The stupid assistant principal scolded me, "Pei Shan! I said tallest stand behind!!!"

"...um, I'm the only one from my class." I mumbled.

But anyway, yeah, my parents were overjoyed, my partially deaf grandfather who was still alive back then was really supportive of me to take up the PTS offer, relatives far and wide knew... etc. (my paternal grandmother is not called Astro for nothing).

I was having second thoughts because I didn't want to leave my friends! All my classmates asked me not to leave and chided me about being action baby lotion michael jackson now that I'm skipping standard 4.

I was even supposed to go to the top class in standard 4. Oh what fun~~.

-

The first day of standard 5 was pretty awkward. Who were all these tall boys and girls?? They look so... scary and action baby lotion michael jackson. It was hell to stay back after class to attempt standard 4 work and go home to do standard 5 work.

I remember crying about having to draw the South East Asia maps. (just the shape of it lah).

I remember calling my father on the phone and crying, "I don't know WHYYY I must learn how to count the area of a leaf!! I DON'T KNOW HOW!!!!"

I remember crying to my tuition teacher, "HOW ?! TOMORROW EXAM ALREADY!! I cannot remember all the states of Malaysia's flags and their meanings!!"

I ended up getting number 2 in class and number 6(i cried.). Which is pretty silly actually, since it's such an achievement already to be better than the normal standard 5s. Some of you who are reading might know Jade Ho(who was from SMK Seafield and is still very beautiful, smart and popular. But the keyword here is smart!)... I got number 2 she got number 3. Nyahahahaha.

--

From standard 5 to form1, PTS students were treated like outcast by the normal kids. In secondary school, a class was set aside for the PTS students. The other normal kids would usually say, "Oh, right. Aiyer, PTS."

The things they used to call us were like Pencuci Tandas Sekolah. or Pityass. ;

It's like our mentality was deemed lower than theirs. For lack of better word, they hated us. Because we were childish and too smart for our own good.

Damn funny though because they loved calling PTS kids, "Small kid". My dear best friend Melody Song Faye-Lynn would not allow me to touch her Girlfriend/Bliss/Seventeen/Cleo magazines because I was a "small kid" and should not be allowed to indulge in reading material with sexual contents.

-

After form1, the PTS kids proceeded to form2 along with the other normal students and we mixed well and found our own cliques. Puberty kicked in for most of us and soon you couldn't differentiate who was a PTS and who was not.

Previously it was very obvious. The PTS kids were SMALL in size. I was one of the unfortunate extremes lah. I've been tall most of my life.

The so called childish mentality became less and less obvious due to peer influence. (and of course, growing up helped alot too!)

Soon the PTS students camouflaged with the normal students. It was always so fun to see the surprised look on my form4 classmates' faces when they found out that I was a PTS.

-

Sitting around with an addmaths book in my hands, I looked around the class. Cliques were sitted around gossiping and trying to study prior to the SPM examinations. It was the last week of form5. I saw the fat little boy now mixing with the 'cool gang' from primary school....and they are no longer little and fat and 'cool', but lean boys with low pants and spiky hair. (The standard look for any boys in the Malaysian education system with half a brain to fit in).

I looked at the people surrounding me. ALL of them were older than me by a year.

The PTS students have been distributed evenly amidst the high school crowd.

As a result, I have NO best friends from secondary school who are of the same age as me. I looked at the students who were in the year below me as my juniors and felt that they were younger than me. One of them even confided to me before that he felt I was older than him even though I'm his age, but a senior.

Sometimes I even felt that I was 14/15/16..and thought that I was 15/16/17.

But NOW? I feel that the 1986 kids in my class are like.. well, the young ones. The 1985 people are like, the normal age for my course. And of course we have the 1984 and the 1983 and the 1982 whom I feel inferior to. There is that "senior" feeling somewhat. Even though I'm the youngest one in the class, I hardly feel like I'm the youngest. The entire class seems to be the same age.

Which leads me to my conclusion: No matter how old your peers are, peer influence will occur, and the mentalities will be in tuned.

---

Sorry for babbling for so long as I get carried away sometimes when reminiscing.

I don't see why the government decided to scrap the examinations. The last batch of PTS will be 15 year old this year. After 4 years of PTS examinations, the government thought that it brought more disadvantages than advantages to those who managed to skip standard 4.

As far as I know, most of the PTS kids who managed to get through are doing really well for themselves. I'm not blowing my own horn, because I'm nothing compared to the really outstanding ones. And most of the PTS kids went on to become best students.

Alot of people think PTS kids are extremely smart. Yes, the extremely smart ones are sometimes PTS kids. But there are also average students who are PTS ie. myself. And there are crazy students who are PTS kids who had to repeat form5 because he couldn't give two fucks about his SPM examinations. (and did silly things like standing on his chair and singing metalicca songs during the SPM trials, taking a chair and threatening to hit the teacher etc)

What I'm trying to say is that getting to skip standard 4 was only tough in the first couple of years. I don't know why the government took this opportunity away from the 90's babies.

We're still here. Surviving. And it's always nice to find out that a new acquaintance is a PTS. :)

I wonder if the government ever wondered whatever happened to the ...19,000(or something like that) who got pass the examinations in 1996.

My grandfather had a few of us over for a dinner at his house. Some how, the people who were there were familiar, but they were not family. The only family member who was there with me was my father. I don't usually take my camera to family gatherings. But I kept asking my father to help me take pictures of me with my grandfather.

We stood side by side to each other in silence while posing awkwardly for many photographs.

Then I sat down and asked my grandfather about a story of him when he was a boy. He told me how he found a coke bottle and did a school project with it. But as I listened to the story, I kept crying and crying and crying. It was like I knew that he would leave me soon.

Sometime later, he passed away and I felt somewhat satisfied that I've managed to at least take many photos with him before he died.

Then I woke up from my dream.

The first thought in my head was, "Ohmigod, that was so sad. I should visit my grandfather more often."
Then I will gain a little more conciousness, "Wait, he died so many months ago."

This is not the first time such thoughts came to me right after a dream about my grandparents. It's like I have temporary amnesia right after my dreams.

I don't think I've blogged this, but once, I even dreamt that Chee Kiang's grandmother had the same face as my grandmother. This was before I met his grandmother.

In the dream, his grandmother was apparently from Penang too(one of his grandmother is from Penang, but I was dreaming about his paternal grandmother who was from Perak) and that there was a very high chance that she could be my grandmother's long lost twin sister. (In my dream, I was horrified to find out that I was Chee Kiang's cousin. Haha)

I remember sitting on his couch and peering at his grandmother's face and holding it in my hands. His grandmother who looked exactly like MY grandmother had this very innocent and sad and lost and naive look on her face.

My OWN grandmother is anything but innocent and naive. So it was weird to see her looking like a little girl. The expression I mean.

Same thing, I woke up from the dream, feeling guilty about not visiting my grandmother at their house in USJ3. Then I remembered.

However, I've also had dreams where I'd see them and KNOW that I'm dreaming and that they were dead.

I was at one of the stops along the North South Highway. There are some other parts of the dream that consisted of strangers, some children asking me to buy things, and a little boy asking me to hold his keys, some adults wanting the key from me, and the little boy making me wait for a little too long.

But that's not the point, the point was that I came upon this gazebo. I saw my form3 Living Skills teacher sitting amidst a crowd of Indian diners. No biggie, I'll probably go say hi later, I thought. I turned to my right and I was surprised to see my family there. I mean, why would they be somewhere along the North South Highway?

My Uncle Terry and Aunty Judy were back from the UK and were dining with my family too.

I went up to the table and stood at one end. Clockwise from my left sat: My father, my mother, my uncle terry, my aunty judy, MY FATHER AGAIN, MY MOTHER AGAIN, and oh god.. my deceased grandparents. This time in the dream I knew that they've passed away and did not make conversations because I was freaked out.

But I think the freakier bit of my dream was to see repetitions of my parents. I mean, TWO sets of them on the same table?

I excused myself and my Uncle Terry asked me where I was going. I said, "I gotta go to school."

Weird........ I had this dream when I was on the bus back from Kedah.

What have I been eating recently???
:(