Monday, September 26, 2005
Par
I was starting to get used to the notion that i could actually survive in NUS, that i could make it through the daily grind. That i had a living, working, throbbing mass of a brain up there.
Right up till i realised i'm regressing. I'm moving down the evolutionary ladder.
That i have a sarcophagus of a skull.
I used to be proud of being called a nerd, because at least i was something worth looking up to. (Oh c'mon, admit it, you'd wished you had aced that english essay exam too, hadn't you?) At least, then, i had a role to play, an expectation to fulfill. I didn't mind having the cheapest bag, the usual mineral water plastic bottle, the stuck-in-a-time-warp-glasses and shoes, the passe hairstyle or even the other nerdy (yea right) friends i hang out with. I was happy being who i was. That is, at least i had a pair of functioning cerbrums. That was before my capillaries decided to go on strike and deprive my brain of its necessary blood supply and oxygen. In an instant, my role was being relegated from a nerd to a jackass. You thought it's just a phase which will eventually pass, yea, if a phase is a year and a half long, and then some.
Interestingly enough, i've begun to wonder; if this is the case, then could it be possible that we kids in m'sia, all these while, have been lulled into this false sense of security that our intellectual capacity is not so far off from our counterparts from across the causeway after all? That an 'A' in m'sia is equivalent to an 'A' in s'pore? After much deliberation (whoa....miraculous, i can still think) i've finally come to a snap decision that we have all been fooled. That we, despite our phallic tendencies manifested in our majestic twin towers, our constant profession that we are still in the Top 100(0) in the world in almost everything, our tragically treasured prodigies and our thriving social arts scene, we are sadly still below par in terms of our cereballic competence. (ok, for those of you who are insulted by now, please read: 'we' = 'i', 'our' = 'my') I shall not mention anything about our education system, simply because it has propelled the term 'cacat' into the international arena.
I dunno, but somehow i feel, it's because of my perceived sense of intelligence (tiny voice laughing out loud in my head) that i've been this lackadaisical all these while. But, i think that's why i love being m'sian-educated. I love being laid back and not being so anal about petty stuff. I love thinking that an 'A' equals an 'A' anywhere but an 'F' does not necessarily mean we are worst because there're still those kids up in Cameron Highlands selling exotic bugs to form six biology students. I'm an ignoramus, and one thing that I hate most to be aware of is the fact that i'm/we're not so smart after all.
But heck, we can still make a wicked bowl of laksa and our nasi lemak costs waaaaay less.
