YThursday, March 1, 2007

ACS Founder's Day and The Straits Times

Two seemingly unrelated topics.

Yet, an exhilarating tale involving these two intertwined entities is about to unfold before your very eyes!

Not really. It's just that I have two topics today.

First of all, Founder's Day. It is an unspoken rule that These sort of events are meant to be borings. (Might I add, ACJC demonstrated its excellence in this discipline.) They aren't meant to be fun or interesting. They are mere formalities. Nobody wants to be there. Nobody. Not the Principal Kelvyna Chan. Not the ACS OBA GUY. (I wonder. Assuming that OBA stands for Old Boy's Association, then what do the girls join? SJI also had an OBA, but they did not have this problem.) Not even the Guest-of-Honour, Dr. Vivian Balamynameiswaytoolong. Minister of Something-Or-Other, and Second Minister Of Something-Else-Or-Other.

Founder's Day is, in a word, demoralizing. It serves the sole purpose of making me feel like a failure. The image of people much better than me in any conceivable way is branded onto my retinas, charred reminders of my inadequacies. People with 9 distinctions for A levels. People who's lives were spent doing noble, thankless work. Ministers who earn much more money than I ever will. I, however, can find solace in one fact. Many of these overachieves will die alone. Really. They will be surrounded by immeasurable wealth, fancy cars, luxurious mansions, diamond-studded watches. But they will still die alone. Nobody wants to be with someone who is so damn good.

How do I know no one enjoys things like Founder's Day? For one thing, quite a large percentage of the college population was nowhere to be seen today. On the way to school today, while past the entrance of the school,I heard a snippet of a girl's conversation with a friend on her cellphone. It went something like this.

"Let's skip Founder's Day."

I could only hear one side of the conversation.

Said girl then proceeded to walk back out of the gate, embracing the freedom and reveling in the joy known as not going to school. What puzzles me is why said girl decided to wake up early in the morning at 6 a.m, put on the school uniform, travel from home to school, and only after all that's said and done, decide not to go to school.

Perhaps you are wondering now, why is it that with my visible dislike of Founder's Day, that I decided to go to school on this day. I have a very good reason. After Founder's Day, I had to be at a meeting in school. Of course, the meeting only lasted about five minutes.

However, I did learn a lesson from this ordeal.

Next year I'm going to fall ill on the 1st of March.

The Straits Times.

Indulge me, once again, if you will. Take today's copy of The Straits Times. Flip to page 3. Look at the article. Laugh.

It appears that The Straits Times is full of comedians. The article states that ST has won several prestigious awards for their newspaper. After having gained your respect, they then proceed to lose all of it when you go on to read and find out that the awards were given by Singapore Press Holdings. For those of you who don't know, SPH prints the ST.

SPH giving the ST an award is like having me say: This year's prestigious Tan Deyong Foundation award for best Tan Deyong goes to... Tan Deyong!

Utter nonsense.

However, fret not, for the other SPH papers also won awards. New Paper, Chinese Morning Paper, Chinese Evening Paper, Tamil Paper, and Malay Paper. They all got something.

So, it's all good.

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Blogged @ 9:09 PM