Auto-Biography
Through some strange fluke, I managed to make it to my JC soccer squad to play a friendly against a Japanese school that came to pay us a visit. Maybe my skills were better than I thought or everyone else was shite.
Anyway, my outstanding contributions during the game was an outrageous backheel flick-pass in midfield, as well as a through ball that was too heavy and easily cleared by the keeper.
The Sega Genesis holds many great memories for me especially because I spent almost my entire holidays playing “Lakers vs Celtics and the NBA playoffs” at Vig’s place.
We would organise our own leagues and perform our own commentaries, even to the extent of video-taping our own games so we could do live playback of our best plays!
My first Chinese lesson didn’t turn out too well and probably set the pattern for the rest of my life. Everyone was made to go to the blackboard one-by-one to write out their names in Chinese for the teacher to see.
Well… I didn’t know how to write my name in Chinese, and the incredulity of the Chinese teacher made me so embarassed that it probably set in stone my attitude towards the language for my life.
Its easier to blame my Primary One teacher than to say my Chinese sucks… :p
Even when I was in kindergarten I was already “kay kiang”…
We were being taught Mandarin in classes and we had to learn how to write numbers. One, two and three were written as one, two and three horizontal lines, so I thought it was a cinch and decided to do some advance homework.
Apparently, “four” written in Mandarin was not four horizontal lines… 🙁
One of the memories I have about kindergarten and primary school is my late grandfather sending me to school every day. He was always there to walk with me and I actually don’t remember talking much, but it was one of those daily rituals that I remember clearly.
There we were, waiting at Gate 1 to board our flight from Melbourne to Sydney when suddenly an announcement came up over the PA system that our flight failed some engineering tests and had to be cancelled.
What followed was a maelstrom of activity as we scrambled to change flight bookings, hastily arrange for accomodations, and try to make sure everything was in order.
Well, I’m in Sydney now and I’ll be leaving for the hotel I booked last night soon. Hopefully nothing goes wrong from here…
Plane flew off late from SG and as a result we landed late in Brisbane, where we had to catch a connecting flight to Sydney.
We made a mad rush to the domestic terminal from the international terminal (the half hour wait for the terminal shuttle train didn’t help much) and we were able to catch our flight.
Unfortunately, as we found out later, our luggage did not catch the same flight as us and had to be sent to Esh’s auntie’s place about 7 hours later. Late, but not late enough to claim insurance…
In my previous workplace, there was an Adventure Learning programme where all new recruits had to go for a team building session and go through some team challenge games together.
Think it was a good idea as it brought together people of different ages and departments who may otherwise never have interacted.
I have some pics in my public Flickr Adventure Learning album that you can check out.
One of the most demoralising events during my BMT was the morning run for our Physical Training. In fact, I think its probably the “lowlight” for most recruits in Pulau Tekong.
Imagine that you have just been uprooted from the comforts of your home and plonked into the strict regimentation of the army. Then imagine having to run near the coast of Pulau Tekong every morning with the lights of “mainland” Singapore twinkling silently in the far horizon.
So near but yet so far…
No, I didn’t just break my leg, so don’t worry. This is an autobio entry for my time in kindergarten when I broke my leg while on a swing. If you feel squeamish, then maybe you shouldn’t read on.
It was an ordinary day when a few of us got on a garden swing that could seat about 8 of us. As we were swinging away happily, our teacher called for us to go back in for classes. I stuck out my leg to stop the swing and then I heard a loud ‘crack’!
Turned out I cracked my shin and had to have my leg in a cast for a few months. Putting the cast on was fun but it was pretty scary when the doctor had to remove the cast with a buzzsaw!