2002-05-03 - 6:33 p.m.

The Singaporean exam hall is a mini cultural marvel in itself. Little desks separated at an equidistant of 2m, each exuding it's pockets of stress and paranoia... sit at your own peil, judgement on you shall be decided in 2/1/2 hours. Your time starts now.

Engineering student: #include void amend (???); /*need to pass this paper for my CAPS*/ main ()....

Medical student: NADH and FADH2, using the enzyme of Nucleoside diphosphokinase located in the matrix side of the inner nitochondrial matrix of your rectum...

Acc student: Enron's reliance on equity capital and the violation of GAAP procedures (bullshit... bullshit and more bullshit)

Arts student: what's for dinner?

'We all so young... and we've got time;

Boy got himself a gun... killed everyone'

-- Radio Station, the Padres

Yeah, thanks Joe! You must have been a pretty twisted and disturbed kid; giving out little bursts of juvenile delight when stapling the ears of little pussy cats. Before I wander off... what is Encik Joe Ng is trying tell our kids? Stretch your imagination a little and apply the words to a kid mugging for his next paper... Boy Killed everyone! (metaphorically or lietrally)

Kick aside the literal bit, I dunt like to see school massacres: pretty messy affairs. Boy with his ten year series is living by his motto -- eat lunch or be lunch. The white paper is there for you to put your genius into words (sniggers), and to be sent to Britain for those Ang Mohs for grading. Education is the quest for knowledge (sniggers)! Those Ang Mohs are marking your script cos they need to buy firewood for their Pohmy families during the cold winter.

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Exams unveils the latent genius sometimes. There's this JC urban legend, which was going round 3 years back , about this VJC student. The GP exam paper he sat for threw up the topic: 'What is courage?'. Most would have penned a 500 word essay peppered with anecdotes of bravery pertaining to a variety of scenarios, and then dishing out 2 handed arguments (on one hand [blah blah blah blah], and on the other... ). But the dry witted student simply scrawled the words: 'THIS IS COURAGE' on the paper and handed it up. The exact grades he got is unknown, but it goes to show that the dreaded exams are sometimes filled with little surprises from the student. Other surprises though pop out when you open the paper, and the next thing you wish was that only you had studied a little harder... like that kid who killed everyone in the exam hall.

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