Sunday, 12 February 2012

• The sidewalk...that changed...my [entire] life

  10 years ago around this time, I wept in bed like some 5-year-olds but in silence.

  And 10 years later, here I am in my room in England, all grown and I am no longer a child anymore.

  In the film 'An Education', Jenny once gave up her A level examination for a man whom, later she found out, was a married man. She had nothing left. She didn't take the exam. She didn't get into Oxford. But her realisation of how important her education is to her life brought her back to track, of course with some help along the way, and she made it: to Oxford.

  She said, in the film, 'I feel very old, but not very wise.' She has experienced something one teenager may need 5 years to accomplish. And she did it in one year or so, as if it was an advance class.

  Both in her shoes and in my own shoes, I feel old but wise.

  Here's my story.

  10 years ago, my parents made a decision that my sister and I should study abroad in Singapore. I didn't want to do this. I just got used to life at my secondary school and I made new friends. I simply felt reluctant to leave. I begged my mum to change her mind. No matter how much I cried or how sad I looked, she simply was stone-hearted. Her decision was finalled.

  For one second, I blamed my sister as she wanted to transfer to a better school. Why on Earth would she do such cruel thing to me by sending me to an exile island? She should go alone instead of dragging me along. But actually she felt the same as I did. She would never have thought she would go study abroad instead. She had no control over things. Neither did I. So all we went sidetrack. To the hot and humid country, Singapore.

  Instead of directly transferred to a local public school in Singapore, we enrolled at a school doing basic foundation courses to improve our English and other subjects for preparing us to take the entry exams. I found they were relatively easy for all subjects, but English which was such a pain. Seriously I hated it so much. Every single time, I turned the page of the volcabulary exercise book, I had instant nightmare going through them. Even though they are multiple-choice question, all the answers were almost identical to each other and technically, they weren't even English to me. I mean, who would use these English in modern days?Do you still speak Shakespeares? As of today, I could not remember much vocabulary as you are reading this, you know. But you know what I mean don't you? Yes.

  At this school (now closed), I met many people from diverse nationalities, mainly Chinese though.  We bonded really well, for some and for some no. Simply cultural exchange with them I should say, on top of experiencing life in Singapore.

  The life at the hostel with my guardian has been so-so. My sis and I stayed in a privite estate with swimming pool and club house. And the rent was ridiculously expensive. But at that time we had no choice, we needed a guardian in order to be granted the student visa. So wait till we got into the local school, we moved out. This hostel lived about 15 students, mostly Hongkongers, and some smoked, some drank and some looked like they were gangsters. Some, to our surprise, had stayed for 3 years already and either hadn't been accepted by any local school or had repeated the same year 2-3 times. Gosh. That made them like, erm 4 years older than their peers.

  About 9 months we stayed in this costly hostel and the residents were kind of wealthy I supposed, and we weren't. With no income and not into finding a part time job, we saved in every possible way. We never took buses to get our grocery errands which took us 15 minutes (one way) to walk under the scorching sun. Simply baked under the sun. Not to mention how torturous to carry around 10kg of food in the return trip. But we both learnt that saving money was like planning for future. You never know what will happen in the future. Hence, we led a cost-effective life. We washed our own clothes. We even ate the food air-mailed from home bits by bits and sips by sips. We went to the extreme to save each penny.

  It's November and time to take the entry exams. I scored highly for Maths and Chinese but made border-line pass for English on secondary 2  level. My sister was accepted and this made me nervous, really. What could I do without a school?

  My mum flew to sort out the housing for next year and at that time, we had an appointment with my sis's principal to see whether I could be taken in. That was an outrageous and insulting moment I would never have forgotten. In this appointment, I was called by a head-of department,a mid 40-year-old man, accompanied with 2 current students of theirs, to the teachers' office. He didn't ask me anything. He just made a mockery of me and the two students giggled away. I kept my calm and then I returned to the principal's office. My mum was like persuading her, begging her, rather. I didn't say a word when my sis stared at me. I was heartless at that moment. I didn't think we would really got anything out of that appointment. She was known disdainful.

  And we left with dispair and all I could do was to pray for miracle which arrived on christmas eve. I was accepted by another school which was far away to do my secondary 1. I couldn't turn it down in any sense.

  The relentless incident made me stronger than ever. Nothing really could stop me. Even I was 2 years older than my peers and spent 1 hour to go to school every day. I would go at any cost. I wanted to show them so desperately that they were so wrong for not taking me in but on the other hand, I was grateful of them because I would not be what I am now. They were bitches still.

  What would have happened instead if I didn't take that sidetrack 10 years ago?Maybe I will be in Hong Kong, struggling with my education. Or maybe I will be unemployed or unemployable.

  But definitely one thing for sure- I would not have met so many lovely people, embraced different cultures and opened up my eyes to live life to the fullest.

  It may have appeared as a sidetrack symbolically but it really is the right way all the while. It was all meant to be. It was.

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