My brother Stuart gives me extra pocket money because he has a job now. I use that money to buy a few pairs of skinny jeans, get a Brazilian wax (O.U.C.H.), pierce my smilie, and then pierce my Monroe. He stops giving me extra pocket money and my parents make me remove my facial piercings.
As a class, we go to this ‘self-awareness camp’ for one weekend. We sit in a circle and share our feelings, or something, and become ‘self-aware’. (Errr…) I can’t remember what’s supposed to happen at these things exactly, because my experience was quite unique. I find out my boyfriend has made out with one of my home girls. (Hey Aud.) So I end up spending majority of my time curled up like a ball in one of the shower stalls. I realize that he is actually a serial player, and has been cheating on me left, right, center, drunk, sober, whatever, you name it. Hello Insecurities, Paranoia, and Self-doubt. Goodbye Confidence, Self-esteem, and Trust.
I get 26 points at the prelims. (The ideal score is 6.) My parents are not particularly worried, though. I think because I’m the forth child, and this is the forth time they’re watching a kid do this, and they are getting tired/bored. And I think after what happened at PSLE when I was 12 – my mom bought me all these awful assessment books, I did some of the exercises but then realized the answers were behind, and just started copying the answers, she got so pissed – she was trying a new tactic of “it’s your life, if you don’t want to study now and you end up washing toilets forever, that’s your decision, don’t come crying to me”.
Also, it’s always been a trick of mine to fail all my tests in the first three terms of school, and then do kinda well at the End of Year Exam. Because that’s how you get the “Good Progress Award” from the government, $400 every year. It’s super annoying, though, because you can’t use the money to pay for important things like jeans or waxing your lady parts. You can only use the money to pay for school excursions to the Science Center. Oh, gee… Thanks????
One exception to this rule is Chinese. I have like, almost never passed a Chinese test. (The few times I passed, I copied.) I’ll never forget the day I brought home yet another one of my failed tests for my mother to autograph and she started crying while going through my mistakes with me. 1. I guess she was disappointed that I had failed again. Again. Again again again. 2. She couldn’t really explain anything to me because she didn’t really understand anything herself.
I learn to make dresses after my O’level exams.
After my exams, I signed up for a short dressmaking course in Little India, of all places. It was a tiny hole in the wall, which appeared to be just another cyber café in the area from the outside, but after squeezing your way past a narrow aisle of computers, you’d come out into a small backroom with rows of desks where they’d conduct English language courses and dressmaking courses. I didn’t know what to expect because it wasn’t by recommendation that I’d found out about this course. I kind of just picked up a pink A5 flyer that said something to the effect of “LEARN TO MAKE YOUR OWN DRESSES!!!!!” and just went on from there. Thankfully, my parents and I were already in the habit of frequenting Little India for our weekend thosai and appam fix, so although they were a bit weary, they weren’t too alarmed that their 16 year old daughter was going to the backroom of a dingy shop house in a neighbourhood largely populated by the Tamil community to learn how to sew dresses two evenings a week for a month.That was the first time I’d ever been introduced to the process of dressmaking, and it was completely baffling. The first few lessons involved very strange rulers, a lot of calculations, drawing a bunch of lines to form shapes on paper, and no fabric or sewing machine. There were three other ladies in the class, one of whom was our teacher, and I clearly did not share the same demographic profile as any of them in even the slightest of ways. For starters, they all got the memo about wearing a sari to class and I didn’t. My internal monologue sounded something like “is she for real? How is this crazy shape the sleeve of my dress? Is she for real?” with regards to the instructions we were given throughout the classes. I ended up sewing a very simple A-line mini dress with a front zip opening, which was very on trend at that time, but it mystified the other ladies and my teacher insisted that I’d made a grave mistake piecing my dress together.
My bestfriend and I wait tables part-time at a small family restaurant. The chef and manager get into an argument about the soup of the day, and we learn that adults are funny creatures.
