Study like I had never study before!
I have been to two primary schools in my six short years of primary education. Both of them are Chinese primary schools (Which explained my "Cina" values and thinking).
My first school is near my KL home at Jalan Imbi. The school is considered to be a neighborhood kind of school, with its laid-back attitude. It is a good place to be in, relaxed and easy to be at the top. I had only one worthy opponent in terms of academic results. He was LooFuTian - my best friend. We were good buddies no less, we enjoyed each other's challenge and we had many good times together - studying and playing badminton. He was a good badminton player and therefore it was forgivable for me to lose to him consistently (excuses, excuses~ shake head). Anyway, our Primary 1 results was so hotly contested that he lost the overall first to me by a single mark only - well, I scored full-marks all the way while he had a 99. That was the kind of "fierce rivalry" we had.
I was the class monitor in Primary 1. Even as a kid, I was kind of good at playing mind games. There was once when the teacher put me in charge of the class while she was away. I remembered clearly that the class was in a total chaos - worst than a zoo with all the noises and shouting. I was supposed to take down the names of the noisy ones, but there were so many of them. SO, I simply wrote down everybody's name on the blackboard - threatening the whole class that I would submit everyone's name as an "offender of peace". In no time, the class grew silent and you could even hear a pin dropped. I started to erase the names of those quiet students while leaving those pranksters' and noise-makers' names on the board. You can imagine the astonished look on the teacher when she returned to see a quiet and obedient class!
When our family moved into our new home in Wangsa Maju, I changed my school to Chong Hwa at Setapak. It is a very prestigious school with a good reputation of producing fine students. Suddenly, I found myself surrounded by great competitions. It compelled me to study harder just when I was getting complacent with my grades at Jalan Imbi.
You see - the Chong Hwa Primary School had a total of 8 classes for each level and with 50 students in each class, the school spilt the classes into the morning and afternoon session. It was a blessing that I was in the best class of the afternoon session and under the mentor of the best teacher I ever had - Ms Lim. She taught me from Primary 4 to Primary 6. When we finally sat for our leaving exams, our class did the best, with more than 10 of us scoring full-distinctions and everyone in the class having at least 2 to 3 As. Our school was the feature of that year as its student - we did the best in the whole nation among our cohort. We even being features in the newspaper with a half-complete school building as the backdrop.
Sure, lots of people would say that it was because we were from the "elite" class with everyone in the class being the best 50 of the whole school cohort in the session. However, I do recall the pains we went through when we study... We are subjected to 3 spellings and 2 essay dictations for each language in a week - every week! When we made mistakes in those tests - we had to do 50 corrections for the full word with the hanyupinyin - even though we may had just left out a dot; we had to rewrite the whole essay many times - depending on the grades we had. You can imagine how messy, chaotic and stressful we were in the morning when we could not finish our correction. It was then friendship came into play - we helped those who couldn't finish their corrections! For the top 10 students of the school cohort, we were trained and expected to bring in the full-distinctions. It was stressful indeed. After school, we were to stay back for extra special lessons on more advanced topics. We were also being assigned as mentor to the weaker students. My dad even sold the TV at our house to allow me to concentrate on my exams!
I had many fun memories - writing (ugly and horrible) calligraphy, playing table-tennis in the canteen, winning art/drawing, essay writing & story telling competitions of all languages (English, Chinese and Malay), representing the school in language competitions (emerged K.L. top 10 student in the individual category and top 3 in the team event). I did not actually finished my primary education when I went over to Singapore - if you considered the fact that I only took the U.P.S.R. and missed my school final exams (since it is after the U.P.S.R.).
Whatever the case, my primary school was the most "glorious" period of my study life. I was almost peerless in the study aspect. In a way, some people may say I was a "geek". Hehehe, but I was so famous then that I have fans... Hahaha, my juniors actually came up and shake my hands (think along the idol line... ;p), I had to carry 2 extra bags for my prizes at the prize presentation day and people that I never met actually knew my name even after so many years! Well, that's part of my geekish history in the primary education - a part of my life that I would always remember fondly of.
Howard - That's Me
Growing Up
Playtime
Nerdy Primary Schools
Havoc Secondary School (BMSS)!
Saints Family (SAJC)
Army Daze (NS)
Stressful University Days (NTU)
Memoirs of an Officer (SJAB)
