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The Divine Comedy!!
ajani_mgo
Veteran
Now, now, I have no idea why I named this thread this, but this was what crept out in my head after I saw that I had to fill in a title here...
Now, now, shall I start my tale, a few months ago, when Argon was disillusioned with our class in school during Homecoming Day preparations, and I a bit later was too, after I was left in-charge of some class stuff also. Shall we say that, then, we had very sadly concluded that class spirit, the sense of communal bonding, seemed never to exist in our class, despite my usual inclinations to ever think positively and the best of every situation.
Now in about a few days time, the first true test hurdle of our life, the "O" Levels, are coming. For those whose countries do not have such educational cultures, the "O" Levels (in Singapore, at least) are a series of tests to be taken at the end of four/five years of education. It is one of the "highlights" of a secondary school student's life (perhaps the counterpart of the American high-schooler), as it very bluntly determines, and very much separates the academically-strong from the rest, the former usually going on to higher academic education and the latter usually going on to more practical workplace education. (In primary school, or the American elementary, we have a similar one to allow the academically-weaker to spend more years to catch up)
Anyway, to cut a long story short, our plan was to throw a really grand chalet party at the end of the Os to really unwind and go crazy. In our school, the norm is usually to attend the prom night, otherwise known as the graduation night, but for our class, a significant number of us aren't going there. Thus Argon and I, and another fellow I shall alias as Kris, went on to start collecting money from the class to prepare for such an event.
Well - guess what? A few days ago, we realized that we lost the money. I shan't go into the details, for that will not be the main point of my post, but very soon, we changed our thinking from "perhaps someone misplaced the money somewhere" to "definitely some idiot stole it" after much investigation and brainwork.
So I went to the front of the class and broke to them the bad news. I must say, I was quite proud of my news-bearing for the class did not break into chaos, or shoot the messenger. We provided them with two options:
(i) Go to the chalet without any gimmicks the money would have provided
(ii) Cancel the chalet totally (although it was impossible for we had already booked the chalet already)
(iii) Choose to pay up again, this time on a purely-voluntary basis, where the sum of money to contribute was freely up to one's own decision. Argon, me and Kris (and another good friend of ours) would pay up the remaining, since it had been under our own watch when the money was gone - we bore the blame.
Today we saw the class really displaying a strong class spirit that we would have sworn never to have been thought existed. Most people came up, paid more than what we had asked for (a token sum of $5 each was enough if they felt like paying, we would cough up the remaining hundreds), with more promising to pay soon. We had understood that we were like asking for the moon in the water - the class was broke totally, some had spent entire allowances to go to the prom, some were having restricted allowances, and some of us just didn't have that much. We managed to scrap a little of cash here and there, until pennies became pounds.
Argon, me and Kris were thinking hard of additional ways to raise the money again just in case. We thought of selling our unwanted books and a load of other stuff (including me jokingly suggesting that we should just steal the school's fire extinguishers and sell them) while we still had another choice. All we really needed was about $300, with $80+ in excess. But we had agreed that since we had lost the money in full, we would pay the money in full, even though we knew among ourselves that no one would question that. But we decided that to save up that eighty, even at the expense of our own pockets, was tantamount to cheating our friends.
Today was our last day in school before we were released for our study break. I witnessed class spirit in the making, and I saw it not in terms of money. By the end of the day, the whole class (excluding some who already had went home and some who were not immediately available) was engaging in a highly-exciting game known to us as "Split" divided among gender lines. Hahas, the guys lost in the end still
, although we were being losers and refused to perform the forfeit (dance in full view of the school) but heck, this was class spirit. We were just playing along the corridors, without any care for the moment for our exams, our gentlemanliness and lady-likeness, and above all, our teachers! (We were expecting to be caught for sure - risking our study break, playing in the full view of the school like that, but who cared?)
Argon rang me up just now when I reached home. We agreed that, after all, perhaps, we had the thief to thank. :rockon:
Now, now, shall I start my tale, a few months ago, when Argon was disillusioned with our class in school during Homecoming Day preparations, and I a bit later was too, after I was left in-charge of some class stuff also. Shall we say that, then, we had very sadly concluded that class spirit, the sense of communal bonding, seemed never to exist in our class, despite my usual inclinations to ever think positively and the best of every situation.
Now in about a few days time, the first true test hurdle of our life, the "O" Levels, are coming. For those whose countries do not have such educational cultures, the "O" Levels (in Singapore, at least) are a series of tests to be taken at the end of four/five years of education. It is one of the "highlights" of a secondary school student's life (perhaps the counterpart of the American high-schooler), as it very bluntly determines, and very much separates the academically-strong from the rest, the former usually going on to higher academic education and the latter usually going on to more practical workplace education. (In primary school, or the American elementary, we have a similar one to allow the academically-weaker to spend more years to catch up)
Anyway, to cut a long story short, our plan was to throw a really grand chalet party at the end of the Os to really unwind and go crazy. In our school, the norm is usually to attend the prom night, otherwise known as the graduation night, but for our class, a significant number of us aren't going there. Thus Argon and I, and another fellow I shall alias as Kris, went on to start collecting money from the class to prepare for such an event.
Well - guess what? A few days ago, we realized that we lost the money. I shan't go into the details, for that will not be the main point of my post, but very soon, we changed our thinking from "perhaps someone misplaced the money somewhere" to "definitely some idiot stole it" after much investigation and brainwork.
So I went to the front of the class and broke to them the bad news. I must say, I was quite proud of my news-bearing for the class did not break into chaos, or shoot the messenger. We provided them with two options:
(i) Go to the chalet without any gimmicks the money would have provided
(ii) Cancel the chalet totally (although it was impossible for we had already booked the chalet already)
(iii) Choose to pay up again, this time on a purely-voluntary basis, where the sum of money to contribute was freely up to one's own decision. Argon, me and Kris (and another good friend of ours) would pay up the remaining, since it had been under our own watch when the money was gone - we bore the blame.
Today we saw the class really displaying a strong class spirit that we would have sworn never to have been thought existed. Most people came up, paid more than what we had asked for (a token sum of $5 each was enough if they felt like paying, we would cough up the remaining hundreds), with more promising to pay soon. We had understood that we were like asking for the moon in the water - the class was broke totally, some had spent entire allowances to go to the prom, some were having restricted allowances, and some of us just didn't have that much. We managed to scrap a little of cash here and there, until pennies became pounds.
Argon, me and Kris were thinking hard of additional ways to raise the money again just in case. We thought of selling our unwanted books and a load of other stuff (including me jokingly suggesting that we should just steal the school's fire extinguishers and sell them) while we still had another choice. All we really needed was about $300, with $80+ in excess. But we had agreed that since we had lost the money in full, we would pay the money in full, even though we knew among ourselves that no one would question that. But we decided that to save up that eighty, even at the expense of our own pockets, was tantamount to cheating our friends.
Today was our last day in school before we were released for our study break. I witnessed class spirit in the making, and I saw it not in terms of money. By the end of the day, the whole class (excluding some who already had went home and some who were not immediately available) was engaging in a highly-exciting game known to us as "Split" divided among gender lines. Hahas, the guys lost in the end still
, although we were being losers and refused to perform the forfeit (dance in full view of the school) but heck, this was class spirit. We were just playing along the corridors, without any care for the moment for our exams, our gentlemanliness and lady-likeness, and above all, our teachers! (We were expecting to be caught for sure - risking our study break, playing in the full view of the school like that, but who cared?)Argon rang me up just now when I reached home. We agreed that, after all, perhaps, we had the thief to thank. :rockon:
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Comments
Maybe ajani can fill the monstrous gap left....;)
Anyway, our dear Ajani was the one who had to stretch his legs to the limit (I wish I can have the picture!) And the guys were made to look like fools. LOL
Back to the issue, the lost money. I would like to dedicate this post to my 404. [404.ole~] is our tag and I firmly believe that we deserve this tag. So to Ajani, and all the class of 404 '2006, Good Luck and All The Best for the coming 'O' Levels!