I Am RV-istic (Special Extended Version)

I am RV-istic cos...

~ I can recite the Singapore Pledge in chinese

~ I can chain the key to its ring in super fast time cos I put on 6 buttons on the RV uniform twice every week for FOUR years.

~ I had been to every malls in the West. So much so I had also been to the malls in the North and South. As for the East, well, it's too... far.

~ I don't mind drinking Newater. While others run around a running track or along a road, I ran along the circumference of a reservoir. Pandan Reservoir. I have witnessed too many 2.4km runners (RV-ians) emptying their breakfasts/lunch into our water source than to bother about drinking water made from urine. Not to mention the yearly count of bodies found adrift on the shores of PR.

~ I'm good at running short distance (ok, used to), cos got stupid people like me who likes to walk to the earlier bus stop, sees the bus in the distance and runs back to the bus stop outside the school.

~ I decide the route to go home 3 hours before school ends. There's 176 right outside the main gate that takes me to BM bus interchange, 30 that goes to then World Trade Centre. There are the buses opposite the school gate that goes to JE where I can choose to take bus or train back home, goes to Boon Lay or Bukit Batok/Gombak. There's 143 at the back gate where I can also take to WTC, there's 197 at the AYE, where I can buy a packet of tidbit and enjoy a peaceful walk to the bus stop by myself. Sometimes, choosing to take any of the buses is like filling in the 4D ticket, cos I never know whom I will meet at the bus stop to accompany me on the trip home. Choosing the route home also boils down to whether I want to eat Mac's at BM, Swensen's at WTC, KFC at Queenstown, Long John Silver's at JEC or watch movies at JP/Lot 1/WM/CP after school that day.

~ I have the ability to find my way home despite being lost. Due to the myriad of buses that passes by the school, my friends and I always find ourselves loading onto one of the buses to unknown places. Once, we took a bus to Pioneer Sector (then was so foreign to me) in the pouring rain and ended up in Boon Lay. Once, we took a bus towards JE, decided to change route, crossed the JTH road and waited at the now Creative HQ bus stop for 197 to take us to city. We took 51 and ended up in Little India. I took a wrong bus and ended up at Tang Dynasty; I'd miss a stop and end up walking up AYE from Tanjong Pagar Train Station.

~ I get excited each time my bus passes under the Pandan Flyover towards JE. From there, the bus will make a climb uphill and if the bus is fast enough, we'll go over the top like being on a rollercoaster. I know the bus drivers liked to hear RV kids scream "whoa!!!".

~ I can talk with my mouth unmoving. Good for speaking ill of others IN FRONT OF THEM.

~ I look around my surrounding before I speak ill of others. If the targets are around, I'll employ the above technic.

~ I use my eyes as hands to indicate the target of verbal abuse. A pointing finger will attract too much attention.

~ I am a bass singer; I can never reach the high notes of the school song.
"与日月争光兮与天地共久长 ~ ~ @#$%^&**&^%$#@"

~ I always check my seat to see if it's clean, cos I had to protect my white shorts for 4 years.

~ Not to mention my penchant for hot pants in white...

~ I can squeeze tonnes of things in a given space. Well, I could squeeze my Bio, Phy, Chem, Geog, A Maths, D Maths, Chi textbooks in the drawer under my table. Not to mention the chi dict, english thesaurus-cum dict set, 成语500, water bottle, umbrella, over-due worksheets. 听写, maths exercise books and my NCC manual. haha...

~ I carry light, cos of the above reason. Once, while we were busy trying out maths questions, Mr Ng Hai Guan walked to my seat and took a peek into my bag. All he found was my sammi-covered student's diary. In shock, he turned my bag inside out and nothing came out. He just asked, "You come to school with only sammi cheng?" I need not answer, the whole class did it for me.

~ I can write words in sonic speed, nicknamed 抄人.

~ I don't blame 大长今 for always hiding her hands under her apron, cos well, RV guys like to stick our hands into the pockets in the lower parts of our shirts. oh, so it was always tissue on my LEFT breast pocket, spectacles on my RIGHT, watch on my LEFT bottom pocket and sweets and what-nots on my RIGHT. During my upper sec days, my wallet migrated from my pocket at the back of my shorts to the Lower Right Shirt Pocket, cos well... there are too much stuff to fill in my shorts-turned-hot pants le...

~ I'm a docile man. RV gals are too loud and demanding... ie QIA...

~ I get tensed up when a stranger approaches me. That guy must be a salesman (olden days' MLM), Christian or ex-RV. All three like to talk non-stop of something that I don't feel like hearing: a useless gadget, an out-of-the-world belief, and the line of RV principals since 1956.

~ I know the ONE-AND-ONLY meeting place in RV: In front of the archives. "hey, later play soccer." "ok, mit where?" "outside archives." of cos, I dunch play soccer, duh!

~ I hate Physics most, cos it was on Level 3. Biology was the best, cos the labs were on the ground floor, but it had 2 labs compared to 3 each for Chem & Phy. Technical workshop is the worst. We didn't visit it after 2 years.

~ I can sleep while sitting cross-legged on the floor, and laugh along with the rest of the auditorium when cued. Or stand up to sing song, at other times, all while asleep.

~ The white pages of my Silver Sword book was tainted yellow, cos I used it for the Reading Period, where I would lower my head in pretense of reading it when in actual fact I was sleeping and drooling onto it. Come on, I believe the pages of my neighbour's Merchant of Venice weren't yellow in the first place too...

~ I cover my mouth when I yawn, because Tham-Tham taught us to do that a dozen times. All while I was dozing off. You know how susceptible to suggestions people are when they're semi-conscious...

~ I thought I would go to Heaven (thereby the lack of thought of converting to Christianity when those Christians tried to psycho me to) cos Tham-Tham also said RV-ians are angels.

~ I didn't like PE lessons cos one of the teacher looked like 阿扁 and the other called himself Navel. Both are Mr Teo, by the way. There was a third PE teacher whom I never bothered to know his name. He looked anal, though. Basically, all RV-ians thinks most people in RV looked anal. The only person in RV who dunch look anal is the RV-ian himself.

~ I liked chinese lessons cos I was taught by 2 chinese teachers (new and famous at that time): 蔡老师 & 叶老师. My parents were also by the surnames of 蔡 & 叶.

~ I like giving chi historical figures english names. It started when my history teacher (the fat woman whom I forgot her name) calls Ci Xi: Suzy cos the ang mohs translated her name as Tsu Sze. I called 苏东坡 sotong ball after that. And do you know the english name of Confucius? If you read one of the sec chi texts, it said: 孔子，字庄尼. Meaning: Confucius, a.k.a Johnny.

~ I'm afraid of Geography for the 1st geog teacher I got: Miss Chin. She looked like she comes from Shark Tale, Robert Deneiro's char. Then, I got this teacher called Mr Chan Keng Soon who puts us into hypnotized state the moment he spoke. We only liked him after he performed a stunt when he dislodged one end of the OHP screen and sent it swinging after him a la Final Destination style. Amazingly, that thing missed him, he turned to us asking why we screamed, oblivious to the screen that settled into pendulum state. Mr Ng was so angry at him for spoiling his screen cos it was hanging in the middle of the blackboard, blocking his mathematical expressions. He got Alex, the tallest guy in 4I to remove the screen from its intact end.

~ I hate the RV canteen. Once, after a 2.4km run, I suffered a freaking leg cramp. I was paralysed on the floor, right in the middle of the freaking canteen, with people looking at me and wondering why I was sitting on the floor with a grimace on my face.

~ and yar, like the other RV-ians mentioned above, I like to 看热闹, but not lend a helping hand.

~ I'm a dreamy guy. I once helped my best friend write a love letter for a crush, in the above-mentioned canteen, albeit 2 years earlier. It was the orientation camp in 2nd year, we stayed over cos I was helping out with NCC matters and he, the Students' Council. At night, we couldn't sleep and he asked help from me, so I imagined myself to be sammi in 百分百感觉 and wrote a super-mushy note for him. yup, I just watched the movie and fell in love with sammi in the dec hols just before that.

~ I can sleep on the bus and wake up at the exact bus stop to alight. yup, as mentioned by xy, we always take the freezing 197 in the early, early mornings. Me, xy & benson. We would sleep together on the bus and wake up promptly at the bus stop to drop off.

~ I have an amazing power of concentration. What with the near-until-can-kiss buildings. 2F, was having our literature test, when from across the building, Trina Kok from 2E sang: GO GO POWER RANGER ~ ~ ~ !!! oh... and speaking of singing, there was the famed Victoria who sang from Les Miserables: There is a castle on the cloud. It was rumoured those who heard her sang died 7 days later from trauma...

~ I'm a lone worker. Sec 2, was ousted out by my history group 1 week before the submission deadline. So I ended up rushing my project through sleepless nights. My topic was on Japanese invasion, so I did a write-up on it. Apart from a scrapbook, I made a big 'book casing' for it, out of styrofoam. For the front, I cut out a frame, laid a piece of transparent wrap behind, carved out the shape of Japan's islands and stuck them onto the wrapping, in the middle of the frame. For that, I got an A, and a group of good friends from 2B and 2F, who helped me type my report cos I didn't have a computer.

~ I can differentiate Beauty World and Bukit Timah Plaza and know the way there. Goodness, our $78 per set of uniforms was made there!

~ I know there are 3 kinds of onion rings: Yellow ones are the class monitors, whose jobs were to shout: 起立，行礼！Green ones are the stern-faced councillors who like to tell us: eh... dun run along corridors. Red ones are those Ex-Co who like to say: I love people who are Corny...

~ I know people who called themselves Connie aren't corny at all. Dear Connie, after a morning assembly, called the troublesome 4I & 4J to stay behind for spot check. Dear Connie, saw my Armani, asked: Why is there no hair on the sides of your head? Why is your hair standing up? Do you have hormonal imbalance? nabehz... I became the laughingstock of everyone for weeks...

~ I know how to set up a commercial tent. Learnt it during sec 3 camp. Was one of the facilitators, cos I was afraid of heights and I knew that that would give me a reason NOT to do those confidence-training stuff. And I really siamed. 3I won 2nd for talentime for our Dr Jones dance. 3J won 1st cos they had PP who did a terrific dance item. oh well, 3I talked about team effort, you know...

~ I feel restless when CNY approaches. Why not? Every year, we had to decorate the wall outside our classroom for CNY!!! 1F carved a dragon head out of styrofoam. 2F made a lion head. 3I ermz... I forgot. 4I... even worse. No memories. Sorry...

~ I had shit luck. I have a bronze medal for a 4x100m relay from sec3. We were actually the 5th, but the 3rd and 4th teams fouled. So 3I got bronze. So funny. 1 and only time I went to receive a prize in RV, especially for a sports event. lol

~ I love Tuesdays, cos it was when the teachers had meetings, so we were let off early. During sec3 (the craze of Titanic), I started to watch movie every Tuesday, so much so that by the end of the term, I had nothing to watch. Those were the days when I had Tuesdays With Yonghao, my buddy whom we watched movies together, went to rot in shopping centres all on Tuesdays.

~ I love views that looked over water. Well, RV looked over Pandan Reservoir leh. During my last year, cos Mr Shamsudin liked to bring us to the Library for lessons, I got attached to the Library that I rarely stepped foot in before. Loved the view of the Library looking over the reservoir. Loved the peace. I met friends while I was browsing through the collection. Got ridiculed my Miss Kiang for borrowing Narnia books. eh... If reading Narnia is so childish, why issit found in the Library?? Our library card was 'pink' in colour, where we surrender when we borrow books and the librarians slot in the books' 'tag' into the card and keep until we return the books.

~ I am conservative. After all, I stayed in such a sterile environment for 4 full years. The only person who created a wave in my era was Miss Kiang, who happened to be my English teacher during sec 4. She had long, super curly hair (that she called frizzy), wears 4-inch high heels, mini skirts and low-V blouse. Apparently, her days as a RGS girl has shown the Pandan Monastery what havoc really was.

~ I can play taichi by pushing blames to people. Like blaming qy for making me lose badminton games? Like insisting that I don't owe anybody money. Like the missing textbook that caused me to fail my history test? Actually, I plain forgot there was a history test. And I could have passed it well, cos most of the questions I could answer out of memory, but there was this question on this Melayu book. nabehz... I cursed and swore, and wondered why I should know about a Malay book when I'm a chinese.

~ I am automatically attracted to RV-ians, 7 years after leaving it.

~ I cared to write all these down cos it was a nice trip down memory lane.

~ I know RVHS is 50 this year, cos 10 years ago, when I stepped foot into the grounds of the cream, Lloyd-style building, we had to run around the Pandan Reservoir (bloody 8km of it) to celebrate its 40th birthday. That was the worst birthday celebration I ever had to attend...

~ I have 50 reasons to say why I'm RV-istic for RV's 50th b'day. Do you?

For the school that I spent FOUR happy, sad, crazy, stupid, lazy, senseless, muggy, sweaty, sleepy, drooly, marchy (I was in NCC, duh!) & crappy days: Happy 50th.