College Day is the most boring thing in the world kthx. Rather ironic how the head honcho preached to us about spending 20 hours a weekend studying, then the arbitrary CT decides it would be a good idea to send the guy who most needs studying to go for this ultimately arbitrary and useless event. I'm sure watching people I don't know take prizes for over an hour is really fun. Not to mention the school hyping up the GOH only for him to sound like a total moron. If his courses are the most popular in SMU, it has to be for the comedic value. It was, in fact, so boring that the entire row I was in was doing stuff like dozing off, reading books and doing their TYSes.

Thanks a lot, school.

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Life is full of questions. Literally. There aren't exactly an infinite value of things to be known, but the number should be large enough that trying to find them all out would make the human head combust, since thinking about one thing would lead to a never-ending spiral of other things you'd then have to think about. Eventually you'd die, and die unsatisfied too, since the time it takes to figure out what all these questions are would easily exceed our lifespan.

Don't even get me started on the answers, I can't even do a simple math equation.

Information is a rather amazing thing. With information, it seems, comes knowledge. And with knowledge, they say, comes power. And with great power, says Stan Lee, comes great responsibility. And responsibility, which I've learnt as I've grown older, is bloody boring and irritating to have.

Case in point : magic tricks. They've always been an awful lot of fun, be it the coin appearing out of nowhere, the cards moving mysteriously, or how a jumbo jet can fly in the air faster than anything on land could hope to. I've had all three explained to me at length, and while I don't understand all of it, it does make the trick a lot less fun when you know there's an invisible string, or that the coin comes from behind the ear.

Similarly, in life, there are an awful lot of things and an awful lot of decisions to make. It's disconcerting.

I have a suggestion for you.

You do not think about anything.

The brain might be the most mysteriously and powerful things in a world full of mysterious and powerful things such as Condoleeza rice, wasabi and the television. You don't need to be smart for your brain to be clever, and incidentally, you can be super intelligent and your brain could be stupid. I don't understand much of what it does, (which, if you stop and think about it, is pretty strange in itself, since my brain is doing things itself that it doesn't allow me to understand), but I don't need to, since it just does them anyway.

Your brain makes many decisions for you without you needing to do much, if any, thinking about it. When you're about to cross a road and stop when you see a car, you don't have a internal monologue going something like :

This seems like a nice little spot on the road to cross, since I do need to get to the other side. Oooh, I could go right foot, then left foot. Or I could go left foot, then right foot. Or I could go left foot, then left foot, then....never mind that. Maybe it doesn't really matter. Unless I'm marching of course, but that would mean I'm in the army, in that case I shouldn't be thinking. At all.

Oh deary me, here comes, a car! Given the speed at which it's traveling, it hitting me would send me down the road instead of across it. Not to mention the wounds that should follow, they would make me fare a lot worse. It's doubtful that if I keep walking, the car would be able to brake in time. It's not likely that the driver has superhuman braking powers. I had better brake while I still can with my own feet. No more walking for me, no sir. Oh wait a minute, while I was talking to myself the car already went past.

You just don't. More likely, your subconscious will tell you to stop without you knowing it. A monologue like the one probably did happen, but your brain didn't feel like sharing it with you.

As your brain gets used to more and more situations, it'll do more things for you without you having to think about it. This is how good and bad habits form. It's also how experience and gut feelings form. When you have a gut feeling, it's your brain's way of saying "don't think about this, I've got the answer right here. You don't know how I've got it, but trust me." Of course, when it does turn out to be wrong, you'd know that life just screwed you over.

So, the solution to the A levels, and to many other things you probably do, is to endlessly repeat situations so your brain can get used to it. The more you let your brain, your subconscious handle things, the more space you have left to concentrate on the harder things, the things that really matter.

Savvy?

It could be me, but society could be just one big filter to the rest of the world in general.

People who go to ITE graduate and then work their lives off in whatever job will pay them.
People who go to Poly graduate and then work their lives off in whatever job will pay them, just that they can say they have a diploma while they go about doing it.
People who go to JC. Those who succeed get themselves into a university, after which they work their butts off with a degree to their name. Those who don't simple take one of the other routes mentioned above.

No matter which path we take in Singapore, the end result still ends up largely the same, the only difference being the "air-con" bit and the "salary" bit.

This does, however, make the fair proportion of Singapore happy, since they are told what to do, when to do it, as opposed to being confused most of the time over how to live their lives. Naturally, the 4 sub + X S papers students are told to go out there and get a scholarship so they can bring glory to their school and eventually their country, while the 3 subbers are told not to fail so they can do something with their lives and so they don't end up embarassing anyone.

Indeed, our lives are becoming almost as predictable as an M. Night Shyamalan movie.

---

How to carry out a conversation in a large group of people: (or, what ticks me off sometimes)

1) When you refer to someone by name, make sure the majority of people know him. If they don't, you give people the impression that they're supposed to identify with this phantom friend you have, which leaves them confused. And people don't like being confused.
2) When you make a joke you think is funny but nobody laughs, act like it was supposed to be lame anyway.
3) To break the group up, start carrying out private conversation. Everyone should follow suit.

Obviously not the seminar you were expecting, but if you know me well enough, you'd know I'm not exactly a public speaking maestro.

---

And so the cycle continues.

---

(5 minutes after made this post)

Christian Friend( I seem to have many of those) : eh you wanna go planetshakers concert?
Me : Why?
CF : Because it's gonne be really good!
Me : Ok, I'll think about it.

(2 minutes later, while randomly surfing around)

Me : The planetshakers concert is called ultraviolet? *randomly decimates surrounding objects, then smses friend to inform non-attendance*

For the uninitiated, violet is my tyrant of an econs teacher, with all of us hapless students at the mercy of her mood swings.

Sadly, there's been a drought of interesting issues for me to blog about. When the most interesting part of school is finding out new and interesting things about your tutors you know something's wrong.

---

Apparently, VS has started offering PE as an O-level subject! Like I said, a drought of interesting issues. This is the sort of thing the NCC and track people joke among themselves about after getting something like 24697267 points for their mid-years. Now that it's actually happened, it could be true that the world is starting to favour the muscleheads again.

---

Looking at the English Language, many of the most powerful words have 3 letters. And I'm not talking about "AAA", "ABB", "OFF" or "FFF", I'm talking actual words this time. And one of the arguably most powerful words is that which is synonymous with the opposite of every MJC student's life right now : "fun".

Examining the word, "fun" started in Middle-age English as a modification on the "fool" or the jester. The noun describes a state of amusement. Fun is most often defined as an activite that brings joy to its participants.

However, much like everything else, the English language has evolved. We can say that "ponning lectures is fun", "Wilfred is a fun person" or "Econs tutorials are fun if you are a shameless masochist", but we've distorted the use of "fun" into an adjective. Now, you'd probably wonder how this is significant, but whoever started this must've had some fun opening up new paths for the English language. Similarly, as we live our lives we tend to try to optimize our enjoyment, participating in fresh history and blazing new trails for human fun. Yup, like it or not, every one of us is contributing to "fun", and probably having a whale of a time while we're at it.

To quote Oasis, "Life is a game we play." Now, the fun factor in life, much like any game, would then be directly related to the people who play. There are people who you laugh with and skip along the proverbial game board happily with, then there are people who seek to slip a hand under the game board and turn your game of life topsy-turvy, upside down and bouncing off the ceiling(Here's looking at you, econs teachers.).......and having fun doing it, probably. Then there are people who have fun competing at the highest level, be it playing poker, smacking a ball across a fairway or trying to become the next Iron Chef; Through the spirit of competition they find fun.

Now, don't be mistaken. A large deal of us will never be able to compete at that level unless the medium on competition is a test of mediocrity. For many of us, our amusement is much more quiet in nature. Now, the term "quiet" in itself spans many ways. It could mean simply screwing around on a daily basis(very evident), or quietly contemplating the truths of the world in your own little corner(not so).

The problem with life, however, is that it splits up into multiple areas. "fun" soon develops into competition, and soon life becomes about showing off your copious amounts of testosterone or estrogen, and soon, the meaning of "fun" is lost, as people have hobbies more associated with things like competition and maintaining a respectable social circle instead. This may be slightly confusing : While competition and winning can be fun, it isn't fun in itself when you get overly caught up with it. Indeed, the line is thin, but in pursuit of happiness as a result of "fun", it needs to be understood through experience first. Games should emphasise the fun factor first ; Save competition for the actual arena. Sure, a little friendly competition is inevitable, but you need to be playful when you're playing. Games should be a delight and a diversion from the actual competition that typically manifests itself in the education system of today. It shouldn't be a death sport for domination.

However, with fun and competition so close together in our lives, a very likely scenario is when the two get mingled, and you feel a deep sense of satisfaction when you hold your AAA certificate while your friend worries whether he'll make it to a university in the first place.

Indeed, fun has evolved not only in application but in realisation as well, which leads me to the fact that the world is slowly but surely degenerating. If a powerful word like "fun" can be distorted, what's protecting the rest of the world?

Everything seems to arbitrary right now. The teacher wants to see the parents because of the belief I just might have an attitude problem. Never mind that it was the one time I didn't do my math work, never mind that she probably was having a syndrome of some sort,because it's always the fault of the student.

When the student does well, however, the teacher then basks in the reflected glory of being a wonderful mentor, guiding the unpolished talent to its fullest potential. Then the principal would recieve credit too, for being a wonderful mentor to the teacher.

Perhaps it's the law of the world : Credit travels up, blame travels down. When people have power, the ultimate way to lose it would be to admit making a mistake, because that shows that said person isn't fit to hold the power in the first way. So, the best way to maintain a stranglehold on the power is to always deflect, dodge, divert and dispense blame to everyone around but themselves. The process then repeats itself until blame reaches the ones who do not have anyone to trickle the blame down to. The income disparity in Singapore isn't due to overpaid white-collar workers or the failure of the government to intervene, it so was the fault of the lower-class workers for not working or studying harder. Because it always is.

I have officially come up with my plan for the A levels.

1) Study the heck out of lit.
2) Study the heck out of maths.
3) Do reasonably well for GP.
4) Pray hard and hope econs doesn't pull me down.

Which leads to the point that I don't think the way Violet drills is actually effective. Somehow, if we write essays and they're rarely looked at, wouldn't we just happily go about our business writing the wrong way when we don't even know it? And what's the point of doing DRQs when we're just going to copy down Violet's politically correct answer anyway? One of these days she's just going to throw an essay to the ground and stomp on it while ranting about how much my essays stink, and I don't see how this future can be avoided.

Perhaps ageing gracefully really IS difficult in today's world, eh?

---

Now that I'm done with that, here's how to mark a lit paper when feeling lazy! Not that I have anything against the lit department, but still!

1) Roll 2 6-sided die. On a 9 to 12, number stays. On a 5 to 8, double this number. On a 1 to 4, reroll since nobody fails lit.
2) If student has a chinese name, deduct 1 mark. If student's name is easily pronounced, add 2 marks.
3) If handwriting is fancy and cursive, add 1 mark. If handwriting resembles egyptian hieroglyphics add 2 marks. If handwriting is overly neat deduct 2 marks for time wasting.
4) If number of quotation marks exceed 5, add 1 mark. From 5 to 10, add 2. Anything else, deduct 1.
5) Actually read the essay, then write comments as see fit. Be sure to use wasteful terms such as "this could have been REALLY GOOD" or "you missed out on an A because you left out ---"

So don't feel bad about failing lit, it doesn't happen all the time. =)

---

Looking back on my (relatively short, and thankfully nowhere near a midlife crisis) life so far, one thing I've realised is that I've been happiest when I was in the moment. To put it in more understandable terms, life is most certainly living, and you live it best when you're not worried about what might have been or what will be, since there really is no point in doing so. You're better off unbridled. Life slaps you in the face from time to time, but that's what life does - An uncorrectable habit, if you will. Not that there's a point getting angry about it. What does the wheel of life do if not turn?

I think the night is making me cranky.

You know, the school is getting more and more irritating.

First, we get the new timetable. Of course, with CCAs out of the way, you'd think we'd have wednesday afternoons free for miscallaneous activities such as slacking at home, slacking at school, trying to mug and so on. But nooooo, obviously the school decides to conveniently leave out the extra lessons they had already planned earlier. Much like the same way the PAP left out the increased taxi fares and tax rates when they were giving out the progress package.

Then of course, even though having CCAs out of the way for more free time already proved itself to be a moot point, teachers still tell themselves that we still have more time on our hands, and more time = more homeword-giving potential. And while their at it, they might as well derive that short timetable/free periods = More chances to have consultations.

So, MJC right now is the school that makes being a student more than about being studying. Not only do you have to conform to everything the school and government says, you have to put up with every stupid policy they decide to come up with, we have to cope with things like homework, upholding the school image through our neat and proper attire, and being expected to maintain concentration throughout the day. The difference between us and the bulk of the working adult population is that the workers get to knock off. Yeah. Life sucks right now.

So, due to a sudden tuberculosis scare in school, everyone who came into contact with said person had to go for a jab today. Which was pretty fun actually, since all we did was slack around outside while people were doing stuff like mugging for the chemistry test, making lame jokes in Chinese and passing out at the sight of needles. Which probably would be an awfully fun experience, except my body has a masochistic tendency of never passing out, instead keeping me just awake enough to experience the entire ordeal, be it taking an injection, sitting on a rollercoaster, staring up a guy's ass while climbing up a mountain or drinking a stupid amount of liquor. Of course, it was also fun since I was presented with the opportunity to miss lessons like communists miss Chairman Mao.

---

Midyear results are out! Not that I did spectacularly, but the lack of grades starting with the letter F are rather encouraging. Along with the absence of grades starting with the letters A and B, this makes for a rather average and mediocre package that I would probably be left alone for in comparison to the oofs, offs, foffs, and fffs of the generation.

---

When people experience failure, there are ultimately two main types of reactions leading to a negative outcome. In the first, people get downhearted, lose confidence, let go of concentration and everything goes downhill from there.

There is, of course, the other outcome - which tends to come from the Bruce Banners of the world. At the end, they tend to walk along a desolate road while the rain pours down on them to the tune of miserable sounds piano music. Of course, nobody wants to see that. Instead, before the serene strolling part comes the unleashing of primal rage, the letting off of steam, blowing of tops, loss of composure, there are a million other things you could call it.

Now, I don't really think there is anything wrong with anger on its own- it is, after all, a natural reaction. Anger is most of the time, a result of passion : The greater the anger, chances are, the more passionate you feel for the issue. Breaking up with a girlfriend, for example, should always be more infuriating that leaving the crappy lit teacher you had in secondary school. However you react to something, the fact that you DO react does show a certain degree of passion, just a matter of how much. And if you don't react to it, there always stands a reasonable and perhaps strong argument that you probably should be doing something else, like working in MacDonald's or rising to the rank of Head Clerk in a shady Malaysian "medicine" company.

Unfortuneately, anger isn't exactly a good thing to bring to the hypothetical trading table of life to ask for success in exchange. In fact, it probably isn't a good thing to bring anywhere. Life is a game, it's meant to be fun. Most people would probably agree with me that Adam Sandler, over his movie career, have proven that getting angry is neither big nor clever. And for typical people like you and me, you probably won't earn the kind of dough that Mr. Sandler does when people laugh at you, be it in secret, behind your back and making you feel paranoid, or out in the open and in your face, making you feel like an even bigger doofus than you already are.

Anger is just a word in a nice Oasis song - treat it like one. You don't want to have to manage it.

If time really was money, the school should be owing me money for all the time they wasted, what with vindictive economics teachers and other overzealous staff.

How in the world anybody could go on for like half an hour on "how to wear your pants v1.0" accompanied by a full-blown powerpoint presentation complete with face-censored models, senseless words and diagrams is beyond me. Not that I remembered much, since after the first 10 or so seconds everything was coming out of his mouth as "wah wah wah", proving the fact that he's about as entertaining as a tv set turned off and that it's almost as if he was a robot programmed with "piss protocol v 2.5" in mind.

And then there was violet who made us stay in school for two periods of nothingness while she happily lunched in the staff room, but I'm not going to go into that, after all from what I hear us innocent students are being scouted as potential rebels.

---

Cab fares have risen again, which proves itself to be a travesty.

On one side, you have the companies claiming to help their taxi drivers. With a daily rental of $96 and fuel costing something like $40 a day, they don't get to earn a whole lot, which is why raising prices looks like a bid to help their drivers.

On the other side, the obvious solution that benefits both drivers and passengers is to lower rent, but cab companies obviously won't want to screw themselves over, so the obvious solution is to exploit the general public for it, while simultaneously blaming rising oil prices for the rising cab fares.

However, anybody that uses 4% of his brains would realise that the government blaming rising prices on rising oil prices is jack. If I buy coffee for resale, and the price of coffee from plantations rose, and I sell at higher rates as well, that makes me a middleman. In a similar vein, the government buys oil, so they charge us extra when oil prices rise. I could be wrong here, but the role of a government probably should exceed that of a middleman.

In addition, you see a lot of companies blaming rising resource costs for the rise in price, but that's pretty much bs, because prices only go up and never down, even when resource prices drop. These are instead advertised as "sales" and "promotions", simply because the public pays for increase costs of production, but drops in production costs result in extra profits for the firm. That probably includes governments as well, since they had so much extra reserves they decided to feel guilty and give some back to the public in the form of a "progress package".

I'm not sure there's even a point to this post, I just felt extremely cheated when i took a cab ealier today. $2.50 + $2 peak hour surcharge is crazy.

Ah, I just knew France was going to lose after I bet on them. Not that it was a terrible match, the sides were actually rather evenly matched, right up to the penalty shootout, at least neither of the teams pulled a Switzerland, or even worse, an England, though France came real close with the red-card-followed-by-wretched-penalties combo. Trezeguet must be feeling terrible right now. Why Zidane got himself a red card, I have no idea.

---

Nobody's realised this yet, of course, but now that the World Cup is over, evil teachers now have an excuse to give us more work to "make up for lost time". It's a disaster waiting to happen. Yep, you heard it here first.

I am going to be really pissed if Italy win this final.

---

It's amazing how a multinational event can bring people together. Not just people from different countries, but even people from the same country you'd never see together under normal circumstances. The truck driver and the businessman. The insurance agent and the pest killer. Two lawyers. It gives people something to talk about. Obviously, the English are the best at this - They still go on about 1966, acting like they actually have a chance at every worldcup, and like every year is "England's chance to break out". Why, if they ever win anything beyond the Tiger Cup we'd never hear the end of it. Multiple National Holidays, national Steven Gerrard Day, Frank Lampard Day, Paul Robinson Day, heck, even Owen Hargreaves Day. In addition, the way the EPL is covered in Singapore, it gives Singaporeans the illusion that England is actually a strong favourite to win, so most of them wind up supporting England. The night at John's house actually proved that.

Thankfully, that kind of thing doesn't happen, since England takes penalties about as well as I do pull-ups.

Looking at the stars in the world cup, most them earn colosally huge amounts of money. By the age of 21, most of them are married or at least attached, have multiple cars, pairs of expensive shoes and ways of complaining to referees. On the other hand, at 21, the average Singaporean thing is working his ass off to get his degree, working his ass off in the army, working his ass off in his new job or working his ass off to pay the bills.

Which is the problem with the Singaporean education system. They want both academic as well as non-academic excellence, so the solution is to work the asses off the local population while importing foreigners to do the latter. Which thus makes training talent from young impossible since a youth's worth is judged mostly on the basis of the ability to adapt to the current education system.

However, playing the villain, at the same time, looking at how much the top players earn, you'd tend to realise that these guys are at the top of a long and extensive pile of other players. In almost every other sport or job, it probably happens the same way. For every Michael Jordan, there are twenty Mike Bibbys, that is, good players who don't make it to superstar status but stay relevant. For every Mike Bibby, there are twenty PJ Browns, players who work hard and get noticed for that instead of being talented. And for every PJ Brown, there are twenty James Poseys, people who don't do much at all, but break out once in a blue moon. For every James Posey, there are twenty Darko Milicics, people who are always available but never utilised. And finally, for every Darko Milicic, there are a bunch of other people who don't make it.

Simply put, the be the best at your job and earn a ton of money, you either have to do it better than everyone else like Perluigi Collina or Martin Yan, or do things in a completely different and new manner, emulating famous figures such as Bill Gates and Steven Lim(well, not REALLY...)

---

Is the world getting smaller, or are people getting bigger?

In a game of football where the difference was a magnificent dive by Thierry Henry, it was decided that the French Fries were superior to the Portugese Egg Tarts, and will move on to face the Italian Pasta for, among other things, bragging rights, the world cup and to be the secret ingredient in the next episode of Iron Chef(which, incidentally, is the best show ever.) The loser, on the other hand, would then get the right to be the bluest team at the world cup. Sounds like a fair trade-off to me.

This of course, would probably lead to a deregulation of the daily activity known as school in favour of the nightly activity known as sleep.

---

I got knocked down by a car yesterday. Granted, it didn't really hurt since the car really could slow down, and it was partly my fault, but still, I got hit by a car! I probably should consider myself lucky though, I've probably used up all the karma for the year.

I was happily walking down the road with the earphones at full blast, so I'd have no idea of the car approaching me from behind until it was something like 2 metres away from me. By the time I turned around and realised the car was desperately trying to slow down, I was faced with a dilemma : Play the role of hapless victim and collect insurance later on, or try and probably fail trying to dive out of the way of the car like Chow Yun Fat in Bulletproof Monk(worst movie. ever.) and looking dumb in the process. So, I just stood there, and the car, which so conveniently had to be a lowrider, prodded me at the back of the knee hard enough to send me into the air. Not forward and flat on my face, damaging my complexion, but instead upwards, so I ended up sitting on the hood of the car while the driver got a view of my ass pressed against his poor windscreen. Much awkwardness ensued.

Of course, I really should be thanking my lucky stars and I'm still sitting here typing this instead of lying in a shady hospital bed wondering if getting hurt was worth the time away from school.

Then again, it probably would've been.

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If you had a choice, would you eat char kuay teow or bak chor mee for the rest of your life?

Right after I made that entry, I just realised what a word "screwed" is. There seems to be no word just like it. Fucked? Too vulgar. Messed?Not impactful enough.Drilled? Same meaning, but rather irrelevant. Ask a student what he/she thinks of exams, and the first word that often comes out is "screwed". In fact, the word is becoming so cliched that practically everyone's used it already. Which is why I'm going to avoid the word "screwed" altogether from now on, if you catch me saying it instead of randomly swearing away, please slap me in the face.

I really should delete this entry.

Pah, I can't believe Germany lost! They might just grab the prestigious title of "team which caused the most betting losses" away from the Czech republic.

Of course, that, coupled with the fact that the homework has already began avalanching down on us and that I already screwed up the midyears in a way I never thought possible made yesterday an incredibly stupid day. I shall go back to curling up in bed now.

This weekend has been one of many discoveries.

1) Call me outdated, but John's house is fecking HUGE, never mind the fact that I couldn't find any non-alchoholic drinks in the fridge. If I build a house like that when I grow up my grandchildren would still find themselves paying off the instalments.

2) My capacity for alchohol isn't as strong as I thought it was. Either that, or vodka is overly strong. I could feel my heart burning and crying for help everytime I took a shot. Stupid liquor games. Well even though the house rules actually resulted in more drinking than the game itself.

3) England has yet to play a credible game in the World Cup. The good thing about it is, they won't get another chance to. Now, if only Portugal would stop clowning around...

4) Speaking of Portugal, Figo looks like a dirty old man.

5) Stamping on a player's crotch and almost castrating him in the process -will- get you a red card. I don't care if you shoved ronaldo or he said he was going to get you sent off anyway, you still deserve a red card. Rooney is a blithering idiot, at least with crouch they had someone to pass the ball to.

6) saving penalties actually seems to get easier and easier with every match.

7) Turning on both the aircon and fan while sleeping is one of the stupidest things you can do. I woke up with icicles of mucus hanging from my nose, frozen tears in my eyes, and Sean Paul's Temperature ringing in my head.

8) How Divyesh can take so much liquor and still come out coherent while Andrew can can drunk on Schweppes still remains a mystery to me. If this goes on the "big and indian" argument might actually prove itself to be true.

9) Going out after an experience like that early in the morning is a bad idea. In fact, going out bright and early in the morning is a bad idea, which proves school to be a bad concept.

10) Getting paid $100 to fail an exam might actually be worth it, since the rest of the papers already promise embarassing results from yours truly.

disclaimer : This is purely satirical, do not take seriously. You have been warned.

Teach less, learn more backfires as teachers experience decline in health

Singapore - The current education system in Singapore will have to be remodeled, said Lo Mai Kai, Director of the Ministry of Education in Singapore, after a widespread epidemic affecting only teachers sparked a need for robots, computers and biscuits as substitutes.

"Due to the teaching less, we have realised that the students aren't actually learning more and that being irrational does indeed backfire at times," said Mai Kai, 45, who is in his fourty-fifth year of service. "Because of this, the academic standard of Singapore has dropped, causing depression among teachers everywhere, though I must stress that it is always the student's fault, and never the teacher's."

One school that has been badly affected in particular is That School Where All the Smart People Go(MJC, a completely inaccurate abbreviation). There, the dismal grades of students have cause a rapid decline of health in teachers, causing them to "Age more, enjoy less". In a recent survey, spa visits, facials, liposuction, makeup consumption and facial overhauls have all gone up as result of bad results from overzealous students. One of the teachers available for comment is Wanton Mee, the Head of Economics in MJC. "It's terrible,"she says."Half of my teachers have blown arteries marking the essays of our students. The other half have been locked in padded cells after laughing uncontrollably". Later investigations show that the English Literature papers and Economics papers were switched mysteriously, and everyone under suspect are coincidentally students as well.

Regarding the current scheme, Kang Kong, a year 2 student who takes Physics, Chemistry and Further Mathematics, with S papers in History, Chinese Literature, Economics and Social Studies, had this to say. "it's obvious that the system isn't working. The only students who benefit from this education system are the overly loud-mouthed and inquisitive students, who eventually become opposition candidates. The government is digging their own grave. By having an education system that fails to reward slacking, they are only taking away votes from those too lazy to oppose them. Why, if I ran for president and promised an education system where grades were proportionate to laziness, the president would be packing his bags now."

Regarding the new education system, Lo Mai Kai called on his deupty, Char Siew Pau, to answer queries. "The new education system will not require brains in any form," Said Siew Pau, who admitted that he was still "a little red", proving the inability of the education system to instill a good command of the English language, but this newspaper digresses. "Students will now have to undergo surgery that will make their head similar to a sponge for information, so that while not paying attention they can still absorb whatever is being taught, no matter how irrelevent and meaningless".

In a street interview my Channel NewthAthia, named so by Igotta Lisp, Chor Dai Dee, a truck driver, had this to say. "I thrived under the education system. But when I tried to apply the knowledge I learned at work in my first job as a basketball player, I got beaten up for being 'too clever'. I mean, all I did was try to calculate trajectory of the flight of the ball. It's not justified. I'm all for changing the education system if it produces such rowdy people," He said while sniffing a sticky substance and looking philosophical.

More updates on the new education system will be posted in the near future, and you know what that means. -Routers