This
is going to sound like a likely story. The author can imagine a half dozen
readers known to him raising their eye-brows while reading the following lines.
Ah yes! My my, they will think.
Young fellow in a pale lime, light green school uniform boards the No. 170 on Rochor Road this afternoon. Tousled hair, black-rimmed glasses, average label bag like a satchel. Sixteen one would have guessed. That was the thing: such a uniform on a junior student, in Preppy Singapore, one would not necessarily bat an eye possibly. Short-sleeved shirt, slacks both in the colour; shoes unsighted. Light lime green pastel such as in adulthood one almost never spies on either men or women. A kind of jinxed colour. The fairies in Midsummer Night's Dream a director might dress in such costume. When the lad was asked whether the school had a particular name for the colour he professed himself not very sure; in the end hesitantly offering "turquoise". (Gilding the lily; though of course turquoise would have been almost equally bizarre for a boy's school uniform.) For an old High School teacher the age and year level was the pertinent point. Was the lad Junior High? Another uncertainty in designation. In fact seventeen years of age; and at Tampines Junior College the same was worn by students sitting their O-levels—their final year of High School. Puberty some years back in the case of this lad. Almost of an age for military service, licensed killing in other parts of the world. Here he sat in clean lime green, ear-phones plugged, excluding the drab interior of the drab No. 170 and all the racket of the road-side construction. The young scamp was headed for prime real estate: Bukit Timah — Tin Hill; Billionaires Row if daddy was top of the pile. Unlikely in this case. Tampines was a fair way out in the north-east, not so far from Geylang Serai. No tie was something perhaps. Endured the grilling with perfect equanimity. Nice lad. Indeed fired off a question of his own in the short space between stops. What do they possibly imagine they are grooming here on the equator?
Front page chief item today of the newspaper notice of an educational reconfiguration which will take the emphasis away from content-based, examination assessed learning and realign for VUCA — the volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous—in order to prepare the young for contemporary challenges. One can only hold one's breath.
Young fellow in a pale lime, light green school uniform boards the No. 170 on Rochor Road this afternoon. Tousled hair, black-rimmed glasses, average label bag like a satchel. Sixteen one would have guessed. That was the thing: such a uniform on a junior student, in Preppy Singapore, one would not necessarily bat an eye possibly. Short-sleeved shirt, slacks both in the colour; shoes unsighted. Light lime green pastel such as in adulthood one almost never spies on either men or women. A kind of jinxed colour. The fairies in Midsummer Night's Dream a director might dress in such costume. When the lad was asked whether the school had a particular name for the colour he professed himself not very sure; in the end hesitantly offering "turquoise". (Gilding the lily; though of course turquoise would have been almost equally bizarre for a boy's school uniform.) For an old High School teacher the age and year level was the pertinent point. Was the lad Junior High? Another uncertainty in designation. In fact seventeen years of age; and at Tampines Junior College the same was worn by students sitting their O-levels—their final year of High School. Puberty some years back in the case of this lad. Almost of an age for military service, licensed killing in other parts of the world. Here he sat in clean lime green, ear-phones plugged, excluding the drab interior of the drab No. 170 and all the racket of the road-side construction. The young scamp was headed for prime real estate: Bukit Timah — Tin Hill; Billionaires Row if daddy was top of the pile. Unlikely in this case. Tampines was a fair way out in the north-east, not so far from Geylang Serai. No tie was something perhaps. Endured the grilling with perfect equanimity. Nice lad. Indeed fired off a question of his own in the short space between stops. What do they possibly imagine they are grooming here on the equator?
Front page chief item today of the newspaper notice of an educational reconfiguration which will take the emphasis away from content-based, examination assessed learning and realign for VUCA — the volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous—in order to prepare the young for contemporary challenges. One can only hold one's breath.
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