Zipper Day/Cinco De Mayo (Texas)
2004-04-29 @ 9:40 p.m.

Must recount the hilarious incident that occurred today. We were watching the second half of Pleasantville. It's this show that came out last century, which I wanted to record but somehow forgot to. Anyway, I love it! The motif of colour is clever. Colour becomes a symbol of acceptance of change, that Pleasantville cannot remain as it is. It's pretty funny that for most of the teenagers, sex is what brings about this awareness and acceptance of change. You should all go and watch it the movie. Damn, it is so good! You look at Pleasantville, then you look at Singapore, and then you start to freak out. We are that close to becoming Pleasantville. Mr Purvis is right about one thing. (He's right about a lot of things if you ask me, but this is the one that he's definitely right about.) Singaporeans need a sense of humour, satirical humour. Do them a world of good, especially our politicians who are so damn uptight.

It was the second half of our GP tutorial, so Mr Purvis brought us to join a bunch of other classes to view the second half of Pleasantville. At 3.10 pm, we start looking at each other, wondering if we should leave for PE. It's a single period, so it's rather pointless, but we can't just absent ourselves. Another teacher tells us that Mr Purvis has gone to speak to the PE department. If he comes back, we can stay. If he doesn't come back, we have to go. Now, does that strike you as illogical? If he doesn't come back, how the heck are we supposed to know we've got to leave? GP teachers can be strangely irrational at times. So we leave at 3.20 pm, prodded by the teacher's conscience (and only some of ours). What sight do we behold as we walk out? Mr Purvis, walking back to tell us that we can stay, but we'll have to make up the PE lesson tomorrow. Irony! So we elected not to go back in to avoid being disruptive, and instead went for a 15 minute PE session. I'm going to fail NAPFA again. There's tests in May, June, July and August, so then again I might eventually pass.

Pass I will, for my lecture test at least. Quite happy, although I feel dumb for not being able to do the first two questions. Oh well, one can't have everything I suppose. I'm elated, by the way, because I got back my Oliver Twist piece today. It's a personal thing really, but I refuse to delude myself into thinking that I'm that good, a "golden boy" as my classmate put it, I forget who it was. Perhaps I am better than what I was told, or maybe I've improved, or maybe I'm third time lucky. No matter. There's another piece to be done for Mr Purvis, plus an extract from Antony & Cleopatra for Ms Lim. Work is beginning to build up, but I remain relatively unconcerned. I worked it out a while back. No sense in getting worried over what you know you'll eventually get done. Far better to be "a child o'th'time", and live your life. There's more to it than grades. Like chilling. Like singing. Like merry-making. Like loving.