“Diary of a Reformed Elitist” has been making its rounds on the internet and the comments from other Singaporeans makes for required reading, if only to appreciate the diversity of opinions held towards this particularly touchy issue. But no doubt, there is definitely a feeling of divide and the subtle differences in how one experiences and approaches life that come with being seen as “elite”.

Conversations with Cabbies

It was right after Grad Night; a group of us lived in the same area and it was close to midnight, so we shared a cab. Relieved at finally getting a cabbie who went in that direction, we were happy to humour the chatty driver. He asked us how old we were and we said Secondary 4, just celebrating our graduation. He asked us if we had just taken our O levels and we said yes but didn’t say only for Higher Mother Tongue – you don’t have to take that in a through-train system. Then he asked us which school we were from.

The brief silence that followed affirmed to me the idea that for all the incidents others might have caused, a large number of students are almost apologetic for coming from such schools. That’s because despite how much or little you may know about others outside of school, there’s this awareness that for every extra dollar that is invested in the “cream of the crop” as per meritocracy, many others don’t get that dollar.

It’s not so much the idea of “(landing) on earth from your ivory towers and (learning) some ‘life lessons’ from the poor commoners” as it is a genuine worry that for all that is said for meritocracy, it is not exactly a fair system. And that we are benefiting from that system.

Which explains the silence whenever this perennial question is asked. A friend of mine even once said “Bishan Secondary” (it doesn’t exist) to avoid the issue. Whether it be naive contrition or genuine concern, this discomfort with flaunting our school or other signs of being “premier” have been drilled into us from a lifetime of lectures on not being elitist, of “the whole other world out there” – of how grateful we should be to be so lucky. A teacher of mine once half-jokingly said that of all things her students feared the most, it was not failing the exams or losing a competition, but being seen as elitist.

In the end we told him our school, and the taxi driver rather considerately drove the conversation towards his neighbor who studied far too hard to get into a top school, but I think we felt a common understanding regarding that momentary uncomfortable silence.

Still, I prefer chatty cabbies.

“Oft Unwitting Elitism”

It’s my favourite phrase from “diary of a reformed elitist” because that’s basically the problem – as seen above, most don’t consciously choose to be elitist. They don’t set out to be haughty or nasty to others because that’s not how most people are like. It’s more about how a system that allows people to easily ensconce themselves into bubbles leads to a shocking lack of sensitivity. You know the drill: kindergarten, a “branded” primary school, Gifted Education, a “premier” secondary school, some “branded” tuition in between, through train (no O levels) and then you’re in a good university and pretty much set for the rest of your working life. Oh and throw in a scholarship for good measure.

It’s definitely not a wrong or shameful thing to choose to take the path that allows you to achieve your best. But such a smooth path makes it very easy for a person to live most of life in a bubble, well-meaning but ignorant, and thus dismissive, of others who might not have benefited from or fit into such a system. Furthermore, while it may seem to be a stereotype, only those who are better-off will be well-positioned to succeed early and thus build on that success. If you get into a kindergarten, you will do better in primary school. If you do better there, you can get into a better secondary school and so on. The opposite is also possible. An observation was made that in the past, you’d only see one or two Mercedes or BMWs among the vehicles used by the few parents who drove their kids to my school, but now the number has increased quite considerably.

Again, it is not a crime to be born into a rich family or do better in school – that would be making the same mistake as assuming poor people are poor because they don’t work hard enough. It’s only that there is a greater risk of insensitivity and ignorance of “the world out there”.

Up till most of my Primary School days, I lived in a HDB flat. It was located near a CC and a huge playground where we could play with all the other kids from the area. During the moon cake festival we would get those paper lanterns and light them with matches, and when we got bored we would get a stack of leaflets from the little troughs in front of the letterboxes and light them. Back then the playground still had sandpits, too. Before going for Gifted Education I went to a neighbourhood Primary School that had only been set up about three years before. And I walked because it was nearby. My brother would play basketball with the rest of the bigger boys from the area. I tell this not to flash my “local” credentials but because it shows how easily things could’ve turned out differently; after going Gifted, I noticed a marked change in the sort of financial background, experience and outlook I came to expect. And I realised if not for these years, I would never have understood really what it’s like. In short, I got a wider experience.

On one of my recent cycling trips, I visited the old playground. They replaced the sandpit with rubber!

Lack of experience breeds ignorance, and that creates such “oft unwitting elitism”.

Coming to Terms with being “Elite”

So if one cannot get such an experience naturally, the next best method would be actually going out to get such an experience yourself. A great channel for this would be through CIP, but as I’ve written about before, it’s shockingly easy to remain in a bubble, yet rack up hundreds of CIP hours. While the rationale and goals of CIP are very well founded, CIP hours are not as restricted in their provenance or rationale.

One particularly meaningful CIP we had in school, though, was a home refurbishment project for 1-room flats.

Recently, I met a teacher from another secondary school as part of a project. It was not even a “CIP” project, even if our goal was helping the community, because we did not get approval from our school and operated it independently. So no CIP hours.

It was the day when the O Level results were released, so (as mentioned earlier) we had just gotten our results for Higher Mother Tongue. I was not exactly satisfied by my result, but oh well. I mentioned this to the teacher as a way of conversation (“So you were busy with O level results today too, right?”) and he replied, while describing the status of the school, “not one student got an A1 today”. Many were in Normal Academic or Technical stream, students which he actually liked to teach because while they may had have to work much harder to score, they were also pleasant and eager to learn. Furthermore, some might have other problems at home – they would have to sleep in the corridor as there was not enough space in one-room flats, and there were no study rooms.

I won’t disclose any more, but needless to say we walked away very humbled and hopefully more aware. It was an important conversation because it also made me realise, despite it being only a few years since before I joined Gifted Education and the so-called “elite” track, how much less sensitive I had become to “the world out there”.

And with that the determination that while there is no shame in pursuing my goals and ambitions, all the while I have to keep searching for a way to sensitize myself – CIP hours or not.

And that’s how I’m coming to terms with being “elite” – not elite in the sense of being elitist or ignorant about others, but elite in that for better or worse I am going to aim to be the best, and that often entails being labelled an “elite”, depending on your definition of success. Because as much as I am inadvertently taken away from more grounded realities, I will have to make it back there through my own effort.

And the next time I am asked which school I am from, I definitely won’t hesitate to answer.

Do share and comment, thanks!

Also, not sleeping for 24 hours on the first day of 2012. A few weeks before the countdown I said I wanted to see the first sunrise of the new year, and with a motley crew of fellow slightly off-kilter people we did it. Hailing taxis in the middle of almost-nowhere, playing cards at macdonalds for hours on a diet of twisty fries and cola, buying the morning’s zaobao newspaper for want of a place to sit on a beach – we did it. We were looking for stars among the lights of passing planes (and Borneo -Borneo is not to the East by the way- among ship lights), laid back and talked, and then the sky began to brighten. We did it.

East Coast 6.47 am

Singapore's sky is perennially cloudy and sqr was complaining very loudly (yes qr) that it wouldn't happen, but we were blessed that day.

The next few hours were a blur of breakfast with one of the grassroots guys and  wandering around lost around East Coast before giving up and hailing a cab home. I was out in Sentosa by evening again with company.

Guess why?

Spot the star!

It may seem a little silly setting such great store by random dates and times – it could’ve been any other day’s sunrise and sunset without looking any different – but I guess my obsession with it was not so much getting something out of it, but just doing it. If you ever expect to get a great revelation or a particularly wonderful year out of simply watching the sun go up and down on the first day of a year on the calendar, don’t hold your breath. But it had been a stressful few weeks heading up to countdown and maybe I needed to get it all out. Maybe I wanted to see if I could do it. Maybe I needed to see something beyond all the work and details of daily life – to spend 24 hours looking at the sky. None of these are probably the reasons but I guess I don’t need a reason to do these sorts of things.   In the end, you just have to stop worrying about why when how and just count the stars and watch a sunrise.

No matter whether it has been a terrible 24 hours, a wonderful 24 hours, or 24 hours of nothing, in the end everyday the sun goes up; the sun goes down. The moon goes up and down. The stars come out and then fade away. Life goes on and all that is needed is to appreciate the moment.

***

Stressful as it was, the days leading up to 2011 have been wonderful – I’m seen enough years (16? Or less?) to know no one year can be confirmed to be great, but I’ve done what I’ve wanted and I know I’ll be fine.

Here’s to 2012 and survive a new year, buddy

Don’t worry about the Mayans. I would know. My countdown party was Mayan themed.

Last nights are always so strange; you’re packing and meanwhile you’re wondering what you’ll miss – or what will be missed about you – so you put on a little Hisaishi and Sibelius but the music doesn’t help. You take a look out the window for a last look at the city and then you’re sitting between a man who drinks too much beer and a woman who speaks too little English when a horizontal rainbow rises behind Mount Fuji until you’re home and you’re wondering if there was any difference in the end.

Not my most lyrical, but certainly the most recent.

Woke up in a strange room today and wondered where the hell I was. Then I got up and repainted it.—
Eugene Lim (@eugenelimzw) December 12, 2011

Yes, I really did. Rose white.

Planning for a cycling trip! YES I KNOW ITS PLANNING but buying bikes is a very time-consuming and expensive affair; I've got a mountain bike but a folding bike is more convenient. Luckily a nice uncle is lending his

Yes, pretty ridiculous but its not just because I got sick of teachers saying I was skinny - I just wanted to see if I could do it. Going strong for two weeks already, if you can call it that.. One downside is eating more meat - I went veg for about a year (thus skinniness) and I really don't like the taste of it.

Finally watched an NC16 movie that was worth it. Twice! It deserves its cult hit status, and I love just the way the story flows – you know where its going, where it ends, but the process of walking and moving and loving is so beautiful you forget there is an end until you reach it. And isn’t that how first loves are supposed to be? Watched 2 more movies also, Tintin and Happy Feet 2, but this was the highlight.

Went to the Titanic exhibition at the Artscience Museum with a friend.. the Marina Bay area + Sentosa is really scenic nowadays, you get the feeling Singapore is really upping the game tourism wise - world class. Explored the East/South side of Singapore on a few occasions too.

And a few more – birthdays, SITEX, staying at Resorts World.. can’t believe it’s been only less than two weeks since Os. Oh and selling tickets at the HDBs with Cool People.

And finally I’m flying off to New York tomorrow for two weeks!! Going to be an immersion programme at Dalton School and staying at a host family’s house in Manhattan. I feel pretty nervous staying at someone’s house like that, but they seem really nice from the email they sent.

Alright so back on topic, I’ve mentioned the website before: http://www.snotm.com/, abbreviated from Stuff No One Told Me, and it’s very similar in theme and style to Things We Forget, but the art style is a gem. And it has wonderful long form comics like these at times:

There's no punchline or soundbite, no powerful quote, but the meandering wistfulness ties it all together on its own. Beautiful.

And I realised that yes there are essential truths in our life that guide how people act, or how things play out – the human condition as Lit students would remember – and my time this year has uncovered so many of these truths. Maybe being a “student leader” forces me to work with more types of people or be exposed to different situations, making discovering these truths easier, but I like to think it doesn’t matter where, what or who you are – you just need to be sensitive to the way people live, how people act and yourself. There’s no real word I can find to describe it (“metacognition”; “enlightenment”; “empathy” – people have tried) – all I know its a sort of intuition and curiosity that drives you to these truths.

And the wonderful thing is these are truths not models or hierarchies or theories, all of which are simply means to the end of uncovering truths about humanity or life one way or another. Truths are truths, and that’s where the buck stops. No more searching or decoding, just knowledge.

So I guess so far as a student, maybe I’ve found some things that have struck me as being close to the truth – rules that guide how one acts or reacts – and here they are:

1. No one owes you any vindication.

It’s a timeless situation: you know you’re in the right, or you feel someone is screwed up or has a selfish agenda – you deserve to win, or at the very least the one with the wrong morals/ideas/personality doesn’t deserve to win. They’re hypocrites, liars, fakes. And believe me, they can be found in any line of work, at any age. It’s all about a sense of justice. This came up while talking with Arjun over coffee: I asked him if he thought the “bad guys” would win in a certain context.

“Yeah, of course.”

I was pretty angry when I heard that. I played with toy soldiers when I was in kindergarten, and the good guys (green ones) always won.

Or Pikachu and Ash or the Power Rangers or the Justice League. You get it right? That the good guys win, not that I watched too much TV as a kid.

But I had asked the question precisely because I knew something was wrong with such a belief – a suspicion gained from experience. Yes, we all grow up and find out about the bad guys in the world, but I think even deep down we always believe the good guys will win. It’s the basis of goodness.

Don’t get distracted by the awesomeness. Anyway, you get from zero to hero in less than five minutes. A hero gets knocked down, but maybe in an episode plus at best he gets back up and trashes the bad guy. Something like that. And we get away with the belief that fighting for what we believe is good, to “beat the bad guys”, is much easier than it takes.

All it needs is for us to be a “good guy” to win.

And that’s the farthest from the truth. It’s fantasy. If being a good guy was all it took, the world would be perfect. No wars, no suffering. Just goodness.

But bad guys exist because good guys don’t fight them.

All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.

And that’s when I realised the truth of it. I’ve come across enough people who, in the belief that they are the good guys, get frustrated because things aren’t going their way, because the bad guy is a better speaker or manipulator, because they aren’t winning. All they need to realise is that they have to fight to even have a chance to win. Simple common sense, but you can read all the unhappy posts and vitriol online about one injustice or another, even as the writer slouches behind a screen, to know not enough people know it.

No one owes you any vindication, even if you believe you are in the right. You have to fight –  and then we have another dilemma altogether.

2. If you really believe in it, you’re willing to lose for it

Most people have the values in the right place – they know it’s wrong to lie, to cheat, and say they’re willing to stick by them. So when you go up against the “bad guy”, who likely does all that, it’s painful to realise the one who cheats and lies wins. A lot. Which explains why Arjun said what he did.

Unfortunately, that’s the truth, at least part of it. Sticking to the truth is a leap of faith; because you believe the other person is also saying the truth, you are most vulnerable to the one who lies. You just need one person to resort to “evil” and he has the immediate advantage. It’s hard to fight rumours or lies because of this. And in order to fight back, to win, it’s tempting to use the same methods.

Battle not with monsters lest ye become a monster; and if you gaze into the abyss the abyss gazes into you.

Another pithy quote for you! But that’s the danger with choosing to fight – the second stage of the battle. You know you’re in the right, so you choose to challenge the bad guy for it. Now it’s a test of your belief as to whether you are willing to resort to “bad guy” tactics to win in the name of your belief. Sadly, in doing so you end up trampling on your beliefs in the first place.

Realpolitik and pragmatism are all magic words to whisk you out of that dilemma, but really they are false solutions – in the end, you still go against what you stand for. But perhaps one would be willing to do so if his belief was not so much in “truth” or “good”, but rather “the greater good”. So in the end, you have to choose what you believe in carefully. And if you claim you really believe in it, you’re willing to lose if winning means having to go against it.

3. Not everyone’s morality is the same

It’s a pretty common experience for those who have been bullied or targeted by “bad guys”; at one point or another, you try to open your heart and appeal to his/her morality. This stems from the belief that everyone, deep down inside, knows the difference between right and wrong, and his/her evil actions are simply something like a cry for help, or arising from some confusion. He’s bullying me because he’s secretly insecure. She’s gossiping because she’s scared of being unaccepted. Something like that, I’m not that experienced.

But basically, we pin the reason for someone’s evil actions on anything but he/she is immoral. We want to believe that human nature is good. Sometimes, yes, someone acts out of insecurity or confusion. But believing that everyone is the same in terms of morality only opens you up to a world of hurt and pain when you encounter those who have been taught the other way.

It doesn’t matter whether human nature is inherently good or bad. Just as people can be educated to overcome their base evil human nature, if human nature is inherently good, people can teach themselves to go all the other way too. And it’s not our fault they are that way.

We need to give more credence to our gut inclinations and less to the dominant view that everyone was really a frightened, insecure child underneath, striving for love and protecting themselves from harm in the only ways they knew how.

If you’ve met manipulative people before, this quote came from a book/blog all about that topic by a psychologist.

Sometimes its hard to believe, but when it comes all the way down to it, there are such things as evil people in this world.

***

Okay wow, this post has been 2 hours in the making and I’m glad to have gotten it all out in one sitting. Maybe the stuff I learned and shared here may not be all that accurate or applicable to everyone, but it is to me. If there’s other stuff no one told you but you learned anyway, share below. Or tell me if there’s a problem with any of the three “stuffs” I put here. There’s certainly a lot more truths to discover out there.

I’m off to NYC now peeps. Host family has wifi so suannage is in order for the next 2 weeks. Also cause I have to write a blog portfolio about it.

One time or another, we wish for something that we don’t have; to be someplace we aren’t at; for some time that isn’t now. It’s a human condition to live in the future, to keep walking and walking until we turn back and see how far we’ve come. We believe that today is just tomorrow’s yesterday, so that’s all we have – what has happened and what will happen. But what we’re really missing is what is, what’s here, what’s now.

The thank you notes have been written, the words needed to be said spoken, the unfinished jobs completed – so I haven’t got much left to put here unfortunately! What I do have are photos – lots of them – so here are a few good ones.

It's easy to get boys to forgive you for not being at the last History lesson of the year if you bake cake. Just make sure it's chocolate.

Inspired by http://www.snotm.com/ - a wonderful webcomic with pretty good advice sometimes - and thingsweforget, I tried to draw seriously for the first time since Primary School. Well, at least I managed to draw.

I may not be able to draw seriously, but I CAN PHOTOSHOP SERIOUSLY.

"Ha? Ask the batch to come down during a free period? For something unofficial? Hard lah. Collect money also cannot."

"We can one. Just try then see how."

So we put it on a puzzle and the last missing piece was our Year Head. It went really really well. Just that the puzzle was manufactured by a dodgy company that operated out of a HDB apartment. On the 7th floor. The block's lift only stopped every 5th floor.

For LitRA farewell tea - we talked about Pokemon, Powerpuff Girls and Yugioh cards. Also religion, the meaning of life and dealing with evil. We did not talk about literature.

Complimentary grad night photo. Our batch is awesome. And also handsome. Did I mention it's my batch?

Seriously though, graduating in RI is pretty strange – we even had to fight to let grad night be called grad night. Because it’s *one school* now and even before that graduating just meant walking across the bridge between the two schools. So looking at the #raff11es hastag trending and friends from other schools talking seriously about graduation, it still felt really distant.

But of course it was only by the time everything was all over that I realized that I shouldn’t have been worrying about how graduation would be like, or what I would miss; only about enjoying every single last second of my time as a Sec 4.

We all — in the end — die in medias res. In the middle of a story. Of many stories. – A Sister’s Eulogy (for Steve Jobs)

That’s why I love stories – not because they’re an escape, not because of the aesthetic use of words, but because good stories speak certain truths about life – a good story is life itself. And the act of creating a story is going back to reconnect with this truth that we already know, just that life’s gone and covered it all up. I like writing “essays” here to cut through all these stories to get to the truth – sometimes it works, sometimes it just goes a bit further from the truth. So today’s just two stories on two pretty disconnected things I’ve come across recently from things friends have written: student leadership and Singaporean literature. They remain stories because an essay of sorts seemed like too blunt an instrument to cut to the truths they hold to me; I hope you’ll get an idea of the meaning behind them too. They’re written from memory, but the big parts are pretty much as I remember them to be.

A Story on Leadership

We started running the moment we were out of the gate (we had never used the RJ entrance before but the guards basically ignored us) - unseasonable rain clouds were already hanging low. It was lunchtime, and we weren’t supposed to be out of school yet – but we didn’t know that (believe it). We were a motley crew of Sec One kids sprinting down the pavement and the iPhone 3G hadn’t been released yet, so that meant navigating by road signs.

The path down Jalan Pemimpin was longer than we expected, but we found the “factory” complex in the end.

We entered via the loading bay which was all rust, huge trucks and more security guards (and a guard dog – who all basically ignored us). The cargo lift only stopped at level 3, so that’s where we got off.

The lady had gotten our email in advance and we rushed through the order – ten minutes before science started. We dropped a coin fumbling with all the notes, then grabbed a box each and started running the moment we were out of the shop – apparently the lady was a parent of a senior (maybe a PSL!).

Then we turned a corner and a duo of those seniors stared back at us absentmindedly – cigarettes still lit. They even had their uniforms on. Looking at them was one smooth motion – no one caught their eyes, but we all saw.

And before we knew it we were five minutes late for science, drenched but forgiven – “out looking for you, ma’m.”

We gave out the class T-shirts after science – they were saved from the rain by plastic wrapping – and for the moment we forgot about the seniors.

A Story on Singaporean Literature

I had read The Giver and annotated “every single page!” of A Wrinkle in Time, as well as making sure others knew all about it, so it seemed natural to attend “A Discussion on Singaporean Literature” when the PA system advertised it at the National Library.

It may seem weird, but it was about 5 years back and the so-called “Singaporean Literature” scene was even more undeveloped then. A few current famous names in the scene attracted a small gathering of less than fifteen at the multipurpose room back then. At least a familiar beard stood out.

Anyway, a question from an aspiring writer, an aspiring publisher and an aspiring investor afterwards, I was feeling brave and literary so I raised my hand and said that I thought literature seemed only accessible to those who got “higher education”; otherwise it was just textbooks and grammar exercises. So was Singaporean literature being elitist?

That woke up another famous name in literature, and for about ten minutes afterwards we heard about how he had grown up in a broken family – his brother/father in jail – but somehow somewhere he had found a bookshop and started reading and writing poetry, that he made the effort to get interested, that despite being poor and from a bad background he had made it. So that was that about your “higher education” point.

Even back then, I didn’t feel my question had been answered in full – or even appropriately.

Anyway, after one of the exams I went to Macs for lunch. Nothing special – lunch hour, lunch crowd, McValue lunch. There was almost no seats left, so I counted myself lucky when I spotted one. Well, there was another man seated at the other side of the long table but I asked if I could sit down and he said yes. I thought it was strange that nobody else was grabbing the rest of the seats along the table. Then I realized one of the staff was standing beside the man feeding him. It was like a veil being ripped away, and suddenly everything became glaringly obvious – the spasms, the hunched back, the off-white shirt that slipped off one shoulder – he was probably a man with cerebral palsy, or some similar disability. Either way, I felt very self-conscious; another group sat down beside me for a while, but walked away not long after to another table. I still wonder if I would’ve done the same if I hadn’t already started eating when I “saw” him.

It made me wonder again about the problem of charity and humanity – and how those two are only similar, but not equal, things. It reminded me about how we go about doing charity without any humanity at all and about more recent stories of so-called “Raffles Diploma slu(g)s” (it’s censored). More specifically, the diploma for Community and Citizenship. Taken on its own, it’s a very good thing – if a student is already involved in community and citizenship, he/she would easily fulfill the criteria anyway. Unfortunately (unsurprisingly?), it becomes a paper chase when students see it as the be-all and end-all, the main point of service, instead of something meant to recognize what they should be doing even without the Raffles Diploma in mind anyway. It takes a remarkable act of doublethink to write a personal statement about one’s interest and personal growth in a project that was started for the sake of the diploma.

It reminds me a little bit about the Young Scientist badges we used to collect in Primary School. To this day, I still don't aim to be an entomologist, but I liked collecting bugs in the meantime.

Now, perhaps it wouldn’t be that bad if the project was meaningful and effective. Working with Year 3 RESL groups this year, a number didn’t sign up for RESL in the first place, but those guys turned out to be the most involved afterwards. They found meaning in what they did. We can’t say everybody who’s aiming for Raffles Diploma is cynically exploiting the system; we can’t say people putting in time and effort to help others is a bad thing either. Furthermore, why reject an olive branch when you can just put in the effort to achieve it? In fact, if a person goes in for the sake of Raffles Diploma but finds meaning in service in the midst of working towards it, that’s wonderful.

“It’s a good idea… it will be a fledgling programme that’s ultimately a social experiment, so it will need to have proper performance indicators. And you need to ensure that the majority benefits from it.” – From CNA

But one of the risks of an experiment is that, again, service is not seen as an end by itself – it is just a challenge you have to overcome to attain a more material sort of reward. More importantly, beneficiaries – the less fortunate, the disabled, the needy – of such service project become seen as less than what they are, and are instead as part of this challenge.

And an important part of humanity, is simply seeing others as fellow human beings – nothing more, nothing less. An extreme case of what happens when you don’t have humanity should be pretty familiar to all of us.

It is not the Raffles Diploma that causes these kinds of things. It’s the mentality that leads people to abuse it that does. Again, it’s an extreme case, but it’s a pretty good example of what happens. We all know what it is – kiasuism, individualism, selfishness – and it leads to a lack of humanity.

In a time when “friends” number in the hundreds or Facebook just a click away and you can wave off charity by donating some cash online, it’s little wonder we are starved of humanity. I don’t think the MacDonalds’ incident or Raffles Diploma are really good examples to bring out this point, but it’s the closest to home. A person’s intent may not seem all that important as long as people benefit, but it’s true that intent does trickle down to one’s actions one way or another, and I think that makes a big difference.

*****

Well, I’m not sick of writing non-fiction anymore, but I appreciate the free time to read anyway.

It doesn’t count if it’s a mock paper!

And besides, can you call it a mock paper if it’s after the mock paper (prelims) and the EOYs?

Well, we’ll find something to call it in the end.

Read: There’s a HMT mock paper tomorrow. The day after the end of the EOYs. Checking in a bit later, then.

1. The Marquee, Keppel Island.
2. Make-A-Wish Foundation.
3. 7.30 PM.
4. Be there.
5. In blazers.

The taxi driver didn’t even know where The Marquee was. We guessed it was a shopping mall, but he dropped us off at Keppel Bay Towers instead. Luckily, though, the receptionist there knew where Keppel Island was and we started off in that direction, hoping The Marquee would be easy to spot.

I remember it was a little surreal – in the middle of ululand, a group of about 10 boys trudging away from the last skyscraping sign of civilization that was Keppel Towers through cement footpaths bounded by lallang.

I did say it was a little surreal.

Anyway, we reached a bridge that overlooked a small marina filled with yachts.

Well, excuse me for not recognizing where the heck I was.

It was all very nice and pretty, but what sort of service were we going to have to do for Make-A-Wish Foundation kids on an island? With yachts no less. Luckily, there were strains of music coming from up ahead and we soon found The Marquee.

Guess what? The Marquee wasn’t a mall. It was literally a marquee.

Imagine this, but about ten times bigger. And looking like a castle.

So maybe we RI boys had been a little slow to realize that, but who expects to be doing CIP in a marquee on an island attached to the mainland with a footbridge? And a marquee shaped like a castle for heaven’s sake.

Well, the marquee (uncapitalized now, thanks) wasn’t the only attraction. There were lots of cars coming in, and they didn’t look too far off from the cars that were on display.

Well, not the buggy.

Turns out we were at Make-A-Wish Foundation’s Wish Ball, a sort of charity ball/dinner that was themed around castles. Because castles feature in a lot of wishes, apparently! Well, that was still fine. We took a few photos of the cars, then we found the person in charge – and he directed us to our table inside the marquee and told us to enjoy ourselves.

Which was all very fine, but -

“So, where are the children?”

His face look a little torn between laughter and confusion for a bit then -

“This ball isn’t for the children. You were sponsored to come here for today.”

Whether it was a miscommunication or misunderstanding, it turned out we wouldn’t be doing any service that day. It was a bit like a learning journey, except that our seats each cost about a thousand dollars, and we spent the rest of our time eating salmon, gold painted fish paste (it tastes like chicken) and tiny food in huge plates. We met the sort of people we only saw in the Life! section of the Straits Times (there’s a cocktail circuit section once in a while) and watched as limited-edition watches and cosmetic packages were auctioned off in excess of at least fifty thousand dollars.

Of course, all for charity.

It was an experience of a lifetime and I’m glad I had a chance to see something like that (I doubt I’ll ever be invited to such a posh ball again in my lifetime).

But what strikes me most from this experience two years ago was the earnest question: “So where are the children?”

We had come expecting to do some sort of service, maybe accompanying children for dinner (not advised for such a short time, by the way) or helping serve food. Instead we got to attend a ball with the Dim Sum Dollies as the opening number.

Not wrong in any way – the participants probably had a lot of fun, and Make-A-Wish probably got a lot in donations – but it was a strange feeling that perhaps it was in the midst of this glitz and glamour that people actually benefited more. That year (Secondary 2), I had done a batch CIP with Viriya in the most conventional manner possible – flag day. In about four hours in the open, swallowing shyness to approach complete strangers for donations at about a 20% success rate, I got about $20? Multiply that by about 400 in the batch and you get $8000 for charity. I think the starting bid for one of the watches at the Wish Ball was $20,000. It rose in increments of $10,000.

I wondered the same thing again this year, when my batch was doing Home Creation, essentially helping clean/renovate the homes of low-income Singaporeans. Needless to say it was much harder work than sitting down and eating dinner.

And if you asked for water, you got it in a pail.

As we worked from unit to unit, we came across an old man who had requested for a small table (the kind that’s small enough for you to put a lamp on top of) during needs analysis. We didn’t have the table – there hadn’t been funding and we hadn’t guaranteed it would be funded – but we felt sorry for him, he looked so disappointed. So we helped fold up his wheelchair and help him onto his chair as we cleaned up the rest of his house. He seemed happier after that, but I couldn’t keep wondering if he would be even happier if he had just gotten his table instead.

I know it all sounds pretty depressing, but don’t we always ask what would happen if every billionaire in the world did something for others? If they gave a tiny fraction of their wealth, they’d help a lot more people than you or I could with a tiny fraction of our wealth. What we can do is only so much.

But that would be pretty irresponsible, wouldn’t it.

There was another difference (other than amount of money involved) between Home Creation and the Wish Ball – I felt happier working in Home Creation. Maybe it was because I was able to see who I was helping, or maybe it was because I didn’t have to wear a blazer, but it was probably because I felt I was helping. The old man felt happier because I cleaned his room, even if he didn’t get his table. Make-A-Wish got lots of donations, but it didn’t matter if I was there eating caviar or not.

It’s a little selfish, maybe, but that’s the whole point of a Community Involvement Programme, isn’t it? If the government wanted to help the community as much as it could they could probably just do it themselves. They’d probably even get more efficient helpers by hiring them. But the point is moving from feeling like you’re helping to knowing you can help. And that only comes from a little inefficiency on our part at first. Yeah CIP’s become a paper chase in most places and sometimes even the most ridiculous things count as CIP, but it’s heart is in the right place. We only need to find it again.

Charity/Service comes in many forms, and most times people prefer it to be monetary – anecdotal stories tell of NGOs turning down offers for hands-on service in favor of money, so “volunteers” end up putting the bulk of their time and effort into finding ways to earn more money for charity, rather than actually going down and seeing the people they’re helping. But it’s the difference between what you want and what they need, sometimes.

How many street sales, flag days and charity concerts have we seen and done before? They all help, sure, but never mistake such second-hand service as what’s all you need to do. The needy may get the money, but we don’t grow as a person and that’s just robbing ourselves. We’ll buy charity concert tickets but not reach out and help out the bullied kid, or stand up and give up our seats for someone who needs it, 报章报道/cliched composition style, or just get down on our knees and help who needs to be helped right in front of us. We’re distancing ourselves from real service.

All very melodramatic – but it doesn’t take a huge hands-on activity like home creation or large sacrifice on our part to start realizing this; it’s a lot about a sense of fulfillment.

Maybe all it takes is a slight sense of discomfort – of not helping - to ask something like: “So, where are the children?”