When do I catch a flu? Is it on a weekend when I can curl up in front of my keyboard and play World of Warcraft? Is it when I'm due to attend six hours of excruciatingly boring classes? Is it when I'm about to endure an arduous and malignant appointment that I can cancel, cackling with glee? (in between sneezes)
No.
I get sick the day before I have to present my research proposal.
My shoulders ache, my nose is running a mile, my head hurts, and my joints feel like someone's removed all my cartilage and ponked me with a pair of pliers.
This tops off an incredibly aggravating couple of days in general. While I am not by any definition very highly strung, events in school have unfolded in a manner which has left me shaking my head in disbelief and wishing intense, debilitating pain on those involved.
It's apparently way too much to hope that the average Malaysian Chinese uni student understands the concepts of courage and decency. Going behind someone else's back about things is intensely aggravating... to say the least.
What prevents me from giving them a piece of my mind is... decency, ironically. I certainly don't need more shit shoveled in my direction. The matters involved do not directly affect my grades, or else I would probably be less tolerant, but there is permanent damage involved in the relationships between people when deceit on this scale is involved.
I fear that I may be misjudging the situation somewhat. Some details are yet not entirely clear, and I'm fairly sure some of the people I'm closer to aren't involved, although I could be proven wrong. I don't want to be proven wrong; I like a lot of my classmates, and (prior to this incident) thought well of most of the others.
But... c'est la vie... People leave you out of the loop, or lie, or conspire against you, and somehow I expect to be surprised, as if a puppy just bit you. Sometimes the bite is poison.
On a positive note, I do wish to share with you my latest edition of the Semi-Daily Tube. You may not be a geek, but everyone loves a good lightsaber duel.
Ah... Violence.
6 comments:
This is the very reason I'm highly against vernacular education, espacially during a persons formulative years.
Sure, chinese is becoming a more widely used language and it is good to learn, and yes, chinese schools produce some very academically inclined people.
But they have the flaw where they produce some of the most defective human beings.
So it's not just me then? I'm not imagining things?
My problem with the situation stems mostly from the fact that previously I had a high opinion of most of them. Now that the damage is done, what is left is to sort wheat from chaff, which is taxing to say the least.
I have a friend who's going to a local uni, with most of the students coming from vernacular schools. To listen to her, most of them:
a. Do not pay attention in class
b. Depend on the teacher to spoonfeed
c. Do not know how to use the Internet even after it's been explained to them
d. relies on others to get things done. Excessively.
Sometimes vernacular ed isn't worth it. ><"
Surely there must be a reason why this happens. It obviously goes without saying that not all chinese ed people are like this, but why is it the stereotype exists?
The Chinese script, unlike the Roman script we use for English or Malay, has a VERY complicated character set.
It is but a giant collection of symbols and unlike English, you can't pronounce a Chinese word if you don't recognise the symbol.
Therefore it was deduced that the most effective way to teach someone mandarin is via the 3Rs, Reading, Repeating and Regurgitating. Following that, the line of reasoning goes "If Reading, Repeating and Regurgitating is good for teaching the language, it must be good for teaching everything else.
So, as Oscar Wilde put it, "He possessed a talent for quotations, which is a passable substitute for wit". You get a people that's very knowledgeable, but not very bright.
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