Wednesday, May 31, 2006
Mini-Update
Apologies to one and all for the once-again late update. I know I was supposed to quit a month ago and free up bucketloads of time to have barrelfuls of fun, but Synovate decided to give me a project that I could work on from home, three days a week, entering office on the other two. The pay's still the same, so why the hell would I decline?Anyway.
Firstly, I want to announce that I've decided to remain in Malaysia for the next three years of my life to complete my university degree. It's not that my application was rejected (on the contrary, I got into NUS's Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences), but somehow I see myself liable to repeat the same mistakes that I've made in JC, i.e. slacking too much. The second reason is that, although I hate to admit it, Singaporeans are just way too competitive. Even if I did put in my 110% effort, there are thousands of others in that little island-country who are just as, if not far more, hardworking than I am. Worse still, those people probably have good track records running for them, while my success(es) can so far be attributed to sheer, dumb luck. How else can you explain a distinction and three credits for A-levels when all I've ever managed were passes? Also, I've only passed two Chemistry tests, as well as one miserable Add-Maths paper before scoring A1's for both in SPM.
It's dumb luck, I tell you! In fact, I was even hoping that Dumb Luck would be kind enough to grant me my AABB, but the reality was that Singapore's JC-level education bell-curve was not as skewed as the Malaysian one. Over here, rumours were flying that 10 out of 100 marks was enough to get you passes in the SPM Add-Maths paper, thanks to the thousands of rural folk who had to do more important things like supporting families instead of studying. In Singapore, the academically-disinclined had already been culled from the system, leaving only the cream of the crop in JCs (of course, that didn't stop some Singaporeans from underperforming, but that's not my point).
Also, there's the case of the three-year bond. I'm not particular about the length of the bond, but I do know that almost everyone who had earned foreign dollars will never want to go home to work locally. I don't want to imagine myself ending up in Singapore for the rest of my life.
Hence, after much brooding over the matter, I've decided to enroll in Monash University Malaysia instead. This way, I'm constantly under the scrutinous eyes of my parents, who I can expect to nag at me whenever I step out of line. Weird, huh? I'm probably the only person I know who's rejecting an acceptance to a University overseas so he could have his parents admonish him. But that's not the only reason, though. One problem I encountered in Singapore was the lack of a goal. Back there, I had none of those "I want to get into Harvard" kind of drive. Monash has an attractive scholarship program which rewards people who maintain good average grades... I could use a goal like that.
