The 1998 Series (Part One).

After “Reply 1997”, it seems that those old memories would keep rushing back, and I find myself stopping to think about those days, and I think it might be interesting for me (and hopefully for you too) to write a little about those days. As I have always said, my happiest studying days were that 2 years in junior college, and also that 4 and a half years in university. For my years in university, you can always refer back to the entries from 2002 to 2006. But I don’t think I’ve recorded my days in junior college, or pre-university / senior high, whatever you call it.

Those days in Singapore the system was kind of weird. You actually go through two rounds of exams – one from your own junior high, and one national exams. The junior high exams would determine if you get into a junior college (JC) for the first three months of the next academic year as the national exams results are not out until March. Luckily I did decent enough for both exams and was able to spend my two years of JC in the same college. Anyway that’s not the point. Who’s interested in education systems anyway?

In that first three months, we go to school wearing our own junior high school uniforms. My JC was one which was popular among many students, so there could easily be uniforms from 40 or 50 schools during that period. That was fine, what wasn’t was that because traditionally my junior high school had shorts as the uniform, so it was quite weird for us to still be wearing shorts even though we were senior high students. And for that reason, we often got mocked by those schools who sported trousers. I didn’t quite bother with the mockery because since Singapore was a hot place anyway, wearing shorts suited me fine – I guessed I never had any fashion sense then, and that hasn’t changed!

Anyway for that first three months, technology advancement meant that the school has lifted the ban on pagers – we could actually bring them to school (just like what you saw on Reply 1997). Practically everybody had one, and the most popular pager back then was this Motorola Memo Jazz:

(Picture source: http://cockenaden.multiply.com/journal/item/12)

It was an alphanumeric pager, which meant that alpha texts could be displayed on the pager. But I didn’t have this. Instead I had another Motorola pager which I couldn’t remember the model – though I am quite sure that it was just a numeric pager. In those days, carrying an alphanumeric pager was so much an “in” thing that you don’t want people to know that you “only” had a numeric pager.

Anyway during that period, I still vaguely remember an incident about the pager. There was actually this relief teacher,  a recent graduate from the same college, who was taking my class during one of the lab lessons (I think it was Physics) and my pager beeped. She turned and asked who had that pager, before telling us that “pagers were not allowed in the college”. Some brave soul suddenly popped up and said “but teacher, the school has recently announced that we can bring pagers to school”. Apparently the teacher didn’t know the rule, and I think it must have been embarrassing for her.

During that first three months, I was in the Science stream (which almost was like a default for most), and I was taking Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry and German. I took German in my junior high, so since my college offered German at senior high level, I thought it would make perfect sense to continue taking. That turned out to be a wrong decision because the teacher wasn’t exactly a good one (there was a period that I thought he actually faked his qualifications to get the job at my college), and I was actually losing interest in the language. So I stopped doing German after that three months. As for Chemistry, I didn’t know why I chose that because it had never been my favourite subject – I guess it must have been a case where there was a cute girl in my orientation group that was doing the same combination which attracted me to do Chemistry. Again, after three months I regretted the decision and decided to do something else. So after that three months, I changed my subject combination (and class as well) to Mathematics, Physics, Computing and Economics. Some people called it suicide to change two subjects – I called it challenge.

Anyway during that first three months I had an interesting bunch of classmates – I think I was one of the only 5 guys in the class! We had a very strict class tutor who which was also a catalyst for me to change class. I really thought that I could get away from this strict teacher after switching class after those three months – turned out that she became my English teacher instead for the remaining of the year. Tough luck.

There were still a lot to write about 1998, I’ll keep them for later – I think I’m going to enjoy writing this series!

Korea.

Haeundae, Busan

In case you didn’t realize, I went to Korea with my mum for a week and while it’s my mum’s first ever visit to a country where she does not speak the language, it was my fourth visit to Korea in as many years. My friends all ask me “what’s about Korea that you like so much that you are there all the time?”. I think it’s a rather difficult question to answer. Why do I like Korea so much? I think much has got to do with the culture, I guess. Korea has both the new and the old, and it is a place where the two mix very well.

Anyway my 7 days in Korea included 4 in Seoul and 3 in Busan. Going to Busan was always part of the itinerary because I wanted to see FC Seoul playing away, and since they were in Busan, it made perfect sense to spend a weekend there. However, I arrived in Busan only to find out that a typhoon was coming Korea’s way (the fourth of the year, which has never happened since the 1950s), and as the typhoon approached, it took a turn and headed towards Busan. That resulted in a rather uneventful stay in Busan. It was drizzling when we arrived after a 6-hour (but free) bus ride from Seoul, and the rain didn’t seem to stop. In the second day, it was raining when we were in Haeundae, and then it started to pour in the afternoon, and I had a tough time making to the Busan Asiad Stadium to watch Busan vs Seoul. On the third day, we woke up to realize that the typhoon warning has been issued, which meant that all the earlier planned visits in Busan had to be cancelled because everywhere was shut down. We had no choice but to head back to Seoul early (4 hours earlier than our original schedule). When we arrived back in Seoul, it was again pouring heavily. But amazingly, the weather became perfect the next day and our last 2 days in Seoul was just totally enjoyable as far as the weather was concerned. Sunny but cool, it was really a perfect weather to walk around in. And the highlight of the stay in Korea, besides the typhoon, has to be us managing to catch the filming of the variety show “Running Man”! I have been watching the show on the computer, but to be able to see them in person was really all an amazing experience!

Running Man filming in progress…

Anyway I spent the past couple of days watching two Korean dramas: “Rooftop Prince (옥탑방 왕세자)” and “Reply 1997 (응답하라 1997)”. Rooftop Prince was one that I have always wanted to watch but just couldn’t sit still enough to watch. So on Thursday, on my recuperating day off, I caught 10 episodes and finished the rest from Friday evening to Saturday morning. As for Reply 1997, I actually didn’t really know about the drama, but after seeing everyone talking about it on the message board of the Arirang Radio programme “K-Poppin”, I thought it might be worth a catch, and boy, it was quite a good drama. The entire setting of the drama, though in Korea, was so reminiscence of my teenage years (FYI, the drama was cast in which all the characters were born in the year 1980, same as me), and a lot of those bittersweet memories also came rushing back while I watched the drama. And I managed to clear the whole series in 2 days – that made it 2 drama series in 4 days. I’m proud of myself!

Reply 1997 (응답하라 1997)

 

Rooftop Prince (옥탑방 왕세자)