Memories of TPJC -part 3-: from Art to PE

04 January 2005

General Paper (GP)
A10 is divided into 2 GP class. HL, Rafidah, Raymond and I are in the same GP class under Mr Charles Remedios. GP is mainly on current affairs, social or political topics, which can be interesting or boring (depending on issues).

GP is one of the subjects that I enjoyed during JC. My parents have been cultivating me the habit of watching TV news since primary school and I read the newspaper regularly (mostly on new urban projects in Singapore), so GP isn't too difficult for me.

The most memorable incident during GP lessons would be the plastic surgery debate. The class was split into equal halves and I was in the "Pro" Team. While presenting my argument that plastic surgery is reasonable for people who had noticeable asymmetrical facial features (e.g. single eyelid on an eye and double eyelid on another), I started having images of weird asymmetrical faces and I suddenly burst into laughter. The laughter gets so bad that I can't finish my sentences and I need to be bailed out by my teammates. The laughing spell last throughout the whole debate, in which I still continue to burst into insane laughter several times...

I also remembered spending long nights writing essays, with the "traveling" single playing in the background...

Art
After much hindrances of pursuing Art as an 'O' Level subject, I finally had the opportunities to take Art as an 'A' level subject in TPJC. Being an Art student, we are required to submit 4 artworks of any topic each month.

Mr Eugene Tan is an alumni from TPJC Art. While waiting for his enlistment, Eugene worked as our relief Art Teacher by assisting Mrs Mary Choo to teach JC1 Art students. Being only 2 years older than us, Eugene is always joking around with us in the Art Room. Eugene gave us complete freedom to express ourselves in our works and providing valuable advice to help us improve. I learn a lot of drawing and painting techniques from Eugene. For example, mixing of colours to make an acrylic painting look realistic and principles on drawing human features using pencil. He also encouraged his student to experiment with different drawing techniques to develop our own style, and this leads me to find that using fingerprints when painting leaves is realistic and unique... After numerous experiments, I learnt that my strengths is in pencil drawing, with potential for improvement in acrylic painting... I would really like to thank him for all his guidance...

To prepare us for our 'A' Level Examination, Eugene brought us on a study trip to the Singapore Art Museum on a Wednesday afternoon... Although I don't understand what the artists wants to express in some of the works, the trip did inspire me with ideas for some of my projects. For example, Tian An and I teamed up for the recycling-themed term project. Although Tian An don't understand what is my idea initially, he was willing to give the idea a shot and contributed by collecting empty drink cans and setting up our project. Titled "evolution", it is only when the final product is taking shape then did Tian An, Eugene and many other classmates understand what I'm trying to express. I still find it honourable to be able to present "evolution" to then-principal Mrs Susan Chan. An interesting part of "evolution" is that the "BATO" stone plays a significant role in the project...

For Art, I always put in my best effort to produce the best artwork. A handful of my better works were being displayed on the subject notice board outside the Art Room... However, there are still times when I produced below quality works like "Crayon Lady" and "Joanne", which are still big jokes among friends till now... From then onwards, I learned that crayons and charcoals are not the right medium for drawing portraits...

The Art Club is a compulsory CCA for all Art students, which conveniently allocate time for us to complete our assignment and at the same time earn CCA points...

The Art Room is an extremely carefree place. It is very common for students to work on their assignments and sing to the melody from their discman... The most notorious incident would be the extremely high notes make by Joanne when she is listening to a ballad by Zhou Hui... It is also in the Art Room that I incidentally found out that by placing a sharpener-mirror at the end of Tian An's name, it will produce the word An|nA, thus resulting in his nick. I skipped countless lessons and will spend the extra time obtained in the art room to complete my work. These are the reasons why the Art Room is always a happy place with endless laughter and minimal stress...

Geography
'A' Level Geography is actually split into 2 sub-subjects "Physical Geography" and "Human Geography"; a concept similar to 'O' Level Combined Science (Chemistry / Physics).

To my surprise, 'A' Level Geography is quite difficult, even for a huge lover of Geography and 98-pointer like me. Every lecture is a tedious session of notes scribing... But with enough training from Mdm Yue, Mr Foo and Mdm Ashiq, note-taking is now a simple chore for me.

My Physical Geography tutor Ms Karen Teo would take almost every opportunity to criticize our class for being lazy. She would even go to the extreme of praising how hardworking or outstanding her Science (civic class) students are and how Arts students are such a nuisance, who are nothing better than trouble. After our 'O' Level result was out, she even sarcastically made a remark "So what if you are a 7-pointer", which was obviously aimed at Tian An. But the good thing about Ms Karen is, she can teach and sarcasm do work in pushing us to study harder.

Human Geography is taught by Mr Kelvin Tan, who can be quite funny in his teaching. Although Mr Kelvin can be quite sarcastic too, he is more friendly and approachable. Mr Kelvin is also the teacher in-charge of TPJC Guitar Club.

HL is chosen as the Physical Geography rep, so for almost everyday, she has to go to the photocopy shop to collect notes for the class...

Economics
Economics was my most hated subject during my stay in TPJC. Economics was taught by a team of lousy lecturers, who could make the simplest topic to be extremely difficult to understand. Lecturers like Mr Mahtani Naresh can be very biased towards Science students, which makes me hate the subject more. I'm thankful to have Mr Albert Tan as my tutor, who makes effort to explain the lectures again, so that we would understand all the topics and concepts.

With little interests, poor understanding and low attendance, I obtained an extremely lousy result of 10% only (the record-breaking lowest score in my study life) for my 1st term test... But with lots of hard work, I eventually improved to Distinction.

AO Chinese
I have to take AO Chinese as my Mother Tongue subject because I didn't took Higher Chinese during Secondary School. AO Chinese lessons commenced a week later than the other subjects. Students are streamed into classes according to their result for 'O' Level Chinese. I was streamed into the same class with HL and Joanne. To my horror, I am the only guy in this class and my teacher automatically picked me as the class rep... Tian An, HL and Joanne are crazily thrilled when they learnt that I was being picked as the Chinese rep, because they had already being appointed as class rep for other subjects at this point of time (Tian An = GP, Joanne = AO Maths, HL = Geography)...

To my surprise, AO Chinese is an extremely difficult subject. For the first time in my life, I find Chinese to be a subject that is difficult to manage (considering that I scored 98 points for Chinese before). I can't believe that we actually spent 3months learning Chinese idioms that starts with 'A' (hanyu pinyin)...

I resisted attending AO Chinese classes, because the subject was just too difficult and boring. It is very common for me to skip lessons and my teacher Ms Ruth Lim will always need to hunt for me or delegate tasks through Joanne and HL...

An interesting point to take note is that Ms Lim is actually Jesscan's primary school Chinese teacher (triple horror)! The two of us even intend to visit her during CNY to give her a surprise that we were dating...

AO Maths
While I can score very good results for Maths (another 98 points subject), I have no interest in Maths and I don't see Maths being useful in everyday life after school. Therefore, I am not sure why I choose to take AO Maths; either it is recommended by TPJC for those without A Maths background, or Tian An psycho-ed me to apply together with him. Something went wrong with HL's subject application so she did not manage to take AO Maths with us. Joanne was chosen as the class rep for AO Maths which makes her rather upset...

Tian An and Joanne took private A Maths for 'O' Level, so it naturally makes me the weakest link for this subject among the 3 of us. But lucky enough, AO Maths isn't as difficult as I imagined; or maybe it was due to my sudden false resurgence of interest in Maths during the first 3 months...

To be honest, I should have dropped AO Maths to lessen my workload as I dislike Maths.

Physical Education (PE)
PE lessons are on Tuesday evening and Wednesday morning, and it is my 2nd favourite lesson after Art. TPJC PE is extremely tedious and physically demanding. It is very common for Botak Chew and Commando Lee to make us run along Ave 9 and Tampines Park Connector to Ave 12, climbs the stairs of TPJC stadium grandstand (that results in sole pain) and many other physical activities. Sometimes after PE, I will sneaked out of school to go home for a shower (benefits of staying near school)...

Knowing that the toughness is good in training us for NAFRA Test, Tian An and I never skipped any PE lessons. The 2 of us even had our own running session after school, which continue till early 2003 (before being disrupted by the outbreak of SARS). Since then, I had my weekly run along Tampines Park Connector which lasted till my enlistment...

ODAC
Starting from December 2001, I had a sudden obsession for outdoor activities. I was very satisfied with the orientation and was quite sick of Concert Band. Therefore, I joined TPJC Outdoor Adventure Club (ODAC) as my 2nd CCA...

ODAC is a fun CCA that is loaded with several fun activities and games. But my phobia of height do hinders my progress and I do take a long time to complete some activities... Nevertheless, ODAC adds another interesting memory to my TPJC life...

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