A random thought on GP and so on

Every Monday morning, I do laundry, make preparations for dinner and wash the bathrooms and toilets. Very little thinking is involved. 

Should I iron this top which doesn't look too crumpled? 

How many cloves of garlic for these dishes? 

Should I scrub the tiles today? 

Yes, you can imagine that my thoughts are usually elsewhere. Today, I somehow thought of my GP lessons. 

You know canon events? Not the camera (though I still have mine). I'm referring to those significant events in the Spiderman multi-verse that shape the character of each Spiderman. Or core memories? Ok, I watch too many movies.

I think one GP lesson was both. That lesson came to my mind every so often. I don't know why. Today, it came to me again when I was cutting meat.

Based on O levels, I was streamed into the best GP class, A01, in JC1. I quickly discovered that GP wasn't like English. We had practically no work, and I still remember an essay submitted but never returned! It was instead, mostly talk, e.g.:

What, exactly, is the point of life?

As I typed the above, my eyes rolled, just like they did back in 1997 - but less obvious last time la, more in the teenage mf way which probably means staring without understanding and keeping quiet while the few vocal ones argued among themselves.

I think that was the moment I decided, to hell with GP!

I wasn't not the type to skip classes but from then on, I read my own stuff in GP class unless we had the rare essay or compre. I might have read all of Jin Yong novels that year.

After getting a C5 at promos, I was streamed into A07 in JC2 - that's like the second last class or something :p In this class, however, there was work so I couldn't read as much. Maybe it was more work, less talk, I improved to B4 for prelims. Or maybe not, coz I got an A1 for A levels.

I ended my housework thinking, I'm proof you don't need to discuss the meaning of life to get A1!

Ok rubbish thoughts aside... More thoughts emerging as I type...

Sito and I discussed GP a couple of weeks before. Our school teachers, at least back then, might not mark the same way as Cambridge examiners. In JC, I always thought my compre answers were correct but I often didn't get the full marks. 

Maybe it was the type of questions set. I'm confident of marking the kids' compre in both languages without referring to the answer scheme, except when the questions were not terribly clear. 

Or maybe it's the marking scheme?

Last Tuesday, I was at a baking class (more on this later) and did the theory assessment. One question floored me. Or rather, the answer did. 

Q: Explain a quality of a good shortcrust pastry.

Or something like that. I wrote: Golden brown edges. I couldn't see how I could possibly "explain" this. My answer was returned with a question - which aspect? Sure, let me be clearer and added on so my answer looked like this:

Golden brown edges - the appearance of the pastry should have golden brown edges.

Please forgive my strange wording; I couldn't be bothered.

It was returned again, coz I need to put the aspect upfront. So this was accepted in the end:

Golden brown edges - the appearance of the pastry should have golden brown edges. Appearance - the pastry should have golden brown edges.

Wa I couldn't. Nvm, just do it and move on to practical!

Anyway, I went on to read Maths where my written sentences were mostly short and full of symbols and Greek letters. It was four years later that I really needed to write. Thankfully, my bosses were more Cambridge examiners than GP tutors!