Confessions of a Cat-holic (104)

The way Mr Poon put other schools down did not make the brand of SPCC look better. In fact, he had turned himself into a clown in Louis Vuitton. It was almost like the dean of Brigham Young University or Upper Iowa University being offered a job as the faculty head at Princeton University but ended up offending the entire Ivy League or top schools on the east coast with racist comments and complete ignorance about city cultures. It would sound something like a redneck from North Dakota trying to oust Columbia of the Ivy League calling it a disgraceful institution and a shame to academia, just because Princeton surpassed its peers on the league table, while accusing New Yorkers of being unsophisticated, unworthy and despicable even. Almost like a Princeton graduate from Appalachia demanding everyone on this planet to bow and salute upon greetings because the world was a meritocratic one. It was a battle between rednecks and city slickers. Also a case of grandiose delusions and reverse discrimination.

The most obvious trait of their ignorance was their patronizing attitudes towards St Joseph students across the street when they fought in line during lunch hours. As a matter of fact, most of the St Joseph guys would not even bother to settle for those lunch boxes from the food stalls on Kennedy Road. They took a cab to Pacific Place for lunch most of the time, way more often than the over-leveraged SPCCers. Nevertheless, SPCCers liked to think of their neighbouring schools as pathetic underdogs because academically they were not as frequent in producing straight As students.

And the music department of SPCC had a strange way of picking music contest entries. From what I knew, St Francis had a strong music department too, it was just that I did not like singing enough to join it. I heard SPCC even hired one of our ex-music teacher, Miss Ivy Lo, to lead their treble choirs. And Good Hope girls were excellent singers having an indisputable reputation among the top schoolers in Hong Kong. But they were overlooked by Mr Poon who knew nothing about the world outside his comfort zone because SPCC was in desperate lack of a sports department, let alone joining the inter-school track and field competition, to compete or feel the hustle in the band 1 circle.

The fact that SPCC only competed in choir and orchestra contests had blinded them from the fierce rivalry inside and outside of school. Automatically, my new friends thought of the world outside as serene and peaceful as the urban oasis in mid-levels, that life was good and could be perfect so long as you worked your ass off. They naively projected that their only competitor was DGS, and sometimes DBS, especially academically. By outperforming the two, they thought that they were top of the world, cream of the crop, without the needs to actually reckon and admit that being the best in academics and music sometimes might not even mean much to many of the top schools in Hong Kong whose missions could sometimes be more meaningful and impactful than that, such as civil service.

Not only there were Good Hope and St Francis, there were also King's, Queen's, St Paul's Convent, Maryknoll, Marymount, St Stephen Girls', Ying Wa Girls, Raimondi, Wah Yan Kowloon, Ying Wa, St Paul's Boys, St Joseph, La Salle, etc. The traditional top schools all had their own specialties and characters, just like the national universities and liberal arts colleges in the states. Just because SPCC was fervent in their pursuit of musical excellence did not mean that the rest of us were good-for-nothing lazy losers who could be frowned upon.

Students like Joe Chiu the New Haven Yale graduate from Shatin public estate, Samantha from The Church of Christ in China Kei Wan Primary School and Monica from S.K.H ST. Peter's Primary School already made up the mean, the mode and the median of the class in networth at SPCC unfortunately and they thought that they had the upper hand in school and in life. Hey, a butcher's daughter and a resident at Shau Kei Wan definitely deserved our full respect. They were the norms of a "prestigious" and "privileged" academy, everyone else was a wretch. Holy moly, my amazing grace.