Confessions of a Cat-holic (3)

Not sure about you, but I didn't buy into this IQ propaganda shit. Maybe this Central district school was the epitome of a Hunger Game where each district sent its strongest candidate to compete on an island to find the best of survivers. But I grew up in Wanchai. I was not a fan of eliminationism. I didn’t believe in the urban legends of a supremacist school. I believed what I saw, with my own eyes. These new schoolmates of mine clearly had some serious issues. I didn’t know them well enough to dig up their medical history but they surely looked unhealthy. You could call me superficial but just by looking at the way they carried themselves and listening to what they had to say, I was pretty damn sure they all had some sort of a hidden agenda.

I had heard stories about students from this school with cancers and leukaemia acing the public exam with the intention to become medical doctors. They might think they could make up their health issues by becoming a health professional. But what good was your so-called top-notch intelligence if you were physically deformed? Now, who wanted to be another Stephen Hawking?

They thought grades and learn-earn-return could supersede sanity and wellbeing. But to me, academic results clearly could not compensate for any atrophies and deformities. No, at least not for me. I would never date a cripple just because he could solve the Pythagoras Theorem or apply Newton's first law in a physics problem. Not even if they were super rich. But they were not even rich. Not middle class type of affluent even. I had been to the homes of my new friends. You might think they were well off living in a mid-level apartment. Those residing on McDonald Road accounted for 5% of the student population and already topped the net worth of the entire class. During home visits, I found that they struggled to pay out the water bills and they could not even afford to own any air conditioner at home. I would not trade normality in having any affairs with a defected man for this level of money or prestige.

I was not saying this school was good for nothing. It surely must have some edge over other schools if it carried a reputation of a top tier co-ed institution. I would say its academic atmosphere was very rigorous, like the Cheung Chuk Shan College in North Point district. Both were known to be factories of overachievers and masters of the public exam. It would be a perfect fit for those who wanted to be a medical doctor and nothing else. Your chance of getting in HKU medicine would be much higher if you enrolled in this school than if you attended a government school. I would say 10% of the students ended up being doctors or dentists and the rest majority usually got qualified as accountants or tech engineers. Hey, 10% would already be much higher than national average. In case you failed to become a doctor, you would still land a job in the Big 4. Not bad, huh?