Confessions of a Cat-holic (47)

I decided to take up basketball in the middle of the school year. I signed up to be a member of the class team and competed against other classes and forms in the second semester. The inter-class basketball competition ran through the entire season in spring but I began the training as early as winter.

I had some previous training in basketball back in St Francis but that didn't mean I was good enough to be considered an athlete, no, at least not in the standard of my alma mater. Obviously, I was not in it to look cool. Looking sporty or popular was never on my agenda. I had enough friends to not feel the need to be liked. I took up basketball out of a few reasons. First, I noticed my height and size was almost the biggest and tallest in my class, second only to Clairol as I mentioned earlier, even though I was considered too tiny to represent my class or house to compete in basketball in St Francis. I felt that I could easily outperform my peers in the new school. They wouldn't find out that I was always placed on the first row in class photo or classroom seat arrangments. They would never find out until I told them so. But would I care enough to tell them the truth?

Second, I knew very clearly that music was not my forte despite my new classmates' delusional belief that I was a piano master. I thought that I really should get involved in something, rather than sitting idly in the classroom in lunchbreaks. On a more genuine perspective, I wanted to confuse my new friends by adding a bit of funkiness to their imagination that had already gone too wild. I wanted to look like an all-rounder, almost as hard to find as an Asian polymath. Afterall I was just as banal and evil as everyone else. I didn't like my new friends enough to show them my true self.

Third, I didn't want to hang out with the mathletes. It was quite easy to notice that the only people who were not engaged in music rehersals were either some maths freaks or the MK gang. No offence to them, I actually befriended with the MK gang in my second and third year at SPCC. But still, I just didn't like maths enough to spend the entire lunch breaks solving sudoku. I worked hard on my weaker subjects, including mathematics and additional mathematics, though. I worked hard enough to finish every single question on my calculus textbook and I spent an hour a day on drilling problem sets, just for the sake of exam. I had too much of equations, proofs and theorems already. The last thing I wanted in my life was another second spent on numbers.

I was astute enough to observe that the mate I secretly admired was tone deaf and that he did not join any extracurricular activities related to choir, orchestra, or classical music in general. When I said the mate I secretly admired, I meant Rex.

My new friends took turns in their music practice. Most of them had rehersals on alternate days: half of them would have lunch choir practice on Mondays and Wednesdays and Fridays, which made them basically free on Thursdays and Tuesdays. The other half would have it the other way round. I saw that I could be the person whom they always turned to when they were free, since I never engaged in any musical training. So I took the initiative to organize lunch outings, an opportunity that I would seize and otherwise would not have gotten as we were not allowed to eat out until F.6 back in alma mater. I played the role of a social worker. I would listen to their problems, complaints, laughters, gossips and emotional breakdowns. I was grateful for their trusts while at the same time entertained by their "like no other" perspectives on the world and the society.

I would eat out three to four days at least every week with my new classmates. Of course, they wouldn't be doing the same, as they all had different engagements with the music department. There were around 20 girls in my class, out of which packs of 3 to 4 of them would be eating out with me once on a weekly basis. Altogether, their alternate practice schedule kept me occupied almost every day.