Confessions of a Cat-holic (79)

There were many reason as in why I didn't feel belonged in the new school. Religion was one. I was raised in an authentic Catholic church, where Sisters from Canossian Daughters of Charity had absolute say over everything and the school policies were strict as hell. The new school was like an open chicken coop, where even the poorest hillbillies had the most pride over themselves just because they held on to the school's halo. Joe Chiu was a prime example. He transferred to SPCC from a local no-name elementary school in the New Territories. As a resident at the Shatin public estate, he quickly found himself in a sea of talents so he worked extra hard to catch up academically, but only to find himself stuck in eternal porn addictions accompanied with obssessive hand jobs and sexual activities so that his kidney exploded in grade 8. He then had to move to America to seek advance medical treatments but he was a resilient one. He later applied to all the Ivies from a public school that was historically underprivileged but eventually landed at Yale, a notorious haven for the gay, new and sexually driven. After working at McKinsey and graduating from college, he even tried Harvard Business School and became the senior manager at English First in Asia, where he devoted most of his time mentoring students and instilling them with the concept that he was an academic miracle to bring hope to the helpless that education could change your fate while destroying your internal organs. Given the obstacles he overcame related to his exploding kidney, I admired his persistence.

The average Joe said that we should all give resources and opportunities for students in rundown areas such as Tai Kok Tsui, because Wanchai was just no different from that neighborhood. I sometimes wondered if I had studied in a mental asylum. It could be that people in SPCC were greatly ignorant of the GDP distribution in Hong Kong. Or maybe they just refused to be disenchanted. All in all, I found Christian values in great conflicts with my own, as I never believed in Santa Claus anyways, not even when I was in kindergarten. I lost patience over their long overdue disillusionment.

Then it was the school training. The new school was math and STEM focused. Most of its graduates would enter engineering, computer science, tech, accounting or medicine. If you looked at the profiles of the alumni of the two schools, you would see the difference in our school philosophies. I was a strong candidate in history, anthropology and even psychology and social studies but I was put in a class of future doctors and engineers. Not saying that I was not capable of excelling in the science subjects, but I had to work extra hard to cope with the new standards, just to enter a profession I was not particularly fond of.

The socio-geographical distribution of my new friends also was a problem. I was not familiar enough with students from the other class to comment on their backgrounds but I could give you a breakdown of the students in my class. The class was around 35 students in total, with 25-30% from the SPCC elementary school and 70-75% new-comers. Most of the students from the elementary school were less driven, partly could be due to their relatively wealthier background, partly due to reasons I was not able to contemplate. Rebecca was probably the odd one, as she was just as driven as the other newcomers. The newcomers made up the majority of the class and they were the arsenal factory for straight As achievements. Just throwing a few names here, Kevin Teng looked like the uglier version of Vanness Wu from Meteor Garden and was a long time student at SPCC since grade 1. He was my good friend. His father was one of the best doctors in the practice of Metabolism & Endocrinology. But he didn't become a doctor. He graduated from UST with a business degree and started his own speeddating company, Love 360. His sister, Zoie Teng from SPCC, then an international school and later Cornell, worked at Lehman Brothers/Nomura as a fixed income syndicate right across from where I sat on the trading floor, partnering with Frances and Freddie, my ex-coworkers in the bank.