Confessions of a Cat-holic (88)

Rest assured, Mr Yeung and I were on good terms. There was no bad blood between me and him. We were in strategic collaboration with each other while offering honest reflections upon our weaknesses. He said I was a spoiled kid and that I would fail miserably if I ever had the chance to study abroad. He was specific enough to list out a few possible scenarios such as me losing my passport in a foreign country and my intolerance of discomfort regarding climate and temperatures in cold places. He said I wouldn't be able to withstand the cold and dry weather since I was too used to subtropical Hong Kong. I asked him why he had such projections which I could not agree otherwise. He said I was taking a cab to Pacific Place every day, which was a clear evidence of my luxury lifestyle that I would be doomed if taken to a foreign country on tight budget. But I told him I was squeezing 6 people on a cab, which already left me on the brink of a lawsuit, god forbid.

Yes, we were fitting 6 people on a cab including the taxi driver, since the SPCCers took pride in their small sizes anyways. We were not doing it to showcase our contortionist skills, not particularly, but we were doing it mostly for cost saving. A 20 HKD cab ride was considered unaffordable for most of my peers in SPCC, not if it was shared by 5 people. If we only squeezed 4 people onto a cab, as required by the laws of Hong Kong, we would have to pay 5 dollars per trip. If you counted the fare back and forth, squeezing 5 people onto a cab could save you 2 HKD! Hey, that was equivalent to an ice cream cone at McDonald's where we often spent over 2 hours chatting on the bench after school. Afterall, I was tagged with one of the seven deadly sins, overspending and refusal to live a Puritan life. My peers in SPCC had decided that I was an expensive friend and that hanging out with me costed a hell lot of money.

I figured that Mr Yeung had totally skewed projections on my proclivity and I refused to sell myself short. Grade-wise, I dropped from 2nd in F3 to almost the 20th in F4 and persistently so in F5. There were a lot of self proclaimed geniuses in my class anyways. There was no way I could match their unceasing manners in reaching for a perfect grade in academics, and music as their signature ECA. Afterall, I was a transfer student from alma mater, and my grades somewhat reflected my intelligence level and the competence of my old school. I didn't want to be looked down upon, as much as I didn't want my alma mater to be looked down upon. That was how I started a schedule of heavy tutoring. Prior to F4, I never really spent anytime on schoolwork after school and I had ample time to engage in social activities with my friends and follow the most talked about dramas on TV. But I figured since HKCEE was more or less an event that could alter my university admissions and career choices for the rest of my life, I really should study hard for it, leaving myself no room for any future regrets.

Another thing I liked about SPCC was that the academic atmosphere was genuinely collaborative. I was too used to the cunning tactics of my friends in alma mater. As I said, my friends in SFCC were treacherous, in all sorts of ways, imaginably and unimaginably. Among the top graders at St Francis, we always claimed to accidentally achieve perfect score with no studying. Come on, who would score perfectly without any efforts? But we did it anyways, to appear to achieve academic success effortlessly. But SPCC was different. My peers at SPCC liked to share all kinds of information such as the supplementary materials they found useful and the tutorial centers that had the best resources to ensure we all benefitted from outside help. They even asked me to go to the tutorial lessons with them, so that we all improved our exam skills and study strategies in preparation for the public exam.

I took on an aggressive schedule of tutoring for two years, which covered almost 8 out of 10 of my subjects in HKCEE, with the exception in Chinese and Religious Studies, two areas that I deemed to be my forte. Guess what, I scored A1 for all of my 8 subjects that I received tutorial lessons. Afterall, tutoring did save my life.