Confessions of a Cat-holic (91)

My new friends liked to think of me as the up and coming diva-to-be, if not the next Miss Hong Kong. They even thought I looked like Theresa Fu. What should I say? I felt flattered, but they didn't understand the culture of my alma mater. We had a thousand hot girls, none with the ambition to marry rich or be America's next top model. It just wasn't our thing. But we had a very high percentage of happy housewives.

Daryl once recommended me to go take vocal lessons with him after college. We were in our early twenties back then. I appreciated his kind intention, maybe he thought that I had the potential of becoming a singer. He wanted me to be the best I could, which I felt thankful for. Something didn't quite click between me and him. I never aspired to be an idol, fashionista or trendsetter of my generation. I worked hard though, but not to bend my back over something as intangible as respect or privilege.

Daryl met Gigi from Maryknoll through a common tutor. Apparently, Clairol also took lessons with that tutor. She once introduced to an ex-teacher at SPCC named Mrs Szeto. The richer circle all shared the same resources in private help and tutorial services. Comparatively speaking, even though I spent a big trunk of my pocket money on tutoring, my education expenses were nothing compared to theirs. I took physics with Yoshi and HL Tam, a packed tutorial center where they gave tips on exam techniques rather than theoretical knowledge about physics. It was videographed. I never got to see HL Tam's face and I was sitting with 100 other students in one of the rooms to hopefully improve our grades in HKCEE. That was how I came to achieve an A in physics without understanding a thing about it. Since it was a videographed and replicable classroom that mimicked a concert more than a lesson, it only costed me around 80 HKD for a class of 3 hours every week.

Then it was K. Kwong for chemistry at Modern Education. He was still teaching there, as far as I knew. K. Kwong had since become a household name, more than a star tutor. I enjoyed his classes, but then I always liked chemistry so I was just attending his class to get it off my list. He did offer some insightful tips and exam strategies but I would say I attained an A in HKCEE mostly based on my personal interests and passion on the subject. Again, the costs for a class with K. Kwong was below 100, since it was again videographed with 1000 other students sitting across 7 rooms at the center.

I was also a student of Linda Lau at Modern Education for geography. Her classes were really amazing in terms of the cost-performance ratio. I attended her classes starting F5 and she offered the best exam tactics which enabled me to ignore three-fifth of the teaching materials and just concentrated my efforts on my favorite topics. She really did a great job in making geography less miserable for me. I heard she was an alumnus of SPCC too.

I took Putonghua as my tenth subject but none of the big name tutorial centers offered classes for HKCEE. I was thankful that Luminous gave me her notes and advised me to try the Mandarin Center at Mongkok, which I did. Not sure what her underlying intentions were, I met a lot of angels ever since I left my alma mater. They would help me get to my desired destinations without asking for any favors in return. Maybe they were genuinely selfless, maybe they were trying to manipulate me or guide me to a path off their track, which I would like to think otherwise. Whatever it was, I genuinely felt grateful for all the good people I met along the away.

For biology, a neighbour of mine from South Horizons gave me his notes, which was said to be handy and of great value. He was Jeff Leung who attained 7As in HKCEE and later graduated from Oxford with an engineering degree. He was a year younger than me, and he went to St Joseph. Smart and down-to-earth, he had become a credit trader in one of the biggest banks in Hong Kong. I was grateful that I had been surrounded by St Jo guys ever since childhood.