Figments

How to Make Peace with Dynamite

2011-07-06T22:22:00.004+08:00

In July 2010, I returned to SMK Pantai.

Saza, Zafirah and I left Universiti Malaya on the morning of the twenty-ninth of June, a Tuesday. My alarm jolted me out of bed at a quarter to five; I pounced on my phone and silenced it. I switched on the phone’s flashlight and changed into a long-sleeved red-and-blue T-shirt and some jeans. I couldn’t be bothered with showering today. I’d packed everything I could the previous night, after coming back from a long dinner in College 11’s hall, where we’d found barbecued chicken, jacket potatoes, cups of ice-cream, fried lettuce, slices of baguette, greasy cobs of corn, warm pink sausages, and glistening sticks of satay. Most of the contestants had stayed at the hall for most of the night, but I’d reluctantly gone up early to pack.

I felt the strangest feeling of sadness as I tossed my clothes into my suitcase, along with the free red bag I’d gotten from the National Nobel Laureate Outreach Program into my suitcase. I slipped on socks and shoes, made sure my laptop was in my backpack, donned my sweater, and grabbed the free umbrella. I stopped to make sure I had everything, and then left the dorm key on the desk. I was going to have to leave them with the door unlocked, but there was no push-knob and I couldn’t leave with the key.

It was so odd, I thought, to be leaving, like this, at the crack of dawn, while my roommates slept. I hadn’t even asked them what had happened the previous night after I’d left the hall. I couldn’t even say goodbye, because I didn’t want to disturb their sleep. After being kept up in cold sterile labs for a few nights, they deserved their rest.

A thin shadow at the top of one of the bunks moved as I made for the door. The voice of Ching, a contestant from Sarawak, rang out in the darkness.

“Are you leaving?”

“Yes,” I said softly, pulling my suitcase along with me. “Sorry to wake you.”

“It’s okay.” He reached forward, rubbed his eyes, and then fell back into his mattress. “Goodbye.”

“Bye,” I said.

I opened the door and slipped out, pulling my suitcase along before shutting the door. I hurried across the corridor and down the stairs, not wanting to look back, not wanting to stay too long in case the bittersweet of it all hit me. I rolled the suitcase past the squat hall building and the elongated cafeteria, shivering slightly in the morning air.

Pn. Nurhaidah Taj, our accompanying teacher, was waiting outside the hall building. She wished me good morning and told me that she’d called a taxi. Saza and Zaf took a while to leave their dorms, and by the time they’d arrived, so had the taxi. We loaded our suitcases into the boot and sped off for KLIA. The sun rose slowly over Klang as we neared our destination.

Our MAS flight took us first to Kota Kinabalu, then back to Labuan. My family welcomed me back, and we all had lunch, which was a delicious feast of spaghetti cooked by the world’s greatest chef, my Mom. I’d never felt better upon coming home to my family. Spaghetti was my favourite dish.

On Wednesday, I took the day off from school. I thought that if I went back right away, all the sleep debt I’d amassed during my competition would slog me in the head and make it hard for me to concentrate. So I paid off as much of it as I could by sleeping in on Wednesday morning. I woke up sometime before noon.

On Thursday, I took coffee as my morning drink for the first time. Having had lots of it at the NSC, I thought it would be fun to integrate it into my regular life. I was right, it was fun. A little too much fun. That Thursday, our first lesson was Physics, and I felt a sudden vibe of energy buzzing throughout my body as I sat down and waited for Pn. Miza to begin her lesson. When she didn’t, I got up and started walking at a brisk pace around the tables in the lab. At first it was just one table, then it was two. At one point, I even started jogging. A few of my classmates were giggling, but I didn’t care. If anything, it spurred me on even more.

“Ethan, what are you doing?” Jessica asked me, as I whizzed past her.

“Just working off some energy!” I called back, nearly slamming into Yana as she got up from her seat. I was so energized, I’d forgotten all about my silent battle with her, and any resolve I’d had to act cold towards her was, for the moment, tossed out the window.

“Ethan John, what are you doing?” Pn. Miza called.

The boys giggled. I slowed down and said, “Sorry, Teacher. Just a little over-excited.”

“Sit down,” Jessica said, patting the empty seat next to her, the one which I’d left.

“All right,” I said, and did as she said. I stared at my pencil-case and Physics textbook for a moment, and opened it to the chapter on heat which we were supposed to be studying. I stared at it for a minute, and then, when nothing happened, I started doodling on the edge of the page.

“Hi, Ethan,” Jessica said.

I turned. She was smiling sideways at me. “Hi,” I replied.

“So? How was your competition?”

“Oh, it was … it was great,” I said.

“Did you win?”

“Not exactly,” I said. “We didn’t make top four, but I won the award for best presenter.” I explained it all quickly.

“Ohhhh,” Jessica said. “Well, that’s amazing, congratulations!”

“Thanks,” I said. Then, I noticed a very colourful drawing on a sheet of paper in front of her. Her hand was poised over it, clutching a pink marker. “What’s that?”

“Oh, this?” She pointed at the paper. “This is my graffiti.”

“Gravity?”

“Yeah, I’ve been doing graffiti lately.” Jessica smiled. “I really like it, Ethan. It’s a great way for me to release stress.”

“Well,” I said, looking sideways at the piece of art she was colouring – misshapen yet perfectly sculpted, unreadable yet understandable, still and stationary yet bursting with colour. “It looks – cool. What’s this one say?”

“Brandon,” Jessica replied.

“Oh. Cool. I see.” I could see; the edges of the beautifully squashed letters, if traced carefully and grasped at once by the eye, did reveal the contours of the name Brandon. “Why Brandon?”

“Oh. You know Brandon? The one at SMK Labuan?”

“Yeah, he’s a friend of mine, why?”

“He requested it.”

“Requests? Wow, you’re really famous at this thing, huh?” When she nodded, I asked, “So how many requests have you gotten so far?”

“Eight,” Jessica replied after a pause. “I’m thinking of charging them next, seven ringgit each. The requests are beginning to get more frequent, man.”

“Well,” I said, “that’s pretty, um, cool!”

“Thanks,” she said.

Just as I was thinking how cool it was that she’d found a new love for graffiti art while I’d been away, she reached into her pencil-box and brought out a long, oval-shaped keychain marked “TERENGGANU” on one end, and decorated with blue and pink flowers on the other. “This is for you,” she said. “I got it while I was in Terengganu.”

“You were in Terengganu?”

“Yes, I was. I was attending the marine science camp – don’t you remember?”

“Oh, yeah,” I lied. I’d probably dismissed any piece of information, if I’d heard it. “You were at a marine science camp? How did that go?”

“Well, great,” she said, and, as the minutes of our Physics lesson ticked away, she began to tell me about her experiences at sea in Terengganu, sailing on a small boat, getting seasick, diving and swimming with fishes, and meeting new people. All the while I clasped the elongated keychain in my hand, running a finger along its plastic surface, oddly touched in some manner.

Katrina was apparently thrilled to be talking to me. “Our winner is here,” she interrupted, while I was telling her about my experiences at Universiti Malaya. “I can’t believe I’m talking to the winner!”

“Awwww,” I said, feeling my heart do a dangerous loop-the-loop. We were on Facebook, having our first chat since I’d returned. “That’s sweet. I didn’t exactly win, though.” Then, I remembered that I was talking to Katrina, who seemed to sort of admire me. “Okay, wait,” I said. “To be honest, you’re kind of right. I mean, everyone came to that place expecting to either get put in one of the twelve non-finalist slots, or one of the four finalist slots. (We were all hoping for the finalist slots.) When the host announced the four finalists, none of them were ranked … there was no number one, number two, etc. It was like … there were for number ones.”

“Mm-hmm,” Katrina nodded.

“But,” I continued, “we all got a surprise. I was the only one who got put in a category with ONE slot … because it was a category made up on the spot that day! There had never been a best presenter category before! So I feel really, truly honoured that the judges requested to make one for me. I would’ve liked to be in the top four, but to make an impression on my audience was the thing I wanted the most … and it looks like this means I did it … so … I can’t really put in words how happy I am.”

Was I bragging? At the moment, it didn’t seem like it. I was still over the moon about what had happened after the four finalists had been announced, and here I was, talking to the girl who had once called herself my number one fan. I was the kind of person who excelled at making victory speeches, no matter how paltry that victory was. I’d made one after getting my PMR results, and I was making one now. If Katrina thought that I was being bigheaded, she sure didn’t show it.

“What an achievement,” she said.

“Hehehe,” I said. “Be careful, Kat. You know this kind of stuff goes to my head and makes it swell. LOL.”

“LOL,” Katrina replied, probably thinking, Eh – I’M not the one making your head swell here, mister.

We chatted some more, and then we had to log off. I turned my eyes from my computer screen, and to the grey box sitting on my desk, sans purple ribbon.

I’d opened it a few days ago, to find the most stylish two-gigabyte pen-drive I had ever set eyes upon. I still hadn’t been able to think of any use for it – or, rather, I didn’t want to, because I wanted to preserve this gift forever if possible. The brown pen-drive was still lying inside the grey box, nestled in foam padding.

Best Presenter was a consolation prize at heart, and it probably didn’t mean much to those who had gotten into the top four spots – in fact, it probably hadn’t meant much to anybody at all, aside from a rather different presentation. If it had been a competition to determine who the best public speaker was, it would probably be much more valuable, and I’d probably have an excuse to brag. To me, however, winning Best Presenter meant everything. It meant I had gotten my audience to listen, made enough of an impression on the judges to make them say, Okay, this kid obviously tried, let’s give him a gift for the effort. It meant that I, Ethan Matisa, who had all this time considered writing the only thing I was quite good at, might actually have some hidden gifts elsewhere.

The afterglow of this victory would fade after a while. But I’d remember this for a long, long time.

The next day, I was walking by the teacher’s offices during recess, munching on a sandwich, when I passed Teacher Julianne, who had been our accompanying teacher for March’s choral speaking. She stopped and said, “Ethan! I heard you won Best Presenter at university! Congratulations!”

“Thanks,” I said, swallowing a mouthful of sandwich.

“So have you settled on a topic for public speaking?”

“Public sp— what?”

“Public speaking,” Madam Julianne said matter-of-factly. “Remember, before the holidays, you told me you wanted to take part?”

“Oh, yeah!” I cried, using the same tone I would have used for a particularly nasty swearword. I had said so, but the thought had been driven out of my mind with all the holidays and cancer-researching and, afterward, presentation work. Now, I was a little reluctant to go. I mean, I’d just come back from a taxing science contest. I’d used up a great deal of my speaking juice. I didn’t want to go …

Heck, I was nervous because I’d just remembered this and hadn’t so much as prepared a speech.

“What day is it?” I asked.

“It’s on July 6, at SMK Lajau. So, do you have any topic yet? I need to tell the judges as soon as possible, preferably today.”

Dear God. “Erm – well, I don’t really have a topic, Teacher.”

She waved a hand as if to swat an annoying fly. “Never mind that, we can change it later. Just think up a temporary one for now.”

“Okay – ‘Why We Should Appreciate Science.’ How’s that?”

“That sounds good,” Madam Julianne said. “Okay, thank you, Ethan. Don’t look so worried, you should be fine!” With that, she opened one of the office doors and walked in.

I sighed, and finished up the remains of my sandwich. July the sixth was in less than a week from now. I didn’t have much time to prepare, but I hadn’t had much time to prepare back at university, either.

That wasn’t exactly a speech, that was a presentation. You had no set script to stick to. If you messed up, you could always look at your slides.

Somehow the idea of having no firm script to stick to sounded very appealing to me.

I couldn’t be bothered to search for a topic on the net, so when I got home, I sat down for a minute and thought about what really interested me. In all honesty, I really wanted to talk about my recent experiences at university. It was a very unique experience, and it had a very nice twist ending …

But it was all about me. Face it, Ethan, nobody wants to hear me prattle for six minutes to conclude with how I was so great that I won a consolation prize. If I told that story at public speaking, there was a high chance I’d come off sounding very full of myself – which I was. I didn’t need to let a whole audience know that. I’d probably be marked down for sheer bigheadedness.

Okay. But your mind is still on the National Science Challenge. Admit it, you didn’t come up with a science-related temporary topic for no reason. So what do you do? What do you want to talk about? Between the dry, sterile, sophisticated lab equipment and strenuous, isolated lifestyle, what could actually interest me and a room full of people from competing schools?

I sat and pondered this for a moment, and then I jumped off my bed, sat in front of my computer, opened up Google, and typed the words “Nobel Prizes” in the search box.

Two participants from each school would be sent, and the second speaker Madam Julianne had picked was my sister, Ellen. She’d put together a speech entitled “Laughter, The Best Medicine.” On July 6, Ellen and I set off for the library at nine o’clock, where we found Madam Julianne waiting. We then started rehearsing our speeches, while she timed us using her phone stopwatch.

I hadn’t printed out a script. The most I had were some notes jotted down in one of the notebooks I’d used at Universiti Malaya. In very, very simple terms, what I had learned so far about Alfred Nobel was this: he was born on October 21, 1833 in Stockholm, grew up to be a self-educated, trained chemist who was fluent in many languages, and started experimenting with nitroglycerine, later setting up a factory to make the stuff. When the factory blew up, killing his younger brother, Emil, Alfred Nobel turned to making a safer explosive, dynamite. He believed that this would bring peace to the world (exactly why was something I would explain in greater detail). He died on December 10, 1886.

Apart from that, I’d also jotted down a few famous Nobel laureates and their achievements. I couldn’t remember all of them, and every time I rehearsed my speech, the three examples I chose would always be altered somehow. The most prominent examples that stood out in my memory were Albert Einstein (Nobel Prize in Physics for his theory of relativity), Sir Alexander Fleming (Medicine, for penicillin – that was easy because it rhymed) and Martin Luther King, Jr. (Peace).

As per custom every time the school sent participants to compete, we’d assembled a few supporters. Jessica was coming along, Syarifah from our class was following too, and so was Maya from 4 DELIMA, as well as a few other girls. They didn’t come to the library with us, but they’d be waiting in the canteen at twelve.

Madam Julianne timed our speeches, making Ellen and I take turns, and suggested tips – Ellen would begin with a joke (Madam Julianne later told all of the supporters to laugh, or else), and I had to stop swallowing my words. Other than that, everything was fine, although Ellen looked a bit nervous.

“Just be calm,” I said to her, while Madam Julianne was busy reviewing a video recording of my speech. “Take it as something fun – after all, you don’t get to share information like this every day.”

Ellen smiled wanly. “I don’t know how you look at it the way you do,” she said. “You’re all – cool and perfect. You’re not even nervous.”

“No, I’m not. My delivery is too fast and I haven’t memorized my speech – I haven’t even got a speech, just a basic skeleton. And I am nervous. I’m just doing my best to cover it up, because, really, nobody’s going to care if I’m nervous.”

“Don’t be nervous, Ellen,” Madam Julianne said. “You’re great.”

“Besides,” I said, “I’ve been to SMK Lajau’s hall before, I know what it looks like.” Last year, as part of the Project Gemilang programme for PMR, I’d been sent to SMK Lajau for two consecutive days to attend an answering-techniques workshop. On the second day, the host had wanted some student feedback on how the talk was going so far, and somehow her eyes had landed on me. I have to admit, I’d been secretly wanting it – yearning for the opportunity to speak, to share my oh-so-unique take on yesterday’s Science study tips, to possibly impress the pretty girl sitting at the back (not Jessica). I’d barely gotten past my third sentence when the students, elite students from Labuan’s secondary schools who had been chosen for Project Gemilang, began clapping. I knew very well that it meant nothing, just that they had never heard my accent before – but it built my confidence. And that was all I needed.

Now, I could almost see myself standing on the hall stage, talking to an audience about Alfred Nobel’s life and how he had dedicated his work to building a world of peace.

“I see someone has the added advantage,” Ellen said darkly.

I opened my mouth to say whatever soothing words I could find, but Madam Julianne called, “Okay, Ellen, shall we try that again?” Ellen adjusted her glasses and moved back to the front.

“So,” she said to Madam Julianne, “start with the joke?”

“Yes. Just start with the joke. You can greet the judges later, don’t worry.”

“Okay.” Ellen cleared her throat, smiled, and said in her best chipper voice: “Why did Cinderella get kicked off the basketball team?”

I sighed and turned to my notes, trying to scoop up all I could before it was my turn again.

At a quarter to twelve, we headed down to the canteen. After five minutes, the supporters we had picked arrived: Maya, Syarifah and Jessica. I smiled at them as they entered the hall.

“Ready?” Madam Julianne asked. “Okay then – the bus will be here any minute.”

Three minutes past twelve, a minibus with a broad green stripe and the number “6” printed on its side rattled through the gateway of SMK Pantai. We all boarded it, and I sat at the front, just across from Madam Julianne, who had a placid, confident expression on her face. I looked at my shaky reflection in the bus mirror, checked my hair, and tried to make sure the pages of my notebook didn’t flutter all over the place.

No actual script. What the hell are you doing, Ethan? No script. Just a bunch of facts strung together, no definite script. You are one badass stagerocker, that’s for sure.

SMK Lajau wasn’t that far away from SMK Pantai, less than ten minutes away down a long road descending in a lazy slope. We got out, registered, and checked our numbers on the list. Ellen was speaker number six, while I was speaker number twelve. We both were given two paper tags marked with our respective numbers, and told to pin them over our school badges for the competition.

“So I’m going first,” Ellen said. “Oh no. Oh no. Oh no.”

“Don’t worry about that,” I said. “Just think – it’ll be over even faster for you.”

“Yippee!” Ellen squealed, rolling her eyes.

We picked up a few copies of the programme, and grabbed some lunch (served in Styrofoam packets) and water bottles, heading off to the canteen to find it. A few other students had arrived, accompanied by their teachers. I tried not to look at them, and scooped rice into my mouth while leafing through the programme. Intimidating-looking speech titles skimmed past my eyes: “The Importance of Studying English,” “Blended Learning,” “Managing Stress,” “How to Improve Communicative Skill,” “The Art of Introduction,” and …

“‘Organ Donation,’” I said. “Interesting. Takes real guts to speak on a subject like that, you know.”

Nobody laughed, so I went back to my meal.

“Okay, here’s the deal,” Madam Julianne told us when we’d finished lunch and were searching for trash cans to dump the Styrofoam packets. “The competition isn’t going to start for another hour or so, but we’ve been allowed to use the library. They’ll call us down before it starts. What do you say, shall we head up and practice?”

“Okay,” I said, “that sounds good.”

In the library, Madam Julianne alternated between Ellen and I, shooting random impromptu topics at us and letting us come up with responses. I hated the way I was hesitating before I replied; fifteen seconds seemed too long, and the time seemed to expand with pointless, self-replicating thoughts like “I’m so slow” and “Nahhh, I can’t do this” and my personal favourite: “This thought is doing nothing in your head but slowing you down. By all rights, I shouldn’t be here, but I’ll screw you up because the brain loves to generate random thoughts that do just that. Sorry? Are you trying to concentrate? Well you can get THAT idea out of your head, because this is my domain and I RULE. Time to asexually reproduce again, hope there’s enough space in your big brain, ha-ha-ha, that rhymes, oh boy, I pity any other deep and meaningful thoughts you may be having….”

We headed downstairs with just six minutes to go before two. SMK Lajau’s hall was just the way I remembered it, only there was a microphone wired to a stand on the stage, cable looped around the three-toed base. The master of ceremony gave us a brief, quick opening (thank goodness this isn’t a BM competition, or that would’ve taken forever, I thought), and the first contestant was called up to speak. I’d already started freaking out, in that serene, in-control manner in which I always freak out. I opened my red notebook, looked over what I’d written, and turned to a blank new page. Picking up my pencil, I sketched out a mind-map with my core points.

Ellen was speaker number six. She did pretty good for her first time – I could tell she was freaking out a bit, but she kept it well under control. When she told the Cinderella joke, we were the only ones who clapped – and, realizing this, we clapped even louder so that everyone else’s cold silence was less apparent. I decided right then that most of the other members of the audience were either not paying attention, lacking in a sense of humour, or just being plain spoilsports.

Not that I give a damn about that – I’m Mister Cool Speaker without His Script, right? Mister Winner of the Best Presenter Consolation Prize at a Contest Which was About Science and Experiment Methodology Skills. I’ll be all right.

We clapped hard for Ellen once more as she came down from the stage, her expression growing more and more flushed with each step she took. “Oh, I sucked,” she moaned softly, sitting back down in her seat.

“You didn’t suck,” I said. “Nice speech, Ellen. Considering that was your first time, that was beyond impressive.”

“You were brilliant,” Madam Julianne said. “Now all you’ve got is the impromptu.”

“Ohhh, great.” Ellen’s head seemed to shrink into her shoulders. “Don’t remind me. Just – don’t.”

I decided that it was better not to talk about the competition anymore, so I said, “Erm, I’m feeling pretty scared myself.”

Instead of drawing Ellen’s attention off her own nervousness, it seemed to worsen the situation. “You’ll be fine,” she said.

“You’re a natural, Ethan,” Jessica said.

I turned to her. “When was the last time you even saw me give a speech?”

“I don’t remember,” Jessica said, with a sly grin. “You?”

“I don’t remember, either.”

“Stop worrying, guys,” Madam Julianne said. “I have faith in both of you.”

“Thanks,” I said.

The next five speakers seemed to go by within minutes, and I distracted myself from the ever-intensifying gnawing in the pit of my stomach by sketching more speech-maps in my notebook, glancing at the list of Nobel laureates I’d made. The words coming from the speakers were well-thought, decently-arranged, very tasteful – but I couldn’t let myself hear them. That was the thing about public speaking, I thought: before your speech, you could never really listen to anyone else’s. Everyone was riveted to their own script.

Except me, ha-HA, I’m way too cool for a script. That’s me, Mr. Badass Best Presenter.

“Certain people will need to shut up if they’re not the ones holding the mike,” I said.

Syarifah turned to me with a puzzled frown. “What?”

“Nothing,” I said. “Just …”

“Practising your speech?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Just practising my speech.”

“Oh. Because I heard the word ‘show up’ in the script.” Syarifah smiled. “What’s your topic again?”

“Oh – Alfred Nobel,” I said. “The guy who started the Nobel Prizes.”

Syarifah nodded contemplatively, and grinned once again. “Okay, keep practising,” she said, and turned away.

Speaker Number Eleven finally got off the stage to pattering applause, which sounded like great leather strips raining down on a pavement. There was a brief lull in the proceedings, a kind of hiatus, during which the judges scribbled on their sheafs of paper, and the master of ceremony looked around with wide eyes, holding the mike close.

“Okay, good luck, Ethan,” Madam Julianne said.

Syarifah slapped me on the shoulder. “You’ll do fine.”

“Not fine,” Maya said. “You’ll be incredible.”

“Go, Ethan,” Jessica said, clapping her hands together and smiling.

“Good luck, man,” Ellen said, flashing a thumbs-up.

“Thanks. Thank you. Thanks very much.”

My insides seemed to be squirting my liquefied nerves in an attempt to digest the food I’d eaten a while ago. All of a sudden, my throat felt very numb. The mind-map I’d been writing out again and again was in my head, I knew what I was going to talk about, but God, right now I didn’t know if I could do this. I’d just come here to talk to the audience about Alfred Nobel, for goodness sake.

“And now,” said the MC, “with the topic of ‘Why We Should Appreciate Science’ as his speech, please welcome Speaker Number 12!”

The audience began to clap, once again that polite, secretly-bored sound of pattering palms. I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and pictured a university lecture hall filled with students, teachers and contest facilitators, all turning around to face me, yelling my name in a jumpy chorus. Then I opened my eyes, stood up, and started walking.

Madam Julianne, Ellen and my friends were wishing me good luck. I smiled and nodded, and kept on walking, feeling perfectly all right now.

I stepped up onto the stage, smiling at the applause, and stood at the microphone, waiting for the prefect to come up and adjust it. As soon as he did, I said, “Excuse me, but is it okay if I hold this instead?”

“You want to hold the mike in your hand while you walk?” I nodded. “Okay, no problem,” said the prefect, and with a smile on his face, he began to uncoil the loops of wire from the mike stand. I surveyed the audience while waiting, praying that they wouldn’t become impatient by the fact that I was putting off my speech with this. Finally, the prefect carried the mike stand off to the side and leaned it against the wall. I smiled and nodded at him, raised the microphone to my lips, and turned to the audience.

“A very good afternoon to the honourable judges, teachers, and fellow friends,” I said. “Okay, first of all, I know that the leaflet says my topic is ‘Why We Should Appreciate Science,’ but my topic today is actually ‘Alfred Nobel’s Legacy.’ I hope you don’t mind.”

The audience sniggered. I paused, giving those sparse introductory lines a second to sink in, took a step to the side, and then continued: “Ladies and gentlemen, you remember dynamite? Alfred Nobel invented it. He also invented the Nobel Prizes, which is one of the things I’m going to talk about today. Alfred Nobel was born on October 21, 1833 in Stockholm, Sweden to Immanuel – an architect and inventor – and Andrietta Nobel.”

Remembering the birthday had been no challenge. All I had to do was remember Jessica’s birthday, October 12, and reverse the last two digits. Easy.

“He grew up to be a very smart, self-educated man. He was a trained chemist,” I continued, extending a finger of my free hand and tapping it, “and he was fluent in many languages.” I extended another finger and tapped it. “All this before the age of twenty. Ladies and gentlemen, it is clear to see that this was a precocious, hardworking man.

Still moving slowly around the stage, I said, “In the 1860s, Alfred Nobel began experimenting with nitroglycerine, a very dangerous and explosive substance. If you watched the second Zorro movie, you’ll remember it’s the liquid that explodes in the end and kills the villain. Only a year later, Mr. Nobel patented his design, and set up a factory at Helenborg, near Stockholm, to manufacture the stuff. In 1864, the factory blew up, killing several people – including Alfred Nobel’s younger brother, Emil.”

I paused, hoping these words sank in deep. “Now, this was a very hard time for Mr. Nobel, but he didn’t give up. Just three years later, in 1867, he came up with a new invention called dynamite, which was much safer to handle. Now the thing is, he believed that this new invention, dynamite, would be a harbinger of peace.” I stepped back and yanked away some coils of wire that had been in my way, and then looked back at the audience. Jessica, Ellen, Maya and Teacher Julianne were sitting to my left. Teacher Julianne smiled brightly. I gave an ambiguous phantom smile, and continued with my speech.

“Seems kind of weird, doesn’t it?” I asked the audience, shrugging for effect. “How can something as explosive and deadly as dynamite ever bring peace to the world? Now here’s what Alfred Nobel believed. He believed that, the day when two armies knew that they could annihilate each other in the blink of an eye, they would both back down. That was what he believed very strongly in, ladies and gentlemen, and if you think about it, it does make sense.

“Alfred Nobel did not live to see his invention bring peace to the world,” I said. “He died on December 10, 1896.”

Okay, now for the big reveal. Be careful, Ethan.

“Now, after Mr. Nobel died, his will was found. Everyone was shocked to see what it contained. They found that Alfred Nobel had dedicated a lot of his remaining money to the establishment of five prizes – prizes for those who confer the greatest benefit on mankind. They would be awarded in five categories: Chemistry, Medicine, Physics, Literature and Peace. (A new category, Economics, was added way after that in 1969.) It took many years for this system to get put together, but they managed eventually, and the first Nobel Prizes were awarded in 1901 – five years after his death.

“A Nobel Prize comprises of a gold medal, a diploma, and a sum of money. There are one hundred to two hundred and fifty nominees per year,” I said, “and – oh, yeah – the prize cannot be awarded posthumously. Today, we have many famous Nobel Laureates whom I’m sure everyone has heard of – Albert Einstein, he won the Nobel Prize in Physics for his theory of relativity. Hermann Joseph Mueller, Nobel Prize in Medicine for the discovery of X-rays. Barack Obama and Martin Luther King, Jr. have won the Nobel Prize for Peace. Marie Curie for pioneering radioactivity with uranium.

“These are only a handful of the famous laureates who have gone on to win the Nobel Prize,” I said, looking the audience straight in its many faces. “If you want to be one too, I’m behind you all the way. Why not? Go and get it!” I grinned, and then said, “Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.”

The audience started to clap, and I grinned, feeling slightly faint. I handed the microphone to the prefect and walked off the stage on jittery legs.

“You were awesome,” Ellen said.

I smiled. “Thanks. It was okay, I guess.”

“That was amazing,” Madam Julianne said to me, when I’d returned to my seat. “You should win number one.”

“Yeah, you should win number one,” Jessica said. I turned to her and saw her leaning toward me, a mad grin on her pretty face. “I tell you, Ethan, if you don’t win number one, the judges would have missed something.”

“At this point, I think it doesn’t even matter if you win number one,” Madam Julianne said. I turned back to face her. “I think it’s safe to say that you’ve definitely placed in the top three. Just think, Ethan – if we place in the top three, that’ll be a new record for SMK Pantai! All these years, we’ve never even come within sniffing range of third place!”

“What? Really?” I asked.

“Yes, really! So I’m hoping you win. Heck – I know you’ll win.”

I let out a shaky breath. “Thank you, Teacher.”

“You’ll win, Ethan,” Jessica said.

I turned to her. “So did you enjoy the speech? Was it nice?”

“Oh, yeah, it was good,” Jessica said.

“Okay, guys,” Madam Julianne said, “let’s just try and listen to the rest of the losers – I mean, contestants.”

Smiling guiltily, I faced forward once more.

There were only a few more contestants after me. There was a girl with a very calm, cool voice who told a story of a public speaker who wrote introductions about himself for every host at an event, and was constantly embarrassed by the way his introductions were read out, painting him as a snob (“Hey, I recognize this, they ran it as a joke in Reader’s Digest,” I told Teacher Julianne happily). There was another girl from SMK Labuan with shiny hair and a high-pitched voice who talked about fashion, dressing properly, and urged the audience to prioritize fashion (“Whoa, cool down, girl,” Maya said). One boy with a round head and glasses started to talk about the elements of a good speech, and started stuttering midway into his speech, causing my heart to hammer nastily. Given the speech title, it was almost funny – but I didn’t feel very humorous right now. The audience, I thought, wouldn’t laugh at you if you fumbled on stage, but they would feel your nervousness. Finally, after a multitude of tense pauses, during which the audience held its breath as one, the boy concluded with, “Sorry for my bad speech,” leaving a sour taste in my mouth. That could have just as easily been me. As the bespectacled boy hurried off the stage, knocking the microphone stand down as he went and causing a squeal of feedback, I uttered a silent prayer of thanks that he hadn’t gone before me.

After the final contestant bowed down and left the stage, we were led by a prefect in a blue tudung to the school’s conference room, where we were told we would be quarantined. One by one, we would be called out according to the order we’d presented our speech in, go to the koperasi, where a teacher holding the impromptu-topic envelopes awaited, and we’d have three minutes with a pen and paper before being led back to the hall once more.

Ellen and I sat together, and remained silent as the minutes ticked by. Sitting at the tables, the other contestants conveyed a sense of doomed impatience. The conference room was bathed in bright white light, and framed photographs of prime ministers, rulers and inspiring pedagogic sayings glimmered on the wall. An LCD projector hung above me, the connecting cable trailing to the table. I took it up and played with it for a few moments, pretending the plug on the end was a microphone.

One by one, the contestants were called out to face the impromptu speech. Every five or six minutes, the door would open, and one of the two prefects standing on guard outside would call out the contestant’s number. The speaker would get up and head over to the door. You could get a very good sense of their confidence levels by the way they carried themselves on their walk to the door. The rest of us who hadn’t been called waited, thinking about God knows what. The bespectacled, round-faced boy who had talked about the elements of a good speech was resting his head on the table, gazing ahead with the sort of air a person has when he doesn’t want to talk to anyone. Justin, a smart-looking prefect from the Science School, who had delivered a speech about the effects of television in a pompous (there was no other word for it) accent, sat at the head of the table, back straight, posture firm, staring at invisible impromptu topics that orbited his head. Isabella, the girl who had shrieked about fashion and why it was important to prioritize it, drummed her fingers on the desk. I smiled at her, and she smiled back. It was a short, fleeting gesture, one that could barely have existed, exchanged in a fear-laced atmosphere.

Thinking that it would be better to say at least something, I whispered to Ellen, “Are you ready for this?”

Ellen grimaced. “Oh, I don’t know. I just can’t wait for it to be over.”

“Me, neither,” I said, thinking what a relief it would be to get out of this cold, glaring room and step back into the hall once more.

“What are you talking about? You’re fine, Ethan. I know you’ll wow them when it’s your turn.”

“That isn’t for sure yet,” I said. “I still don’t know what kind of topic is waiting for me in the other room –”

“Yeah, well, neither do the rest of us, let’s put it that way.”

We fell silent, and I continued twirling the end of the projector cable, thinking of the only other time I’d had an impromptu topic. It had been in May of 2008, and I’d been a new student at SMK Pantai. The school board had organized English Week, and one of the activities was a school-level public speaking contest. My topic had been – I grinned as I recalled it – television.

I shut out the bright white walls and depressing silence of the SMK Lajau conference room for a while, and recalled the only other time Jessica had seen me give a speech, two years ago.

I’d already taken part in the essay competition, and despite knowing it was an easy win, I’d sent off three essays to the office. I’d taken part in the Spelling Bee competition, too, my teeth chattering as I realized I would be taking on formidable Form 4 and Form 5 students. I’d ended up duelling a tough-as-nails SPM student, but in the end I’d been the only one able to spell the winning word correctly, and I had won. I could still remember how Jessica had reacted when she’d found out, jumping up and down and rushing off to tell Lily.

And then there had been the public speaking contest, which I’d only taken part in because a) Jessica was going and she’d feel better if she weren’t alone, and b) because my English teacher had encouraged me to. The third reason, c) because I thought the experience would be good for me, materialized as a vapour-like by-product of the first two.

I’d called Aunty Pat up on the phone to ask her for advice, and she’d been very generous in helping me hone my thoughts, think about what I wanted to say and how to say it. Something about that phone call bolstered the wispy confidence I had, and although I wasn’t positive I would win, this would do. It was my first time, after all.

Only a few of us had turned up: a group of English teachers as a panel of judges, four contestants, and a couple of random students who had stayed back to watch the proceedings. SMK Pantai’s Dewan Gemilang was dimly lit at that time of afternoon, and I’d sat to the right of the judges’ panel, Jessica a seat ahead of me.

As Ron Keyes, a cute and chubby Form One boy, ascended the stage, Jessica had looked over her shoulder and motioned for me to sit next to her. I dragged my chair forward, bringing my notebook along. Jessica was holding a folded sheet of paper covered with her dainty, squashed handwriting.

“I feel kind of lonely,” she said.

Her small tone, while far from terrified, was quieter than usual. Quite frankly, it frightened me a little. “Well,” I said, unsure of how to reply, “I’m here, I hope that helps …”

“What’s your speech about?”

“Television. What’s yours?”

“Oh.” Jessica gave an embarrassed sort of smile. “‘Love Makes the World Go Round.’ It’s quite bad, really.”

“It sounds great! Can I see it?”

She gave me that modest smile again. It wasn’t yet August, and I hadn’t yet seen the full-blown power of that smile. She held out her script, and I took it with as respectful a manner as I could manage.

As my eyes landed on the first paragraph, she drove all the written words from my mind with her own spoken ones. “I definitely won’t win, Ethan. I’ll probably get last place.”

I put her script down. “Don’t say that. You’re really good.”

“You don’t know me.”

“I’ve heard about you. My friends say you’re one of the top students in English class.”

“Oh. They do?” She looked at me with a hopeful expression, and then it faded. “I’m not as good as you, though.”

I shook my head. “Seriously, Jessica. You’re just being humble, and that’s a good thing. But you’ll be fine.”

The modest half-smile appeared again for a third time. “Thanks for coming here, Ethan. I really appreciate it.”

“No problem,” I said.

I picked up her script again and was just about to start reading it when Ron concluded his speech, and the judging panel clapped. “And now,” said Madam Julianne (she had been there, I remembered now), “give a big round of applause for Jessica, from 2 TOPEZ!”

“Oh, God, here goes,” Jessica said, and I handed her the script. Oh, well. Perhaps it would sound better coming from her.

Her speech was amazing. I was really flawed. I tried to tell her that, but I was the next contestant, and so I’d gone up onstage, reluctant, nervous, excited and terrified all at once, giving her a brief glance as we –

Hang on. That wasn’t impromptu. That was my Jessica flashback, when she and I had sat together for a brief moment before our speeches. What was I doing thinking about that?

Everything had changed after that, I thought. There had been the blue notebook, and Troy had come after that – and then the bitter weeks, months of repression, confusion and frustration. And now, two boyfriends later, she was with this new guy called Anton … and I was still unsure whether I had forgiven her or was still upset with her.

She came to my competition today. That’s something to be thankful for. She’s being very supportive of me.

I grinned. That was true.

The door swung open. “Speaker number eight,” called the prefect, “it’s your turn.” Justin rose from his seat and strode towards the door. It clicked shut coldly.

For my impromptu speech, we’d gone one by one into an adjacent classroom, where a teacher I didn’t know had given me a topic I was completely unsure of: “My Handphone.” This was completely out of left field for me, because I didn’t own a cell phone at all. My friends would probably be at an advantage – I was sure many of them had already owned cell phones since grade six – but it wasn’t for me.

Thinking that cost me fifteen seconds. Screw it, I thought, just pretend you do. That should be easy.

It was pretty easy. I didn’t recall hearing anything about telling untrue stories in the rules, or from Aunty Pat. I told them a story about how my cell phone had helped me contact my mother one evening, when I’d come out of school from a co-curricular meeting that had ended early. In the end, Ron had won third place, and I had placed second behind Jessica.

“You see? Your speech was great!” I’d told her, as her face was overwhelmed by brilliant smiles. “The judges loved it! And there you were saying ‘It’s no good,’ and I was telling you that it was good – and I was right.”

“Alah, Ethan.” Jessica favoured me with a smirk. “I was just lucky bah.”

“Well,” I said, “I think your speech was wonderful.”

“You did?”

“Yeah, I did. Congratulations, Jessica.”

I grinned to myself. Second place behind Jessica … not bad, not bad at all. I should be far improved by now, considering I’d won Best Presenter.

Don’t get your head bloated, Ethan, I thought. Remember that Jessica won first place with humility, not pride.

I played with the projector plug some more as my mind shunted along a narrow mental corridor, trapped between thinking of either Jessica’s new boyfriend or the worst possible case scenario that could arise from my impromptu speech.

Fifteen minutes later, the door opened and I got up. The prefect led me along the corridor to a small classroom off the school koperasi. A kindly-looking man of middle age waited inside, holding a stopwatch and a brown envelope.

“Four minutes, right?” I asked him.

“Yes,” he said. “Good luck.” He handed me a black pen, waited till I had ripped open the envelope, and then clicked his stopwatch.

I pulled out the little strip of paper and read it:

What would you do if tomorrow was the last day of your life?

I grinned. “All right!” I said. This would be easy, even if I didn’t tell them the entire truth. I picked up the pen and began scribbling a hasty mind map. For the final ninety seconds, I scanned the sheet of paper, sneaking glances at the middle-aged man with the stopwatch.

Finally, he clicked it and said, “Ah, your time is up. You may bring that into the hall if you like.”

“I think I’ll bring it,” I said.

Although damned if I’ll be using it.

I stood up, thanked him, and followed the prefect down to the speech hall once more.

Once again, the hall prefect folded up the mike stand and leaned it against the wall, while I stood there holding the microphone. When he was done, I drained all my nervousness with one quick exhalation. This was the second time I was speaking to my audience this evening, I already knew how it went, this was just the fun egress of my day.

“Well, a very good evening, ladies and gentlemen,” I said. “It’s nice to see you all again. Right, I’d like to tell you what I’d do if tomorrow was the last day of my life.”

A few students from competing schools looked up. An Indian girl from St. Anne’s with a sullen, pointed face glared at the seat in front of her. I looked away from her – she wouldn’t do anything for my confidence level. I turned and looked at Madam Julianne, who was gazing at me with a sort of hopeful fascination, and Jessica. She was beaming.

I focused on that smile, absorbing all the energy that had once turned my insides to jelly one year ago, and found myself feeling stronger than ever before. There could be no fear now. Not with her there.

I said, “Life is like a speech. At that point, there wouldn’t be any more time for any more big ideas, I’d have to head straight for the conclusion. So although I’d love to climb Mount Kilimanjaro, become a billionaire and visit the Seven Wonders of the World, the reality is that I just wouldn’t have time to realize all those dreams in that one day. So I’d keep it simple.

“The first thing I’d do would be to thank everyone in my life for all they’ve done for me. I’d write some letters and e-mails, and send them off. Oh, I’d tell my parents and my family that I love them. Of course I’d do that – they’ve been with me since I was born. I love you, I’d say, thank you so much for everything, it has really been a great journey with you guys. Besides that, I’d also tell them not to be sad – it’s not like I’d be unprepared for death at that point,” I said. “I’d be able to go out peacefully.”

I took a deep breath and smiled at Jessica. She was nodding.

“I guess I’d be pretty free after that, ladies and gentlemen,” I said. “My day would probably be ending by then, so I’d make a cup of orange juice, take a bar of chocolate – Cadbury’s is my favourite – and head to my room and enjoy one final meal. That’s how I’d want to go, enjoying the great gift that is chocolate.” A few members of the audience laughed. “Then I’d sleep,” I said, “and I don’t think I’d wake up. All in all, a very nice way to go.”

I grinned. “Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.”

The audience clapped once more. I stepped down from the stage, my heart racing. My left hand clutched at a sheet of paper as I touched down, and I realized it was the sheet I’d written the impromptu outline on.

“Was I okay?” I asked Madam Julianne as soon as I sat down.

“Okay? You were fantastic. They’ve got to give you first place.”

I smiled, and smoothed the paper out, watching the prefect re-set the microphone stand. The poor guy, I’d probably given him a fair amount of extra work today.

The rest of the contestants came in with their take on the impromptu speech, and I soon realized just how shabby my performance had been.

One common thread running through all of them was the theme of charity. Each one of them said they’d donate to charity before they died, and how they wouldn’t feel good without saying a great amount of final prayers before leaving. Another common theme was travelling the world to see all the great places of interest, but I wasn’t afraid of that.

“This makes me feel really bad,” I said to Jessica, towards the end.

“What?”

“That I didn’t mention donating to charity at any point. I’m definitely a bad boy.”

Jessica snickered. “Don’t worry bah, Ethan. Your speech was unique. I was here the whole time, I heard all of the others and they weren’t as good as you.”

“Except Ellen’s,” I said quickly.

“Yeah, except Ellen’s. Seriously, Ethan, yours was the best so far.”

“Really? You’re not just saying that because I got you to come on as a supporter?”

Jessica smiled. “No, I’m not,” she said, “although if you were bad, I would have to anyways, wouldn’t I?” She laughed. “No lah, Ethan. It was a great speech. You’re going to win.”

“Thanks, Jess,” I said, and turned around just to catch Isabella saying, “And I will donate all my money to charity, all the savings and coins that I’ve ever collected, and I would also pray because if I don’t I will go to The Hell.”

“Great,” I said to Jessica, “I’m going to go to ‘The Hell.’ Let’s hope the judges don’t mind.”

She laughed, and we sat and talked for a while as the master of ceremony thanked all the speakers and announced that the judges would need a while to make their final decision.

“Just think, Ethan,” Madam Julianne said. “Top three. Top three at least. It’d be a crime not to have you as our winner, but Pantai’s going to have a record set today.”

“Awww, you’re being too nice.”

“Are you going to finish that?” Madam Julianne pointed at a curry-puff in a plastic bag. I’d gotten it from the canteen during lunch after registration, and hadn’t finished it.

“What? No.”

I turned to Jessica. She, Syarifah and Maya were reading the script for our school’s drama competition. I swallowed. I had helped edit the script, so I felt a strong attachment to it. The drama was a story about why we should love the environment and take care of it always – not the most original idea, I thought, but I’d been hired as an editor and not a producer, so I kept my mouth shut. The script had been written by Form 5 students, but they’d sought my help, and I’d ended up making some pretty heavy changes to the grammar, wincing slightly as I did so. I’d kept the original story intact, however.

Right now, Jessica read, “What’s wrong with me? My body feels so sick. No, it can’t be! I’m leafless!”

“Hey,” Syarifah read. “Why does it feel so hot and uncomfortable here, I’ve never experienced such stuffy temperature in my life. You know what, I think I’m going to take a swim. Maybe that’ll help cool me off … splash.” She broke reading for a moment to grin at Jessica. “Aiseh.”

“Jessica, you should be the Penguin,” I said.

“But I’m not in the drama.”

“Hm? Pity. I still think you’d be great as the Penguin.”

“All right, I’ll read the Penguin’s lines,” she said. “Here goes: Oh my God! What’s this … eeek! What’s this oily stuff sticking to my body? Ew, the surface of the water is covered in this oily … black … sludge. Looks like it’s forming a layer over the water itself! I can’t imagine how those little fish down there are going to breathe!”

There was a sudden squeal of electronic feedback. I spun around sharply in my chair.

“Oh, this is it,” Madam Julianne said. “Ethan, Ellen, get ready.”

“Ladies and gentlemen, we have come to the end of our contest,” the master of ceremony said. “We have heard many interesting speeches today – speeches about stress management, laughter, national unity, fashion, even organ donation. You were all very good, so give yourselves a round of applause.”

We complied, and the speaker continued, “Our judges had a very difficult time deciding who should be awarded the top three spots.”

“Yeah, right,” Jessica muttered.

“Without further ado, the moment you have been waiting for, ladies and gentlemen – in third place, speaker number eight, with ‘The Importance of Studying English’!”

A sweet-faced girl stood up and walked to the stage, and the speaker waited for the applause to die down before continuing, “In second place, speaker number twelve, with ‘Alfred Nobel’s Legacy’!”

My teacher, sister and friends cheered loudly as I got up, weak-kneed and goofy-faced, to join speaker number eight at the stage.

“In first place,” the speaker said, layering her voice with showbiz suspense, “the champion of the Public Speaking State Level competition, for W.P. Labuan … on the sixth of July, 2010,” she added, to reluctant chuckles, “is … speaker number seventeen, with the title, ‘Fashion’!”

Isabella jumped up, her eyes shining, her mouth open in an overjoyed expression of surprise, as the audience erupted in tumultuous applause. Watching her rush up to join us at the stage, I couldn’t help but grin at how excited she looked.

The three of us posed for a few photos, and then we moved aside so that the photographer could get a clear shot at the winner. I was just about to step down when a tall Malay lady from the judging panel approached me. She had a stiff, thin nose, appraising eyes and a fair complexion that glistened eerily. I’d heard that healthy-looking skin was supposed to shine, but it didn’t have to look like plastic. I had no idea what this woman’s name was, but I had seen her before, at numerous co-curricular competitions and festivals. She’d been at the airport on June 22, the day I’d left for Universiti Malaya.

“Congratulations,” she said to me. “You were very good, but you need to be more dramatic. Your enunciation is clear, and your voice projection is good, very confident – but you’re too casual. Too calm,” she said, tweaking the air with her fingers. “Besides that, we marked you down because you walked around with the microphone a lot. That was one major problem we had with you.”

“Oh.” I raised my eyebrows and faked my best expression of openness. “It was?”

“Yes, it was. You’re not supposed to do that.”

“I see,” I said. “Well, I’ll make sure I don’t do it if I ever choose to take part in this competition again.”

The tall, shiny-skinned judge nodded. “Apart from that, you were pretty good.”

I nodded. “Cool. Thanks.” With that, I left, and headed out of the emptying hall.

Be open to criticism, I thought. That’s one of the things you must be if you ever hope to be good at what you’re doing.

I returned to my seat, which was surrounded by empty chairs – my supporters had gone outside. My bag was still lying on the seat, next to my lucky notebook from the Science Challenge. I picked up the notebook, leafed through it, and inserted the paper I’d outlined my impromptu speech. It was a pretty okay speech, I thought, as I put away the notebook and zipped the bag up, probably not the best speech any Labuan student had given, but it gave me a lot of pleasure.

Madam Julianne and the others were outside, waiting in the shade of a small hut. “Hi!” Madam said, and shook my hand. “Congratulations! You did so well!”

“Yeah,” Jessica said. I turned and saw her walking slowly to me. “Awesome speech, Ethan.”

“Thank you,” I said. “Second place, not bad, huh?”

“No, it isn’t,” Madam Julianne said, and a sudden dark frustration flitted across her face like a bat in the night. “But you should have won first. Not that Isabella girl. I mean – I don’t mean to be a sore loser about it, Ethan, but the judges picked her over you? Did you hear her? Standing there, shrieking about fashion?”

“Well,” I stuttered, “I thought she was – okay, you know –”

“Ahh, you just say that because you think she was cute,” Maya said. I smirked at her, and then turned back to Teacher.

“Wait,” I said. “You’re not just being a good supporter at this point. You really think the judges made a mistake, don’t you?”

“Yes, I do!” she said. “I talked to them when you were done. I asked them how they’d rated your performance, and they said you did fine – except for the part where you were walking around with the microphone. The prefect didn’t have any problem with that when you asked, did he?”

“No, he didn’t. He was fine with it, didn’t you guys see?”

“That’s what. I don’t recall seeing anything about not being able to walk around in the rulebook, but the judges insist that there was something. Oh, and they said you weren’t dramatic enough. They didn’t like your casual delivery – they said you were too calm, too relaxed, as though you were discussing everyday topics.”

I snickered. “Hey, man, that’s how I do things.”

“Alah, Teacher.” It was Jessica. “If he has a natural speaking style, what’s wrong with that? He’s relaxed. He’s not afraid. So?”

“I know!” Teacher Julianne said. “What do they expect him to be, tense and scared? Like that girl who won, I suppose – ‘Fashion, fashion! We must prioritize fashion!’”

“It’s a compliment, really,” I interjected, “I’m glad to know they thought I was too cool for the winning spot –”

But Madam Julianne wasn’t done yet. “I think something really fishy is going on. I’m going to check the rulebook tomorrow, Ethan, you wait and see.”

I bit my lip. The last thing I wanted was for this to turn into a dramatic fight – but Madam Julianne’s dedicated support of me was something awesome to behold.

Jessica stepped up to me, extended a babylike finger, and prodded me in the chest. Jab. Sparks radiated inward.

“You should have won,” she said, looking up at me.

All of a sudden, her expression was too cute-puppy-dog-eyes for me to think straight.

“Er, yeah,” I said. “I mean – no. Second place is good enough.”

“Oh, Ethan.” She circled me, and I swallowed. “You were always the modest type.” She came around from my left, and poked me in the ribs again. Jab. “You should’ve won, Ethan.” Jab. Jab. “You should have won.”

I forced a smile. All my thoughts of her, from the beginning of this year, up until now, were accumulating in my mind, forming a dense cloud of anger, pain, admiration, regret, forgiveness and frustration inside me.

“You’re never going to let me forget this, are you.”

“Oh, not for a while.” Jab. She poked me on the chest, right above the tight cloud of frustration and repression, and I felt it dissipate a little bit. I suddenly wanted her to poke me again right there, if only to take away all those feelings, those convoluted emotions that were preventing me from just communicating with her.

“Tell me I should’ve won,” I said. My voice had a tinge of desperation I had never heard in it before (and never wanted to hear again, for as long as Madam Julianne, Syarifah, Ellen and Maya stood watching us).

Jessica looked up at me. “You –” jab “– should –” jab “– have –” jab “– won.” JAB. She grinned as she pummelled me with her finger. “Ohh, that feels better.”

“You have no idea,” I said.

“So,” Jessica said, stepping back, “you think you want to go for next year’s contest?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “We’ll be very busy then. If the situation is permitting, I guess I will – but right now, I don’t think so.”

“If you do go,” Jessica said, looking up at me with a familiar gleam in her eye, “will you –”

“Win, yeah, I guess I’ll try.”

“Good boy.”

“Okay, here comes the bus,” Madam Julianne said.

We turned, pulled on our bags and collected our stuff, and boarded the bus. I ended up sitting next to Jessica, and I swung the door shut after me.

“Next stop,” said Jessica, as the bus rumbled out of SMK Lajau, “debate.”

Debate. I nearly smacked my forehead, but doing so would’ve brushed against Jessica’s shoulder in the process. “Oh, yeah,” I said. Out of sheer nervousness I grinned. “When’s that, again?”

“The fourteenth or fifteenth, I think,” Jessica said. “We’ll be going up against St. Anne’s.”

“St. Anne’s. Hey,” I said, “did you notice that St. Anne’s didn’t place back there?”

Jessica turned to me, and beamed.

“That’s wonderful!” she cried. “We totally kicked their butts this year!”

“Yeah,” I said, “we did.”

I leaned back in the hard seat, and I probably would’ve tried to catch a few winks, but I caught sight of Jessica’s small, dainty fist poised above me, index finger extended.

“Now,” she said, “as I was saying …”

We continued arguing playfully, verbally abusing the first-place winner, talking about how “great” my speech was, and laughing about my little win as the bus chugged back to SMK Pantai.

Afterword: This post is Part 2 of the "Figments Comeback," and I really hope you enjoyed it. My sincere apologies to any public speakers who may have been hurt or offended by anything I wrote above. I'd just like to remind everyone that not everything here is 100% accurate; certain lines of dialogue were altered, edited or just plain made up to make things flow better. The basic storyline, however, remains as true to real life as possible. :-) The next post is something that you're probably already familiar with if you know me on Facebook. It will be called "A Long Day at School," and it should be released on July 16.

Anyway, this story is very important to me, because the events which I have just related had a major part in getting me ... well, I wouldn't say "getting me to where I am today." I think a more accurate phrase would be "getting me to who I'm with today." The friends I've made since then, to be straightforward.

If you want to go for public speaking too, or if you think you'd like to give it a try, just know that I'm behind you all the way. You can learn a lot from it, so go for it.

Why wait? ;-)

- E.M.

The National Science Challenge

2011-06-21T20:33:00.006+08:00

In March, 2010, just before Jessica and I started ignoring each other, my Chemistry teacher told the class about a mega-hard science competition, organized by the Academy of Sciences Malaysia, being held all over the nation. There would be a preliminary round, a semi-final round and a final grand battle. Whoever entered the semi-finals would get to spend a week in university and “work on our very own thesis,” while the winner of the grand finals would be sent to Sweden to witness the Nobel Prize awards ceremony. Nobody responded at first. I was a deluded class monitor who wanted to show everyone the way to be by volunteering for everything, so after a few moments I went forward and asked about it.

I eventually convinced a few of my classmates to join in with me; we’d need three people to a team, anyway. Saza and Zafirah, two very smart girls, joined my team, while Vince, Liza and Jessica formed a team of their own. We took a look at last year’s preliminary-round questions, and nearly fainted. Saza suggested brushing up on science facts that we hadn’t quite learned yet, and passed around flash cards. I tried not to let my trepidation show; I was the class monitor and master of this situation, after all, the calm and collected nerd who nurtured a brave inner warrior (in short, I was Spider-Man to myself).

We took the test in the school’s empty conference room a couple of days later. The test lasted more than an hour, cut across two periods of add maths, and the teacher who was supposed to be supervising us couldn’t stay with us because she was busy … so some answers got shared between Jessica’s team and mine. I helped Vince out with pleasure. The questions were formidable, and by the time we reached the surprise essay questions at the back, our time had nearly run out, along with whatever ideas we might have had.

We all got together to discuss the first essay question, and we submitted our papers with the final two essay questions empty. I thought that we’d be lucky to scrape the bottom three, and never expected to hear from ASM again.

During the end of March and early April of that year, Jessica and I entered a cold war phase that extinguished any feelings I may have had for her. By the time she started talking to me, with only occasional things she had to say, I was confused and rather apathetic. Girls, I decided, were complicated, unusual creatures, great to be friends with, but deadly if you dared to push anything past the boundaries of friendship. I was equipped with what I deemed a backward, bigheaded sense of romance that would do no good for my image. I didn’t so much decide to stay off girls until further notice, as experience a dry lack of motivation and disillusionment with the whole idea of romance altogether. Suddenly every love song made me cringe, every romantic movie was intolerable, and every time I read any of my Facebook contacts talking about lurrrve, I felt a sick mixture of derision and pity. My teachers were right. Now was not the time for romance. I had enough on my plate, or, rather, school desk – nine subjects and a reputation as a “PMR hero” was suddenly a lot to live up to.

Later that April, one of my teachers called me down to the office to talk to me. I needed to make a drastic improvement in my grades, and I had to stay out of love. Love, she said, could ruin any student, no matter how smart they were. Even if I weren’t in such a dejected state, I wouldn’t have argued that a person didn’t have much say over how, when and with whom they fell in love. I said yes to my teacher, agreed to try harder, and left the office. For a week after that, I borrowed a pair of spectacles from Garrett and wore them during lessons as a sign of earnestness and seriousness.

May came around, and I discovered that Jessica had a new boyfriend, this time a dashing-looking guy by the name of Anton. Meh, I thought, whatever. She would always have a boyfriend, and I was just going to have to … well. It wasn’t like I cared. In the meantime, mid-term exams were approaching, the very exam I had to do well in, lest I receive more warnings from my teachers, less A’s on my report card, and a less flattering school record. Jessica and I settled into regular, somewhat formal conversation whenever we talked. Someday, I would get over myself and stop being angry at her. Today was not that day. On the other hand, I noticed that an acquaintance of mine, a Form Two girl named Katrina, who was studying in St. Anne’s, seemed to be paying me an awful lot of attention lately. She’d crafted me a gift on my birthday, posted messages on my Wall, and sent frequent texts. Once she even told me that she’d had a dream about me. Deep inside, some desperate part of me latched on to these signs, and drew the most obvious conclusion. She’d come a bit late, however. I’d only just pulled the plug on my romantic life.

(The following is a tale I may tell again, and if I do, I would like to do it in greater detail, and devote more to it than I am for this quick recap.)

June of that year saw one of the best school holiday seasons I’ve ever had. SMK Pantai took not two weeks off, but three, planning to make up for it with Saturday schools in August and September, classes which could easily be skipped. I stayed up late, watched movies, indulged in writer’s laziness, played computer games, browsed Facebook, and chatted with Katrina. I got a surprise phone call towards the end of the second week; it was from Zafirah. She told me that our team –

“Team?”

“The one we were in, you, me and Saza? The science contest?”

“Uh-huh …”

“Well, our team was chosen to compete in the semi-finals. It’ll take place at Universiti Malaya, from June 22 to June 29.”

I was stunned. SMK Pantai had been chosen as the best in all of W.P. Labuan? What about all the more prestigious schools, like St. Anne, or SMK Labuan, or the science boarding school? And what day, pray tell, was June the twenty-second? A quick check at my mobile phone calendar told me that it would be a Tuesday, the day after school opened for the second term.

I suddenly felt a surge of annoyance. We’d been picked, and we were being told at the last minute. I felt like sitting it out as a sign of protest. Saza and Zafirah persuaded me to come, flattering me with remarks about how I had the highest intellect among them, and how they really needed me if they were to have any hope. Zafirah was the true genius among us, but I realized that I couldn’t leave my friends. I went along on with them, on the contest of which I knew so little.

It was the National Science Challenge, organized by ASM and MOSTI, and featuring sixteen teams, one from each state in the country. Each team would conduct a research module over the span of one week, and prepare a report and finally present their findings to a panel of judges. The top four teams would progress to the finals, which would be held later this year. The judges were learned, smart-looking people with menacing titles at the end of their names: Ph.D in polymer chemistry, Master of Sciences in genetics engineering, Master of Sciences in mathematical modelling …

My annoyance at being selected evaporated quickly. The whole program seemed rather fun. It was, however, challenging in ways I hadn’t anticipated, and I soon felt lost among the sea of genius students from all over the country, students who were veterans at their science subjects, students who complained and insulted themselves if they got less than 87% in physics or chemistry, or didn’t score an A-plus for add maths. The facilitators had prepared three modules for us, and by means of a lucky draw, each team would be assigned one, leaving five or six teams to a module. There was a biology module (“Study of Anti-Metastatic Potential of Xanthorrhizol and Xanthorrhizol-Curcumin in breast Cancer”), a chemistry module (“Study on the Conductance Property of Liquid Polymer Electrolyte System”), and a physics module (“Study on Ionic Conductivity of Solid Polymer Electrolyte”). I didn’t understand half of the words in the research module topics, except for “polymer,” which was a dreadful, hideous thing I wanted nothing to do with. I’d experienced severe brain-straining during my chemistry and physics exams, leading me to the decision that I was terrible at them. I opted for the biology module, and as a representative for the Labuan team was called out (last on the list), I got up and drew the final scrap of paper. It was the biology module.

“Picking up scraps of paper from baskets has never been more exciting,” I cracked. I was in an unfamiliar place, filled with unfamiliar people, and this was how I was going to act: by keeping calm and confident with the delivery of lame jokes. I’d been watching Spectacular Spider-Man over the holidays, and I’d devoted at least two hours out of every day to playing the video game, so I now fancied myself an expert on making witty remarks, much like Spidey himself. In retrospect, it seems pretty lame. Either way, it would help get me through. That was my primary weapon: humour.

The research was real, and it was exhausting. We wouldn’t be looking through books and streams of information, and regurgitating what we’d found into our lab reports. Instead, we’d be going into laboratories, conducting our own experiments, choosing the assays we wanted to conduct and investigate. The first couple of days were devoted to putting together a literature review, writing up three lab reports that would make up the final Big Lab Report, and figuring out what sort of experiment we wanted to do. By the third day, we were staying up till three in the morning, spending our time in cold labs that smelled of phenolphthalein and sterilizing chemicals. We had three assays to complete: cell adhesion, cell migration and cell invasion. We were studying breast cancer. The whole concept of our research module was based on metastasis, which was the phenomenon that enabled cancer to spread from one part of the body to another, or all parts of the body, usually ending up in important organs and causing death. The trick was for the breast cancer cells to break down the extracellular matrix, and basement membrane, which (if I remember correctly) were layers of tissue and protein that lined the surface of other tissues – in this case, blood vessels. If the cancer cells succeeded in breaking through, they would access the bloodstream and flow to all parts of the body. Cell adhesion was when the cancer cells stuck to the extracellular matrix; I supposed cell migration was when it travelled through the bloodstream to the rest of the body. As for cell invasion, that was obvious. It meant that the patient was as good as dead.

Looking back on it now, it seems that the only thing that kept me alive was the constant coffee breaks the facilitators allowed us. Coffee was served at every meal. I grew to love the taste and stinging heat of it. Another thing was the apples. I’d brought a bag of green apples along with me in my suitcase; every morning, on my way from my dorm to the main hall of Campus 11, where we’d have breakfast, I’d munch on my apple.

Our mentors were all very supportive, patient, and cool people. There was Mr. Cheah, who worked with the health ministry, and Ms. Fariza, who laboured in the biology labs day and night to make sure we all got our experiment results on time, and Claudia, our personal mentor who hung around with us in the computer rooms, alerted us for tea break, checked that we were doing okay, and helped us with anything they could. There was also the mysterious Mr. Bard, who was terrifying at first, but soon transformed into a very sweet man. “I’d been acting all along,” he grinned at the end.

Anyway, the first three quarters of our stay at Universiti Malaya were exhausting. There were days I wished I could go home, days I called my Mom and felt like crying because I missed her so much. Somehow, I pushed through. I think it might have had something to do with Saza, who always laughed at my jokes, no matter how lame they were. Our final report was very patchy, and was missing a few important bits. It was submitted in a hurry (most of us were pushing the deadline anyway, by Day 6). Finally, it was time to focus on the final challenge: the PowerPoint presentation. Another lucky draw was held, and the facilitators determined the order in which the teams would present. On Night 6, we presented our PowerPoint to our mentors, so that they could suggest improvements and give us feedback.

I felt terrified as I gave my rehearsal presentation. We’d put the slideshow together in a hurry, and I couldn’t remember much. I knew I was betraying my performance by my frequent glances at the slide-screen, but I didn’t care. At one point, I felt a powerful urge to say, “I’m sorry. I can’t. Can we start over?” but – somehow – I made it through that. When I was done, I gritted my teeth and waited for the crushing judgement.

None came. “It was really amazing,” Bard said. “You have good voice projection, which is helpful, and the way you gave sneak previews of what was going to come, near the beginning, is very good. Showed the audience that you had a punch-line. And … you use humour in your delivery –”

Well, I tried, I thought, smiling sheepishly.

“– which is good. I think if you can keep this up for tomorrow’s performance, you may just have the cat in the bag. A spot in the top four is yours.”

I was filled with a buzzing sort of elation as I left the presentation hall that night. So I did have a shot at it after all. Sure, we were pitted against teams that made my blood run cold, teams whose members were geniuses of the highest order (Penang’s team was a trio of three girls who used fluent English, spoke like PhD-holding adults, and each one of them had a favourite science subject; and Malacca’s presenter was so impressive that even his teacher wouldn’t stop talking about how good he was). I made a decision right there: I wanted to give my audience a good show, no matter what. I don’t know at which point I realized that it wasn’t winning that mattered, but making an impression on the crowd, and – if I was fortunate enough – getting a few good laughs out of them, too. It was difficult to think about bagging a spot in the top four without laughing at my own delusiveness, so I focused instead on something I was certain I could do: put on a good show. I’d given presentations before, many times at school, and once I’d given a short speech in church, and I craved the thrill of having a microphone before me, of having an entire audience’s ears at my mercy. By now, I’d asked myself the question of What if it’s horrible? too many times, and the hellish agony of staying up late in labs and completing reports on tight deadlines was over. It was time to instead consider the question of What if it’s GOOD? Somehow the chance of it turning out nicely, however small that chance was, managed to outshine all the horrible outcomes I was trying not to imagine.

The next morning, we were all shuttled back to the lecture halls, and quarantined in one of them. One by one, teams went forward, and entered the “battleground” hall, where the judges, mentors and other members of the audience (teachers, family, etc.) awaited. My team - the twelfth team that would be presenting - wasn’t scheduled to present until two in the afternoon. Zafirah, Saza and I tweaked a few of the slides, and I muttered my speech to myself, trying to avoid memorizing it, except for the basic gist of it. I tried to come up with more jokes each time I rehearsed; some very funny opportunities were presenting itself, not least of which was the chance to poke fun at myself.

Finally, at two o’clock, Saza, Zafirah and I walked into the lecture hall, and I looked up at everyone there. I can’t remember whether or not anyone was cheering. The seats surrounded us, making me feel like I was standing in the middle of a coliseum. Sitting high up were the teams that had already presented; closer still were our mentors. I caught sight of the judges to my right.

I let go of any fear I was still holding on to, and instead picked up the mike in one hand, the slideshow remote in the other. I talked. I introduced my audience to the literature and experiments on metastasis that had been carried out before. I walked them through our hypotheses (all four of them). I explained the concept of metastasis itself. Then I described our experiments, the methods we had used, and the results we’d obtained. I tried to interject every single joke I could remember. As I spoke, I looked at members of the audience, hoping for encouragement. One of the judges was nodding and smiling; spurred on by this, I continued. Their laughs added to my courage.

“… we lost a lot of sleep over this assay right here, because we had to wait while we put it in a carbon-dioxide refrigerator for forty-eight hours,” I said, and paused to let them laugh. “But it was worth it!” I added. More laughter. Finally, I muttered, “Hopefully …”

The audience’s laughter filled the hall now. I couldn’t help but grin. I’d delivered my three-point punchline, my triple-move-combo. (This is an important part of Spider-Man video games.) Nothing could go wrong.

“In the end, we found some really interesting results,” I said as we neared the final slide. “We had three assays, and since it was an odd number, it was a sure-fire way to determine which drug, among xanthorrhizol and xanthorrhizol-curcumin, was the most effective in inhibiting metastasis.” I’d been using the idea of a “match” between the two drugs throughout my entire presentation; it had probably been inspired by the World Cup mania erupting all around me. “Assay one, cell adhesion – xanthorrhizol-curcumin is more efficient than plain xanthorrhizol. Assay two, cell migration – xanthorrhizol proves to be more efficient. The two compounds were neck-and-neck, ladies and gentlemen, all we needed was a tie breaker to determine whether or not our hypothesis – xanthorrhizol is more effective than xanthorrhizol-curcumin at inhibiting breast cancer cell metastasis – was true or not. So we went to the third assay … and we found that both the drugs were equally effective. A most peculiar result which I had not expected. I … I was really surprised, ladies and gentlemen, and our hypothesis could neither be rejected nor supported. In the end, we concluded that both xanthorrhizol and xanthorrhizol-curcumin showed equal efficiency when it came to inhibiting metastasis of breast cancer cells.”

By the time I finished, the judges asked me and my teammates a few questions. All three of us had to take the mike this time. We didn’t do so well there, and I admit that I flubbed pretty badly, but I made the audience roar with laughter one last time.

“… I’d say it is very beneficial, because it possesses anti-inflammatory properties, and anti-oxidant properties, too. It’s also readily found in curry, which you should encounter at your local mamak store. I mean, don’t you guys like curry?”

When our turn was over, I walked up to pick a seat with Saza and Zafirah, trembling with excitement. The two of them kept apologizing for flubbing the interrogation session, and I kept telling them that it was okay, everyone was nervous, we’d done our best anyway. The last thing I wanted to hear today was an apology. The last thing I wanted to feel was regret.

On the way up, Abang Mierul, one of the main facilitators behind the whole competition, stopped me for a moment, to ask if I would give a brief testimonial on the whole programme. I said sure, and went on my way up, even more pleased. I sat with my teammates in a row high up.

There were only a few more teams left to go. I savoured my first viewing of an actual presentation, sitting high in the bowl-like shape of the lecture hall. It was presented by Penang’s team. Amanda, who was the embodiment of genius, spoke for the first half of her presentation, and then handed the mike over to her teammate Jia Ying.

Oh, why didn’t I think of that, I thought, as I watched arrows appear on their slides to illustrate the hypothesis “The higher the dosage of xanthorrhizol-curcumin, the higher the inhibition of cell adhesion of MDA-MB-231 cancer cells.” Then I bit down on the thought: No regrets. Regret will not be allowed to fester today. I had a good time presenting and I’m happy about that.

Slowly, the rest of the teams presented their research modules, and when they were finished, we were all let out for a little tea break. As we left the hall, I found myself walking alongside Melaka Team’s teacher, who gave me a brisk nod and said, “That was a very, er, interesting talk just now.”

“Thank you,” I said, and moved on to grab my cup of coffee.

When we got back into the hall some fifteen minutes later, we found that members of MOSTI and ASM had turned up, even high-ranking Datuks and Dato’s, all of them in smartly-cut suits. The closing ceremony was about to begin. This time, we weren’t allowed to sit wherever we liked – every contestant now sat with their teachers. When the hall was full, everyone stood up to sing the national anthem, and then the host, a meek-looking lady of about twenty or thirty, said a few opening words. A slideshow of the entire semi-finals competition was then played, featuring photos that had been taken throughout the week. Everybody laughed hard at one of me lying against a closet in the biology lab, my eyes closed and my mouth hanging slightly open. I beamed. That photo had been taken at one or two something in the morning on the fourth day. My team had been waiting to enter a chamber at the end of the lab, where a fume hood, ultraviolet light and carbon-dioxide refrigerator was kept. I’d decided to catch a few winks.

The results were delayed for as long as possible, through a few more speeches from really important members of the sponsors. Then the testimonials began, and one by one, the four contestants Abang Mierul had chosen got up, descended the sloping hall to the stage, and took the mike. I was the last. When I finally reached the microphone and looked up at everyone – the government officials, the PhD holders, the mentors, the judges, the teachers, the contestants – I realized I had absolutely no idea what to say.

“Well, what can I say that nobody else has said before,” I began with a lame smile, and everybody laughed. Wow. That was a good sign! I continued talking, and realized that I was beginning to grow accustomed to this pattern. I’d start off a little uncertain, and then a laugh from the crowd would boost my confidence, and I’d ride it like a wave till I forgot about my nervousness.

I didn’t tell them everything – there was barely any time for that, and everyone was waiting for the results. I did, however, cover the basics, like how completely unexpected it had been, or how supportive the mentors were. I thanked everyone whose names I could recall, and ended by saying, “Well, it was really good that you guys laughed during my presentation, that helped a lot.” More laughter. A guy could get used to this. “This experience has been completely unforgettable, and is definitely something to remember. But not to relive,” I added. I waited for the laughter to die down before saying, “Except these last two days, they’re going fantastic!”

This time, as the audience laughed, I fancied I could actually hear cheering. I wrapped it up with a short, “Well, I suppose that’s it, thank you very much,” handed the microphone back over, and scurried up to my seat, feeling very light.

Then it was time for the mentors to hand out certificates, and each team of contestants formed a slow line to the stage. We all received a free bag, and some books on science and Nobel laureates. When we had settled back into our stage, our host took the microphone and spoke into it.

“Well, ladies and gentlemen, it’s the moment you have all been waiting for – the results. Our judges have evaluated each team’s presentation and lab report very carefully, and I can say that it’s been quite a challenge for them. We have, however, come up with four teams whom we are going to send to the semi-finals.”

A still, unbroken silence came over the whole audience, as they waited with bated breath to hear who the first of the finalists would be. I straightened my legs and tried not to fidget.

I don’t care about winning, I tried to tell myself, but the words just didn’t ring true to me. A small part of me did care about winning. A small part of me was hanging on to the host’s every word, hoping that the next team called out would be mine. To witness the Nobel Prize awards ceremony in Sweden … that was a chance of a lifetime … I wasn’t the science-loving student I thought I’d be, I hadn’t loved the research work all that much … but to actually go to see Nobel Prizes being given out to the year’s best scientists … to say that the first time I went overseas was to witness that … oh, my God, to tell my friends that …

“And the first team is Malacca!” The audience broke its spell of silence to applaud and cheer as the two boys (one was sick) from Malacca, Mohd. Faris and Daniel Tan, the presenter, stood up and headed down to the stage.

C’mon, do I really care about winning? The winners will have to come back for another round, and even then, only one of the four will be chosen to go to Sweden. I made those guys laugh just now, and if that wasn’t enough, I pulled out a good flurry of giggles during my testimonial. I had more fun than I could have asked for, and what’s more, I know I can do this again if I have to. Either I’m really brave because of all the caffeine and fatigue that’s been put into me these past few days, or I really have mastered the fear of public speaking.

All this would sound great if I actually said it – after all, it would be only too easy to say “I never cared about winning, really” after the four finalists were announced. I made a silent promise not to say that to anyone, not for at least six months – and at the same time, my eyes scanned the seats nearby for anyone who would listen that I didn’t care about winning. I needed to say it fast, before all four finalists had been announced. Yet, I still knew that it wasn’t entirely true, or that I wasn’t entirely certain how I felt. I wouldn’t be entirely certain until the four finalists had been announced, and that was the trouble, really.

“… second finalist spot goes to Penang!” More applause. I raised my hands and clapped as hard as I could, although I wasn’t one bit surprised. They’d had it coming. Like I said, Penang’s team comprised of geniuses, and there was no way they could miss out on the top four. They’d asked the most questions during our research module – and, as far as I knew, they’d stayed awake. Amanda and her teammates, Jia Ying and Michelle, went down to the stage.

Third finalist spot, do you think it’ll be us? There are still two more slots for Labuan Team, oh, it would be so cool if –

“Oh, just shut up and enjoy the show,” I muttered.

“What is it, Ethan?” Saza asked, just as “Perak, third spot” was announced. My heart gave a sharp twinge.

“Nothing,” I said, as the audience applauded once more.

“Hope we win, Ethan,” Saza added.

Thanks for reminding me, I thought, but grinned anyway. If I had any one person to thank for keeping my spirits up, it was Saza. I would remember that for a long time.

Our host paused before announcing the last one, and I could almost hear the collective thoughts of the audience as they struggled to contain their impatience. Finally, she said, with the suspense-milking flair of any good talent show host, “And the fourth finalist team is …

“Selangor.”

I cheered as loudly as I could, and everyone put their hands together for the last team to be announced as part of the top four. As the cheering subsided, the host said, “We have one last award to give away today. Today we have a new category, that is, the award for best presenter.”

Nobody said anything about a best presenter, I thought. Oh, well, it’s probably Daniel. He deserves it; his presentation was STELLAR to say the least. But at the same time, I felt the faintest tingle inside. A tingle of hope, probably.

“This one got the special attention of the judges,” she continued. “They were so –”

The contestants seemed to start calling out my name at once; it was impossible to pinpoint the person who shouted it first. It started off a little faint, and then grew till it seemed that they were all yelling my name.

“Ethan! Ethan!”

“ETHAN!”

“Eeethan!”

And now the host couldn’t continue; she had lowered her microphone and looked up, smiling, at the rest of us in the hall. My mouth went dry all of a sudden (no, no, please, don’t call my name, what if you’re wrong, how embarrassing that’ll be – it’s not me, just because I made you laugh doesn’t necessarily mean the judges were impressed). Pretty much every contestant had turned around to look for me, and were still calling my name. With one final attempt to break through the noise, the judge said loudly, “And from Labuan, the Best Presenter, Ethan John Matisa!”

I grinned weakly as cheers burst forth from the audience once more. Then, my teacher nudged me and said, “Well, go on, Ethan, go get the award!” I stood up on shaky legs, threaded through the seats till I reached the centre aisle, and slowly descended the steps to the podium.

It seemed to take forever to reach. The host was standing there, flanked by Abang Mierul, and the winning teams that had been called out. I prayed I wouldn’t overbalance and fall. Finally, I reached the host, who shook my hand and gave me a square grey box, bound with a slim purple ribbon. A transparent plastic cut-away window revealed what looked like a brown watch strap.

It was my great fortune that I didn’t have a microphone in my hand, because I didn’t know what to say, or what to do. I just stood there, standing a little further out from the four teams, smiling up at the audience. I looked up at Saza and Zafirah, sitting beside my teacher, and suddenly felt a pang of sadness. It felt as though I had abandoned them to join the elite crowd. Something about the smile on Saza’s face made me remember that I was more elated, more overjoyed, than I could ever remember. Even scoring straight A’s in my PMR didn’t quite compare to this. My teacher smiled at me, and I smiled back. I didn’t know what to do … but standing here would do for now. Yeah. Standing here, like this, basking in the applause for those who had made it … this was more than I could ask for.

I stood for a few group photographs as the audience filed out slowly, and then I headed back up to my seat, where Saza, Zafirah and my teacher were waiting. They handed me my bag, and we left the hall for another tea break. After that, wherever I went, it seemed that contestants wanted to talk to me, or parents of contestants, or mentors. They just wanted to offer a brief word of congratulations, and some of them even made guesses as to what was in the grey box. No matter who I met, I hardly ever stopped grinning. Some of them said that I deserved to win. Some of them told me how entertaining I had been both times I’d taken the mike. I even met Daniel Tan and his parents, who were delightful people. When I got on the bus to return to our dorms, everyone smiled at me, and I smiled back. When I reached College 11 once more, Mr. Cheah bought me an iced Milo and talked to me about the whole thing. He pointed out how interesting it was that the audience had started shouting my name before I was even announced. He revealed that from day one, Mr. Bard had seen a flicker of potential in me, and had told him to keep an eye on me from then on.

It didn’t take much guessing to understand that, for as long as I lived, there would be few days like this one, few days at which I could feel such intense joy lasting for so long. So after a while, I let myself enjoy it. I knew that, as much as I was trying to keep my ego under control, it was going to sustain some minor swelling from this experience. I knew that it would pain me to return to my dormitory tonight, and pack up my things, and look around the place for the last time. I knew that I couldn’t wait to call Mom and tell her what had happened. Of one last thing, I was completely and utterly certain: I would never, ever forget today.

Afterword: This story is one part of a greater story arc describing what I really did during my time in Form 4. You know stuff on my blog can get extremely corny, so ... fair warning. The next blog post is called "How To Make Peace with Dynamite" and it should be coming out on July 6.

Amanda, who was one of the top four finalists, went on to win the entire contest with the rest of her team. This earned them the Prime Minister's Challenge Trophy (which is something like the Triwizard Cup, for any of you Potter fans out there), and also a trip to Stockholm, Sweden, where they witnessed the 2010 Nobel Prizes (I can think of no Harry Potter equivalent for that).

You can read Amanda's perspective of events at the 2010 National Science Challenge semi-finals here. It is an engaging, brilliantly-written piece, much better detailed than this version of it, and it also includes photos. I don't know how Amanda managed to include photos in such an arranged manner using the Blogger template, but ... I suppose I'll find out later.

Amanda also wrote about the finals of that competition, you can read about it here ...

... and if you want to hear the tale of a winner, how she went to Sweden, visited the Nobel Museum, listened to lectures given by renowned laureates, and actually saw the Nobel Prizes being presented by the King of Sweden, please click on this link.

Rare opportunities come and go, but memories stay forever.

- E.M.

SHREK FOREVER AFTER (2010) -- Movie Review

2010-12-07T21:49:00.006+08:00

SHREK FOREVER AFTER

THE FINAL CHAPTER

Directed by: Mike Mitchell

Starring: Mike Myers, Cameron Diaz, Eddie Murphy, Antonio Banderas, Walt Dohrn

Written by: Josh Klausner, Darren Lemke; based on the book Shrek! by William Steig

Approx. runtime: 93 minutes

Music by: Harry Gregson-Williams

I saw the first Shrek sometime around 2002, and I enjoyed it. Funny tale, generous on the gross bodily humour, seemingly designed with the idea of gathering all the famous fairy tale characters in one universe – the way today’s new Marvel films like Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk seem to be attempting with their heroes. I saw Shrek 2 a couple of years later, and thought that was pretty entertaining too – but after seeing Shrek 3 in the theatre, I became less inclined to watch another instalment – should they dare to make one.

Not again.

At first, when I saw the ads for this movie, I was pretty indifferent. They were exploring the It’s A Wonderful Life idea of the Shrek universe, pretty much in the vein of the experimental What If comics released by Marvel. I wasn’t against seeing it, but I wasn’t so excited to watch it, either. But then today my family decided to watch it, and I just thought, Why not give it a try?

First of all, I’ve got to say, this one is very good. If you think the series started getting dry around the third film, and that Shrek Forever After was simply made to cash in on the franchise’s success, well, I suppose you’re right. But they had good story ideas when making this movie, too, and it shows. From the very first minutes, when we see the pages of a fairy-tale book being turned by invisible hands and read aloud, we know that this is a throwback to the elements that made the first Shrek so memorable in the first place. This is good old Shrek, classic Shrek, if you will, and the movie stays that way right until the end, when the song “I’m A Believer” (also from the first movie) is played.

Shrek, now a full-time family man, starts to become aware of how boring his life is. Every day is the same – get woken up by the kids, change the diapers, sit in the (rather iconic) ogre-restroom while trying to ignore an insistent advertiser’s carriage, try to enjoy a well-earned mudbath, have his door blown open by the annoying neighbours – I mean, friends, Puss, Donkey and Dragon – and to end the day, listen to Puss retell the story of how Shrek saved Fiona. It’s the same thing, over and over again.

"Yes, honey, happily ever after."

To make matters worse, Shrek has become admired and adored by the villagers, which is not as good as it might sound. Whenever he can work up a good frightening ogre-roar, it is applauded, not screamed at. An ogre is supposed to be a scary beast feared by everyone, not a pop-culture icon, and the days when reality fitted the myth begin to seem very far away. Shrek’s frustration with his dull life, coupled with his longing for the glory days, escalate till he is pushed to the breaking point, turning a birthday party for his children into a disaster. Shrek says right to Fiona’s face that he wishes he had never rescued her, and then storms off in a rage. That’s when he bumps into a short little man who says that he can give Shrek his past life back for one day, but in exchange for one day of Shrek’s real life. They settle on a day in Shrek’s infancy, a day he won’t even remember – a day that will be no big loss at all. Shrek scratches his signature on a tall contract, and literally falls into his new life. At first Shrek has fun, causing chaos in the town, scaring little children and making mud-angels. (Think snow-angels, but with mud instead. Yeah.) Terrorizing villagers wasn’t this fun back in the day, was it?

But there is a catch, a potentially disastrous one too. The little man who gave Shrek his old life back is Rumplestiltskin, an ambitious con artist with a sly cunning matched only by the world’s nastiest attorneys. The day Rumplestiltskin took from Shrek is the day Shrek was born – meaning that, outside of this one day, Shrek never existed. As soon as the sun rises the next morning, he will fade into nonexistence. The only way out of this bind is true love’s first kiss – and that is no easy task, not even in fairy tales, or even modern fantasy movies for that matter.

As Shrek explores this new world, he begins to see, with mounting horror, the difference made by him not being there. His weird, squashed-looking house is nothing more than a mud-pile penetrated by tree roots. Ogres are not only feared but an endangered species. Far Far Away, Fiona’s hometown, is a wasteland ruled by the one and only Rumplestiltskin. And since there was no Shrek, Fiona was never rescued from the dragon’s tower in the first film. She has become the leader of a secret band of ogres who have formed a resistance against Rumplestiltskin. Shrek must now, by whatever means possible, share a smooch with her before the sun comes up – but not just any old kiss, this has to be true love’s kiss. If that’s not a tough challenge to base a film on, I don’t know what is. It certainly held my attention throughout the movie.

Shrek Forever After is set apart from the other films by toning down the comedy aspect, and focusing more on the adventure part of it. While the others were funny and comical, this is the most frightening and suspenseful Shrek of all, despite having none of the deaths the previous three showcased. Rumplestiltskin makes for a very convincing villain, much more compelling than Prince Charming and Lord Farquaad. Especially with that ominous prologue at the beginning. Puss in Boots and Donkey are in this movie too, in their altered forms, and still manage to provide great comic fodder. The witches are a very cool addition, with their skull-on-a-chain gadgets and pumpkin-bombs. The action scenes were done nicely – one broomstick scene in particular that would make any Harry Potter fan go “Ah, I see what you did there” – and the more emotional aspects of this movie aren’t handled too formulaically either. You see that formulaic thing being done in lots of movies today – you know what I mean, scenes where you can almost see how well this scene would superimpose onto one from another movie. It’s not such a bad thing – I guess we’ll always have and need film-script formulas, whatever the age – but it gets tiring after a while, and Shrek Forever After managed to steer clear of that.

So – should you see it? If you’re a Shrek fan, yes. Definitely. If you liked the first movies, this will be a treat for you. If not, well, view at your own risk. It’ll be a good way to pass one and a half hours of your time. Compelling, entertaining and well-plotted, with borderline spine-chilling moments and a good score from Harry Gregson-Williams, this is the Shrek we’ve all been waiting for.

December 7, 2010

P.S. Look out for the end credits sequence! It’s very much like the opening titles of Spider-Man 2 and Spider-Man 3, the way it sums up the important bits of the previous movies. Not only does it look good, and bring back fond movie memories, it’s a great way of saying, “That’s it. We’re done here. No more Shrek movies.”

Review of I AM LEGEND by Richard Matheson

2010-11-20T00:47:00.002+08:00

I first saw the movie adaptation with Will Smith in a darkened cinema in December of 2007. I was with my fellow altar servers, on our yearly vacation, this time in Penang. The previous night we’d watched Across the Universe, and while that was sort of nice, I think we all found this movie a lot better, in terms of knock-you-out-ness. (“Superb movie,” one of my friends said, as we departed. “Superb.”) I sat with our priest, Father Simon, and the servers’ advisor, Alex, in the cinema. As the credits rolled, with Bob Marley singing “Three Little Birds,” I saw a phrase not often used in film credits. That phrase was “based on the novel by.” Alex chuckled and said, “Ethan, now you’re going to want to read the book?” I’d laughed along with him, but had thought, Nah. I don’t think we’ll have enough time to browse bookstores on this trip, and I don’t have much money on me anyway.

Two Christmases later, I successfully managed to buy a paperback edition of the book from a Borders outlet at The Gardens. It was a film tie-in with Will Smith on the cover, set against a blurred, mud-bronze backdrop of New York City’s skyline. It also had twelve other short stories as a bonus – the actual I Am Legend only took up 160 pages. I didn’t touch that book for a long time, although I wanted to read it (it was a favourite of Stephen King’s), but I’d always bring it along whenever I had to board an airplane. The first time was on the way to KL in June of 2010, on the way to a national science competition – I managed the first ten pages or so before we landed, and then I had so much to do that I decided not to read it anyway. The second time, I was headed to KL again, this time on a class trip. When I came back home, I continued reading it, until I finished.

Robert Neville, the protagonist of I Am Legend, is pretty much the last man in the world, after a virus causes humans to either die or to turn into vampires. (The dead ones can turn into vampires, too – after all, they are the undead.) I’m not talking about the recent romantic vampires, either, with full red lips, diamond-hard abdomens and supermodel bodies (or, God forbid, sparkling skin). These are savage, violent, animal vampires, the blood-thirsty monsters imagined by Bram Stoker on the brink of the twentieth century. They have rotting skin, dead flesh and lethal fangs. They probably smell bad. They will stop at nothing to convert you and turn you over to their side. There is nothing sexy about them. Not even the enticing dances the females perform outside Robert Neville’s window, to tempt him over – but I’ll get to that later. Neville lives by himself in a house stocked with food, supplies and the latest in stake-manufacturing technology. Day by day, he conducts research to find the virus that caused this apocalypse, while at the same time battling the loneliness, frustration and borderline insanity that comes from being the last man on Earth, or, at least, not knowing, hearing or seeing anyone besides yourself. The emotions here are real and stick out of the pages of the book like knives. You can feel Neville’s frustration when he can’t think of a reason the virus acts a certain way; his loneliness and suppressed urges, no longer having a female to provide love and companionship; his satisfaction when he moves one step closer to understanding the vampire bug.

Comparisons? Richard Matheson’s 1954 book is very different from the movie. I’m pretty sure that Robert Neville and his family aren’t African-American, especially since Matheson mentioned him having blond hair at one point. Second, Neville is a big fan of Robert Marley in the movie, while Richard Matheson’s version listens to classical pieces while he works and reads. Besides that, I’m quite sure that Matheson’s Neville never lived in New York City, but a modest city or town instead. Cure for cancer gone wrong? Forget it. In Matheson’s I Am Legend, the virus simply seems to arise out of the blue, and has existed for a long time, going back centuries. The book also underscores Neville’s sexuality. (Sorry about that.) I mean, this guy’s wife has been dead for nearly a year, and every lady bloodsucker out there uses that to his advantage. They call out to him in the middle of the night, twist and poise their bodies seductively, and generally exploit his instinct to push him closer to their end. It is definitely tough being alone, even worse being tempted.

Even though the movie I adore is very different from the book, it hasn’t changed my feelings or prejudiced me towards either. I don’t prefer the movie because I saw it first – and neither do I prefer the book for being the original, pioneering work. I like that they’re different, I like that they can cover more ground together and interest me in different ways, I like that the book has an ending the movie didn’t prepare me for. Francis Lawrence’s 2007 movie is more of a re-imagining of Matheson’s novel than an actual adaptation, and it works great on its own. And being a fan of that movie does not stop me from liking the book at all.

If you want to check this out, go right ahead, but be prepared for a general sense of bleakness and frustration. Happiness is scarce in I Am Legend, but there are a lot more scientific points than you’d expect a vampire tale to cover. Neville ponders why a vampire would fear the cross, what exactly about garlic repels them, and why one can only be killed by putting a stake through its body. It took me back to my Michael Crichton days. Twilight fans, if you want to see the less flattering interpretation of the vampire, or if you’re feeling open to something familiar but new, try this. It’s a quick, engaging read that still inspires people’s minds today, vampire nut or not.

Ethan Matisa

November 17, 2010

Sea Park Hotel, Kota Kinabalu

Six Months Later

2010-11-01T23:42:00.005+08:00

When I last left you (which was a very long time ago), we were doing pretty okay in school. The first batch of tests were over, our counselling teacher was planning a trip to Singapore, and Jessica was giving me the silent treatment.

I, uh, haven't cared to write at all for a long time ... the stuff I wanted to write about was stuff I couldn't go into too much detail on. I was having a lot more fun with Facebook, and I still am.

Anyway, a lot has changed since then. The class trip's destination is KL, not Singapore, and we'll be heading there on the second week of November. We are not doing so hot in school, not with Chemistry and Add Maths barely poking their heads above the fail-bar. (Last time I checked.) Our final exams are about to finish, and I guess I'm okay so far. I'm even somewhat optimistic about BM. Last but not least, Jess and I are now friends again -- better than ever, in fact. Something seems to have purified between us since then -- I'm now seeing her as a really close friend who just happens to look pretty.

There is a lot that can be covered between then and now, but I think I'll tell you about what happened today.

We had our three Biology papers today, and we were off to a bad start. Since it was a Monday, the teachers held assembly, and it carried on until seven-forty. The exams were supposed to start twenty minutes prior to that. We spent the whole day cramming our exams instead of cramming for them. It made my self-confidence falter. This was Biology, the only science subject I could make head or tail of -- probably because it was the only one that discussed heads and tails in the first place. It was the subject with cool words like "mitochondrion" and "anaerobic" and "disaccharide." It didn't have so many calculations, it was fun, it had cool pictures, and it talked about sugar a lot, leaving a faint sweet taste in my mouth. I wanted to get an A for it. And there we were, nearly panicking, trying to answer as much as we could.

Boy, I don't know if I'll get an A this time. I'll probably scrape A-minus. Which is sad, because I've been chasing A's in Biology the whole year. It's the way I keep my spirits up for science.

When I came home, I was okay. I'd burned a new CD packed to the 700-megabyte-tall brim with a few film soundtracks. (I've been into movie scores for a while now.) Most of them had been acquired from soundtrack fansites -- I opted for expanded versions whenever I could. Last night I'd burned the complete soundtracks from Jurassic Park and the first Harry Potter movie (John Williams), the "regular" soundtrack from Mighty Joe Young (James Horner), Revolutionary Road (Thomas Newman), Drag Me To Hell (Christopher Young), Pride and Prejudice (Dario Marianelli) and the expanded score from The Incredibles (Michael Giacchino). I was especially proud of that one. It had a few tracks I hadn't gotten when I'd downloaded the normal score -- for example, the piece of music that plays when a young Mr. Incredible stops an elevated train.

I folded clothes that evening while listening to my newly burned disc, and Mom made some very nice sticky chicken and cabbage for dinner. After dinner, I watched a bit of Family Guy, went back to my computer, and caught up with my best friend on Gmail.

That was basically how I spent the first of November, trying not to think about the Add Maths test which would be the following day. All in all, a pretty okay, regular day.

Sickness

2010-04-23T22:27:00.001+08:00

THURSDAY – APRIL 22, 2010

I woke up on the morning Jessica went off to camp with a sour pain in my throat, my nose feeling like it had been splashed in slime, and my head feeling a little heavier than usual. I was quite surprised, especially at the painful throat. Was a sore throat coming on? If it was, how was I supposed to do this choral speaking thing?

Another shocking thing was that the sky was quite light already. I’d woken up late, and I had twenty minutes to get ready. I hurried to get ready, sniffing and clearing my throat as I went.

It was a Thursday, and a pretty horrible Thursday. Only a few people were left in the class, with the others off for the 1Malaysia camp. Our Physics teacher spent four periods’ worth of time in the class while I dabbed at my leaking nostrils with a handkerchief. I forgot to take the attendance-book on my way to the Chemistry lab, and so I doubled back to 4 TOPEZ with James midway through the second period to get it.

We made a lot of lame jokes throughout the lesson. The teacher was using one of those CD-ROMs from the Education Ministry, along with an overhead projector and one strategically-placed box of a loudspeaker, to teach the lesson. We were making our way through the chapter on chemical bonds, and occasionally, the voice of the female narrator would be replaced by a deep-voiced man in some parts. James and I wondered why they were taking turns. “Why does the man have to narrate?” James asked at one point. “Can’t he just leave the girl to narrate?”

A few moments later, a diagram of atoms binding to form molecules appeared on the screen. “What can you conclude from this information?” the male narrator asked.

“That everyone needs to go and pee,” I blabbered. I don’t know why I said that. It was a completely random and silly statement.

“Yes!” the male narrator continued. It seems that he had just made a really long pause in case any student had wanted to come up with a conclusion that was actually relevant to the lesson. “Atoms must donate or receive valence electrons in order to …”

James had started cackling at “Yes.” “Did you hear that?” he hissed. “He said ‘yes’! He said yes, Ethan! He’s agreeing with you! He probably needs to go and pee, too!”

A very funny idea occurred to me just then. I tried to communicate it to James, but I’d been seized by a crippling attack of the giggles, and it was very hard to talk with so little breath. Between giggles, I managed to say, “Maybe that’s – why he – keeps – going away! He’s – going to the toilet every five minutes! And – so is – the girl narrator!”

We both laughed so loudly that our teacher gave us a strange look from her desk, a look that was part smile, part frown. It was like she was trying to be dignified, and at the same time, suppressing laughs of her own because she knew how bored we were.

After recess, Madam Rosalie called me down to the teacher’s room (not the same as the staffroom, in case I haven’t mentioned already … the teacher’s room is much larger, and I feel more comfortable in it – mainly because the principal’s office isn’t in there). When I entered through one of the orange doors, Madam Rosalie gave me a friendly smile and wave. She was sitting at her desk, which was at the far end of the teacher’s room, along with the other English teachers’ desks. It then struck me, perhaps not for the first time, how friendly Madam Rosalie could be with her students. She’d actually wave at them and smile – and when she walked into a class, she greeted them first. And she’s lots of fun to talk to – even if she does make me late for a class every once in a while (actually, I should probably thank her for that one day). She’s very smart, but will only let it show through her vocabulary and wit. Aside from that, she speaks with an enthusiastic zeal in her voice that makes it almost musical. You can tell that she’s seen a lot of the world, and yet she’s always smiling. It’s amazing. That’s one trait of hers that reminds me of Jessica. That, and the smooth, honeyed voice (except Madam Rosalie’s is used to say nicer things, while Jessica is usually saying sharp words about someone). The only difference is that Madam Rosalie likes to read a lot – the only books Jessica has ever taken pleasure in are the Twilight books.

I waved back, and then walked over. “Morning, teacher,” I said, very formally.

“Morning. Hi,” Madam Rosalie said. Just as I reached her desk, she laid two very fat books on its surface. “Is Tobias around?”

“Yes, he’s right upstairs. Those are the books?” I asked. Yesterday, she had mentioned wanting to lend Tobias a book, and said that she had one for me as well.

“Yes,” she replied.

They were both paperbacks by a guy called James Rollins. One book was titled Sandstorm, the other Map of Bones. “Um. Which one’s for Tobias and which one’s for me?” I asked.

“Oh, whichever you choose,” she replied. “Take them up to him, and see which one he likes, and which one you like.”

“Okay,” I said. “And, uh, when can we return this?”

“Anytime. Although next week would be nice.”

I winced. “I don’t know if I can make it by next week. Especially Tobias, he says he doesn’t read much. Er … but I shouldn’t take too long, though.”

“Anytime’s fine,” Madam Rosalie said.

“Okay,” I said. I scooped up the books and said, “Thank you very much. They, uh, look interesting.” And different. I wouldn’t mind trying something new.

Madam Rosalie smiled, and her eyes crinkled. “Enjoy them. Er, what do you have now?”

I paused on my way to the door. “Recess,” I said.

“Okay. Well, that’s it then. See you around.”

“Thanks, Teacher,” I said, and left.

Tobias was thrilled to see the books. We went over the blurbs on the back of the books, discussed what they might be about, and decided that Sandstorm was a book involving Saudi Arabia and the Middle East, while Map of Bones involved the Vatican. He’d take Map of Bones if I didn’t have any objections. Tobias was very interested in the Vatican – he had seen Angels and Demons recently and had enjoyed it very much – and thought that it would be cool if we could read about the hometowns of our religions. After all, he reasoned, I knew quite a bit about the Vatican, and he knew quite a bit about Saudi Arabia. We also concluded that James Rollins’ books were like a combination of The Da Vinci Code with the Indiana Jones movies. I hadn’t read Dan Brown, but according to Madam Rosalie, James Rollins wrote much more nicely.

Before too long, Tobias was reading the prologue of Map of Bones, and going “Oooooh! That’s cool!” and “Wow. Such nice English sentences.” Occasionally he’d ask me to explain something – but only occasionally. He got through quite well for somebody who claimed not to have read a novel before. That’s Tobias – gifted in many ways.

We were sitting nearby James and Vince at the time, and I turned to James to talk. We talked about James’ love life, about what might be going through Vince’s mind, and about how boring this day was. And what it was like not to have Jessica around.

“Has she said anything about me?” I asked him. “Since … since then?”

“She hasn’t said anything,” James replied.

“She’s talking to me again,” I said. “All of a sudden. Just … talking. And smiling. And being nice. I’m confused, James. I dunno what she wants. Does she want me to be her friend, or … or not? Who does she want me to be?”

James was silent for a few minutes. “Maybe she feels like trying a new … strategy,” he said. “She thinks that you’re not going to get the message if she just ignores you. So she’s trying to … be nice to you again.”

“I think I pretty much get the message by now,” I said. “After being ignored like that. I mean … I apologized to her the other day. Tried to, at least. But she … held up her hand. Like this.” I held up mine, and lowered it. “It was like she didn’t want to hear it. I guess I’d picked the wrong time to say sorry.” Maybe she’d needed space. Maybe she still did.

James shrugged. “Maybe she just wants to be nice to you and see how you act in return.”

A little sweetness crept into the thorny, unpleasant emotions I was feeling towards Jessica. That was actually somewhat good of her. I felt like I owed her a little niceness in return. Recently I’d been acting quite emotionless and flat. I didn’t know how else to act, but … maybe, in time, we’d figure something out.

I shook my head. “I’m not sure what to do,” I said, repeating myself. “I’m not sure what she wants. I’m beginning to care less and less about that. But … I guess I should act fair to her. I don’t have to be cruel to her just because my friendly approach didn’t work out.”

James simply nodded.

By now my nose was dribbling into my handkerchief every time I swiped it, and I had to hold a hanky-wrapped finger under it to make sure I didn’t go streaming down my face. Tiny little pinpricks had begun to erupt in hundreds of spots all over my skin. I didn’t know whether it was because my skin was dry, or because the temperature was very hot all of a sudden, or because my immune system’s agents were waging little wars against germs inside my body. All I knew was that it was irritating, unpleasant and quite scary. I had to scratch myself a lot.

My headache had worsened and was gnawing away inside my skull. For some reason I thought of the number six whenever I thought of how I couldn’t stand this headache.

When school let out, and I approached the gates, I passed by Troy’s old buddy, Marko. They used to hang out a lot last year, when Troy was Jessica’s boyfriend – but now, they don’t stick together much. Marko was asking one of my classmates how long that 1Malaysia camp would last. “I guess I’ll have to wait till Sunday,” I heard him mutter, before he slunk out of sight.

I bit my lip. Marko and I were friends, and I liked his caring personality quite a bit – but from time to time, when I saw how frequently he was hanging out with Jessica, I would feel a little bit … not quite right. I wondered how long it would take for either one of them to come right out and tell the truth about their relationship. But I didn’t feel too bad. If it were true, then Jessica deserved to be with him. He could make her happy. And, unlike last year, I didn’t feel like I’d had a part in “creating” Marko somehow. I didn’t get that what-if feeling, I didn’t get those I could have made things turn out differently thoughts. I was perfectly confident of my sanity in this matter, and of how far my control extended. And it was time for me to accept that guys like Marko and Troy are more Jessica’s type.

I headed out of the gates with Ellen, my sister, and waited for Mom to arrive. As the invisible pinpricks poked away at my skin, and my nose continued to leak, I clutched onto my books and files, wondering why my body had chosen this day to be ill. Was I suffering from Jessica-sickness? Please. I wasn’t. I could go for eight weeks of holidays without missing her much, and I knew that I could survive without her by now. We were friends. But we didn’t depend on each other. And that was good. I didn’t want to be vulnerable in that sense. I wasn’t ready, not quite yet.

Kebabs

2010-04-23T20:49:00.004+08:00

Jessica has begun taking notice of me again, bit by bit. Acknowledging me a little more every day. Originally I thought I’d just stay out of her way and not say anything to her, not even look at her, and that had begun to get easy. But she seemed to be re-accepting me, and I was a little confused. How did she want me to act? What was I supposed to do? By this Monday she’d actually started smiling at me again.

Just when I’d gotten over her, this had to happen. I wondered how long it would be before I switched to the other end of the spectrum again, and went back to liking her. I hoped it would be very long.

I’d signed up for choral speaking, even though my History teacher had signed me up for a 1Malaysia camp that would be taking place at a time that would clash with practice. Teacher Julianne (well, of course that’s not her real name … again, but she reminds me of a movie star with that name … again) is in charge, and after the auditions, she got me and Ellen together and asked us if we could work on making a new script. We’d need a fully-prepared script by the next day, because we had only a week and a half till the actual competition. “How about ‘Trials and Tribulations of a Teenager’?” Ellen suggested. “Anything,” Teacher Julianne said, “as long as you can finish it by tomorrow.”

Ellen worked on the beginnings of a script, and I managed to churn out something that I thought might pass. My mind seemed to be in a blurry daze while I was writing it, and I didn’t really want to do it – I didn’t know much about choral speaking, and I knew that this hazy-minded feeling meant I was writing something half-baked – but I didn’t want to stop, either. I didn’t want to think about what would happen if I left Ellen to do the script alone.

I handed the script in to Teacher Julianne last Thursday, and she said she sort of liked it – but it seemed to be not much more than a shell of a script with nothing in it. She needed more meat on the bones. During recess, she set Ellen and I, along with a few other guys from her class, to brainstorm the themes we’d want to touch on – homework, internet addiction, teen love, and video games. She told each of us to work on one of these themes and to try and come back to her at two o’clock. I was assigned the teenage love theme.

I thought I might be able to work on a little teen-love sketch during Civics class during the final two periods, but an even better opportunity presented itself in the two periods of Physics class after recess. I didn’t pay much attention, and we weren’t discussing much from the textbook, so I thought it would be safe to try and come up with something now. After all, I thought, I had quite a bit to say on that vast subject.

I was sitting at a table with Tobias, Vince and Garrett. Jessica and James were sitting together at a table near the front. A few weeks ago, I would have sat between them – but I didn’t want to do that now. Not even with Jessica showing signals that she wanted us to be friends again. I was still confused, and maybe even upset.

I picked up my pen, and looked down at the sheet of paper. I can’t remember much of what happened next. An image from last year had come floating into my head, an image that seemed shadowy, grimy and gave off a nasty atmosphere – an image of Troy and Jessica, sitting together on the stairs near 3 TOPEZ. Jessica was giving me a sheepish little smile.

When I was done writing, I looked at what I’d written.

CHOIR: "She's so pretty. Those sweet eyes, those perfect teeth in her smile, that honeyed voice. But I can't have her. She's with that other guy, Alfredo. Oh. Here she comes!

SOLO: "Hey. Hi. What are you doing around here?"

CHOIR: "Um. Just standing."

SOLO: "Oh. Well. Alfredo's being a real nasty jerk lately."

CHOIR: "Oh. Sorry."

SOLO: "It's okay. I just feel like, why should I care about him, when he doesn't even care about me? He's always hurting me. But I love him. So even though it's tough, I'm going to stick by him. I just ... I just love him."

CHOIR: "I hate this. Whenever you and I are together, you're always talking about him. Not only that, you're talking about how he's hurting you and how you don't want to leave him! This guy doesn't deserve you and you know it! Come to think of it ... neither of us deserve each other. You don't deserve me because you don't listen to me and you will never see that I'm the right guy for you. And I don't deserve you because I'm a coward, too afraid to say how I feel. I keep it all locked up inside. In fact ... all this time, I haven't been speaking to you. I've just been thinking. Because I'm so afraid to tell you. The funny thing is that the audience can hear me, but you can't. You're the only person in this auditorium/room/hall that can't hear me! I ... I love you! But I hate you. Oh."

SOLO: "Hey. Why so quiet?"

I sort of liked the twist at the end, with the boy revealing to the audience that they were actually hearing his innermost thoughts, and that he was too afraid to speak. I knew why he was too afraid to speak. He didn’t want to put it all out there with a girl like that, a girl who didn’t quite know how to listen to him. I didn’t think the audience would get the twist, but it seemed okay. I submitted the sketch to Teacher J by the end of Civics class.

I’d seen my History teacher already, and I’d pulled myself out of the 1Malaysia camp. I’d already been for a 1Malaysia camp last year, and that had been enough. Garrett was filling in for me. I wasn’t going to have a 1Malaysia script, and I certainly wasn’t going to go for a 1Malaysia camp. Choral speaking would be more fun, I was sure of that.

“It’s quite interesting,” Teacher J said the next day. She had gone over everything we’d done, and incorporated them into her finalized script – which had now been made into copies four pages each. Now she was showing me the teen-love bit I’d written, which had been shortened to a solo line. “Interesting, but the rules say we can’t digress into a drama form like this. So I’ve simplified it and left only the important bits in.”

“Okay,” I said. “I guess I do like this version better.”

SOLO: Wow … she’s so pretty! Her sweet eyes! The perfect teeth in her smile! Her honeyed voice! But … I can’t have her. I can’t ever tell her how I feel. She’s with that other guy, Alfredo. I’m too much of a coward to tell her how I feel. I keep it all locked up inside. I hate this! I hate her! But … but … I love her.

“Could you do the solo for this?” Teacher J asked. “It’s kind of long, and it’s your idea, so can you do the solo?”

“I’d love to do the solo!” I said. In fact, I can’t imagine anyone else doing it.

“I do have one question, though,” Teacher J smiled. “Why Alfredo?”

I hesitated. It was a long story, but I told Teacher J the truth. One of my good friends from Selangor told me about a cockroach that had come into her hotel room once, while she was on a camp with her friends. She had decided to refer to the cockroach as Alfredo. “And that’s why Alfredo, Teacher,” I said. “Because the boyfriend is a real cockroach.”

On Wednesday morning, 4 TOPEZ headed straight off the assembly field and into the Biology lab. We were doing an experiment today – on the calorific energy value of different types of food. We were supposed to fill a boiling tube with 10 ml of distilled water, and use a retort stand to hold it over a peanut, or a piece of corn, or a chunk of bread. The piece of food would be poked onto the tail edge of a pin, and the pin’s head would be sunk into a wad of Plasticine. We were supposed to ignite the piece of food until it could burn on its own, put it right underneath the boiling tube, and record the change in temperature. The idea was that the chemical energy in the food would burn up in the form of heat, and the thermometer would be able to catch that heat and tell us how much energy there was in the food.

Sir had put a bag of small peanuts and a raw cob of corn on his desk in front of the laboratory. He then switched off all the fans in the lab, because he didn’t want any wind to interfere when we started burning our food samples. The girls gave loud clucks of disapproval when Sir pulled an electric fan out of the supply room, put it at his side of the laboratory, and stood in front of it. I gave a light chuckle. Sir can be very funny in that way.

I helped my group carry out the experiment, measuring out the distilled water and recording the masses of foods and changes in temperature, but after a while, with smouldered, cinder-like peanuts threatening to crumble off the edges of the pins, we began to get a little bored. Tobias stole a pin, still with its head stuck in the wad of modelling clay, and skewered a peanut on it. He held it over the fire of the Bunsen burner. Next was a balled-up chunk of bread, then a combination of corn and peanuts.

I was next. I couldn’t just stand there and watch Tobias have a good meal all by himself. I stole some pieces of corn from our stash and skewered them on a pin of my own, and then held them above the flame of the Bunsen burner, a little nervously. Golden bubbles formed on the corn and popped, sending tiny vibrations pulsating through my fingers. Their edges blackened slowly. When I thought that I’d roasted it enough, I pulled my kebab out of the fire and blew on it, testing it with my tongue – and then popped it into my mouth. It’s dangerous to have a metal pin in your mouth, I know, as opposed to a wooden stick – but I didn’t care!

James thought he’d try making his own kebabs, too, and I watched him as he roasted corn and bread. He bit the food off the pin and his eyes went wide, and he grinned. “Hot!” he yelped, and I knew that it wasn’t too hot for him to handle. “Hot! Whooo! Hot!” I laughed to myself as he hopped around, chewing quickly and swallowing. “Ahhh,” he said. “Better.”

We had a good Biology experiment. Until Tobias roasted the modelling clay on the end of his pin, and left it in a gooey heap on the table.

Our classroom doors are padlocked every day before we go home. Part of my job as class monitor is having to unlock those padlocks at the beginning of the day. I don’t really like the whole padlock situation – it was introduced this year – but by now, I guess I’ve gotten used to it. The keys are kept on hooks that hang from one of the pigeonhole-racks in the staffroom.

I managed to unlock the front door padlock today, and let all my friends enter, but today was the first day that the back door padlock gave me trouble. No matter how much I tried, no matter how far in I pushed the key, I couldn’t seem to twist it enough to pop it open.

After a minute of trying to get the thing open, the doors began to rattle. Someone inside the classroom was banging against the doors like a battering ram. The banging proceeded for a few more moments, and I began to wonder who it was – so I peered in through the windows at the side of the door. I couldn’t see who it was very clearly, but I thought I saw a flash of familiar ponytail. I almost giggled. She was the one banging against the doors? When she knew so well who was on the other end?

I wonder what would have happened if I’d managed to get the padlock open, and if she had barrelled one last time into the doors. They would have burst open, and she would probably have tumbled right out. Well. I’m just glad the padlock stayed shut.

“It won’t open,” I said through the windows.

“It’s stuck?” Jessica’s voice.

“Yeah. It’s stuck.”

“Let me come and see what’s wrong.”

What do you expect to see? I wondered, but stepped back and continued working on the padlock. I removed my key, glared at it, and gave an equally nasty glare to the narrow keyhole. Just as I was sliding the key back in, Jessica came through the front doors.

“Let me try,” she said, and took the padlock, the key still stuck in it. Nothing she tried worked. Eventually, I got tired of watching her, but wasn’t quite sure how to say it, so I tried twisting the key for her. Our fingers collided a few times. Finally, I summed up the courage to say, “I want to try.”

“Okay.”

I don’t know why you were trying in the first place, I thought, it’s not as if you’re that much stronger than me.

Not a very nice thought. But not a thought she would hear, either. As I wrestled with the padlock, I saw that Jessica was barrelling into the doors again, then pounding it with her hands – as if that would achieve anything. The doors opened outward, not inward. She was probably making a lot of our classmates wonder what was going on outside, but the doors weren’t opening.

Finally, one of Jessica’s friends stepped in to help. She managed to open the padlock. I looked at Jessica with raised eyebrows as she walked away. When my classmates had elected me as leader, I’d wondered if they were joking around, and why. When they had chosen Jessica to be my assistant afterwards, I’d realized that they were quite serious. Either that, or they wanted to see what would happen between us with that kind of a work dynamic.

Right now I thought it wasn’t very funny.

She had something to say to me when I re-entered the classroom. I went over a little tentatively, remembering to keep my face blank and act neutral.

“Is choral speaking full?” she asked.

“Uhm, I’m not quite sure,” I said. “We’ve got about thirty-nine members now.”

“I’d like to follow it,” Jessica said. “I don’t mean that I want to be in the choir. I just mean I want to, like … help out. Help coordinate the choir, give directions. Do you think there’s enough room in there for me to go?”

I shrugged. “There … there could be. I’ll check with Teacher J.”

I should have told her to go and ask Teacher herself – I should have said, For once, can you please don’t send me out to do your work? But the thought didn’t cross my mind. Later, I would realize this meant that we were almost back to being friends again.

“Thanks, Ethan,” Jessica said.

“Welcome,” I muttered.

Sometime later, I came back up to 4 TOPEZ, and said to Jessica, “Jess? Well, I, uh, I talked to Teacher about it, and she said … she said you’re most welcome to join.”

“She did?” Jessica brightened. “Wow! Thanks!”

“Sure,” I said. “So, anyway, you can come over whenever you feel like it.” I hesitated, and then said, “She seemed really enthusiastic to have you over.” That surprised me, I almost added.

I’d packed two peanut-butter sandwiches for recess. I ate them around half-past ten, while wondering what I was going to do now that Jessica was on the team.

After recess, I sat at my seat, just looking out the door at the corridors, and I overheard Jessica going over some of the lines with her friends. I turned in my seat and saw that they had a copy of the script. I picked up my copy and read silently along with them, and tensed when they reached the “Wow, she’s so pretty!” solo. To my relief, Jessica only giggled when they read it out.

Later, Jessica called me over yet again. I wondered what it could be this time. “Ethan,” she said, “I’m sorry, I forgot to tell you and Teacher. I’m going for that 1Malaysia camp!”

“Ohhh,” I groaned. “Yeah. I forgot, too.”

“What are we going to do about that?” she asked. “Oh, well. If you see Teacher, can you tell her about it? Tell her … that if she wants to let me go and hire someone else, it’s fine. Ask her if she wants to let me go, or if she thinks it’s safe to let me go for the camp and fill me in on the details when Monday comes.”

“Monday,” I said dully. “That camp is from the twenty-second to the twenty-fifth. That’s … a Sunday.”

“A Sunday,” Jessica said. “Right.”

I sighed. “She looked so happy when I told her you’d be joining us.”

“I know,” Jessica said, and winced a little bit. “I’m sorry, Ethan. Just try and ask her about it, okay?”

“Okay,” I said.

So much running around to do! Argh. Well. At least she’s talking to me. That’s not so bad.

I did talk to Teacher J just before school let out for the day. She didn’t seem angry at me at all. She said that, okay, it was a little tough, and she’d really wanted Jessica to be the conductor for our project. In the end, she said she’d try to get Jessica to conduct in the end, even with her going for the camp. It was going to be tough – but we couldn’t think of anyone else for the position of conductor.

We practised from half-past two till five o’clock that evening, on the stage in the school hall, with Jessica conducting. “Keep your eyes on the conductor,” Teacher J said. “Remember that – keep your eyes on the conductor at all times. She will be giving you signals, telling you when to stop, selecting which part of the choir is going to deliver a certain line. Keep your eyes on her!”

Gee, that’s going to be tough, I thought.

Practice went pretty well that day. We nearly finished one page, and – thank goodness – we didn’t reach my solo part. I didn’t think I was ready to deliver those lines in front of Jessica just yet, keeping my eyes on her, shouting so that everyone in the hall could hear. She wouldn’t understand, and it probably meant little by now – but I was still nervous.

I need more practice ...

Singapore Trip and Sanitization

2010-03-30T19:57:00.007+08:00

School was rather packed today. Our counselling teacher has proposed to take about 15 of us from 4 TOPEZ on a trip to Singapore this November. We'll take a ferry to Kota Kinabalu, hitch a connecting flight to Singapore, and there for three or four days. We've got quite a few possible destinations on our list so far -- a science centre, a 3-D movie screening, Universal Studios and an underwater sea-world park. (I'm not sure if I said that correctly. I was very amused when one of my friends tried to say it and ended up saying "underworld sea-park" without even realizing it.)

We'll need to pay RM 1,000 for the travel fees (which I'm a little vague on), and then we're going to have to pay for our food, as well. On top of that, my friends have mentioned that they'd like to go shopping ... with the Singapore dollar being a little over two times the value of our ringgit. That's all cool with me ... I see no reason at all for me to complain, since our counselling teacher is going to all this trouble to find travel packages for us and organize our trip. Not to mention, she is being very nice about it too.

I just wonder how I'm going to save all this money. I've talked to my mom about it, and she says she has no problem giving me a significant portion of it, but I'm going to have my part too, she says. Somehow or other, I'm going to have to find a way to raise funds. I wonder what I'm going to do? Sell cookies or cupcakes at school, maybe? Auction off some of my old books? I have to be honest with myself, I haven't read those paperbacks in quite a few years, even though some of them are quite precious to me -- but then again, all books are precious to me. It's a character flaw of mine that complicates things. Like my old Michael Crichton books. I'll always tell myself that I want to read it again, maybe just one last time, maybe a couple of years from now. But the truth is, I'm probably going to forget it again.

I wonder what things would be like if I was living in another one of my little fantasy-universes. I'd probably find a rather easy way to make money ... I'd be Ethan the Short-Story Writer, or Ethan the Newspaper Columnist. Maybe I'd be selling short reviews of books to an online magazine for RM 150 apiece, and every month I'd submit one or two reviews. Easy. By November I would have accumulated around twelve hundred.

But I'm not a book reviewer, or a guy who can sell short stories to magazines. That second option looks especially tough, since any literature that isn't Malay, has the slightest ring of controversial material, does not agree with the government's views on Malaysia, does not show the country in an ideal light, is going to be a little tricky to get published.

I need to find a way to get money. Somehow.

"I heard you've become a little more dirty-minded," Garrett said to me with a grin.

It was a meeting of the boys of the classroom. There were only five of us, including Tobias, James and I. Our Maths teacher was supposed to be in class right now, but he wasn't. I guess I could figure out the chapter on mathematical reasoning by myself.

I went a little red and said, "Really? You have?"

"Yeah," Garrett said to me. "What's that all about?"

My face drooped a little. I did not like this tight, guilty feeling I was going through right now. I turned to James and said, "So he's heard about it too, huh?" I asked. "How many others are talking about it, besides us guys? How many people are talking about how Ethan's becoming a bad, disgusting boy?"

"I think the girls might be talking about it," James replied. "You may have noticed how Jessica isn't talking to you very much."

To Garrett and the others, he explained, "Yeah. Ethan's kind of becoming a little, y'know. During Physics, he'll ... like ... make interpretations of the pictures and diagrams. See funny shapes in them."

"Oh," I said, "that."

"Yeah," Vince said. He was smiling. "You should try to tone it down a little, Ethan. You can talk like that around us. But try not to say it around girls."

I nodded. I didn't recall saying anything like that to the girls. But I remembered that I sat between James and Jessica whenever we were in a laboratory. Maybe Jess had overheard me telling one of my crude jokes to James.

Ugh. Well. That's the way it is, isn't it? I'm not a good boy, like so many people think I am. Really, I'm not. I enjoy a slightly nasty joke, and will laugh if you say a dirty word very loudly. If I see a strange-ish image on the whiteboard in Maths class, I will start giggling.

But I guess James and the boys are right. Maybe I should keep these coarse jokes to myself, especially when girls are watching. If Jessica really is ignoring me because I acted out of turn, then this wouldn't be the first time. And I really, really hate it when she does it. It's a really painful feeling, being given the cold shoulder from her, and knowing it's your fault, knowing that you offended her, and not quite sure how to go about fixing it.

I felt a little ashamed. I looked up at James and said, "So now what do I do?"

"Just phase it out," James replied. "Be the Good Boy, Ethan."

"Right," I said. "Thanks for helping and, um, telling me. I appreciate it."

We shook hands.

Sometimes, like today, I'm not quite sure what to do. How squeaky-clean I'm supposed to act. Is Jessica really switching off to me because I acted out of hand, or am I just being paranoid? Jessica is a very nice friend and all, but I do wish she would just come and tell me if she finds something wrong with my behaviour. Talk to me.

I'd lent her three books last week, and on Monday, she'd returned both to me: Rose Madder by Stephen King and The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom. She'd finished them awfully fast, I thought. That ... or she'd found some graphic scenes in Rose Madder that she hadn't liked (violence, maybe, or swear-words, thanks to the abusive-husband of a villain in the book), and had decided to skip the rest and send it back. I don't know why I was considering such a possibility, but I couldn't help it.

But James and Garrett are right. I shouldn't let too much foul stuff grow in my mind. And if I do, I should try to watch what comes out of my mouth. Part of me thinks that my friends should accept me for who I am -- but if this is who I am, then that's not very good. They've been my friends for a while now. They know who I am and who I'm not ... and they're just doing their part in helping me iron out my own kinks.

So thank you, James, Garrett and Vince ... (not your real names, I just picked them based on actors who remind me of you) ... I hope I can act a little better now ...

Aside from that, the day at school went kind of okay. I just needed to forget about Jessica's sudden cold silence, and I could enjoy the good parts of the day.

I hadn't packed anything for recess, because I, um, got up kind of late. So I bought two hotdogs from the canteen. I don't much like the way I always get my upper lip smeared with sauce when I bite into them ... but I'll put up with it, because that sauce disguises the sausage's taste. Now that I'm writing this, I wonder how much I actually care for the canteen hotdogs.

Pn. Kalpana gave me the task of finding an empty classroom for our Moral lesson tomorrow. She would need a whiteboard, because she was planning to teach us how to write long, essay-length answers to the SPM questions. I found a nice Form 3 classroom on the top floor, above 4 TOPEZ, that would be empty during our Moral periods. It was the second classroom I actually had to walk into, so I was quite happy that I'd managed to find it so quickly.

I bought Garrett a drink from the canteen, and one for myself as well. I gave him the Sprite because it was colder. When he opened it, he asked me, "How did you know this was my favourite drink?" I smiled, feeling a little magic spark run through me, and said, "I didn't. Really, I didn't. I guess I was just lucky." He replied, "Thanks, man. Maybe I'll buy you a drink tomorrow."

"Oh, it's fine," I said. "If you really want to repay me, just ... just enjoy the drink. That's all I want, for you to enjoy it." Wow. God was really guiding me through my day today, huh? He'd helped me find the classroom for Moral, and he had helped me pick a drink Garrett liked. These things can seem like coincidences sometimes, but I think that's just God's way of blending into the world.

I guess the best part was meeting the counselling teacher before I went home. That was when I really forgot all about Jessica. We talked about the Singapore trip, about why fresh vegetables helped to prolong life, and how I'd enjoyed the book she'd lent me, The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari by Robin Sharma. She had lent me that book just after my PMR, and I'd returned it before the holidays began. It was nice. There's an example of a book-lending case that went well. "I think we're supposed to not overburden ourselves," I said. "Take a break once in a while. And it's good to try new things, too ... I think."

I guess it was a rather interesting day. If I were given the chance to live it again, I'd probably try to negotiate with the time-machine-pilot to ask if he could take me a week or two back, so I could watch myself and my mouth and make sure I didn't let anything dirty slip. That's a lovely thought, but I need to move into the future a little. If we all worked on the past again and again, we'd constantly find flaws that we could have worked on, things we would have wanted to do again. But would we ever be ready for the future? I don't mean to get all philosophical and all, but ... that's just what I think. I think we do what we can, and try to do a little better tomorrow. Or at least do things a little differently. That's one of the many things we live for.

It's Already March! and New School Adventures

2010-03-28T21:37:00.002+08:00

1 - NEW SUBJECTS

Well, I have to say, it's been a long time since I wrote anything here. At first I didn't know what to say, and I'm still not quite sure, but let me start off by telling you about the beginning of this year at school.

Of course, at the very beginning, were our introductions to our new teachers and subjects. It had always been my dream to get into the Science stream, but I forgot about that now as I walked into my first week of upper secondary school. The excitement had begun to wear off when I realized that you didn't really need any A's to get in, you just needed B's and above.

Add Maths was quite fun, because our teacher was smart and easy to talk to. The functions chapter at the very beginning wasn't too hard to follow, but the subtopics about composite and inverse functions began to give me what felt like mild, localized headaches after a while. When I managed to get an answer, however, it gave me a little rush of satisfaction. I tried to keep these happy rushes frequent so I wouldn't lose interest in the subject.

Sejarah is okay. The teacher is good at what she teaches, that much is clear. And although her position among the teachers is not something we students are very delighted about, she is too nice to me for me to be anything less than decent to her. I mean, she's okay, and she teaches well. Sejarah class can be kind of fun if I just figure out what I can do with it, and do just that.

Chemistry and Physics were all right from the beginning, but I found myself getting a little slack around the eyelids as we progressed into February. They were okay, but nothing to shout about. I hope I can find interest in this subject soon -- by myself, I mean. Otherwise I'm going to grow bored, and then my grades will slip.

I was thrilled to find that we would be getting Madam Rosalie for English. (That isn't her real name, but I like the sound of it.) She's very fluent in the language, and very sharp, using words that few of us know. And she has an American-ish accent that adds to the effect of her voice sounding very much like Jessica. I sometimes think that if Jessica had a much, much older sister, she would sound a lot like Madam Rosalie. Maybe she wouldn't look that similar, though.

Biology class was a lot of fun. We were being taught by our old Form 2 Science teacher. There was an organic, friendly feel to this subject that contrasted with the cut-and-dry calculativeness of Chemistry and Physics, and I fell in love with it from the beginning. It isn't very easy, but it's too much fun not to like. Not to mention that 4 TOPEZ is the only class that gets to learn it, so I'd better make do with what I have.

Remember Pn. Kalpana? She was my Science teacher last year, and I enjoyed her lessons very much. She is teaching Pendidikan Moral this year. I find that just the tiniest bit sad, because when I leave this school, I want my last memories of her to be of a teacher who gave bombastic Science lessons. Oh well, why am I complaining ... she teaches Moral class very well. And at least she is still there to give me advice if I should need it.

The rest doesn't really need much mentioning, I guess ... all that remains is for me to tell you that we're not taking Geografi or Kemahiran Hidup anymore. Yay! I was never very good at those, even though they became easy and fun to master towards the end of Form 3, and I don't miss them one bit. I know that because their absence barely registers on me.

2 - MISSING 2009

Adjusting to the new SPM-format subjects was a little tricky, especially during my first two months. It wasn't just because they were hard, it was because the teachers told us to expect difficulty.

"No honeymoon this year!"

"I know people say that this is honeymoon year, but ... please, guys. Don't relax. You've got to work harder than ever."

"You're going to go through a big change, a massive transition, and it's going to be kind of like an earthquake. The shock is coming right up. Some of you will take it slowly, some of you will go through it quickly ..."

And hopefully some of us won't notice it at all, I thought.

I don't know whether I have gone through the Big Shock already, but I do know that I felt a very peculiar sluggishness in my mind for a few weeks. It was as if a few sectors of my brain had shut down and were refusing to work, because they didn't want to be pushed so hard. They didn't want to use up all their juice right before SPM year. Sure, we weren't supposed to slack, but if we pushed ourselves too hard, could we be expected not to collapse when 2011 finally came? Give me a little break, pleeease.

The truth was that I missed my PMR year. It had been such a nice experience, at least, what I remember of it. Whenever I was bored during a Form 4 lesson, my mind would wander back to those days -- symposiums every three weeks where students from every school would gather at a venue; Projek Gemilang meetings every few Saturdays at SMK Labuan; meeting friends from all over Labuan; standing up in front of crowds who cheered loudly when they saw you; frequent meetings with the principal in the school conference room, online exam drills in a virtual universe; explaining formulas and science keywords to my friends during a group-study session; skimming quickly through the chapters in a reference book; flipping between the answers page and the questions that I'd answered while holding a red pen in my hand ... and, most of all, the encouraging, exciting feeling that I was gradually climbing stairs, making my way through a bitter cold rain to the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. The feeling that I was going to get results that would make me happy. The feeling that I was putting effort into my studies. The feeling that I was moving. I missed that.

Every now and then, I'd wonder what it would be like if I could relive it again. Go through every moment again, the sweet, the bitter, the painful, the exciting, the boring, the amazing ... would I do it? Would I go through 2009 again if I could?

These daydreamings were making it hard for me to focus on 2010, and the Big Shock that was supposed to be coming my way. But I couldn't help it. And maybe this was part of the Big Shock. Maybe I needed to think about it to let it go.

3 - A NEW BATCH

Well, something interesting has happened, something I never saw coming. This year's 3 TOPEZ students are part of a program called Akademia Plus (or something like that), just the way we were part of Projek Gemilang and Score-A!-Online. What the teachers have arranged for them is basically this: they have picked from 4 TOPEZ the nine students who got straight A's or one B in their PMR, and have given each of them three apprentice-students from 3 TOPEZ to tutor. We can tutor them in whatever way we want, the teachers say. Give them tips, talk to them to motivate them, arrange extra classes with them, discuss things on Facebook. It's all up to us, they say.

We met them last week in the conference room, during a meeting with the principal and a few other teachers. They made each of us from 4 TOPEZ stand up and introduce ourselves, and then they named the three students who we would be taking under our wing. The mentor would then walk over to his/her apprentices and shake hands with them.

When I stood up, all the Form 3 students gave me a shock by cheering wildly. (That phrase must be grating on your nerves by now.) I know I'm not an unknown person in my school, but they will still clap and holler for me even in front of the principal, even during an ahem-this-is-serious-to-your-future thing such as this, even during such dull places as the conference room. That, to me, is quite sweet.

I introduced myself, and then the teacher read out the names of the apprentices I'd been assigned to. What surprised me was that I had not three, but four students. All boys, thank goodness. When it was time for us to shake hands, the first guy threw his arms around me ... and everyone else followed suit. My classmates and teachers were very amused. I was quite flattered myself. None of the other mentors from my class got a hug. Awww ... sorry ...

As we all resumed our places and listened to the teacher give a brief rundown on what we were supposed to do, I thought about what a challenge this was going to be. I was going to have to keep my grades up while balancing both the Form 4 syllabus and the key elements of the Form 3 syllabus, unless I was very lucky. A challenge, all right -- but what a fun one! A way to somehow relive the glories of last year. And to help other people, which is kind of nice -- in fact, one of the things I enjoyed most about PMR year.

To think I complained about not having had enough of 2009! I thought, grinning to myself.

I hope that, a few months down the line, I am not moaning to myself, And to think I was excited at this student-apprentice program.

I don't know much about the workings that go on within the offices of SMK Pantai, but I think this is the first time that the school has ever done something like this -- shared the teaching power with other students. And I hope it goes well. I hope I can do well.

4 - THANK YOU

Now, there's a lot I've been wanting to say to the people to have helped me. And I'm sorry I didn't say it earlier. 2009 was a good year thanks mostly to you.

Thanks to my parents and family ... my Mom and Dad, Aunty Pat, and everyone else ... who of course gave me support and never let up with the advice that schoolwork was an important part of being a teenager. It helped quite a lot.

Thank you to my incredible teachers, even the ones who weren't teaching the 7 Subjects. You made the subjects fun for us, and that compelled us to push a little further and stay a little longer for extra class. A special thank-you to my generous and inspiring counselling teacher as well, for giving us the extra motivation that we needed. I say this sincerely, none of the motivation-programs we went for that year, with all those distinguished speakers and fancy teachers, could equal the quality of what you had to say to us. You have a great heart.

Thank you to Pn. Kalpana, whose Science lessons are the stuff of legend. I tried my best not to slack in your class, and you were the first teacher whose subject I got A's for throughout the entire year. Well. Apart from my English teachers ...

Thank you to Aunty Joan, a friend of my mother's, who generously mailed reference books and past-year exam questions to me. Seriously, that was invaluable, and I did see my Geografi and Sejarah marks go up. So thank you, because you helped a lot.

Thank you to my awesome friends, you really rocked my world -- especially those who studied with me in the final weeks from Trial 2 leading up to the PMR exam. To Tobias, Jessica, Otto, Fauzi, Naim and all my classmates. To my study-group buddies: it was a real pleasure working with you.

And thank you, readers ... especially you. Your comments have been very encouraging and helpful as well. (I am thinking of a reader of mine called CO'78, whose kind compliments were very cool, although they did make me blush a little.) I hope you enjoy reading whenever you stop by.

If I haven't mentioned you, I'm really sorry ... so just to be safe, I'm going to say thank you to everyone who was in my life around that time. I know that all the motivation experts say it's really me that did it, because I took the initiative and made the effort ... and they're sort of right, but I still think I'm not much without you guys. So thanks.

A Very Wonderful Christmas

2010-01-01T23:59:00.003+08:00

(I’m going to sort of rush through this one – which I don’t like to do, seeing as its one of the most important posts. But for that reason also, I think I can’t stop myself – I really want to get to the end of this, to tell you how it went. I like reading something immersive and detailed, but this is going to be … rather sparse and dry. Sorry about that.)

CHAPTER 1
It Was Fun – Getting Prepared – The Days of the Last Mile

It was fun.

Going for the endless seminars and speeches held at many different schools, completing exercises every day during and after school, looking through textbooks and reference books with a careful, analytical eye and a pencil trained only to pick out the important bits – it soon became a lot of fun to do. The Ethan of 2008 would have passed out at the notion, not only because of the daunting amount of effort he’d have to put in to do it, but because of how tiresome it would seem.

But, after doing it for a fair number of months, its intensity increasing as the PMR drew near, it became a sort of sport, a sort of athletic challenge that I wanted to do my best at. I can barely remember everything that happened – just about all my experiences have melded and condensed into something that, now I look back on it, seems as short and concise as a feature-length film.

At times, the journey did feel like a movie. The kind of movie that I’d like. A movie about a young boy with the potential to do well, but lacking the will to work hard and turn his potential energy into kinetic energy. A movie about how this boy learned to do that, and make things work for himself, as he climbed to the top of the academic ladder, slowly appreciating and even enjoying what he was going through, knowing it was all for the best.

“Hey, Ethan, can you help me with this?”

“Uh, Ethan … sorry to disturb … I got a problem with this … how to do this question …?”

“Ethan? What’s your answer for number 25?”

“Ah! Ethan! There you are! Now, how do you get the volume of a cylinder?”

That, too, was fun. It used to be a little annoying, but now I viewed it as a special privilege. My friends were turning to me for help. And I was trying to help them solve their problems (mostly Maths) as best I could. It was great, it was exciting, it was fun.

Sometime around September, our teachers really started dishing out sets of exercises and model exam papers. It wasn’t uncommon for us to get two or three stapled-together sets in one day. I felt like a tennis player holding his racquet out in front of a tennis-ball-spitting machine, ready to swing and hit any furry green ball that came sailing his way. They’d come fast, and they wouldn’t give you much time to rest and breathe, but you’d hit them, because you liked hitting them, hitting them was FUN, hitting them developed your muscles and when it was finally time for the tournament you’d know that you could do everything well and emerge champion –

We didn’t always manage to finish the exercises at home, and when that happened, early in the morning, before assembly, I’d get together with some of my friends – mostly Tobias, Otto and Fauzi – each of us holding our respective exercise sets, and we’d discuss the answers, and answer the questions, usually finishing up just on time. Bah, foul question! Down you go! Not so intimidating now, are you?

I think that was the part I liked the most, the way studying became a social activity for us – how I’d get together with my friends and we’d all help each other out. Throughout 3 TOPEZ, everyone was doing it, organizing themselves into little groups, clumping together to come up with solutions for their problems. And it was so beautiful to watch and partake in.

These are the moments, I thought one busy (but FUN) morning, as I sat squeezed among five other of my friends, my pen in my hand, telling my friends the answers I had given, and apologizing for the ones I hadn’t figured out yet, these are the moments I’m going to look back on and miss. We’re going through a fantastic adventure right now, and I want to enjoy this part and live it to the fullest. When I’m all grown up and (hopefully) successful, I’ll remember these days, the Days of the Last Mile, when my friends and I united to finish our homework, and prepare ourselves for the PMR.

Since then, some of the friends I knew have gone to different classes, different streams. And I miss them all. We all do. Just a few days ago, I heard Jessica saying how much she missed the old 3 TOPEZ, and I thought, Those were great times, huh?

CHAPTER 2
Trial Results

The results for my first PMR trial had come out in late August – 5 As, 1 B for Geografi, and 1 C for Sejarah (owwch!). I don’t recall ever getting an A for BM before. In early September, we did our second trial exam, and I’ll always remember the climactic feel that trial had to it. It felt intense, strong, and epic – if you can use words like that to describe a pencil-and-paper exam, that is. I don’t know … after having my contact with books, TV and movies watered down, I guess I look for dramatic tension and novelty in the most mundane of things. When I took a break looking at the fun things, I noticed a lot about the boring. (And that made it FUN, of course.) I mean … I felt excited doing the Geografi exam, because I now felt so confident, so slick. These were questions I had done before and answered before too. As for the Kemahiran Hidup trial … I remember muttering under my breath as I passed the halfway mark, “This … is … so … sweet.”

Every time I hit a question that I wasn’t sure of, a question that meant potential danger, I marked it by outlining a triangle around the number. In Geografi, I only got eight of these danger-marks, while in KH, I drew about ten. As for BM, I had never drawn so few danger-triangles.

Anyway, the results for my second trial came out quickly, and I was thrilled to learn that I’d gotten straight A’s. All seven. Only three others in my class had pulled that same stunt – there was Zafirah (a consistently brilliant student), Tobias (of course – if I’d done it, he’d probably done better) and Jessica.

“Jessica and Ethan are probably going to break the school record,” Pn. Kalpana observed one day. “The trend for SMK Pantai’s PMR results is that only one non-Muslim student will achieve all A’s. However, if Jessica and Ethan keep up their performance … I think they can break a record.”

The prospect of doing such a thing was immensely exciting, and added more fuel to my fire. I had to break this record! It would be so … much … FUN!

CHAPTER 3
Set the Stage – This is It, This is the End

October 5 was a Monday, the day that the exam hall was set and prepared for the Big Day. We made sure we picked good, sturdy tables, and nice, comfortable chairs – well, as comfortable as they could be. It brought a smile to my face when I saw students walking up to a table in the middle of a classroom, and tilting it from side to side to see how much it would give, then going off to find another, more firm-legged desk.

October 7, Wednesday, was probably the toughest day, and I couldn’t wait to get past it. Once I was done tackling BM, and the formidable karangan questions that emerged, I’d be able to face the rest of my papers in relative peace of mind.

Good thing this is coming first, I thought. Then I won’t worry about it when I’m doing the others.

Every time I walked out of that bright exam hall, my stomach felt a little lighter, my heart a little bolder. My confidence was increasing with each step I took, but it never exceeded the limits Pn. Kalpana had once set for me. At least, I think it didn’t.

My Sejarah paper, which usually ended up with fifteen or so danger-triangles scratched among its pages, emerged from the exam hall with only six. My KH danger-triangle tally had dived under ten, and BM’s was … well, I don’t remember exactly, but it was lower than I had ever seen it in my life.

This final showdown did not have the exciting and intense air of the second trials, or “Trial 2” (I have my own affectionate name for it). It felt more like the ending of a long tale, than the climax of it. And I suppose it would have felt that way. This was the end of our journey, after all (except for the results, which would be out on December 28 or 29). The atmosphere of finality hung over us, almost anti-climactic, almost worrying. Why did I feel this way? Wasn’t I supposed to feel enthusiastic? What was happening to me? Was I getting tired?

I never panicked, though. The lessening of excitement was a surprise, but I didn’t panic.

We walked out of the exam hall for the last time on October 13, 2009. I shook hands with Tobias, walked back to the canteen with him among the crowd of joy-fizzing candidates, and picked up my bag. We shook hands, and thanked each other for all that we’d shared, all the help, discussions, philosophy … and then we left the school.

I’d attend school for the rest of the year, despite the fact that they weren’t having lessons. But that is another story … and, I’m afraid, a painfully boring one as well. Tobias knew about it, because he only showed up once or twice after the PMR. Smart guy. He deserved the break, he’d worked so hard.

CHAPTER 4
A Change of Plans – KL Vacation

My family had scheduled a vacation to KL from the 21st to the 28th. We’d be back just in time to collect my results – or so we thought.

Days before we left for KL, my mother told me that the PMR results date had been changed to the twenty-fourth. I had a choice, she said. Either I could call the school office on that morning and find out how much I’d scored, or I could wait till I got back to Labuan. “If your results are really good, they’ll call you,” she added.

I thought I’d hope for the third option, and not call at all. The suspense would be quite a bit to handle, but I didn’t know if discovering my results over the phone was what I’d had in mind.

KL was great. From the 21st till Christmas afternoon, Ellen and I (remember Ellen?) stayed with our Aunty Sandy, her two dogs and two cats. We went out with our Aunty Pat to MidValley Megamall on the 23rd, and bought a few books. We also met William, and that was a great experience in itself.

I could barely remember anything about preparing for my exam, by that time. All I knew was that I missed those times. There was so much that had been great – Pn. Kalpana’s science classes, Pn. Noraini’s English lessons, our BM exam-drills and Maths exercises, our Geografi trial exams, our Sejarah briefings, our KH recall-sessions. Getting together with friends to complete our work. Reading reference books at home, knowing that every second counted, knowing I had to do all I could.

At the beginning of the year, I’d wondered what it would be like in those few days leading up to the exam. I’d likely cut myself off from the TV, computer and internet, and spend most of my hours shut up in my room, my eyes glued to my textbooks, my brain crunching and crunching information as I did model paper after model paper. And if my results were good – I’d take my results slip and look at the print with glee, and a hot fireball of triumphant emotion would erupt within me and I’d jump up and down. I wouldn’t be able to stop grinning for the rest of the day, and I might even burst into song. It would be a feeling I’d never experienced before, and I couldn’t wait to experience it.

But that never really happened, at least not to that degree. Even during the PMR period, I watched a few minutes of TV a day, and I didn’t stop using the internet completely. I just found my books more interesting. I had a book full of past-year questions for each subject, and I made sure I finished everything before taking the exam. I needed all I could get.

And I never really achieved that state of Eyes-Glued-to-Textbook Studying. I think I managed pretty fine without it.

CHAPTER 5
Christmas Eve

It was December 24, 2009, and I was really into my vacation. Aunty Sandy was being very kind to us, and we enjoyed the company of her pets very much. Every night we’d have a great meal, and maybe watch some TV. She allowed us to use her computer, too.

That morning, I woke up, and remembered, Today is the day my results come out. Maybe I’ll ask one of my friends on Facebook. Or maybe I just won’t call at all.

Some time past ten, I was sitting in front of the computer, my cell phone by my side on top of a copy of Pride and Prejudice (I’d brought that with me to KL). I was browsing through some Facebook profiles, and I had actually forgotten all about the significance of that day.

My cell phone rang, and I saw from the caller ID that it was Dad. My parents would be coming to pick me up at noon, I recalled, and he probably wanted to go over our plans for lunch. (We had organized a big family Christmas lunch at a restaurant near Aunty Sandy’s house, after which I’d go with my family to the Armada Hotel.) I took the phone and pushed the green button. “Hello?”

“Ethan,” my dad said, in his usual semi-sinister tone. “Well done.”

“Well done?” I asked. “Erm … what for?”

“You got all A’s, Ethan,” Dad replied.

Oh! Right! That. I can’t believe I forgot!

I walked slowly away from the computer and made my way to the living room. “All A’s? Really?” I asked in a perfectly calm tone of voice.

“Yes,” Dad said, equally calm. “Really.”

“Wow,” I said flatly. “All seven, right?”

I was surprised at how nonchalant I sounded. And also a little proud, because I was taking it in my stride. What I still didn’t understand was how emotionally flat I felt. The excitement wasn’t here, the fireball of triumph wasn’t here, and …

“Yes,” Dad repeated. “All seven. Congratulations, son.”

“Thanks,” I said.

And I didn’t care. So what if I wasn’t feeling like I wanted to leap into the air and bounce off the walls of the house?

I knew this was coming, a voice deep down inside me said. It isn’t really a surprise to me, because – it was what I expected all along. Maybe I knew that it would be this way, maybe I didn’t – but I most definitely believed. I didn’t know, I believed. That’s why I don’t register any change in my emotions right now.

“Yeah,” Dad said. “Anyway, we’ll see you in a few minutes, okay?”

“Okay,” I said. “Thanks, Dad.”

I hung up, and stared at the phone. Oh, I thought, taking a deep breath. So I did it. I got straight-A’s.

It is the really big emotions, I think, that take the most time to impact you. They hit slowly and gradually, and after a few days, you realize that you’re completely ecstatic.

Mom and Dad came over eventually, and I shut off the computer after posting a mysterious but triumphant Facebook status message: “Oh yes – thank you God – I DID IT!”

I walked out into the hall to hear my Mom calling, “Where is he? Where’s my clever boy?” She came down, saw me, and gave me a big soft hug.

I remembered all the speakers I’d heard say that, when you got your straight-A’s results, it was your mother who would be the proudest. And I remembered Pn. Kalpana’s advice: Do this for your mother. She gave birth to you. She wants you to succeed. When you take your exam, remember her.

“What?” Ellen asked, entering the room with Aunty Sandy – who looked just as bewildered.

“What do you mean?” Mom said. “Didn’t Ethan tell you?”

“Tell us what?” Aunty Sandy said.

“Son!” Mom turned to me, grinning. “You didn’t tell them, did you?” She turned to the rest of them, and said, “Ethan got straight-A’s for his PMR.”

Then the congratulations started pouring in, as well as the ang-pows. They were all probably very excited and happy for me, and that was great. I, on the other hand, was still trying to figure out how I felt.

Don’t anybody ask me how I feel, I thought. Because if you do, I’ll be completely honest with you, and I’ll say that I just feel normal. Glad, but pretty normal.

Aunty Sandy had a bottle of whiskey lying on the counter called Irish Mist, and Dad let me have some. He let me have quite a lot, anyway. It stung and caused a lot of fumes to rise up my nasal cavity, and it also made my stomach feel a little painful for a while, but it was nice.

There were many gatherings and parties to follow that afternoon’s lunch, and Mom made me stand up and announce my results at every one. I was quite happy to see her like this. She was pretty happy for me, and that meant a lot. And, as the days passed, I felt happier and happier for myself too.

I got a lot of ang-pows in the end, mainly for the results, and you can guess what I did with most of the money. Yep. I ended up visiting the bookstore a lot (Borders Bookstore at The Gardens, near MidValley, was my favourite stop), and Mom had to send the books in a parcel back to Labuan. Some of the money was spent on tea at Secret Recipe’s with a very special friend of mine (and that really is another story). And I’m planning to put some more in the bank later on.

It turned out that eight students in our form, including myself, had managed to get straight-A’s. Tobias and Jessica were among them.

Remember that power you learned about? I asked myself. Remember how you accidentally hurt yourself when you “created” Troy? Well, you’ve “created” this success, and it feels pretty good, doesn’t it?

Perhaps I’d never created anything at all. Perhaps I didn’t have any powers at all – that’s the sanest explanation. But I must admit to you, Dear Reader, that throughout the whole thing, I indulged myself with thoughts of having this power, and using it to get what I wanted.

In the end, I thought, I took responsibility for Troy, whether I’d done it or not. And, more importantly, I took responsibility for my studies. And that gave me … power. The more responsibility you take, the more power you give yourself. And ... and vice versa.

It was a magnificent Christmas. I don’t think I can write all about it, let alone remember everything that happened – so much did! But I want you to know that I enjoyed it very much, just about every moment that I went through.

And 2009 has been a wonderful year. I suppose I should thank my Aunty Sandy for that – sending over The Secret as my Christmas present might have had a hand in this. So thank you, Aunty Sandy.

What a journey it’s been, as they all say. And maybe there’ll be more to write about soon. Form 4 is sure to have its little ups and downs, every one interesting. But I don’t think I’ll ever forget the adventure I had this year, with my teachers, with my family, and with my closest friends.

I did it. I did what I set out to do. Goals really do help, I suppose. And now I know that, if I just set my mind to it, I can do whatever I want. After all, these results aren’t about what I did, they’re about what I can do. (That was part of my [somewhat arrogant] victory speech in the car on the way to the hotel.) It’ll teach me something whenever I have an objective in life. And it will help a great deal.

I suppose that’s why I wanted to get all A’s. So that I could understand that.

Post-PMR School Days

2009-11-13T17:11:00.004+08:00

The air was cool, the sun was rising from its bed of greenery in the east, and the Form 3 student attendance was worryingly -- but not surprisingly -- low. The date was November 12, 2009, a month after my Big Exam had finished. Sports activities were being held, and I was one of the happy people who were skipping (just call me Mr. Lazy). I sat in the garage with some Form 1 boys, one of whom was Colin, a nice guy who had one day simply walked up to me and asked if I would be his friend. I'd said sure, seeing no reason not to. (His real name isn't Colin, of course, but I chose it for this blog, naming him after Colin Creevey from the Harry Potter series. More on why I chose that name some other day.) Colin was the person who had brought me here today, here to this garage -- and now I was playing chess with one of his friends. I was losing, slowly but steadily -- mainly because my opponent was being helped. That boy with the green bag next to him was being of extreme assistance. Man, if he could just keep his fancy chess-moves to himself, I'd probably have a better chance of winning.

As my opponent considered his next move, I turned for a minute to look at my stack of notebooks nearby, as if for support and encouragement. The notebooks were sitting next to a miniaturized version of my red-and-blue schoolbag, one that came along with the original bag when I bought it. (The main reason I chose red-and-blue is because those are the colours of Spider-Man's costume, but that was the sort of thing I only told my friends.) I was frequently asked why I was still studying when the PMR was over (although I wasn't studying at all; the only thing you'd find in those notebooks are quick jottings-down of stories, or story outlines. They don't feel good cooped up in my head for too long, and I have to let them out somewhere), and I had gotten tired of giving the long, truthful explanation. Now, I'd either say, "I'm not studying," or "Because it's fun." That wasn't a complete lie.

Last year, I had prided myself on reading formidable-sounding titles (at least, to myself and the kind of people I hung around) such as Great Expectations, Far from the Madding Crowd and Romeo and Juliet. (They actually thought that last one sounded cool.) Apart from enjoying the tales, I secretly thought they made me look quite good. Rather intellectual, in a way. I wasn't your average nerdy school-bookworm, I was your average nerdy school-bookworm with good titles in his hands.

Now, however, the PMR exam over and done with, I brought my usual notebooks and printouts of story-excerpts, and on top of that, a small paperback entitled Spider-Man -- THE OFFICIAL NOVELIZATION OF THE FILM! My standards had dropped a little, in exchange for my grades going up.

I loved the films, but I didn't consider novelizations of blockbusters to be my cup of tea -- and yet I was reading this one. For the fifth time since I had bought it at the age of eleven, in fact. And why? Just for fun, of course ... just for fun.

During the PMR-study-period -- that spine-tingling time between January 1 and October 13 of this year -- I hadn't read that many books, but I had kept myself fed on some light stories every now and then. If I didn't have something to read, I would almost surely go crazy. I read things I had already read before, stories from when I was a younger boy. Most of them were Animorphs books, which I had enjoyed when I was on the verge of becoming a teenager. Other times, I would read a short story from Roald Dahl, or Stephen King, or maybe I'd read one of Michael Crichton's tales out of his autobiography, Travels. I didn't feel comfortable sitting down with anything more serious than that -- any book which demanded real attention, any book that would grab my focus and lead me into a passionate love affair with it, the way I liked, was to be avoided. Books like these would turn me from my studies, at the very point I was beginning to get a decent grip on them. I didn't want that.

Other than that, I continued writing little stories of my own, just to pass the time. Ninety-nine percent of them were outlines. I wasn't worried about bits of my stories manifesting into real life ... if they could even do that at all. Speaking of which, I can't remember when I last saw Troy -- about late October, perhaps? And before the PMR had even begun, I had overheard that Jessica was now single -- and I hadn't seen her with Troy again. Up till then, every time she and I talked, she would somehow find a way to mention Troy, or how he was being to her, or what he was up to, and -- on particularly stinging occasions -- what a sweet, nice boyfriend he was. All that was over now.

Not that I hadn't decided to leave the whole thing alone before I'd heard. I now knew where my responsibilities were -- with the exam, of course. And the minute I had let go of my pain, all my studying became a little more -- more fun, somehow. I seemed to get not only more knowledge out of it, but more [emotional] fulfillment. Maybe I was imagining it, maybe I wasn't ... but it still felt good, and that was all that mattered to me.

"Your move," said my opponent, shaking me out of my recollections of past nightmares. I looked at the board and saw that he had taken my castle.

That wasn't so bad. That wasn't so bad at all. I'd been through worse.

I lost the game in a matter of minutes after that, but I still didn't feel that things had been played out very fairly. And I was a little irked at the guy with the green bag, the one who had been helping him. So, as soon as I was done being pummelled into the board, I called him over and asked, as casually as I could, if we could play against each other. Without help, of course, I added carefully.

I wasn't going to start scolding a younger boy for helping me lose, or skewing the fairness of the previous game. But I wasn't going to be quiet about it, either. And besides, the exams were over, there was nothing to do, and there were hours to spend. What was wrong with another good game of chess?

Green-Bag Kid and I played without any help from his friends, which was as good as winning itself. And I managed to overpower him, eliciting long pauses from him as he stopped to think about what he was going to do next. In less than thirty minutes, I managed to win.

"Good game," I said slickly.

The day before had been a little weird. I had reached the part in my Spider-Man novelization where Peter Parker goes up to his room after coming home from his fateful trip to Columbia University. The spider-bite on his hand is swelling, and he feels massively sick. He passes out, and when he wakes up, he finds that the next day has arrived, and he is late for school. He manages to throw on some clothes in time and hurries out to catch the bus.

The weird part is this: I felt a little sick yesterday myself. I think it was a bad canteen curry-puff, and I spent the evening in my room, trying to distract myself from the churning feeling in my intestines by re-reading the story outline I had written in school. By night-time I was okay, but I stayed up really late to play a computer game, and I went to sleep at midnight. Guess what? I forgot to set the alarm, and I woke up the next morning at ten past six -- fifteen minutes before Mom sends us to school.

I set myself into turbo mode, and got ready as quickly as I could. I barely made it -- I usually need about half an hour to get ready for school; it may seem a bit long, but it means that I don't have to rush every day. By six-twenty-three, I was pulling on my school shoes and grabbing my mini-bag and stack of books. As Mom drove us to school, I remembered the scene I had been reading yesterday, and an amused grin appeared on my face. Can't write OR read without having things seep into my life somehow, I thought. So what's next? A fight with a school bully where I come off as the winner?

In all fairness (heh-heh), Green-Bag Kid was no bully, but I had come off as the winner in front of all his friends.

Add that to my secret list of Peter Parker parallels, I thought. (I don't usually let grown-ups in on this stuff ...) I'm nerdy, but prefer to think of myself as smart; my class sees me as the Science genius because I always score the highest marks in that subject (okay, that's a bit braggy); my first name has five letters while my surname has six; I don't have an actual girlfriend even though I wouldn't complain if I did ... that's it. The red-and-blue colours I carry around do not count, sadly.

But there are millions of teenage boys all over the world like that ... and that's part of the magic of Peter Parker. Boys can relate to him. And I don't mind being part of that group.

After recess, I went up to 1 TOPEZ, my sister's class, to play chess with some of her classmates -- where I lost again. I had to leave, though, when a teacher came in. I went downstairs to the space near the assembly field that divides the main stage from one of the school blocks. Two painted wooden huts with blue roofs stand there, and I saw a group of Form 1 students sitting at one. Not the same one I had been hanging out with earlier. To my surprise, Sierra -- a Form 4 prefect who had made friends with me a month or so ago -- was sitting with them too. (And, no, that isn't her real name, either. The only real name here is mine: Ethan Matisa.)

The young boys saw me and called me over. That's what everyone does whenever they see me: they call me, shout my name, wave, cheer. I think I've become somewhat famous in my school, if you don't mind me being so show-offish. Whenever someone stands up at assembly, to accept an award, or something like that, they'll get mild applause, but when I stand up, I hear them clapping really loudly and cheering, roaring, making high-pitched "whoooo" sounds. I think it's the boys, mostly. When the results for my second PMR trial came out, and the students who had scored straight-A's were announced, my name was one of the four, and as I stood up and walked towards the stage, the usual loud cheering began. It had happened enough times already for me to know that I wasn't imagining it out of some deeply-rooted narcissism, and for once, I didn't feel nervous or shaky at all the ... thunderous support. As I stepped up to the principal to accept the award, and shook his hand, he gave me a smile, and said, "Teruskan kecemerlangan," and I nodded. (For any non-Malaysian readers out there who don't speak Malay, this means: Keep up the good work.) His fellow teacher, a bespectacled man whose hair reminded me of comic-book Doctor Octopus, stood just beside him, and as we posed for a picture, I saw, out of the corner of my eye, this glasses-sporting teacher lean ever so slightly towards the principal, and whisper, "Banyak peminat budak 'ni." (This kid has a lot of fans.)

Well, I thought, as I stepped down from the stage, clutching my certificate, and trying to look as though I hadn't heard the comment, at least someone other than me notices. I'm not imagining it at all!

(The flashback is over now.)

So when I saw the young boys in the hut waving me towards them, I thought I'd just walk past as politely as I could, since they'd probably only have pointless (and probably dirty) questions to ask. But Sierra was there, so I decided it couldn't possibly hurt.

"Hi," I said, as I stepped under the low roof of the hut. "Can I join in the sun-shade?"

"Sure," Sierra said. There were two curved benches in the hut, surrounding a small round table that was almost cute in its imitation of a broad tree-stump. In fact, the whole hut had a tree-trunk-tree-stump-this-stuff-is-raw-tree-the-kind-you-only-see-in-forests motif about it, and I liked it. It was cartoonish, but fun. The boys (there were about five of them) were sitting on one of the benches, and Sierra was sitting on the other. She shifted aside and patted the space next to her, and I sat there, feeling quite glad.

The boys asked me what I was doing, and why I was still carrying these books around. I answered their questions, but I wasn't paying much attention to them. I was looking at the roofed walkway to the school gate, the one that connected to the canteen, which was about twenty feet ahead of me. Jessica was there, talking with some of her friends.

"Ooo, look," one of the boys said. They'd noticed my novelization. "Spider-Man. Can I borrow?"

"Sure," I said, and he picked it up. His friends gathered around to look at it, and even flipped through it. "The real name of the Spider-Man," said another boy, "what his name? Peter ... Peter ..."

"Peter Parker," I said.

"Yeah, dat's right. Peter Pucker."

Jessica was now standing alone in the walkway, looking in the direction of the canteen. Was she waiting for a friend, perhaps? Was someone buying drinks? "Not Pucker," I said, not moving my eyes at all, "Parker. Peter Parker. And ..." I don't know why I felt I had to say this. "And Mary Jane."

A thrilling, stunning coincidence occurred right then. In the time it took for me to say the words Mary Jane, Jessica looked at me, smiled, and waved -- and I waved back. And that was it. It was almost as if I'd said her name, instead of Mary Jane's, and she had heard and looked around to see who had called it. I'd said Mary Jane while looking at her.

Oooo, could this be a sign? I giggled to myself, half-jokingly, half-wondering if it was. But then again ... did I even need a sign to point this out?

The boys turned to see who I was waving at, and I said quickly, "Hey, no, I didn't mean she's Mary Jane."

Jessica was looking down towards the canteen again. The boys looked back at me, and I looked back at them. Then they went back to looking through my stuff.

Hope they fell for that one, I thought with the ghost of a smile.

The Blue Notebook

2009-08-18T21:42:00.008+08:00

Foreword: This posting is probably going to sound really, really crazy -- a little crazier than "Reading Minds," one of my earlier postings -- and there may be some parts that you do not believe. To tell you the truth, I'm not sure I believe all of it myself. However, my Aunty Pat once said, "I believe that if we let ourselves, we can tune into the universe and do a lot more things than we imagine we can." Whatever the case, I just hope you enjoy this piece.

1 - QUOTES

"Why isn't there a Jessica in this story? There should be a Jessica here."

-- Jessica, after reading my blue notebook for the first time

"A day without laughter is a day wasted."

-- Charlie Chaplin

"OMG! I started writing a novel and whatever would happen to my character would happen to me shortly after, including a replica of being shot by the bad guys! :(So when I couldn't take it no more, I "cheated" and wrote out of charcter and made my character take a detour and get a lot of money. First I didn't think that worked but guess what: that came true 2 yrs later! I totall y forgot about that and my characters are in limbo and I've been having near death experiences so thanks for the reminder, I must get my characters back on track to conclude the story. (Had writer's block)I think what happens is that the subconscious is relaxed when writing and if you love your story, you're in a highly receptive state. So your subconscious gets programmed for what happens to your character to happen to you, if you identify with her because you have the energy of love that draws experiences to you. (I like to write in "I" form). So it's not really to do with psychic but since psychics work with the subconscious, in a way kind of yeah. You are already skilled in auto-suggestion and manipulating the subsconscious Hope this helps."

-- Yahoo! Answers.com

2 - INSPIRATION

Almost a year ago, I fell asleep during my lazy Christmas holidays to enter a very strange dream. In the months to come, I would work on this dream, attempt to turn it into a story, change details, twist facts, until all I had was a warped remnant of a story that had once been good.

I opened my eyes to find myself lying facedown in the sand. I blinked a few times, and then got up, coughing. My body ached all over in a strange, non-painful way, a way that didn't make me feel weak but strong. Almost as if I'd been shot with electricity.

Dusting off sand from my palms, I looked towards the direction the shadows were pointed in. A hundred feet away, maybe less, was a lovely bright-blue sea beyond the rim of sand. Nice. Really nice.

Now I looked in the direction of the morning sun. Beyond the road where no cars would ever drive, there was a field of long, tall, itchy-looking grass that sloped uphill. I wondered what was on the other side of that hill.

People were moving about in that field of grass. I headed over to them. Real, live people -- survivors! Probably the last people left on the planet after the blast!

Everything under my feet made a noise that sounded loud in the surrounding silence. No car engines hummed, no birds chirped, no insects buzzed. As I entered the field, grass and weeds slapped against my legs with annoying loudness.

A tall man in a faded white tee, jeans and a ragged-sleeved jacket headed over to me. He wore a wide-brimmed hat on his head, and had a dark, suspicious-looking beard.

"Welcome to the Cerode Farm, my friend," he said, and held out his hand. "My name is Brandon. Brandon Corwood. But call me Don ... everyone else does."

"Okay," I said. "Uh ... I'm Seth."

"Seth, huh? Pleasure to meet you! I bet you're not infested yet, then, huh?"

"Infested? Well ... I'm pretty germ-free, for the most part, except for a little sand."

Don laughed. I didn't like his laugh -- it was rough, scratchy and very, very unfriendly. "Well, we'll have you treated soon enough," he said. "Over here at the Cerode Farm, we're all infested. We'll need you infested by six latest, because the Big Boss comes down here at midnight."

I didn't like the sound of that word -- infested. In fact, I was thinking I should probably run there and then. But Don was carrying what looked like a gun in his pocket. A very futuristic, dangerous gun. I looked around at his friends -- his friends who were tending to these tall green shoots in the grass. They were each carrying weapons. Some were carrying scythes and knifes. Others carried guns. One even had a slingshot, and although that didn't look so bad ... well. You get the idea.

Don must have read my mind. He bent down a little closer, and whispered, "Look, buddy, I know you don't like the sound of that word right now. None of us did. But the minute we submitted ourselves to the Zermans ... my, were we grateful. They were, I mean. My host is right now sending me strong waves of gratitude."

This was beginning to sound familiar. I kept fighting the urge to run, thinking it would be better to try and keep from fainting under Don's foul breath.

"It doesn't hurt, really," Don said. "And we'll give you whatever you want. When the Big Boss sets up his city right here in Crosswood ... why, there'll be games. Fun-houses. Extravagant food and drink. Everything that you want. And you will be one of the chosen few given special treatment, you see, because you'll be one of the hosts taken in the first week." He straightened up to his full height -- I didn't like the fact that he was taller than me. "How does that sound, little champ?"

"Fine," I said.

"Good. For now you just stay here, okay? I'll show you a nice place up there where you can sit down. Don't worry about the chains we put on your feet. It's just to keep you from -- well, never mind. I like you, kid. Young, healthy ... but the Boss wouldn't like it if he hears I didn't carry out my safety duties responsibly. So, I'm sorry, but I'm just going to have to chain you."

How about you drag me up, too? I wanted to say, but kept quiet. This guy was annoying me big time. He was turning what little moral fibre I had into pulpy fruit-juice. He was getting me to submit to these Zermans, whatever they were, by promising me pleasure and importance. And I was falling for it, the way any weak-hearted character would. I didn't know I was such a coward, and I didn't like the fact that he had helped me find out.

"So, you just follow me," Brandon Corwood said, and grabbed me by the arm.

"Leave him alone, Corwood," said a voice that came from above. (Not from heaven ... it was just a couple of feet over my head.) "That guy's coming with me."

Don and I looked up. What looked like a pointed triangle made out of pure ice was hovering in the air, and standing on it was a tall, handsome-looking man in blue shorts and a Quiksilver T-shirt. He looked slightly older than me, but manly nonetheless.

"You guys want to start fighting over me? I'd choose who I want to go with, but I don't know who the bad guy is," I said lamely.

"Shut up, kid," Don told me, dropping any nice-guy act he'd had going. He drew his "gun," and I saw that it had a shiny, tapered muzzle with a tiny hole. "As for you, Frostbite, I say you'd better get going or I'll start shooting you, this time in the entertainment centre." Then he yelled, and I saw the gun float up and out of his hands. It was covered in a shiny coating of -- could it be? -- ice. The man on the levitating ice-glider held out his hand and the gun sailed right into it.

"Nice shot, Corwood," he said slickly, "but you need to learn how to shoot bullets, not the whole gun." He looked at me, an urgent expression on his face. "Kid. I need you to come with me. Now. We're the good guys, okay?"

I looked up at him. And I looked at all of Don's other friends, still tending to those strange plants, running blades over their sides, chopping off branches, spraying water at the roots. They were all wearing reflective goggles, I noticed, and they sure weren't paying attention to the little struggle going on between glider-man and Don.

"Okay," I said.

"No you don't! Seth! Get back here right this minute!" Don bellowed.

I wondered why he wasn't chasing me, and then I saw that his legs had been frozen to the ground with gigantic slabs of ice. That was pretty cool, if you'll pardon the pun.

The man held out his hand and I grabbed it. There was a schloop sound, and all of a sudden, the glider was much wider. He hauled me up onto it, and I grabbed onto his back. I felt a chill around my sneaker-clad feet, and as I looked down, I saw that rings of ice had appeared out of thin air, securing me to the glider so I didn't slip and fall.

"Where are we going?" I asked, as the glider motored through the air, away from the dangerous-looking field and, most importantly, away from Brandon Corwood and his smelly breath.

"The beach," ice-glider-man said. "At least, for now. I'm Tobias, by the way."

"Nice to meet you, Tobias," I said. "And what do they call you? Iceman?"

"I go by the name Frostbite," Tobias replied. "I know the rest of the world is dead and Marvel Comics wouldn't sue me for copyright infringement, but I wouldn't pick Iceman. It's a little ... a little uncool. Frostbite has more ..."

"... bite," I finished.

The glider had made it to the beach in no more than ten seconds, and now Tobias lowered it to the sand with whatever telepathic powers he had. "Keep up the lame jokes and you can join me in superhero-land," Tobias smiled, and the ice-glider was gone, leaving a puddle of cold water that seeped into the sand. My sneakers were a little wet, too, but what did I care?

"Hey, uh, Frostbite," I said. "Thanks. For saving me, I mean."

"No problem," Tobias said, and began walking me towards the water. I noticed two more people standing there: a pale-skinned blond girl, staring at the water with sharp concentration -- and something that looked like The Thing from Fantastic Four. He was grey, though.

"Meet Seth," Tobias said, and the girl and the rocky-skinned man walked over to shake hands with me. "I found him at last. He nearly got turned over to the Zermans."

"Nice to meet you, Seth," the blond girl said. She was very pretty -- pretty in a familiar way that made me wonder why I was having a Fantastic Four dream instead of a Spider-Man dream.

"Nice to meet you, too," I said.

"From now on, you're one of us, okay? One of the good guys. The people working to find the cube, destroy evil and ... if possible ... rebuild civilization." She sounded tired, somehow. Sad and heartbroken, in fact, in a way so deep that it wouldn't show up on the surface, but would eat away at her instead. I don't know how I sensed this, but ... I did. Perhaps it was one of my powers.

"Okay," I said, trying not to think about whether "rebuilding civilization" involved repopulating the planet with her. I cleared my throat and asked, "What are we doing out here?"

"We're trying to find the Aldralet cube," the rock creature said.

"The Aldralet cube?"

"It's a powerful cube of alien origin that contains the energy that gave us our powers," Tobias reeled off, as if he did this every day. "That same energy killed off the other, not-so-fortunate 99.99 percent of the world's population. We're trying to find it before the Zermans do. Although," he said, squinting his eyes as he glanced at the Cerode Farm, "the way those stupid idiots are going, I don't think they'll have a chance."

"We know it's somewhere in this beach, you see," Blond Girl explained. "It ... it went there and hid, after the Blast."

"Okay," I said.

"We're the only ones who know the thing is out here somewhere," Rock Man said.

3 - RECORDING

I lay lazily in bed for a few more moments, alternating between heavy-eyed wakefulness and grey dozing, before I decided to get up and write down some ideas in the empty blue notebook I'd bought last week. I did, and for a few minutes I wrote. I imagined the desolate, empty world I had visited in my dreams, and the fact that the only survivors were people with extraordinary supernatural abilities. Or, in comic-book-speak, "superheroes."

The blond girl would be named Allison Norton, I decided as I scribbled, and the character based on me -- if there had to be one -- would be called Seth. Seth what, I didn't know. And for the Tobias guy ... his last name would be Beck. Taken from Quentin Beck, alter-ego of Mysterio in Marvel Comics.

I worked on the story for an hour or two after that, eventually coming up with a thin plotline of superheroes that were split into two groups. The first group comprised of those who were taken hold of by the Zermans, who wormed into the brains of their hosts and controlled them from the inside out, becoming Mindvaders (the way haemoglobin becomes oxyhaemoglobin once it binds with oxygen). The second, possibly smaller, group, would consist of the heroes who decided to fight the Zermans and tried to win back humanity.

I still wasn't sure whether I wanted a post-apocalyptic scenario or not. After three indecisive months of consideration, I decided not to. The heroes and the Mindvaders would carry out their battle in a world where humans still lived and ran the planet.

But the heroes-versus-aliens idea wasn't the only one I wanted. Before this idea came along, I had wanted to write a love story about a girl who lost her boyfriend and decided to move on with his spirit in her heart, living every day for him. I'd thought that idea was fantastic, and I'd wanted to insert that into a bigger storyline, knowing I could never make it work on its own.

And now I had this grim idea for a story ... and it seemed like it would work. So I modified the love story a little before incorporating it into my storyline. Now the story was about a girl who lost her boyfriend to the Zermans. After her boyfriend became infested by the Zermans and turned into a tool of evil, the girl decided to fight the Zermans forever with him in mind, until she freed him.

I thought that would make a pretty okay story.

4 - A LOVE STORY

The idea for the love story I mentioned earlier wasn't very original, but it hadn't been borrowed (read: stolen) from a book the way most of my other plot-lines had. Instead, I'd been inspired after reading about the story of Czech model Petra Nemcova, who lost her fiance in the 2004 tsunami while on holiday in Thailand. She had moved on quite well after the incident, making a quick -- almost miraculous -- recovery, and had lived life with her fiance's memory fuelling her. At least, after reading five, maybe ten reports and stories online, that was basically what I had been able to understand about it. I could write more, but ... I won't.

I think it was Aunty Sandy who led me to this story, back in 2007 when we were having a big family dinner in our Selangor house. Aunty Sandy did a lot of important things for me, sent me very valuable information, and this was just one example.

Music was playing in the hall, family members were making conversation, and I was trying to finish up my barbecued beef steak. And, out of the blue, Aunty Sandy says, "Ethan? You know that model you like? Petra Nemcova?"

A chill spread through my body right then. It felt like a sword of ice going through my chest. I looked up a little cautiously, preparing myself. I needn't have worried -- it wasn't as if the whole family had stopped to listen.

"Yes?" I said.

"She lost her boyfriend in the tsunami," Aunty Sandy said. "Her fiance."

"Oh," I said. I already knew about this, although I wasn't captured by the story the way I would be. "They were on holiday in Thailand, right?"

"Right," Aunty Sandy replied. "I saw it on Channel E!, on '25 Celebrity Near-Death Experiences,' a few nights ago."

"Okay," I said, making a mental note to look out for that show whenever I got a chance to watch Astro at Aunty Sandy's place, or Aunty Pat's.

For the rest of the night, I kept thinking about the cold sensation that had shot through me. It had felt sweet, in a way.

There would be more feelings like that.

After that night, I looked up Petra's story on the internet. That was the beginning of a slow transition, a change that would begin with me having a crush on her, and would end with me admiring her and seeing her as a true inspiration.

5 - JESSICA AND THE NOTEBOOK

It was January, 2009. After a couple of weeks of thinking, I had decided on Unbelievable as the title of this new superhero novel. I had worked on the storylines, cooked up some ideas, written down thoughts and suggestions, little discussions and summaries, all in that little blue notebook of mine. That notebook had become important to me. Writing is something a person like me does from his heart, and when something from your heart ends up in a notebook ... well, then, you can consider that notebook a piece of your heart. Or a back-up copy.

I worked on the story every day, and shone with the internal happiness that comes when I am working on stories. It is not the type of story which I like, but it is immense fun ... and I'm happy.

Jessica and I were now the only ones from 3 TOPEZ who took Moral classes, and we were now sitting -- along with the rest of the Moral students from the DELIMA class -- in the school conference room, waiting for our teacher to arrive. Except he wasn't arriving.

My blue notebook -- which was now filled to almost sixty pages -- sat on the desk next to me, right beneath my hand. Right in front of me sat Jessica. I would occasionally glance from the notebook to Jessica, then back to the notebook, and -- for no logical or intellectual reason at all -- I'd look back at Jessica again. And I'd think about yesterday.

We had been sitting in a lonely corridor during another teacher-less Moral class. Jessica had been bored, and she'd asked if she could see the blue notebook. I'd swallowed, and I'd said yes. What was the harm with letting her read it, after all?

At first, I'd thought she'd just put it down after a couple of minutes, either uninterested, or unable to invest her time in something so dull. But she kept on reading it, and when I noticed that she wasn't flipping through the pages, I realized that she was ACTUALLY reading it. And she wasn't saying anything at all. I couldn't read her expression -- apart from her eyes, the rest of her face was hidden behind my book -- so I couldn't tell whether she was entertained, excited, bored, shocked or interested.

After a while, she put it back, and didn't say anything.

"Ethan?" Jessica said.

"Yes?" I replied.

She pointed at the notebook. "Is that a book for schoolwork and school notes, Ethan? Because it sure doesn't seem like one."

"No, it sure doesn't," I said. "It's a sort of 'ideas book.' Whenever I have an idea for a story, or more follow-up ideas ... whenever I think of anything story-related, I'll write it in here."

"I see. Because I think it's really nice, Ethan."

"Wow," I murmured. "Thanks."

"You're welcome," Jessica said. "In fact, you're one of the greatest authors I've met."

"Thanks," I repeated. I'd trade a whole bar of Cadbury chocolate for the feeling I was experiencing then.

"I've seen that there are quite a few characters in your stories ... but there isn't a Jessica. I mean, there isn't me in it."

"Sorry," I said. "I just --"

"No, there's no need to apologize," Jessica said. "I was just curious ... how come there isn't a Jessica in any of your stories? There should be one." She smiled. "It would be fun, you know, if you put me in one of your book."

I already knew that being called a great writer was one of the things I looked forward to, as an aspiring author. And I knew that it gave me great pleasure. But now Jessica was asking for a role in my book -- she was the first person who had ever said that. I realized that this was another thing that gave me pleasure as a writer. I never knew that, I thought, and hid a grin.

"Well," I said, "you're right. I have a new story that I might want to put you in."

"Nice," Jessica said.

I ran my finger along the cover of my notebook, thinking, And I thought that you were going to bore her to death.

I kept thinking about what Jessica had said. By the end of the day, I thought that I had found the perfect role for her. But I felt I needed to ask for her permission -- or to at least tell her.

I'll ask her tomorrow, I thought.

6 - PROPOSAL

The next day came.

Right now, I had the characters for my new story set in mind. There was Tobias Beck, the responsible, intellectual hero, who could cause water vapour in the air to freeze, and use it to his advantage. (I'd based him on Tobias.)

There was David Darrel, the slightly gloomy hero who could transform temporarily into any creature whose DNA he acquired. David, who was a big fan of Spider-Man, was quite frustrated that he couldn't crawl walls or sling webs, but learned to appreciate what he'd been given and make the best of his talents. I'd based David on myself. Before my teenage years, any self-based character would be goofy and funny, hiding his inner insecurities with his sense of humour. This was my first time creating a version of myself with a darker exterior -- the way I was now, I thought. Very unsurprisingly, each self-based character I made seemed to reflect my perception of myself at the time.

There was Ron Keyes, who could transform into a nearly-indestructible man made of rock. He had been inspired by The Thing and the Hulk.

And then, for the two characters who gave Unbelievable its zing: Allison Norton and Johnny Spurling, who were slightly based on Petra and her fiance. Allison Norton (David's classmate) had the power to conjure force-fields. She could also turn completely invisible. As for Johnny Spurling (who was one year older than Allison), he could control electricity to some extent, and was able to shoot lightning bolts through his fingers. I'd given Johnny my middle name, something I would forget later.

I had written a lot about my characters, and I'd paid special attention to the Allison-and-Johnny storyline. I didn't have everything set down on paper yet -- I was still trying to get it all organized -- but I had a lot of ideas in my mind. Here are some examples. Since I was writing a simple, comic-book-style fantasy, some characters would have personalities or appeareances that somehow corresponded with their power. Tobias Beck, the ice-man, for example, would be extraordinarily cool and slick. David Darrel, the morpher, would have a history of changing personalities throughout his childhood, and he would have an identity-crisis complex, not really knowing who he was. Ron Keyes would be a fan of rock music. Johnny Spurling would have an electric personality ... especially his eyes, which Allison would affectionately describe as "electrifying eyes."

I had this all set clearly in my mind, clearer than anything else that month. It felt great to have this story.

Allison Norton would no longer be based on Petra, however, I thought, as I folded up a sheet of paper, wrote "ALLISON" on one side, and beneath that, wrote "NORTON." I realized that I, too, had wanted to make Jessica a part of my story.

I made two small tears in the part of the paper around the word "ALLISON," and pulled it down -- it was now a little open-and-close flap. Heh-heh. Pulling the flap down, I wrote "JESSICA" behind it. And then I closed the flap.

I cleared my throat, smoothed out my collar, and rose from my seat. It was recess, so I wouldn't be distracting anyone from their lessons. Jessica was sitting across the classroom.

You know, this is funny, I thought. I'm about to turn the Petra-character into a Jessica-character. It's strange ... when I first met Jessica, I thought she looked a lot like Petra. I think it was her smile, mainly. Ha, ha ...

"Stop stalling for time," I muttered to myself, "and just go and do it."

So I did. I walked over to where she was sitting, and said, "Uh, Jessica?"

She looked up. "Yes, Ethan? What is it?"

I held up the little card that I'd made. "You remember her, right?"

"Allison Norton? Yes, I remember."

"Well, I just wanted to ask you if I could do this." I pulled down the flap, and "ALLISON NORTON" became "JESSICA NORTON."

Jessica's face brightened. "Well ... sure!" she said.

Okay! "Do you want me to just put your name in there, or try to base the character on you?"

"It's up to you," Jessica said, and I nodded. Of course. Personally speaking, I wanted to try to base the character on her. There was just one little problem, however -- I didn't really know Jessica that well.

That would change dramatically over the next few months.

For now, I thought I'd work with what I had. "Thanks, Jessica," I said, and headed back to my seat.

She said yes, she said yes, I thought. From this day onward, there will be no more Allison Norton -- Jessica Norton shall take her place.

There was one thing I was not considering, though. If the Petra character had been replaced with a Jessica character, then what would become of the boyfriend, Johnny Spurling?

I was basing fantasy on reality, the way I'd always done, in the case of Jessica Norton. But the Norton girl was part of a love story that involved Johnny. I'd changed one character, messing up the collective Jessica--Johnny character. And if fantasy wasn't based on reality, the reverse would soon occur.

But I wasn't thinking about that. I was too happy. After all, I had a new character. That was something to be grateful for.

7 - BOYFRIEND

Valentine's Day came and went, and I'd continued writing in the blue notebook whenever I had free time. I had already written a notice announcing that Allison Norton was now Jessica Norton, while writing about my friends, about what I thought of Unbelievable, and some other random things. This blue notebook wasn't just for writing experimental storylines.

Monday found Jessica and I sitting in the conference room again with our Moral classmates. As usual, there was no teacher, and I went over some Science notes, wondering if she would say anything.

After a while, she did. "You sure saw a lot on Valentine's Day."

"Saw a lot? Of what?" I asked, putting my notes down.

"Oh ... you know. Me and Troy. At the primary school."

Valentine's Day had been a Friday, and many of the secondary school students walk to the primary school to be picked up, because they both let out at the same time. I remembered what I'd seen. Two boys had been hanging around Jessica, and she'd been talking to them.

You mean those guys weren't ... disturbing you? I wanted to ask, but I could tell from her tone that she considered Troy a friend at the very least.

"Oh, that," I said. "I see. Uh ... which one is Troy? I can't remember what he looks like. Can you describe him for me, please?"

"Well, let's see," Jessica said. "He's tall ... tall, definitely tall, around your height ..."

She hesitated. I noticed a twinkle in her eyes and a sparkle in her voice whenever she mentioned this Troy guy. Did she ... did she like him? I wondered. Did she have a crush on him?

"Spiky hair?" I offered.

Jessica nodded. "Yeah! Spiky hair! And ... and electrifying eyes," she said, nodding. Then she giggled, possibly because she liked the sound of that.

I didn't. In fact, my heart had stopped the minute she'd said "electrifying eyes." I hadn't written anything about electrifying in my eyes in the blue notebook, so Jessica couldn't possibly have read it and ...

Wait, wait ... "electrifying eyes"? Is that what she said? Isn't that how Allison -- I mean, JESSICA Norton would describe Johnny Spurling's eyes?

I swallowed rather uncomfortably. The back of my neck was prickling lightly. Jessica, meanwhile, was smiling to herself, probably thinking about this Troy guy. "That's all I can think of for now, anyway," she said. "If we see him another time, I'll point him out. Okay?"

"Okay," I said. "So ... 'electrifying eyes,' huh?" I tried to look nonchalant, I tried to smile.

"Yes," Jessica answered. "Charged full of electricity."

"Oh, I have another question," I said. "How old is he? I mean, what form is he in?"

"Form 4," Jessica replied.

A chill spread through me. First the electrifying eyes. Now this. I clearly remembered that Johnny was a year older than Jessica in the story. In fact, I'd written it down.

Johnny is Jessica's boyfriend, I thought. I made that very clear. But is Troy your boyfriend?

For the next few weeks, Jessica would tell me about Troy, about what he did ... and sometimes she'd ask me why he did that, why were boys like this? And whenever she talked about him, she had that sparkle in her voice, that affectionate tone. That something I couldn't quite describe that told me how she felt for Troy.

I never asked whether or not Troy was her boyfriend. And I didn't need to. It was all too obvious. By February I'd already met Troy, who took an immediate liking to me ... and I ended up becoming his buddy. From time to time I'd hear him ask, "So, how's my girl?"

I was hiding something inside me. I was hiding a strange mixture of confusion, wonder and some other emotion I couldn't quite name. It felt like the emotion Peter Parker must have felt when he discovered he had spider-powers.

And it felt like a terrible weight on my shoulders.

I used to fight reality with fantasy, I thought. Whenever I was stressed, I'd continue writing whatever story I was in the middle of, and I'd escape into my own little world. But now my fantasy is becoming reality ... what do I use to fight that?

8 – MAGIC

So Jessica had a boyfriend. Okay. Fine. But for some reason, her boyfriend seemed to have uncanny similarities to the Unbelievable character I'd created. Apart from being her boyfriend, that is. He was friends with David (me). He was a year older than Jessica. His eyes were described by Jessica as "electrifying."

I tried to tell myself that the notion I was considering -- the notion that I had somehow, through some impossible method, created a boyfriend out of thin air for Jessica -- was a stupid, crazy notion. I told myself that only insane people believed that they could write something and make it come true. People who believed they could simply design other human beings should be locked up in an asylum.

It was crazy, and I didn't want to believe it ... but I couldn't help it. I couldn't get rid of the feeling that somehow, I'd had a part in the whole Troy thing.

But, in a way, it was pretty exciting. I had the chance to meet one of my own characters. I didn't know of many writers who could do that. Instead, they met people and then based characters on them, or on a combination of them -- backwards. I had the chance to talk to my character, to hang out with him, to observe him.

Yet, I would often ask myself why I was still entertaining this laughable notion. Was it because I wanted to feel special? Was that why I chose to see myself as a person with the power to write things into reality?

"There are two ways I can look at this," I told myself one day. "One way, I can tell myself that this is just a bizarre coincidence. That, or I unconsciously noticed a guy named Troy one day, and my subconscious deduced that Troy and Jessica were a couple, and to break the news to myself, I wrote it down in a story. But wait ... that's a lie. The Jessica--Johnny idea came from Petra and her fiance. I'd had that story in me for a long time, and was just waiting to use it. So ... explanation one, it's just a coincidence. A strange one, but, hey, that's why they're called coincidences, right?"

I paused. "The second explanation is that when I wrote about Johnny and imagined him, he came to life somehow. That book Aunty Sandy sent me ... The Secret ... it said that we get what we think about. Thoughts become things and all that. When I write, my stories flow in as well as out, and they seep into my mind ... Perhaps, after quite a while of keeping the Jessica--Johnny love story stored up in my head, it seeped into my subconscious and The Secret made it real. No ... wait ... that doesn't sound right ..."

It sounded unbelievably lame. I drummed my fingers on the desk, and thought, Okay. Remind me why I'm having this conversation with myself, please.

My job as a writer was to look at things from a magical perspective, and then to write it. To look for the thread of magic inside the story. To say, "Well, what if it were true?" and then work from there. And when I looked at my current situation, it was very easy to see the magic.

"It probably isn't true, anyway," I said to myself. "Think straight, Ethan. It's your exam year. This is no time to descend into the spiral of insanity."

So I tried to think straight and to dismiss the idea that I could make things happen by thinking about them. But, before the month was over, Jessica told me that she'd accidentally cut herself with a kitchen knife at night. I remembered what I'd been thinking of that whole week: Jessica Norton having an accident in the kitchen, slicing into her own finger with a knife.

Well, so much for not entertaining fanciful ideas, I thought to myself. First you go and create a boyfriend for Jessica, now you go and cut her finger? You need to start being more careful, Ethan Matisa!

I could hardly sleep for the following ten days. I felt quite guilty over what I had "done." No, there was no proof that I had cut Jessica's finger -- but there were too many coincidences popping up. Too many coincidences. And I didn't believe in coincidences.

Spider-Man got his uncle killed while learning to use his powers, I thought. And now I'm learning to use my "powers," and I'm making quite a mess as well.

It was crazy. Too crazy. I couldn't live like this. It was nice to have a little superhero fantasy once in a while, but this was ... this was bad.

However, I thought I might have another idea for a story. A story about a boy who scores all A's in his PMR.

I closed my eyes and tried to go to sleep. It was in vain. It was all in vain.

Maybe someday, when I grew up, I'd look back on this whole experience and laugh. I'd see the rational explanations, connect the dots, and wonder why I had been so stupid as a teenager.

Someday ...

Don't think about it, I told myself.

---------

August 2009
Could this be the strangest thing that I've ever experienced?