Today after the Math Studies paper, I walked home. The last time I had walked home from school, it was from a completely different school - so that was some 2 years ago. The route I took today was through Ghim Moh - which took me about 15 minutes of walking from school.

Walking through there in my grand ACS uniform, ears plugged with white apple earphones and carrying a brown f aux (I think) leather satchel with converse shod feet, I felt like the epitome of the stereotypical 'rich' upper class kid. I felt that with one look, everyone could tell that I didn't belong there. As I walked I saw various eyes wander about and land on me, studying me for a second before dismissing me as an outsider. It made me feel weird. I wanted to say "look I share the same skin colour as you!" but then they'd point out that I was speaking perfect English, and when I cry out "dan shi wo we ke yi jiang hua wen!" they'd laugh at my accented Mandarin.

This odd feeling of being in a world separate from mine was added too when I decided to cross the railway bridge at the back of Ghim Moh CC. Spanning a small depression where the railway tracks lay snugly in the middle and were bounded by lush growth on both sides is this peculiar bridge. I say peculiar because it looks like just any old overhead bridge, except there isn't a road underneath it. It's like the LTA got lazy and just used the same plans for every other overhead bridge. At the bridge, I stopped for about 5 minutes to admire the greenery and the quietness of the area.

While I was standing there and looking about still, I found myself suddenly struck by the symbolism of the railway tracks and the bridge. To my right lay Ghim Moh with her HDB flats and to my right lay Easy Sussex Lane, nicely split into two distinct areas by the train tracks. One area was decidedly Lower to Middle class and the other was definitely Upper Class. I found myself thinking about this quote from I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings which was about how the railway tracks in Stamps seperated the Black area from the White area. The exact quote I forget, but the gist was Maya saying that it was like stepping into a seperate world when she walked into the White area.

I again found myself struck by this idea that as a Singaporean who patronises Holland Village/Orchard Road often, has been going to nothing but 'name brand' schools her entire life and has never stayed in a property that was not landed - I am living anything but the typical Singaporean life. While Stamps in the '60s is a far cry from Singapore of the present, the idea of segregation remains. The situation is however, markedly different.

My grandparents were not born with silver spoons in their mouths - they came to Singapore with practically nothing in the '60s and started their own business on borrowed money. Along the way they took many risks, often sacrificing their health in order to run the business, bringing them to where they are today - able to enjoy a more than comfortable retirement, see that their offspring and their offspings's offspring live comfortably and travel the world according to their whims.

My mother was much less fortunate compared to my father. She was born the youngest daughter in a family of 8 to a illiterate mother and a taxi driver father. From a young age however, she set herself apart from the rest of her siblings by excelling in school. She was rejected from Paya Lebar MGS and instead opted to take the long commute home everyday by attending St Margarets' School. She ended up mucking up her O levels but somehow ended up in what was still know as RI then. She ended up mucking up her A levles again and couldn't attend a local university, so she kicked her heels about by working as a bank teller for a while. It was then that she realised she wanted something more for her life, she didn't want to be a bank teller forever! Instead through donations, loans from siblings and friends and using the savings of her parents and herself, she managed the scrape up enough money to minimally fund her education in Australia, working part time in order to pay her school fees and living expenses.

This might be taken to be an elitist view, but the point I'm trying to make is while I didn't do anything to achieve the status I'm enjoying now, my parents (and grandparents) put in their hard work to get where they are today. Sure, we'll never live in one of the grand homes I was gawking over as I walked through Queen Astrid Park, but I can't really say I'm poor either. Somehow, somewhere down the lines it has been this hard work put in that has made all the difference between 'Ghim Moh' and 'Sixth Avenue' (I'm not rich, don't kidnap me please), and as a result impacting my life greatly. I'm not saying that the other people didn't work hard, it's just that for whoever thinks they have worked hard enough, there is someone else out there who has worked harder and is still working.

Anyway to sum up this rather pointless expository, this idea of 'hard work' is something that should be kept in mind anytime a debate about 'Elitism' comes up. I might not be the best of examples, but if this ignorant child did not cram like hell for the PSLE, God knows where she would be today and what she would be like. Hard work, literally, works. This is something that all (especially people with the name L.L.H.L. who aspire to be a doctors) of us as students should keep in mind especially for the next 5 months whether its A levels or IB exams. So never mind that I've fucked up this round of exams rather nicely, it's still about 9 weeks to the Pre Lims and that's plenty of time to adequately pull up my sagging grades into something presentable.