I still remember my first few days of school clearly. I came in, completely disoriented and stuck with a bunch of MGS girls I didn't know. We bunched together, introverts (believe it or not am I introverted) lost in a sea of extroverts from Other Schools. We ate out recess in silence, having gravitated towards the one recognisable store because it was similar to the Red Bowl Noodle Store in MGS. The first recess I ate wanton mee. I remember staring at my chopsticks rather despondently, hoping to hell that I wasn't making a damned fool out of myself because of my woebegone chopstick skills. Then two unfamiliar faces came and asked if they could join us, one was Sarah and the other was Tricia.

So that was how I made my first non-MGS, ACSI friend (minus the rest of the people I knew prior, like Jono and Petrina). We ended up sitting together with Tricia for most of the rather lengthy, pointless and boring introductory courses. There, my attention was also caught by two particular noisy boys by the name of Calvin and Lex. I remember right before classes were released, I scanned my eyes down the list of subject combinations that were listed and realised that Lex had the most similar combination as mine, and I wished really hard that we'd be in the same class together.

When the class assignments were first released, I remember being excited that I had Lex as a classmate. On the other hand I was sad we were the only two people assigned to .9, I didn't like the idea of not knowing anyone else. Someone came and led us up to class, and I remember being really nervous as Lex was laughing and joking away. When we stepped in, the first thing that I noticed was the ang moh teacher, and I remember thinking 'holy cow, this school is so rich that they can afford ang moh teachers!'. Then I noticed Cielo, someone I recognised from MGS but didn't know. That afternoon, I ended up taking 74 and 165 back home with Joash - the first of many such trips.

When I came to class in the morning, I felt really scared. Some people came and showed me a seat, so I placed my stuff there. Looking around, no one looked particularly friendly or made a move to talk to me at all. At a loss of what to do, I went outside of class and stoned for a bit. The first lesson was Chinese, which was utterly chaotic. Various people came in and out, and I remember Xian Yi talking to me, which I really appreciated. This was because the two people seated next to me, Nic and Ted Kin were silent (I later learned this is because one was a zombie and was sleeping with his eyes open, and the other is just silent by nature) and this really made me feel like shit.

The next lesson was History, and it felt really odd being the only girl there in a class full of guys (this ended up later repeating itself, as the 3 other girls started to disappear from lessons altogehter). The lesson was something on Russian History, and I could barely remember my O level stuff. Then WTY paired us into groups to do RAFT. When choosing the topics for the RAFTs, the guys started a bidding war. This started when someone started yelling for a particular topic, then all the other guys from other groups started yelling. Gradually the group members joined in, and the teacher's voice was drowned out in a sea of yelling, with hidden tones of utter amusement. Somewhere in the middle of this whole mess I sat, wishing to hell I was back in the office working again, and feeling out of place like never before.

The other lesson I had that day was SL1. Because of a mix up before, I wasn't sure if my SL1 was Math or Bio. I was frantically trying to ask my classmates about this, but lots of them were rushing off for Chemistry. Finally, Gabriel came to help me. Problem was, he didn't know where the lessons were either. I followed him as he started to make various phone calls. Time started a-ticking, and soon he need to rush off for classes. At this point, lost outside a random C3 classroom, I felt myself on the brink of tears. So far I had spent this entire day in quasi-solitude, lost, out of place and feeling oh-so-unhappy, and now here I was about to miss a lesson on my first day of school. After Gabriel apologised and ran off for Chem, I shed a few tears and walked about aimlessly. I soon ran into Sarah, who was taking SL1 Biology, and I ended up sitting in her class. Later, The Indian Lady helped me get my classes in order and told me where to report for SL3 Biology.

After returned from Biology, I remember finding the entire class empty, save from a random guy (Gen) who was playing with a soccer ball alone in class. Afraid of going down to eat alone, I ended up eating only a light snack for recess (also eaten alone) and ended up with gastric pains. My memory gets patchy at this point, and I remember asking someone what White Space was.

Because we were new students, we had some fail orientation thing planned. We were supposed to stay back after school and mingle with the student council nominees for some games. However in the middle of the games, the 4 of us, Mary, Judith, Tricia and me got called out for choir auditions because we had earlier expressed interest. Though the auditions were casual and simply, I was too terrified to sing in case people laughed. So I didn't sing. And that is how I ended up not joining choir (this trend repeats itself often, not auditioning for things).

I remember being really shaken by this inability of mine to sing. Burdened down by the unhappy events of the day, my mind started to spin into a litany of self pity and general generic sadness. Watching the odd activities that majority of the Second Intakers were playing, I felt such a great sense of displacement and kept wishing I had gone to ACJC instead. Finally when Cielo asked me how the choir auditions went, everything that had be swimming around in my head rushed to the surface and I started to crack up - so I walked off to go home. As I walked out along the astroturf, the tears kept coming and on the First Day of School, I cried as I walked out of those gates.