Tribute to biology

Under my long, naggy encouragement, S took up a biology elective in university. Not that a design student need to know about the DNA and mutated drosophila to churn out stunning prototypes. This whole thing had to do with the education system and I guess that's digressing too much. Anyway, I digress.

So there we have, S in a class, all by herself. Luckily, she thought some me-time was good. S was telling me about the lab work she had to do for the class and boy was she excited:
"I can see the cheek cells clearly! I even helped someone else adjust her microscope!You remember last time we had this same experiment in secondary school? I couldn't see the cells but I can see it now!"

I wondered aloud:
"Wah! Imagine last time you could see the cells, you might have been very interested in bio! Your life would be very different now!"

Sometimes, a meander along the way changes our lives forever.

***

Once, we had to do some stuff to a blade of leaf so we can look at it under the microscope. I was very interested in bio, and did exactly as told. Imagine my surprise when I looked into the microscope and actually managed to see chloroplasts moving from one cell to the next!

Naturally excited (with a bit of hao-lianness thrown in), I tugged my nearest bench partner to see. Soon after, the whole class started gathering around my bench and exclaiming in wonder as they looked into my microscope, my slide. Then, this guy, Q who could not quite believe that I actually made it to a pure-science class, unhurriedly peered into the lens and proclaimed that the whole class must be starry-eyed from the light and no frikking chloroplast was anywhere.

Sadly for him, Mrs. X gave me a pat for an experiment done well. The same Mrs. X who much later asked me if there was something wrong with me just because I laughed loudly at jokes. Oh dear me! I didn't know we were supposed to laugh softly after lessons when something funny was said.

This reminds me. When I was in primary school, Mrs N gave me a slap across the cheek because I was gesturing to Y who was sitting behind me. No words. No warning. No fair treatment for only I got slapped even though Y was as enthusiastic about signing during the boring nth assembly talk.

My favourite textbook!

I was am a hardworking student!

Additional notes like these were strewn all over the book!

***

Fast-forward to first 3 months in JC. I chosen one that was near and suitably placed on the JC standings. But it was hell on earth. I took the Chem-Bio-Econs-Maths C combi. and had classes till 5 pm every other day. Oh no! No JC crashing for me because my lovely form teacher would demand this and that if we were missing and the school enjoyed random spot-checks.

Bio was taught by this effeminate male who enjoyed nothing better than to inform us that he didn't know why he was bothering with the class at all. I wish he didn't bother. As you can guess, he could not bother to use other words to re-re-re-re-re-explain a concept, merely proclaiming it as being "so simple".

Bio died that day.