Today concludes the first week of the actual timetable at RI, and with it a whole host of adventures-- not all of them very savoury or pleasant.
1. Victoria is ridiculed for being in H1 Chinese
As I was waiting outside the classroom for H1 Chinese to start (well, actually, for the seniors to clear out so that H1 Chinese could start), a senior came out and asked me if I was going to use his homeroom. In excitement (because seriously, who isn't excited about Chinese) I nodded and even supplied details: "Yup! For Chinese!"
The senior looked at me, snickered, and then started speaking to me in Chinese-- presumably in a bid to make me not understand anything he said. The underlying assumption, of course, being that I was only taking Chinese because I got >D7 for O Levels. And by extension, that I am a banana and don't understand simple Chinese.
Whatever. I WILL PERSEVERE! Ensuring my continued Chinese-speaking ability is worth a bit of snickering now and then, I suppose. I will KEEP TELLING MYSELF THAT.
2. Victoria gets lost
Having trotted around the school for a good 5 days in December, I erroneously believed that I was therefore a veteran at getting around the school. Evidently, from the "erroneously" above, you can infer that I was wrong. I AM a veteran-- at least where walking from the Com Lab to Marymount MRT, and back, is concerned, and from the canteen to the library, but anywhere else often requires a good deal of turning around and subsequent disorientation before I give up and follow the crowd to someplace where I guess we're supposed to be.
So I was looking for the entrance of the staffroom to submit my SRP form, and I was really confused because some teacher had mentioned the Dean of Staff Rooms, who sits imperiously at the entrance to staffrooms and decides who shall pass and who shall not-- usually to students she's a typical Gandalf-- but there I was, standing outside a door, on which a notice commanded: "NO ENTRANCE TO STUDENTS AT ANY TIME". And there was no Dean of Staff Rooms in sight, Gandalf-like or otherwise.
To spare you readers the pain of my embarrassing experience with the teacher that came out and was promptly accosted, I shall continue right on to the revelation: I was at the BACK DOOR of the staff room. The main entrance was only accessible through some mysterious staircase accessible only from the library, or at least somewhere near there, which spits you out in some mysterious corridor when you try to get down and discover that it's not linked at all to the other blocks.
3. Victoria has nowhere to sit
One of the good things about being Sec 4 is that you never ever run out of places to sit in the canteen. Usually, you just look in the general direction of Sec 1s, with their skirts long and belts high, and they pick up all their miniature belongings and scurry out of the line of sight of seniors, to some tiny hidey hole in J Block or something. But in RJ, we become the hunted. We get glared at by the seniors everytime we walk in, because we look distinctly uncomfortable in our uniform-skins, or we have our skirts too high, or too low, or because we're J1s.
And you can't just sit anywhere that looks open. Never sit at a table with a hockey stick or some sports paraphernalia, unless you want to get unceremoniously lifted up and dumped on the floor by some jock (not that this has ever happened, except that time some idiot picked a fight with a rugger, but better be safe than sorry) and never sit at the second floor of the canteen, unless you want to get glared at by the Humans (I refuse to spell it with a "z") people for invading their elite territory.
