Last month, I met up with
my primary schoolmates whom I had not seen since I left primary school. That
feels like another lifetime. I am surprised how sentimental some of my friends
are and the things they could remember from school. As a rule, everyone remembers
things differently but some of these school friends remember the school activities and the teachers
well. I hardly remember any of the things they remember. I feel nostalgic about
my university days but never my days in school. To me school was not entirely
fun as there were many rules to be followed and plenty of uninteresting
homework to be done.
In school, we used to have
dictations and spelling tests for English classes and we had 听写 (tingxie) and 默写 (moxie) for Mandarin classes.
Spelling and dictation test in English and Malay were less intimidating. Even
though you did not study you could still get through dictations if you have a
good ear and if you could spell some of the words but not 默写 (moxie) where one is required
to learn the whole text by heart.
If you have not memorized the text simply because you had totally forgotten
about the test, you probably wish that you had a fever that would exempt you
from going to school. Unless you could feign a stomachache or some sickness,
you would be heading for 交白 卷 ( jiao bai juan)
that means passing up blank paper. I
definitely learnt all the tenses after being punished once by the English
teacher for not knowing my tenses. I believe that as a young child I did not cause my mother too much trouble unlike the boy
from One Red Egg and A Great Deal of Mischief , a children’s story written by June Chiang.
One Red Egg and A Great
Deal of Mischief is a story written in
local context for both the story and the illustrations.
One Red Egg is about nine -year- old Owen who lives in Penang. The
narratives are done in Owen’s voice. In Chapter 1, Owen explains how his given
name has come about. His mum named him after Owen, the Goldfish as it was her
favourite cartoon character when she was little and she wanted her child to
have puffy cheeks just like the goldfish.
‘Pa named me Jo Han, which is my Chinese name. The
name came all by accident. Pa was with Mum in the hospital, waiting for me o
enter the world. The wait got too long for Pa so he tool out his laptop and
watched an exiting squash tournament. The squash Queen was playing in the game.
She was running left and right chasing after the ball. When she hit the last
ball, Pa threw up his arms and shouted, “ Yay! Nichol David is a johan! A
champion! Nicol David the Squash queen has done it again !
That was when I pushed myself out into this world,
Mum said, abd Pa had missed the great moment. (Mum is still angry with pa for
this,( The doctor and nurses looked at me fluttering out into this noisy world
and said to Pa, “ What a Johan you’ve got here!”
Pa said, “Indeed, indeed. He’s a johan, just like
Nicol David.”
Owen is extremely
energetic and he refuses to do his homework and constantly disobeys
instructions given by the teachers even when his teacher punishes him. He is
always up to some mischief and he squirms even when he is still. When the
school term ends, he brings home his report card that carries zero marks for
his Maths test because he leaves
the Maths test paper blank, his mother knows that something is amiss. His
mother takes him to see a doctor and inside the doctor’s room , as his mother tells the doctor
about him, he starts peeling off the white paint from the wall. The doctor
tells the mother that he will refer Owen to a psychologist to determine if the
child has ADHD.
In Chapter 0, a
psychologist is defined as ‘someone who knows why you bring home a red egg from
school'. It is sweet when the
mother calls the child ' genius' and the mother comes across very kind, patient and
wise indeed. In Chapter 18 , when the dad roared, and the child's observation
about his dad was funny.
Throughout the book, the story flows nicely prompting chuckles along the way.The beginning and the end tie in very nicely. I
have enjoyed reading it . How June tells
the different anecdotes is clever. One
Red Egg is a delightful read indeed.
Please bring this book to London! Thanks :)
ReplyDelete(And my army green heels...)