KS Parents' Love Story
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I am hooked… Waiting for next episode…
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Ep 5. Vivien, the Barracuda Queen
There are fundamentally two methods of survival in the animal kingdom - stick with your own kind to ensure safety in numbers or devise some kind of defence mechanism against predators. The first method is employed by creatures like sardines, salmons, dolphins, seals and penguins and the second by things like pufferfish, sea urchin, electric eel and so on. But once in a while, there are tribes that employ both methods to gain maximum advantage. Barracudas is one such species.
As explained in earlier episodes, barracudas are a bunch of curious things in the university campus , especially the female type. They are usually very pretty, academically bright, well groomed, has terrific fashion sense and seem to be gainfully employed in part-time vocations like modeling or public relations outside of studying hours. Most , if not all, come from wealthy families that is manifested in their branded apparel, accessories and bags. Heck, even their nose pick is branded. Their parents were usually doctors, lawyers, bankers or other such professions and were as snooty or even more so than their unfortunate offsrpings. Barracudas do not need help from anyone and helped no one, not even another barracuda.
And because of these and many more, they tend to be snooty and looked upon the general student body as \"the masses\" or \"those people\". They were also very selective in whom they mix with and hence, they tended to clique within their circle. One look and a barracuda could recognise its own kind from afar. All the campus boys tend to drool over a female barracuda while the girls aspired to be one. A barrcuda girl generally despised the boys, even their own kind. They deemed them to be rough, uncoth and lacking in taste and finesse. This was basically true with a few exceptions. So, the barracudas moved in their own troupe and live in their own world, seldom crossing the path of the working class unless its a class or group assignments and projects. Even so, they tended to do their part efficiently to minimize interaction with the rest of us. The barracudas were indeed a unique and special breed.
Amongst them, the queen barracuda was popularly worshipped by one and all. She was Vivien, the Barracuda Queen. Vivien had all the qualities of a barracuda and more, much more. She had an aura about her and a confidence that came naturally in the knowledge that she alone reigned as royalty. And because of this, she was always surrounded by groupies, wannabes and guppies that hanged around her every word and action. They were like bees attracted to honey. It was veryn hard to get near or to her and even the killer whale (The Dean) had to give her respect because her father was the Dean of the prestigious medical school and her mother (the Queen Mother) was a renowned cardiologist, doubling up as the personal physician of the Prime Minister. Her word could make or break anybody in the faculty. She was also stylish in every way, not gawdy or showy, but elegantly stylish. Her top were always streamlined and elegant , with little details either in the collar, the sleeves or the wrist and were always without any brand logo. While we all know it must be something expensive, you would never know the brand because it was not conspicuous. She was also always either in pants or long flowing skirts, never jeans. And never sneakers, always strappy heels or low platforms.
Vivien was widely acknowledged as one of the top three beauties not only in our faculty but in the entire campus. She too had long , straight flowing hair, rebonded. Always let down and flowing, never in a bun or *horrors* in pigtails or ponytail. Her eyes were deep set, double-lid with brownish pupils. Some said she was of mixed parentage but nobody ever dared ask. Together with high cheekbones and a sharp nose, she looked very much at home in a magazine cover or a movie poster. She was indeed very beautiful. She also possessed a physique that can be said to be \"devilish\" - squarish shoulders, straight back, slender arms and legs that reached to the sky while her bosom was perkily proportionate, neither too big nor small. They were perfect, like her.
She was every boy's dream, both day and wet. Many have tried to approach her but none came close. Many others, especially the rich spoilt barracuda boys attempted but all were ruthlessly rebuffed.
Some said she was a lesbian but she was so cool she couldnt care less. That added further awe to her persona.
The only boys that she had ever started a conversation with were.....you guess it....Turtle, Octopus and me. Actually, she talked to me but since the other two morons were with me, they insisted that they too were included in the encounter.
Thus began the first of my two barracuda romances. The one with Vivien began one day......
Next episode......
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OMG... I'm hooked... :oops:
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Awww...sunlight7, your story really reminds me of my uni days, where I met my now hubby... :love: Can't wait for next episode... :please:
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Ep 6. Chalk and Cheese
Some couples are made for each other.
You just know it by looking at them that they will someday get married, buy a condo, settle down, have kids (and a dog) and live happily(?) ever after. A picture perfect family straight out of a propagandic TV commercial for family planning. They are like ham and egg, bread and butter, fish and chips, Batman and Robin…ok, maybe not the last one as it seems a bit "queer"…
After some years, they even began to look like each other. Their pet dog also started looking more and more like them, or vice versa. Their toddler then looks like the dog. The entire family all look spookily alike, dog and human. Freakish but true.
Turtle, Octopus and I swore we will never ever end up like this and that we are to slap each other tightly if any one of us began to transform into one of those. Little did we know that we would be eating our words a decade later.
Anyway, those are what we call a match made in heaven.
Me and Vivien ? We were a match made in hell.
We were so different we might as well had lived in different planets, we were like chalk and cheese. Our relationship was intense and stormy, sweet and sour but most of all, it was destined to fail. Everybody knew, so did we, to be honest.
I met Vivien way before angelfish, during the first year of the university term in fact. We remembered it well. Yes, "we" because Turtle and Octopus were there as well. Vivien was driving her family’s second car, a flaming red Toyota Starlet. It was a big deal for an undergraduate to drive to school as most of us took the public bus. It was a particularly hot day and she was in a black tank top and a pair of hipster jeans, heavy studded belt and topped by a pair of elegant Ray-Ban sunglasses perched on her high nose. She was way too cool and we shamelessly stopped our card game by the roadside and stared as she drove by. And then her car had a flat tyre, I changed it for her and we became a couple…wake up ! this is not a Korean drama script. Besides, I would not have done that as I hate getting my hands dirty. Octopus would have been a more likely candidate, he’d do anything to get to know a girl, especially one as pretty as Vivien.
It did involve a car though but not hers, someone else had knocked into her car from the side. We were so busy gawking at her that we did not even notice the two cars had crashed until we heard the sickening screech of what sounded like two thin cans scrapping against each other. I suppose that is what you would expect from Japanese cars - scrape a little of the paint off the surface and you may just spot the Pepsi-Cola logo underneath.
What followed was a piercing high-pitched primal scream, almost sub-human in nature…followed by a tirade of eloquent abuse. Vivien was screaming at a male Barracuda (it was that obvious, he was in a too-tight T shirt, black tight jeans and pointed leather shoes. No male undergraduate wore leather shoes except barracudas. The rest of us wore sensible Nike, Adidas or Puma sneakers) that we would later find out to be one notorious Alvin Soh - self-absorbed, pompous and generally obnoxious but very rich son of so-and-so. More about this scumbag later.
"Oh…@#$…daddy…%^&…what…abcdef…see me…ghijk…your eyes…piece of shit…lmnopqr…" We could not really make out what Vivien was screaming but it was torrential, like a heavy rainfall of abuse.
"I…@#$%…you…drive…%^&…pass…licence…bitch…my shoes…" Alvin Soh was shouting in return.
It was quite a spectacle, two barracudas snapping at each other in the middle of the roundabout. Turtle, Octopus and I stood and watched, smiling at each other. We love barracuda fights, they are vicious, colorful and theatrical. It went on for a couple of minutes and then Vivien came storming toward us, as we were the nearest and in fact, the only spectators to the wreckage.
"Did you guys see what happened ?!" She literally screamed at her trio of potential witnesses.
"Erm…no." Turtle was almost trembling at the sight of this very angry yet beautiful girl, her sunglasses now stylishly pushed on top of her head like a hairband.
"Nope." Octopus was still staring at her chest as he answered nonchalantly.
"Yes I did," I lied. Turtle and Octopus turned and looked at me, eyebrows raised in incredible disbelief, stunned by the deception. I knew instinctively what they were thinking - No you didnt, you bastard. The truth is I could not have seen the accident either as we were all busy staring at her in the car but who cares, right ?
"Oh good, oh thank God. What a relief. Did you see what he did to my car ?!"
"Yeah, I don’t know what is wrong with him, driving like a madman." Turtle and Octopus couldnt contained it any longer and burst out laughing.
"Would you be my witness, pleeeease…" I assume it was for some kind of police file or insurance purpose but it was not. It was much worse. I did not know it then but she actually meant for me to be the witness to help her deal with her dad’s impending inquisition.
"Of course." Nothing felt better when you are an undergraduate than to have the future Barracuda Queen in a sweaty tank top pleading with you. I felt powerful and virile, like the alpha male of a lion pride. My buddies were openly stabbing me with dagger eyes.
"Here’s my phone number. Can I have yours please, I’ll call you once I figured out how to tell my dad about this" She scribbled some numbers on a piece of scrap paper and handed it to me. I wrote my phone number down on another and gave it to her as my two friends looked on with increasing disdain, like watching someone getting a Gold medal by bending the rules.
And then she went back to argue with Alvin Soh. I could see him smirking in my direction and pointing his angry index finger at me several times. I just shrugged my shoulder and smiled. I’m a clownfish, remember ? You think I could be fazed by a few angry stares and gesticulating, especially from a male barracuda. Alvin Soh would turn out to be my nemesis for the rest of my university days.
Then suddenly and as abruptly as the accident started, Vivien just drove off without so much as a word or a look. Alvin Soh pointed his index finger at us as a final warning, followed by an icy stare and he too drove off. We went back to our gin rummy card game.
So I now have in my possession the most sought after item in the entire campus - Vivien’s phone number - which she voluntarily gave to me. What do you do with a girl’s phone number ? You call her, right ? Wrong. I decided to wait for her to call me instead.
The call soon came the next day, the call that opened a floodgate of turmoil in my life, a good one year before my encounter with angelfish outside the library.
(PS: this episode specially dedicated to Chief Kiasu) -
More... More... :please:
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sunlight7:
Wah... :oops: ... I may not be a mills and boons fan, but your stories stirs those long forgotten memories of youth and hope....
(PS: this episode specially dedicated to Chief Kiasu)
Thank you! -
sunlight7:
Are you writing your true love story, or are you just making this up? :scratchhead:Ep.4 Ecounter with The Killer Whale
If you are a fan of National Geographic, like me, you would know that a whale is generally a very gentle giant, gliding across the vast oceans with its mouth open wide to ingest little planktons as food. They move gracefully and slowly, never loud or intrusive. But most of all, they can be elusive and tend to leave others alone. However, contrary to that notion is the killer whale, who is is far from gentle. It is a bloodthirsty, cruel and cunning meat-eater, a carnivorous killer that stalks, toys and tosses its prey, usually a dolphin or a seal, in the air again and again before subsequently eating the poor creature.
I was, unfortunately, similarly stalked by a killer whale a.k.a. the Dean of the Business School during my dark days. A Dean of an academic instituition is, by and large, an isolated job. He or she does not actually teach and interact with the student body but rather to set policies, rules and generally lord over everybody, especially the lecturers and other teaching and administrative personnel. They function as his eyes and ears, so he pretty much would know what goes on in the faculty. He is like an emperor ruling over his little kingdom and behaves as such. Suffice to say, the Dean is a most hated figure in the world of academia. We also hated our Dean.
The Killer Whale looks nothing like its namesake of the ocean. Our Dean was small in stature but big in ego. In fact, he was big in everything else.....including...well. you know what they say about bald men, right ? He was about 1.65m from sole to scalp, but rather rotund in girth. He actually looked a bit like an angry garden gnome with his red puffy cheeks, hooked nose and a balding head, speaking of which is very impressive in shape and size. His head seemed to be proportionately too big for his body and gave the optical illusion that he was wobbling as he walked. But the shape was perfectly curved like an egg. It was smoother than a baby's bottom. That was indeed one heck of a dome ! You would know he was appraoching simply by having the sunlight bounced off his forehead
into your eyes. His ego, on the other hand, was huge. As far as he was concerned, his word was law and his faculty, a monumental reflection of his success. His gold plated watch, his thick gold necklace peeking out from his hairy chest and his gawdy colorful suspenders are symbolic representation of that success. Needless to say, the faculty's academic performance was further evidence of
his success and any blight on that platform of success was considered a direct challenge to him and everything he stood for.
So, you can imagine what we meant to him - a trio of fun-loving, easy going and truant losers, not goose-stepping in line with his definition of succeess. Being average , to him, is being a failure. We were like a cancer eating at insides, rotting bacteria corrupting his pristine world. Of the 3 of us, I was considered exceptionally abhorrent because my grades had been falling consistently and alarmingly at a reverse 45 degree towards zero. Towards failure. Towards an insult to his kingdom. Towards an encounter with the Killer Whale........
The rumuors have been making the rounds in the grapevine for weeks that I had made it to the Dean's list. No, not the one for the brainy yet all rounder high achievers. This was the \"alternate\" Dean's list that came with warning letters and verbal reprimands. The rumours finally came true one fine day when I was summoned to the Killer court to have an audience with the Dean.
\"Congratulations, you made the Dean's list\"
\"Yeah, right\"
\"So, when are you seeing his royal highness?\"
\"Thursday\"
\"What are you gonna say\"
\"I dont know. What can I say ?\"
\"Just say you are naturally intelligent and this is just a very temporary blip in your long academic career and that you will bounce back with a vengence when your brain has had its sufficient rest\". With friends like that, I was doomed to a life of irreverence and dark comedy.
The meeting with the Killer Whale was actually rather uneventful, given the build-up hype to the event. I knew his personality, his pompous nature and his inflated sense of self-importance but what I was not mentally prepared for was the emotional intimidation:
\"What we have here and what I have built is a very fine instituition, my dear young man. By all acccount, we are one of the top universities in this region, if not the world. Do you know what that means ?\"
\"Uh huh.\"
\"No, you dont ! Because if you do, then your pea-brain would be able to grasp the significance of the situation. Here are your performance in chro....no....lo....gi..cal....or...der.....\" His fat, pudgy index and middle fingers tapped at a stack of A4 sized papers. *I fantasized of McDonald's oversized french fries*. They were my assessment and examination scripts.
\"Chronology is only important in a controlled series, sir. For changeable situations, chronology is actually quite irrelevant. The past is only a reference, its not a predictor.\"
\"Shut up ! Oh, you think you're smart, arent you ?! Well. this is the situation, listen carefully....either you buck up in the coming semester or you ship out of the faculty....MY faculty ! Consider yourself warned.\"
\"What?\"
\"You heard me, shape up or ship out.\"
\"You can't do this. I passed\"
\"Passing is the new failing, my boy. You and your two moronic friends are a disgrace to the reputation of this instituition.\"
\"But, but.....\"
\"Dismissed !\"
What an asshole, I thought to myself as I walked out of his court. Therein now lied the dilemma - if i devote more time to my academics, I would not have time to search for angelfish but if I don't, I may never see her again if I somehow successfully got myself kicked out of university.
I needed help. I needed Vivien - the Queen Barracuda. -
Busymom:
Err....according to what he had written at the beginning....is his true love story.....
Are you writing your true love story, or are you just making this up? :scratchhead:sunlight7:
Ep.4 Ecounter with The Killer Whale
I needed help. I needed Vivien - the Queen Barracuda.
Indeed, brought back youth luv memories which happened in the campus..... -
sunlight7:
I observed that too....some couples after some yrs, they really look alike.
After some years, they even began to look like each other. sunlight7:
This is a bit too exaggerating bah.....Their pet dog also started looking more and more like them, or vice versa.Their toddler then looks like the dog.
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