My DW argues with google map…enuff said.

The best thing about Joseph Schooling is not his swimming prowess, it’s his personality. My son and a couple of kids met him in the pool once, he was chatting with them and hi-fived my boy when he realized that my DS was also in ACJS, Joseph’s alma mater.

Joseph Schooling is a polite, humble and well brought up young man, as far as I observed. There was no airs about him.
Well done, Mr and Mrs Schooling !

Hi winth,

I just realized that I may have hijacked this thread, my sincere apologies. I didn’t mean to, just wanted to break our daily monotony with a little story.
Please let me know if you want your thread back,

Sunlight7

Ep 7. An inauspicious beginning.


My first date with Vivien was with her dad - the Dean of the Medical School.

There we were, alone in his office, two grown men with nothing to say and nothing in common except for Vivien. Professor John Lai would look up occasionally at me from his pile of papers through his horn-rimmed glasses, not in a hostile way but still rather too intense for my liking. I was looking everywhere else but at him, squirming self-consciously in my seat. The silence was deafening and very, very awkward. We seemed to be frozen across the thick mahogany table for I don’t know how long. It could have been five or ten longest minutes of my life. I twiddled my thumb under the desk and tapped my toes lightly as Bob Marley’s rhythmic "Buffalo Soldier" played in my head. I made a very strong effort not to sway from side to side or bop my head up and down.

Vivien Lai the barracuda queen had called me the day after the accident :
"Hello." I drawled in my couch.

"Hey, its Vivien from the car accident yesterday. Remember me?" I shot up like a rocket from my slouched position in front of the TV as my heartbeat immediately began to pound and my speech began to stammer.

"Oh…he…he…hello…ye…yes…I remember."

"Oh good, hee hee. You promised to help me, remember that too ?"

"Did…did…did…I ?" I did not mean to refute my help but in my nervousness, my usual eloquence escaped me and all I could do was let words tumbled out of my mouth like a babling idiot. I could imagine her pouting at the other end, it brought a smile to my face and a warmth to my heart.

"Of course you did !"

"Ok…so…so…were-were-were-when do we want to-to-to go-go to the po-po-po-police station ?"

"What ?! Are you insane ? Why would I want to go to the police station ???"

"To report that lunatic who side-swiped your car !!" My speech lucidity was immediately restored just thinking about that scumbag Alvin Soh.

"I’m not reporting to any police, are you mad ? My daddy is already pissed enough already. To involve the police…I will never get my car back …are you mad ? Anyway, our family lawyer is handling the insurance and what-not. Are you mad ?".

"No, you’ve asked me three times and I am not mad and what help do you need from me?" I have since regained my composure although I could still feel the sweat dripping off my palms.

"I need you to come with me to talk to my daddy…to tell him what you saw, tell him that its not my fault, tell him its that idiot Alvin Soh." She proceeded to tell me about her dad and what to say to him.

"You’re kidding…no…no way…you want me to talk to your dad ? Are you mad ? I don’t do very well with Deans" The image of the killer whale floated across my forehead.

"Yes you will"
"No I won’t"
"Yes yoooooouuuu wiiiill !"
"No !"
"Yes, yes, yes, a promise is a promise. Alright, my white knight in shining armour, I’ll make it worth your while with McDonald’s and a movie, my treat. And you get to kick Alvin Soh’s ass"

"Oh. Like a date?"

"Call it whatever you want." She gave me an address in the campus, a date and a time. She then hung up with a "ta ta, don’t be late".

After calming down for five minutes with a can of beer, all I could really think of was what a situation have I gotten myself into…maybe I could get Turtle and Octopus to come with me. You know, courage in numbers.

"What the f***, man !!" They chourused in perfect unison. "No, no way"
"Oh, c’mmon…surely you dont expect me to face the dean alone, right ?"
"We can’t help you, we didnt see anything, remember ? Only you with your miracle eyes saw what happened. This is your karma, you f***ing liar, ha ha ha"
"Yeah, you deserve this for being such a rat…ha ha ha. Good luck with the Dean"
"And your Vivien, hee heee" Octupus teased as he air-kissed me.

So there I was, all alone.

I was supposed to meet Vivien in her dad’s office in the medical faculty but she did not turn up and for which she would later confessed to have over-slept…in the afternoon of a school day ! We were supposed to meet there, blame Alvin Soh for the damage to her car, me testifying as such, she apologises to her father and then we scoot out of there for a burger and a movie. That was the simple plan. That was our date. But for now, the silence continued in what was increasingly becoming a contest of will to see who would speak first. Prof Lai continued to read and look, I continued to listen to the hypnotic beat of the phantom reggae music in my head.

After an excruciating long while, just when my head was about to explode to the loud thumping of the reggae beat, the Dean spoke.
"Well, I guess she’s not going to show up, as usual"
"Oh, maybe something important cropped up"
"Nope, if I know my daughter well enough, she either over-shopped or overslept." Prof John Lai gave out a long resigned sigh."Well, its lunchtime and I’m hungry. Why dont we head on to the cafetaria and grab a bite. You can tell me whatever that Vivien has put you up to lie to me."
So I ended up having lunch with the Dean of the Medical faculty and spent the next arduous 90 minutes defending Vivien and blaming Alvin Soh. The Professor did not seemed convinced but was finally too tired to resist and had reluctantly agreed to let the matter rest, on account of my sincere chilvary.

His parting words, however, were both frighteningly ominous and prophetic :"Stay away from my daughter…for your own good."

Vivien and I had our first big fight that night on the phone, even before we were a couple. I was fuming mad by the fact that she left me all alone with her father while she accused me of over-reacting and that it all turned out well. She rumbled on about how her father was a really nice man who was only strict with her but to me, it was a question of integrity and facing up to your actions. But to her, it was just a tiny episode amongst the many that she has gotten herself into and managed to get out of, either through her charm or sometimes through sheer dumb luck. There would be many more fights and squabbles in our time together.

It was not an auspicious start…made worse by my first sighting of the angelfish since that moment outside the library.

sweetjam:

My friend gave birth recently and I saw her hubby with another lady behaving intimately. Before my friend got pregnant with her second child, she was going through divorce proceeding with her hubby. They managed to resolve their differences and lived together again. Then my friend got pregnant not long after. My friend is beautiful and slim. Her hubby is fat. I saw another gorgeous girl behaving intimately with her hubby. Should I tell my friend?

Yes, you should and let them deal with it. Technically speaking, it's not your problem and you are obliged to tell her as a friend (assuming it's a deep friendship).
There should be no fear if you're doing the right thing as your conscience is clear. People are only hesitant or fearful when doing the wrong thing. Btw, whether they are beautiful or not is irrelevant.

wayfarer:

Hi all,

I read in earlier years' post that ACS Junior doesnt have homework in P1. Can any current P1 mother advise if this is still so? I'm enrolling my son this year, and i truly hope there is no homework! Thanks.

No homework, confirm.

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)

Yes, in case I trip over something.

Hi swimironkids,

Its been 2 months since my DS joined SAC in Nov 2012 and his 25m freestyle has since dropped by about 3s recently and should go below 20s very soon, its not fantastic timing but good progress. DS is also now doing 50m regularly and enjoying the training sessions wih new friends. He could not complete 50m when first joined SAC. DS is still hopeless in breastroke and backstroke (he says he is afraid he might hit his head). And he is still not confident to plunge into the pool from the "what-do-you-call-that-thing-they-stand-on-to-dive-into-the pool".

The downside is the class can sometimes be too big (more than 20 kids in 2 lanes) so it gets crowded and the faster kids are blocked by the slower ones. Also, there is no age category, so some big but slower kids swim in the same class as younger but fast kids. Its a bit strange to see…

Anyway, his appetite is scary. At the rate he is eating, I will go bankrupt just feeding him. I am also glad to say that his chest and abs are also forming very nicely, so are the broad shoulders and the arm muscles.

As for those vulgar kids, I’ve devised my own solution - my DS just dries himelf, change and goes home, no hanging around the locker room !

Just a bit of progress updates…

God bless.

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......