curse of e navy blue pinafore on wikipedia

so tickled by this line in this wikipedia entry - see e 'Uniform' section: '....consists of a knee-length dark navy blue pleated pinafore over a white collared blouse. Students customarily fold their sleeves, following in a time-honoured school tradition.' (cue laughter from e man-maid)....

didn't know that it was a 'school tradition', but then almost every girl did that? think I started doing that after I ruined a shirt when e unfolded sleeves kena stained irreversibly with bright Richardsonian blue fabric paint during an Art lesson & made my mum real mad that I had wasted a perfectly good non-secondhand shirt.

like many mums, mine had insisted on buying school uniforms one size larger so that they could be used until they were worn out rather than grown out of (a waste), especially when my mei ended up in a different secondary school & could no longer hand down her old uniforms to me like she had done for 5 years in primary school. hence e sleeves that threatened to cover my elbows. unfortunately my mum overestimated my ability to expand, & at e end of 4 years e uniforms were still too big for me. my shirts could actually be mixed up with my kors' shirts in e laundry if not for e lack of any front pockets on mine, & e youngest of my kors is 3 years older than me. maybe that is what inspired him to swim laps of e butterfly stroke & pump iron in e gym *lol*

didn't think much about upsized uniforms though, until e first 3 months of JC when my guy friends told me that I looked 'lost somewhere in there'. & then one guy offered to rent one of my pinafores for $10 during e uniform-exchanging craze, 'to feel what is it like to wear one' - he thought he could fit into mine....(for e record, no I did NOT let him try, even though $10 was one week's allowance).

in that seaside JC I was taught e term 'e curse of e navy blue pinafore'. there were only 26 of us navy blue pinafores in e 96/97 batch, but guess we made our presence felt? some of us felt sort of relieved to switch to e JC uniform after e 1st 3 months....an end to e 'curse' - all e associated stereotypes (e.g. schoolmates are shocked that you can speak more Hokkien & Teochew than they can) & blown out of proportion expectations (e.g. this chem tutor who blasted a fellow navy blue pinafore with 'you are from XXX how come you can't do this?)'....but many of us continued to fold e sleeves of our JC uniforms out of habit. didn't realise that others noticed this little detail until some buddies pointed it out to me. was even more shocked when e man-maid mentioned this....even he knows when I don't think he has ever beo-ed girls from my alma mater before *lol*

from e same wiki entry, e navy blue pinafore song....still recall my reaction (lua3 cheem1....how to remember e lyrics when I can't even remember my home phone number?!) when first confronted with it during secondary 1 orientation sitting on e bare concrete floor of e Jalan Kuala school hall =P

From High Olympus flows to us the glory
On us the sacred fire descends.
Rise, sisters, rise, the world is all before ye
Fear not to grasp what fortune sends.

Chorus:
Sisters in learning and sisters at heart
Life lies before us,
Here's luck to the start.

A little while the sun shines high above us
And youth's elixir fills our veins.
The magic fire, that moves the gods to love us
The fire by which the will attains.

Repeat Chorus once

So heart to heart we'll scale the heights of learning
No mean desires our days shall shame.
Whole-hearted, true, with pride and ardour burning
On sisters, on to life and fame.

Repeat Chorus once

but much better than e silly 'obedient-serf' lyrics of my primary school song '....we will always obey the school rules....' zun4 boh2 - LIKE REAL =P felt damn silly singing that in e mornings before breaking e rules & being punished after recess together with all e guys by being made to 'stand in e sun until your sweat dries' on e school driveway. all it did was to strengthen our friendship, steel our resolve to create even greater havoc e next recess time, give us a nice tan, & allow us to say 'sek guan liao' (习惯了) & give e vice-principal (incidentally e brainchild behind those lyrics in e school song) our best smile e next time he threatened us with similar punishment *lol*

[ filed under: thewonderingstraycat ]