children's day - 01

[300905] e cat usually brushes its teeth to e strains of e national anthem & 'we belong to tao nan school | and we always obey the school rules....' & 'we look to thee for something something....' on weekday working day (any self-respecting cat would sleep in late on non-working weekdays) mornings.

this morning however, streaming through e bathroom window from e 2 nearby primary schools were e very familiar 'sama-sama maju ke hadapan | pandai cari pelajaran....' lyrics of Semoga Bahagia that kids are forced to learn & then sing during Children's Day celebrations in primary schools across e country.

& e cat thought of its many Chinese & Indian (& Eurasian & Ceylonese & Indian-Chinese) classmates who struggled to learn this song. we were made to go up one by one to e front of e class & sing it aloud while e music teacher whacked us with a ruler for each wrong or wrongly-pronounced word.

e school had separated all e Malay students into a single class, so none of e cat's Malay track & field friends were in its class to help those who struggled with e unfamiliar language. so for quite a no. of classmates it became a song of tears & much anguish & humiliation. & this was repeated year after year each time Children's Day drew near with various music teachers, as many could never remember e song despite all e whackings.

e cat cannot remember e titles or singers or performers of almost all songs, let alone e lyrics. so e cat grew up preferring songs that have no lyrics. & e cat can't find mp3s of its favourite songs by itself precisely because it cannot recall most of e details needed to search for them in e first place.

but e cat escaped a lot of whacking for this Children's Day song as it was usually in e music teacher's good books for having what e teacher wrote in its report card as 'perfect pitch' (e cat has no clue whether it really has perfect pitch). plus it had no problems with pronounciation, having a Bahasa-educated parent who went to school when Singapore was still part of e Federation. still, whatever lyrics that e cat could stuff into its brain moments before e 'singing test' were forgotten by e time it reached e end of e song.

wonder how e primary sixes feel singing this song while celebrating e last Children's Day of their life in e middle of last minute preparations for e PSLE exams ;) on this day in 1991 e cat had already dug holes to bury its books & e tonnes of worksheets & PSLE mock-exam papers from its teachers. while dogs dig holes to bury important things like juicy bones, cats do e same to bury their pee & poop. makes cats wonder if dogs actually dig up their pee & poop to bury important things like juicy bones....

[ filed under: thewonderingstraycat ]