I was able to maintain my grades and stay in the 'smart class' in Standard 4. It was a tough year. It was a class full of smart bright intelligent kids who went to school for the sole purpose of studying. Most of these kids (I've kept in touch with them) are now in big universities and have gotten scholarships. Some of them even went to the same secondary school as I did, and they continued to excel, getting top places in physics or bio or math in the whole of Malaysia, beating many other bright students. So you see, it wsn't my fault I didn't do so well in school in 1993 - these kids were just too hardworking to enjoy life the way I did.
I enjoyed being in this class. It was the year I learnt that the Malay word for cheese, is 'keju' and not 'cis'. (embarassing story)
Me and my friends formed a club, where we met once a week during recess. What did we do? Err, crossword puzzles, do extra English questions, you know, I was trying to fit in with the smart kids. But hey, no one could beat me in English, so I was confident in joining this club. Maybe they were trying to fit in?
I also started joining speech competitions. The school had English speech competitions every year. I was famous in school for that. What do you expect - how many people in a Chinese school can speak fluent English? I went very far in these English Speech contests. Very far. But that happened later on, so it'll be on later blogs.
It was also this year that my house got broken in to. There were 2 armed robbers that went into our house, trying to steal a lot of stuff, but ran away empty, thanks to Michael my cousin who had this huge fight with them. Michael would come home late almost all the time, and he one night, he saw our door open. Next thing he knew, two men were pointing guns at him, they shot his car, but Michael fought them, and they ran away. The police came, but as usual, made a big scene and did nothing about it. But as a result, we had a guard that came to guard our house every night. Evenually, one of the guards became a close friend, Mahmud was his name. I still remember him. He would help with gardening, and keep us safe at night. It was a scary house to live in. I wouldn't dare to walk at night along the dark corridors. Looking out of the windows at night was like looking into Stephen King's mind. It was spooky.
Life was good, and it continued to be good.