Friday, November 05, 2004

Singapore Biology Olympiad

I kid myself today.

“Hi hope you’ve been studying cause you can go for the Biology Olympiad today”

Great… message me right after Malay A Exams… Oh I’ve been studying alright – peribahasa and rangka karangan that is!

Biology Olympiad is an annual competition organized by the Singapore Institute of Biologist to hunt for geniuses in Biology to represent Singapore to the international level. Questions asked are beyond Advanced Level.

Well I did study Natural Selection and Post Translational Method though… If I got all these questions right I should get a minimum of 2!

Well, a lousy scholar representing college how nice.

It all started when I went beyond expectations – an A for Biology. That’s a WoW WoW WoW (WWW) for a second intake scholar (Hiding the fact that I failed my General Paper) and Leong Hui being one WWW second intake scholar too asked me why wasn’t I in the Olympiad team. Then I find myself attending the last class discussion for the Olympiad team – not forgetting being chosen to model for Apple’s advertisement on that day itself!

Luckily I recognized some people in the team – my classmate Nicole, two WWW scholars Leong Hui and Adai!

It was held at National Institute of Education in Nanyang Technological University – where they train teacher wannabes. It was at the other side of Singapore so it took us quite some time to reach there, only to be greeted by loud thunders and war-like sounds – which we soon found out that we were near the army’s life firing area… oh how I wished they would just aim at me!

Anyway the university was beautiful – not so Cina as I expected. I was exposed to a variety of colour uniforms as we approached the venue.

I got worried when:
· Anderson JC students sat on the floor revising
· Raffles JC students were talking about things I’ve never heard before
· Victoria JC send a flock of representatives
· Anglo Chinese (or was it Saint Andrews?) JC concluded that they studied everything from A – Z about Biology already…

I didn’t feel that bad when:
· Tampines JC came in late for the competition (no offense yea!)
· I met one of my frog research friends (who was as blurred as me during the research)

Upon entering the competition hall, the president of the SIB aka the emcee cum head invigilator started bitching and yelling at us. Her arrogant ness really pissed me off – the rest too I think… cause when she asked us to shut up and sit down – someone from Raffles JC stood up and said “Yes Sir”! Good one!

“I’m the PRESIDENT of the SINGAPORE INSTITUTE OF BIOLOGIST” – oh no wonder no one wants to join

“You call yourselves Biologist when you haven’t heard of the institute before?” – did I refer to myself as one?

“I have LED the SINGAPORE team to the international level for four years and EVER since WE got overall champions (or something like that)” – oh like you answered the questions…

“When our students come out of the international competition saying that the questions were easy – we told them it was easy because of us: because we trained you to be prepared for the competition” – so it’s not because of your own self discipline and determination?

“We have been winning two gold and two silver for four years in a row (or something like that) and we joked last year that we would bag four gold this year” Hahaha… funny

She even made a big fuss on how blur we were:

“Please place the answer sheet for SECTION A on top of the question paper of SECTION A and put them on the LEFTHAND corner of the TABLE. Then please place the answer sheet for SECTION B on top of the question paper of SECTION B and put them… I hope you know how to differentiate left and right and where the top of your table is”

“We shall hand you the question and answer sheet for SECTION A first because knowing JC students you will always mix up your answer sheets”

Slaps oneself on the forehead… how did she hold on to her presidency post for so long? Or how did she become the president? Wait how did she become a biologist?!?!

I concluded that I am going to set up the Malaysian Institute of Biologist and also organize Malaysian Biology Olympiad and compete with her… see who can win hmph! Future Malaysian biologist! Are you with me?!?

After four hours of dreadful 200 unanswerable MCQs, it was over!
I got pissed when:
· An ah beng Victoria JC student said that he didn’t expect the questions to be that easy
· That Burkina Faso SIB President threw our bags near the entrance hysterically (it was funny to some extent too)

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