Epilogue II: Blue-Red In Da House

Rockstar came back from sports camp Friday evening, and like at least 5 other Kennedy School kids by my count, had taekwondo belt grading on Sunday. 4 of the 6 kids were girls, all taking intermediate-and-above belts, with one girl going for a red belt (yup, one grade higher than Rockstar haha)

Post-grading prerequisite pic

Now, Rockstar (and at least a few of his camp-going friends) trained close to a year for their gradings….. only to receive the much-coveted grading notice with date scheduled for the day after they got back from camp in the evening.

Now here’s where I go on a convoluted rant somewhat related to Why We Need Sports In Schools. In like, a sick way.

See, donkey’s years ago I graduated with an Accountancy degree from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, and NO honours*. To be exact, I flunked a paper for the first time in my life when someone really close to me passed away, exacerbated by a lack of erm, exam strategy: My then-Singaporean classmates explained the Fine Art Of Registering For Semester Courses – before you pick your modules for the semester, you check out the exam schedule at the end of the term. 

Back in the day, they had a very valid point – when you’re doing the Obnoxious Cram To Regurgitate Everything In 3 Hours And Then Forget It For The Rest Of Your Life, that extra time is gold. Outside the exam hall though, you don’t often get to check the exam schedule at the end of the term and pick your modules to suit a cram schedule. Usually, it’s more like the first time in your young life that you ever have to go away on sports camp for several days and 13 activities is very close to when your next big taekwondo grading is going to be.

And so off Rockstar went…

…as did his fellow schoolmates. No one skipped camp. No one thought to be too freaked about taekwondo grading. (Rockstar had one comment, earlier that Sunday, and that was “Ah. Adrenaline.”)

It’s amazing how much more little kids can do without batting an eyelid, simply because no one told them something couldn’t be done. 

Oh yeah and Rockstar wanted me to put a picture up of the 6 meter wall at camp…. that he apparently managed to scale, ring the bell at top, and then zipline down…

*Yes, any eagle-eyed readers might ask how I made it into a dealing room as more or less fresh grad with zero honours or merits; dealing room management trainees in those days needed a first class. It’s because I was not hired as a management trainee, I was what they called “experienced hire.” Still a junior, gofer job, though… And which I got after faxing my CV, unbidden, direct to the dealing rooms of some large banks. And yes I was quite self conscious people would look at me weird. Then at HSBC in Singapore one team head picked my CV off the fax machine and called the number.      

ps: Here’s another lesson from sports… No matter how good you are, there’s always going to be a time when you have to pass the ball if you really want your team to win. (This is hard. But you’ll totally be able to do it once you ask yourself whether you’d rather lose, and for a dumbbb reason. :D)