It's been a long time since I thought about my time in SC. Perhaps, I simply didn't wish to relive those memories. Rach, the "boy-crazy", the "slacker", the "day dreamer", the "try hard", all possible tags that would have gone with my name. The friends whom I had thought were just a passing phase in my life, fluttering in, and then out when that period of time was over. I certainly chose to shut those memories out when I left SCGS. I always thought I was unfairly treated by the teachers and despised upon by some of the students. I never stopped to reflect on my own attitude towards the school; I never tried to be conscientious nor diligent, I copied all my homework from whoever who would lend me, I stoned in class whenever I could and bitched about my teachers whenever somethin happened.

The few friends that I could have called my true ones were all separated from me when we graduated. Amy, Lijun, Xingwen and even Carolyn. Li went to the UK, Amy to Melb and the latter 2 stayed in Singapore then. Amy and I got together whenever we could when we were back in Sgp for the hols. Li and I, we lost touch at the end of last year after a year of long-distance [really long!] phoning and snail-mailing. I tried effortlessly to contact her this yr to no avail. I was like.. "That's it, I lost her." I used friendster to search, and finally found her. Thank God. Isn't it amusing how I have always been anti-friendster because it's a time-consuming, useless tool and now, I am using it to contact all my missing loved ones? Lijun wrote me a testimonal, that brought back floods of memories to me. Those I wanted to shun away from. This was what she had to say:

"Rachel! I have not seen u in ages! ur fault!haha anyway i love u loads!I laugh when
i think about the silly things that happened to us in SC..like the 100 over times we both almost got kicked out of class for talking or wateva..we both got kicked out by audrey one time...and i totally could not care less..its funnyi remember all the stupid bets we made and whoever won would get yummy gelato..i think the winnings were split even right haha and all the times i wanted to give up u kept encouraging me all thru to my As... ur a super darling friend thanx!I MISS U! Thanx for everything!!!!! Love yA. xoxo"

She didn't write much but it triggered off everything else buried. We always got in trouble with Audrey, who hated me rotten. We were thrown out of class and made to sit far away frm each other for the whole lesson, but we thought nothin of it and carried on our usual ways. We made bets on who would get higher and the loser would treat gelatos, we gossiped endlessly about Andy Roddick, threw snide remarks at Mandy Moore for stealing Roddick away frm Li, we [plus Amy] rawked up to our prom more than an hr late and left early to go back to the hotel to eat haagen daaz and watch Ali G. She who was gracious enough to let me have lunch at her house before Chemistry exam, she who sewed my name on a pencil box for my birthday and inserted a pill box into the pencil case coz she knew I had a pill box in my bag always.

Amy and I.. who hated each other when 1st forced to be sitting partners. But we started talking, then hangin out, going out after school for lunch, to meet guys, to shop and gossip. We who hang out every Saturday at the malls shopping and slacking. Amy who brought laughter to my otherwise boring and crappy classes, she who consoled me when I got thrown out of class by Audrey [another time] for not having my Social Studies workbook. She, whom I ate lunch with everyday and shared my secrets with....

They were imperative in making my stay in SC less spiteful, more enjoyable. They dabbled my unpleasant memories of SC with pretty, delightful moments. SC wasn't as emotionally scarring as I intially regarded it to be. It's part of my life, my past. All the friends whom I made there that I still keep in contact with, are priceless to me. The little things they did or tried to do, when I lost my best friend and then Abi, to comfort me, it lays etched in my memory because right then, I was inconsolable and never expressed how much those little thoughts meant to me. But they did. They exemplified acceptance towards me in Sec 3/6 when I thought I was an outcast. I thought I had forgotten it all, swiped from my memory, but when something tiny like a testimonial triggers it off, no, it wasn't forgotten. Instead, it is etched in my memory and relived as though it was just yesterday.

One thing I learnt from this is that whether the unpleasant or the sad, it is still part of your memory and makes you who you are today. Rather than dig a hole and bury it, hoping to forget it in due time, there's always something in the fine print that sprinkled alittle bit of happiness into that depressing point of time. We just have to loook for it and embrace those memories.