To Every Teacher That Taught Me

To every teacher who taught me, including:

The one who said the school’s chemistry lab was so old, the pipette was donated by Sir Stamford Raffles;

The principal who asked if the Head Prefect enjoyed his trip after the latter tripped and fell while walking to the microphone during morning assembly;

The economics teacher who insisted on pronouncing it KEE-NEE-SIEN theory, the history teacher who believed that “the more civilised we are, the donkey-er we become”, and the geography teacher who started every semester by drawing a perfect circle on the board and saying “The world is round, is it not?”;

The frustrated Chinese As A Second Language teachers, including the one who became less frustrated when we stood up in class and replaced our “Lao Shi Zao An” greeting with, “Lao Shi Ham Sum”, and giggled to himself for two Chinese composition periods;

The Math teacher who was so short-sighted that the class thought they pranked him good by replacing chalk with chicken bones, only to be pranked back when he insisted he could see what he wrote on the board;

The Additional Mathematics teacher who knew that the students nicknamed him – based on his initials F.S. Leong – “Fuck Spider Leong”, and didn’t care.

The teacher who made us recite, “I refuse to take out the refuse”, and “The police car could not patrol because it ran out of petrol”, so we would know the importance of emphasising the right syllable.

The teacher who told me I couldn’t use words such as “bitch” when describing Jane Austen’s characters;

The teacher who instead of assigning essay topics during two-period General Paper lessons, screened pirated VHS copies of Woody Allen’s movies, Monty Python episodes and the occasional rugby test match between Wales and everyone else.

HAPPY TEACHERS’ DAY, wherever you are.