We’ve recently moved our kids from the international school to one of the local ones. We did this for various reasons, including my dissatisfaction with the teaching qualifications (or lack thereof) of international school teachers, what I perceive to be a wishy-washy IBO curriculum framework, and lack of basic grounding in maths. I’ll be honest and say that our decision is not a common one, but both J and I are the result of strict schooling systems and, being hard science graduates, we value maths ability and literacy above all. Some may say we’re too obsessed about that, and they may be right, but that’s the way we are.

Anyway, the first parent-teacher meeting came up recently, and we attended it, and might I say right here that I get immense amusement and enjoyment out of interacting with the school prefects. Whenever there’s a meeting on, you’ll find the school buzzing with prefects, wearing their prefect sashes. You are always given a card or ticket or slip of some kind prior to the meeting and this is what the procedure generally entails:

As you walk through the school gates, the guards will wave you through with a cheerful word of greeting. After all, they’ve seen you come and go for the past few months. You wave back and walk through, ticket in hand. Now imagine you come to a long straight corridor, with a flashing sign reading “HERE!” at the far end. Imagine six older children spaced along this corridor, each asking to see your ticket, then directing you further along the same corridor. Imagine there is no other way to go along this corridor, except back the way you came, or onward to the flashing neon sign. Welcome to the role of prefects at a Singapore primary school parents’ meeting.

Next time, I’m going to throw a spaniard into the works(*) by looking puzzled and saying earnestly, “Are you sure? But someone told me I had to turn left here.” They’ll look serious, call a colleague over to adjudicate, have a hurried discussion, then just wave me along, and consider it a job well done. As Harry Harrison would say, it’s a win for all parties concerned — the prefects get to feel like they’ve averted a national disaster by guiding a greying woman along the right path, a post-event retelling will convince teachers of the utility of having prefects around, and I get secret amusement by watching the aching sincerity in their actions.

And J got caught out recently when ordering a coffee from his local beverage bar. There’s nothing we like more than watching B grade movies and yelling things at the screen. “No, don’t go in there!” or “Switch the light on, switch the light on!” and making gurgling and crunching sounds when someone gets crushed or eaten. B grade horrors are our favourite, and the kids bring all their pillows from their bedroom and form little enclosures on the sofa so they can hide behind them when something scary happens. It’s a fun night for all the family.

Well, anyway, J was waiting for his morning dose of Nepalese masala spicy coffee (I’m not kidding you), and watching the TV just near the bar, and he told me there was an absolutely great show on, with a Chinese group of paranormal investigators (he thought), and a giant snake rampaging through the city, eating everyone in its path. Doesn’t it sound like fun? Unfortunately, he was in “family B grade movie night” mode, which meant that when the snake happened upon an hysterical woman, he told her to run, and then made the obligatory sounds of sympathy when the snake got her. It was then he realised that he was now the focus of a dozen pairs of bemused eyes. “I forgot you weren’t with me,” he told me later.

“What did you do?” I asked.

“Just smiled at them, collected my coffee, and continued on to work.”

And that’s how you make some fun in Singapore.

EDIT: (*) Yes, I know the term is really “spanner in the works”. I’m quoting from one of John Lennon’s books. Yep, he wrote a couple, and even illustrated them himself.