YIsland-Wide Prawn Shortage Sparks Outcry
Prawn lovers protest usage of prawns in national exam.
Mrs. Lee Swee Khng, a housewife, was stunned this morning when her regular seafood supplier at Bukit Timah Market told her that all 200kg of prawns he normally stocked had been purchased by rotund middle-aged man and a tall young lady with exceptional fashion sense earlier that morning.
"This is ridiculous!" she says. "I was planning on cooking prawn mee for my family today! It's not every day that I do that, you know."
The normally sullen-faced seafood man, who declined to give his name, was, in contrast, flashing a toothless smile as he said in Hokkien, "Normally it takes the whole day to get rid of stock. But today, these two people come up to me just when I'm opening the shop at 5 am and ask to buy all the prawns I have. Of course I'm happy!"
That was not the only incident of people in Singapore being deprived of their prawns today. Miss Lily Ng, a counter staff from the McDonald's at King Albert Park, had to turn away many an enthusiastic customer asking for McDonald's new Prawn Wrappers and Prawn Burger due to the shortage of prawns. "There was nothing we could do. Our usual supplier told us he could not pass us the agreed amount of prawns due to some complications this morning and we just had to accept it."
Mrs. Tan Xing, a patron at McDonald's, had been one of those turned away. "I made it a point to come down to McDonald's today to try out their Prawn Wrappers. To think they ran out of stock even before it was noon! Somebody should do something about this!"
A check back in the Ministry of Trade and Information yielded no results; they were just as puzzled about the shortage. However, news of the prawn shortage got to the Ministry of Education, whose spokesman quickly supplied the answer.
"Today is the GCSE O'Level Biology practical paper and Cambridge required a very unusual apparatus this year--one dead, uncooked prawn for each student observe and draw. Schools all over Singapore have been buying prawns in bulk for the paper."
The biology practical, which accounts for about 30% of the entire biology paper, is widely regarded as the hardest practical as it requires almost as much studying as the main paper.
This is the first time a prawn has been used in the paper.
jac was here with you
10/28/2004 06:24:00 pm
YMy Life--The Movie
It comes like a sneaky, slow sensation, crawling up and permeating your mind, this idea that you should be everything everyone expects you to be. You have an impression of what everyone expects you to be and you're afraid that if you don't live up to their expectations something unspeakable should happen.
It goes past what people think, even. What people think you are slowly becomes what you think you are and when suddenly you realise that you aren't the perfect person you wish you were, that your relationships are far from being the fulfilling kind you wish they were, when you feel lethargic and flabby from not exercising, when you realise it is possible for you to get below 30 for physics MCQs, you crash down to earth.
It's disappointing, really, when confronted with the reality that your life is not perfect and it will never be perfect, despite what other people say. Not storybook-ending perfect, though sometimes when you're happy it may seem that way. When depression sets in and starts to pick out everything that is utterly undesirable in your life you see your life from a different angle and realise this uncomfortable truth: life is not a movie.
Your life will never be a movie with music playing softly in the background. No one will ever see that poignant scene of you playing the guitar while staring wistfully out of the window. Rain will not fall to add to the atmosphere of sadness when you are crying. You will never be able to hear what other people say about you when you're not there.
To me, the melodrama queen, this is a tragedy.
Life not being a movie means you will never have a perfect body--whatever that is. It means you may fail your exams and be sent to a school you never wanted to go to. It means you will have friends and you will drift, and you may not know some of the people you know right now after a few years. You may be broke. And--horror of horrors! You may never meet your Prince Charming.
Sometimes poetic justice doesn't exist in life like it does in movies. Disappointing, but true. That realisation hit me hard one night as I struggled with the emptiness I feel from time to time.
I don't know how to say this. You all know what is coming. The fact that life is not perfect also means that we don't have to be perfect. We don't have to expect that our lives are perfect, because there will be disappointments and issues in our lives that make us feel helpless and tired. The fantastic thing is that despite all this, God has a gift to offer us.
God has His gifts of joy and peace. These gifts don't change our circumstances at all; they change the way we view our circumstances. With the peace of the knowledge of His faithfulness and love we look at our present circumstances not through eyes tinged with sadness and despair, but with hearts of hope and anticipation. With the joy of trusting that He loves us we can wake up looking forward to what each day brings, knowing that He will never leave us nor forsake us.
Our Father in heaven is watching us from up there with eyes of love.
jac was here with you
10/24/2004 07:17:00 pm
YElaborate
In the past few weeks I have...
1. Beaten everyone except Kenneth at pool on Ben's pool table
2. Spread my germs to practically everyone who has come within a 5-m radius of me
3. Managed not to blab who's running for head prefect. Though now I can tell you: they are Maggy, Louisa, Kaye, Limin and Steph (I think that's it)
4. Been convinced to go for Gala Night, yet another farewell party for the graduating class
5. Realised I will miss MG
6. Felt intensely grateful to all the teachers who put up with my nonsense over these past 4 years
7. Watched Pearl Harbor and actually enjoyed it (it was revision for history!)
8. Decided on my subject combination: math, econs, history and lit, and am currently doubting my choice of doing arts considering the fact that I barely got an a1 for lit and only got an a1 for SS/Hist because they moderated
9. Decided to go for Talentime even though it is two days before my written papers (are you CRAZY, Jac?)
10. Learnt how to use my digital camera (stop rolling your eyes, Zhen)
5 weeks to end of O'Levels.
Haven't you heard, Jac, that counting down to something only makes time pass even slower?
I'm scared. I cry out to God every day. It's so hard to trust that He'll give me what I want because He never said He'd give me everything I want. And that's exactly why I should trust Him because I don't know what's best for me and if I want 6 points even though it may be bad for me in the long run and He gives me 6 points that would mean He's just easily swayed by public opinion the way politicians in democratic countries are.
But God doesn't listen to anyone. And I don't have to listen to anyone but Him with regards to how I should view myself. And He tells me to see myself as His beloved child.
jac was here with you
10/19/2004 05:31:00 pm