so the raffles schools have taken 20 of 21 top o level places, says the straits times. hooray, proud to be an old girl, filiae melioris aevi and all that, but what's new? like su-lin, i do feel so sorry for the people with 8 or 9 points, and i can actually say this because i got an 8 myself. it doesn't seem to matter now but it did so terribly then. and having said it ought not matter at this late date from the way i still make snarky remarks about su-lin and higher chinese in some perverse way i think i do mind terribly that of our group, i'm the one with the terrible grades. i know it didn't make any difference to us and i've never had cause to feel it and people always find excuses for me (they couldn't read your handwriting) and what i'm doing now might be evidence that o levels was rubbish but that's no good because its really the same line of reasoning innit? that there are quantitative measures for aptitude and we do like some kind of external validation even if we don't believe in it. but at least i never felt i was going to lose my place; it was okay for me, i wanted humanz and anyway i had four points off for the usual reasons but i remember very well there were medicine people who had to leave because of a shock 2 in history or because they just couldn't scrape more than a 5 for mother tongue. i remember being jealous of a girl in desmond's class for the first three months and then when she had to leave i was so sorry for her devastation i thought she could go on running amok with my boyfriend if she likes if only she could stay. hell. how these things come back. it really shouldn't matter in the least but talking about o' levels does depress me. also, even given that it is me we're talking about, i don't deserve a three for a maths, not after all that coaching from minyin. argh! such rancour! enough!