I think I have never mentioned here before (and I usually don't express personal aspects of my life in my blog, but I think I need to say this out or I will keep myself awake tonight crying) but there was a time - several years ago - when I dreamed of entering a Junior College (J.C.); that dream soon became more specific: I want a place in either National Junior College (N.J.C.) or Hwa Chong Junior College (now Hwa Chong Institution, or H.C.I.).

That dream, I now know, is never going to be realised ever in my lifetime.

Let's backtrack a bit here. Cue early 2000's: I'm doing my secondary education in what I now regard as one of the most (if not the most) evil secondary school in Singapore - it's located in the far north of Singapore, and shares it's name with something else that is well known internationally. While I have also myself to blame for the kind of behaviour I showed while in there, that evil school's administration (let's call them the Devils) did nothing to investigate or try to understand why I was behaving in such a manner then.

I was a target of systematic bullying by the thugs in the school, and also the victim of a systematic purge and destruction of my life, my dreams, and extreme bias against me from the Devils.

Rather than punishing the thugs, I often felt that I was the target of punishment from the Devils; rather than seeing the bullying problem, they saw me as the problem, that thorn in their behind, that nasty itch they can't reach on their backs.

The "punishment" the Devils meted out, however, weren't your usual run-of-the-mill cane on the ass. No, no, no, it was something else more systematic that allowed them to cause more grief and pain than a few strokes of the cane, yet allowed them to stay clear of being screamed at by the Ministry of Education for using "inappropriate discipline methods".

They simply denied me of my freedom to choose my path in life. And whatever I wished or wanted to do, they made ultimately-sure that the exact opposite will happen to me.

Firstly, they denied me of all activities outside of the school curriculum. In Singaporean schools, there's something called Co-Curricular Activities (C.C.A. for short) that are extra activities for students to take up, in addition to the usual study curriculum. Most schools require that their students take up at least one C.C.A., but my school and the Devils within went out of their way to ensure that each, every, and all C.C.A.s that were available were denied to me.

Secondly, they went out of their way to ensure that I get minimum education and minimum (if at all) freedom to choose the subject combination I wished to take in secondary 3. Here in Singapore, when you reach secondary 3 you get to choose a combination of subjects you wish to take for the next two years, and that often can determine where you go later in life. In my case, I was denied of virtually each and every subject that I wished to take - all the sciences subjects, arts, design and technology, even mother tongue (I'm Chinese, by the way) and Additional Mathematics.

I was only allowed to take the bare minimum: English, Elementary Mathematics (even the name here sounds like an insult to what I know I'm capable of in mathematics), and Combined Humanities. And that was it.

Ridiculous? Not to those Devils apparently.

Then, finally, when I reached secondary 4, the final pieces of their unholy plan went into place.

In secondary school in Singapore, classes are divided into two, three or four streams (depending on how you count them): the Special/Express stream, in which you complete your secondary education in four years by taking the Cambridge 'O' Level examinations at the end of it, the Normal (Academic) and the Normal (Technical) streams, in which you take Cambridge 'N' Level examinations at the end of the fourth year and optionally go on to the fifth year preparing for the 'O' Levels.

For me, I started out in the Express stream. When I reached secondary 4, they conveniently moved me down into the Normal (Academic) stream.

Combined with the limited subject combination I'm taking, deliberately limited time that I can spend in school, being barred from attending classes normally, the kind of attitude all but one of the teachers who were assigned to teaching me were having (it was like telling them to wade through a metre-deep pool of a fetid mixture of faeces and raw sewage pumped out from an industrial city in China), and SARS (yes, SARS - you can now start guessing when exactly this happened), even a polytechnic education seemed impossible to be had for me, let alone a place in J.C.

To make matters worse, they deliberately signed me up for 'N' Level Mother Tongue examinations (stating that "they must do this"), and then barred me from taking the exam on that day.

My fate was sealed.

I ended up in what is often (and I must say, accurately) thought of as the garbage dump of the Singaporean educational system: an Institute of Technical Education (I.T.E.,), or more accurately, It's The End. I didn't last long in there - I, a person destined for higher skies, was never meant to fit into the rowdy environment that was the I.T.E. In addition, I was confused, angry, frustrated, and felt horrendously insulted, not to mention the bullying that continued. I dropped out only a few months after being in that garbage dump.

It was the start of at least 4 years of the most confused, frustrated time in my life.

I had no direction. I didn't know what to do. I had no idea what to do next. All my life, things have been generally predictable, and I have always thought my future will also follow the path I thought I could see so clearly. Yet, in four short years this path, which I though was going to guide me right up to my adult life, vanished right under my feet, taken away by the Devils.

I felt like a train that just derailed, but somehow managed to keep it's momentum going. And what kept it going was time.

Time waits for no-one, of course. I needed to get back on track. But how? Even I have no idea how to get myself back on track.

I started neglecting life. I surfed the internet aimlessly, walked the streets aimlessly. My life was aimless. How can you have an aim when your aim has been robbed from you?

National Service (military conscription) came and went. It made my life even worse, the details which I do not wish to put here. At least though, it did open my eyes. At the end of it, I finally saw the situation I was in. I realised that I needed to get out of all of this. But where do I start?

I thought I could start by gaining back a part of what I lost. I applied to sit for the 'O' Level Examinations as a private candidate, and tried to pick the subject combination I wanted. But - again - virtually all of my favourite subjects are out of the question: I couldn't take any of the sciences subjects if I'm not attending a private school that dives into the practical side of the subject. Arts was out too, for a reason I can't recall now. I was forced to take and make do with the subjects that I could take.

I thought my life could be back on track. It was not to be.

Taking the 'O' Levels privately was a whole lot different from taking it in a public school. There is no structure, no external guidance, virtually no-one you could ask for help. There's only the internet to look to, a comparatively cold and unfeeling thing compared to being able to ask for help from real, live humans. I flunked two out of the five subjects I took, and scraped through another one.

However, that's not the worst of it. The worst of it, I realised, is that no matter what I could do, even if I scored straight "A"s on my exams, there will still be something missing from it: the experience of being able to enjoy school life.

Recall that I was denied from co-curricular activities when I was in school. On top of that, practically each and every non-study-related activity - sports carnivals, school-organised camps, etc. - were all denied to me. All the fun, the essence of school life, I never was able to experience them.

I try often not to think about any of these. I try to put on a mask and go about my life as usual. But - when I step outdoors, reminders that something's not quite there in me are everywhere. School-going people, in their school uniforms or  t-shirts, either going or coming back from school for both study and non-study activities - often with their close friends - are everywhere: on the streets, in shopping malls, on buses, and on trains (the recently-opened stretch of the Circle Line is especially chock full of them). Everywhere I turn, it seems, there's one of these people, who seem happy and enjoying their life. And here I am, lonely, never having experienced something like this, and never will.

And it doesn't end in real life. Just to give one example, there's one community right here on LiveJournal - apollofaculty - that chronicles their non-study activities they had and the fun they are enjoying (and these guys are from Hwa Chong Institution no less). There's more out there on the internet - YouTube, flickr, etc. - if you go look for it, there are all there. And on local TV, there's this programme airing on MediaCorp Channel 5 called "The School Nationals". It's not too hard to see what it's about, and why I often avoid watching that.

Of course I can't stop these guys from doing what they are doing. I can't stop them from enjoying these activities, I can't stop them from wearing those shirts, I can't stop them from being happy about it, I can't stop them from talking and laughing about their experiences, I can't stop them from uploading their experiences onto the intertubes, and I can't stop the local TV station to broadcast an entire programme about a part of it. It will be unfair to them, as it was unfair for my school to deny all of those to me. But, whenever I see them, try as I might I can't ignore the nagging feeling in my chest - even the sight of that big bold blue link up there is enough. Whenever I see them, whenever I think about them, I often feel as if a rock has been dumped on my chest, while feeling as if there's something hollow in me. Enough of them, and sometimes I want to break down, go nuts, and cry - and I have already did that at least once (twice or thrice if you count an unrelated matter).

These past few days, I have been thinking, is it possible - in any way - for me to get these experiences back, to fill a hollow part of myself? I started planning: as you may or may not know, my aspiration was to become a graphics designer and artist, and the two routes I was considering were either straight into a private arts school, or through a J.C., and then going on to a university or arts school later on. I was leaning towards the latter for obvious reasons - it could be able to provide me the experiences I am missing. However, a phone call to the Ministry of Education revealed that I am too old for J.C.

Boom. Bombshell.

It was when I know that, in this life, I will never, ever be able to fill that hollow void in my life.

And that brings us back to the beginning of this blog entry, and why I felt I needed to write this. When I realised the horrendous truth, somehow something in me told me to write it out on my blog. Something in me told me that I needed to let everyone know that situations like mine exists, that such things happened, that there is such unfairness happening in this world.

In a way this is also one of my many lame attempts to try and get the rock off my chest and the void filled, but I don't know how it can ever be gone. I feel lonely, grief, despair, helplessness, and frustration.

God, I wish there was a time machine so I could go back in time and fix all of these. I really do.

Just to let anyone concerned out there know, I'm indeed seeking psychiatric help for all of these, but there's only so much they can do.

I just don't know what else I could do.