There’s something about Why I Didn’t Try For Mass Comm

I love meeting up with my buddies. Besides irritating the hell out of each other, we bitch a lot. And one of our pet peeves is about how sucky uninspiring our diploma course was. Just in case you are kaypoh and wondering which course I was in, I am not going to say it because I’m a kiasee who is paranoid about getting sued. For added protection, I wish to state here that my diploma has got nothing to do with tourism. Ahem.

Whenever I bemoan my choice of diploma to other friends, who fortunately was not from the said sucky diploma program, their words of consolation usually goes something like this: You deserve it, heh heh. I can’t blame my friends for being unsympathetic because what they said is basically true. With the hope that the youngsters reading this can learn from my mistake, here’s my story:

It all started when my bunch of buddies and I got our O level results. Being the typical end-product of the Great Singaporean Education System, we were worried shit about which JC or Poly course to go for because any misjudgment may result in a Major Screw Up In Life. This being a milestone decision, we spent many, many days (actually, just two) agonizing over it.

My buddy’s newly-wed uncle happened to be on honeymoon then, and had entrusted his house keys to my bud for safekeeping. In view of this gross misjudgment, I declined his uncle’s services as an insurance agent some years later, heh heh…. Anyway, I digressed. We decided to hold an all-nighter at his uncle’s place to thrash out which courses to go for, as well as spend some time reminiscing on the various misadventures through our Bengish days in secondary school.

This all sounded fine in theory, but making important decisions were the last thing on our mind when we met up. We spent a good part of the evening munching on pizzas while watching (of all shows) Keving Costner’s Waterworld. Then we played silly games to decide who is to finish the unwanted pieces of pizza after it became apparent that six large pizzas were too many even for four developing boys.

Maybe it’s because of the pizza and the many bottles of Pepsi, but we were soon feeling restless and hyperactive. Since the uncle was nice enough to let us stay for the night (actually, he had not idea we would be doing so), we decided to help check the newly renovated flat for any workmanship defects.

We were just trying to be helpful, but our noble efforts came to an abrupt stop after my bud stumbled upon the ‘jackpot’. While exploring the, eh, master bedroom, he found porn. To be more precise, a cabinet full of porn.

Being fully-functional, hot-blooded and able-bodied youngsters, we were utterly horrified by what we found. It was hard to reconcile the smut with the kindly image we have of his boyish-looking uncle. It was not an easy decision, but we decided to go ahead with what we know needs to be done: to prove his uncle’s innocence, we decided to go through the items one by one, with the hope that the video tapes with titles like ‘Beauty and the Beast’ is actually the Disney version and not those XXX versions.

That daunting task took us all the way till dawn, and sad to say, we emerged as bitter youngsters after confirming that every single tape was, eh, not suitable for viewing by the young. Tsk tsk.

We also almost forgot about the joint poly admission exercise that was taking place that morning. After some superhuman efforts, we finally made our way to the admissions centre and registered our course preferences. On the bus ride back home, I had this fateful conversation with my good buddy:


Good Buddy: Eh! I thought you wanted to apply for Mass Comm?

Me: Aiyah, I can’t apply here lah. You need to go for the direct application at Ngee Ann Poly.

Good Buddy: Ngee Ann?!?!? Damn far away leh. It’s on the other side of the island. So you going there to apply or not?

Me: . . . .

Me: I think we go back to your uncle’s place can?


And that’s the reason why I never applied for Mass Communications.

Damn.

Signing off,
Barneysaurus