Crescent

I'm here at the nice place behind the canteen, with the seesaws and table soccer and the random exercise bicycle that I highly suspect still doesn't work. There's the sound of piano-playing coming from the mini forum and the screaming of girls in their dri-fit tees in the field. I see juniors with Tablet PCs and a pang of nostalgia hits me - oh, how I miss my cracked, creaky, old tablet. I hear the PE whistle - more screaming and laughing.

Ooh, cute SJI boy looks back at me - he's probably here for the music elective programme. I see a Councillor sitting at a table a distance away, sitting unglamly like an ah beng. I want to laugh. "Girls, please sit properly when you're doing your O Levels in the hall... we don't want to hear any complaints from the male external examiners."

I hear noisy cranes and machines in the background - they're building the useless indoor sports hall. I see a girl with teary eyes being guided to the fitness corner by a friend. Ah, the beauty of innocent, true friendship in secondary school.

What's missing is the sound of all the Band members practicing their own parts in various parts of the school (resulting in a somewhat melodious mess that follows one everywhere in the compound).

Screaming and running and unglamness and blouses of a gross shade of yellow. I don't feel at home, though. I'm alone here and there's no Dance practice for me to crash. I feel lonely in my wonderful alma mater; there's nobody to take in all these sights and sounds with me right now. I'm thinking of Yingyan. Joan. Jenna. My wonderful dance Laoshi whom all of us miss terribly.

I look at the girls in the field and wonder if they'll feel the rush of love and nostalgia all of us experience when we come back after we've graduated. I wonder how many of them are still despising the fact that there are no guys here - do they realise how wonderful and precious the memories of being in a girls' school will be in time to come?

What do I miss most about Crescent? Having our very own classroom, the place we have all our lessons and where we can do whatever we want freely (just don't tell the teachers) - change our clothes openly, sleep in the weirdest, most contorted positions on the floor, scream and laugh and sing and run around (Remember Cuixiao's old Chinese songs?), blast music, have random H2H chats with pals, lie on tables, do all the stupiest things ever -

Your classroom's a place you develop a relationship with, your own personal space in the one place where you spend 7-12 hours every schoolday for four years . Not having a classroom thanks to the homeroom system in JC makes me feel homeless in this "second home".