“ Mom, do I have to...” I murmured. “ Come on, John, its your first day of school overseas! Shouldn't you be excited?” My mother exclaimed.
“ But...but...”
“ No buts, now go.”
I had no choice but to listen to my mother, I walked towards the gate and suddenly, someone banged into me, without apologising, he shot off. I caught a glimpse of his face as he banged into me. I turned around and said, “ You see? The people here are so aggressive!” My mother looked at me, “ Its ok, I am sure school here is going to work out fine.” “ I doubt it will.” I thought to myself as I headed off towards the school again, taking notice of my surroundings just to make sure that there was not going to be another person coming at me.
Today was the first day of my school at Hwa Fu Institution. I was from New York, and had to migrate all the way to Singapore due to my mother who recently lost her job and wants to come here to start a new beginning. My friends back in New York had warned me about this place, saying that the people here are very hostile, and I should be very cautious not to get into trouble. My friends also stated that the people here said very strange languages which sound like English.
As I was walking towards the classrooms, I could hear some people behind whispering to each other and giggling. “ Hey look at that ang moh, he look so funny, hahaha.” One of them whispered. “ I just got here and now I already got a nickname? How worse can this place be!” I thought to myself frantically. When I found my class, I was about to step inside when a huge figure stood in front of me. I froze on the spot, slowly lifted my head and saw a tall and buff boy grinning at me. I looked at his face closely as I thought that it looked quite familiar, then it struck me, it was the boy who banged into me earlier!
I thought of countless things that he would do next at that time. Would he grab me and say that I would have to give him my pocket money forever? Or would he make me turn around and give me a wedgie? I was too scared at that moment to run for my life, I thought to myself, “ OK, this is it.” “ Hey, sorry about earlier ah, was rushing to tell teacher something. My name Randy, whats yours?” My eyes popped open as I was wondering why he did not do all the things that I had thought about. When I recovered from the shock, I replied “ My name is John, nice to meet you.”
Randy let me sit beside him in class and we started to talk about ourselves. I asked him about the language that he was speaking. He did not quite understand what I was talking about and I asked him why he included the words “ lah, leh, ah.” into his sentence. He then understood what I meant and explained to me that it is called singlish. “ Aiya I dont know why I always say it , I think its because I learnt it from my parents.” he explained. “ Ring...ring...” the school bell rang as our teacher came into the class.
During recess, me and Randy rushed to the canteen. When I reached into my pocket to take out my pocket money to pay for he food, I realised that I had forgotten to take my pocket money from my mother. Randy noticed that something was wrong and asked me what happened. “ Erm...I dont have any pocket money.” I replied, feeling embarrassed. “ Oh its ok, I have some spare pocket money here, you can return me the money tomorrow.” Randy said without any hesitation. “ Wow, I never knew that Singaporeans were so kind and helpful.” I thought to myself.
Looks like I was wrong about Singaporeans being aggressive and hostile. It turned out that Singaporeans were actually very kind and helpful! I also found out that the language that Singaporeans were saying was actually English, just that there is a little twist in it. Mom was right about everything turning out to be fine. I am starting to think that being in Singapore is better than being in New York!
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