The Malay language paper has long been over. So has the English language paper. But I guess I can still share my stories with you, nan ?
Alright. Prior to the exam, mom was drumming this into my head - "Rukun Negara will come out. Study Rukun Negara. Listen to Mama." I was practically being hypnotised by these five words -
"Rukun Negara will come out."
It's those five national principles - belief in God, loyalty to the King and the Country, upholding of the Constitution, and another two more whose translations I forgot. I complied, because this year is our 50th year of independence. Any question on the country's history/culture is very likely to come out. So, I sat down, grabbed my overused Sasbadi History revision book (overused in the sense that all the pages have dogs' ears, highlighter marks and pencil scratches, and the covers have fallen off and the content pages are torn) and turned to Rukun Negara. I practically memorised everything, word for word, and I could say it in my own words too. Hoping that this would come out for the History exam, I breathed a silent prayer.
It didn't come out for History. It came out for the Malay language essays.
I was overjoyed ! The first question was on Rukun Negara. Without hesitation I closed my eyes and wrote all the points in succession, with further elaborations from the History textbook. This was a gift question ! After the Malay language exam was over I ran home and told mom everything. She, too, was happy.
The next day was the English language paper and I hoped I could do those one-worders - continuous writing questions with only one or two words in them. My previous attempt on a one-worder was "Examinations" and I scored almost full marks for that. Then again, I wasn't too sure of whether I'd make it. The continuous writing part is the only part of the English paper that is sent to Cambridge markers and I had to really deliver.
When the Paper 2 question sheet was laid in front of me, I skipped everything and went to the last question.
"Tomorrow."
What could I write about tomorrow ? I could write about a mundane tomorrow. I could write about Vision 2020 (but at the rate things are going, I wonder......) - and I don't wanna be a hypocrite in the exam hall. So, I assumed the role of a disgruntled ten-year-old, reading the papers, knowing her share of political affairs, and I used the title "Tomorrow" to criticise the current systems in the world and in the country alike, how the race for power never ends, how in our yesteryears the dominance of a country was shown via colonisation, and these days it's shown through the amount of established multi-nationals a country has - I gave my all, and I didn't care about my potential examiner's political alignment - I criticised as much as I could, but I didn't condemn.
Tough luck on that one, I guess. I don't know whether to be worried for the fact that there'll be locals presiding over the marking of the papers, or to be worried that the Cambridge markers' whisky might fall on the exam sheets and..........................
Pray for me for the rest of the exams, people.
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