i've always thought that my kindergarten years were awfully horrid ones. true, i've had plenty of fun living with the paternal grandmother in 2 HDB apartments with one entire wall knocked down to link both together. there would always be food on the table (the grandmother is an average cook though). and she would always be the one to send me off to the school bus. after school, i would be engrossed my with Sega Megadrive, playing Gunstar Heroes and Rocket Knight Adventures all day long. but all this doesn't beat the fact that the family church that the parents attend (and force me to attend too) is just BESIDE the kindergarten. add 5 schooling weekdays and 1 church weekend, i practically visited both kindergarten and church 6 times a week. 20 years down the road, i'm smoking outside my old school and thinking back of the first time i was introduced to phonics and vocabulary. Dr Suess wasn't that popular back then. and Montessori was presumed to be French cuisine for the gastronomically adventurous. the kids really have it going for them these days, i must say.

but so much has changed at Galilee Kindergarten. you can really see the amount of construction that they have done to the interiors. a new porch with actual tiling (back then it was just cold concrete flooring), some balconies, classrooms with quaint little chairs, nicely decorated school boards. i haven't seen the uniforms though. during my time, the uniforms were a really chequered affair. yellow squares of various shades complemented with electric blue shorts and white school shoes. my primary to secondary school days at Fairfield were equally plagued with colorful memories of lemon chiffon paired with navy shorts (we only got to wear a single year of long pants during secondary 4/grade 10). it's no wonder that till today, i still have a thing going on for all things yellow and blue.

Galilee is a christian kindergarten. so most of the kids there have some basic knowledge about bible stories. things like the wise man building his house upon the rock, the bible and its all encompassing knowledge, and how much Jesus loves us little children regardless skin color. we sang children's christian songs everyday during assembly. in fact, kids who attended christian schools will prolly remember one very fun song that involves a lot of sitting and standing. i hated it because it involved sitting and standing. it was a rather silly song given that it had only 5 words in it. Hallelujah. Praise. Ye. The. Lord. the song comes in two parts and thus there would be two teams sitting and standing at alternate intervals (when one sits, the other stands, depending on which part of the song their group has been assigned to):

hallelu, hallelu, hallelu, hallelujah (one group will belong to this batch of lyrics)

Praise Ye the Looooord! (another group will belong to this batch of lyrics)

it's an awfully irritating song given that it lasts no more than 1 minute. and because of this one minute, nobody ever sings this song once. it always has to repeat itself. on horrible days when the kids are hyperactive after a sugar treat from the teachers (eg. Children's Day), the song leader can actually pull it off THRICE. by then, i would have wanted to throw a tantrum to show my 'praise' for the lord.

my kindergarten days were pretty gay too. i dabbled in a bit of drama during one of the kindergarten's concerts. i can't remember what the concert was for, but they were plenty of kids acting out Noah and the great big ark. now in case you don't know, Noah was the guy who built the first ever imaginative design of a gay cruise. God and Noah were on pretty chummy terms. so God one day decided to wash out all the evil of the world (literally), by sending endless rain and a great big flood. and that's the good thing about having God as a pal, he preps you for the bad times. he ordered Noah to build a great ark according to his blueprints and measurements. big enough so that it could contain Noah, his family ( he had several sons and their wives) and get this.... two of every creature that's found in the earth. meaning one male and one female of every creepy-crawly, birdy-wordy, beastie-beastie and fishy-fishy. ok lah, throws one off the track of the gay cruise. but it's still somewhat a cruise right?

and thus for 40 days and 40 nights. it rain and it rained and everybody was dead (except Noah and a bunch of animals that any zoo in the world would kill for). Noah sent out a dove to see if there was any land. the dove came back with nothing. another few more days Noah sent out ANOTHER dove and this time it came back with some form of vegetation (can't remember what). but basically that's how you get the international symbol for peace: the dove with the little bit of veggie in the beak. it's God's promise to the world that he will never ever kill it by flooding ever again.

i played the lead role of Noah. the props were entirely made out of styrofoam. styrofoam being the 'it' material for props back then. the teachers painted a ginormous ark with a door that could open and close, and they stitched lots of animal costumes and brought along plenty of really bad make-up. my favourite kindergarten teacher (an indian lady), helped me to draw on a beard using an eye-liner pencil. i think that's where i got my goatee fanaticism from. i thought i looked so cool in the goatee back then that i was pretty adamant about not wiping it off after the concert. right now i already have one. no need to wipe it off anymore.

i finished my outside Galilee kindergarten feeling a tad nostalgic. but still, nowhere closer or chummier with God. i'm think i'm destined for the eternal gay cruise to hell. but definitely not on God's cruise to heaven.

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