The ‘Good School Stigma’ & ‘NS Myth’: Doing Dishes
Since I was on the topic, I thought I would talk about something related. The funny conceptions Singaporeans have, that is, the ‘Good School Stigma’ and the ‘NS Myth’.
The ‘Good School Stigma’, as mentioned in the previous post, refers to how the average Singaporean will go into a slamming session if they found out the other party of the conversation came from a good school.
What defines a ‘good school’, loosely refers to the top 10 schools in the now-defunct school ranking system. A stricter definition would be the consistent top 6 schools (can’t say 5, cos it was really the top 6 which never really erm… dropped out of top 6).
The ‘NS Myth’ refers to the belief that ‘all boys turn to men’ when they serve NS.
The anecdote is as follows:
My family used to slam me for not doing the dishes, because ‘you elitists always think you are way above doing household chores’. The thing was, before I entered secondary school, as a normal neighbourhood school kid, I was barred from doing the dishes for the fear of breaking one.
When I went into secondary school, I was automatically ‘exempted’ from that, not cos I said, ‘How can you ask someone from a Good School to do the dishes?!’. I was just given that no-do-dishes status without me even having to move my lips.
Either my elitist aura was so strong it spelt out my ‘intentions’ on a smoke screen behind me, or you know, it was the ‘GSS’.
Not that being labelled as such bothered me, cos in the 6 years to come, I barely ate at home. After I left for school at 6am, I kept away from home till 10pm. The only meals I had at home were during Sundays (CCA on Saturdays, remember?).
So the story went that 6 years later, after my conscription into army, I felt I should end the cold war blah blah… Actually, I wanted to end the cold war during the preps for ‘A’ Levels, but well, I was busy with the As. Anyways, so one weekend, after meals, as usual, I went to do the dishes. My sisters, who were bored to death for the weekend, finally noticed I was doing the dishes and exclaimed,
‘WOW! NS sure make you more independent! You are doing the dishes, like you were forced to during BMT!’
I know it was beyond me to try to clear my name as to whether I had been doing the dishes since time immemorial, but let me point out the most obvious flaw in their establishment of the ‘NSM’: We never had to do the dishes in army, not even in BMT.
Yes, cleaning the stores, jerry cans and our own ponchos, etc. But no, sorry gals for breaking your fantasy, we don’t do the dishes.
There was a reason why Singapore Food Industries (SFI) remained viable despite their poor food quality: They were the contractors to man the cookhouse. Though I would prefer myself to do the dishes (cos I trust my level of hygiene more than I trust theirs), they were the ones paid to do so.
If there was anything manly that I picked up during NS, it was the ability to clock up a record number of saying ‘Chee Bai’ in a day; while updating those record books (Why that chee bai never counter-sign?), while wearing shoes to go for meals (Chee bai, wait for me will die ah?), while greeting fellow company mates (A: Yo chee bai! Wassup? B: Lan jiao!) or before I tuck into my meals (Chee bai! The chee bai chicken look like some Chao Chee Bai and the vegetable is f**king chee bai overcooked!).
I think there would be more examples to illustrate the 2 points in concern (since it is the concern for most Singaporeans), but right now, I’ll keep it at this.
Anyways, for those who blog from wordpress, after the sign-in page, there’s always a list of blogs which had a lot of pageviews, one of them is this blog called ‘Stuff White People Like’. The most recent post I just read, was actually on White People on Ivy League, which was similar in theme as the ‘Good School Stigma’ I was talking about.
One of the reasons I believe to be behind the slamming was sort of pointed out in the article, and the way I would deal with someone who has the GSS was also as illustrated by the writer: Imply that I only got in cos of my ‘minority status’.
I always had to get out of people’s GSS slamming by saying: I got into Hwa Chong only cos I took LEP, which got me an extra 2 points off (total of 6 points) just so I scraped through the cut-off-point of 2.5.
No one realized the inconsistency with the math, cos they ’stopped feeling threatened since they can now believe they too would have been accepted to an Ivy League school (Good School) if they were a minority (good in Chinese)’ and couldn’t be bothered to slam me further.
Anyways, here’s the link. I bet the writer was better at explaining in irony the predicaments of ‘elitists’ under the ‘Good School Stigma’.
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p/s: Just in case anyone was wondering, getting an acceptance into LEP guaranteed a place in the JC of choice at that point of time, regardless of L1R5 (though the extra 2 points were still stated as a criteria), just like the way some athletes got into HC with, I think, 15 points.
Anyways, the real cut-off point for that year was 2.1, thanks to people like me 
