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I trod down the massive hall, my heart racing.

The atmosphere was uncanny that day: a strangely harmonious concoction of chitter-chatter, occasional sobs and group selfies made the occasion undeniably melancholic. It was our graduation day.

Scanning the crowd, I caught myself stealing a quick glance at her. She was her usual self, smiling effortlessly as her cheerful demeanour resonated with her peers while they engaged in high spirited chitter chatter.

All of a sudden, as if she noticed, she glanced in my direction.

A Poem For My Brother

O how exciting it is to be
A child in the world of today!
A reality filled with stuff of dreams
The fruit of struggles, the base for more.

Look at yer phones and fancy tablets
Fresh out of Star Trek or Matrix lore
We 90s kids can only reminisce
The VCR-and-pencil tricks of yore.

Look at yer high speed trains and many planes
People crossing borders as they please
Never thought our childhood holiday dreams
Would be nothing to our little kids.

Look at yer global metropolises
A cross-mix of cultures and different things
Where many colours walk a single street
And a single suit clothe many skins.

Look, though, at yer pointless fights and wars
Not all is perfect as you can tell
But this will be what your gen will bear
March on bravely and all will be well.

O how exciting it is to be
A child in the world of today!
It's yours for the taking, yours to keep
What you want it to be, is now your say.

What's Better Than One Bullseye?

February 26th, 2014. I woke up rather groggy that morning. It might be because everyone else was already awake. Normally, I would be the first one to rise, and any attempt to wake my dorm mates up would be in vain. Why, of all the 72 days being stuck in this hell-hole, did they choose this particular day to be so eager to wake up? Simple - on this glorious day, we get to fire a Colt M16A1 rifle.

Casanova

It was the 22nd of February. The seven of us were just chilling about outside the church, waiting for the Mass to start. When it was almost time, she asked: "Shall we go in now?"

No one responded. They were too busy complaining about camp. I stood forward, offered her my elbow and said, "Come along now, let's go in first."

Note to Readers #7

A couple of weeks ago, we allowed our previous url's (www.suburbankid.tk) redirection to our site to lapse. I want to say that we will not be relinking the redirect and from now on only suburban-kid.com will lead to this site.

This is mainly because the redirection itself wasn't so much a normal, 'official' redirect that you can usually do on your domain registrar (Goddady, Namecheap etc). The 'free' nature of the .tk domain, which made it attractive to us - or rather, me, as the team hadn't been formed yet - in the past, also came with severe limitations, one of them being that it was almost impossible to make a redirect when we decided to get a .com domain.

Well, the keyword is 'almost'; through a lot of googling and a dose of ingenuity, we managed to pull it off by attaching an empty webhost to the domain, and using that webhost to force the redirect. If it sounds like I'm speaking in Greek here, you can ignore all of that and simply know that we succeeded. But it was, quite plainly, a hack, and it was hard to maintain - the webhost itself required constant updating by logging into its dashboard, or it would expire, cutting off the redirect. Which kept happening, only I renewed it every time before the last.

Then there's the fact that .tk domains are just bad for search engine optimisation (SEO), mainly due to the fact that a lot of scam sites use them. That was why before today, you'd never be able to find Suburban KID on a Google results page, whereas now we're close to the top. Cutting off all links to that domain will hopefully provide us with an even cleaner slate to work with.

We'll consider setting up a small page at our old domain to remind users who still haven't realised that we're on suburban-kid.com now (seriously?), but the fact that our readership has remained steady even after the expiry of the redirect seems to indicate that it isn't much of an issue. Just thought we should let everyone know what's going on anyway, lest you're curious about the 404 page you'll get visiting our old domain. Have a great weekend!

The Sun Sets: How Jit Sin's Book Throwing Marks the End of an Era

Not too many hours ago, a hot topic began circulating on social media regarding a disciplinary case of a top-ranked school in Malaysia. Apparently, the school authorities had decided to take action against students that left their books in desks after the end of class due to the heavy timetable, which was against school regulations. This in itself came as no surprise; what was far more shocking was the way they decided to go about it - the books were collected and thrown into a heap in front of the school. Students were given an ultimatum: collect the books and receive 6 demerit points (nearly one-third required for expulsion) or not collect them and risk getting caught through the names on the books, which would then result in double the demerit points. To make the situation even more humiliating for the students, the teachers reportedly took the opportunity to take photos of the students while verbally insulting them.

The school in question is Jit Sin High School (JSHS), Bukit Mertajam, also known as SKK Jit Sin. My alma mater. In fact, the alma mater of the entire Suburban KID team. As such, though this post is written in my own personal capacity, it's needless to say that we're all concerned about it. While our school has shown itself to be capable of making bone-headed decisions at times, never did we think that such a proud and prestigious institution would resort to such barbaric methods of 'educating' students, methods which I suspect are more effective in sending the wrong message more than any sort of discipline.

However, this is but one new milestone in the long decline in JSHS, and the vernacular Chinese education system in Malaysia as a whole. Despite its long history, it now suffers the threat of becoming one of the most outdated educational systems in the region, and maybe even the world. This opinion piece is intended to show, through my own eyes as a student that has gone through the grinder, why this is the case.

Stepping Out

On the Malaysian Airlines flight from Ho Chi Minh to Kuala Lumpur, the passenger beside me sported thick rimmed glasses along with a striped t-shirt and beige khaki shorts. Although I had only a quick glance, it was evident the Caucasian man was already past his working years.

A few minutes after boarding had completed, the already familiar yet compulsory safety briefing video interrupted the movie that I was fully engrossed in. Slightly dismayed, I moaned silently.

Eye Contact

"Where are you?"

"I just got out of the workshop," her silvery voice echoed through the phone. "Are you outside?"

"No, I'm on the opposite end of the hallway, by the exhibitions."

"Okay, I'm on my way."

I watched the crowd of students walk past, some clueless, others curious. My eyes lit up as I caught sight of a cute girl of small stature, dressed in a salmon-coloured blouse and dark leggings.

I sneaked up to her. "Hello."

"Oh hey, I didn't see you there."