Tuesday, September 19, 2006

Autograph books: Hidden art

I was in Muar last weekend, basically doing nothing but eating and watching some TV, all the while staying at Gurl's place.

It's not always that there's an extra guy to help around the house, so Gurl grabbed the opportunity and started the long-postponed task to clean up her bedroom. Figuring that it was my responsibility anyway, I obligingly (gladly?) chipped in my efforts to help.

A girl's room, a guy's nightmare.

While clearing up her stuff, we came across her old autograph book, dated back to her primary days at Convent Muar. Taking a break I flipped through it to see what pre-pubescent girls had in mind when they were on the verge of graduating from primary school. Well it's not that I didn't have gal friends of my own back then, just that I was from a chinese school and chinese-educated gals can be quite conservative at times.

Yay autograph book!

The moment I opened the book it had me in stitches. I recognized quite a few of the people who left their traces on the pages...Sheena, Michelle, Shi Yan, Pei Jie and Vicky to name a few. It was really funny to see what these full-grown ladies were writing 10 years ago. You could not imagine the fun I had going through all those entries, trying my best to hold back the tears (of laughter of course).

My favourite poem went like this:

[Name] went to to town,
Sitting in a taxi,
Drinking a Pepsi,
Wearing a maxy,
Amboi, so sexy!

It's amazing how 'creative' kids were then. Though not making any sense whatsoever and obviously a copy-and-paste work, they did rhyme. What the heck is a maxy anyway?

Among all the colourful, doodle-ridden entries, I did manage to find a few that were somewhat unusual. One of them went like these.

Dear [name], I have nothing to write. Just STUDY HARD. May God bless you.

Straightforward and to the point. Now that's a girl who matured at the age of 12. I wonder if she's writing summaries for news articles now.

thought completed at 7:42 PM | 0 comments

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