Unexpected Holidays

Living in the United Arab Emirates was an interesting experience for me.

I was always very grateful for the unexpected holidays we received when members of the royal family died. Such gratitude, however, is easily misplaced, as happened with me during my latter years when before one of my usual weekly exams, I was actively hoping the president would die so I wouldn't have to do the exam the next day.

It was always a joke between those of us that saw the irony in students celebrating a holiday the government officially labelled as a day of mourning. Personally, I still don't see a justification for calling a national holiday on anybody's death, and so I will disregard any "bleak" aspect of this holiday for the rest of this entry.

The beauty of these holidays was how unexpected they were. On some occassions, the government wouldn't get the chance to notify newspapers on time to make the announcement in the morning paper, and so nobody would know about it. One such case happened when I was in Grade 9 or 10, and the local newspapers couldn't get the word out so they informed the schools personally, probably. The administration got their cleaners and other staff to line up at all the entrances to the school to stop cars and give them the good bad news.

It's an extremely refreshing experience, when you're depressed having to wake up in the morning, planning which period you would have to spend doing homework for the following period or revising some God-awful French Auto-Dictee, and then voila. No more school for the day! And you're up early, so more hours of fun!

I remember on that particular day, I saw students dancing on the grass isles of the parking lot. Me, I wasn't dancing. But one thing's for sure: I wasn't mourning either.

When Sheikh Rashid died, the ruler of Dubai, I was still in Falcon's Private School, the school I was in for kindergarten and Grades 1 through 3, and we got four whole days off. Wow! Four days!

We were watching the funeral ceremony on national television where the entire royal family got together, and my brother mentioned dreamily without looking away from the television, "Look at all those Sheikhs. Imagine, if someone dropped a bomb here, we'd get the whole year off..."

Environmental Prefects

Memory blurs this particular aspect of TT area life. I can't rightly recall much about the environmental prefect, partly perhaps because the phenomenon largely died off as me and my friends hit senior status in the TT area, which meant we were less badgered by the over-zealous seventh grader that got his new prefect badge.

The environmental prefect was in charge of garbage. You heard me. Garbage. Just like most of the Student Life Organisation, they handled garbage (in one form or another) to achieve the SLO's primary goal: to alleviate the financial burden of the school. In this case, to reduce the need of, or possibly eliminate, cleaners.

Breaks and Lunchtimes would take their toll on the school campus, with students littering their numerous sandwich wrappings, juice cartons and other such superfluous paraphernalia, and so the environmental prefect's duty was to make sure people didn't litter. They were "insiders," plain-clothed policemen, perhaps. If anybody littered the prefect came down on them like a locust.

The trick, however, was to see someone commit the crime, which is, needless to say, an extremely difficult and tedious task because it requires constant observation. On some occassions, the environment prefect would probably pass by a group of people sitting around, eating and come back a while later when they're done and see sandwich wrappers and juice cartons on the floor. What would follow is an extremely entertaining conversation between the prefect and his victim, who is, in most cases, guilty of littering:

"Pick that up."
"What?"
"Pick that up."
"It's not mine."
"I don't care, just pick it up and throw it in the trash bin."
"No."
"What?"
"I said no!"
"You have to."
"Why?"
"Because I'm a prefect, and I'm telling you to."
"I don't care what you are, I'm not picking up trash. It's not mine."
"I'll report you."
"Go ahead."

Usually nobody got reported. I don't think even the SLA took the whole idea very seriously. It was probably just a "shot in the dark" attempt, some new guy probably came up with the bright idea and they tried it and figured it just didn't work, but didn't have the heart to remove it, with all the seventh graders hanging on the bell of their office all day, wanting a job.

And usually, the prospective garbage-man that the prefects victimized were normally not responsible for the specific piece of garbage the prefect wanted in the trash can, but rest assured, some piece of garbage lying around there was his. Litter doesn't come from nowhere.

As my time in that school wore on, I could see some of the environmental prefects give up on the whole get-students-to-clean-up-after-themselves approach. I vividly remember one of my very good friends who happened to be head of the Chess Club and also a "senior" environmental prefect, going around picking stuff up. Not full-time, like a cleaner, but as he walked around the TT area, just notice a wrapper for the straw that came with the usual Al-Ain Orange Drink or Mango Drink, pick it up and chuck it.

I suppose in popular perception, environmental prefects were the bottom of the food chain at school. That would probably be why, for a short while, I was one myself, though I never had any "conversations," and generally did a poor job of it. I just needed the points.

French Classes

Adapted from author's personal log, entry date circa summer 2003. Names have been changed for privacy.

French was compulsory in our school. They divided students into different levels of difficulty, based on a student's familiarity of the language. French "High" was for advanced speakers, where most of my latter-day friends were, French "Beginners" was for the novices and French Low for intermediates like me and a handful of other unwilling souls.

I hated French with a passion. The textbooks were extremely colourful with comics and pictures and characters, I suppose to attract students and make learning "fun." I didn't quite appreciate that. The colourfulness and "fun" aspect of it insulted my intelligence and served as a discouragement. I was mature enough to realise that comics aren't always for kids and pictures and fun stuff doesn't make a total drag like learning French any more interesting. I'm just lazy. But true enough, I wasn't interested in having fun while learning French. They're oil and water, they don't mix. I believed if they believed in teaching French, they should just teach French.

The books were so colorful and touchy and feely and “fun” that most of the real French to be learnt was from our copybooks, stuff the teacher made us write down. Now, I'm not one to be renowned for my consistency in attendance and attentiveness. Having to write things down in my copybook would often interrupt my thoughts, and so my French copybook was somewhat similar to the dental profile of an ice hockey player: full of gaps.

Our teacher was a particularly clucky woman by the name of Beded. She both loved and hated me, for I was that kind of student. First term was wonderful, she made everything so easy, I got good grades. Then came second term and she realized my true face when she turned up the heat just a little bit. I was lazy and uninspired, with absolutely no interest whatsoever in the subject. Let’s face it. Studying off a copybook analogous to a hockey player’s smile wasn’t going to get me anywhere.

Once, we were told to write an essay about nature and the seasons in our own country. Well, I’d been growing up on Bengali culture, where we’re so proud of six whole seasons (the specifics of which elude me till today), I couldn’t resist putting something like that into my essay! When she was handing our homework back, she held my submission back for a moment. In front of the whole class, she said, “I understand you want to add something interesting into your essays, but six seasons?” She glared at me for a moment and turning her gaze away, passed my essay to me.

Poor me, the whole class was snickering and laughing. How could I tell her, it’s true! Well, I’m sure she’d believed me in some way, but my absolute lack of sentence construction ability in French rather ruined the supporting sentences. My friend, Kamal, who used to sit in front of me then said, “Six seasons? What, the four seasons and two flood seasons?” Rrrright.

Of course, I wasn’t the only person she hated. There was the guy sitting next to me. Another totally uninterested and uninspired soul, Nithin. The boy was forced to transfer to my school, because his father who was rolling in cash at the time wanted to give his son the best education. Unfortunately, Nithin didn’t share the same ambitions as daddy dearest, and hated the school with a passion. What skills as a bully he had back in Indian School were being used on him at our school. Poor fellow was bullied into seclusion, and he could care as much about French as Saddam cared about the Kurds.

There was the time Nithin and I decided we’d challenge one another to lift each other’s chairs. I was huge at the time, a whopping centurion, a 100-kilo behemoth. Nithin, a skinny Indian, a bare 60 kilos was no match for me, so I’d regularly ruin his day by lifting the side of his chair closest to me, especially when he’d be writing something important in French class, like when he’d be writing letters to his cousin in India (yes, that’s the closest to ‘important work’ Nithin would get in French class).

One fine day, I decided to lift his chair while my teacher was writing something on the board. With all my strength, I heaved on his chair real subtle-like under the table, out of view, when my teacher unexpectedly turned around to check her book. Unknowingly, in my enthusiasm to ruin Nithin’s day, I invested so much energy into the task that a look of extreme exertion was painted across my face. My teacher couldn’t help but notice the quick transition between excruciating effort and casual attention on my face in her peripheral vision.

I spent the rest of the term sitting alone, in the corner.

The Table Tennis Area

The Table Tennis Area would be, without a doubt, the place that would evoke the most memories if I ever visited it again. It was our hangout zone.

We were given two breaks throughout the 8-to-4 day. The first one would start at 10.45am, and end at 11.10am, a 20-minute short recess during which we spent most of our time stuffing our faces, playing stupid games, sometimes eating fast enough to play some table tennis, or just spend 20 minutes standing around, refusing to pick up garbage or make fun of each other’s lunches, faces or any random possession we could use to belittle people with. We called this short recess ‘Break.’

The second one, which we called ‘Lunchtime,’ was much longer. It started at 1pm and ended all the way at 2.15pm. This was the time almost everyone looked forward to, unless they had detention, a test or a class. In my early years, when my social life was much sorrier more modest, I used to spend Lunchtime at the Computer Club or the Chess Club.

As time wore on, I became acquainted with more and more people and discovered talking was an immensely efficient method of communication, which led me to spend most of my time at the Table Tennis Area with a handful of interesting friends.

Also known as the TT Area, it was basically an emptied out, wall-less ground floor of the building that held the entire 8th grade. The side gate through which I came in every morning opened up to the three basketball half-courts side by side, their hoops fixed onto the first (and only) floor of the 8th grade building. With cricket nets to the right and left, and a mini-canteen in the middle, under the canopy of the 8th grade building was our TT Area. The floor was spaciously tiled out with large, square concrete tiles that had an uncomfortably large gap between each other, causing Table Tennis balls to bounce this way or that if they ever left the table. On the far end, green wire mesh separated the TT area from the inside of the school and the symmetric basketball half-courts on the other side. Long tables and benches ran parallel to the green wire mesh, and this was where our bags lay between whenever we came into school and when the first bell rang at 7.55am.

There was a reason why it was called the Table Tennis Area: there were a lot of tables to play table tennis on. Couldn't have figured that one out, eh. The administration solved the problem of having nets that could potentially be damaged, stolen or vandalized by the brats that played on these tables by fixing wooden planks in place of the nets. It was an ingenious solution, but also caused the ball to rebound very hard should a smash hit the net.

Though during Break we might not get much time to play, Lunchtime was the perfect opportunity to play either basketball or table tennis and was worth trying our best to stay on the good side of our teacher and not get a detention. Sometimes, Lunchtime was just uneventful, an opportunity to shut down our brains and enjoy doing nothing for a change. Other times, like during our latter years with the introduction of AMS’es and AMS repeats, it became an opportunity to study. For some, the Lunchtime was never a time to slack off or talk or play, but an opportunity to catch up on some homework which would otherwise have to be done at home. There were also the odd quizzes that would come by in 7th period Economics, or 6th period French Auto-Dictee, which would need our attention.

During our final exams, the TT Area was where we met before a 2pm exam to revise. The TT Area was where we spent the 4 hours between an 8am-10am exam and a 2pm-4pm exam, if our schedules were ever like that. These sessions were exceptionally helpful, because after I lost all sense of conscience about my studies during my latter years, the 4 hours between the first and second exam of the day would be all I had under my belt in the way of studying for that second exam.

The TT Area was where I spent the last few, hot, summer afternoons in the summer of 2002 revising for my A-Levels. That year was my best year in that school, and those afternoons were among my most fondly remembered.

Cloudy Days and Exams

Cloudy days remind me of exam season. Final exams for the first term would usually be at the end of November, and November marks the beginning of Middle Eastern "winters," which meant short, lazy days, mild weather, and occassionally, wonderfully overcast skies. After 9 months of oppressive desert sunlight and heat where the very wind would sting the eyes, overcast weather with a pleasant breeze was something I greatly savoured. The world would seem to be illuminated by soft light, there would be no sharp shadows and the usual, oppressive yellow that the sun always coloured everything with was replaced by the soft blue hue of the clouds.

We would emerge from one of our final exams at either 10am, midday or 4pm, depending on the subject. As usual, the most memorable exam would be the last one, and usually scheduled at around 8am, so we would come out of the exam hall at about 10am, as free men. And free men we were.

As some of the local students set about barbarically ripping their textbooks and copybooks apart out of spite, me and some of my friends would routinely trudge along to the Naqaanaq place. Here, we had a few sandwiches, bought a few Dews and either discussed the exam questions or discussed where we would all meet to go bowling.

Overcast mornings, no matter where I live, bring forth a flood of memories of all the final exams throughout my school years. They remind me of complete, unhindered, childish freedom.

Looking back now, I realize how much of a peaceful and privileged childhood I had. Not having to worry about where the food came from or who was bombing my people back to the stone age, the greatest worry during my childhood was nothing but a collection of sheets of paper that I had to answer and get good grades for.

For that, I remain eternally grateful to The Provider.

The Point System

Our school prided itself on how extremely well-structured the courses were. I do agree, because on more than one occasion our teachers either knew less than we did, or knew more but couldn’t say it because they just didn’t know English.

It is my firm conviction that without the point system and a long-standing reputation of excellence propped up by a handful of crucial and talented individuals in every department, the International School of Choueifat would have been another high-class bottomless wastebasket, a posh, back-alley garbage dump of privileged illiterates, a random collection of advantaged pubescence.

The Point System was devised by SABIS, I believe, as a system where specific topics are broken down into piecemeal, easily understandable concepts. They covered only what the administration termed “basic concepts,” and would, by convention, constitute 80% of any non-AMS examination. The remaining 20%, it was contended, would include "thinking questions," potentially (and sometimes practically) unanswerable, but still not a death blow to students. This was, however, a highly elastic principle, because every now and then, class averages did hit the single digits (out of 20).

Each “concept” in the point system was accompanied by a corresponding “sample question.” These concepts would be taught plainly enough in class, but the teachers were not required to go through the sample questions with the students. It was said that the students should deal with sample questions themselves, and at the teacher’s discretion, discuss only the ones they had trouble with. Some teachers, of course, didn't pay attention to the administration's attempts at forging apathy toward the well-being of the students, and went ahead and dedicated periods to tackle the sample questions.

The sample questions, of course, were sold in the school bookstore at the regular, highway robbery prices.

The importance of these sample questions was that they formed the basis of a testing system not dissimilar to Nazi Germany's machines of oppression: The AMS.