I'm a friggin' nerd in school. I jot down stats on who's who to beat at which subject, and study hard to beat these students so that I keep myself motivated and let myself have goals to achieve. From Form 3 till Form 5, I am with this very gifted guy, a Chinese guy, LSY. *Not gonna name his real name, but his real name is based on those 3 letters* He's the quiet, humble and hardworking person who is pretty much shy unless you pick his brain and then only his character comes out. His subject scores are always top of the class, especially the tough subjects like Additional Maths and Physics. As for me, I am such a nerd at school that I basically keep score of every subject marks each of the 5 top-scorers in the class, so much that our class teacher does not even have to tally up the total marks to know who is the top student of that semester, I already had the scores in my hand!

Yes, it was a struggle. I had to work my butt off, and only until Form 5 that I feel I can somewhat match this guy's excellent scores with my own. He may pwn my ass in his two favourite subjects, but I match them with my own Biology and English scores. He still comes out tops, among us 5, the best I could match him being the third best under another really well-rounded student, also a Chinese. Feels like holding my own against the Chineses (they are hard working, and in the case of LSY, very gifted), so I was happy that I could maintain my scores between them. they are my peers, my punching bags, my consult. You can imagine that, from this post alone, that my friends generally are those with aspirations and drive, and unfortunately/fortunately *depends on how you see it*, they are Chinese. My best friend however is still a Malay but I can see the disparity bove the drive to succeed between him and the "Top 5", keeping it as "pass cukuplah!" rather than striving to be better.

What are the "Top 5" doing now? LSY is in Silicon Valley like I said, No. 2 is a successful neurosurgeon in one of those "spa" hospital in Singapore, No.3 is a "bus driver" , No. 4 is holding his own as an architect in New York, and No. 5 is a partner in an engineering consultation firm. But from the total of 5 here, I would feel that I'm no.4 in terms of success, perhaps even the number 5.