The senseless mugging has ended. The brain reawakens to other types of activities. Resting and relaxing.

Just awhile ago, I was wiping the dust off the assessment and guide books. I was frantically scribbling on books, notes and rough paper with almost every writing equipment known to man. Chemical equations were doodled senselessly. Problem sums were smashed apart sometimes with ruthless efficiency, sometimes with excruciating slowness.

The past weeks have been a blur. But nonetheless, there were some special events that stood out prominently despite of the late training sessions and studying.

The Story of the Insane Boy

I climbed out of bed with bones aching on the day after May Day. I woke up at 7.00am on a Public Holiday, a new record set. I was due at my maths tuition teacher's house in an hour's time for some last minute "reinforcement" for the common test the next day.

Stepping out of the cab into the place which has been my retreat on Sunday mornings for a year, I felt nauseous. Not because of the driver, but the prospect of doing intensive maths for another morning.

After greeting the teacher, I settled into a room alone. As I waited for the assignments to come rolling in stacks, three other Secondary twos were sent bundling into the room I was in. Two boys and a girl. Harry, Mervin and Melissa. Hougang Secondary, Catholic High and Deyi Secondary.

The teacher strode in with two similar assessment books. She placed the two books on the table and told us to share the books, two to a book. The topic was algebraic manipulation. They were her hardest sums she said, and told us to teach each other in case of any difficulty.

I paired with Harry and we stared at the black and white printing. There was a minor problem. Out of the 16 sums scheduled, I had done half the previous morning. So, I zipped to the other sums, while the others began to scratch their pencils on the paper. They were at question 1 while I was at 8. The prospect of me returning home early seemed brighter than magnesium ribbon being burned.

But the road to solve every sum was full of potholes and humps. There were hidden traps everywhere. By the time I was at question 13, they were at 8. Shit! The magnesium ribbon now seemed different from rose-tinted glasses. It was dim.

As we talked about our schools while positioning the different alphabets, she came in again with her famed 2B pencils. They were well-known defacers of books.

"Any problems?" She enunciated. We shook our heads in unison. "So good arh? Let me teach you people some of these sums before you solve this and go home." She said. They had no problems because they copied all the hard sums from me. Her finger was pointed at a ridiculously long sum. Damn it.

As she vandalized Melissa's book, I was especially bored. The sums that she was teaching, I had got correct for all. And my method corresponded exactly to hers, except that I had skipped steps here and there.

"All right, solve this sum, show it to me and you can go."

Finally! I picked up the pencil and stared at the equation. And stared. And found a method to solve it.

As I worked towards the solution, the others were still staring. The rose-tinted glasses became normal sunglasses.

When I finished, the others were still in the process of writing. She came in again with her army of wood and lead. As she checked my book, she signed a very good on it. When I was about to pack my bag, she told me to tarry a little. She wanted to explain that sum. The rose-tinted glasses came on again.

After her explanation, she told them to do their corrections and then go. However, I did not leave. I waited for the boys to finish before leaving with them.

As the three of us were walking through the immense private estate, Mervin was complaining about the SJI tennis coach. He was in Catholic High tennis. After parting ways, I walked towards the bus-stop with "Tears In Heaven" being pumped into my ear-drums. It was at the bus-stop that I noticed the boy. He was clad in a blue polo shirt, B.U.M. jeans and carried a black spongy Dakine bag. The jeans were fastened with a brown belt high above his waist. Poor taste.

It was when the bus arrived that I noticed that Melissa and the boy were taking the same bus. I settled into the seat behind the driver with "1985" being played, thinking this was going to be another usual bus ride when Melissa suddenly slid into the seat next to me when the bus was outside Sunrise something. She said something about the boy asking her questions repeatedly, moving closer to her and adjusting her pants. She complained that he was "psycho" and that it was scary.

I looked at her weirdly and turned around to look at that boy, skeptical. There was something in that retarded-looking boy’s gaze that made me believe her. I asked if she wanted to inform the driver, on which she promptly refused. There was nothing much I could do, except for the fact that with his small build, a good kick up that soft tendon would had sent him reeling on the floor, whimpering.

As I talked to her about her CCA, life in school and other stuff in an effort to calm her down, he suddenly appeared right next to our seat. She gasped. I looked out of the window. It was the MRT Station bus-stop. Interesting! He was alighting at the same stop.

We let him walk far ahead of us, but he kept turning around and cast furtive looks at us. Walking even slower, we let him enter the MRT Station first before going in ourselves. She wanted to avoid him, so we took a right turn to the other pair of escalators which was much further away. In logic as according to human nature, he should have turned left as it was much nearer.

But it was to our surprise that he was just standing at the parapet next to the escalator exit. Exclamations stringed out of her mouth. I made the thoughtful turn to the other end of the station. He did not follow us. Good, but I got tactically beaten by him. I had thought that he would turn left according to logic, but he turned right. I forgot that he was a "psycho".

We boarded the Marina Bay bound train and she alighted at Ang Mo Kio.

After which, nothing much happened, except for another bout of mugging. This was one of the two interesting events that happened just at the start of the month.

The other was the Singapore Robotic Games held on Tuesday at Ngee Ann Polytechnic. Our school got third for the micro mouse race, where we got triumphed by Shadow of Woodlands Ring and Rae of Raffles Girls.

The defeat showed us the strength of our competitors, with their powerful motors and advanced tyres.

We decided that we would show them what we were made of in July.

Watch this space for more updates!