You never try, you never know.

Funny. I never knew. I never knew I’d get this far... I never knew I would have gotten the selection test call letter from ASEAN. And just moments ago, I never knew I would EVER get the call letter for the upcoming interview. I really, really thought I screwed up the test. Wait, correction: I did screw up the test.

So – was this envelope dropped into the wrong mailbox? Actually, I have already put my thoughts of getting the ASEAN Scholarship Awards to rest to make life less miserable for myself. But now, here it is again, right before my eyes, truly rising from the ash/grave/dead.

My name, zombielike-ly (yes, I know it doesn’t make sense) printed on THE envelope and there is a stamp on one of the lil’ corner that says “BY AIR MAIL”, dead identical to the first call letter that I received not too long ago. Of course, the lil’ “Singapore Post” prints outstandingly sticks out like a sore/dead thumb – except it doesn’t quite look like a thumb...

In any case, however, and in spite of that tiny insignificance, I have to say; those trivial words gave it away – my heart was doing backflips.

Come to think about it, “more than that,” you might state on the contrary and yes, it’s true; everything was fireworks; breathtaking fireworks! Truth be told, it’s not the money that I’m after; I don’t really care that much about the money. To me, I think the ASEAN Scholarship Awards is more than just a relief of the financial burden; it’s like a mark, a kind of recognition that is beyond the value of cold hard cash, it’s just something you can’t put a price tag on.

But like I said earlier, I’m still quite darned stupefied on how it came to this. I did badly for my selection test. But I suppose Amanda was right after all. You don’t need to know the answers to all the Math questions and you’d still get the call back. In fact, she added that that there were those smart arses who were bragging away about knowing how to answer every single question and at that very moment, she, like me, was telling herself how screwed she was already. But they didn’t get it. She got it.

It’s funny really... I’m sure them smart arses did answer it... right? Probably just not correctly. XD Okay, scratch the rest. Taking only my situation into consideration, I guess it was the General Ability test that got me the second call letter.

Well, I may or may not receive the scholarship but a little word of advice to the applicants for the years to come: do study for the selection test. I was told to read up the Form 5 Addition Mathematics syllabus but I think most of the questions had more to do with Mathematics itself, which is quite well reasoned and thought out ‘cause some students don’t take Add Maths, right? As a matter of fact, it’s not so much of the I-didn’t-do-7-bloody-questions and the I-only-wrote-250-blooming-words-when-the-requirements-were-350 that you’ll be biting your nails about (just like how I did but more on the figurative idea) but rather the psychological blowing that will blow your ego far, far away into the longkang (or monsoon drain if you prefer).