Meditations

having jogged my mind with red hot chili pepper's by the way album, i here aim to attempt to postulate why prc scholars do better. prc scholars hereinafter to be referred to as 'zhenan', 'prc' & assorted derogatory terms. do indulge my lapses and excesses. thanks.

Preamble

it comes as no surprise that prcs do better than locals. this phenomenon is neither shocking nor new nor exclusive to the college in the bishan-braddell area (whatever). every academic competition is oversubscribed by these people and they dominate all the prize tables. outside pure academics, prcs rule the basketball courts, the chinese cultural societies and the elite science clubs.

Ever befuddled by this phenomenon? well there are many reasons, and here are some i dare suggest.

Red China is very big

Even without taiwan, oops, ROC, PRC already numbers around 1.3 billion people. if ur indian, that's 130 crore. heck, taiwan wont even matter. since there are so many people and these who have been selected are selected based on merit, then they must be le creme de la creme and possibly the best or at least among the best that the People have to offer. clearly these people fall within the wee percentage of percentages, and absolute number for number they must generally be better than the same fractal of people they contend with. so they are better.

the counter to this is that there are many people who come self funded. well, there are wussy prcs that do not get 120/100 for all their math tests. but those that can pay their passage to get here safely on a plane and not a little sampan must already know something. exclude the premium genes and sharp acumen that they could have inherited from their o so wise parents who ship them over to the land of the more-free.

They are older

they benefit from the maturity that comes with age and a few more trips around the sun. most are older and such can benefit from the wealth of at least 1 years experience. and this helps them a lot. their brains are more developed, to add to their brilliance.

They've studied the stuffs in prc

english might be a barrier for them, but seriously, how many subjects require a good grasp of her majesty's language? as long as their english can function, physics, chemistry and maths should not be a problem. to compound this, they have already studied quite a bit of this back home under mao's portrait. right. maybe they didnt exactly study maclaurins series and what not, but when they came in sec 3, they were sort of repeating a year, so they have a stronger and better foundation. whereas stragglers like me keep getting pushed up and out by the institution, these people 'relearn' their stuff and hone their math skills to allow them to achieve greater heights. (auspicium melioris aevi)

They have nothing to do but mug

well this is obviously the strongest of my points. the least fallible of them all.

most prcs who come to singapore come by themselves, without a family. as such, they do not have to set aside family time apart from that rare call home to their mommas. 'da er zi hau xinku ah'. their weekends are void of such family commitments, allowing them to indulge themselves, 'basic physical chemistry' in one hand and a gay pink highlighter in the other.

well they have friends. interesting counter. thank you for this interesting point. however when they come to singapore, most of them get posted with their lao xiangs. they get posted to the same school. if u had seen them for one whole week, wont get sian meh? id foam if i have to see the same faces nearly all of my waking hours.

besides, comrades have the same vision, same goal, same want. theyd all just come together and spend quality time bonding over tetrahedral, planar, seesaw and what not, with a gay pink highlighter in one hand. together, they can discover the intricacies of the building blocks of the universe, and boyfriends and girlfriends, prcs of course, relish the trip they take down the brief history of time. stephen hawkings not a prc, but nevermind.

it is also important to note that if they have friends, locals have friends too. but i digress.

well a zhenan once said he got many external stuffs to commit too. he goes out pretty often, he shoots a fair bit, he has ydsp, he has lianhe zaobao and a plethora of commitments.

simply put, he is atypical. which prc gets C for gp? if i were a prc and i got a C i would be so happy id drape the china flag and do a victory lap around the track like liuxiang did during the olympics. look around. half the prcs are active in two ccas. two is already being very charitable to them, and invariably one of them is chinese society and the other a science club. yes, one or two have shooting, wushu, council, red cross. but one or two. they are anomalies. and their results show it. they dont get the perfect scores that we know they know we believe they should get.

they have all the time in the world to mug. excluding their good genes and their endurance, clearly the uneven playing field favors them. they have a headstart, they wank over math, clearly they gain the upperhand over us.

that's all.