Model Alumnus

The cemented roundabout, which unambiguously laid flat under the blazing Singapore sun, was sopping wet, as though drenched in its own perspiration. As I was ogling at the seemingly odd and random occurrence, I heard a hissing noise coming from a nearby tap in which an elongated plastic gardening hose was loosely fixed. It took a bit more of common sense and time to mentally process and understand what the hell was going on, although I would admit that there came a certain point where I simply questioned my own sanity, thinking that the water leak was just an ordinary mirage, an aquatic apparition, or a soggy figment of my imagination.

I scouted the vicinity with my two eyes and found no sign of human existence. At two in the afternoon, under a weather as blistering as a rope burn or hot as a scantily-clad group of college undergrads by the beach, it was understandable that even the most highly-pigmented human beings had to take refuge inside the air-conditioned rooms. Being the most environtment-conscious ex-student/die-hard-alumnus that I am and have always been, I crossed the sea of precious water like Moses – the only difference being that I simply stepped and walked over it with my four year-old Chucks while he had to part a huge ass body of water with his wooden staff – and closed the regurgitating tap until not a single tiny drop leaked out from the mouth of the hose which appeared – to my lewd fascination – to have lost its turgidity the moment the gushing water came to a standstill. I stooped up straight, folded my hands, looked up, and beamed a smile of satisfaction at Saint Jean-Baptiste de la Salle who happily stood with two little children up on the gleaming white façade of the school building.