Back to school

I remember the day I received my diploma. I was happy that I could move on to the next stage, just like when you were nine, you eagerly waited for your tenth birthday so that your age became double digit. I was in my new home in Boston by mid afternoon on the day of the commencement and I thought that marked the end of school life and the beginning of my life as a working adult. My working life didn't really have anything to do with school in the first 10 years or so. When everyone was talking about going back to school to get an MBA, I was like "They gotta be crazy!"

Just when I was totally convinced that I didn't have to deal with schools anymore. I got thrown back into the whole school scene again and I was shocked.

Changunnie will be turning three in about a month. In Hong Kong, it means she can go to K1 in September this year. Schools don't go knock on your door to offer you a place. In fact, parents are supposed to run around like headless chicken, read up all the "About Our School" and "Our Philosophy" on each school's website and write long winded essays to talk about how great their children are. We have done round 1 for those schools that accept kids below age 4 to start K1 and we will need to do it again for schools that only accept kids who turned 4 when the start K1 in couple months. I thought the tough part was done. I was so wrong about it.

The first school (let's just call it the Pretzel School) held a parents information day yesterday morning. It's a school that takes in about 60 kids each year and about 75% go there with a corporate debenture. We got to the school hall about 10 minutes late but there were over 300 parents already. The presentation had already started but I managed to get the key message "Your children will be assessed based on how good their English is. We need to work with children who can understand us. Parents are strongly recommended to speak to your children in English in the next few weeks leading up to the assessment day. You should read story with them." So, it'll be bootcamp for Changunnie in the next few weeks. If there's a language problem at home, it's not her English but rather her reluctance to use any non-English language. What do they want from kids who are barely 3? Are they supposed to play scrabbles and know how to score higher points by using double word and triple word? Or they should be so evolved that they need to know how to block someone from using double word in the last round??

Parents were very enthusiastic during the Q&A session and everyone got a question except us. The only thing I wanted to ask was whether there's enough sports facility for the kids as the school will operate on other premises in the new few years due to renovation of the campus. And I wasn't exactly thrilled at the 7:30am - 12:30 pm schedule. It means Changunnie has to wake up at 5:30 every day for school.

There will be an assessment in March and we will also be there to meet the teachers. I just have a strong feeling that it will be a Curb Your Enthusiasm episode....