Two Friday ago, in sympathy with the children of T&T who, four Thursdays ago, sat the Secondary Entrance Assessment examination, I began an SEA sample test. (I've been doing the SEA "in the papers" since around 1990, and am yet to pass for a "prestige school.") I failed the mathematics two weeks ago, almost as spectacularly as I nixed the "Language Arts" last Friday. Today I take my last shot at getting into QRC via the essay.
Since there would be no challenge in writing a children's essay for a grownup paid to do it every Friday for decades, I usually try to make it harder on myself. The three choices today are taken from the Guardian's last practice test.
COMPOSITION
1. A relative abroad asks what you usually do at home to relax when you have finished your school work. Write a letter replying, naming at least two activities and describing how these have assisted you in relaxing.
2. Write a story describing at least three situations in which you thought that you were a good son or daughter to your parents.
3. You have received a gift of money that can buy either an expensive video game or a plane ticket. Write a letter to a friend stating how you feel about receiving such a gift and giving reasons why you would choose either the game or the plane ticket. I could combine the topics in one essay, as in previous years, but I reckon it would add more to the challenge/potential humour if I wrote all three separately this time, and used public figures and MPs as the writers and addressees of the letters, and drew the story characters from local public life. (I assume the story must be written in the third person, despite confusing instructions.)
So.
Dear Vidwatie
When you ask, darling sister, what relaxes me at home (like you already know what relaxes me when I'm travelling!), I find it easy to tell you, such is the natural bond between sisters, worth far more than a mere million dollars-and that's not even checking the air miles! When I have thoroughly perused all the preparatory papers for Cabinet and minutely reviewed in fine detail all necessary position papers, and when I'm done skimming quickly through the State of Emergency declaration, there are two activities that really bring peace to me. The first is the setting out of glasses of nice drinks for people to enjoy. As the mood takes me, I might mix five glasses of orange juice, or five of fresh tomato juice, or maybe five of cranberry juice. Sometimes, they look too dark, and I may add a thinner of some sort, just to bring these pretty drinks to the right hue. That is the first activity that makes me relaxed. The second activity, which I find far more relaxing, is to wash these same glasses holding the orange, tomato or cranberry juice until they are spotlessly clean and sparkling. It gives me so much pleasure and I am thoroughly relaxed by the end. It seems such a shame to waste all that juice when there are so many thirsty children in sub-Saharan Africa, that I feel duty-bound to drink the juice, so as not to waste it. It's not nearly as relaxing as the washing and the filling of the glasses, but one must do one's duty.
Take care
Kamz
The Good Hindu Son
From the time Sat did know heself, Sat did know he uses to be a Hindu. Even as a boy, Sat was a Hindu. In fact of the matter, Sat was a Hindu baby, a Hindu pregnancy, a Hindu foetus and all, right down to his Hindu zygote self. Sat learn that from he father. Not he physical father so much as he spirit-you-al father, he father-in-law, the late great Bhadase, who wasn't so much a Hindu or a Indian man as he was a real man. Bhadase drag sand from Car-Oh-Knee Swamp and turn it into a truck, then turn that truck to a transportation company, and then he carry away the Federal elections and all. Sat didn't understand everything way Bhadase was trying to do, but Sat follow enough to understand this: if is what the Hindu and them say to do, it bound to be the right thing. The fuss thing the good Hindu son did do, what make he Hindu parents proud, Sat get a radio licen for Hindu. Sat had was to go all the way to Privy Council to get it, but he went through hard. Second thing, Sat stop any pantyline in teacher skirt. No Sah! Not in a Hindus school. But Sat parents did real proud of him when, ignoring all the ignorant mouthing off of people who doesn't understand Hindu culture, Sat stand up for the right of the Hindu community to marry 14-years-old girls to big hardback man. If was your son, you woulda proud, too.
Dear Joao,
I was, of course, horrified, of course, to hear it described as a bribe of an airline ticket or expensive video game. These were, of course, merely suggestions. If you receive a gift, must you not accept it? Where is the wrongdoing? I did not ask for the airline ticket or expensive video game. But, if I must choose, I prefer to have someone give me a whole building.
Mines truly
Jack
BC Pires is done with the SEA. Read more of his writing at www.BCraw.com