Alas, the school semester is officially over – a week and a half ago in fact. What followed the end of semester is pure localized mayhem. All SMU students rejoiced for joy, not to the fact that school is out, but in accordance to the fact that study week had begun. Ah good old study week. The library is finally opened 24/7 – and that gets all SMU students excited to the point of climax. To us, 24/7 library = 1 week nonstop zoukout(in the library), without the alcohol (well for most part). We do everything (and I mean everything) in the library during beloved study week – our fair share of study, we eat, we drink coffee, we shit and dirty the toilets completely, we bring sleeping bags and sleep on the tables, and we exercise by walking around and socializing and telling other people we’re gonna get destroyed by our papers when we secretly feel that anything less than an A is an absolute appalling piece of rubbish for a grade. I remember it oh so clearly – it was Tuesday morning, and the vending machines had run out of red bull. what. the. fuck. Actually come to think of it, maybe I should have my own energy drink. The SMU GEORGE KUAH ENERGY DRINK. Allows you to be fucking awesome, just like me. It allows you to act like a cool professional student (like me), it allows you to make the dean’s list your bitch (like me), it allows you to maintain near perfect GPA (like me), it allows you to pimp out your resume (like me). What a brilliant idea; SMU culture in a bottle. To be the best, drink the best.

Now its exam week (how time flies), and exam week is like the NBA playoffs. You have to be in full swing with no inertia. There is no insurance to cover your perils of not spending 22 hours a day studying and the other 2 hours sleeping on the toilet bowl in the library. There is no hedging against the likes of George Kuah (this is subjective – if you’re a business student then kudos to your extra chance of pulling an A+ out of your ass, if you’re an accounting student then HAHA CAUSE MY A+ means I just fucked you over with the existence of an overall curve). Get your tracksuits on, tie up those laces tight cause it’s game time – No time for life, family or friends; there’s only time for ratios, analysis, slides, cheat sheets and the SMU GEORGE KUAH energy drink. Once this exam period is over, we will all heave a sigh of relief and carry on with our glorious lives and make the absolute fucking best of our holiday time – and that means spending december working as a fucking awesome intern in a fucking awesome MNC, where theres no time for life, family or friends. But hey, what to do? DO YOU WANT TO GET HIRED BY MORGAN STANLEY OR NOT?

 

It has come to my attention that a certain group of SMU students were unhappy that there were Mid Terms held on the day of Deepavali. Now, I know I said that there are no breaks here in the premier school, but there’s a line that needs to be drawn. When the school erases that line, they effectively erase any sliver of a reputation of care and concern for their students. Not that I expected much more of them – the beast of a culture that they’ve inculcated, fitting more and more students in a single seminar room year on year – it’s quite clear that this school is run first and foremost a business and a brand. But as a brand, I’m surprised that they let something so clearly wrong slip, as I’m sure word will get around to the national papers and it’s only a matter of time before you see this issue in the forum pages of the newspapers (there’s an email of complaint floating around facebook).

Big swinging timer me feels for you, and the hindrance that stood in your way of enjoying Deepavali. Super awesome me still loves my super awesome school, but George Kuah also loves his pineapple tarts, and especially so during a festive period that it is most associated with. If they had mid terms on Chinese New Year day one or two, I would personally bring a bottle of pineapple tarts to the Office of Student Life on that day, and personally shove them up each and every living organism’s arse in that office. But oh wait, they wouldn’t be there on a public holiday – they’ve got no mid terms.

Here’s the email that was floating around the internet.

To Whom It May Concern
RE: Request for Secular Policy in SMU

We are a group of students who feel that SMU has been discriminatory with the practice of holding mid-term exams and events on October 17th, Saturday, on the day of Deepavali . Deepavali, as you might know, is a significant religious celebration for Indian ethnic groups such as the Hindus, Jains and Sikhs.On that Saturday, mid-term exams were held for a number of courses. This is a clear violation of an ethnic group’s freedom to celebrate their religious event without having academic requirements imposed on them. More so, we wonder how such events could be sanctioned on a designated and statutory Public Holiday. While it may be the individual professors who chose the day and date, the Registrar’s Office should not have approved of the dates. Chinese New Year this year, we were given the option of cancelling classes on Chinese New Year’s Eve while quizzes and course-tests were postponed. We were also given a lighter workload in lieu of the celebrations. We sincerely request a similar consideration for our traditional festival so that we too can enjoy the celebrations without the academic obligations weighing down on us.

Another issue is events such as SMU Broadcast and Entertainment (SMUBE)’s Voice Personality Hunt (VPH) held on Deepavali. There were Indians participating in the event and Indians helping out in organization and preparation. We understand from representatives of SMUBE that the venue was booked and sponsors sought for the event before they realized it was Deepavali day. However it is likely that approval of such an event was given by was SMU’s various offices (Registrar’s Office, Office of Student Life) and we simply ask for the approving authorities to watch out for such important dates.

We understand that this year there was the possibility of Deepavali falling on either of two separate dates. However, any religion that follows the Lunar calendar has these peculiarities. It is the role of SMU to check, either with Indian colleagues or otherwise, so that school exams and events do not clash with religious celebrations. We urge the University to or re-look or change its policies with regards to secular issues and implement racially-fairer policies (no exams, events, less workload) during times of religious celebration. Having a slogan – “World is Our Camp us” – which captures the ethnic and cultural diversity of your students; we look forward to your positive action to reinforce this sentiment. We look forward to hearing from you soon. You can contact us at any of the following e-mail adresses.

Thank you.

It’s that time of the semester again; crunch time. Final papers, quizzes, project deadlines and project presentations plague our final one third of the semester. But as an SMU student I love to brag about crunch time, because asymmetrical information leads me to believe that there aren’t many other companies and institutions out there that go through such a busy few weeks like us. Friends and family have to constantly listen to how busy we are, and how stressed we are whilst we’re insinuating that we absolutely love the glorious heavy bout of work.

Presentations; its all about presentations. About the art, the technique, and the beauty of putting up a great presentation whilst dissecting bad presentations and destroying them in front of the whole class. When George Kuah steps up to the plate and is on the hot seat in front of the entire seminar room, George Kuah turns on super saiyan mode. The swagger and the confidence exudes from me, a swagger and confidence that stems from the fact that the SMU trait of believing that I’m better than everyone else is emblazoned on my heart. I apply everything that I learned in Communications class when I was a freshman, as well as the methods that I have learnt from the big time big shot awesome Cognitare training over the years. I talk with a voice that goes boomz, am clear and concise, and I try to use technical financial terms (no matter what class it is, it could be Spanish class for all I care) to let the audience know that George Kuah means “don’t play play”. And as a personal touch, I speak with an accent – but don’t worry, only during presentations (and when I’m participating in class). This magical accent that I suddenly conjure up every time I feel necessary, has no standard origin. It sounds like a mix of Donald Trump and Nanny Fine, with a touch of Michael Jackson and Winnie the Pooh. You might think it’s pretentious, but I assure you that it sounds oh so much more professional, especially with exchange students and/or a foreign professor. And lets not forget slamming other presentations, a deep tradition in our university’s history. Let nothing pass, leave no stone unturned. Wikipedia and google every damn thing that comes out of the mouth of other groups’ presenters, and you will find an angle for criticism. Have a calculator to calculate any dubious looking mathematical figures on the slides, and fire questions with a frown on your face. Snipe them down, and do it well. It’s like George Kuah perpetually holds an imaginary Counterstrike Arctic Warfare Sniper rifle in class – I’m the real Frederick Zoeller of presentation criticism. (I would give you a better sniper character comparison for you to identify with but Zoeller sounds so right, but then again, chances are, you wouldn’t know who Frederick Z0eller is because you haven’t watched Inglorious basterds on the movie screens because you’re an SMU student and the only screens that you watch are the bloomberg ones.)

Presentations might not count for a massive grade, but it projects both your professionalism and skill in SMU. The basic assumption of bad presenter = not capable = GPA <3.2 = bad reputation holds much truth, and seriously now, can you afford to have a bad reputation in a reputation sensitive school like ours?

It’s break week here at SMU. But what break? There are no breaks. We go hard all semester long. Go hard or go home. The GSRs were full last Sunday, and they’ve stayed full ever since. George Kuah, in truth, is the embodiment of all that is hardcore about our beloved SMU. Look at that lion on our school logo. Fierce; fucking fierce. Just like all of us students here – fucking fierce.

Everyone’s taking this break week as an opportunity to get up to speed with studying for whatever remaining mid-terms there are; as well as to try to jump start upcoming projects, with complete disregard for fellow group members social lives. In the minds of all of us who have blue, white and gold blood flowing through our veins, break week = no official school classes = additional time to come to school to do nothing and act cool cause our social lives have been completely eradicated = a general perception that break week really means break balls week = 17,4289 scheduled meetings for school related purposes just because.

But what divides the average (already high and mighty) SMU student from the likes of George Kuah is that I have the perfect combination of smarts and knowing how to work smart. You see I know that the variance of project grades do not have massive influxes and swings, therefore group projects don’t affect your grades as much as exams do (yes that’s right, projects are overhyped). And that is why, I mug and mug for my own personal welfare, giving it a full 150 percent effort, and not giving a 100 percent effort towards group projects, letting my group members do more work than me. But I camouflage this by acting like a big shot big time boss of the group when I need to show my group members that I have good leadership capabilities. When called into action, I evaluate the other group members work and excel sheets, giving them my analysis of the good and bad, my cognitare like criticism of their low quality powerpoint slides, and ending off with recommendations – which allows me to show off a range of good consulting skills (bain and BCG, if you’re reading please take note). Then I send out emails telling people what good jobs they’ve been doing and praising them, whilst making sure to CC the Prof. Now, if you look at the bigger picture, I do 20 % of the amount of work and effort that the other group members put in, but I still get the same grade. Which gives me leverage over my own group members when it comes to exams as I technically have had more time to study and soak in all the knowledge from my McGraw-Hill textbooks.

Sly and ruthless you might say. But the A+ is mine, and that my friends, is what’s important in this university society of mine. Nothing else really matters. Let us not forget, that the M in SMU stands for management – we are essentially a Management school after all, and what that really means, is that I come to school to learn to tell other people what to do in a nice way, without them thinking I’m a bum.

“I study Management” = “I learn how to give instructions to other people without me having to do any real work”

Phew, thank the high heavens for a long weekend. Poor old me is feeling the strain of school. No la, not the schoolwork kind of strain (seriously us high flyers – yes they call us high flyers, don’t get stressed by school work, we just say so to act cool and to be charitable so that we can seem more human to the rest of the clowns), but muscle strain. That’s right, big fuck me kena muscle strain. Let me explain the series of unfortunate events and catalogue the fateful timeline that led to the collapse of my muscle – My calf muscle, to be exact.

But first, let me take you through my regular class routine as a high flyer big timer can’t accept no A minuses SMU student. I come to class on time (not early as I don’t want to look like a nerd) and sit in the middle row of the middle column of seats. Once again, sitting in the middle row facilitates my intention of “blending” in with the rest of the class, to not stand out too much like a nerd (front row) and to not be branded a 3.2 gpa and below rebel (back row). Then I snap open my IBM monster machine ( must be IBM, otherwise your excel sheets don’t look half as cool) and open up my slides for the class (yes, downloaded the night before in good preparation), followed by four tabs on my web browser – one for facebook cause I’m so popular that I get constant flows of friend invites and wall messages, another for Bloomberg news, another for school email, and lastly a browser tab for wikipedia, in case I need quick knowledge to answer any questions posed by the professor or the class because class participation separates the cream of the crop from the losers of SMU. Oh, and my stock market tracker as well – I know people to my left and right are peering at my screen, and I need to maintain my big time big shot I know I’ll be a fucking awesome trader image. Then I sit back, and pay attention via my ears, whilst reading all the latest Bloomberg news with my eyes, another example of my world class multi-tasking capabilities. One of the next two scenarios will then follow: 1. If it’s a Finance class, I tend to engage the professor in deep financial hoo hah talk, floating words that 3.4 and below can’t even spell. Or 2. If it’s a marketing slash elective course, I sit back, wait till someone makes a stupid comment, and then retaliate with a wonderful piece of class participation that would just put the other person to shame, causing him/her to think he/she is a complete loser, and plunging them into fear that their grades will disappear into the abyss. The call for the mid class break, or the signal for the end of the class are two of THE MOST important times of a class period. Because all awesome students make sure they rush to talk to the Prof so as to curry favor act big and talk cock in hopes that the grade would be secured or a TA’s position might be on its way – its always good to be a teacher’s pet in SMU – or should I say, Professor’s dawg.

There are always a number of students who rush to talk to the Prof, so in order to ensure that I always have a spot, Mr 4.0 GPA me has been going to the school gym over the past two years, doing exercises and short sprints to give myself practice for the dash to see Prof at break or when class ends. To pack up and dash to talk to the Prof takes skill – a skill that I glady have honed.

Anyway, that last bit, was the major cause of the downfall of the George Kuah calf muscle. No one knows the prior causes of strain, it might be too much salty Koufu food, or it might be too much essence of chicken in the morning, but last Friday during one of my classes, when the Professor bellowed the words “That’s it for this week”, I peered to the corner of my eye to see Brady Tan Sheng Shiong peering back at me, both of us with the same thought in our minds – get to Prof first. I packed up in a flash, he did too, and I jumped out of my chair and was on the steps, when a lunge of my left leg caused severe pain. I felt to the ground with a thud, one of the very few times suave SMU me has been humiliated in public. But the pain was doubled by the fact that Brady got to Prof first. Curses. Curse all these big timer wannabes. They don’t know who they’re dealing with.

Wow im so fucking tired. I just got back from a weekend away scouting out a timber plantation in South East Asia and I’m glad I’ve learnt so much. I want to show you that my GPA is so good that I can just take a weekend overseas, learning and proving to all the people around me that I am capable of “learning” outside of school but during the school term. I learnt a lot about timber, and the pulp and paper industry, and I think there’s a bright future for the industry, although it has some way to go. I see a future for myself in it also, because I’m a big fuck, and I am more capable than just investment banking. I can cook, I can study, I can play guitar, I can play yo-yo, I can calculate poker odds within two and a quarter of a second, I can speak seventeen languages – all of which show that I am very adaptable. Which is one of my 7 traits of why anyone should hire me. Yes, SMU and the powers that be have been good enough to me to provide me with the super awesome and very necessary interviewing skills which makes me rehearse my answers so well that most employers actually think I’m being robotic and an actor, but it’s alright, I’m still a big enough fuck to get past the interview with my big time analysis of the advantages and disadvantages of DCF and FCF, which to be honest, is right on the money.

But let me get back to timber and it being, in my mind, a sub-commodity. Put aside tree reserves and shit. Put aside the amount of cash flow that it has generated historically. Lets think about the assumptions being made about timber production. Can we really get a certain amount every month? What strategies are in place to ensure that there are sufficient trees for long termed goals? What are the relevant costs for a year round operational timber mill? What are the current highlighted risks that are associated with this industry, both macro and micro? Is the infrastructure needed to support the mills in place in the designated country? So many outlets for risks; my brain is oozing with questions, and I just wanted to let the world know my thought processes because I’m way too smart for the average joe, and by writing out the questions, you would know that my G.P.A is fucking legit baby. I don’t mean to brag, but really, maybe 1 % of Singapore and SMU actually think in this manner.

But sad to say, George Kuah is hurting right now, and hurting real bad. My SMU girlfriend has left me for a person with a lower GPA. The horror! Lower GPA! I hide in shame. It’s like getting fucked over by James Lye for a Morgan Stanley Private Wealth Management job. It’s like being a girl in the Miss Singapore World contest and losing to Ris Low and her Zipbra preen top. It put me on edge.First time in four years in this school that I’ve experienced true heartbreak. I just don’t understand it – what’s wrong with me? I printed out my resume and showed it to her and asked her to reconsider, but she refused. I pointed to my perfect GPA, I pointed to my work experience, I cried and told her it doesn’t get any better that this on paper, and paper is all that matters! I know I have an ugly face, but I’m so damn bloody smart, and my future is brighter and shinier than Thaman’s bald head. My life is in such shatter that I think I might have to go drink some hard liquor at Ice Cold Beer every evening and act cool and melancholic, and maybe some PRC scholar girl with a high GPA would take pity on me and pick me up, and I can get my life back on track.

But lessons in life have to be learnt. Chasing girls in SMU is like running a business. You get a girlfriend, but the possibility of heartache causes it to never be a matured asset, but always an account receivable. Unfortunately, there is high risk that this account receivable will turn sour and turn into bad debts. So proper risk management needs to be in place in order to reduce the exposure and probability of this occurrence. And that’s why, I’m on my way to the pet shop after this to buy a dog, which I shall name, mista vista.

So you thought I was gone, but that’s not quite true.

So the semester is back in effect, and in full swing to be precise. But then again, we’re talking about SMU – first day of the first week will already be considered “in full swing”. It feels so good to be back in school – the heat is on; I feel like I’m a part of a season of Apprentice that lasts four fucking years. I think by now I don’t have to tell you that I know I’m the hot fucking favorite to win. How I’ve missed school and my  favorite way cool hangout spot. I’m talking about the one, the only, gem and pride of stamford road, the wonderful SMU library. Library for the win. Library > Zouk. hands down. I die die must go to the library every day, whenever I get the chance to do so. Why? I can’t put my finger on it, it’s just a super cool place where you get to spot the who’s who of SMU and its human nature to just want some attention. I want to be seen in the library. I want to wave at all the girls I know and be seen doing so. I want to let all the freshmen know whats up when they see me lift my chin like a seal towards fellow colleagues, classmates and acquaintances. The library is now more crowded on a daily basis than Mambo night. Gone are the days when I can walk my walk and talk my talk and swagger into the Library and get a nice cosy little seat. Come past eleven in the morning and I might have to queue for a fucking seat. Irritation central. But since the library is so cool but so damn crowded, solutions must be in place to ensure that the growth of SMU as a business and the growth of SMU students GPA all around does not stagnate. Sufficient risk management should be in place to diversify the strategic and operation risks to reduce the objective probability of loss, and to maintain our stranglehold as the premier school in Singapore. Oh by the way did I mention that becoming an Investment banker isn’t viewed as being so top notch cool anymore? There’s been a swift wind of change in the mindset of the fucking cool SMU student. Since the IB trend tanked with the rise of the credit crunch, all SMU students suddenly have a new similar mindset that Investment banking is like Michael Jackson songs after his death – that’s right, overplayed, overfuckingplayed. Now everyone is scrambling for something “else”. And as you can tell from my sentences earlier on in this paragraph, super duper awesome me thinks that Risk Management is the coolest thing to do now. Risk Management is THE shit right now. It’s like lady gaga, the butter factory and the SMU Banking and Finance Interest Group altogether. Its the trendy thing. And big shots like me are early adopters when it comes to trends (Yup Marketing 101 rentention is in the house). We blaze the trail for all laggards. Anyway back to recommended solutions for the school library. School should start a fucking awesome members area in the library, exactly like how the clubs do it. Membership can only be attained via being a Dean’s Lister, cause only Dean’s Listers are cool. This would ensure that big shot future potential trader banker accountant consultant lawyer engineer consumer banker engineer engineer engineer nurse constantly gets seats so as to be able to ensure the maximum opportunity to fulfill our big shot potential. Seventy percent of the library population is on their laptops playing mafia wars or blogshopping or soccernet.com or acting cool by having bloomberg.com up on their screens but have arms folded and head asleep. It doesn’t take a George Kuah to project that these people have a big fat GPA<3.2 written on their foreheads. Go hard or go home.

And don’t even get me started on the Group Study Rooms. Fucking awesome me was back in school two Saturdays ago to retrieve some items from my locker, when I took a look around and realized that a whopping 80 percent of GSRs were full! Fucking hell. End of the second week and already everyone is either mugging or pretending to mug (but then again if you’re really doing this on a saturday afternoon in school when there shouldnt be anyone around to see you act cool then you must be the biggest fucking loser I’ve ever heard of). I guess big hot shot me is going to have some competition from now onwards. What can I say, everyone wants to be me. Everyone wants to be George Kuah.

lets slow down for a second here. I’m not trying to “tarnish” a good name like SMU. I love my school, and I’m proud of many aspects of it. However, I’m not completely lying, and I’m not completely telling the truth when it comes to what I write. I might write with a tad bit of exaggeration, but everything I write about, I’ve heard it from someone else in school more than once. These are not mythical – these are real perceptions from real SMU students who have time and time again mumbled these certain issues under their breaths; just with a little bit more gun powder. Would anyone take notice otherwise? Come on, deep down inside you know what you read from this page holds some relevance to more than 5 people you know around you in school. You know I’m not bullshitting you completely. SMU provides bloody fantastic education, I dare say more planned out than any other local institution, but what students make of it is a completely different matter altogether. I might just shut down this page, cause some people can’t handle the bad bits of truth, but then again, I might not, cause I might enjoy it.

I’ve got a semester left to graduate and it feels like my work here in SMU is done. I’ve conquered everything that SMU students hold near and dear to their hearts. I’ve gotten my near(ahem) perfect GPA, I’m on the dean’s list, I rock out with my cock out being in cognitare, I did 3 internships (yes, every summer because working 9 to 9 is bloody fucking cool) with the last one being an awesomely respected Barclays sales and trading position that paid me good money, I’ve been TA many times, I’ve been in tonnes of CCA EXCOs, I have an SMU girlfriend, I am respected and feared in the classroom, and I am in SMUSA. Before I move on, let me tell you that being in SMUSA is orgasmic. You get branding, people think you have power, and it just sounds like an awfully important position – perfect for a big fuck in school, like me. What exactly does SMUSA do? I can’t tell you… or rather, I don’t think we have real functions. All I remember doing is giving out ice cream, cotton candy and popcorn to smu kids hanging around the library during study break period before exams, like a homeless welfare shelter providing food for the forsaken. And that’s about all I remember about SMUSA. Come to think of it, easy work whilst having the title VICE PRESIDENT OF THE SMU STUDENT ASSOCIATION (which sounds oh so fucking important and allows me to splash it all over my big fucking awesome styled resume) is not too shabby a deal at all. Plus lets think of the way I got elected. I splashed big fucking posters all over the school, with my face photoshopped with some transformer body and megan fox bouncing up and down in the background. Oh and yeah, ask my friends to vote lor (im popular so this means I’m going to win). Easy peasy, and SMU students are dumb enough to not realize that I don’t have a stand or viewpoint or anything on my marketing material nor did I say that I was going to make their lives better by joining SMUSA. They just like my head on a transformers body. But enough with the big digression, and back to me conquering everything that life in SMU has to offer.

I’ve decided to…. here’s a big one… finally live the good life in SMU. It might sound perplexing, especially with the amount of things that I have managed to accomplish here in school. But I want to have outright fun for once during university. A real standard of fun, not the SMU hang out in the library play dota and act cool kind of fun, but something that anyone in and out of SMU context can enjoy. SMU is located in an amazing location, with fascinating things surrounding the campus, but I have never gone. Most fellow students haven’t gone. There’s the Art Museum, the National Museum, Rendezvous Nasi Padang, Cathay Cinemas, Fort Canning, and so much more. But I’ve never gone during school semesters. It’s not that I have no interest, but the SMU culture has made me prioritize my grades and my potential career over everything else. It’s a massive social pressure isn’t it? It’s all about perceptions. Going to Museum=not present in school library=not studying hard enough=lousy grades=no one wants to do project with you=no friends=go to museum yourself holding hands with your own penis. SMU students have very strong mental power; everyone in school is like Jean Grey from the X-men, with their mental visualization of their perceptions (like the one I mentioned above), they create an imaginary vortex of a force field that encapsulates the school compound, not allowing students to venture beyond the grounds. Cross the lines and you are mentally taken to face Pontius pilot and the jews- which is everyone in school.

So now that I’m almost done with this school, and I’m such a big fuck in school, whats more big fuck then saying fuck you all, I don’t fear you anymore, I’m a level 90 elvish beastmaster and I hold the sword of a thousand truths. Fuck I sound so damn cool don’t I.

The bi-annual process of bidding for courses in SMU rages on until the start of the term, but obviously being a guy known for being fucking awesome at a lot of things in the SMU context, I am completely unfazed, as being fucking pro at bidding for courses is yet another one of my specialties. Of course, I always get my courses in the first round of bidding without fail. Being a future big shot investment banker, and a fucking awesome SMU student, I always do the necessary extensive research to make sure my goal of getting all my courses whilst ensuring the saving of E-dollars (this is what SMU kids use to bid) makes me a fucking awesome course bidder. I always collate historical data of the previous three years bidding price history of the courses that I’m interested in, then I extrapolate them to Microsoft Excel, where I create worksheets and run multiple regressions and intensive stress testing of my collated historical data, creating three scenarios of a bull, base and bear case, and putting the finishing touches to the process by using these three scenarios to run a full in-depth scenario analysis. From the results, I will always get an estimated price which has a 99 percent confidence level of being in the bottom 10 percent of prices that succeeds in getting the course. All this to ensure two things – that I get my courses and have my perfect awesome timetable so that I can be TA for 7 other courses, and to maximize the usage of my e-dollars, saving excess that would have been used in unnecessary higher bidding prices. You might ask why I’m saving these E-dollars for. Truth is I don’t really know myself, but I like to brag to other fellow SMU students that I got all my classes, and still have $200 over E-dollars, when most of them are e-dollar broke after each bidding session. It makes me feel fucking awesome about myself – Just another one of those things to accentuate my big fuck status in school. George Kuah, fucking big shot, world class course bidder. Sounds good; steam. All SMU students play the “let’s try to make the other SMU student feel inadequate” game, and I’m the Barcelona FC of it. Lebron James and I share the same nick name cause I’m that fucking sweet.

You know how bidding works in SMU – you know it’s that time of the year when your mobile phone rings nonstop (some of you might not experience this because you either have no friends or you have a gpa under 3.2, which means you suck at life and no one wants to do projects with you) with different people asking you what you are going to bid for and what your schedule is, and how much your bid is etc; and also if you want to bid together and form project groups ASAP, rather than have to analyze through a crowd of jokers on the first day of class and pick out the least rotten clowns of the bunch to have as group mates. We SMU students are serious; so fucking serious about our project groups. Go ahead and laugh, but let’s see who has the last laugh when we get our fucking A plus plus with extra credit and you get your lousy A minus. So awesome me, like many others in SMU, prefers to have the project group tied down by the end of the bidding period. But of course, I only group with the best. GPAs 3.8 or better. Every time I form a group we’re guaranteed the A plus plus. We’d be like, the holy trinity of the Boston Celtics, or the new Real Madrid with Kaka, Ronaldo and Benzema. We’re like Google teaming up with Yahoo AND Microsoft, with the appeal of Apple. We’re Team Fucking Awesome. And we love to square off with other groups of big fucks to know that we’re ultimate. Two semesters ago, I gathered some of the best big fuck minds I knew for a group for Corporate Reporting. Shady Sim, a fellow master of presentation in Cognitare, Ranachan Pattacharn Piyapong Niu Nai, a Thai scholar with a mean work ethic and good enough English, Marvin Wong the Microsoft Excel God, and Betsy Soh, who had decent grades but she was quite hot and was used mainly for data entry and prettying up powerpoint slides. With them as group mates I couldn’t be beat. We were definite A plus plus material. I remember walking down the hallway to class with them, I can still see it. We had the extra swagger – we were like, the Justice League – Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman and the likes. Reverance was upon us. We’d bump into my arch nemesis Roger Cheah and his cronies of the SMU big fuck syndrome, eye ball each other whilst greeting each other in the most superficial of manners, and once again, I smirked and all I could think in my head was “Mess with the best, die like the rest”. Of course, we got the A plus plus and not them.

Now its back to the future, with new project groups formed one and a half month before the start of school, and we’re all ready to make an assault on the grades. It’s lonely at the top of the Dean’s List.