An Economics Lesson

Being told to use specific economical terms to write a story about a boy, my classmates and I came up with this within the stipulated time period:

Once upon a time, there was a boy named Muthusamy Karupiah. He asked his mother for some money. He said, “I demand some money!”

His mother said, “No dear, the current economic status of the country is undergoing inflation because the supply of natural resources is limited. The National Income is facing a major crisis. The price of fabric has increased, so we don’t get much revenue from selling our underwear. The quantity of underwear is limited. It costs a lot to buy underwear, so we can’t make much profit. Muthusamy Karupiah, you should take Economics classes at ATC.”

Muthusamy said, “Oh maaaan.”

Paradox

A far-fetched dream,

Dissolving into the emptiness of reality.

A trickling, flowing stream,

Softening into the chamber of thought.

An icy-cold rain,

Melting into the solidity of warmth.

A heart-sharpened pain,

Liquefying into the medicines of time.

A silently whispered name,

Blending into the divinity of vibrations.

A temperamental, fiery flame,

Diffusing into the tenderness of darkness.

My lecturer paired us off and made us write sentences one after another. This is a general idea - as much as I can remember - she took the original copy off us. Now let's see what my classmate and I got up to.

Red text= Me

Blue text= Chris

BEAUTY LIES IN THE EYE OF THE BEHOLDER

A pale, insipid face peeped out shyly from within the wraps of a ragged scarf. It was cold. It was one of those nights where the children were reluctant to leave the warmth of the fireplace. And then Santa appeared. He laughed merrily, a huge bag of goodies slung over his shoulder, tinkling bells harmonising with his laughter.

The children started to cry. They realised that this was not the Santa Claus of their bedtime stories, but Santa Claws. They ran and hid behind the trees. “You can’t hide from me forever, children,” cackled Santa. He had a big belly. Santa’s face paint was starting to peel, revealing the horror beneath his façade. Then the Goblin appeared.

A little child trembled as he climbed up a tree, the branches scratching cruelly against his flesh as Santa approached menacingly. The Goblin started to laugh at Santa’s big belly. “Haven’t you heard that beauty lies in the eye of the beholder?” snapped Santa angrily. “No wonder the children are afraid of you,” the Goblin laughed. “Appearances can be deceiving,” said Santa, “besides, Mrs. Claws finds me attractive.”

An Encounter

A gentle breeze swept through the college, bringing a split-second sense of peacefulness to the bustling students hurrying about the campus.
“Maia!” A twig crunched behind the elder girl and she turned, the sunlight reflecting momentarily upon her face, creating an unusual radiance that harmonized with her outfit.
“Maia,” I repeated, struggling to keep the books in my arm from sliding onto the floor as I stared into the veil of trees, trying to make out the figure of my classmate. “Wait up.” My body shook as I stifled a sneeze.
“Are you all right, Michelle?” The girl next to me asked, a concerned frown playing across her pretty face. “You’ve been sneezing all morning."
“I’m fine, Tai Yun” I reassured my friend as we walked up to Maia. “It’s merely a touch of the flu.”
Maia, as we discovered, was deep in conversation with a lecture-mate (as I found out later) of ours. A lecture-mate I’d never noticed right up till that moment.

“Hi,” he waved casually at me and my companion as we approached, smiling. I just stood there and stared. Those ever-slithering books of mine as well as my compulsion to sneeze were forgotten the instant I set eyes upon this particular lecture-mate I didn’t even realise existed. His bashful smile could best be summed up in one word – captivating.

I stood there and gaped for a long time, vaguely aware that he was saying something to me, although my brain refused to register human speech of any sort at that precise moment.

Forget the fact I had long since harboured a secret shyness of strangers. Forget the fact I had difficulties looking acquaintances I’ve been seeing for five whole months in the eye. This guy was amazing, outstanding, The Unbelievable Exception.

“Well…bye,” He muttered after a while as he reluctantly backed away, obviously unwilling to end the conversation. “See you all around, yeah.”

“Yeah.” I parroted dumbly. “Yeah.”

The instant he was out of earshot, I turned to my classmates with huge eyes as I gestured wildly, searching for the appropriate vocabulary required for a situation as such.

“That guy…who is he?” I finally managed to produce a question in a barely audible awed whisper.

“Why, our lecture-mate, of course,” Tai Yun replied.

“What? I’ve never seen him before!”

“He’s from the scholarship class,” Maia added.

“Wow. I mean, wow. Did you…did you see…his smile? Wow. It was amazing,” I muttered, mostly to myself.

My friends were starting to give me the weird eyeball and I didn’t blame them.

“Did you…did you guys see his teeth?”

“What about his teeth?” The dark-haired maiden next to me asked as she stooped down to pick up one of my invariably sliding books that had evidently found a new resting place on the floor.

“His teeth. They were perfectly straight. And I mean straight! Goodness gracious, I’ve never seen anyone with teeth as straight as such. It was as if they were set using a ruler or something.”

“Gee, a lot of people have straight teeth too,” Maia volunteered.

“That’s not it. His teeth were so straight, they didn’t seem real,” I explained. My companions didn’t get the point. How could they, when they were concentrating on the conversation and I was feasting my eyes on one of the most eerily perfect sets of teeth I’d ever seen?

Eerily perfect was right. The unnaturalness of the teeth made one feel as if one were in a horror novel where the teeth would eventually turned out to be some sort of weird phantom. It was something right down Stephen King’s lane – indeed, I recall having read a story by King entitled “Chattery Teeth” a couple of years ago.

As I headed in the direction of the lecture halls with my associates, a shiver ran down my spine and I sneezed. Then again, it could just have been my bout of constantly recurring flu, returning to haunt me.

Hah, tricked you all, didn’t I? Sorry, there isn’t a romantic conclusion to the day. ;)

But I’m actually serious. This human has the most unnatural, eerily perfect set of teeth I’ve ever set my eyes upon. He scares me. O_o

A story without the vowel “e” with obvious exception of title. (A reader challenged me to attempt this.)

“Do you think cows can fly? I saw a cow fly. ” A dirty-looking boy said softly at Solomon’s Roads.
“And pigs can fly too,” I said, smiling.
“It’s not an untruth,” this boy said indignantly.
“All right,” I said, humouring him. “Show this girl a flying cow.”
Thus, our young lad brought yours truly to a tiny rundown barn down a path off Solomon’s Roads. I shall abstain from portraying said barn’s aroma for I worry administrators would bring a particular humanoid into custody on indict of polluting minds of our young scholars.
I saw nothing but a skinny cow with this black coat of fur that I thought was originally brown. “Moo,” said Blawn.
“John, this cow can’t fly,” I told my youthful pal.
“It can fly. I saw it,” insists my childish companion.
“All right,” said I again, about to turn away and walk off.
John told Blawn “Cari bombi loo lanny ma kalia phsaki rani santai.”
I always thought this child was odd. I was about to say a word or two but Blawn was sprouting a pair of pink crystal wings at that point. Blawn hung in thin air by his wings. Gobsmacking but spot on. Cows can fly, I murmur ramblingly.
It did not occur to yours truly right away that Blawn was no ordinary cow. “Wow. Cool,” I told Blawn. It was a wrong thing to say. For an unknown basis, Blawn took an instant look at this girl and did not akin to what it saw…
“Do you think cows can fly? I saw a cow fly. ” I said softly at Solomon’s Roads, soot framing my mug, dust and dirt clinging to my clothing.
“And pigs can fly too,” an old man said, smiling.
“It’s not an untruth,” I said indignantly.
“All right, show this guy a flying cow.”
I think “Cool” is Blawn’s word for “Kick” in human vocalizations.

A story without the vowel "a". (Of course, except for this title.xD)

Once, there used to be this huge country house right in the middle of town. Five beings resided in there, one from this world, two not from this universe, one from the skies, one from the undergrounds. They lived blissfully until the time the white monster from Iou turned up unexpectedly. Hence, the nice beings invited the white monster in for lunch. Surprisingly, the white monster decided to join them for dinner too. The white monster showed them plenty of cooking tricks, before he went off. So, the being from this world decided to try the tricks the white monster showed him, yet the other beings decided to try the tricks too. People told them plenty of cooks spoilt the broth, but they never listened. They put too much pepper in their morning serving of food, blowing off the roof of their mouth. Thus, they were forced to visit their doctor, this odd guy who only wore green shirts with this purple tie. The doctor told them they were considered to be lucky for despite the red smoke coming out of their mouths, they did not explode from the result of consuming too much of the explosive condiment – pepper from Jupiter. He stitched up their mouths, told them not to jump for the next twenty-four hours, consequently sending them home. The five beings were very sorry for themselves in the end, vowing never to invite white monsters from Iou into their country house in the middle of town in future.

The Man on the Moone and Friends

The damsel of about eighteen stared at the scenery around her in amusement. She had long, silky dark hair carefully put up with combs, large, innocent wide eyes as soft as that of a doe and a figure so graceful it reminded one of a lovely swan immediately. The young lady had a creamy complexion with a tinge of roseate; her skin was as soft to the touch as a baby, as if it had never been used before. The dark-haired girl was dressed in appropriate to that of an ancient Chinese dynasty. Her robes were weaved out of the softest fabric you ever saw, frail and easily-crumpled by appearance, but strong to the touch. She was in fact wearing numerous layers, each layer peeking out from underneath the previous one, all tastefully matched in accordance with pure winter tones: white, green, blue and grey.

“Good evening kind sir,” she said haltingly in an oriental-sounding accent. “Would I be so fortunate to be meeting the famous Man in the Moon?”

The lanky thin man who had previously been staring at her with an amused expression on his pallid face snorted and looked away distastefully. “Get your grammar right, Earthling,” he muttered. “I certainly don’t live in the moone. I live on the moone. And it’s moone with an ‘e’.

“An ‘e’?” the girl enquired politely.

“Yes. Can’t you people understand simple English? I live on the moone. I don’t quite know what is wrong with you Earthlings…I mean, honestly – what’s your name?”

“For now, Chang Er,” said she.

“Well, Chang Er, how would you like it if I just dropped the ‘r’ from your name and just called you Chang E?”, the Man on the Moone asked.

“Actually, people do that a lot,” Chang Er voiced. She was getting tired of being civil – the Man on the Moone wasn’t well-mannered at all.

“See what I mean?” the Man slapped a hand against his forehead. “I don’t even know why Earthlings are so uninventive.”

“What do you mean?” the young maiden snapped, feeling insulted.

“I’ve met a dozen girls on the moone in the past week, all of them named Chang Er. Eleven of them had white rabbits with them and the twelfth had a white dog. She said she couldn’t find a white rabbit at such short notice. Where’s your pet?”

“I don’t have one,” Chang Er said indignantly. “I’m not like them at all.”

“Oh?” The Man on the Moon looked interested. “Then what’s your story, if not having an idiotic notion of swallowing longevity pills?”

“Longevity pills don’t work – everyone knows that,” the dark-haired damsel expressed, rolling her eyes. “Those salesmen will do anything these days. It’s all a scam.”

“Try telling it to all the Chang Ers I’ve met. They were so annoying I sent them all away, ” the male replied. Wisps of a bond begun to creep between the acquaintances. “How did you end up here, then?”

“It’s a long story,” she sighed.

“Make yourself comfortable,” the Man on the Moone said graciously as he settled down on a moone rock and motioned for his companion to do the same. “After all, we aren’t going anywhere soon, are we?”

“I guess it all started because I was so inadequate. This great Feng Shui master came to my name-giving ceremony, you see.”

“And he predicted something?”

“No. He told my second sister Huang Zhao Jun that she would grow up to be a very beautiful singer and marry a king. My third sister, Xi Shi shared a similar fate. Yang Gui Fei, my eldest sister kept making him drink wine and before the Feng Shui master could reach me, he was too drunk to say anything. He didn’t even get a chance to name me, although he had named all my sisters during their name-giving ceremonies.

My relatives quarrelled a bit about my name and they finally settled it by drawing lots and asking the wisest man they could find to pick a name out of the box. They didn’t like the name he picked, so they drew another.

Hence, my first name was Xiao Long Nv. My parents bought an Ancient Tomb for me to live in and…”

“They made you live in a tomb?” the Man on the Moone exclaimed incredulously.

“Ancient Tombs are very fashionable on earth,” the young maiden reassured her friend. “Anyway, the lessons were my problem.”

“Lessons?”

“They made me take lessons from an emotionless lady who attempted to teach me a special type of martial arts where one was forbidden to show feelings of any sort.”

“How ridiculous,” he said.

“Yes. I did have a liking for martial arts, but I certainly didn’t like being restrained.

Therefore, it was the end of that name for me. My relatives came together again, and after much discussion decided to name me Zhi Nv.”

“Oh? Fascinating.”

“Not really. They made me sew day and night and I hated sewing. They also mentioned eligible shepherds named Niu Lang to me whenever they could. Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against shepherds. I just wasn’t interested, do you understand me? After a while, they gave up. Yet again, my relatives wanted to choose a new name for me. I don’t quite understand the difference my name makes – I’m still me. After going through Princess Chui Ping, Princess Huan Zhu, Mei Chao Feng, Zhao Min, Huang Rong…they decided to name me Chang Er and bundled me onto a spaceship headed for the moone. Of course, the spaceship left immediately. They told me to tell you I came here because I’d swallowed my husband’s longevity pills, but obviously I don’t have a husband yet, I’m too young. I guess their last option was to strand me on the moon,” the Lady on the Moone muttered as she rolled her eyes again. “How about you?”

“Me?” the pale man asked, looking surprised. “Oh, I wasn’t very satisfactory either,” he said diffidently.

“When I was six, my parents left my younger sister and I in the woods. We wandered about and found a gingerbread house. The pleasant lady we found there gave us a decent meal and showed us our way home the next morning, giving us sweet rolls to take along on the journey. That was when all the trouble started.

After my eighth birthday, they told me to pull a sword out of a stone. I did pull it out, but the young man next to me started crying. Nobody was watching, so I handed him the sword to pacify him and he was the one who ended being known as ‘The Lad Who Pulled out the Sword from the Stone’.

I was twelve when they got very upset at the idea that I wanted to grow up and I didn’t agree when the fairy Tinkerbell offered to take me to Never Never Land. It sounded like a preposterous place to me. Apparently, my parents didn’t think so.

My parents were very disappointed when I wasn’t turned into a frog by the age of sixteen. ‘How else, can you find a princess to marry?’ they asked me. I merely shrugged. I didn’t exactly relish the idea of being turned into an amphibian. They then told me to go and rescue a girl with ridiculously long hair by climbing up her hair to the tower she was locked up in, but I was afraid of heights. I was next asked to go to a ball and look for a poor girl who was mistreated by her stepmother and stepsisters. Nevertheless, I couldn’t find any. I picked up a glass sneaker at the end of the ball and gave it to my younger sister. I think she still has it.”

“A glass sneaker? How…refreshing,” the Lady on the Moone replied, startled.

“Yes. My parents weren’t pleased at all. They told me to find a mermaid who had exchanged her voice for a pair of feet but she was too quiet for my liking. In desperation they sent me to the funeral of this girl named Snow White. I stared into the plastic coffin of the olive-skinned young lady with dark hair and I mourned for her in the proper way. I still don’t understand what I should have done that day, my parents yelled at me every time the funeral was mentioned.”

“People can be weird,” the maiden said, shaking her head.

“I know – hey!” he stopped halfway through his sentence and stared as a man with a huge axe approached them.

“Who are you?” the duo asked in unison.

“I’ve been sent to cut this tree…” the newcomer broke off awkwardly. “Are you two the Man and the Lady in the Moon?”

“On…” Chang Er corrected.

“…the Moone…” her partner finished.

The woodcutter stared for a long time. “Well, I’m sorry for intruding. I was only sent here because I was so derisory…”

A little long, a little redundant, but oh well. One of the Man on the Moone's perspectives.

The tale of a bus-challenged high school student.

Not for the first time, I've been forced to walk home when I could have been happily sitting behind my desk in school and flipping through my books...or doing whatever it is a high school student does.

"Ring...."
*Groans*
...
...
*Moans*
...
...
...
(Procedure is repeated.)

Reluctantly I pull myself away from the warm covers and climb down my bed.

Glancing at the clock, I felt pretty pleased with myself for being able to wake up early this time round. It is only 6:30 in the morning as I lock the front door of my house and head for the bus station.

Upon approaching the bus station, I see some students from my school. I nod politely to them – we aren’t really on close terms considering the fact they’re in a lower form.

*Sits and waits*

Two empty buses appear on the horizon, each of them trying to overtake the other.

“Hey, wait, wait for me!!!”

The busses roar pass.

*Waits again impatiently*

A couple of guys from the school next to mine walked up and sat down on the bench. Another girl I don’t know(wearing my school’s badge)emerges from the darkness and begins flirting with them. Her flirting with them is almost as disgraceful as the way the boys flirt back. (Importance of Being Earnest?)

Eventually, another bus appears. It is packed.

“Hey, I don’t mind sitting on the roof at all…really…just stop, please!!!”

The piece of cold, unfeeling metal ignores me and drives on without stopping.

*Sits back down and glares indignantly at the taillights*

The sun is beginning to show his face on the side of our planet. Oh no. I’m going to be horribly late for school and it wasn’t even my fault this time.

“Did you hear that a lot of busses broke down yesterday?” A lady next to me asked her friend in a loud voice.

At long last the bus I’ve been waiting for arrives.

Thankfully, I step up onto the first step of the bus…and remain there. That’s how packed it was. It was like being packed into a squashed can of sardines. My face is squashed into somebody’s chest and my hand was clinging onto the pole for dear life as I look at the roads. The doors aren’t closed – if they were I wouldn’t be on the bus. After doing a spot of worrying, I manage to tear my eyes away from the fast moving ground and got a shock.

The bus is moving in the opposite direction of my school! But…I am sure this is the right bus!!! Hesitating a little, I shout out to the driver over the heads of numerous passengers.

“Uhh…Mister?”

The passengers shoot me a dirty look. Well, how else was the driver supposed to hear me over the traffic sounds outside?

“Yeah?”

“Does this bus go to(Inserts bus-stop in front of my school)…?”

“Yeah.”

I wonder briefly if the driver’s vocabulary consists of only one word.

“But…we’re headed for the South! (My school is in the North.)”

“Yeah.”

“…Uhhh…how long will it take to reach my destination?”

Some of the passengers are now giving me the evil eye. Well, I'm SORRY, but it is very difficult to hang from a pole for dear life and conduct a sane conversation with the driver when I am practically half a step away from getting off the bus. Or rather, falling off the bus. You'd think they'd show some sympathy. So I ignored them.

“Depends.”

Well…it was good to know the driver could say something else other than ‘Yeah’.

“Depends on???” I’m starting to get desperate as the bus moves towards the official animal shelter which is in the complete opposite direction of my school.

“The traffic.”

I’m sorry, but I so don’t get him. Is he going to make a U-turn, pass the bus station where I got on and head for my school eventually? How long is eventually? YEARS?

Well, I’m pretty sure it won’t take years. Maybe a couple of hours that I don’t have.

I press the stop bell, take half a step and got off the bus. I start to walk in the direction of the original bus station I’d been at, which is right outside my house.
*Stomp stomp stomp*
*Trudge trudge trudge*
*Drag drag drag*
*Mumble mumble mumble*
*Stomp stomp stomp*
*Trudge trudge trudge*
...
...
When I reach the bus-stop, I look at the time. 7:30. I didn’t sit down and wait for another of those dratted contraptions we call buses. Oh no. It was as if I'd run a marathon. I dragged my feet around the corner and went home.

Seriously…one could pop a blood vessel. And this isn’t even the first time. I can’t wait till I get my driving licence. In the meantime, I’m stuck with those wonderful, fickle inventions that we call “buses.”

Excuse me.