You celebrated your 60th Birthday with your form 5 classmates.

Here is another class essay.

Christopher was awkwardly quiet this time. Usually he was always making conversations about his law firm or about his misbehaving 4-year old son. Even Lily was silent. These kids creeped me. Usually Lily was always singing aloud or maybe even talking about how new ol fields were being found. I sat in the back seat, thinking to myself, I lead a good life, I am 60 tomorrow and I am smiling to myself, a life well spent.

We approached the Veranda Complex a majestic mansion, built over a hundred years ago by the British imperialists. My children were taking me out for lunch, we were to meet their mother, Amanda there. Strangely the gardens of the mansion were quiet, usually it was filled with people, all dressed formally, talking, gossiping and drinking tea. All the snobs. Ironically I was becoming one.

We got out of the car. My son, handed to me my cane, I took it from his archery-saw hand. I looked into his eyes, I saw the eyes of endurance and determination of a young man. I slowly got out of the car; falling off the stairs would not give good results! My daughter led me to the entrance. We walked into the refurnished mansion, there I was, Amanda. Hair white with strands of grey hair, thick half-inch glasses and still elegant just like the 37 years ago. “Bernard, why so down?”, “Where is everyone?”

“Come”.

She led me through the lobby, then we entered the dining hall. It was quiet. The four of us sat at the long table. I at the head. Then suddenly a string quartet came out on the stage and suddenly started playing. Christopher and Lily stood up. Then out of the blue, a group of similar aged people as me was flooding the entire eating hall. My eyes widened, “By good grace! Sharves, Aziz, Jia Sek , and is that Ruth?”

I was dumbfounded, these people were my classmates. We spent our last year in school together. I looked at Amanda:

“Did you do this?”

“Yes, this is for you honey,” she gave a peck on my cheek.

Vasukumar, came up to me, and shook my hand. He smiled, that crooked teeth of his, just as it was 43 years ago. He took the stage and did a toast;

“Friends, here we are together, all once again united, probably for the last time. I thank everyone of you for pulling this off party off. Bernard, we all are here, to celebrate your 60^th birthday to my dear friend, my brother, Happy Birthday!”

There was a loud applause, I found myself speechless. My eyes teared, there were all my friends, it was 2010 when we were in class, all together. This class was superbly special we had all kinds of people in that class, from all walks of life and all kinds of ethnics.

Flashbacks raced through my mind, I remembered, I used to hate that class. Then over the months, we bonded together, I remembered the times when Khairi brought his acoustic guitar during Mr. Shek Kim’s calculus class and also Mrs. Thomas’s physics class and always received a long lecture thereafter.

Suddenly,I was at the other end of the room, laughing my heart out, with my old buddies. The string quartet, still playing in the background, I could see Lily and her friends whose parents were my mates. I saw Amanda, in her white gown talking to my high-school crush- Ruth. I excused myself and went to sit at an empty table. The 64-people filled hall was drowned with laughter, jokes, tears, hugs and sweet reminiscence.

I was sipping my unsweetened lemonade, then all of a sudden I felt a sharp stab in my chest. My hand was clenching my chest. The world spun round, my sight now saw legs, then funny rainbow colours. Then blackness.

“Clear the way!” The E.R. doctor pushed his way through the halls of the hospital. Amanda grabbed Bernard’s hand, walking with pace with the wheeled stretcher, they barged the E.R. room, they performed CPR on the lifeless body, connected wires to it, switched on the CRO, after minutes, that felt like forever, Amanda spotted a little beep on the machine. “He’s safe ma’am, he’ll live” said the doctor.

My eyes were heavy, I forced it open, all around me were balloons. The morning sun shone warmly through the window.

“He is awake!”, the voice sounded like Christopher’s

The room was now packed with people. The doctor came in, “Stay clear, he just had a cardiac arrest, Mr. McGrace you are lucky to survive,”. So I had a heart attack, whoa. There’s a real gift!

“I am 60! Nice, here I am 60 years old in bed right after my first cardiac arrest”. I laid there restless, but strangely talking again with my old 5 Science 2 class. The day went on, we enjoyed ourselves, by my side the entire time my family.

So this is my 60^th birthday.

Vanity in Men (and Women)

Men say Women are vain.

Women say Men are vain.

I say both are correct.

Men, look at them always combing their hair, so concerned about their goatee, frequently adjusting their pants.

Women, look at them always puffing her lips, so focused on her dress, the worst about their figure.

The question is why, are men and women so vain? People are, who isn't vain? Everyone wants to look good, it's animal instinct, the men wants to attract the women, the women wants to strut her beauty. It is nature's work.

The next time you comb yourself in public, go the restroom to 'freshen' up, and to arrange that tie or scarf, think of it, that vanity is part in everyone's life.

Reason I am writing this: the guys in my class always adjusting their shirt, from their pants, there is this one guy who sharpens his sideburns to be sharper then a needle head. Then, there is this girl, who spent almost 1\2 hour, in the bathroom; combing hair.

Chemistry lives on!

We had to carry out an experiment today, to study the heat of displacement between Zinc and Copper II sulphate. So I entered my group and did the experiment as ordered by the teacher. The fact is, when you add Zinc powder to the Copper II Sulphate solution, a little heat will be produced, because Zinc is able to displace Copper form Copper II Sulphate solution, so the experiment was carried out, and we attained a change in temperature of 30C to 39C. A change of 9 Degrees Celcius. By the way, the molarity of the CuSO4 solution was 0.2mol and a volume of 25cm^2.

But what would happen if you were to increase the molarity to say, about 2.0mol and this time instead of using Zinc we use a more reactive metal, say Magnesium?

The results were astonishing!

First the whole reaction turned into a dark grey liquid, the bubbles started to boil up, then thick white smoke was coming out of the cup, and then as the smoke died down, you can see the solution slowly being boiled down to the base eating away the sides of the cup. It was too hot to even put our hands near the cup, what more to take its temperature.

We thought it was going to explode! Well, it did, what if we were to put Potassium? With a CuSO4 molarity of 2.5mol?

The more reason to love Chemistry!