Marty's "Don't Change"

I heard Marty Casey's rendition of INXS's "Don't Change" on the radio. At least I thought it was Marty singing it... cos it didn't sound like Michael Hutchence... or JD. So I stood there transfixed in front of the radio in the kitchen, pitching my ears each to see if it was really Marty or not.

I love Marty Casey. He's like the best performer out of all those former Rockstar contestants. He's the one with the most potential to succeed with his own band or solo project. I'd love to meet him and just be his friend. He seems like such a normal guy. Like he could have gone to ASL with me or something.

ASL (American School in London) was a great school. It was so unlike all the other international schools I've been to. At ASL, everybody, the teachers, the students, even the parents encourage you, truly encourage you to find and achieve your true potential. It was great. It was a school where every single student could shine. And the thing about the kids that went to that school, every one of us was talented in some way. And everyone else was happy to watch the other ppl shine at their particular talent. I don't know, but that was how I felt. Like my friend Ayesha, she was really smart, and all the rest of us were just really happy to watch her succeed in every subject, etc. And then my other friend, Mark, he was a trumpet player... and like I really loved watching him perform, especially when the school band played jazz. Yeah. And other kids were really good at acting, and it was just fun to watch them do their skits and all the drama exercises (the ones that they now do on Whose Line Is It Anyway?). Yeah, we did those exercises in class even before that show existed. So I guess those games were taught at the FAME Academy or something. I imagined that FAME Academy or the New York School of Performing Arts or whatever those schools are called are exactly like ASL but specialising in Drama and Music.

I want to send my kids to a school just like ASL. Of course I can't afford to live in London just to send my kids there, so I'm hoping there will be a school just like it in KL. Children need to be stimulated. I really, really don't want my kids to do SPM. It's such a regurgitative educational system. All they do is memorize, memorize, memorize and then spit it all back out again for the exams. The teachers don't even teach the kids to think for themselves what the answer might be. They just teach the kids, "this is the answer, and you gotta write it all back down for the exams." It's such a stupid system. I hope Malaysia goes through an intellectual revolution in the next coming years so that ppl can change the way things are taught in this country, and you know, so ppl can just change their thinking for once. Change is good.