Oh, the choices

A rare moment in the history of a Singaporean MRT train...weep my friends...weep.

So I'm at school with all the teachers today going through training for our new Student Management Information System (SMIS, for the acronymly inclined out there). Name, address, date of birth, blah blah blah...you know, all the normal stuff one has to fill out. One would think that after filling out this information like a gazillon times in one's lifetime that the world over would know everything about you. I've got applications, registrations, publications, and other "ations" out there somewhere. Anyway, I digress....

The form had some interesting fields that had to be filled out. One is nationality. I looked for American, but it wasn't a listed option. I saw African, Japanese, Chinese, Brazillian (I think), but no American. I left that option blank, although I was tempted to tick Japanese. I figured if the office staff looked me up on their records one day they'd think I was a new Japanese teacher (with a weird name, of course) Then, I'd pop in during their coffe break to freak them out.

Another option I had to choose was whether I was an active or inactive teacher. Hmmm....let's think about this. If you came into my class and saw me dead in my chair with my students quietly doing their work, I guess I'd be inactive. Other than that, wasn't really sure what that option was all about.

My favorite option was color. This was right under the nationality option. So I, as well as everyone else in the room, figured it meant racial or ethinic or...haha...skin color. I clicked the scroll option and BAM....there they were! About 70+ options of colors to choose from! I mean, if you asked me what color I am, I'd say I'm black. But this baby had so many to choose from. Some of my favorite follow:

Dimslate (This sounds like an insult. "What color are you?" "Oh, well I'm a dimslate." ".....")

Hotpink (*cough*)

Chocolate (This would answer the question one of my students asked me the other day: "Teacher, can I eat you?")

PapayaWhip (What in the world does this color look like?)

Fuchsia (Yes, I am royalty)

Palewhite (Well, there it is! Inactive teacher)

Metallic (enter stage right: Terminator Teacher Part 3: The Reckoning)

In the end, there were so many choices to choose from, I decided to choose the first color on the drop down list:

Transparent.

This way, if ever the principal wants to see me in a meeting, he won't be able to.