Local Geniuses

Of late, I have been free enough to keep surfing the net and indulge myself with current affairs and what not (as a result, my frustration-meter has been on the high scale too). One issue that amazes me (still) is how the statistics of our annual public examinations (SPM, STPM etc) seem to have an increasing trend year after year. And 2005 was no exception.

It was slated that 4779 out of 438132 candidates for the 2005 SPM scored straight A's [Sun2Surf, The Star]. That is a whopping 1.09% of the whole pool of examinees! And we are only 55 students shy from having a thousand who dished out prefect 9A1s.

... .. .

Though I do not have the stats nor the means to the sources now, were we really stupid a few years back? Or has the government been so successful in continually upgrading (excuse the pun) education standards that more and more geniuses are being nurtured??

Which brings me to our new hero, Mr., sorry, Dr. Chan Yao Ban:

(source: The Age)

Being only at a tender age of 21, Dr. Chan is now a the youngest PhD graduate in Melbourne University, and he is currently doing a huge favour to mankind in his research on schizophrenia diagnosis etc etc etc. Cool... but too bad he is not in Malaysia any more. But who cares, right?

So again, who is saying there are no geniuses in Bolehland? They just don't live here anymore.

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Now waiting for my friend, PK's turn to make his mark in a Korean daily as the smartest PhD student in RESL@ICU, or something to that effect :)