It works like this. When someone meets us for the first time, they sum us up in five minutes. In 300 seconds, they try to picture our past, present and future. All it takes is three easy questions: Where do you work, where do you live and where did you go to school. Sometimes, they squeeze in: what car do you drive?
By then, they've pretty much worked out my bank balance (they're wrong, it's practically empty), my political leanings (irrelevant) and my favourite breakfast food (pretty much any bread product).
I know because people do it to me all the time. Within minutes, I'm classified as: Western-educated, therefore liberal, single, therefore independent and probably strident, female.
Amazing how much people can figure out so quickly. All right, I have to be honest. I put people in slots all the time, too. And why not? Ready-made categories make life a lot simpler. It's easier to deal with people when you can forget about them after filing them into some convenient spot.
These categories follow you from Primary 1 to the grave. And no one ever lets you forget it. Ever seen this at parties? Mostly, it comes from men. "Oh. Convent girl, were you?" Nudge nudge, wink wink, and they achieve instant male-bonding with the lads around them.
The more visible the school, the worse it is. During his terribly insecure teens, one of my friends had a blanket ban on dating girls from Raffles Girls' School. He figured they were too smart, too brainy and too hard for him to handle (he was probably right).
Thank goodness he has grown up since then. Now, even girls from the Gifted Programme are all right -- as long as they are leggy and have long hair and don't contradict him in public.
Men are not let off the hook, either.
If you're a fast-rising male working for the Government, chances are people will think you came from Raffles Institution, and that you're square and boring.
Anglo-Chinese School? Well then, you probably drive a snazzy car, pick up women at the Singapore Island Country Club and will rise through the ranks using Daddy's impeccable business connections.
And if you came from St Joseph's Institution or St Patrick's Secondary School -- uh, well, I'll pray for you.
Isn't it funny how your whole life was laid out in front of you before you even turned 10?
Earlier this month, the Ministry of Education put a lid on the number of children who can claim priority at popular schools, on the basis of their parents' links with clan, religious or community groups.
So now, parents who planned on getting their children a head start on the race track are probably tearing their hair out as they envisage their children's future fading in front of their eyes.
But whey the fuss? The last time I looked up a medical enclyclopaedia, nowhere did it say that children are grade-churning, career-climbing genetic extensions of their parents.
Parents do not owe them a living on Shenton Way or in the High Court.
However, children are entitled to a life -- which includes the opportunity to make choices, see things from different perspectives, make mistakes and learn from them, question the status quo and carve a niche in their own world.
It is extremely difficult to do that when all their classmates are from the same background, and everyone has ballet on Tuesdays, piano on Thursdays and tuition the rest of the time.
And what happens when you land on the wrong side of academia? More than one social worker has told me they have more discipline problems with students in the Normal stream than those in Express.
Part of the reason, they say, is that children in Normal stream have very low self-esteem. Almost all the adults around them, from teachers to parents, treat them as if they will never amount to much.
It also works the other way. I met a group of students from one of Singapore's top junior colleges recently. When discussing career choices, one said most of them wanted to go into the Administrative Service and become part of the elite corps of civil servants. Which sounded fine, until I asked them why.
"Because we have no choice," said one 17-year-old. One by one, they gave a list of reasons which were slight variations on a deadly theme. All their lives, they have been groomed to go to the best schools, and then take the best jobs so other people will look upon them as success stories.
If they feel they have no choice at 17, what happens when they are 57?
Here is the scary part: In allowing ourselves to be defined narrowly, we begin to plod along on a brain-dead, auto-pilot mode path without knowing why we want to get where we want to go.
You cannot escape the box even after you become an adult. I get more than a few knowing, condescending looks when people, older women especially, find out I'm still single at ana age when the average Singapore woman is married.
Well-meaning people my mother's age try to tell me what I should be doing with my life -- from changing careers to having children. And boy, do I feel that my life has been one big mistake after those sessions.
If I wanted to fit into a parentally-approved category, here is what I would do:
[] Get married, preferably to an English-educated, Catholic, Cantonese doctor/lawyer/financial analyst (engineers are going out of fashion).
[] Having two kids, get them into good mission schools and spend the rest of my life in tai-tai-hood, chauffeuring the children around the island and having tea with Chanel/Ferragamo-clad friends whose husbands went to an Ivy League school.
Sure, I could pigeon-hold my life away. It would be so ... tidy.
There's a catch, though. Homing pigeons, for instance, are kept in little lofts and are trained to return home from far away. Each loft has a hole called a trap. While some have open traps so the birds can fly in and out as they please, others are arranged so they can enter easily but cannot fly out again.
Pigeon-holing does have its advantages. It is extremely efficient. It allows us to organise our lives, chart our course, plonk people where we feel they should be, and convince ourselves that people who do not fit in any of our boxes should not exist.
Then again, it can get really cramped. And it is difficult to soar when you live in a filing cabinet -- even if it is your own.