Big winner did it all for late mum

Aug 20, 2010
STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT AWARDS

The late starter's cancer-stricken mother died in June
By Leow Si Wan
MADAM Ong Siew Kee just wanted the son she loved to live the best life he could.
An administrative executive married to a foreman, she wanted her second child to work hard in school and live with purpose.
But Chang Ze Xun, though a good kid, was content to drift along.
'I slept in class and failed all my main subjects at the O levels,' said the former student of Hua Yi Secondary School. Those grades qualified him for the Institute of Technical Education (ITE). His parents were disappointed, but supported his decision.
Madam Ong would have been proud of her son yesterday - he was one of four winners of the inaugural Lee Hsien Loong Award for Outstanding All-Round Achievement for post-secondary students.
In fact, he was the biggest winner of the day, also winning the Sultan Haji Omar Ali Saifuddien Book Prize and the Lee Kuan Yew Scholarship to Encourage Upgrading, for ITE and polytechnic graduates.
But it was a bittersweet achievement for the young man, now 20 and a second-year mechanical engineering student at Singapore Polytechnic.
His mother, to whom he was 'extremely close', was not there to see him collect his awards. She had died on June 30, at age 52.
Yet it was only because of her that he had come this far. In his second week at the ITE, some two years ago, Madam Ong told him she had had a relapse of breast cancer. It was a wake-up call.
'She said I can't continue my life like that and that this could be the last time she would address me this way,' said the bespectacled youth softly. 'I started working much harder.'
He did - obtaining a perfect GPA score of 4.0 and becoming top student of ITE College West this year.
He also promised her he would win a new award he had found out about.
To give her reason to hang on, he made her a promise. 'I told her I would win this so she must stay alive to see me on stage,' said Ze Xun.
'Although she isn't here now, I know she will be happy. I will be visiting her at the columbarium, and will take my certificate along.'
The ITE held a mock graduation ceremony at his five-room flat in Jurong West the day Madam Ong died.
Said Ze Xun with tears in his eyes: 'That day, she was not responsive. But when the ceremony started, she opened her eyes and tried to sit up.
'After her death, because I remembered my promise, I really tried during the interview for the award. I spoke for 40 minutes.'
Ze Xun wants to go to a university here and eventually become a teacher.
His father, Mr Chang Swee Fatt, 56, no longer questions his choices. He said in Mandarin: 'When he told me he would go to ITE because he did not qualify for his first choice at the polytechnic, I was against it at first and wanted him to choose another poly course. He convinced me in the end, and now, after taking a longer route, he is studying in the place he had wanted to all along.'
At the annual Special Awards Presentation Ceremony at Seameo Regional Language Centre yesterday, awards were given out in nine different categories, to recognise students' achievements in academic and non-academic spheres. A total of 122 students received more than 130 awards.