30 Hour Famine
I SURVIVED THE 30 HOURS. After the first few (eight?) hours, it really wasn't that bad. Your stomach starts to go into denial and you don't feel the hunger that much anymore. I was pretty sleepy on both days. Couldn't sleep well on Friday night for some reason.
On Saturday, my only job was handling the registration. There were ten of us there at the registration tables and due to the lack of labeling on the English camp registration tables, lots of Chinese camp participants came to the English camp registration counters to register. There were some problems with missing receipts and mixed up camps. Some campers wanted to be shifted to a different language camp on the day itself and we ran out of size XL and S t-shirts. @_@ But overall, it went okay. Registration ended at 2pm. Missed the opening ceremony but did catch the oath taking session and was told to take off my shoes at the appropriate time (too busy reading. Didn't catch the announcement. Had to have someone tap me).
After registration, the promo team basically had nothing to do until 11pm. swt. So most of us ended up hanging out in the conference hall which acted as the committee room and storage. Played cards, tried to sleep on the chairs (failed), talked, talked about food. Took some walks down the hallway to see the campers' rooms (Freezing cold. Could feel the aircond from the outside. swt). Talked about food more. My Saturday afternoon/evening was that eventless. Saw bits and pieces of the campers' activities though. They looked fun. *pouts*
During the night, I watched a little bit of the concert before retreating into the relative serenity of the conference hall. The concert was okay but I wasn't very pleased with it. For one, it was very Chinese-oriented. It was supposed to be a bilingual camp. Translations were not provided for the English speakers and I myself felt left-out. There were two emcees but the Chinese emcee had a stronger personality and took over the stage most of the time. The performances too did not fit into the famine theme (belly dancing? Come on. -_-;) Guess I'll bring this up during post mortem later.
There were some issues within the organizing committee during the night. We (promotions team) were told to leave the "committee HQ" as only the main committee members were allowed to sleep in it. We were told to sleep in the theatrette where the volunteers and group leaders were to sleep in. In a matter of seconds, we were demoted from "committee" to "volunteer". Explains the tag they gave us that morning. I wasn't annoyed at the change of venue. I was annoyed at their reasons for shifting us into the volunteer/group leader room.
No. 1, they said that we were volunteers. No, we weren't. Even if we are not leaders of our specific sub-committee, we were still there as committee members from the beginning of the famine planning until the execution of the event. It's superficial but please, give us more credit than that. I could have not attended the event if I were just a volunteer.
No. 2, they said that they wanted to have committee meetings in that room so they wanted us to be well-rested. Hello, you're the ones who gave us security/patrolling duty at 11pm to 3am. We would not have been well-rested at all no matter where you shove us to sleep. Nevermind that patrolling duty was canceled at 1am, it's just that if you had planned in advance for us to patrol the hallway, this is a very weak reason to put us in the theatrette because we would be the ones disturbing the volunteers and the group leaders. Also, what kind of committee meeting could be so filled with secret that the other committee members was not allowed to hear? In an event at this scale, wouldn't you want transparency so whatever issues anyone noticed could be brought forward and fixed immediately?
No. 3, they said that the theatrette was prepared specially for volunteers and group leaders. Why squeeze into the conference hall when we have this special allocated place for us! Besides the fact that we weren't volunteers, the theatrette was packed. The conference hall was less so. -_-;
So yes, I was annoyed at the "main committee".
Later that night, we had some sorta mini treasure hunt for a friend whose birthday was on the 24th of August (Sunday). At one, the first clue was given to her and she was supposed to find me to get some friendly harassment, her first present and the next clue. -_-; I might have overdid the harassment (I just told her to sing me a love song... since the whole treasure hunt was arranged by her bf. ._.). She gave me a look and walked away. I did not give chase until 5 minutes later. At that time, I did not have anymore mood to go on with the thing so I just handed her the stuff and wished her, and left her to decipher the next clue. I get that it is tiring to fast and do things. I get that it's embarrassing to sing. But to leave me like that; standing with the present and the clue... I felt like an idiot for even agreeing with the game. She should be happy for her birthday, I know... but I could not wish her properly because I felt very slighted. -_-;
Played more chor tai di before I turned in for the night. I couldn't sleep on the chairs so we picked a spot on the stage to lay out my sleeping bag and slept. Woke up two hours later to find my friend missing and my body freezing cold. Found her outside the theatrette, so I joined her there to sleep (waaay warmer) and slept like the dead till 6.30 pm. The whole day was even more of a blur than Saturday. My eye-bags were obvious when I took off my glasses. xD There was a photo-taking session before we left for the buses.
I was already zen with being called a volunteer by then. -_-; It was demoralizing to know that your hard work was not recognized and you're left out of the loop but okay, whatever. I just followed whatever they said and did what the other committee members and volunteers told me to do. The stadium was less packed than expected and the wait for 4pm was excruciatingly slow. The performances were okay but the whole thing was lopsided to the Chinese speaking participants as well. The English emcee was speaking Mandarin half the time. It rained yesterday but the countdown concert carried on like it wasn't and the campers who went down to watch it was not concerned about the rain as well. Pretty amazing.
I did not know half the people invited to sing/perform in the concert. xD The only ones I know was Yise (she came for the HELP Famine camp concert too) and Guang Liang. Oh well. We broke fast at 4pm after a few speeches and photo-slideshow viewing session. It was merely koko crunch and soya drink but after 30hours? Ahaha, could care less. FOOD! I accidentally broke fast 2 mins before the rest (I didn't know, okay! The soya bottle was opened and I took a sip and then I went wtfaasdfhjkl WHY NO ONE STOPPED MEEEE?) Automatic reaction when you see an open bottle. -_-; which means I fasted 29 hours 58 mins, unless you're following my watch which said 4.03? when I opened it. But then again, my last meal ended at 9.30am... so that's half an hour to patch it?
Then, we got ready to leave the stadium. During the wait for the bus leaders to get the people ready, there was one committee or volunteer who came up to me to thank me. He said, "You are from promotions, right? Thank you. You did a great job." For the first time in two days, I felt acknowledged. I mean, the president of the committee came to thank everyone for their work but that felt routine and empty due to what happened the previous night (Saturday). What this person said touched me because he did not have to do that. He also remembered that I was from promotions although I have never spoken to him personally before. To whoever you are (you probably won't be reading this. Ahaha), thank you very much for making me feel like part of the event again.
Also, I was very impressed by the logistics team of the event. They had very little space to work with and lots of logistic issues with the venue. I could see that the head of logistics was stressed out for both days but she never snapped at anyone and kept a smile up the whole time. She never complained and she answered me every time I had a question (re: being out of the loop). I'm glad we had her. Thank you very much, logistic team of HELP Famine Camp.
ahaha, that was a really tl;dr report, complete with rantings. Ate KFC when we got back although we were advised to eat lightly first. Slept at 9~ The end of the whole experience~
On Saturday, my only job was handling the registration. There were ten of us there at the registration tables and due to the lack of labeling on the English camp registration tables, lots of Chinese camp participants came to the English camp registration counters to register. There were some problems with missing receipts and mixed up camps. Some campers wanted to be shifted to a different language camp on the day itself and we ran out of size XL and S t-shirts. @_@ But overall, it went okay. Registration ended at 2pm. Missed the opening ceremony but did catch the oath taking session and was told to take off my shoes at the appropriate time (too busy reading. Didn't catch the announcement. Had to have someone tap me).
After registration, the promo team basically had nothing to do until 11pm. swt. So most of us ended up hanging out in the conference hall which acted as the committee room and storage. Played cards, tried to sleep on the chairs (failed), talked, talked about food. Took some walks down the hallway to see the campers' rooms (Freezing cold. Could feel the aircond from the outside. swt). Talked about food more. My Saturday afternoon/evening was that eventless. Saw bits and pieces of the campers' activities though. They looked fun. *pouts*
During the night, I watched a little bit of the concert before retreating into the relative serenity of the conference hall. The concert was okay but I wasn't very pleased with it. For one, it was very Chinese-oriented. It was supposed to be a bilingual camp. Translations were not provided for the English speakers and I myself felt left-out. There were two emcees but the Chinese emcee had a stronger personality and took over the stage most of the time. The performances too did not fit into the famine theme (belly dancing? Come on. -_-;) Guess I'll bring this up during post mortem later.
There were some issues within the organizing committee during the night. We (promotions team) were told to leave the "committee HQ" as only the main committee members were allowed to sleep in it. We were told to sleep in the theatrette where the volunteers and group leaders were to sleep in. In a matter of seconds, we were demoted from "committee" to "volunteer". Explains the tag they gave us that morning. I wasn't annoyed at the change of venue. I was annoyed at their reasons for shifting us into the volunteer/group leader room.
No. 1, they said that we were volunteers. No, we weren't. Even if we are not leaders of our specific sub-committee, we were still there as committee members from the beginning of the famine planning until the execution of the event. It's superficial but please, give us more credit than that. I could have not attended the event if I were just a volunteer.
No. 2, they said that they wanted to have committee meetings in that room so they wanted us to be well-rested. Hello, you're the ones who gave us security/patrolling duty at 11pm to 3am. We would not have been well-rested at all no matter where you shove us to sleep. Nevermind that patrolling duty was canceled at 1am, it's just that if you had planned in advance for us to patrol the hallway, this is a very weak reason to put us in the theatrette because we would be the ones disturbing the volunteers and the group leaders. Also, what kind of committee meeting could be so filled with secret that the other committee members was not allowed to hear? In an event at this scale, wouldn't you want transparency so whatever issues anyone noticed could be brought forward and fixed immediately?
No. 3, they said that the theatrette was prepared specially for volunteers and group leaders. Why squeeze into the conference hall when we have this special allocated place for us! Besides the fact that we weren't volunteers, the theatrette was packed. The conference hall was less so. -_-;
So yes, I was annoyed at the "main committee".
Later that night, we had some sorta mini treasure hunt for a friend whose birthday was on the 24th of August (Sunday). At one, the first clue was given to her and she was supposed to find me to get some friendly harassment, her first present and the next clue. -_-; I might have overdid the harassment (I just told her to sing me a love song... since the whole treasure hunt was arranged by her bf. ._.). She gave me a look and walked away. I did not give chase until 5 minutes later. At that time, I did not have anymore mood to go on with the thing so I just handed her the stuff and wished her, and left her to decipher the next clue. I get that it is tiring to fast and do things. I get that it's embarrassing to sing. But to leave me like that; standing with the present and the clue... I felt like an idiot for even agreeing with the game. She should be happy for her birthday, I know... but I could not wish her properly because I felt very slighted. -_-;
Played more chor tai di before I turned in for the night. I couldn't sleep on the chairs so we picked a spot on the stage to lay out my sleeping bag and slept. Woke up two hours later to find my friend missing and my body freezing cold. Found her outside the theatrette, so I joined her there to sleep (waaay warmer) and slept like the dead till 6.30 pm. The whole day was even more of a blur than Saturday. My eye-bags were obvious when I took off my glasses. xD There was a photo-taking session before we left for the buses.
I was already zen with being called a volunteer by then. -_-; It was demoralizing to know that your hard work was not recognized and you're left out of the loop but okay, whatever. I just followed whatever they said and did what the other committee members and volunteers told me to do. The stadium was less packed than expected and the wait for 4pm was excruciatingly slow. The performances were okay but the whole thing was lopsided to the Chinese speaking participants as well. The English emcee was speaking Mandarin half the time. It rained yesterday but the countdown concert carried on like it wasn't and the campers who went down to watch it was not concerned about the rain as well. Pretty amazing.
I did not know half the people invited to sing/perform in the concert. xD The only ones I know was Yise (she came for the HELP Famine camp concert too) and Guang Liang. Oh well. We broke fast at 4pm after a few speeches and photo-slideshow viewing session. It was merely koko crunch and soya drink but after 30hours? Ahaha, could care less. FOOD! I accidentally broke fast 2 mins before the rest (I didn't know, okay! The soya bottle was opened and I took a sip and then I went wtfaasdfhjkl WHY NO ONE STOPPED MEEEE?) Automatic reaction when you see an open bottle. -_-; which means I fasted 29 hours 58 mins, unless you're following my watch which said 4.03? when I opened it. But then again, my last meal ended at 9.30am... so that's half an hour to patch it?
Then, we got ready to leave the stadium. During the wait for the bus leaders to get the people ready, there was one committee or volunteer who came up to me to thank me. He said, "You are from promotions, right? Thank you. You did a great job." For the first time in two days, I felt acknowledged. I mean, the president of the committee came to thank everyone for their work but that felt routine and empty due to what happened the previous night (Saturday). What this person said touched me because he did not have to do that. He also remembered that I was from promotions although I have never spoken to him personally before. To whoever you are (you probably won't be reading this. Ahaha), thank you very much for making me feel like part of the event again.
Also, I was very impressed by the logistics team of the event. They had very little space to work with and lots of logistic issues with the venue. I could see that the head of logistics was stressed out for both days but she never snapped at anyone and kept a smile up the whole time. She never complained and she answered me every time I had a question (re: being out of the loop). I'm glad we had her. Thank you very much, logistic team of HELP Famine Camp.
ahaha, that was a really tl;dr report, complete with rantings. Ate KFC when we got back although we were advised to eat lightly first. Slept at 9~ The end of the whole experience~