(no subject)
I'm back from my camp! It was not bad, not bad at all! And hey, I'm
still alive, aren't I? :) I'm never very good at telling people about
my experiences in detail, but I'll try my best with this one.
Day One: We left BP at around 7.00 a.m. Our camp was at Snake Valley Resort in Kluang, so it was pretty close, took us about an hour or so to reach there. We went in three buses because there were Interactors from about eight or nine schools (from BP) participating. So anyway, I brought the basic luggage stuff, and yeah, that includes my guitar! :P Hell, if I could bring my piano I would have... hahah. Ok upon reaching, we went off to our dorms... Accomodation was so unfair! :P The girls got this dormitory that was air-conditioned, clean and comfortable while the guys ended up staying in small, fan-less, obviously air-conditioned-less rooms... haha, I guess one can take it as a challange. It was, after all, supposed to be a camp. But that's not all, really. Our (the guys) dorms were scattered up on the hill, and there were tons of mosquitoes there! You know, after going there, I realised the difference between what it means to say a lot of mosquitoes and a little of them. A lot can be defined by having like six, seven or eight mosquitoes parking greedily all over your body... hahaha. Thank goodness most of us brought insect repellents, and there were less of those bugs (oh yeah, did I mention bugs? there were a lot of them too.) during night time. After that, we got to the ice-breaking session. Somehow I ended up in a group which was particularly ....quiet, I think, is the word. Haha. My group leader was this guy from my mother's school... haha, he was cool. Anyway, the ice-breaking didn't exactly warm anything up, in fact I thought the ice got colder... hahaha. Then we had a seminar on leadership by some lady, can't remember her name. What I do remember though is that it was rather dull and uninspiring (I think it was supposed to be inspiring.). Then, lunch. Food was terrible. But I guess the first day's meal was still okay, when I compare it to what we had for the next two days... after lunch, we had a seminar on management by the BP Rotary Club President, Mr Foo... it wasn't exactly motivational, but Mr Foo definitely knew how to make sure the audience wasn't falling asleep. hahah. Group discussion was next... it was to discuss and plan about the performance we wanted to do for the second night - was a compulsory thing for all groups. I guess that's what camps always have huh. Performance night or something. Lol. So, we planned a sketch... since none of us had any fresh ideas, I decided to recycle the one I did for the BRATs workshop (Ridiculous News Network!)... but it wasn't exactly plain sailing (in fact, not at all.), because all my teammates were only fluent in Mandarin and some of them in the Hokkien dialect... so I Manglish-ed the whole idea... hahaha. It was really fun, I'll tell you about the performance details in the Day Two section. At night, we had a treasure hunt, so we were running all around the resort finding stuff in the dark. Our group almost won... we missed by a couple of points! haha. The organising committee then made a barbeque for us, I didn't eat though. Was without an appetite. So around 1.00 a.m. we were SUPPOSED to sleep... but as usual for me (when I go to camps/workshops, that is), I didn't get any sleep... two reasons. One: there was a pub in the resort, and outsiders were karaoke-ing at an unearthly volume until around 2.30 a.m.... but no, the silence didn't get me sleep. The second reason was that my roommates, basically most of the Form 4 Interactors from my school, had a really crazy and stupid idea. They're all the playful sort, not that I mind, in fact it's fun to have them around, but I guess they went over the limit... one of them suggested to go to the pub and get some beers, and they actually did... I didn't go down with them because I was working on my sketch lines, and if you didn't know, I don't really like alcohol. Around 3.00+ they came up and told me that they got caught by the people in charge of the camp... one of them was almost drunk :P It wasn't exactly a small thing, because it would be (and i think it was) reported to the Rotarians... so they stayed up all night talking about the whole thing and worrying their heads out. :P All of us who stayed there got around one hour or less of sleep... haha.
Day Two: We (who stayed in that room) woke up at around 4.40 a.m.... yeah, crazy time to wake up, but not so much if you realise that there were around 90 participants and all of us had to be ready by 6.00. So we took an early shower and everything... didn't have to rush at all. Haha took our own sweet time. We didn't really want to sleep anyway. Not with the whole 'getting drunk and caught' situation going on. Around 7.00, we had breakfast... or at least, what was supposed to be breakfast... hahah. awful meal again, but really, there isn't much to be expected. We had water games after that... got really, really wet after all of them was over and the clothes I wore had the sort of chlorinated-swimming-pool-water sort of smell with them... haha. Then it was lunch, and then a seminar on discipline by a Mr. Long, who happened to be the principal of my brother's primary school (when my brother was still in primary school, that is)... it was okay, but considering I had only one hour of sleep the past day, I had to try very hard not to sleep through it... then we had a telematch - we had four different tasks to complete and then we had to find a flag in an area... my group finished the tasks the fastest but unfortunately, we couldn't find the bloody flag and we lost it... gah, soclose again. I guess we had ourselves to blame, we were blind enough not to see that the flag was RIGHT in front of us when we had finished the tasks... blargh. The telematch being over, we had a long group discussion again, to prepare for the performance for the night. After showering and changing, we were back at the main hall again for the group performances... so anyway, like I said, I recycled my idea previously used at BRATs... about a newstation providing absolutely stupid news. Except I changed the name to SNN (Stupid News Network), so that it'd be direct, straightforward and most importantly, blatantly stupid. Haha. I was the newscaster together with another girl from my group, I did English the Phua-Chu-Kang-style while she gave a Hokkien translation of it (though most of the time, her script was to say stuff completely unrelated to whatever I was saying. hahaha). And hey! We even had a translator for the deaf! hahahaa. Thank you, TV1! HAhaha. Well, we had only a few segments for our performance... for current events, we made a parody of the recent terrorist-beheading-hostage videos going around... our terrorist was talking gibberish most of the time, muttering Bush now and then, and started and ended with 'konnichiwa', whatever the hell sense that makes!!! That one definitely got a lot of applause. Lol. Haha. Then we had an entertainment news section in Mandarin... we made a parody of the whole Jolin Tsai-Jay Chou scandal, and it gave everyone a laugh. In fact, I couldn't stop laughing myself when I was doing my newscaster thingy. Lol. Our last segment was a weather forecast, and I reused the whole impromptu-spilling-water idea that my BRATs group had used... except that this time, there was a LOT more water... hahaha. So, my group wasn't that quiet after all, at least, not for the performance...my fellow group members were all sporting.. had a lot of fun doing the performance. plus, I think we got the most positive response from the crowd AND the Rotarians! ):) After the performances, we watched a Chinese movie, Mu Qin Kuai Le (A Happy Mother), I think that was the title... it was really really touching. It was about this young boy we went to school to give a speech about appreciating our mothers during Mother's Day, and he told about how much suffering his mother had gone through... the film centered on the mother's experiences, and I almost cried when it was over. Then we had a sort of heart-to-heart talk with the Rotarians about how we've been treating our parents, and how we should be treating them... one of the girls cried talking about it, and in fact I thought most of us would have, if all of us were willing to open up about it honestly. This was definitely the best seminar throughout the entire camp. It didn't directly relate to leadership and motivation (which was supposed to be the point of the camp), but it is still the best.
Day Three: There weren't any group activities for the last day.... after a jog on the hill during the morning, we had another terrible breakfast, then we had like three hours free to do whatever we want... and having absolutely nothing to do (and not wanting to swim or whatever), I brought my guitar down from my dorm and guitar-ed the hours away. Hahah. I had to do James Blunt's You're Beautiful like four or five times yesterday morning...! It's a popular English song, even among the community in BP too, I suppose! I didn't do it in the original key of course... can't sing the way he does, with the whole frequent switching to falsetto. :P So after the leisure time, we went to look at the snakes and other animals at the resort's mini zoo... hahaha, we spent like 45 minutes looking at this darn snake, waiting for it to eat the bird which was together in the same cage as it was... except that it didn't! We were all like, let's just watch Animal Planet already. :P Well, there were another two smaller ones which we got to see subdue some frogs... yeah, sadistic entertainment, huh? hahaha. Then we packed our bags and went to the closing ceremony... speeches and prize-giving. The Best Group went to the group which performed best in the activities, whereas Best Group Leader went to this girl from another group. We won the Best Performance award! :) And somehow, shockingly, I got the Best Male Participant award... I don't know how the hell that happened, seriously. It must have something to do with the whole me-not-going-down-to-get-future-hangovers-with-my-schoolmates thingy, I think... so anyway, after that, we went to watch a snake show. It was boring, because the only snake parts were minimal... most of the time, the guy kept crapping about some sort of medicine he was selling that he claimed to be effective for some sort of sickness or whatever. I wasn't really listening. After that was done, we all headed back home!
So overall, I guess it was a nice experience for me... it wasn't too over the top, not to the extent that would make one dislike the camp... I found the whole thing quite pleasurable. It wasn't entertaining to get hoarded by mosquitoes during the day of course, but hey, like I said earlier, it IS a camp, after all! :)
Day One: We left BP at around 7.00 a.m. Our camp was at Snake Valley Resort in Kluang, so it was pretty close, took us about an hour or so to reach there. We went in three buses because there were Interactors from about eight or nine schools (from BP) participating. So anyway, I brought the basic luggage stuff, and yeah, that includes my guitar! :P Hell, if I could bring my piano I would have... hahah. Ok upon reaching, we went off to our dorms... Accomodation was so unfair! :P The girls got this dormitory that was air-conditioned, clean and comfortable while the guys ended up staying in small, fan-less, obviously air-conditioned-less rooms... haha, I guess one can take it as a challange. It was, after all, supposed to be a camp. But that's not all, really. Our (the guys) dorms were scattered up on the hill, and there were tons of mosquitoes there! You know, after going there, I realised the difference between what it means to say a lot of mosquitoes and a little of them. A lot can be defined by having like six, seven or eight mosquitoes parking greedily all over your body... hahaha. Thank goodness most of us brought insect repellents, and there were less of those bugs (oh yeah, did I mention bugs? there were a lot of them too.) during night time. After that, we got to the ice-breaking session. Somehow I ended up in a group which was particularly ....quiet, I think, is the word. Haha. My group leader was this guy from my mother's school... haha, he was cool. Anyway, the ice-breaking didn't exactly warm anything up, in fact I thought the ice got colder... hahaha. Then we had a seminar on leadership by some lady, can't remember her name. What I do remember though is that it was rather dull and uninspiring (I think it was supposed to be inspiring.). Then, lunch. Food was terrible. But I guess the first day's meal was still okay, when I compare it to what we had for the next two days... after lunch, we had a seminar on management by the BP Rotary Club President, Mr Foo... it wasn't exactly motivational, but Mr Foo definitely knew how to make sure the audience wasn't falling asleep. hahah. Group discussion was next... it was to discuss and plan about the performance we wanted to do for the second night - was a compulsory thing for all groups. I guess that's what camps always have huh. Performance night or something. Lol. So, we planned a sketch... since none of us had any fresh ideas, I decided to recycle the one I did for the BRATs workshop (Ridiculous News Network!)... but it wasn't exactly plain sailing (in fact, not at all.), because all my teammates were only fluent in Mandarin and some of them in the Hokkien dialect... so I Manglish-ed the whole idea... hahaha. It was really fun, I'll tell you about the performance details in the Day Two section. At night, we had a treasure hunt, so we were running all around the resort finding stuff in the dark. Our group almost won... we missed by a couple of points! haha. The organising committee then made a barbeque for us, I didn't eat though. Was without an appetite. So around 1.00 a.m. we were SUPPOSED to sleep... but as usual for me (when I go to camps/workshops, that is), I didn't get any sleep... two reasons. One: there was a pub in the resort, and outsiders were karaoke-ing at an unearthly volume until around 2.30 a.m.... but no, the silence didn't get me sleep. The second reason was that my roommates, basically most of the Form 4 Interactors from my school, had a really crazy and stupid idea. They're all the playful sort, not that I mind, in fact it's fun to have them around, but I guess they went over the limit... one of them suggested to go to the pub and get some beers, and they actually did... I didn't go down with them because I was working on my sketch lines, and if you didn't know, I don't really like alcohol. Around 3.00+ they came up and told me that they got caught by the people in charge of the camp... one of them was almost drunk :P It wasn't exactly a small thing, because it would be (and i think it was) reported to the Rotarians... so they stayed up all night talking about the whole thing and worrying their heads out. :P All of us who stayed there got around one hour or less of sleep... haha.
Day Two: We (who stayed in that room) woke up at around 4.40 a.m.... yeah, crazy time to wake up, but not so much if you realise that there were around 90 participants and all of us had to be ready by 6.00. So we took an early shower and everything... didn't have to rush at all. Haha took our own sweet time. We didn't really want to sleep anyway. Not with the whole 'getting drunk and caught' situation going on. Around 7.00, we had breakfast... or at least, what was supposed to be breakfast... hahah. awful meal again, but really, there isn't much to be expected. We had water games after that... got really, really wet after all of them was over and the clothes I wore had the sort of chlorinated-swimming-pool-water sort of smell with them... haha. Then it was lunch, and then a seminar on discipline by a Mr. Long, who happened to be the principal of my brother's primary school (when my brother was still in primary school, that is)... it was okay, but considering I had only one hour of sleep the past day, I had to try very hard not to sleep through it... then we had a telematch - we had four different tasks to complete and then we had to find a flag in an area... my group finished the tasks the fastest but unfortunately, we couldn't find the bloody flag and we lost it... gah, soclose again. I guess we had ourselves to blame, we were blind enough not to see that the flag was RIGHT in front of us when we had finished the tasks... blargh. The telematch being over, we had a long group discussion again, to prepare for the performance for the night. After showering and changing, we were back at the main hall again for the group performances... so anyway, like I said, I recycled my idea previously used at BRATs... about a newstation providing absolutely stupid news. Except I changed the name to SNN (Stupid News Network), so that it'd be direct, straightforward and most importantly, blatantly stupid. Haha. I was the newscaster together with another girl from my group, I did English the Phua-Chu-Kang-style while she gave a Hokkien translation of it (though most of the time, her script was to say stuff completely unrelated to whatever I was saying. hahaha). And hey! We even had a translator for the deaf! hahahaa. Thank you, TV1! HAhaha. Well, we had only a few segments for our performance... for current events, we made a parody of the recent terrorist-beheading-hostage videos going around... our terrorist was talking gibberish most of the time, muttering Bush now and then, and started and ended with 'konnichiwa', whatever the hell sense that makes!!! That one definitely got a lot of applause. Lol. Haha. Then we had an entertainment news section in Mandarin... we made a parody of the whole Jolin Tsai-Jay Chou scandal, and it gave everyone a laugh. In fact, I couldn't stop laughing myself when I was doing my newscaster thingy. Lol. Our last segment was a weather forecast, and I reused the whole impromptu-spilling-water idea that my BRATs group had used... except that this time, there was a LOT more water... hahaha. So, my group wasn't that quiet after all, at least, not for the performance...my fellow group members were all sporting.. had a lot of fun doing the performance. plus, I think we got the most positive response from the crowd AND the Rotarians! ):) After the performances, we watched a Chinese movie, Mu Qin Kuai Le (A Happy Mother), I think that was the title... it was really really touching. It was about this young boy we went to school to give a speech about appreciating our mothers during Mother's Day, and he told about how much suffering his mother had gone through... the film centered on the mother's experiences, and I almost cried when it was over. Then we had a sort of heart-to-heart talk with the Rotarians about how we've been treating our parents, and how we should be treating them... one of the girls cried talking about it, and in fact I thought most of us would have, if all of us were willing to open up about it honestly. This was definitely the best seminar throughout the entire camp. It didn't directly relate to leadership and motivation (which was supposed to be the point of the camp), but it is still the best.
Day Three: There weren't any group activities for the last day.... after a jog on the hill during the morning, we had another terrible breakfast, then we had like three hours free to do whatever we want... and having absolutely nothing to do (and not wanting to swim or whatever), I brought my guitar down from my dorm and guitar-ed the hours away. Hahah. I had to do James Blunt's You're Beautiful like four or five times yesterday morning...! It's a popular English song, even among the community in BP too, I suppose! I didn't do it in the original key of course... can't sing the way he does, with the whole frequent switching to falsetto. :P So after the leisure time, we went to look at the snakes and other animals at the resort's mini zoo... hahaha, we spent like 45 minutes looking at this darn snake, waiting for it to eat the bird which was together in the same cage as it was... except that it didn't! We were all like, let's just watch Animal Planet already. :P Well, there were another two smaller ones which we got to see subdue some frogs... yeah, sadistic entertainment, huh? hahaha. Then we packed our bags and went to the closing ceremony... speeches and prize-giving. The Best Group went to the group which performed best in the activities, whereas Best Group Leader went to this girl from another group. We won the Best Performance award! :) And somehow, shockingly, I got the Best Male Participant award... I don't know how the hell that happened, seriously. It must have something to do with the whole me-not-going-down-to-get-future-hangovers-with-my-schoolmates thingy, I think... so anyway, after that, we went to watch a snake show. It was boring, because the only snake parts were minimal... most of the time, the guy kept crapping about some sort of medicine he was selling that he claimed to be effective for some sort of sickness or whatever. I wasn't really listening. After that was done, we all headed back home!
So overall, I guess it was a nice experience for me... it wasn't too over the top, not to the extent that would make one dislike the camp... I found the whole thing quite pleasurable. It wasn't entertaining to get hoarded by mosquitoes during the day of course, but hey, like I said earlier, it IS a camp, after all! :)