Introduction
Speak not, lie hidden, and conceal
the way you dream, the things you feel.
Deep in your spirit let them rise
akin to stars in crystal skies
that set before the night is blurred:
delight in them and speak no word.
How can a heart expression find?
How should another know your mind?
Will he discern what quickens you?
A thought once uttered is untrue.
Dimmed is the fountainhead when stirred:
drink at the source and speak no word.
Live in your inner self alone
within your soul a world has grown,
the magic of veiled thoughts that might
be blinded by the outer light,
drowned in the noise of day, unheard...
take in their song and speak no word.
Friday, November 10, 2006
I don't know. Sometimes, you know you've worked really hard for something and when you get the outcome of that hardwork, you expect it to be good. Really good. Like marvellously good. So, when you get an outcome that is simply good, you end up dissatisfied. Enough said, I would like to recount my experiences at lead camp '06.
Day 1I entered the Changi MOE campsite with much dread and anxiety. The place looked too small for a campsite and a tad bit hostile (I don't know why..) for my liking. I was in group
8 :), the unimanginably wonderful group consisting of Maryam, Kristel, Anzie, Shuang Wei, Yi Jie, Yu Ling (Kok), Latha, Vaish and myself. First things first, we were assigned to bunk 'E'. Our bunks were remarkably big but the flooring was parquet and worse, there were spacings in the parquet that allowed you to see the level below. Tht meant that it would be awfully painful to roll over while you sleep. Ouch.
That aside, we each got an envelope to send messages to each other and we stuck them on our bunk door. We bunked with group 7 (Kevyna, Debbie Goh, Xin Er, Claire, nat, Qian qian) and the moment we got to our bunk we starting to look out for names for our group. Since, we were from group
Eight and bunk
E,we wanted a name starting with E as well. Energetic? No. Enthusiastic? No. Energiser? Like the batteries? No way. Enthralling? Engaging? Earthly? Exuberant? Effervescene? Please.......... Well, at this very crucial point, Kristel had to point out that Maryam shared an uncanny resemblance to ELMO from Sesame Street. Hey, wait a min, did we hear EEEElmo? Yeah, so we became 'Elmo'. (As a sidenote, if you thought elmo was bad, there were groups like ding dong and looney tunes, and banana..)
Then, we went beneath our bunk to have a group debrief session with our lovely facils, Sophia Ng and Habiba. We then played this 'trust' game, where our whole group formed a very small circle with our hands in the spotting position and one person would stand in the middle, 'falling'. the aim of the game was for the person in the middle to trust her groupmates to hold on to her and for the groupmates to thave the responsibility to catch and pass on the person in the middle. It was quite fun, especially when I went to the middle.
After that, we had general activities, starting with 'Nitrocrossing' where we had to cross from one point to another over an 'acid pool' using a rope in the middle. The biggest problem was to catch hold of the rope. Our group, being a bunch of whackos, decided to use all the twigs on the ground to make a long stick, fastening them with our hair bands, shoelaces and Kok's pant laces. To add to it, we attached Anzie's hairband to the 'stick' to act as a hook to grab the rope. IT WORKED!!! :) Then, we started swinging one by one, making it in the end! We rock! Well, at least until Habibah pointed out that we could have thrown shoes at the rope to make it swing until it reached us. I shall defend my group by saying that we had lots of fun doing what we did.
We then did 'Zigzag'. This was fun as it reminded me of my SMPS days, where we used to play Crocodile and sissors, paper, stone on a similar structure, the aim of the game was to get all members across without falling off the zigzag thingy. That was easy enough, but we were made to cross in order of age and height without being able to speak. This was very fun, as we ended up taking secretly when the facils weren't looking. ;)
After that we did spiders' web, and the tyre thing, where we had to get the tyre out of the pole. It was hard, and my group decided to carry the lightest person (me) on someone's back to get the tyre out. I ended up being carried by Anzie and Latha respectively. We managed to retrieve a hoola hoop but not the tyres as they were simply too heavy for us to lift!
Then we got to do one high element, Burma Bridge, where we climbed to a certain height and had to walk on a rope, while holding onto two ropes by your side and climb down. That was fun but there were more interesting and fun that we could not do. Sad! :(
By the way, bathing facilities at the campsite are seriously horrendous (at least they do not have curtains instead of toliet doors like the horrible Labrador Park). There are locks but they can't be locked. So, when you are bathing, someone has to hold the door from outside!
We ended the day with CCA discussion (highly uneventful for slackers like myself, Maryam, Kristel, Vaish and Latha). Then, we went to sleep at about 11 and i couldn't sleep! If you thought that I hadn't tired myself our enough, you are absolutely wrong! Since the campsite was at Changi, you could hear a plane landing or taking off every 5 mins. It is fascinating to watch to landing in the daytime but having to hear it is painful. Having to hear it while sleeping is plain torture! One lesson all us campers learnt is that SIA's planes are the loudest of them all! Jetstar, Sri Lankan airlines, Thai, Quantas all are noisy in a bearable way. So much so that by day 3, all of us were betting (SIA or not SIA) just by listening to a plane. With that, the only consolation for the night was that mozzies in Singapore hate me. They probably find my blood tasteless. Which is why they spared me and took Kristel instead. I literally cried out loud when I saw the bite marks on her. Even putting axe oil and sleeping didn't help.
Day 2We reluctantly woke up to start our day with rafting!!! :) Congratulations to my group which is one of the few groups whose rafts sustained and not disintegrate on water! We attached the 4 poles to form a # shape and secured one barrel to two opposite sides of the poles. Then, we put two tyres in the middle for extra buoyance and it worked!!!
After that, we got to serve food and I ended up serving rice, which is quite fun as you get to see how much rice each person eats, from the anorexics to the non-carb intake people. After that is the really frustrating part. We kayaked. Kayaking is fun. But we were made to raft into one line and the people seated at the front of the kayak were made to stand up on the sea. Well, that can be fun. However, standing next to Marissa sim who could not stop shaking since she was at the end and singing 'From high Olympus" was fun but extremely wobbly and shaky.
Worse, the tides were against us so we kept having to break raft and kayak further. Once, my kayak was at the extreme end and our instructor, Maya (Kaakha kaakha, anyone?) wanted me go to the other end of the row without paddling.. Wait a minute, how am I supposed to do that? I was supposed to walking on the kayaks in the middle and towards the last kayak. This was indeed disastrous. But I only got acrros about 3 kayaks when we were too dangerously close to the rocky areas and we had to break raft yet again. Day 2 was extremely fun, though!
Day 3At the end of day 2, Mr. KTan had a shocker for us all. The next day, 55 sec 1s and 2s would arrive at the campsite to do the stuff we did one day 1 and this time, WE would be THEIR facils. This exercise, though aimed at improving our facilitation skills as CCA leaders, was a complete waste of time for a 55 juniors who ended up to be all picked from UGs. This meant that most of them were already highly disicplined and exposed to such activities. We didn't really have much problem handling them. Each group was supposed to get 4-5 juniors but in the end, each group only got 3, due to the poor turnout. My group got two people I already know: Tze qing, Soffia, from PB, and Roy.
Other than that we had cleanup on the last day. This was painful to do as our bathrooms were clooged up with sand from the beach due to our kayaking. After much toil and trouble, we managed to somehow clean up our mess and finally made our way home after a closing ceremony.
Now for a funny part. After everything, we are boarding our bus, going Tanah merah mrt, waving our goodbyes and looking at the campsite for the last time when Kevyna Pang goes, "Wait a minute, do you all see that PE T-shirt hanging from bunk E? Could that be mine?" She quickly looks through the bag to find out, "Oh no, it's MINE!!!! What do I do??" that it was indeed her shirt and it had her psl badge and her nametag on it. We called everyone we knew who was still waiting for her parents at the campsite and one girl responded, passing her phone to Mr Yeoh who promised to safeguard Kevyna's Shirt.. :)
Wow, that has got to be my longest blog entry. Let's hope I'll have a longer one after India trip!! :)) Hope all goes well~
The End
9:33 pm
