hUiLiN 
Sunday, June 11
i survived. in one piece. PART 01 & 02
i m proud to announce that i m a SURVIVOR. i came back in one piece, unless u want to count the cuts and bruises on my body. hahas. overall, the camp was fun. and 19th student council rawks the house! still, my shoulders and back is aching. i may have to lie on the sofa for several days before i could sit properly. ow. i m trying to recall what i had done the past five horrendous days. first 2 days are wow, horrible, terrible, veggie-table. and i swear, this is going to be the longest entry i have ever written. anyway, its supposed to be my toilet bowl. so. this is just my undigested matter. hahas.
DAY 01
i didnt really sleep alot the night before. i woke up at six plus, and tried doing some bionomial, but ended giving up. cant focus. my mind was about the camp. i stoned in my living room the whole morning until seven plus, thinking whether i should go to the camp. and my mom was so tired that she was sleeping and ignored me until i demanded my breakfast from her around 745.. before i left my house, and my brother had already woken up. me, i was still thinking of a way to wriggle out of this messy thing. my mom and brother sang me the buddhist scripture, like im having my funeral then. arghs. why do i have such cranky family. poor me. i felt like hitting them la for making me feel so sad for leaving them. i reached college ten minutes before nine.
almost everyone is in the canteen with their luggage, all so excited and chattering. thereafter, the 19th sc went to put their bags in fusion house and gathered there for further instructions. we got the schedule for the day and we were divided into four groups. thank god, im in the same group as jamie. and i think mrs tan, she said its more exciting if she gives us the timetable per day. wow. marvellous. and so, the first part of that day is to clean the classroom blocks. the rationale behind this is to show our sc care and concern to the students. hahas, dun ask me how. lols. i was thinking. the classrooms will still be dirty when all of us came back from holidays. right? defeats all purposes. halfway through cleaning block A, i saw ethel, and the feeling is so great. i got to see my friend. support support. hahas. oh yeah, it was also then i know we are going to sleep in tents while we were in school. oh crap. i never slept once in a tent. no, i dun even noe how to pitch a tent. so horrible. yeah, i haven said about my amulet thing. we had an attire check before. and miss foo spotted my necklace and asked me wad i m wearing. i told her is my amulet and i have to wear it. hahas. she said maybe i should adjust the length cause it can be seen. so i did what she said. and guess wad. SNAP. the amulet detached from the string. is an omen. it marks the evil of the 5 days 4 nights camp. and i was correct, okay. the meals are yucky. all fried and spicy.
after cleaning the classrooms, we had a morning assembly training by the 18th sc. and i was selected to be an announcer next time. oh crap. i dunno why, i said the national pledge anyhow. and they still chose me. has. i m gg to have a hard time with keanu reeves in the next one and a half year. i shant say who s keanu reeves. s nickname for a somebody in college. but anyway. hahas. the 18th was so good to their juniors, they gave all of us a small personalised notebook. in the cover, it was written a small message. mine is "empty promises are worthless". at first i took it quite hard, cause there is hidden meaning, but later i think is true. unless they got psycho ability, how they know i m such person? thanks, to dunno who wrote that. it makes me much aware of myself.
we had to pitch our tents after it. due to miscommunication, the girls pitched the tents not in favour of mr b.tan's. we took up the fitness corner, and he wanted us to change. but not now, when there is still some light. we went for a quick dinner. damn fast. the food is horrid. but we have to swallow anyway. and later we went for a talk given by the 8th SC on project management. i was so tired. i was dozing during the whole thing. it was so boring. remember all of us hadnt bath. we were so tired. still we saw the 8th SC and 1st SC pple all grown up. there were 3 of them, and they told us of their passion for SC. they were all successful people now, two of them are teachers and the other is an trainer in hewlett packard. i was thinking coming into sr, is not entirely a failure option. unless we make ourselves fail, we shall succeed in life. anyway, the workshop starts from 730 to 1000. everyone thought we could bath and went to sleep after we gone to shift our tents. that was when i lost the peg for my tent. and it caused everyone in sc to look for the peg in the grass, groping for the stupid thing with their hands in the dark. i felt so bad. i caused trouble for everyone. but no.. mr b.tan and other teacher advisors gathered us at the pe room there. and we were made to do punishment. this is not because of the peg but in the morning, some forgot about their attire. so all for one, one for all. we hit the track. when we came back after a round, mr tey commented that we are damn disorganised, and made us run again with a time limit, i think is 2min30s. everyone sprinted. aniway we failed the timing. i remembered doing 4 separate rounds in the middle of the night. i was going to faint. in between, we did push ups and sits up on the track. it was a test of our edurance. damn stress. mr tey asked us questions on the full names of all HODs. we spelt many of them wrongly, and we got the punishment. tough. almost everyone was near to tears. this is the beginning of a monstrous training camp. the relax part was over, this is the real one. we finally got through it, and the teachers explained the reasoning to us. sadly, my mind was drifted to somewhere, except they want us to carry a notebook around. when we finally ended crazy thingy, it was near one. and frantically, we went to bath. oh ya, we also have to pack all our luggage in another bagpack, that belongs to the odac people. tell u the truth, its smelly and dirty.. and the reason we are going to repack, the teachers said we are changing our campsite. like real.. we all got fooled in the end.. lights out at 145am, but in reality none of us sleeps that night. there was 4 of us sharing, and it was bloody stuffy and hot inside. awaits for daylight.
DAY 02
we woke up at 0530. my sleepmates were janice, jamie, lishan and me. it wasnt meant to be that way, but anyway. i was so exhausted. cant take it le. try looking for the peg, but still couldnt find it. so i went to apologize to mr b.tan when he told me about the hike. we know we have a physical training, but we dunno we are going to do. that morning we had five loaves of bread, several cans of luncheon meat, sardines and baked beans. that was meant to be our breakfast and lunch. well my group rather ate plain bread and biscuits for breakfast. it meant we have to carry the cans and bread along with our luggage to dunno where. oh and i forgot. im in group 01. my group mates were xinyi, lishan, jamie, me, amos, alicia, gayne, jonathan, julian. so it turns out we were going macRitchie reservoir, oh we dont need the teachers to tell us. we can guess. mr tey, mr b.tan, miss foo and mrs tan went with us. carrying the heavy backpacks, sleeping bags, shoe bags, 8 tents, plus the food: cans and hike. physically exhausting. when we reached there at 830, because of our dilly-dally, mr tey reprimanded us and we did push up on the path. my palms are so swollen. and mr b.tan wanted us to rearrange our bags, and we had to take out all our stuff and repack. meaning our clothes were all scather among. all of us are sharing the same load. the boys are carrying much heavier bags than the girls. also because of this, my pe shirt and shorts went missing. everyone was carrying around 5 kg of bag. sads. anyway, mr b.tan took the lead. and we had to follow. the rest of teachers were carrying nothing. mind you, he walked very fast, and couldnt keep up initially. he was walking with a walking stick, and his bag was nothing. we had to walk in a single file, there were other people there. some guys were running half-naked. me began to get use to the heavy load, and could keep up with his pace. still, there were some dropping of stuff. after walking for about 3 km, it began to rain heavily. and we had to stop at the ranger station for shelter. we are not the only ones. we had our lunch and chatter there. with one can-opener, we opened the sardines and everything la. i prefer baked beans on my bread. anyway, my group left a half loaf of bread. everyone is starved. the rain never stops but everyone there is leaving, also going down the hill. i was thinking mayb the teachers decided to call off the hike of the bad weather. mind u, there is landslide. but no, instead of going down, we are going up. the rain hasnt stopped yet, there s still drizzle. suddenly we are cutting through the jungle, and mr b.tan is using a compass. oh lord. things r getting bit out of hand. the jungle floor s so wet and there are so many twigs, falling branches. worst still, there are thorns on them. we stopped halfway, when mr b.tan wan us to reflect why we want to be councillors. we were in the middle of nowhere in the jungle, sitting on top of our bags. luckily it rained, because it turned out to be our lunching area. i dun think i wan that. there were so many weird insects there. i felt so dead. i wanna drop dead then. i wanna get out of there badly. anyway, i thot it through about me being a councillor. we walked our way through and come to a sandy patch. this is the start. when mr b.tan suddenly want to play the casualty game. everyone was stunned, we had no idea what to do. until almost everyone became a casualty including me myself. now we know what we had to do. carry the casualties to a point where mr b.tan was. suddenly i felt he was psychotic. we dropped our bags on the ground. and began carrying. everyone was shouting instructions. and mr b.tan was counting how long it will take us. we carried this thing for so many times. mind you, some of the heavier people ended up being casualties. and we have to carry them. suddenly the gender doesnt matter anymore, we had to carry by hook or by crook. we were all pushed out of our comfort zones. i remembered carrying angel with jamie. she treated it like a laughing matter. brrz. i ended up being a casualty three times, and were carried by janice, angel and wee kiat. and i felt so sorry for them la. yet she could still laugh while we were carrying her. all of us are doing our best to see the teachers' maniac expectations. ya. and later, mr b.tan shouted everyone to do the hornet drill. all of us were to lie flat on the sandy ground, our hands protecting our heads. it was then i noticed how little i am. i was staring at the sand and stones in front of me. why am i doing all this? if i werent a councillor, i would be at home now, watching tv attending lectures with my friends. but because i m elected one now, so i m going through all this shit. seriously. i felt quite demoralised. council now is totally different from secondary school days. we are expected to do more than before, and to let the rest of students accept us. we have to be tough, strong to accept any critics from them. the rains fell even heavier. we were back on track to our way to our "campsite" again. we had to reach there by 345pm. i dunno how many km there are. i m so tired, cold from the rain, and feeling sick. i m not afraid to say i was crying in the rain, except my tears were mixed with the raindrops. i was dragging my feet to the destination which turned out to be bukit timah hill. i wanted to go home so badly. until the last few steps, i heard cheerings behind me. it cheered me up. they even sang college anthem. everyone is trying so hard, pushing their limits. i felt encouraged. not only me, so many of us are encountering this problem and fight this. 19th. we are the ones.
we finally reached the damn place. i felt a sense of achievement. though quite sad about the crying part.. at least is my sign of destressing. everyone boarded the bus and went back to school. we were so cold.. now we had to unpack. we all made it, i made it. this is a very nice feeling. and i thought i lost my torch in the meanwhile. that night, the T.As showed their concern to us by giving us to sleep in classrooms. we were so glad. this is like a reward to us. at least, im touched. but there are many cockroaches (xiao-qiang) in the girl's toilet near lt5. hahas. we turned in around 11 plus.
DAY 03
i woke up around 545pm, because im disturbed by their alarms. the funny fact was everyone slept like logs and couldnt be woke up by the alarms. there were three. we had workshops from 9 all the way to 12 in it-room 3. mr alan tan taught us on risk management, where we learnt about tau-pok. then the 18th exco spoke to us on induction. it was cold there. and we just took in everything we could. we were all looking toward afternoon, where we were going Changi MOE adventure centre. we reached there at one plus and divided into three groups. im in alpha, and my group members are jonathan, jarnaden, dinesh, cedric, wee kiat, sabree, gayne, xinyi, shiping, clara. we called ourselves alpha taupok. our facilitator was caihong (rainbow). she was a nice woman. we went to do our high aliments in one day. hahas. at least for rock climbing. my hands passed the red line. hahas. which is a great achievement for me. previously i couldnt have possibly done it. later, we tried wild woosey. i partnered with xingyi. well. we were so afraid. when we reached the top our legs are shaking. and our helmets were knocking against each other's. we lost balance. and i fell on the wire. who was belaying me? oh ya, wee kiat i think. has, its horrifying, my life depends on him. then later, i began belaying. cedric, jonathan, clara and shiping were the only ones who cross it. they are the strongest. continuing is the jumping from the pole. that s the easiest, only if whether u can grab the pole.
"on belay?" i asked.
"belay on." jaja replied. "squeeze check."
"check."
"climbing?"
"climb on."
i took a deep breath before i jumped. phew. it served the purpose. hehe. i grabed for almost a second. yipee. hahas. except jaja pulled too hard already, i m in agony. finally we went for abseiling and flying fox. that s the best part i thot. because there isnt difficulty. hoho. we went for dinner. well, we are very hungry. it was more than six hours after the last meal. alpha served the meal warmheartedly. there was a sudden fire drill. and we went off to do night activities. we were all blindfolded. and separated from our grp mates. we had to find them back with just "oinks". then we had to make a square with our blindfolds on. alpha did it the first. and we were so surprised. hahas. the thing is, night activity doesnt call it off a day. later we play another casualty rescue game. we were all blindfolded, and in the meantime, dinesh got "lost". as later he described that he was kidnapped into a blue van that drove him to dunno where. when we found out dinesh was lost. we all went around the vincinity shouting, "DINESH, where are you?" actually we all know he s not there, because dinesh wont play a joke on us. the teacher advisors were. they were hiding their laughters behind. argh. so annoying. until mr tey asked whether we want to go out and look for dinesh. even rainbow tricked us, we carried a stretcher and ran out calling for dinesh. when there was this car passed us. irritating. when we asked mr tey to come along with us. he was driving his car past us. so frustrating. argh. we walked briskly all the way to east coast park, when we thought we saw dinesh in his red shirt in the dark. but we called the wrong one, because he was moving further away from us. then shiping turned and saw him hiding behind a tree. we knew the T.As wanted us to do this. so we asked dinesh to lie on the stretcher while we lift him. it was hard because dinesh was heavy built.. we got eleven pple. but gayne and sabree they all had back problems, we dun wan them to get injured. so the remaining of us tried our best to carry dinesh. we pulled. rotate our position every now and then. took care of one another. it was hard. why couldnt they find someone lighter. hahas. anyway. we walked our way painstakingly, perspiring. one, two, one, two, xinyi was calling. when we reached the place. taupok team began fighting even harder. our goal is only that near. we were shouting now. it raises our morale. we made sure the CLCs heard us clearly. we may be a small group. but we are no nothing. the last few meters, we chiong there. and dropped dinesh. it was another sense of pride. we brought dinesh back safe and sound. alpha did it again. there in which. we had debrief with the T.A.s again. it was hell. they made us run here and there many times in a limited time of only 30s. tzewei and limin were not feeling good. we hadnt have our supper. the CLCs had already turned in. and left us. the debrief lasted for so long.. me and sabree. we were counting the number of planes taking off in the center. boy, it was so irritating. because the teachers were commenting us on our lack of urgency. and its hard to hear them break every now and then. again. that night, we only slept around 2 plus. few more hours to daybreak. whines.
DAY 04
we had our sea activities today. in the first place, i was thinking of not getting involved. i wanted to get out of it by saying i had the woman problem and couldnt play this game. but i dunno what gone into me. i did it eventually. and my kayaking partner is dinesh. hehes. mr ho even suan me before we even started kayaking. he so annoying. anyway. dinesh is strong as in he never fails to complete what he wants. so we peddle out into the sea. my hands like falling off anytime. the whole trip, he was calling me jamie. quite upset. has.. he said i fixed the name of jamie. dots dots. we were in the middle of the sea. and the instructor gave us a mission "impossible". he wanted the front person to echange seat with the back person. all of us did that. well until then, we had a small conflict. now that dinesh is in the front. the damn instructor wanted everyone in the front to stand up at least for a second. the waves were becoming more choppy. there were a few who backed out. that was disheartening. but all of us pulled through. behind, we were grabbing onto each others kayak tightly. making sure unity is there. so everyone ll not capsize. wee kiat's and dustin's capsized when we were switching the places. we pull through. we anchor. and our shoes were filled with sand. we went for lunch. and we continued with our low aliment activities, where we were gathering our equipments for our rafts. alpha lost three PVC poles in one of the four games. out of the three groups, we were the only ones with insufficient materials. that was damn disheartening. we tried bribing rainbow. but then.. hahas. we were so cold. the rain had started. we worked our rafts in the rain. out of the five girls, i had the poorest physical ab. i could only contribute small parts. im not sure about the ropes. it was quite devastating. my feelings arent great. with the rain and everything, i was damn pessimistic. and dinesh was transferred out of the team and in came evan. we worked nevertheless. we are the last, and done with incomplete materials. bravo went to fight the war first. but what i heard was that their raft dismantled the moment it touched the sea, and never made it the 25 meters. then later, group c went as well. they never really complete. only left us - alpha. compared to the others. ours looks more of a dragon boat, with one barrel in front and one behind. we never really utilise the equipment given. we used only 2 pvc poles, 3 tyres, 2 barrels and 9 ropes. i was going to pull onto the rope to tighten at the back of barrel. or rather i was supposed to be sitting at the back. it was time. the ropes of our raft loosen on the way to the sea. until shiping tied a dead knot to it. everyone board the raft. cedric was banging the barrel, and i was calling the rhythm. the rest were peddling. everyone was cheering on us at the shore even the teachers, vice principals and other groups. and though i wasnt wearing my specs. is so cool. everyone thinks its cute. they snap alot of our pictures. alpha is the best. i m so proud to be an alpha. neither did our raft dismantle in the sea. we travel more than 25 metre. we were so happy. we didnt expect it to happen. we were like oh my. we did it! we did it! everyone was cheering on us. we were the unexpected. everyone thot we couldnt do it, even us. but. hahas. and we were so yipee. dinesh felt so sad he couldnt be with us. but he helped us even though as we set sail. i hope we got pictures. we helped keep the stuff and later bath. getting ready for the campfire. i dunno why. i love campfires the best. 2 hours in the dark. singing. playing. laughing. performing. tobey got all the teachers to do the hokey pokey. hahas. some look very very very funny. especially mr p.tan. sshh.. p can mean alot of pple. he looks like a humpty dumpty. haha. so cute. the 19th went so crazy, so enthu. compared to the rest. our performance was the most anti-climax one haha.because we had no time to think of better one. and one of our ideas were used by one of groups. so we switched to this. i enjoyed it so much. i was used to being wet and dirty. hahas. it was the last night. after the campfire and debrief. good thing was we never got tenkan by the T.As. they were pleased with our overall performance and sent us to sleep. first time, we were dismissed earlier than the CLCs. so some of us went around disturbing them. honestly, 19th had lost their mind. everyone was so happy. we made it through. that was the last night. later everyone gathered and we done the craziest stuff. singing and dancing the friendship dance. i wasnt tired at all. doing the hokey pokey. all 32 of us under the moonlight. we made sure we rock the floor. i was overwhelmed. i was so happy i made it through this camp, and survived to tell u guys about my story that i am not longer a soft person and i had overcome my fears. that night, i slept well. and heard nothing of the airplanes taking off. i even dreamt..
DAY 05
it was time to leave. and everyone felt a bit sad. we had our fun. the rain came so suddenly. and we were in the canteen for our reflection time. as it was helpless from the sea. we faced the cold winds. and water splashing onto us. we hugged each other tightly. and singing the srjc cheers. told you 19th are a bunch of crazy people who work and play hard.
"brrr... is cold in here. there must be some sr spirit in the amtosphere. i say brr... olei olei. ice ice ice." uncompleted version. hahas. we suffered from brain freeze. like jonathan says. at last, the rain stopped and we proceed with our area cleaning. luckily we are not doing the toilet cleaning. or we ll die.. we had our last debrief follow-up for rafting with rainbow. and later is time to get ready for home. at last we are going back to civilisation. hahas. where there ll be enough food for us and everything. this camp taught me alot. and made a bunch of new friends. 19th is the best. or rather, tis s the best council camp i have ever been to. wah.. we are going to work even harder.
here i am. spend more than 4 hours vomitting my stuff. there are so much stuff i haven completed. homework. and i haven had my lunch!!! ahs~ gotta go grab something. logging off at 1527. jiayou! charis~