hey peepz! i am back from the NUS Humanitarian Camp. it was supposed to be a camp for mainly freshmen. but because my sister is the organizer and they lacked people, and she asked me, so i, out of my kind heart agreed. even though i just finished the prime minister's cup barely 2 days ago.
at first i tried to get the guys from db to go. but because it would cost 55 dollars to participate, they were super relectant, despite the appeal of 30 over girls, and only 3 guys. ah well. maybe money IS more important than girls.
and so in the end, only i from the team went. and eventually made up one of the 3 male participants in the team. luckily, there were 3 more councillors on hand to rein in all the estrogen and bitching that went on in the camp. haha!
being one of 3 guys had its perks. one of the girls asked me in an ice breaker game if i was happy that there were so many girls. well, i thought the answer was quite obvious. haha! ah well. of course, it was quite hard too. for me to converse with members of the opposite sex. i am not really the conversant sort. i am more the, get drama and get people talking and then keep quiet sort. haha! ah well. usually i find myself running out of topics to talk about, or even to keep a conversation going when it comes to talking to girls. i really do wish that someone could just teach me how to converse.
well, talking to members of the same sex proved to be a lot easier. in order to save space, my wonderful sister had me bunk in with the other 2 guys in a twin room. i had to problem squeezing in of course. after all, we all went through ns. and hence, formed our common conversational topics. after that, i tried to psycho both of them to join dragonboat. haha! i just kept talking and talking about it. i just hope they would be interested enough to sign up at the matirculation fair. when my sister found out, she got quite pissed with me, because the camp was supposed to be an opportunity to recruit people into the club, and here i went poaching the guys into db. i wanted to poach the girls too. but i kinda stopped at the guys. of course, when the girls asked me about it, i simply obliged them with straight forward answers. hopefully, i mangaged to convince some of the girls to join. but most of them looked like the kind-hearted-i-really-want-to-help-people sort. db is an entirely different club, and it would be hard to have them both. i just tell them to do what they have a passion for, whether its to row a boat, or to do relief work in banda acheh or to join a hall or just to study.
so over those 4 days, we played a series of games that taught us things about team cooperation and stuff. most of the games, were really quite cool! some of the games were really disgusting though. one of the more memorable ones had to be one when we had to suck clean marshmellows that were covered with hershey's chocolate syrup mixed with ketchup. it was plain gross. the girls insisted on stopping. i thought it tasted like sour plums. of course, when you start thinking of the ketchup, you just lose your appetite. this was just one of the things that i had to eat. i was the only guy in the group you see, so being the macho brave alpha male, i volunteered to do everything downright disgusting, wet and dirty. there was one occasion when i had to eat 5 pretzels that went through the clothes of 3 girls and 1 guy. they were sort of soggy and saltier than usual. ah well. really surprised i did not get diarrhoea. on top of that, i had to do more of the manual labour and stuff. well, a guy had to do what a guy had to do.
but the girls were really swell. they were quite sporting ah well, totally immersing themselves into the spirit of the camp. very proud of them. and i hope they had lots of fun too.
in the evening, we had "theme" talks about volunteerism. the seniors showed us video clips about their expeditions, and they shared their experiences in volunteerism. some of the video clips were really touching, especially the one when they went to acheh for the tsunami relief efforts. the scenes were full of tragedy and emotions. many of them were lost, orphaned kids enjoying when playing with the relief workers. heard some continuous sniffing after that. i had a big headache and a bit of guilty conscious. because i questioned myself what was i doing myself. i am so lucky, doing nothing but studying and rowing my boat without putting as much efforts in the arena of volunteerism. i was being the materialistic, hedonistic bohemian.
at that point of them, it felt that i needed to simply abandon everything and jump straight into volunteerism. well, it was the same feeling i had at last years community service club's freshmen orientation camp as well. then, it really felt that i could it. but now, i cannot, simply because i have already adopted a lifestyle that i cannot simply recklessly and carelessly throw out of the window simply becuase my heart aches for the lonely, the poor, the helpless. i wish i could but i cannot. it was a crushing feeling. and yet...
anyway, i do hope that many of them would have decided to join the club and get involved with helping people. the world needs more people like them.
we also had to put up a short performance for the old folks at the kaki bukit moral centre. so my group put up a dance/song item to the ah niu's dui mian de nu hai kan guo lai. it was a funny item, and i was glad, it got the old folks laughing at parts and i really hope that they enjoyed themselves. the girls were great acting as hiao za bos. haha! after that, we mingled with the old folks. and i was talking to 2 grandmothers. i was quite scared. firstly cos i had no ability with hokkein or any form dialect and was not very convsersant with chinese, and second, i was afraid to talk to them about family. i was scared that at any point of them they would burst into tears and bewail about past tragedies. but now on hindsight, it occurs to me that these were 70 year old people who have gone through the world war and all sorts of possible hardship. they were hardened people. they werent going to just break down and cry there and then. if they were, they would have done it a long long time ago. i asked them if they liked to sing karaoke, but in the end, they insisted that i sing for them. so i went up and sang with some of the people. ended up singing the same song we danced to. haha!
after that, i felt like i need to call my own grandmother. these old folks were so called abandoned, and living alone in one room flats, with little visits from their own family. one of them did not even know where her own daughter stays. their grandchildren barely visits them. and i got all guilty again. becuase even though technically we did not abandon my grandmother, cos she insisted on staying in jurong when we moved to choa chu kang, i personally barely visit her. sigh. partly due to my commitments, partly due to my hedonistic and hermitic lifestlye. but i guess that is no excuse. i do know that she's fine and well though. so that is at least one comforting though.
the camp was really fun and enjoyable, thought-provoking and emotion-evoking. i made quite a number of friends that i am glad to say hi in school, and to stop to chat. so here's a big thanks to my new friends. i do hope that we can continual to keep in contact despite busy schedules: boisterous nishah, piano-prodigy shu en, autie dawn, relief teacher janice, martial artiste carmen, china-cute cheng ye evonne, the hiao jacqueline, the calm sabrina, frizzy haired ruth, the really lame vignesh, the teddy bear liren, the part timer zhikai, hou yi junda and dirty looker alvin. think i missed out a few more. so if you people do see me, please please please do stop me to say hi! of course, if you guys will discover where i usually hang out, do drop by as well, or see you on msn, if i ever come online that is. haha!
well, that's in a nut shell my experience in the camp.
on saturday, after that, i met up with melvin to buy presents for alex because it was his birthday. we were joined by jason, xiangyi and yoke, all of whom were apparently jioed by melvin. we walked and walked and finally settled on getting an army green addidas messenger bag and a yellow nelgene bottle for him. to me they were really nice. wished i had them for myself really. haha!
and so yesterday, a bunch of us, namely jason, xiangyi, gm, riesal, weimin, melvin, birthday boy alex, and i, gathered at marche orchard to celebrate. when i set the time to meet at 11, only gm and alex were on time, and the rest of us, expectedly were all late. but of course, fashionably late. so we chatted and made fun of each other as us db guys would do. we ate and had this really gorgeous, mouth watering death by chocolate cake that would satisfy even ms wen's chocolate craving!
after that, because it was raining really heavily, we simply walked round and round heeren looking at clothes (what else right?). we went to party world to ktv (jason's idea of course) while poor alex had to go to work. so much for a birthday celebration eh? haha! but hey! we put in alot of effort simply to get this many number of guys to come down. and alot of effort went into getting the presents! so alex, you better appreciate it.
but he's had a great birthday celebration this year. he had many many parties and lunches to celebrate his birthday. wish i had that many parties. haha! well, next up is baby mels' birthday. so. hm... we should be dunking him in the kallang river i guess. haha!
anyway, after the ktv, i went to queensway alone to repair my spectacles, which the day before, i conveniently stepped on. the frame bent and the lens flew out. i was so sad. i thought i had to change my beautiful 450 dollar oakley frame... i just sat there stoned and bereaving. luckily, the frame did not break into 2 like the last spectacles i stepped on. so they simply bent it back to its original position. felt as if my lost child had returned to my embrace. haha!
so here ends my 5 day adventures. later at 2 i will be having 2 back to back revision driving lessons. i am getting desperate, cos i my driving test is this thursday. argh! did i mention this is my second attempt. and just last week, i had my first revision in 6 months, since my last test. argh. why do i keep having the feeling that i am going to like mount curb or crash into another car while changing lanes. ZX told me before my first test that all men should be able to drive. bish bish. and i failed my first test. can you image the blow to my ego, my self esteem and not to mention my manhood. sigh. this second attempt may or may not break me. haha! but till then, i am going all out to conquer that. if we can win the PM cup, i can definitely pass a driving test!
after that i will have to rush for our db agm. so far we have only 3 candidates. all of whom are worthy of leading the team. i just wish that they have more confidence though. because i know that i will be supporting them. in fact i will be supporting whoever is willing to slog it out of the team, because i am. in fact, i think we all will. the year had been super exciting for the team. i am very expectant and simply anticipating the new season. i just keep wondering what will happen to the team. i got only 2 things on my mind right now. that is to be a lot stronger than the incoming batch of juniors and the second is to win the pm cup 2006. the journey will be long, tough and tedious. but i know, that at the end of it, whether victory or loss, it will still be all worth it.
so to the next captain and vice captain, i think i just want to say, that we will be behind you two all the way!
at first i tried to get the guys from db to go. but because it would cost 55 dollars to participate, they were super relectant, despite the appeal of 30 over girls, and only 3 guys. ah well. maybe money IS more important than girls.
and so in the end, only i from the team went. and eventually made up one of the 3 male participants in the team. luckily, there were 3 more councillors on hand to rein in all the estrogen and bitching that went on in the camp. haha!
being one of 3 guys had its perks. one of the girls asked me in an ice breaker game if i was happy that there were so many girls. well, i thought the answer was quite obvious. haha! ah well. of course, it was quite hard too. for me to converse with members of the opposite sex. i am not really the conversant sort. i am more the, get drama and get people talking and then keep quiet sort. haha! ah well. usually i find myself running out of topics to talk about, or even to keep a conversation going when it comes to talking to girls. i really do wish that someone could just teach me how to converse.
well, talking to members of the same sex proved to be a lot easier. in order to save space, my wonderful sister had me bunk in with the other 2 guys in a twin room. i had to problem squeezing in of course. after all, we all went through ns. and hence, formed our common conversational topics. after that, i tried to psycho both of them to join dragonboat. haha! i just kept talking and talking about it. i just hope they would be interested enough to sign up at the matirculation fair. when my sister found out, she got quite pissed with me, because the camp was supposed to be an opportunity to recruit people into the club, and here i went poaching the guys into db. i wanted to poach the girls too. but i kinda stopped at the guys. of course, when the girls asked me about it, i simply obliged them with straight forward answers. hopefully, i mangaged to convince some of the girls to join. but most of them looked like the kind-hearted-i-really-want-to-help-people sort. db is an entirely different club, and it would be hard to have them both. i just tell them to do what they have a passion for, whether its to row a boat, or to do relief work in banda acheh or to join a hall or just to study.
so over those 4 days, we played a series of games that taught us things about team cooperation and stuff. most of the games, were really quite cool! some of the games were really disgusting though. one of the more memorable ones had to be one when we had to suck clean marshmellows that were covered with hershey's chocolate syrup mixed with ketchup. it was plain gross. the girls insisted on stopping. i thought it tasted like sour plums. of course, when you start thinking of the ketchup, you just lose your appetite. this was just one of the things that i had to eat. i was the only guy in the group you see, so being the macho brave alpha male, i volunteered to do everything downright disgusting, wet and dirty. there was one occasion when i had to eat 5 pretzels that went through the clothes of 3 girls and 1 guy. they were sort of soggy and saltier than usual. ah well. really surprised i did not get diarrhoea. on top of that, i had to do more of the manual labour and stuff. well, a guy had to do what a guy had to do.
but the girls were really swell. they were quite sporting ah well, totally immersing themselves into the spirit of the camp. very proud of them. and i hope they had lots of fun too.
in the evening, we had "theme" talks about volunteerism. the seniors showed us video clips about their expeditions, and they shared their experiences in volunteerism. some of the video clips were really touching, especially the one when they went to acheh for the tsunami relief efforts. the scenes were full of tragedy and emotions. many of them were lost, orphaned kids enjoying when playing with the relief workers. heard some continuous sniffing after that. i had a big headache and a bit of guilty conscious. because i questioned myself what was i doing myself. i am so lucky, doing nothing but studying and rowing my boat without putting as much efforts in the arena of volunteerism. i was being the materialistic, hedonistic bohemian.
at that point of them, it felt that i needed to simply abandon everything and jump straight into volunteerism. well, it was the same feeling i had at last years community service club's freshmen orientation camp as well. then, it really felt that i could it. but now, i cannot, simply because i have already adopted a lifestyle that i cannot simply recklessly and carelessly throw out of the window simply becuase my heart aches for the lonely, the poor, the helpless. i wish i could but i cannot. it was a crushing feeling. and yet...
anyway, i do hope that many of them would have decided to join the club and get involved with helping people. the world needs more people like them.
we also had to put up a short performance for the old folks at the kaki bukit moral centre. so my group put up a dance/song item to the ah niu's dui mian de nu hai kan guo lai. it was a funny item, and i was glad, it got the old folks laughing at parts and i really hope that they enjoyed themselves. the girls were great acting as hiao za bos. haha! after that, we mingled with the old folks. and i was talking to 2 grandmothers. i was quite scared. firstly cos i had no ability with hokkein or any form dialect and was not very convsersant with chinese, and second, i was afraid to talk to them about family. i was scared that at any point of them they would burst into tears and bewail about past tragedies. but now on hindsight, it occurs to me that these were 70 year old people who have gone through the world war and all sorts of possible hardship. they were hardened people. they werent going to just break down and cry there and then. if they were, they would have done it a long long time ago. i asked them if they liked to sing karaoke, but in the end, they insisted that i sing for them. so i went up and sang with some of the people. ended up singing the same song we danced to. haha!
after that, i felt like i need to call my own grandmother. these old folks were so called abandoned, and living alone in one room flats, with little visits from their own family. one of them did not even know where her own daughter stays. their grandchildren barely visits them. and i got all guilty again. becuase even though technically we did not abandon my grandmother, cos she insisted on staying in jurong when we moved to choa chu kang, i personally barely visit her. sigh. partly due to my commitments, partly due to my hedonistic and hermitic lifestlye. but i guess that is no excuse. i do know that she's fine and well though. so that is at least one comforting though.
the camp was really fun and enjoyable, thought-provoking and emotion-evoking. i made quite a number of friends that i am glad to say hi in school, and to stop to chat. so here's a big thanks to my new friends. i do hope that we can continual to keep in contact despite busy schedules: boisterous nishah, piano-prodigy shu en, autie dawn, relief teacher janice, martial artiste carmen, china-cute cheng ye evonne, the hiao jacqueline, the calm sabrina, frizzy haired ruth, the really lame vignesh, the teddy bear liren, the part timer zhikai, hou yi junda and dirty looker alvin. think i missed out a few more. so if you people do see me, please please please do stop me to say hi! of course, if you guys will discover where i usually hang out, do drop by as well, or see you on msn, if i ever come online that is. haha!
well, that's in a nut shell my experience in the camp.
on saturday, after that, i met up with melvin to buy presents for alex because it was his birthday. we were joined by jason, xiangyi and yoke, all of whom were apparently jioed by melvin. we walked and walked and finally settled on getting an army green addidas messenger bag and a yellow nelgene bottle for him. to me they were really nice. wished i had them for myself really. haha!
and so yesterday, a bunch of us, namely jason, xiangyi, gm, riesal, weimin, melvin, birthday boy alex, and i, gathered at marche orchard to celebrate. when i set the time to meet at 11, only gm and alex were on time, and the rest of us, expectedly were all late. but of course, fashionably late. so we chatted and made fun of each other as us db guys would do. we ate and had this really gorgeous, mouth watering death by chocolate cake that would satisfy even ms wen's chocolate craving!
after that, because it was raining really heavily, we simply walked round and round heeren looking at clothes (what else right?). we went to party world to ktv (jason's idea of course) while poor alex had to go to work. so much for a birthday celebration eh? haha! but hey! we put in alot of effort simply to get this many number of guys to come down. and alot of effort went into getting the presents! so alex, you better appreciate it.
but he's had a great birthday celebration this year. he had many many parties and lunches to celebrate his birthday. wish i had that many parties. haha! well, next up is baby mels' birthday. so. hm... we should be dunking him in the kallang river i guess. haha!
anyway, after the ktv, i went to queensway alone to repair my spectacles, which the day before, i conveniently stepped on. the frame bent and the lens flew out. i was so sad. i thought i had to change my beautiful 450 dollar oakley frame... i just sat there stoned and bereaving. luckily, the frame did not break into 2 like the last spectacles i stepped on. so they simply bent it back to its original position. felt as if my lost child had returned to my embrace. haha!
so here ends my 5 day adventures. later at 2 i will be having 2 back to back revision driving lessons. i am getting desperate, cos i my driving test is this thursday. argh! did i mention this is my second attempt. and just last week, i had my first revision in 6 months, since my last test. argh. why do i keep having the feeling that i am going to like mount curb or crash into another car while changing lanes. ZX told me before my first test that all men should be able to drive. bish bish. and i failed my first test. can you image the blow to my ego, my self esteem and not to mention my manhood. sigh. this second attempt may or may not break me. haha! but till then, i am going all out to conquer that. if we can win the PM cup, i can definitely pass a driving test!
after that i will have to rush for our db agm. so far we have only 3 candidates. all of whom are worthy of leading the team. i just wish that they have more confidence though. because i know that i will be supporting them. in fact i will be supporting whoever is willing to slog it out of the team, because i am. in fact, i think we all will. the year had been super exciting for the team. i am very expectant and simply anticipating the new season. i just keep wondering what will happen to the team. i got only 2 things on my mind right now. that is to be a lot stronger than the incoming batch of juniors and the second is to win the pm cup 2006. the journey will be long, tough and tedious. but i know, that at the end of it, whether victory or loss, it will still be all worth it.
so to the next captain and vice captain, i think i just want to say, that we will be behind you two all the way!