Post-june camp withdrawal symptoms

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I have officially morphed into a shitting machine.




In the short span of 3 days, I've defecated like... 8 times probably?
It's called post-camp constipation release I suppose.
5 days worth of bowel content suddenly breaking free... (If anyone... and this is quite likely - has a mental image of HSM lead singers crooning "we're soaring, flying..." PLEASE STOP hahaha)


That plateful of papayas that Mum made me eat on Friday must have been highly effective. indeed.


Not to mention the added laxative of a continuous stream of nutbars (mum just stocked up on all natural TLCs - tasty little crunchies from the organic shop down the road which taste surprisingly remotely enjoyable) and banana walnut bread that has made its way into my digestive system via the omg-i've-already-worked-so-hard-to-cut-and-paste-10-newspaper-articles-who-cares-if-the-summary-isnt-done-
and-i'm-5-chapters-behind-my-studying-schedule-for-geog-and-bio route.


oh my crap. i need to go.



Okay that brings the grand total to 9. In just 72 hours. That's an average of once per 8 hours. Whoa.



Anyway back to the MAIN TOPIC!

Council Camp (2nd - 6th June)!!!!!!!!
DAY 1
Pre-camp jitters set in.
Worries such as not having 6 pairs of 100% white socks flit into my mind but are quickly dismissed (I am learning how to discern when instructions must be strictly followed and when they're so ridiculously pedantic the only way to not appear like an idiot is to work around them in a tactful manner)

Okay this has to stop.

My overtly detailed descriptive narrative self must be surpressed for the mere fact that I have only 7 bleeding days left to study for terms!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (the rest of the holidays minus 4 days for cluster camp and 3 days for bintan trip) that's like almost 1 day per subject!!!!!!!!!!!

That's like 20 chapters of human and phys geog in less than 24 hours!!!!!!!!!
That's like 5 cowbrain thick chapters of bio!!!!!!!!!!
That's like ... demand and supply essays bao!
That's like CHINESE ORAL ++++++++++

not to mention the GREAT EXPECTATIONS (the novel itself included too ) of The Parents. And The Butter Woman.



I shall summerise a list of things that I've learnt from camp!!!


1) never underestimate the psychological implications of June Camp, ESPECIALLY WHEN YOU SLEEP!!!
I thought with the absense of Sam, Sarah and Ale they'd no longer be rough nights filled wtih nightmares and sudden exclamations of 'COME ON COME ON's and pounding on the door as well as buddha claps.....

HOWEVER!!!!

I DREAMT OF PIGS PUSHING WHEELBARROWS FILLED WITH CHILLI CRABS ON FRIDAY
NIGHT!!!!!!!!!!!!! and then AhMa Lisa was giving commands and
screaming '1,2,1,2..' whilst the piggies were all tap-dancing to the
beat with their hooves.. ILSHIF (I shall get to that later)

Anyway since char requested I've attempted to draw it out using my very primal version of Paint... (no fancy photoshopping here)



For those who weren't there, I'll explain. This is the result of our Day 5 Teachers challenge - where we spent 5 tedious hours trying to figure out how to get the entire 35 (extremely arbitrary number... this constantly changed in the coarse of time due to sick people returning, people getting sick, people going and returning from prayers etc) of us as ELECTS to move 10m across the track from 1 line to another with just 14 hands and 15 feet (this again is an arbitrary no...which changed with the number of elects)

After an entire merry-go-round including our very ingenious bridge, random meshes and insect creature with appendeges, we finally came back to our original idea -

12 strong piggybackers (mainly guys), 12 piggies on their backs (okay now im confused. are they piggies and backers or .?!! nvm), each holding on to the legs of either a person wheelbarrowing or crabbing (the inverse of a wheelbarrow..facing upwards). and at the same time.. the piggybackers had to do some weird sort of gypsy line dance so that only one of their feet is on the floor at one pt of time lol pretty amusing to watch actually...

HENCE THIS TRANSLATED... or fragments of this gruelling 5 hours was filtered through the recesses of my consciousness whilst i was sleeping and ended up becomign piggies tap dancing pushing wheelbarrows filled with crabs (the chilli part was probably jsut cravings on my part) hahaha.

I'm glad that Jared got a chance to show his manhood anyway!! He injured his knee during the camp so he had to be a crabbie but nonetheless did the very noble task of being the supporting crabbie!!! (sacrificing his hands)
gosh i also have to apologise to ian yang for having lack of cushioning fats and making him carry what he probably felt was a sack of sticks...


2)The totally ownage and most awesome ACRONYM ever - ILSHIF!
hahahaha. created by grps 6&7 on our post-macs amazing race highness! serena was laughing so hard that she farted;
HENCE gid coined the term, I-laughed-so-hard-i-farted!

3)NOT TO EAT MACS!!!!!!!!!
this may sound utterly unbelievable but I've never eaten macs so many times per week as I did so in Council Camp... and its supposed to be some Spartan-style boot camp... amazing hahaha. Monday we ate cos we went out to buy stuff for 3G dinner and had to rush back so ate a quick meal. Day 4 was amazing race so we had to eat and walk.. and Day 5 the teachers decided to treat us to mass order of mcCHICKEN and double cheeseburger after our very piggish experience.

4) not to trust uncles who drive comfort cabs with soyabean adverts and speak chinese!!!
after going to RGS on our first amazing race stop we had to very sad misfortune to ask this very ignorant cabbie where The Legends (the former botanic gardens) was and he told us BARTLEY ROAD and pointed us in some random direction. so we continued walking tirelessly on and finally came to our senses (tgt with some hints from our facs and after asking multiple bus drivers,passers-by and security guards) that we were IN THE COMPLETELY WRONG DIRECTION!!!!!! and that zomg bartley road was at paya lebar (omg i shouldve realised it from the start actulaly.. since i pass by bartley road everytime i go to plmgs). Anyway GOOD JOB LTA for enabling 105 to come in time otherwise we'd have walked from school all the way to orchard... as we could only use our ez link cards twice throughout... but from rgs to fortcanning was manageable by foot. and fort canning to istana too (lol to see NATHAN).

Then the last was ESPLANADE ALL THE WAY BACK TO SCHOOL!!!!!!!!
2 straight lines.
TIGHTEN UP!!!!!!!!!
CLOSE THE GAPS, GUYS!!!!!!!!!
OBJECTS!!!!!!!
STEPS!!!!!!!

we had to walk in this seriously annoying pace that was too brisk for comfort yet too slow to gather momentum for a jog. this on-the-verge of breaking into a run pace lasted from 12 - 3am.
i was walking with peter and we counted the no. of steps as 9780 (+ - 100) hahaha. highly inaccurate number but heck it made us forget the pain.

5)Learning to change from sweaty post-5km pt and post-cheering sessions into our no.2s (full school u, tie, stockings, court shoes) and get from concourse to NL to concourse (and look impeccably neat of course) in just SEVEN MINUTES FLAT!!!!!!
No excuses shall be given for messy hair or untucked shirts = KNOCK IT DOWN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


6) Not to leave Hairul 4m behind tying his shoelace = KNOCK IT DOWN!!!!!! also not to split our pants like he did :D

7) Not to leave the com lab before pushing in chairs = KNOCK IT DOWN!!!!!!!!

8) to (rather obsessively) make sure every group member is present and not in the toilet getting kidnapped by 32nds, or else . KNOCK IT DOWN!!!!!!

9) nt to be like claire and think of russel and oxley road simultaneously.. ... nicknames stick realllllllly long

10) to be like russley and yell STOP BLINKING !!! at a traffic light

11) To trust each other - learnt this from the trustfall where one person goes on stage and onto another table and falls back into the locked mesh of arms of the other elects.. CAN I TRUST YOU!? YES YOU CAN!! anyway. it shd be more like. if gideon can trust you, YES I CAN!! hahaha.

12) Learning to plan and execute proposals which occur concurrently whilst juggling a super packed UNKNOWN SCHEDULE!!!
yeah one of the most frustrating things about camp was that we had NO IDEA what was going to happen next. so often we were thrown into situations unprepared... we had just 3 days to plan 3G dinner which took place on Wed.. and that's 3 days PACKED WITH ACTIVITIES lasting all the way up to 1,2+ am and starting at 7am on an average!! and then we had until Friday to plan some mystery ad-hoc and teachers' day thing. hence we had to wake up at 7 on friday morning although we just slept at 4am that morning in order to plan

13) To be able to say 'Inter-JC principal and teachers dialogue' in chinese.
This was extremely vital in our simulation game where we had to wear our No2s and position ourselves and certain locations as though we were ushering parents and teaches to 2 different events... lol marg was some indonesian teacher and she kept asking me in some weird accent WHY THE CPA NO EZCALATOR!?!? why the floor so DIRTY!? why the CPA is called Lee Choon whatever?! and then another two PRCs which i had no idea how to handle...

14) to know our bloody 14 cheers INSIDE OUT!!!!!! if not = KNOCK IT DOWN!!!!




1)3G dinner "ohana means family" (:

Sounding strangely like some dinner where everyone gathers and sees each communicates via videoconferencing and bluetooth.
Anyway we split ourselves into souvenir, decoration and programme committees, did up our proposal in proper format and all and had like a few hours to roam the streets and pick up whatever we needed. Hence I made my very first trip to BRAS BASAH COMPLEX! :D

lol luckily we had people with the connections such as Chor Hao so we could get our awesomely economical yet stunning GUITAR PICK HANDPHONE KEYCHAIN! a trip to popular and cheapo art shop (as proudly introduced by char) got us basically everything we needed .

The event itself was a major success with The Gid doing his thang as emcee and the decor doing an awesome job with cardboard totem masks and guitars and grass skirts and flower-petaled candles in water bowl thingus (: And although sean had to go back on tues cos he was sick his little botanical possessions made their presense felt (err.. in other words THERE WERE PLANTS).haha

The (infamous) Peanut Game.

Kinda marked the turning pt of the entire camp. apparently its a tradition passed on to the next june camp. and you can only play it once.


It started out happily. We each got into our groups and were told we had to go aorund to the 4 stations; basketball, dog and bone, floorball and can-hitting in order to win peanuts.

Since we had 4 members; me, hairul, char and ian yang, we had a total of 16 peanuts and 4 live peanuts each. once we lost 4, one of our members had to go to this place called 'Jail', and we needed 30 peanuts to buy him/her out.

it SEEMED like your usual station rotation games.
it SEEMED like your usual see wchih group has the most peanuts at the end of the day game
it SEEMED like jail was no big deal
it SEEMED.......

it even SEEMED like the clowns were good people (okay despite my unexplainable phobia of clowns, they really seemed to help us in the beginning..)

but NOOOOOOOOOOO. we were sorely mistaken.
it got SINISTER...
after wagering our peanuts on playing dog and bone and floorball...

and getting conned by a clown (wth he made us pick a card out from his deck, HE shuffled it, and then we had to randomly pick another card. if it wasnt the original card, one of us had to go to jail. #*#&*$&#*!!)

only me and char were left.

Then a clown approached us and told us he'd give us 60 peanuts to buy our members back (see our deluded perceptions at this point of time...we were still obsessed with buying back our own members only) but only if we ran 1 round under 1minute 20 seconds. (if a clown approaches you dont actualyl have a choice but have to do as he says). so we ran our asses off and i came back with a sprained ankle....and I went to jail.

By then, half the elects were in jail... and I got to see the horrors of it. People were made to hang/do crunches. were mocked by the Jailer. run rounds holding long wooden spars. They were crying. dying. muscle cramps, twisted ankles, injured backs were just to name a few...

it was about then that we realised what they were trying to tell us = WE WERE ALL ONE. it wasnt about groups or fightin gagainst EACH OTHER. we were all against a common enemy - the game masters.

we fought fatique (it was nearly 2am)
we stretchd ourseleves physically and mentally...
and although we eventually lost, it really shifted our paradigms.

The Chimerian Game

We were the Chimerian Tribe and the 32nds were the Hydra tribe. They patrolled the grounds. they made us hang. do pumping. and sent us to jail, our second home. Some stayed there for almost 3 hours.

the objective was to look for the ORBS (lightsticks) to solve the puzzle and free our friedns.

lol omg it totally glamourised AC. i mean.. id never have pictured it a filming site for 007 but seriously now i see its potential. the elects some how unanimously decided on gathering our clues behind the EL where it was safe from the Hydra predators... although hardly any communication was possible.. i still remember seeing alex crouched behind some motorcycle and then airi me carrie and putu crawling on grass and rolling on the floor to avoid being seen lol! and how wang tried unsuccessfully to walk next to the fence to pretend he was actually a passerby outside the school walking..

me and xinyue tried seeknig refuge in the toilet for temporary recovery from trauma (lol brings back good memories from CF camp during the persecution of christians simulation... where me sarah thomas and cynthia locked ourselves in a shower room claiming we were from the swim team and not cf) but then the chimerians were outside waiting for us.

Oh that reminds me about xin yue too ):
The scene where the ambulance arrived and brought her away on a stretcher still remains in my mind. But she says her back is mcuh better already :)