Sophiscated Art

Monday, September 04, 2006

Three days pass in Pulau Ubin, living on chlorine-saturated water, survived the mosquitoes guerilla warfares, the downpour of Cadet Inspectors' missiles, the scorching hot sun and the pain relapse of my recovering leg.

Day 1

I was almost late for school due to the last minute of packing. There wasn't really anything to blog on what happen before we get to Ubin except for the constructive sentence from Kenneth "To serve, to thrive, its not up to you". Reached the jetty and met up with the rest of the schools and set off in the bumper boat. On the boat, it happened so that the sea water was splashing on my face, felt totaly refreshed although it also felt salty. Unfortunately when we reached Ubin, the Ubin's jetty was jammed, putting our patience and endurance to the test.

Hoho, the long walk to the north of Ubin was horrible. It was long and tiring under the merciless hot sun. Heavy bagpacks were secured and we started the long march to camp Noordin. We had to run every few minutes intervals with the heavy water bottles weighting us down while the two dowel poles occupied our free hands and crying out the songs and cheers that sent our heart racing with our running speed. We were very much fortunate this time, our campsite was at Noordin which was a little nearer compared to the mosquitoes battle ground of camp Bahru. Everything settled down and we were grouped accordingly. Landed in group 4, Falcon, with Chien Wei, Calvin, Jamuatul, Jessie, Guo wei, Saleh, Lester, Liyana, Eunice and kuku Kenneth. Then there was jaws dropping after we were introduced to Mdm Yati (Cheer!). The camp started with spot checks, sneaky! The CIs surprise us with the shavers as our meeting gifts. Boys with long sideburns were ordered to shave their sideburns away. *Poor Raymond (Fuhua, got to know him in SANA course and NPDP)was shocked at the though of shaving sideburns*

Camp pitching was faster and so much better than last year (4 hours last year, 40min this year), thanks to the "yi zi shen" Guo Wei for doing so much tying and pulling, despite his injured index finger. The sun was blazing warm and you can guess how hot it was when a twine caught fire. Field cooking was next, and it always pay off teaming with Kenneth. Kenneth was a fine cook (can opener too) and always ensure there's plenty of cooked food to go around. Instead of my usual one-can policy, I ate satay chicken, pineapple, noodles and a mess tin of poccari isotonic drink. First trouble was brewed after no one attend to our food ration, so there was bombings followed by gun shots by Sir Preetpal, Sir Daniel and Sir Kim Peng. Then there was the national rally, which Sir Kim Peng started talking again about the noodles and its affiliation with African kids (So memorable), which he minimised the number of african sharing a packed of noodles into 4 (It was 16 last time wasn't it?) after npcc decided to show support for the msg-free Koka noodle instead of the old time favourite Maggie. Sir Daniel suddenly gave everyone a peanut as a punishment(Everyone thought it was suppose to be a snack), the instruction was to save keep it until the last day of the camp to remind ourselves the importance of food.

The day continued with the never ending land expedition around Ubin, led by Mdm Yati. There was running and sprinting every split seconds with water bottles and ponchos. First destination was at the Bermuda's Triangle where we had a squeezing game feeling each other warmth and care, while sniffing the perspiration from each other. Second destination was at Chicken's feet where there was lots of fun, including the stupid question which we fell for it. Chicken had how many legs? 4! LOL owned by Mdm Yati after being listening and concentrating too much that a chicken has 4 toes. Then we did 5 push-ups after Kenneth overtook Mdm Yati in the run. The fun never started until Lester made a remarkable comment, "One for all, all for one!" which landed all of us smelling the toasted concrete ground. Then, we had an interacting game which Mdm Yati adopted from a korean variety show, requiring us to take out our socks with our hands over each other's shoulders. The lovely third destination was at the jetty and we certainly enjoyed the cooling sea breeze blowing gently on our face. On our way back to camp Noordin (We skipped destination 4 thanks to courtesy of Mdm!), we were conversing on the camp's water (Ubin's water cannot be consumed, only campsites had their own water supply). Raymond was complaining non-stop on the water, convincing others it contained copper (too much chemistry for him). The water tasted like swimming pool's water, including a vice-versa effect of making you more thirsty after consumption and we had a few experiments on our spit after taking the camp's water, result= murky white spit which looked like liquid paper. YUCKS! I didn't get any chlorine smell in my water as it still contained some fresh 100plus smell. Retuned to Camp Noordin as the first group and got some sleep on the foyer by the order of Mdm Yati. Washed my face and had dinner with the same old usual canned food and noodles, then had campfire preparation with zombified sec2s who ran from Camp Bahru to Camp Noordin. We had a song session with Mdm Marsilla and her almost identical twin (Not forgetting mdm yati) which lasted like eternity. The debrief ended with the collection of peanuts for lamination by sir Zhi Wei, in prevention of peanuts getting wet during tomorrow kayaking session, he convinced us by giving out a few sample of laminated peanuts to some people.

Sleeping at night was worse (we slept vertical), the air was stuffy and reeked of legs' odour. We had fire drill at night, which was more like PT. The war sparked off with an artillery shot from the CIs as they sunk the group 5's vessel and followed by napalm strike which burnt almost everyone. Casualties of cadet under the bombardment of the CIs were rising as they showered more missles down and less than half of the sec3 survived to withness the history of their mischievious actions. I was shot after being found without socks and I managed to limp my way through to the dumb-founded survivors watching the execution of boys with long hair who were picked out by innocent Raymond. Then we had 10 push-ups for the inability to answer the CI loud and clear. "Bedtime stories" came after the punishment and we were sent back to our tents to collapsed back to our beauty sleep. Too bad, the night's serenity was broken by the singing of the malay boys which sounded more like a lullaby than a pop song. Salute and thanks for the song.

Conclusion= 15 push-ups for the day!

Day 2
Sorry for the long content, I try cutting it short and sweet

Woke up early at 6am and reported for morning PT lead by the sir zaki and our very own local product, Sir Kim Peng. The exercises were fun, fun and more fun. We had to run around Camp Noordin and Bahru, singing and perspiring as we went. Push-ups, crunches, jumping jacks and etc were carried out. Raymond given up on his water-strike and happily drown himself in the chlorine-saturated water. We had ATF, high element for the start of activity for day 2. We got to try out 1 of the high element structures although we had to wait very long. We missed the 7th storey high element with the Singapore's highest flying fox (stretches all the way from our tents to the camp entrance). There was 3 different routes to choose, but I was quite disappointed when I had to go for the easiest route rather than the commando route (Lucky I didn't go for that, 'cause all the people who went up had their ankle's skin torn when they tried to cross the obstacle by climbing upside down like a monkey across the rope). Mine was pretty easy, sit on the disc plate and slide to the other side, walk throught the narrow wire line and made my way to the finishing point by grabbing onto the ropes. Guo Wei got a bit depressed after being scolded stupid by the Hong Kah cadet. He certainly took it seriously and I tried my best consoling him that "you are clever, you are clever".

The next station was tunneling by HO and sir wei jun. We were deceived that the tunnel was so long it stretched all the way cross the hill but the actual length was around 3m. The tunnel was very dark like the tunneling we did in sec 2. The difference was that this one was a one way direction while the sec 2 tunneling was abit of turning here and there. Sir also told us there was alot living things in there like snakes but it only turn out to be a tailess lizard and a poor croakroach. It was pretty narrow so there could only be one person leading at a time. No one dare to be the first person so I volunteer (If I don't, who will?). Everyone was timid and coward, unwilling to be the first person even at the tunnel's junction. Haha, all the stupid exucses and bargains started popping up like internet's pop-ups. Then, it ended quite lame when we discovered the sinister plot of sir wei jun claiming the tunnel was long. We had to pick a blue ball from the tunnel and hand in to sir to accomplise the task. It was of knockings and bangings on the tunnel's door until we got the correct colour.

We had a quick lunch and changed up for kayaking. Procceded to Camp Bahru for kayaks, paddles and life vests. Before the dip in the seawater, we had a long lecture for the kayaking's theory which landed most of us roasted and burnt. The tanned was uneven around the area covered by clothes, shorts, shoes and spectacles. We wore the life vests and dip into the cold water, reliefing us of the heat. It was the peak of the whole camp, kayaking! We carried the heavy kayaks onto the sea and took off! I paired up with Kenneth and there wasn't any cooperation between both of us during the whole paddling. Kenneth had lot of experience after kayaking for 6 hours in his OBS camp. We was the fastest around with all the effort going to Kenneth. It wasn't much of fun and excitment when we kept having rafting activity but to spice things up sir kim peng never fail our expectation of fun when he had people to exchange their seats with another person in the middle of the sea. The anti-climax soon came when sir zhi wei took our a ziplock bag full of peanuts from his life vest and start munching and sharing with the rest of the CIs, it wasn't long to struck us that he was eating our peanuts that we are required to save keep! Total pawnage by him and there was nothing we could do in the middle of the sea. *sigh* The keeping of the kayaks wasn't fun at all, we had to carry the heavy kayaks to the storage for cleaning and keeping. We had to go several round to retrieve back all the kayaks and the last round for the speed boat. Some people was just slacking around, washing their shoes in the paddle-washing tub and some just stand and pose like sir stamford raffles (We had enough statues of him in Singapore). The process totaly wear us down and we still had to run back to camp Noordin in our sand-filled shoes.

Back in camp Noordin, I had my first bath during the camp and the feeling was just fantastic, but the scolding for being late for the falling-in certainly turns down the fantastic feeling of bathing. Next, it was pioneering activities by contructing a catapult. Guo wei, Kenneth, Liyana and me tagged to build the catapult. The catapult was up for launching thanks to the campcraft superman, Guo Wei who really got so stressed when the three of us was making lot of blunders. We didn't won the competition of the furthest shot made by the catapult and there goes the peanuts reward (Peanut was more worthy than a gold as 75% of the campers had either crushed their peanuts or surrendered it willingly to Sir Zhi Wei who was more than willing to have them ended up in his stomach) . We had a long dinner before proceeding with the campfire. The CIs were all rowdy and enthusiastic during the campfire, Saleh was the mc and there was humour presence in him during the campfire. The song leaders were quite a let-down but definitely not the CIs, there were certainly not their usual self that night. I was struggling to keep myself awake when I found myself surrounded by CIs with Sir Kim Peng (He lost his voice and was conferred the title of Ah-Du) and Mdm Yati beside me. There wasn't much to say about the campfire except for the sparklers which made the flame green. We was too exhausted to be any more high spirited and were dismissed for sleep.

My group had night sentry at the second slot but we fell asleep while waiting so Sir Daniel and another sir came to wake us up. They didn't really mind and there was no punishment at all since they was in good mood thanks to Sir Zaki (Don't ask me why, cause this was what they told us). Night sentry was easy for that night, we took a walk around the camp site from the gate to the drainage shelter and it ended. I suggested to Chien Wei and Calvin to change three of our sleeping position (First night was truly horrifying when we had to cramp with each other and smell each other's armpits and Guo Wei came late and there wasn't any place for him except for the grass patch outside, haha). We decided to sleep horinzontaly although we had to stick our legs out (We wore track pants throughout whole camp so it doesn't matter sticking our legs out) and it was very spacious in between three of us! I slept at the ventilation gap with the night breeze shoving across my burnt face which knocked me out in that very instant. KO!

Conclusion=18 push-ups!

Day 3
It's ending so don't whine

Woke up by the whistle and had breakfast before seperating for area cleaning. Unpitched all the tents and sent them off to the logistics. The greatest irony of the whole camp took place. The inspection of the peanuts commerced. Group 2 who won the pioneering competition received their second peanuts but the CIs being jealous, didn't hesitate to crush them. It was so hilarious when I saw Desmond's face when both his peanuts got crushed when a CI praised him for his well protected peanuts. HERE. The twist of the whole peanut case which shocked most of the campers with laminated peanuts was that when they unwrapped the peanuts, *to their horror* it was just peanut's shells. Haha, so they kana tekan together with us! The punishment was adminstrated that all those without peanuts had to take some canned food home. I supposed that the best punishment ever implemented (The weight wasn't that much anyway). A mass debrief was conducted and we joined back with the sec2 from camp Bahru into our perspective schools and went home!!! I had to carry the first aid with me *sob* for the journey back. Went to have lunch with Kenneth, Jian Peng and Desmond after dismissal at school, we filled our stomach and were all full of shit.

Some people complained too much. What can you expect? This is a training camp! Don't go around whining and nagging that you had too much work to do and it was unfair to you as you had put in "more" effort than others. Bullshit. All you do is to sweet talks and no action carried out. I don't blame anyone if they can't pitch a tent, I don't blame them if they stand around during tent pitching trying to light up a lighter which they failed to do so when they weren't suppose to, I won't even blame you if you tried creating more trouble rather than help by trampling on our effort. Action speaks louder than words and get that in mind. All you guys know is to go around encircling me with all your whining and buzzing like some mosquitoes and comparing to others. Bing Cheng hates mosquitoes, Bing Cheng see mosquitoes, Bing Cheng whacked mosquitoes. Simple?

Sorry for the poor English used as you can see the content is very long. Thank you for wasting a part of your life reading this rubbish. Salute and this is Ah Bing still kicking and typing.

|3:15 PM|