Friday, October 26, 2007
OBS ROCKS!!!! OMG its fun man :D
Haha ok so im gna post a day to day recount(note the follwing is in slightly more formal language cos im submitting it for NYAA.)
Dislcaimer Alert:might contain some info that may be disturbing.
Day 1:
Raining at Punggol ferry point. Shucks everyone got really wet. So we waited like so long before the ferrys came and we were on our way...Oh and camp 1 looked really nice! passed it on our way to camp 2, which was the super rugged-with-not-as-good-facilities camp. So then we gathered at the multi-purpose hall and were introduced our group names. guess what my group name was? RAFFLES! like zzz. Haha so then we were introduced to our instructor Pei Lee(the self-proclaimed prettiest instructor at OBS "-.-). She was okay la. quite nice. right so then went to settle the store stuff. timtam and I volunteered for Store-IC thinking it was slack but we were WRONG! Had to like check to make sure all the store eqiupment(life jacket, harness, tents, water bottles, whistles, bag packs, helmets etc). right so then we were handed our rations. whoa whole lot of stuff. right and lunch was 2 buns together with 1 apple XD ok so our very 1st activity at OBS was the trust fall thing. u climb onto a high platform then the rest of your watch whole pull tight a sheet below and you have to just fall backwards. kinda fun. when you first fall you get the feeling of fear because it's like nothing behind you and about to fall into nothingness. but yea well it was okay. so the next activity was belaying practice. it was quite cool. get to do belaying(the guy at the bottom pulling the rope for the climber so that the climber doesnt fall if he lets go of the climbing surface). so there are four ppl in the belaying family(deadweight, belayer, asst belayer, climber) and the instructor asked us who is the belyer in our life and all that kind of stuff. so next, we went to pitch our tents. the pitching was okay but took a fair bit of time. so then did field cooking and cooked the rice and some canned food, ate, showered then gathered for night circle(reflections)and then started a journal(which i'm using as reference as i pen this down). Next was bedtime. The tent was like so stuffy and hot! But just then, it started to rain and we were called out of our tents to sllep in the boathouse. so we had a little 2G reunion. almost everyone from 2G in camp 2 gathered and slept together. Freezing cold at night. It was crazy! so cold...but still managed to get around 5 hours of sleep. Good night.
Day 2
Woke up super early at about 5.40am. So the first activity was morning PT and we just did basic exercises. Then we were briefed on the sea expedition to go around Pulau Ketam and back. then did the capsize test and learnt how to kayak a little. right so i started out with Yan Liang and Timothy Tan in a Tri-Yak. so we kayaked a lot and finally got to the other side of Ketam when the wind and current was very strong. we made it but left some people behind. so the instructors got ask to get off at Pulau Ketam and told us to leave no man behind and stuff and to have lunch(biscuits). so we ate and I now partnered up with Jon to be the last man. we were like helping people to launch and we were the last to leave. so throuhout the journey, we were the last man and the ones who travelled the most distance as we had to keep rescueing people form the strong currents near the shores. almost capsized once but leaned backwards and avoided that. Jon and I rocked at this kayaking! i think we were the most effective of the other sea expedition leaders, who erm couldn't even help themsleves. one was over enthusiastic and wanted to leave Ketam the moment the last kayak docked! ok so we had little breaks in between as the currents and wind was SO strong and it was against us all the time. I felt Jon and I could have completed the whole thing from the lunch break but oh well, helping others and working as a team was more important. in the end the whole thing took over four hours! It was quite tiring! we took 35 minutes to get to cover half the island and the rest of the four hours for the return journey! right so then we had a cooking competition which HILARY won but it did not matter anyway because it was just a friendly competition with no prizes or rather prize for both watches. the instructors (Mauricette and Pei Lee) cooked up something for both watches. The strudel thing they cooked was nice! So then we heard from Kai Yuan's group(Tenzing) that Camp 1 was super nice with good facilities, catered food...Next were some teambuiliding games like Stone juggle, number punch and Traffic jam. it was quite interesting and fun. the stone juggle thing involved standing in a circle and holding a stone in your left hand and throwing to the person on your left and catching with that same hand the stone thrown by the person on your right. The Traffc Jam was a puzzle and the number punch involved team co-ordination. Good night.
Day 3
Went rock climbing! well i only got to try one wall because it was raining and we had to run for cover and did not have time for the second wall. I have the record for the one i climbed though, which was the harder wall to climb! WOW! So we packed our things and hiked to camp 1! YES! PROPER AND CLEAN TOILETS! it was a short hike with HILARY and we reached there quickly. SO we played some team building games(Blindfolded "race", crossing the "river" etc) again before dinner/ which we got catered food! wow! Tired and hungry so we were happy to get the catered food and ate really quickly. Then ar, after holding our shit for 2 days we went to SHIT. Woah damn bloody shiok!(okay this bit will have to be deleted). the toilet was like heaven! haha... So the night activity was some tunnel crawl thing. we hiked a little into the jungle in the dark and were led to several constructed tunnels. we were then told to crawl in in the dark and look for a puzzl in the dark. it was really dark, stuffy, smelly but it was fun! SO we were then suppose to do a solo night walk back to camp 1 but it was cancelled because other groups were doing it also. Sigh. It would have been fun though. Good night.
Day 4
Land expedition. We had to hike around the forest looking for checkpoint trees and performing the tasks. It was quite interesting to look for the checkpoint trees in the forest! And we managed to complete 2 revolutions of the stone juggle thing! wow a great achievement for our watch! Right so we finally reached camp 2 and had to clean up and make sure everyhting was in the store. Unfortunately some things were not and we each had to pay $1.70 each for the missing items. So we then went to the boathouse to get souvenirs(i bought 2 t-shirts, 1 keychain and a mug). Home sweet home.
Most memorable Incident: Kayaking(Really tiring but really really fun!)
Values learnt: Resilience, Teamwork, determination, Leaving no man behind
Application:Work hard no matter how many setbacks we have faced.
Right so here it is. The 4 day recount.
SO today was the last day of sch. sigh. 2 yrs pass rly fast yea? i mean i feek lk we were only in sec 1 a few days ago or smth. not 2 yrs. OMG. time is scaring me...
EOYA was kinda xian. we were still kinda tired and my bowling rly sucked. forgettable score.
OH AND HERE COMES THE GREAT PART. i dun wna niao any1 but im still rly shocked myself. I got an overall msg of 1.0! holy cow! that's A1 for everything! even IS! HOLY COW. we were lk logging into the results thing using the class com and the projector was on. so i logged in nervously and i heard cheering before i even registered whta i had seen! HOLY COW! combined 1st in class tgt with zhen quan and nick low. OMG...I'm really happy. the mugging has paid off!
Hmmm i shall do a write up of the year overall anbother day.
::5:43 PM
