We love Truth or Dare, don't we. We play it all the time on class outings, seemingly undeterred by the need to come up with fresh questions for constantly recycled game partners. The sessions invariably turn into those in which the unlucky are forced to reveal the names (or, for those unwilling to disclose the full names, the first letters of the names) of their crushes/ideal dates/those in a certain group whom they think are pretty, etc. However, if you join in one of these rather frequent sessions, you'll find that I'll be sitting out, as I did yesterday.
What made half an hour of meditation facing the sea preferable to a laughter-filled bonding session with the class was the undesirable-enough thought of being asked about my "love interests", or anything to that effect, during the game. It's not so much about guarding my privacy any more so much as the fuzziness of it all. That bit of preoccupation with her over the weekend, that vividly non-platonic high encountered on her first appearance, the strong, inexplicable urge to reach out and hold her hand, the regret that wells up on my not doing so—at what stage does an obsession become a crush? I don't wish to have to make a concrete classification and to be pressed about my classification standards, and thus I'd rather not have to answer questions posed on my "love interests".
The class camp that transpired yesterday and today (Thursday and Friday) as I encountered it can be best described as a dream, from which I was rather reluctant to wake up.
For one, the camping experience at the adventure centre was just so detached from reality. For the short two-day period, I stopped worrying about tutorials and homework, about chasing after a beautiful A Level cert and about all the things that characterise school life—for the short two-day period, I got to concentrate on enjoying myself and finding out about the lives of all of you. As well, my state of mind and emotions were rather different from those I experience when I go to school.
But what makes dreams dreams is the waking-up process. After the camp drawn to a close, I walked out of the Library block along the corridor connecting the Library block and the Canteen block. I saw the familiar mini-canteen, and for some reason, I was reminded of the stress and cares of school life—that's when I distinctly felt reality's crashing down on me. In a few seconds, I lost that altered, peaceful state of mind that was with me during the camp, one which was soon replaced with an acquainted sense of apprehension about the future. It was vaguely painful feeling the transition from camp experience to school life; I can only be thankful that I don't have to return to school the day after the camp.
Perhaps what was a dream to me was, to you, an experience that was continuous with reality. Perhaps I stress out too much in school, such that the camping experience was bracketed out by my subconscious as some sort of a temporary discontinuity from normal life.
Whatever it is, I enjoyed my dream thoroughly. I hope you enjoyed the two-day experience as well.
As you would recall, in an attempt to bond the RJC J1 classes together to induce a conducive learning environment later, the administration pioneered the two-day class adventure camp for all the J1 classes. There are Monday-Tuesday and Thursday-Friday slots spanning March to August(?) 2007 available for booking. The camp will be held at various campsites like Sarimbun, Pulau Ubin and Labrador Adventure Centre. Two classes will share a common slot and attend the same camp together. Attendees would be excused from all lessons for the duration of the camp.
Our wonderful CT was kiasu enough to make a booking early so that we can secure a slot that we prefer. We held a class meeting, and it was decided that we take a slot earlier in the year to minimise the impact of the camp on our academics. We would also book a Thursday-Friday slot so that we could rest over the weekend.
It turned out that our class, less Yu Cong and Hao Yang—26 people in total—attended our class adventure camp from 29 March to 30 March 2007. It was held at MOE Labrador Adventure Centre, with 08S03D sharing the campsite with us. According to the teachers, among the J1 classes, us and 3D were the only classes using this campsite.
The organisers of the camp gave us a lot of free time throughout the activities. There was structured occupation of our time only during the mass game on the first night, and our actual participation in the ropes course held in the morning. At other times, we were free as a class to engage in various activities, be it card games, (inane) group games like Truth or Dare, a hike, washing-up, preparation of dinner or cleaning-up. We were also free while we waited for our turn to attempt the high elements. This reminded me of our OBS course, during which activities ended as early as 4 pm in the afternoon for us to travel to our campsite, pitch our tents and have our dinner.
The amount of free time we were given also reminded me of my Sec 3 GEP Malaysia Trip. The teachers, being ambitious about the learning objectives of the trip, planned locations that were too far apart and wound up in our spending a lot of time on travelling—I didn't like the trip very much because of this. But as I came back to Singapore and did my blogsurfing, I realised that there were people who enjoyed themselves thoroughly because of how they were able to turn the travelling time into opportunities to have fun with batchmates.
So despite the lack of mental stimulation a walk in south-westerly Singapore per se would provide, I didn't find the walk boring as I grabbed the opportunity to chat (mainly) with Qiongye, Weiren, Kaiqi and Mr Neo.
Whenever free time is incorporated in large quantities in a camp or trip, how enjoyable the experience becomes really depends on the individual and the dynamics of the group. This is not to say that you should blame yourself if you didn't enjoy our camp; on the contrary, I wish to point out that some individuals and groups are more suited than for turning free time together into splendid quality sessions, and are therefore more likely to like how they planned our camp this time round.
The day started easy, I guess, with a session in Seminar Room 1 to review our particulars. After that, we were due to meet at 8.50 am near one of the first-storey function rooms in the Library block for a briefing. While waiting for that, I was obsessing over distancing myself from Weiren, lest Mr Neo label us as 'good friends' and separate us from each other for Project Work. Weiren insisted that I find out about Mr Neo's grouping criterion, something which I did while waiting. We eventually launched into a discussion about Project Work.
In the function rooms, we were briefed on the objectives of the camp and introduced to the people running it. We got a hint of the lax disciplinary standards that were enforced later (I'm not complaining), although the kind of wackiness some of the instructors (especially Shopkeeper Tan) possessed only surfaced itself later. The group did a simple personality profile, which was utterly incongruent with the rest of the camp's activities, but I suppose a little warming-up doesn't harm.
After that, it was off to Labrador Adventure Centre—well, not really. The bus dropped us off at some random junction near NUS, and that was when we were told to make our way to the lunch point at Labrador Park. By foot. With one quarter of an NParks-supplied map per hiking group. (Each class was split into two hiking groups, so there were four hiking groups in sum.)
But the nice thing with first-time-run camp programmes is that some of the planners' objectives might not always be fulfilled. We may have been supposed to be challenged with finding our way to Labrador Park with a section of the map. But as all four hiking groups were dropped off at the same location at the same time, we happily combined the sections of our maps and, with the expertise and experience of our scouts Eugene and Wei Zhi as tools to find the way and as reassurance, set off as one giant group.
We spent about three to four hours walking around and striving to reach our lunch point (where, as Mr Koh explained, we eat). We had, as well, an intermediary goal of finding our way to various checkpoints in Kent Ridge Park. I never really bothered about planning the route we had to take, and so my energy was mostly consumed in the walking and the conversations with whoever was around.
It was fabulous finding out about the lives of Mr Neo and all of you. For example, for once, Qiongye became more than someone to supply hugs and kisses, more than someone who is a composite of idiosyncrasies the class makes fun of. In our discussion, I came to perceive that he has a life and direction towards which he drives his life. We conducted a discussion regarding Art Education, with respect not just to the technicals but also to his perception of Art Education's being a very special and personal form of education as compared to those involving the sciences.
One of the facilitators sat us down in front of one of the exhibits in Kent Ridge Park, and conducted a spontaneous lesson on the park's relation to the twentieth-century history of Singapore. I appreciate the short refresher on our past, especially since the knowledge from Mr Lester Lim's whiteboard-mutiliating history lessons have been buried deep in my brain.
After the conversations, the short break for group photography and camwhoring, the canopy walk, the Chinese lessons from Lin laoshi (Janice), the walk along Pasir Panjang Road in the rain—after all that, we found ourselves at Labrador Park. The rain stopped a short while before we arrived, which was at about 2.00 pm.
After having our packet lunch, it started raining again, and 5B adjourned to a pavilion for shelter. Truth or Dare came up as an option to spend our class time, and it was, for some reason, accepted—even with Mr Neo around. I conveniently excused myself to the toilet, and delayed my return by reading the exhibits along the way.
Shopkeeper Tan came and walked me to the 5B pavilion, and in his eccentric way of saying things, asked about the game we were playing. After I found out that they allowed dares to take place (and in fact made it compulsory for every third victim), and keeping in mind the unvoiced pressure from Shopkeeper to stay with my class, I joined the game. I was told that Mr Neo was game enough to answer questions, although he had the choice to refuse answering a question. After a while, though, they changed it to some "ideal date confession" game. So much for variation.
Half an hour of facing the sea in the rain—to get away while 5B indulged themselves—wasn't as bad as it sounded. I didn't feel any sense of calm distinctly just because I was facing the sea, but I didn't feel too bored either. With the exception of a few anglers slacking in a nearby pavilion, the immediate vicinity of the park was completely devoid of people. The thoughts that were going through my mind were only disrupted by 5B's occasional uproar, which they made presumably because someone said something especially scandalous.
Actually, independent of my averseness to participate in their games, I appreciate 5B's playing the games that they play. Romantic tension underlies some of our interactions, and such games tend to flash them out. Being aware of the romantic undercurrents contributes to our interpersonal awareness (which, to those concerned about the lives of their friends, is in itself a fulfilling thing) and heightens our sense of identity.
Apparently, even they had to admit at some point that enough was enough, and they stopped the game. I joined the group once again, and somehow the people I ended up talking to were the same few people I've been talking to since the start of the camp—people like Kaiqi, Qiongye and Mr Neo. Mr Neo opined, among other things, on the state of the Economics department in RJC. The rain stopped as we were talking.
A signal to us to proceed to the campsite was given, and soon it was another walk to Labrador Adventure Centre. This time, the walk was shorter, and we took at most half an hour to walk to the campsite.
The lavishness of the MOE headquarters failed to hint correctly at the state of its campsites. As soon as I entered the campsite, I saw gates with antiquated designs, roads which were uneven, buildings which were dilapidated—in short, the campsite is really old and in bad condition. I just hoped that the ropes that they were going to use during the ropes course were in better condition than the campsite.
3D and 5B walked past the primary schoolkids, who were engaging in their activities, from West Grove Primary and stopped in front of the two-storey dormitory block. The facilitators, cool as cucumbers, announced that there was one 20-bedded room for each of the two classes. Immediately, sounds of genuine disgust from the thought of sharing rooms with guys piped out from some of the girls. The facilitators went on to explain that the classes could make arrangements to separate ourselves by gender, but ended up giving one key to each class anyway. Instructions were given for us to collect additional mattresses as needed from a separate room.
How the facilitators acted—arranging for the guys and girls to sleep in the same room by default—was characteristically different from the stance taken by the school with respect to accomodation in camps. For the RJCO camp, the CO exco thought it unnecessary to split the rooms by gender, but the school barred guys and girls from sharing a room for the night. Moreover, I always thought that teachers were uptight, paranoid people who would disallow arrangements like having a gender mix in the same room for the night. (In any case, as I'll elaborate on later, I do believe that we were all the better with all of 5B sleeping in one room.)
We unpacked and washed up, and soon we had some fun preparing dinner by ourselves. It seems that the people who went out to buy food cared enough to include vegetables in our diet. Therefore, we had, as raw materials, some bok choy, some canned food (tuna, mushrooms, sardines) and thirty packs of assorted flavours of instant noodles. And we set out to cook with a wok, twenty messtins, one pot and four gas stoves.
I took the session as a continuation of my on-and-off endeavour to learn how to cook. Thanks to the lack of Home Econs as a subject in RI, I was completely ignorant about the relation between the taste of instant noodles and its preparation process. Well, now I know that you're supposed to put the noodle cake in only after the water boils vigorously to preserve the taste of the noodles.
Things got momentarily tense as some of the guys went against this fundamental principle and went head to insert the noodle cake before the water was boiling. Other than that, things were generally calm. We switched methods here and there, but got everything cooked anyway, and quite nicely too.
Thanks to Wynne, Linxi, Gek Min and all the other amazing people for fixing dinner and ensuring that we're all well-fed for the night! And to Lorraine, too, for preparing dessert (sweet potato soup) for us and Mr Neo.
Samuel and Mr Neo left at some point after dinner, and the rest of us had some time to ourselves. Soon, we had the night activity, one of the two major structured activities for the camp.
The rules for the game are so convoluted I won't bother to elucidate them in full. Essentially, our facilitators came up with this original mass game that involved thought, planning, teamwork and physical activity, expressed in a major game and several smaller 'quests'. By accomplishing tasks that themselves required physical and mental effort, we were supposed to gain enough money to 'purchase' materials to build a structure enabling someone to reach into a circle in which no one could step to pick up some slips of paper. Of course, there were plenty of other complications, like going to war, forming alliances, and well, the opposition.
Yours truly was selected to be the prime minister of one of the four countries, but stepped down to Samantha a few minutes into the game. Actually, I didn't make it expressly clear that I wanted to step down; upon learning about the goals of the opposition, I said that I didn't really care, and that the opposition could do whatever they wanted. And then Samantha took over. Might as well: since Samantha doesn't have any leadership roles in the class, this is our chance to see her leadership style.
The game continued for about two hours, and for me, it was filled with laughter and various pleasant surprises. For one, Rainer went against my expectations to exclaim "Oh my penis!" (as opposed to "oh my dick!" and the like) when the sexual faculty was endangered by the weight of the people towering on him—his exclamation was surprisingly civilised.
I enjoyed the game, but it ended so much like a bridge game—so anticlimactically—that it left no aftertaste. Oh well. We sat down as a class in a circle for about forty-five minutes for a debrief on the day's activities, during which we were asked to rate the strength of the class bonding, before we were given free time to have supper and turn in.
After much tension and hard feelings with the facilitators of the primary school campers (it all cleared up in the end), we finally secured supper in two trays of mini-curry puffs. We brought it upstairs, and I was talking to Eugene over whether we should indulge in curry puffs at this time of the day (that is, near midnight). It seems that Eugene's rather health-conscious too. But each of us ate three curry puffs in the end.
Overnight school camps reduce me to a little boy sometimes, especially in the domain of bathing. It took lots of pressure from various quarters (to quote Wynne: "There's no pressure on you to say 'yes' or anything.") to overcome my reluctance to enter the shower, but I did anyway, at 1.00 am.
Well, that was followed by a brief session of quiet observation of the class in the room. For any of you who are curious, I was really just looking at the dynamics between people as you interacted among yourselves. By that time, the lights were off, and 70% of the people were sleeping, so I was just looking at the remaining 30% who were awake—for example, Meiyi and Stacy, the former of whom was supposedly predicting the latter's love.
I eventually turned in at 1.30 am, and woke up at 7.00 am. Plans to watch the sunrise didn't materialise as we woke up after sunrise, and as our view was blocked by the towering buildings around, unlike in Labrador Park.
After breakfast, we proceeded for our high elements, the second structured activity for the camp.
We split into groups for our high elements, and I was in the group that completed rock-climbing, abseiling and zipline. Mr Neo stepped in and used Lorraine's camera to act as our resident photographer. By this second morning, many people were considerably tired, and were seen conking out in the holding room for the abseiling station.
The high elements were fine, I guess, if slightly boring. We had a rock climbing course in our Sec 4 year in RI, so rock climbing wasn't that foreign. But it was still rather thrilling to be able to reach the top after getting stuck in the middle, even if I depended slightly on the tension of the belaying rope during my ascent. I had a chance at playing each of the roles in the climbing system, and I think most people did, too.
My group had to wait quite a bit for the abseiling station. Ernest and company had lots of fun trying to teach Mr Neo the psychomotor games Kingkong Kangkong and Please Will You Follow Me. Victor almost got a white slip for bidding goodbye to Mr Neo the way he did. But overall, during the wait, the energy level was really quite low.
I went after Kaiqi for the abseiling station. Despite doing it once before in P5, fear still arrested me a bit. But during my descent, I was composed enough to respond to some people's "Go Wei Zhong!"—that's better than my previous experience, but that's probably because I'm much older now. I'll probably never abseil again, so I needn't worry too much about how I coped independent of treating it as another experience of dabbling in something.
The rain almost stopped me from completing the zipline, but it abated in time for the station to continue operating for a while more. The inertia to stay on the platform when I was due to step off was really strong. I probably couldn't have stepped off without a slight push from the instructor. The descent down the steepest drop among my three zipline experiences was nothing like those in my thought experiments; I don't think I have a word for the momentary high I experienced. But what a pity—there wasn't much of a scenery to speak of at the adventure centre, unlike at the Ubin campsite of OBS.
After my descent and when I was helping out with the trolley, it started pouring, and the operators for the trolley heeded for shelter while the instructor closed the zipline station. The other 5B group's challenge pole activity was also rudely interrupted by the downpour.
We convened in the canteen for lunch, and did a brief cleanup of the campsite. By this time, Tan Chen was missing, but his things were found all over the place. The cleanup all happened too quickly, and before I knew it, I found myself seated beside Weiren on the bus journey back to RJC.
In one of the first-storey function rooms, Mr Koh did a quick debrief, during which he talked about the reason for which we didn't get to try the challenge poles—that some members of the other class tried things twice and delayed the whole schedule. He said that things would have been perfect were it to start pouring half an hour later, although some people in the class would rather have not attempted this seemingly intimidating station.
And of course, Mr Neo ended the camp acting his usual self and cracked all of us up with his self-references.
I walked out of the function room alone, and didn't like the transition from the camp mood to the school mood. But things that have to change have to change.
And being your Physics rep, I collected $16.00 worth of Physics notes at the photocopying shop, leaving behind another $20.20 worth of notes, which I didn't have enough money to collect. It seems that I'm better off as your Physics rep than your Prime Minister.
-issues: reminder of sparkc incident, chalet, guy-girl same room - further discussion
-read and vet
Wei Zhong @ 10:16 pm
07SO5B senior class
08SO5B Photobucket
08SO5B Yahoo! Groups
Gek Min
Ian
Janice
Kai Qi
Lorraine
Mei Yi
Qiong Ye
Wei Zhong