Everything is clearly written based on my opinion. So don’t judge me if some things sound harsh! :( — If you’re gonna judge me please listen to Sara Bareilles’s “King of Anything”.
With that said, happy reading!
Also this is too long, so think of this as a book. It’ll feel shorter. ;)
Now let’s get to know a bit about myself. (That sounds too self-centered). I’m an anti-social quiet boy with no socializing skills. Oops, that’s the end of camp.
Day 1
So I started off entering into the Ngee Ann Youth Academy and I was greeted by the community members, well, we all were. They did their little welcome cheer that sounds like…
We say welcome
We say welcome
We say welcome, welcome, welcome
We say welcome, we say welcome
We say welcome, we say welcome
WELCOME!
And I was like “Who wants to go first?”… I signed my name, got a sticker and entered the little room and was greeted by my GL (Group Leader). His name is Gerald and he’s a cool dude. He was like “My name is Gerald” and shook my hand. My welcoming senses just went tingling. I took a seat at the District 7 seat and waited for more people to come and we started to get to know each other. The first person I met was Wei Wen, I sat next to her and the GLs helped us know each other. She’s enrolled in Chinese Studies. We did a little introduction of ourselves and what course we were in. Later our second GL Suhaila introduced herself. She’s the crazy type of GL, jumping around places and shouting cheers. The camp committee sure like advertising their twitter names on the board. I didn’t bother following because mine is private anyway, and it takes too much effort to type most of their Twitter names. We got briefed about the camp and were told to come in with an open-mind. My bad.
After the briefing we went to the sports hall and did some Ice Breakers to help memorize our District member’s names. I forgot the sequence but I think it went like “Gerald, Amos, Wee Ern, Kevin, Adrain, Louis, Kasey, Wei Wen, Jun Xian, Jonathan, Poh Teck, Susu, Belinda, Katherine, Eliane, Hong Wee, Vanessa”
I might have gotten their names wrong, sorry! I gotta admit, this was a pretty fun activity. We also learnt our first cheer the Chopping Cheer (District 7 = Axe). It goes like this..
Chop, we chop you down
Quake, we shake the ground
Now we break it down
Tremble upon our feet as we rock np now
Chop-che-chop ah x3
Chop! Chop! Chop!
Guys: He chop, he chop, he chop
Girls: She chop, she chop, she chop
We chop, we chop, we chop
Chop tomato
Ketchup, ketchup, ketchup x9
District 7’s gonna shut, shut, shut you down!
It’s really catchy.
After which we went for lunch. We ate hard and dry instant noodle that were fried. I think there were some vegetables in it, I can’t remember. Goodbye protein. Nobody needs protein. It wasn’t tasty, but edible.
We then moved on to play games. In no particular order because I can’t remember.. we played a teamwork game. We pulled strings which controlled a rubber band. We have to use the rubber band to move objects across obstacles. Challenging but fun.
Second game was to hit a ball upwards as many times as possible without it dropping, played as a district. We took a few tries to actually to get to 30+ (passing score). This just killed me, we were under the hot sun since this was located in the field.
The third game was a hula hoop game, we held hands and have to pass the hula hoop across this big circle. Those who have two of the hula hoop of same colour would have to do a forfeit. I was lucky my huge body could fit through the hoop.
Fourth game was a chair jumping game. There was a row of chair and we had to use our butt to jump across the row of chair to the other district. When the two players meet they will do a scissors-paper-stone, loser has to leave and get replaced by another district member.
Fifth game involved balloons and popping. Ironically, before we even started I accidentally stepped on my balloon. Way to go, Jun Xian! The objective is to step on other people’s balloon. District with the most people left in the court wins and losers do a forfeit.
I couldn’t even tie the balloon onto my leg because the string was too short. Fats.
I totally can’t remember if there was a sixth game… Great…Somewhere in time we were introduced to our lofts and left our things there. It’s a really comfortable place if you actually on the air con. The GL in charge of bringing us to the loft kept saying we should keep our valuables in the loft, I actually believed him. I was the only person who left their phone there, so I suffered for the next half of the day. From then on I made this little quote, “Don’t always trust the GLs”. They’ll kill me if they read this. I have reasons to support this anyway (cough,
solo night-walk nightclub).
We then had a PFP talk by some person… who I forgot his name. He’s probably the leader of the PFP Programme. We also had a Sports and Wellness briefing. I was shocked when they said no FBT. They’re just comfortable shorts, what’s wrong with them? A buffet followed, I had my plate filled with fried rice, chicken curry, ebi (tempura prawn), meatball, éclair, vegetable, sweet and sour fish and some other edible items. Also drank fruit punch. I got to meet some students from the school of ICT as well as the lecturers of the school. They were really nice and brought us back to the air conditioned music box room, but I forgot to tell my GLs and they got worried. That was my fault really.. fuck my stupidity.
We then heard a
real ghost story about some haunted block 50 in Ngee Ann with the upper floors being haunted. Ended up watching two horror movies, “The Ring” and “Insidious” (I think). I hate jump scares so I tried to watch with my eyes closed for the first movie. So I was watching and taking a nap at the same time. Second movie I just gave up and took a nap because I was too tired. It was two movies consecutively. That’s 4 hours! It took so long for us to be able to go on our night walk, not even counting the time we had to wait after the movie.
So when we reached Block 50 I was pretty freaked out from the movie jump scares. We took the lift up and Ironically the upper floors were really locked. We were only allowed to access Floor 4 (the rest were covered with masking tape). I got jumped scared while laughing at a joke my friend made. I was like HahahaAAAAAH. We completed it quite quickly and returned back to the loft. Oh this is where the GLs scammed me by saying tomorrow we’ll have a solo night walk. Ok, continuing the story, damn, the walk from Block 50 to the loft was deadly. It was such a long walk and we were told to walk faster. RIP legs. It was 2:43am by the time I was done showering. The loft has wall sockets = free phone charging. I stayed on the 6th floor and the wifi signal there was crap. You have to stay closer to floor 1 to actually receive any signal. Thank god I had a little bit of 3g left on my phone for any important messages on Whatsapp. I tweeted a little and replied SMS that were from the afternoon (sigh) and went to bed.
Le wild charger.
Day 2
The view sure is great. Awesome sunrise blinded my eyes.
Woke up quite early and got ready quickly. Went to the NPYA and had even harder and drier noodles for breakfast than yesterday. We learnt a new cheer the Oi Cheer.
GL: District 7 Oi!
Axe Out!
GL: District 7 Oi!
Get ready!
GL: District 7 Oi!
D7’s gonna bring bring bring bring bring you down
We gonna claim claim claim claim claim our crown
We gonna boom-sha-ka-la-ka-eh! Boom sha-ka-la-ka-eh!
We gonna chop-che-chop our way, chop-che-chop our way, chop-che-chop our way
Chop!
We were also told to plan for a district performance. We agreed to do a dance after much discussion.
Lunch was some yellow fried rice I think. It scared me to death because I thought it was nasi briyani (I hate it) but thank god it wasn’t. We then proceeded on to games.
But before games I believe it’s when we did a little first impression thing kind of game. We were told to write our name on the top right side of the paper and pass the paper around. We need to leave down the first impression of our district members. Mine basically went kind of like “too quiet, need to talk more”. :)
First game was to hop on one foot with hands carrying it and bring opponent down. I obviously suck at it, I can’t even stand on a bus without grabbing on a pole.
Second game was to sit in a circle, play blow wind blow to shuffle districts and start by hitting one of the players with a stick. I got hit 3 times and was made to do a forfeit. Nothing too bad, just embarrassing myself. I already do it on a daily basis.
Third game was a defence and attack game. This was held in the field and it was freaking warm. It involved kingdoms which were like square areas. We had to enter other district kingdoms or steal each other’s strings attached to our arms to get points.
Fourth game was a blindfolding game. We were blindfold and treated like minions. We had to cross obstacles with the help of these angels. I kept getting grabbed by those devils and forced to walk somewhere else. I was like “no go away, I tired”,
Dinner was fried rice, this time not yellow. It had sweet and sour fish in it. No complaints. Edible and better than some dry noodles. After which we went for the performance and only some districts performed because of limited time. Now I was expecting a horror night walk, guess what happened? We got a night club. We literally went to a dark hall and party by jumping all around. It was so much fun! No sarcasm here, that’s the best part of camp. After that we returned to our loft.
It was only 11:20pm I was like, o-m-g we get to sleep early? Sadly we got a debrief and they said we had to shower by 12 midnight so that we can cross-bunk. Huh? What on earth is a cross-bunk? I want to sleep!! It’s actually visiting other apartments and socializing with other districts. I think we socialized with District 9. We played eye-candy and sadly.. I have none. LOL, I’m not being mean, I just don’t find anyone interesting. Sorry ;_;. We finished at around 1am and I slept at 2am+.
Day 3
Woke up and went back to NPYA. Wow we had fried carrot cake for breakfast! My favorite dish. Thank god they didn’t screw it up too badly. It tasted sweet rather than oily and salty (the way I like it). But the way my district ate it was hilarious. They separated the spring onion and ate the carrot cake whaaaa… Some of them only finished half of it and my GL didn’t think it tasted right. I still ate the whole thing anyway. My favorite dish, screw food poisoning!
We moved on to play “dirty games”. The first one we played was sliding across a wet soapy mat to collect bottles and run back to our district. That was super fun. Second game we sat in a circle and sang happy birthday while passing a few bags of fruit punch and mud water. When we stop singing the person holding on to the bag of disgusting stuff have to splash the thing on their head. Awesome right?! I had to splash myself twice. Wasn’t the best idea to wear black… But nah, I didn’t mind since I was on my “Last day, bye camp, just be happy!” mood. After the game we had more games planned but lightning came. My mind just went “thank the lord, thank god, thank everybody.” Finally I can get some rest from my sticky situation. Yeah right! I was sabotaged by Susu to join a little drama performance. Then I got tau pok (squashed people and got squashed by people). After everything we went to shower. We were told to shower in 5 minutes. I just went in, rinse myself for 2 minutes and went out. I gave up, the freaking annoying people kept banging outside. It’s not like I was covered in mud and fruit punch. /sarcasm
Lunch was held in the stadium and it was dry bland bee hoon. We took some photos and went back to NPYA to complete our district performance. It was fun and we watched our camp completion pictures. I think I appeared like twice, both unglamorous as ever.
Since you read till here I’ll give you a present. Here’s the ugly picture of me doing a retarded smile. Hope it makes your day brighter.
As you can see, I'm alone.
And that basically sums up camp from whatever I can remember in 5 days. Can you believe I took 5 days to write this? Damn… At least it was overall an enjoyable-dirty-tiring-hard ride. :) <- that sounds dirty
Thanks for reading and thanks everybody who planned the camp! ◉◡◉