砂漠のJeffire

Jeffirean Stories

Monday, July 26, 2004

WHEEEEEEEEEEW~

I'm finally back from a up-n-down week which ended in the best manner it could ever for this 2004! Never been so happy, the day I RODed can't even match 1/2 of the smiles, laughters and fun I had for the weekend.

Actually I was at my school's Student Association Leadership Camp. I am very very glad that I made the right choice by hammering emails to the organisers, from the secretary to the President. Haha. Luckily they weren't annoyed and facilitated my participation. The camp was sure one of the best I ever experienced.

Before writing about the camp, let's first wish my grandfather a Happy 7Xth Birthday! (Oops, my mother and aunts forgot to mention his age to me, but I reckon he's still in the seventies... We had the celebration just now at a restaurant at SRC, all of us 110% full with the sumptous buffet and the ice cream cake....hahaha. I ate lotsa desserts..

Okie, the days before the camp were much wasted days as the planned activities all blanked out less the driving lessons. Anyway I managed to build my champion Master League team with a cheap budget and probably another 2 additions in the form of Hatem Trabelsi and Walter Pandiani will end my WE7I conquest as I look forward to WE8. Most likely I will stick with this team in WE8, depending on what I see in next season's Champions League ba. Anyway here's the 1st 11 list and you may be thinking, "hey who are these people?" Anyway, if you aren't an enthusiast in soccer(or betting) then probably, you will be scratching your head. Here goes:

Forwards: Diego Tristan, Zlatan Imbrahimovic
Midfields: Ludovic Giuly, Pablo Aimar, Damien Duff, Joaquim Sanchez, Steven Gerrard
Defenders: Espionaza, Ricardo Carvalho and some Greek defender (who will be relegated to the bench after Trabelsi's arrival)

However, by estimated worths of pounds in the real world, this team will cost you 80+million pounds... haha.

Enough about football and back to the camp experience.

This camp was held at NACLI (National ... Leadership Institute) at South Buona Vista Rd, around 5min bus ride from KE Hall of NUS. There were probably 70+ participants as we had 7 groups in all and I was in group 7. My group facilitator was a 120% super duper interesting, wonderful, caring, etc etc(the praising adjectives goes on and on) girl, called Zing. Hahaha. My team members were 7 girls and 1 guy, and they are HW, HL, Valerie, Bernice, Fern, Corrine, BQ and Glenn. They are all one bunch of very interesting people, fun-loving and dynamic. I had a great time "serving the girls", haha, no la, just being as best as possible the gentleman in the group because Glenn is such a nice chap, so how can let the girls be disappointed with me. Anyway, I was "rebranded" Mustafa by HW just because of Zing's looking for the Mustafa plastic bag which I had on me incidentally. Kaoz...anyway it's out of fun nature and I'm pretty fine with it, though probably I have to spend some time to rebrand myself back again as the same old Jeffire. Hehz.

The start of the first day was slightly off key because I mistaken the camp's time to be later than actual, but luckily my driving instructor was very forgiving, even though I 'fly aeroplane' in the eleventh hour for him. Anyway lesson was cancelled and I was on my way punctually to NACLI. I was quite anticipative as I walked up the slope leading to the "Hall of Aspirations" where it was the reporting venue. What would happen, who would I get to know, etc, were the questions that whirled in my mind...

Upon reaching, I did my registration. I found a seat in the front row which was empty and looked around the room. Soon, I realised many were late and so I just went to sleep promptly because I was watching One Piece till 4am in the morning...wahaha. A couple of moments later the activities started and I got to know the people in my group through the ice breakers. Then we had some workshops and a sharing session by the president of the SMUSA, Victor. He was a great speaker with his witty humour and soon we also got to know the rest of the exco one by one. I realised that the girl whom I was bothering with my endless emails enquiring about the camp was a super chiobu (ok, this is a praise which i can't find any appropriate English word to describe), and I was like 'kaoz, siao liao'...haha. Anyway please don't get mistaken because of the special mention. I'm just putting my true thoughts out mah... dun mind dun mind.

Lunch was heaven as I couldn't had breakfast in the morning due to a sleep too much. It's awkward sitting in the middle of 2 girls, errr....something I had never done since dunno how many donkey years ba, or even maybe never before. haha. I tried to spaced out a little by sitting slightly outwards, but some soon questioned why I was so...well, I can't say I'm shy about it right...bzzzzt. Scored a goal with the girls by helping some of them to clear their dishes.

After lunch was another briefing and a change into sports attire, as we were gonna be playing some games soon. The first one was Captain's Ball in a round robin format. I was supposed to play in the defense area but I reckoned that I ought to be joining the attack so I aimed to be the table-turner which worked pretty well in some games as I managed to get the ball to the forwards. In some others it was totally a wreck as I didn't contribute enough to help Glenn in preventing the loss of goals. Oops. Due to a long lack of serious exercising, I was very much out of breath in the 2nd game but soon readjusted in the 3rd. A few memorable moments in the games were being elbowed by "Faye Wong" (haha, sorry it's another long story), charged down by another girl and also trying to be hero. Er. If my grpmate reads this (the trying to be hero part) I will be in deep trouble *pray*. It's like this, one of my grpmate who was the Captain (the person who stands on the chair to receive the final pass), fell off the chair. Upon seeing it I immediately grabbed her on the waist and tried to cushion her fall. I wonder if it made her fall worse because some people may have very good balance/reactions and know how to break their falls. Moreover the area was pretty clear with me behind her by 2 steps and no one else in the vicinity of 5 steps. I also wonder if she will be angry to be touched.....ok. i have 100 wonders in my mind now because of the fact that I have never touched a girl on the waist before....OKIE. Some of you must be thinking what's the big deal... er, whatever la.

After Captain's Ball was water bombing.... I seriously suspect it's one of the organiser's idea to get people (esp girls) wet..... err.... never mind, but the idea of having a strategic war game with water bombs in a field doesn't turn out to be 'strategic' after all since it was very easy to get people wet. Even with human shields it didn't help. And of course in the end it was free for all as every 'pharoah' (the person that supposed to remain dry for the grp to win) was wet in 5 mins time. Hahaha. I didn't have much fun in this game because I knew before the game there will be plenty of cleaning up...well, in the end I led the cleaning up of a portion of the field by initiative and luckily many followed on and the field was cleared very quickly. Phew.

Checking into our rooms was a pleasant surprise as the rooms were hotel quality. We had 5 beds in each room, and I was bunked in 202 with BQ, Bernice, HW and Fern. Got the chance to hit the bathroom first and yeah, was very glad I could clean up first because I hated the feeling of being wet and dirty. (I enjoy being in the swimming pool though, haha). Whew. After that was chambermaid duties because Glenn helped his bunk 201 girls make their beds and yeah, ok, I had to as a matter of duty. Ok, maybe I should clarify why I didn't volunteer with initiative or why I wrote this now. I'm very pleased to be of service, no problem, but to me a bed is a pretty personal property/teritorry (you wouldn't want anyone to be touching your bed unnecessary right?) so you know... i just dun wan to make anyone uncomfortable, angry...

After cleaning up it was time for dinner, then another discussion. Before the serious thing, the 2nd IC, Ford, held an impromptu singing competition. The first song after being cajouled for probably 5-10 mins was Fish's Fly Away, it was awesome! I mean the 2 gals who sang it together sure have all the courage to be singing to the whole camp, and they did it very well. After that, not to be outshone, the most outstanding group (Ford's group, haha) had a even more powerful singer, yes, the "Faye Wong" who elbowed me. Well, I was completely wowed out by her singing... only a few people can wow me out, and some of you may know I have very high expectations of singing standards so you know i'm very honest about it. She sang an English song which I cannot remember the title, but she had a powerful voice (contrast with her petite size). I hope to be hearing her sing again soon....haha. Well, anyway I didn't muster the courage to sing because I felt I couldn't make it anyway after being wowed out... soooooo......

After the discussion we were all super tired but there was still this night hike to Holland Village. It was 3.81 km away but we took 1.25 hrs to get to the cafe we were instructed to. Had some great chats with a couple of grpmates, and had a great time in the cafe too. Although there wasn;t much for supper, the ambience was great! Learnt more about the grpmates, and also had a close chat with the president himself while we waited for the chartered coach outside the cafe. Hehz. All the girls was surprised that the matured looking prez was not as old as they thought. Hahaha.

A short ride back to the camp area, we were all back to our bunks. Was intending to see how the situation goes before retiring to dreamland, and indeed it was really worth the sacrifice as I got to see the girls enjoy a ice cream banquet (ok, not a real one, just sharing of 2-3 little tubs of Haagen Daaz). I mean they were having fun yakking away and eating ice cream, so it's kinda made me think that these people are really so onz...haha. After some deliberation between both bunks after the ice cream, it was decided that we all retire. I felt relieved because I was starved of sleep, but the idiotic irritating girly shrills that boomed from other bunks (other grps) prevented me from getting to dreamland earlier....grrrrr.

It was like until 4+ or early 5am that I collapsed but soon I was up again at 73oam. Breakfast was scheduled to be at 830am so I guess I ought to be first up being the only guy in the bunk. Anyway I washed up but soon returned to bed again because of the rain and the freezing aircon. Finally decided to switch it off since I saw that everyone was covered with their blankets entirely. Phew. BQ was as usual the garang one, being the 2nd to be ready. Fern with her dental appt was 3rd though it was 10mins only to 830am. Fern and BQ then went around waking the princesses up (err, I would never dare to do that) and they were up at 830am reluctantly. Everything was back to normal at 0900am where we were at the dining hall chatting away.

After breakfast it was group discussions with topic groups led by different members of the organising team. I decided to go for Welfare, which was led by Elvis in bunk 106. I can't remember the group no but their whole group was there while my own group was with Ford in bunk 201. We had a fruitful discussion on welfare matters, while some ideas were probably up in the heavens, others were down to earth yet critical. Soon the bell went off for the checkout and I bidded goodbye to the group and Elvis.

Back at the bunk, I realised that the girls were all waiting for me as they had long ended their discussion because Elvis was the last one to be informed about the check out. I quickly packed and soon we were at the Learning Lounge for the last bits of activities. It commenced with a jigsaw puzzle competition, and then the presentation on a pitching a product. Our group presented on a toy rugby ball touted to have medical properties. I had to be on stage as an actor but being poor at that, I could only muster some response with my falling flat on the stage....haha.

The last of the lasts were long winded as Victor and co summed up the camp with speeches. There were also invitations for people to stay back if they were interested in running for SA positions, or helping to organise the upcoming flea market, or helping to organise events with Excites, an event organise CCA in school. I was interested in the former 2 so we stayed back to hear some first hand revelations about schoollife. It was long stories but useful words that we heard.

Went on the train with Fir, Fern, Glenn n Yvonne. Bidded them goodbye at Raffles Place and was home at 6+. Soon I was busy with clearing emails, especially school stuff.....

I only got sleep at 2am..

It's 2am now again! Acks. Wish me good luck for tomorrow....

Smiling Idiotically
Jeffire =)

Acknowledged my existence at
2:05 AM