All in a Day's Work

3D/2N CIRCLE Experience

Day 1
120705

Slept at three in the morning (Was packing my bag the whole night), woke up three hours later to wash up.

Was at SMU rather early as dad gave me a lift there. And so we waited till around nine before setting off by coach. In the mean time, Chin Wan and Julia did an informal introduction, as they were not present during the pre-camp meet up the previous Sunday.

The journey to the Chinese Gardens was plagued by a terrible traffic jam, which worsened as we approached Clementi. And this was in the direction away from town!

Anyway, it started to pour as we entered the Chinese Gardens (What a ceremonious welcome indeed), so we settled down to some ice-breakers.

Just before lunch, we had to come up with a name for our Group as well as paint our Group's flag. Being wary of mosquitoes in the Park and Woodlands over the next few days, we brain stormed for creative names and ideas, such as 43ers and 4-3-2-1, but eventually decided on SWAT (It's both cool as well as graphic, as in fly-swatter, you know?). Oh, and we also came up with our Group's cheer.

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The SWAT Cheer (In Hokkien)

Ecstasy wa boh jia
CID wa boi kia
SWAT! kia si nang!

(Translated version)
Ecstasy, I don't eat
CID, I'm not afraid
SWAT! Now, that's frightening!

---

--Lunch--

Fried Fish Fillet
Stir-fried cabbage
Fried Toufu
White Rice

We enjoyed our lunch raffia- (Derived from the African Raphia ruffia palm tree) style, that is, we were bound at the wrists.

After lunch, the weather cleared up abit, so we proceeded to engage in our water activities.

I had the opportunity to Canoe first with Xin Yu, who was able to control our little vessel skillfully in the water. Incidentally, she was a canoeist previously.

We came in first (Out of four teams) in River Rafting, with the least raffia string used and for submitting the banana in the best condition. As a reward, we were given two bunches of bananas (I suspect they were leftovers from lunch. Oh well...). We also had to do a forfeit (Hey, I thought only losing teams would do a forfeit!): The Banana Dance (See lyrics below)!

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The Banana Song

Bananas of the world unite!

Peel banana
Peel, Peel banana

Chop banana
Chop, Chop banana

Fry banana
Fry, Fry banana

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The weather took a turn for the worse, and as such, we did not get to try out Dragon Boating and Bridge Building.

We ajourned for dinner after playing "Helium Cane" and "Human Scrabble".

--Dinner--

Chicken Drumstick
Bok Choy
Fried Omelette
Chilli Rice

After dinner, we were briefed on the Night Walk at the Japanese Gardens. Ghost stories galore! Anyway, it was pitch dark by the time it was our turn to do the walk. And the facilitators took it upon themselves to scare the living daylights out of us freshies, but we were well prepared for that. Ho ho... Probably the only complaint was that one of the checkpoints was not lit, and the marker was slightly off the intended location, so we spent the better half of our walk searching for it.

Day 2
130705

We were fortunate to have been allow to sleep in the Pavillon, as our campsite was washed out by the rain.

--Breakfast--

Fried Mee
(It's quite like the SFI one, but slightly better)

The Circuit

We did activities such as transferring water from one point to the other using only plastic cups supported by our teeth and mouth, toe tower, where we had to use out feet to form a tower (We formed one that was 1.8 metres high), the rice game (We didn't get to execute the whole plan, though), the sponge game (which saw our whole group nearly picking 'ankles' for part of body to be tied, giving us a marked disadvantage during the game such that we had to rotate two pairs who had 'wrists' and 'elbows' quite frequently. Ha), the Wheelbarrow game as well as a 360 revolution game (Where we had to do a forward roll without touching the ground).

--Lunch--

Chicken Wing
Bagadel
Coconut rice

Route March. Yup, you've heard it right. We're going on a route march today. To SDANs Adventure Camp. Whee... Basically, we went from Checkpoint to Checkpoint while going on a Scavanger Hunt concurrently. And we ended up running towards the second half of the journey.

And for our hard work [we came in fifth (There was a mistake prior to this which ranked us sixth, before time advantage deduction)], we were given Menu B for dinner. Along with 4 Mess tins, solid fuel and some seasoning. We had to come up with a dish or two for a gourmet food competition, and so we had Gourmet chef Gabriel to do the cooking. He did a marvellous job at cooking and the presentation, but we lost out (I presume) due to the small serving (It's gourmet crusine what!)

Of course, while the scouts were starting the fire and the chefs were busy going about creating their feast fit for kings, the rest of us huddled around a second camp fire that was set up to cook FOOD for the army of starving mercenaries. And cook up a storm we did! Chef apprentice Azrul made dry mee, sardine noodles, seafood noodles, curry chicken as well as egg noodles for the lot. Response from the mercenaries was swift. They gobbled down serving after serving of noodles, such that Azrul was swamped by requests and was only able to relinquish his duties and break for his own dinner an hour and two restarted fires later. By the time I got to work, though, hunger was no longer an issue, and my curry mushroom noodles went somewhat untouched (but that meant I had more to myself. Ha!).

The mobile bath stalls are definitely better than the Public bathing facilities! (Hint to NParks: Sort out your pathetic, trickling shower heads!)

Day 3
140705

Creature comforts! Oh well, we slept in nicely pitched tents out in the field, so it wasn't too bad. Ha ha... Hao Yi complained that he was sleeping on a nail, which explains why he looked rather puffy in the morning (Besides the fact that he tucked in at three in the morning... :P)

--Breakfast--
Omelette
Ikan Bilis and Peanuts
Nasi Lemak

After breakfast, we played "Perfect Square", an ACTIVITY where we were supposed to be blindfolded, arrange ourselves in a specified order, and then form a square (or in our case, a rectangle) in that order, without so much as to whisper a word. Then came the surprise. We were separated from each other, and so had to find a way to link up the others. And the rope... was nothing thicker than a raffia string, which was why we were unable to locate it using our 'kicking' method. Oh well...

After successfully completing the task, we set off to try out another camp-favourite (-must-have, I must say): Spider Web! We tried to get through many times, but thanks to integrity, failed to get more than three members across at any one attempt. :P However, it was due to the group's perseverence that we tried again and again, and in the face of adversity, did not succumb to failure as easily. It was a case of enthusiasm building upon enthusiasm, I must say, that kept the team going.

--Lunch--
Fishball
Hokkien Mee

After lunch, we were supposed to do a confidence game, ala OBS, but a sudden heavy downpour forced us to retreat to the sheltered Basketball court, where we played our game of 'Tiu Tiu Tiu' and 'Cowboy'. :P

Instead, we did a trust fall activity when the weather cleared up.

The end all game, the finale, was Human Chariots (A water bomb activity). We had to hoist our targetboard at least one metre above the ground, and being the medic, I piggy backed Shili, and we advanced alongside Lionel's group to assault the common enemy - Section 3...

First blood was drawn when Our forces struck an enemy target from a distance. After the initial artillery bombardment, we did a flank attack on the enemy, attempting to do a sweeping movement and encircle them.

Deep into enemy territory, we were ambushed by a phantom army (Their flagbearer[target board] had been decimated by the combined attack) and our buddy group was wiped out. We reorganized and mounted a counter attack on the renegades, bringing down another in the process.

When the dust settled, all that remained were three Section 4 groups and a single Section 3 one. It was a no brainer. We jointly took out the Section 3 group before turning against our former allies. As I withdrew behind our three-men deep ring barricade, assassins sneaked up upon me. And that was when Azrul stepped in, and ala Lord of the Rings["You shall not pass!"-Gandalf the Grey, Fellowship of the Rings], he made a stand against the sneaky bombers, stopping two blasts that would have shattered my skull. A third, also from a phantom bomber, grazed my left hip (To which I still bear the scars of war till date), barely missing the princess that I was protecting.

We emerged victorious. The last remaining chariot in the land. And peace reigned. Okay, at least we could go home. Camp was over at last. After 3 gruelling days and 2 long nights, we have survived SMU's Leadership and Team Building Camp 2005.

Kudos to the facilitators who spent many a sleepless night worrying about our safety, and for being our guinea pigs in trying out the stations before we did.