Wednesday, March 15
AHH jj's new album caocao is absolutely fabulously starifically fantastic! i love the track caocao itself, but e truly wonderful song is bu-si-zhi-shen, vaguely translated as the-body-that-never-dies, literally translated as eternal life. the dizi in the song is so so so good argh. the album rawks and im so proud of jj! - pats in a maternal manner -. also found out he goes to westside anglican church! heh.
OBS! now i start.
DAY ONE 060306, Monday.well i woke up @ e usual time, donned on e obs tshirt and my dads trackpants, & off to school i went! bringing w me lots of overdue homework which i managed to complete on sunday to hand up. heh. we gathered @ e LT, chatted for a bit, 310 & 311 were there, so we figured if we were mobile, we'd both be mobile, and same for resi.
SO anyways. the bus trip to punggol jetty was loads of fun! apart from jasmine attempting to molest liza and stuff. which was a bit disturbing. of course, nothing was taken seriously and suaku said i look auntie with my hairband! PFFFT.
we reached pulau ubin! & started getting sorted into groups. i was the first on the list to be called and to be present, and i was in BO SENG, oh trust me i was giggling like mad about e name. then after a while, sarah cheang and i realised that e people coming to boseng were from 310 and after 9 people ..... some strange unknowns came along!
we had our first circle w chiobu! or chew yien, to be more politically correct. e hostility between e 307ers and 310ers was fairly obvious. chiobu was like " why are you all quiet, look so sian " and someone from 307 said "because we're different class." so there, not a very good start. needless to say, i was relatively pissed off by that. but anyways.
we were shown around obs camp 1, then off to our bunks. which were a LOT better than expected. with nice mattresses, blankets, pillows, pillowcases, bedsheets. after much ado with packing our stuff nicely, cum chatting a bit, then eating, we started!
we had a map activity, chiobu sorted us into groups so we couldn't just stick with e ppl fr our class. it didnt actually succeed in bonding us, lol. trust fall! was very interesting. although i dont seem to be able to fall backwards straight. i remember doing it before a long time ago, but i never could. ahh well. cowardice. & we also had our group activity, the group to be standing behind a line, and a ball of twine a distance away fr us. we had to figure out the quickest way to get the ball of twine in a way so that everyone in the group would be touching it. we clocked 5 seconds, but chiobu said her record was 2. pah!
we also took our watch group photo, (which turned out not very good). afterwhich we learnt about wearing a harness, and belaying. then we had our first work-together with kurt, & found out their instructor was rather kool, wee how, his name is? so our first climbing thingum, just a log with metal staples sticking out. quite amusing, i was with yulin, melissa and baihui. i think, the same people in the group as the map activity.
we had a first-aid talk but that sucked. i didnt really take any of the advice in. like dark clothes to keep away this, bright clothes will attract these but keep these away. gah. its better to let go & stop worrying! then we had supper (YES WE EVEN HAVE SUPPER, who ever said OBS was a torture camp? but then i think us resi people have waaaay the best deals.) which was red bean soup and that was awesome. totally warming & stuff. also got a nice shower!
DAY TWO 070306, Tuesday.started the day with PT. which was interesting. the flagraising was strange lol, literally just flag raising with no anthem-singing and pledge-chanting. and PT involved lots of stretching, warm-up exercises, a rather short jog, plus a couple of pushups and crunches. not exactly very tiring, but it wakes one up.
had our first height element thingum! the external rock wall, the one outside the MPH. naturally we separated into 7ers and 10ers again, taking the two halves of the wall we were assigned. congrats to all those who reached the top and conquered the horrible part which i got stuck in! i guess i shouldve stayed there and continued on, i've no idea why i came down anyways. partly because time was running short, partly because i was just like AIYAH ITS JUST A WALL I CAN DO IT ANYTIME FOR THREE BUCKS AT TANJONG PAGAR. anyhow. can't say i was tired, because i seriously wasn't. sarah, when she saw me coming down was like "are you tired? because you dont look tired @ all." whee i have stamina! actually, thanks for jasmine dear for being such a fantastic belayer. the wall was quite kool, as jas says, i've never tried a wall w e actual rock gradients. only e ones with sticking out blobs of colourful plastic.
then it was backpack carrying! aside fr stuffing all my stuff into my bag, i stuffed in about 7 cans of can food (YES ITS HEAVY.) and 20 tentpegs (OH YES THOSE ARE HEAVY TOO) so the weight nearly murdered my shoulders. but it was just for a short distance anyways, we heaped them off into a speedboat, where they'd be then transported to obs camp 2 for us.
so we learnt to kayak! something i've never had any experience in. and our capsize practice. while we were kayaking there initially to do our capsize practice, jasmine and i started paddling and all right, then someone from kurt came in from our left so we steered to our right, but then another gust of water came along and so we capsized. w/o any forehand knowledge that we were going to. twas rather amusing, & not a very good foresight of my kayaking skills. (jasmine has experience.)
SO WE KAYAKED TO CAMP 2! with no injuries, i think. and no capsizes, woot! i still think i really suck @ kayaking. but anyways. jas lost her patience with me quite a few times. but ahh.
we got a nice place to put our bags down in camp 2. but that was the only use for the place, we had to built our barshas! which is smth similar to a tent, but basically a big sheet of canvas in an inverted v shape above the ground, with groundsheets for us to lie on inside. so a tent with airspace. a lot of it, actually but anyhow, not the point.
camp 2 was nice, there were toilets and stuff, but i just took a powder bath and it felt so darn good okay. thanks to jayne for lending me the powder! never expected powder baths to feel just like a shower. whee.
sarah, joanna and annie cooked our dinner for us! (we got GIANT rations okay, so much food, seriously.) which was great, maggi with sardines and chicken curry. & that was all nice but not very filling, and we still had lots of food to lug around. SIGH. but they're great cooks! the rest of us built the barshas, but the sad thing is that the 7ers took one and the 10ers took one. chiobu tried to change that but it didnt work, unfortunately. it was also freezing during the night, im so glad chiobu suggested taking our ponchos to use as blankets because i was really freezing, especially as i was @ the side, with my whole body to the open side of the barsha.
sarah says everytime she wakes up, im awake. which is interesting. i never knew im that light a sleeper, i just know that when i sleep in a group, once somebody wakes up, i automatically do too. ahh well. but that day was prob only kuz i was freezing my arse off.
DAY THREE 080306, Wednesday.the giant hike. today was the apparently ultra tiring day but it was a great day for me seriously. after breakfast, which was bread and coffee buns, OFF WE WENT!
we had to find 3 checkpoints, then go to ubin village, ubin resort, and e highest point in ubin. be aware that we're still carrying our terribly heavy backpacks, with slight modification because we packed up everything again! so, whilst switching navigators throughout, we chufa-ed!
first checkpoint was led by felicia, yulin, and someone i forgot. oops. anyways we walked for quite a short distance, then we had to follow a small trail off e main route. after much fuss & backtracking & re-checking, we finally found the sign hanging on a tree! with a famous quotation. i think obs rawks, the use of quotations, they all seem to fit w e situation. whee. & i harth quotations myself.
then the next walk! jayne & two someones navigated, i forgot TOO. wheesh. feels stupid. anyways, this one was direct, they're wonderful navigators we just walked, into a small trail, and were told to put down our backpacks and go off to search! i found it entirely by accident, saw this path which seemed trodden off into the trees, so i was like, okay lets try here, and when i got up and turned, on a giant tree, there was the obs sign. whee! pats myself.
the third one, jasmine annie and i became navigators, but jas did most of the work. i felt we were taking too many breaks in between so was like " we'll only rest after finding the third obs sign and then we'll have our lunch!" this one took ages and a LOT of backtracking because we mapped the coordinates wrongly (SORRY!) but we eventually found it thanks to wonderful accidents, cheers to chaiping!
lunch was tuna and bread. not too bad.
then was a long walk to ubin resort, much further away. we took two breaks in between, which i also felt were excessive, because with each break i believe people got more tired. but we made our way to the resort, which had nothing much! but was quite amusing anyways. then the highest point of ubin, which i dont regret going to.
the view was amazing okay, the quarry was shining aquamarine from our view. it was really calming, and with the light breeze, you really feel like one of those SIA ladies on the playing cards, you know the ones where a stewardess would stand on a cliff and the wind would ruffle her hair and she'd look all pretty and her uniform would tighten around her showing off her fab figure. anyways. my point is, one feels wonderful there.
then we were given a time limit to reach another quarry by. we managed it and for our 'prize' we were allowed to go for a dip in it! which was fantastic, acted sort of like a shower for us. we learnt the art of spitting water from wee how, but unfortunately joanna & i simply cant do it. we end up spouting water relatively unsuccessfully and it sortof drips off instead of spraying out. lol disgusting indeed.
then the walk to the campsite! we managed not to break but it was really tiring, especially after the dip in the quarry. sigh.
BUT WE FINALLY STARTED TO BOND. yes! we all left to either cook or build barshas. & guess what, we connected our two brashas, so we'd all sleep together instead of 7 in one and 9 in the other, separated by class! that really rawked okay. & we cooked lots of noodles mushrooms anchovies etc and that was all really good. & oh campbell vegetable soup which was nice too!
there was a residential wild boar we were warned against. it managed to take off with a loaf of bread i think, but after that we wrapped up our food and hung it up on our tree. we were also told to bury our leftover food in the beach (our campsite was at the north of ubin, opposite e johor shore) but because we were all too lazy to, we ended up scraping til the bottoms of our mess tins and pot, finishing the food. WOOTS!
then we had a circle with chiobu where we actually played TRUTH OR DARE. gosh lol. bu that was fun. chiobu said she doesnt have a boyfriend, but according to people from boonshi, their instructor boonwee has a girlfriend who's a fellow instructor & comes from nanyang girls and has a chinese name so everyone's pointed glances are in chiobu's direction, lol.
there was no toilet, so yep, peeing in the bushes/sand. very interesting indeed. changing behind ponchos, too. night was okay, we did SENTRY DUTY! joanna, sarah, jayne and i combined so four of us stayed up for 1 hr 40 mins, but when it came to jayne's and my turn, after a while, the three of them fell asleep (HARRUMPH) so i was left to do duty all alone. sobs. well not exactly. the dhanabalan ppl were there too, with cheronne, liza & melissa sng. harths those fantastic people! liza gave out speculoos =D and i shared a muesli bar w cheronne dear.
we didnt talk much, but i really loved the surroundings there. from across the shore, you could hear the muslim chantings and they were beautiful, especially from across the sea. some said it was eerie, but amidst the eerieness it was truly amazing, matched with the chantings of the monks/nuns from ubin itself. there was apparently even indian karaoke from malaysia too. bu that wasnt too obvious to me @ the time. then the night crickets, leaves rustling. the quietness is fabulous, & i love e darkness that settles itself on me. apart from the flashes of the torches of the sentry, its just darkness and still trees.
" i reckon when the darkness is close to us it is a friend. But when we sorter push it away from us - divorce ourselves from it, so to speak, with lantern light - it becomes an enemy. " - Captain Jim, Anne's House of Dreams.
wahahaha okay fourth and fifth day will be recounted in the next entry because im geting bored of typing this all out!
i was green-ed at 10:49 am
