since im so bored. i have decided to tell all some of my secrets, to make them not secrets anymore...
the well known secret 1. im a hedonist
the shocking secret 2. i hate studying and exams
the prideful secret 3. im a self-proclaimed jane of all trades. but mistress (as in master) of none.
the disgusting secret 4. i like girls more than guys. i mean LOVE. i always crush girls.... :( - er jie says wait till i go jc. haha, but guys are so immature! yikes!
the forever unknown secret 5. i like _______
the empty secret 6. i dunno a lot about myself
Friday, December 19, 2008
Thursday, December 18, 2008
China trip (part 3)!
the final part (3)
29 OCT, Wednesday
Today, had no lessons, instead, we went to keyan, another scenic area in shaoxing. it was a large tourist park which had many lakes and rivers within. however, at the time when we went, it wasn’t a bit crowded, so it was a breeze walking through the park. on top of that, we had 2 boat rides (again) and were sight seeing. this place was great, fresh air and all the green. after walking quite a lot, we came upon a few rides that were stationed in the park. they were namely the Viking ship, bumper cars, archery etc… the teachers allowed us a ride on the Viking ship! so I bought a ticket for 10 yuan, sat with sherilyn and had a whale of time on the ship swinging from end to end. I was a little surprised that I did not few scared of the height at all, instead, I was screaming with joy.
the walk in the park took up the whole morning, so it was time to eat lunch at the park itself. it was more good food. haha. subsequently, we headed for anchang and I forgot what happened there… L but since I forgot, it probably wasn’t very exciting. hehe
after that, we went back to school where our buddy’s parent once again picked up for the second night of home stay. I remember being half anxious and half happy. anxious because I was afraid of the language barrier that was impossible to ignore, and I was happy cos it was the very last day that I had to endure. haha. anyway, the home stay today wasn’t too bad. lemme tell u why.
mrs xu decided to eat out for dinner, with yijia’s friend and her buddy sam ang. so I had company who could speak english. I was appeased. this was although mrs xu had said the previous night that she might eat out with melodi’s buddy’s family, but in the end, the plan did not materialize. so we went to some posh western restaurant adjacent to a hotel. we took a little while to decide where to sit, in the vip room or in the common area, whether we wanted privacy or ventilation. but in the end, ventilation was preferred. I was given the chance to order what I wanted. I ordered chicken porridge as I was quite full alr and knew that I couldn’t down large portions of food, furthermore, I the chicken porridge was one of the cheapest on the menu, so as to not tax the person footing the bill. the food was okay..
this night, I didn’t meet melodi at all, but im glad I managed to have some quality time with yi jia. we managed to have decent conversations and we had fun together. I taught her how to play the piano, pachabel’s canon in d and she was so happy to learn it that she picked up the first part in about 15 mins! she’s a quick learner, and her little history with music definitely played a part here. the rest of the time was spent watching repeated telecast of meteor garden on tv and watching variety shows, in chinese of course with no english subs. but I tried hard to follow and more or less managed to. im glad that we watch meteor garden together as it was a common interest and as a result, we had more to talk about. we also exchanged gifts. I gave her a souvenir and a bottle of perfume. she gave me a ‘souvenir’ that would make me really remember her. haha, it was a little memento of her pic when she was young and one of her dogs. additionally, she gave me a picture book of a bog would had a real life adventure in Africa, interesting huh. after that, we went to sleep.
30 OCT, Thursday
it was our last day in shaoxing. we went for tour in lan ting. we toured this park that had a magnificent Buddha effigy out of a solid rock that was easily 100-150 metres high! though im not Buddhist, but this craft was an impressive sight to behold! and I cannot imagine how many people risked their lives to carve the Buddha out, it was probably done when the sea level was higher (the park was claimed to be once covered by water, I dunno how, but they say so.) furthermore, there was a soft side to the seemingly high and mighty Buddha statue, there was a beautiful blue bird perched on buddha’s right index finger. it was a sweet sight. the park was home to also an interesting looking piece of boulder that had a very narrow base, but a very big top. it was like a pyramid turn upside down! it looked a little intimidating as it might topple and collapse, but good thing it did not. on the rock, there were inscriptions in Chinese which mean: the no. 1 rock under the sky. okay… haha. we walked further and then we encountered a over hanging canopy of trees with pink leaves. it was breathtaking! yun yun, jin ting, shariel and I did not take a second thought at taking a classic picture.
lan ting was enjoyable due the fresh air and the green. after the morning there, we went for lunch and then went to da yu ling. the story behind this memoriam for this guy da yu was because he was an upright official that cared for the peasants, esp the flood problems. so he built drains and dams for them and the people from then commemorated his deed for them. at the entrance, there was a high wall that had 9 large cauldrons location on top of it. the guide explained that the no. 9 was only reserved for the king as it was the largest single digit number, but because of the high admiration and honour the people had for da yu, they gave him the honour of the no. 9. and the water caudrons ( I forgot the real name for this) were in remembrance of his help in solving the flood problems. inside the da yu ling, there was a temple for da yu and outside, there was a large bell. mr lim paid 5 yuan to ring 5 times, and he was wishing us students and teachers good fortunate in studies and career. thanks mr lim for being to thoughtful. lol.
I guess that da yu ling took up the whole afternoon. then we went to some posh restaurant located in some high end hotel. we were to have our farewell dinner there. unfortunately, it wasn’t really a students’ affair, cos our buddies were not present. instead, it was ma xiao zhang and her band of teachers. so it was more of the teachers saying farewell, the students just ate to their hearts content and nothing more. anyway, there was crazily wide range of food there. from seafood to meat to veg to western food to desert etc. I even ate flower crab there and mussels. I really loved the seafood. haha. after dinner, we went back to the hotel for the night’s sleep.
31 OCT, Friday
we departed for Hangzhou early in the morning. on the bus, the teachers allowed us rest, that was good for us, if not we would not have the energy for the rest of the day. at Hangzhou, we went to the yue wang mausoleum. Hangzhou was yue fei’s home town, and thus they had a temple for this famous warrior. when I was young, I rmb reading a comic on the life of this patriotic war lord. his story is so sad and really makes people sympathise with him. he was so loyal to his country, and had inked on his back 4 words that signified his total loyalty and devotion to protecting his country, yet, he was accused as the disloyal subject and hence executed. I really admire this guy, but his ending is just too sad.
after the tour at the yue wang mausoleum, we ate lunch and then we headed for the west lake cruise. the west lake was really beaut! we viewed the lei fong tai, where the legendary madam white snake was trapped by the monk fa hai. we also so saw a few other pagodas, and along the trip, there was a constant breeze filling into the boat. it was a pleasure traveling on the west lake.
next up was the flower garden at the west lake park itself. this flower garden didn’t really impress me much, but there was vibrancy of colours present in the flowers. so it was quite an eye opener.
after this, we had dinner and then we transited to the cultural performance park. this place was super cool. the park was a in the setting of the dynastic era, it was as if we were in a city, with the high walls, and there were even ‘soldiers’ in costumes guarding the gate. on the walls, we occasionally saw some imperial edict kind of thing and the most wanted list. these things added all together made the place seem like it was an authentic historical ground. in the ‘city’, there were many mini stalls, and since we had about 30 mins before the cultural show started, we were allowed to roam about, buy things and look around this interesting place. I walked around with sherilyn and we took a few note-worthy pics! there was this waterfall, probably man made, but it was so scenic!
soon it was time for the show. since we didn’t purchase the best of tickets, we were seated at seats which were a few rows short from the back. the characters in the show appeared really tiny, nevertheless, the show was enthralling enough! there was acrobatics, dancing, singing and all that u could name. haha, it is some world class performance and not some cheap show made up of any kind of actors. there were even eng subs! haha! they potrayed the stories of the historical greats, like yue fei, madam white snake, and others.
after the show, I still rmb the pl group scurrying to stay together in the midst of the sea of people. there were easily 10 thousand ppl! fortunately, no one got lost and then we were fetched to our dinner destination. with that, we checked into our hang zhou hotel.
1 NOV, Saturday
in the morning, we set off to the Hangzhou bookshop. there, the prices were more costly than that of the shanghai bookstore. but they were still affordable. I bought the good earth, my mum’s lit text last time, so I was quite curious about it. also, I bought about 7 dvds! haha, including 2 of Charlie chaplin’s works. hehe. I felt very happy. LOL!
after that, we went to the mei jia wu tea plantation. here, I spent a good sum of money on buying tea leaves! 300 yuan! that is S$60! wow, I can’t believe in myself, but then I couldn’t bear not to miss out on such a ‘miracle’ item. why do I say so? it is because the sales woman gave a demonstration on how the tea drink could neutralize some black liquid in ur stomach, the black liquid was a result of starch (from rice) and water. also the sales women said that the black solution was the culprit of the black/brown spots under our skin as we grow older. heh I was so grossed out at the black thing, so I decided to buy one premium grade bottle for my family. :) haha, im so nice! and I bought it too cos I saw the teachers buying, so I thought, at least it is safe enough for the teachers to believe in it, and it wasn’t a sham.
after that, we had lunch and then travelled to Suzhou. haha, I must admit that I was quite excited about Suzhou, for their mei nϋ. I wanted to see for my eyes what beauties the Suzhou women were. haha. on the bus, the teachers gave us some quite grueling lessons and we had the qiang da competition again..
at Suzhou, we had the privilege to do more shopping at the guan qian street. I bought chestnuts again! but Suzhou chestnuts aren’t the best! L they were freaking hard to shell. L and the taste wasn’t all that fantastic, although the stupid store keeper recommended that particular type of chestnut our of her 3 kinds. I bet she was having me on! I didn’t really buy anything else as I was quite tight on money after buying the tea leaves!
after shopping a little, we had a tour along the old canal. it was quite beautiful as there were floats about the canal and they were lighted. other than that, the cruise was okay… oh! before I forget, I was utterly disappointed at how ‘beautiful’ the Suzhou ladies were. they weren’t at all! maybe that was all those that I had set my eyes on, maybe all the pretty ones were shut at home and not allowed to set foot outside their homes, in fear of being abducted, but who was so old fashioned in thinking, maybe all the pretty ones had gone on holiday, and left the ugly ones behind. lol, or maybe my taste is too eccentric. haiz, but the term Suzhou beauties is an over statement, that is in my opinion. I bet the Koreans a tones more ravishing, be they fake or not. :)
yup, so after cruising and walking down the canal, we checked into the Suzhou hotel.
2 NOV, Sunday
the first place we were brought to was this silk embroidery factory. there, we had a tour around the showcases of silk embroidery products. they were terrific! I couldn’t take my eyes off them. my group was scheduled to do shopping first. I was thinking that I needed to get at least something back home. the problem was the prices. the cheapest nice product was 150 yuan. I managed to get one thanks to mr lim, lending me money, even though that wasn’t the best resort. L but the design on the product was very nice, and it depicted 2 lover birds on a tree branch. I could say that I bought it for my parents, even though it was using their money (I paid mr lim back at the airport in singapore) after that, we had a hands on session on embroidering silk! it was very tedious to me, I had to sit still and the only action required was the up and down movement of my right hand. my body was so restless! haha. but my end product was quite well done lah, esp with the silk thread red in colour, what more could I ask for!
after the embroidery factory visit, we had lunch within the vicinity and then we went to the tiger hill park. it was nothing spectacular, on the sword testing stone caught my attention. :) it was a piece of large rock that had a fine and even slit in the middle, which was supposedly caused by a sword. it was quite cool and I even got the chance to stand on the rock! lol..
with that, our time at Suzhou was done, and we travelled back to shanghai. the teachers, as usual made use of this time to have qiang da. I wasn’t very interested cos my group was losing in the point system. oh, maybe I should reprimand myself for saying that cos it was probably because I didn’t participate that my group did so badly. but I was sitting at the back (the seats were allocated according to groups, so I could protest for the front seat cos it w as cause too much trouble for others), and my voice was so weak, esp when I spoke chinese, that even if I shouted with all my might, the front couldn’t hear me. I tried once on the 2 trip from shanghai to shaoxing, I wanted to answer mr lim’s maths question, but was too soft, so I made a blunder. L from then, I just shut my trap whenever there was this qiang da thing.
when we reached, it alr dusk. we had dinner at one of the restaurants that we had visited earlier. this time, we were to sit in our groups! it was a very fun time with all my group mates. we had a lot of funny incidents, with invoke laughter throughout the rest of dinner time.
following dinner was the visit to the pearl oriental tower! it was definitely exciting! our group went up to a height that could see the whole of the city of shanghai and its suburbs. but I guess I couldn’t see much cos it was dark at night, haiz, we should have gone in the day! L anyway, it was at the opt when someone was being mean me and I had to sms to ah heng for her comfort. that woman, I dunno why she like that but she like always bore some stupid grudge against me. I didn’t do anything to deserved that lor, she just broke up with my clique and then all because she had friends on the trip, she was throwing her weight around. haiz, I have almost forgotten this matter as I abide by this idiom: live and let live! but she was seriously mean! sickening!
that night in the hotel room, I asked her why she was so bad to me, and then she gave her excuse, “oh, because I’m no longer with ur clique, so I not so close to u anymore…” weak excuse! this would probably have gotten a measly 2 out of a 25 for a lit essay! in me, I was thinking, “so what, does that mean u purposely don’t want to be nice to me? sickeningly… anyway, tmr, we will be back in singapore, u have ur share of friends, n I have mine, so we are fair and square! n then u will not be able to act high and mighty!!!” from then, I was quite lonely for the rest of the trip. but at least I was going home soon!
3 NOV, Monday
we left for airport at 4! slept on the bus. when we reached the airport, we checked in and then waited to board the plane. I rmb watching a little soccer on tv while waiting, it sure beats talking with the people I dun wan to.. on the plane, I watched 3 and a half movies during the 5h flight! they included angus, thongs and perfect snogging, the dark knight, corbardes (a Spanish movie), and a Korean movie, and another which I forgot. haha! on the plane, I also got a few sia souvenirs and I even brought the pillow home! LOL, so kiasu me! at the airport, mum and dad were there to pick me up. I bought a medium fries to eat. :) and then the following day, I had sore throat! lol. okay, so my journey to china and back ends here! :)
29 OCT, Wednesday
Today, had no lessons, instead, we went to keyan, another scenic area in shaoxing. it was a large tourist park which had many lakes and rivers within. however, at the time when we went, it wasn’t a bit crowded, so it was a breeze walking through the park. on top of that, we had 2 boat rides (again) and were sight seeing. this place was great, fresh air and all the green. after walking quite a lot, we came upon a few rides that were stationed in the park. they were namely the Viking ship, bumper cars, archery etc… the teachers allowed us a ride on the Viking ship! so I bought a ticket for 10 yuan, sat with sherilyn and had a whale of time on the ship swinging from end to end. I was a little surprised that I did not few scared of the height at all, instead, I was screaming with joy.
the walk in the park took up the whole morning, so it was time to eat lunch at the park itself. it was more good food. haha. subsequently, we headed for anchang and I forgot what happened there… L but since I forgot, it probably wasn’t very exciting. hehe
after that, we went back to school where our buddy’s parent once again picked up for the second night of home stay. I remember being half anxious and half happy. anxious because I was afraid of the language barrier that was impossible to ignore, and I was happy cos it was the very last day that I had to endure. haha. anyway, the home stay today wasn’t too bad. lemme tell u why.
mrs xu decided to eat out for dinner, with yijia’s friend and her buddy sam ang. so I had company who could speak english. I was appeased. this was although mrs xu had said the previous night that she might eat out with melodi’s buddy’s family, but in the end, the plan did not materialize. so we went to some posh western restaurant adjacent to a hotel. we took a little while to decide where to sit, in the vip room or in the common area, whether we wanted privacy or ventilation. but in the end, ventilation was preferred. I was given the chance to order what I wanted. I ordered chicken porridge as I was quite full alr and knew that I couldn’t down large portions of food, furthermore, I the chicken porridge was one of the cheapest on the menu, so as to not tax the person footing the bill. the food was okay..
this night, I didn’t meet melodi at all, but im glad I managed to have some quality time with yi jia. we managed to have decent conversations and we had fun together. I taught her how to play the piano, pachabel’s canon in d and she was so happy to learn it that she picked up the first part in about 15 mins! she’s a quick learner, and her little history with music definitely played a part here. the rest of the time was spent watching repeated telecast of meteor garden on tv and watching variety shows, in chinese of course with no english subs. but I tried hard to follow and more or less managed to. im glad that we watch meteor garden together as it was a common interest and as a result, we had more to talk about. we also exchanged gifts. I gave her a souvenir and a bottle of perfume. she gave me a ‘souvenir’ that would make me really remember her. haha, it was a little memento of her pic when she was young and one of her dogs. additionally, she gave me a picture book of a bog would had a real life adventure in Africa, interesting huh. after that, we went to sleep.
30 OCT, Thursday
it was our last day in shaoxing. we went for tour in lan ting. we toured this park that had a magnificent Buddha effigy out of a solid rock that was easily 100-150 metres high! though im not Buddhist, but this craft was an impressive sight to behold! and I cannot imagine how many people risked their lives to carve the Buddha out, it was probably done when the sea level was higher (the park was claimed to be once covered by water, I dunno how, but they say so.) furthermore, there was a soft side to the seemingly high and mighty Buddha statue, there was a beautiful blue bird perched on buddha’s right index finger. it was a sweet sight. the park was home to also an interesting looking piece of boulder that had a very narrow base, but a very big top. it was like a pyramid turn upside down! it looked a little intimidating as it might topple and collapse, but good thing it did not. on the rock, there were inscriptions in Chinese which mean: the no. 1 rock under the sky. okay… haha. we walked further and then we encountered a over hanging canopy of trees with pink leaves. it was breathtaking! yun yun, jin ting, shariel and I did not take a second thought at taking a classic picture.
lan ting was enjoyable due the fresh air and the green. after the morning there, we went for lunch and then went to da yu ling. the story behind this memoriam for this guy da yu was because he was an upright official that cared for the peasants, esp the flood problems. so he built drains and dams for them and the people from then commemorated his deed for them. at the entrance, there was a high wall that had 9 large cauldrons location on top of it. the guide explained that the no. 9 was only reserved for the king as it was the largest single digit number, but because of the high admiration and honour the people had for da yu, they gave him the honour of the no. 9. and the water caudrons ( I forgot the real name for this) were in remembrance of his help in solving the flood problems. inside the da yu ling, there was a temple for da yu and outside, there was a large bell. mr lim paid 5 yuan to ring 5 times, and he was wishing us students and teachers good fortunate in studies and career. thanks mr lim for being to thoughtful. lol.
I guess that da yu ling took up the whole afternoon. then we went to some posh restaurant located in some high end hotel. we were to have our farewell dinner there. unfortunately, it wasn’t really a students’ affair, cos our buddies were not present. instead, it was ma xiao zhang and her band of teachers. so it was more of the teachers saying farewell, the students just ate to their hearts content and nothing more. anyway, there was crazily wide range of food there. from seafood to meat to veg to western food to desert etc. I even ate flower crab there and mussels. I really loved the seafood. haha. after dinner, we went back to the hotel for the night’s sleep.
31 OCT, Friday
we departed for Hangzhou early in the morning. on the bus, the teachers allowed us rest, that was good for us, if not we would not have the energy for the rest of the day. at Hangzhou, we went to the yue wang mausoleum. Hangzhou was yue fei’s home town, and thus they had a temple for this famous warrior. when I was young, I rmb reading a comic on the life of this patriotic war lord. his story is so sad and really makes people sympathise with him. he was so loyal to his country, and had inked on his back 4 words that signified his total loyalty and devotion to protecting his country, yet, he was accused as the disloyal subject and hence executed. I really admire this guy, but his ending is just too sad.
after the tour at the yue wang mausoleum, we ate lunch and then we headed for the west lake cruise. the west lake was really beaut! we viewed the lei fong tai, where the legendary madam white snake was trapped by the monk fa hai. we also so saw a few other pagodas, and along the trip, there was a constant breeze filling into the boat. it was a pleasure traveling on the west lake.
next up was the flower garden at the west lake park itself. this flower garden didn’t really impress me much, but there was vibrancy of colours present in the flowers. so it was quite an eye opener.
after this, we had dinner and then we transited to the cultural performance park. this place was super cool. the park was a in the setting of the dynastic era, it was as if we were in a city, with the high walls, and there were even ‘soldiers’ in costumes guarding the gate. on the walls, we occasionally saw some imperial edict kind of thing and the most wanted list. these things added all together made the place seem like it was an authentic historical ground. in the ‘city’, there were many mini stalls, and since we had about 30 mins before the cultural show started, we were allowed to roam about, buy things and look around this interesting place. I walked around with sherilyn and we took a few note-worthy pics! there was this waterfall, probably man made, but it was so scenic!
soon it was time for the show. since we didn’t purchase the best of tickets, we were seated at seats which were a few rows short from the back. the characters in the show appeared really tiny, nevertheless, the show was enthralling enough! there was acrobatics, dancing, singing and all that u could name. haha, it is some world class performance and not some cheap show made up of any kind of actors. there were even eng subs! haha! they potrayed the stories of the historical greats, like yue fei, madam white snake, and others.
after the show, I still rmb the pl group scurrying to stay together in the midst of the sea of people. there were easily 10 thousand ppl! fortunately, no one got lost and then we were fetched to our dinner destination. with that, we checked into our hang zhou hotel.
1 NOV, Saturday
in the morning, we set off to the Hangzhou bookshop. there, the prices were more costly than that of the shanghai bookstore. but they were still affordable. I bought the good earth, my mum’s lit text last time, so I was quite curious about it. also, I bought about 7 dvds! haha, including 2 of Charlie chaplin’s works. hehe. I felt very happy. LOL!
after that, we went to the mei jia wu tea plantation. here, I spent a good sum of money on buying tea leaves! 300 yuan! that is S$60! wow, I can’t believe in myself, but then I couldn’t bear not to miss out on such a ‘miracle’ item. why do I say so? it is because the sales woman gave a demonstration on how the tea drink could neutralize some black liquid in ur stomach, the black liquid was a result of starch (from rice) and water. also the sales women said that the black solution was the culprit of the black/brown spots under our skin as we grow older. heh I was so grossed out at the black thing, so I decided to buy one premium grade bottle for my family. :) haha, im so nice! and I bought it too cos I saw the teachers buying, so I thought, at least it is safe enough for the teachers to believe in it, and it wasn’t a sham.
after that, we had lunch and then travelled to Suzhou. haha, I must admit that I was quite excited about Suzhou, for their mei nϋ. I wanted to see for my eyes what beauties the Suzhou women were. haha. on the bus, the teachers gave us some quite grueling lessons and we had the qiang da competition again..
at Suzhou, we had the privilege to do more shopping at the guan qian street. I bought chestnuts again! but Suzhou chestnuts aren’t the best! L they were freaking hard to shell. L and the taste wasn’t all that fantastic, although the stupid store keeper recommended that particular type of chestnut our of her 3 kinds. I bet she was having me on! I didn’t really buy anything else as I was quite tight on money after buying the tea leaves!
after shopping a little, we had a tour along the old canal. it was quite beautiful as there were floats about the canal and they were lighted. other than that, the cruise was okay… oh! before I forget, I was utterly disappointed at how ‘beautiful’ the Suzhou ladies were. they weren’t at all! maybe that was all those that I had set my eyes on, maybe all the pretty ones were shut at home and not allowed to set foot outside their homes, in fear of being abducted, but who was so old fashioned in thinking, maybe all the pretty ones had gone on holiday, and left the ugly ones behind. lol, or maybe my taste is too eccentric. haiz, but the term Suzhou beauties is an over statement, that is in my opinion. I bet the Koreans a tones more ravishing, be they fake or not. :)
yup, so after cruising and walking down the canal, we checked into the Suzhou hotel.
2 NOV, Sunday
the first place we were brought to was this silk embroidery factory. there, we had a tour around the showcases of silk embroidery products. they were terrific! I couldn’t take my eyes off them. my group was scheduled to do shopping first. I was thinking that I needed to get at least something back home. the problem was the prices. the cheapest nice product was 150 yuan. I managed to get one thanks to mr lim, lending me money, even though that wasn’t the best resort. L but the design on the product was very nice, and it depicted 2 lover birds on a tree branch. I could say that I bought it for my parents, even though it was using their money (I paid mr lim back at the airport in singapore) after that, we had a hands on session on embroidering silk! it was very tedious to me, I had to sit still and the only action required was the up and down movement of my right hand. my body was so restless! haha. but my end product was quite well done lah, esp with the silk thread red in colour, what more could I ask for!
after the embroidery factory visit, we had lunch within the vicinity and then we went to the tiger hill park. it was nothing spectacular, on the sword testing stone caught my attention. :) it was a piece of large rock that had a fine and even slit in the middle, which was supposedly caused by a sword. it was quite cool and I even got the chance to stand on the rock! lol..
with that, our time at Suzhou was done, and we travelled back to shanghai. the teachers, as usual made use of this time to have qiang da. I wasn’t very interested cos my group was losing in the point system. oh, maybe I should reprimand myself for saying that cos it was probably because I didn’t participate that my group did so badly. but I was sitting at the back (the seats were allocated according to groups, so I could protest for the front seat cos it w as cause too much trouble for others), and my voice was so weak, esp when I spoke chinese, that even if I shouted with all my might, the front couldn’t hear me. I tried once on the 2 trip from shanghai to shaoxing, I wanted to answer mr lim’s maths question, but was too soft, so I made a blunder. L from then, I just shut my trap whenever there was this qiang da thing.
when we reached, it alr dusk. we had dinner at one of the restaurants that we had visited earlier. this time, we were to sit in our groups! it was a very fun time with all my group mates. we had a lot of funny incidents, with invoke laughter throughout the rest of dinner time.
following dinner was the visit to the pearl oriental tower! it was definitely exciting! our group went up to a height that could see the whole of the city of shanghai and its suburbs. but I guess I couldn’t see much cos it was dark at night, haiz, we should have gone in the day! L anyway, it was at the opt when someone was being mean me and I had to sms to ah heng for her comfort. that woman, I dunno why she like that but she like always bore some stupid grudge against me. I didn’t do anything to deserved that lor, she just broke up with my clique and then all because she had friends on the trip, she was throwing her weight around. haiz, I have almost forgotten this matter as I abide by this idiom: live and let live! but she was seriously mean! sickening!
that night in the hotel room, I asked her why she was so bad to me, and then she gave her excuse, “oh, because I’m no longer with ur clique, so I not so close to u anymore…” weak excuse! this would probably have gotten a measly 2 out of a 25 for a lit essay! in me, I was thinking, “so what, does that mean u purposely don’t want to be nice to me? sickeningly… anyway, tmr, we will be back in singapore, u have ur share of friends, n I have mine, so we are fair and square! n then u will not be able to act high and mighty!!!” from then, I was quite lonely for the rest of the trip. but at least I was going home soon!
3 NOV, Monday
we left for airport at 4! slept on the bus. when we reached the airport, we checked in and then waited to board the plane. I rmb watching a little soccer on tv while waiting, it sure beats talking with the people I dun wan to.. on the plane, I watched 3 and a half movies during the 5h flight! they included angus, thongs and perfect snogging, the dark knight, corbardes (a Spanish movie), and a Korean movie, and another which I forgot. haha! on the plane, I also got a few sia souvenirs and I even brought the pillow home! LOL, so kiasu me! at the airport, mum and dad were there to pick me up. I bought a medium fries to eat. :) and then the following day, I had sore throat! lol. okay, so my journey to china and back ends here! :)
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
Yay! da jie's back
hello blog! my da jie's back! n im very happy. :) thank God for keeping her safe through the 5-6 months in the states! hehe, da jie's very nice and i hope she n i will not quarrel as often as we once did. anw, the bad thing about her homecoming is... i have to sleep on the upper bunk, which is soooo troublesome... lol. the good thing was that i could eat crab last night, not that crab is such a rarity here, but i ate huge ones! :) of course da jie being at home is good enough a thing. haha. anw, the main point in this post is: DA JIE, WELCOME BACK! :D
Monday, December 15, 2008
CK/CKS Camp 2008!
it's been 2 days since i've come back from ck camp. it was fun, but not as fulfilling as ks camp. maybe cos i was in the comm and thus was constantly worried about how things would turn out. esp for the games i planned, got feedback that they were real good, but i still can't forge how nervous i was... and being the logistics in charge with nat was a task that demanded quite an amount of responsibility.. so i was kind of more stressed and tired than enjoying myself. maybe ths stress was self-inflicted, haha, but im this kind of person that puts herself in stress for no reason. lol.
day 1, 10 dec wed
i can't really remember what emotions i was going through, probably more nervous than excited. i had packed my bag just the day before and shaking my head at how huge and heavy it was.. i had used the same bag for ks camp and when i got to camp, it was large in comparison to many other bags, and i told emelyn that i didn't feel secure having a small bag, if i had brought a smaller bag, i was afraid thathad left things out or worse, at the end of camp, with the cumulation of other additional items, i wouldn't be able to squeeze everything in and become a lobang auntie, so i just stuck to the big bag although it was embarrassing.
kind auntie wan teng volunteered to fetch me along with her 4 girls to camp. ps, vbs and ck/cks camp was held in the same venue and on the same days, so it was pretty convenient for auntie wan teng. btw, since nat and i were log, we had a few boxes worth of groceries and other stuff to bring to camp, good thing my dad could help us in this area, if not auntie wan teng's car wouldn't have any space left for sitting! yep, in the car, we were quite sien, so i took out my guitar and we had a mini sing along session in the car. :) it was cool. by 45 mins, we reached.
we assembled in the main hall for ck/cks and then we were given the camp opening by cheryl, the camp mistress. then we split into our groups to come up with a group name and hail someone as our leader. my group consisted of nat, bernice, joanne, boaz, isaac chan, samantha and elias. we elected boaz as our leader and out group name was gluteus maximus, aka backside or butt.. lol. other groups were itch and noelene's group (no creativity here... haha)
after that, we proceeded to the next programme, which was ice breakers. the first game we played was a can game, by which every group had a rubber band with strings attached to it, and also there were each member a can representing him/her. so every member had to arrange the cans using the strings to make them in a certain order of something, like weight etc. i will tell all here, lol, my group did a great deal of cheating! even though elias was the organizer and was playing with us, he closed one eye whenever we cut corners by using our hands instead of really using strings only. lol. the first pattern required was a straight row, followed by creating a row on a narrow curb and finally forming a pyramid with the cans. and boy, my group cheating unabashedly, of course we concealed it. haha, but we still did not come in tops.
the second game played was some food war. it was pretty physical and i didnt really like this game. each group had a station where it had all it's 'food supplies'. the aim was to steal other groups' food as well as guard the food we had. in addition to all of the above, we had to guard our 'lives' which hung on the tail that we had on our backs. once an enemy ripped off our tail, we had to drop all that we had and go to the tail giver who was located quite far away. so the point was, prevent ur enemies from grabbing ur tail off, and horde food!! for the 1st game, was more of attacker, but i never got any loot, i did not dare to take risk... haiz, i also rmb getting into a really rough tussle with auntie suet yin, and she scratched my arms, but i didn't rmb hurting her in any way, so i was quite pissed that she caused a few scratch scabs on my arms. during the first game, joanne and josiah arrived! i was so excited about their presence in camp cos i think it was time for them to assimilate into ck. so they played round 2 with us. in the end, my group had quite alot of spoil and they were for our teabreak, haha, but like what bernice had said, it was no use fighting so much, cos in the end, everyone would just share food.
following teabreak was message 1 by pastor goh on worship. something cool that i learnt from this message was the 1st 4 commandments each spoke about an aspect of worship. like the 1st was on who to worship, the 2nd, how to worship, the 3rd, what to worship and the 4th, when to worship. it was something that never struck me till that day. later during discussion, my discussion group which had members like isa, tze yan, elias and joanna and kong wee, our facilitator for then went to the guys dorm and parked ourselves on upper beds of 2 bunks. it was then i shared about the contemporary worship in my school and how much i felt it inapropiate for christian worship. i really dislike the type of chapel services we have in school and all the christian pop songs sung again and again. although my other christian friends are okay with it, i seriously think that it is not right.
after discussion, by right we had dinner, but joanne, nat, some guys and i played soccer. the guys were namely aaron, marcus, boaz, josiah and daniel. they were the soccer faithful throughout camp and always played soccer during free time, while i always switched about soccer and captains ball and volley ball. btw, in regards to soccer, lemme tell u something, i dunno why, but every single soccer game i played, i ALWAYS scored a goal and then never could anymore. it's weird... but at least i scored a goal.. haha, while some others didnt have that chance. yeah, so i played soccer till i was almost soaked with sweat. then went for dinner. the amount of veg left was pathetic so i had minimal veg and lots of rice and meat... oh, this was going to be one of my sacrifices if i wanted to play soccer before the meal.
after dinner, we had a workshop. oh did i forget.. i was the guitarist for this camp too. lol, my church quite sad, very little talent for guitar, but good thing josiah can play too, so we were the official guitarists for camp. the worshop was conducted by pastor goh and was on service. i basically learnt that whatever gifted i had, i had to give it God in service, which i am proud to say that i alr am, cos love to play guitar for singspiration during youth meetings and camps. then i paired off with nat to share about our talents and how we could use it in God's kingdom.
after the worshop, we had a 'night walk'. this was planned by kong wee and fortunately, i was the one who was not blindfolded, cos if i was blindfolded, i would feel super useless and handicapped as being alr impaired in hearing, i didn't want to have anything less. i had to lead my group through the camp site and there was of course some uneven trail and even one part when there was wet mud, so i had to guide them ultra carefully. however, the fun of the night walk was marred when ezra lost his specs, in the dark, it was impossible to locate his specs, so we were quite worried about it. in the end, ezra had to go home and wasn't back till the following day.
before going to sleep, i realized that ihad left my tooth brush at home! i was so angry with myself. goodthing mum was coming to the campsite the following day, my saving grace. other than realizing that my toothbrush was absent, i had some fun before lights out, i played bridge with friends. it was fun! :)
day 2, 11 dec thurs
day 2 started with exercise conducted by elisa and hui qi! yay, we jogged a little around camp then played h2o and finally chain catching. i played till i was sweaty again, hehe. then it was devotion time. i rmb we were sitting facing the sea and i was casually sipping on a can of 100 plus while michael led us with devotion. after devotion, we had breakfast, for me, it was cereals and milk again!!! :) i love koko krunch with honey stars in milk. that's the best combo ever! hehe, but we were fortunate to have the auntie cooks who prepared pau for us. it was a filling meal for me.
next up was message 2 by pastor goh on bible intake. i was reminded that the bible is authoritative and reliable, so we should not alter it to fit with what we want. discussion was with pastor goh and there i was encouraged to pick up a commentary to follow me through my daily devotion and also to find out whatever i didn't understand in the bible. thanks pastor goh! i will try to make these things become real.
before lunch, a large group of ckers wanted to play captains ball, but was stopped by cheryl as lunch was alr prepared for us on the table. so we no choice but to push play back, but i was afraid of getting stitch, so while i played soccer, i played goalie and later on, i went up and scored my lone goal for the game. after that, we played captains ball but i had to leave half way to prepare for my games slot which was next. noelene and i set up the obstacle course for the can-can game and got ready all materials.
soon it was time for my games! my first 2 games were in door games. the first was the plastic bag and laughter game, which i got from ks camp. it was just a warm up activity that made everyone happy and relaxed. after that, i introduced to the a game which was slighty more tensing, which was fox and squirrel.
after that, we moved outdoors. there, we played the can-can game. it was tremendously funny watching the groups work together. there were a few incidents when isaac tan (who joined my group in my place) piggy backed isaac chan, in between them, all the cans, i guess they were raring for first place that when i.t ran, the cans dropped, and they had to start from the beginning. more haste, less speed guys! though there were times when the piggy back theory worked well. but there was once it failed rather badly andddd very dangerously! tze yan was piggy backing isa and the string which they had to go under was caught in isa's eyes but tze yan went on and the string was pulled down by sheer force on isa's eyes. man! so scary and then later while tze yan had to climb up a chair, she fell forward, knocking isa and herself down. but all they did was burst into a heap of laughter. so i was glad that they weren't hurt.
sunbesequently, we played captains ball, this time, with wet sponges. i didnt play cos i was organizer and i couldn't get wet cos of my hearing aids. hehe, i dipped the sponges in disgusting egg+water+soap water. eww! and there was even cold water! but my friends all loved the game. aw wright...
after my games, which everyone obviously enjoyed, we played more captains ball and had tea break. then we settled down for message 3 on prayer by prof hanko. i learnt that we should pray to God for who he is, our creator and therefore, we have to offer thanksgiving to him. during discussion, prof hanko asked a few intriguing questions, like why didnt the saints of the old testament pray 'our father', while it was so in the new testament. it was because Jesus is our elder brother and we are adopted sons of God. oh, after the message, i understood it so well finally. also, i had some pleasant surprises! tabi, sharleen, phebe, and pamela had come to visit us and would be staying till the following night! oh, how exciting!
after discussion, we had dinner and then i played soccer with the usual group, this time we had more ppl like tze yan and isa. heh, i dunnid to say this again, but i scored! hehe, and i was beginning to discover my hidden passion and goalkeeping, although i wasn't that good. but at least it allowed my food to churn without entering my appendix. at 8, it was time for movie screening. we watched facing the giants, it was quite good as a chirstian show, but i guess it wasn't great, cos movies aren't the best way to impart christian values... we had a mini discussion on the movie. then i played more card games and then went to sleep. i had my toothbrush finally! thanks mum! :)
day 3, 12 dec fri
today started with exercise again. hehe, organizers hui qi and elisa were relying on me to give them ideas lol. so we played jacob's ladder, cowboy and dog and bone. then boaz gave devotion. he was too soft that i couldn't really hear what he was sharing...
after that was breakfast. my, i tell u that ck has ferocious appetite! i had gotten 2 large boxes of cereal and bread and nutella and other stuff for breakfast. on top of that, the aunties prepared pau and pandan cakes and milo. and within the first breakfast, the 2 boxes of cereal were finished, 3 cartons of milk were emptied and we were running on low supplies! later, i asked sharleen whether she had any idea on how much breakfast food nathaniel got for ks camp, she said, "probably a lot more, cos u noe who he is..." lol, okay, maybe i really underestimated the amount of food needed for breakfast. anw, good thing that uncle faichong bought 3 large boxes of cereal more, if not i would be in hot soup!
when we were still eating breakfast, the hankos had arrived. this time wilma and elaine came along, so we had to play host to more ppl! the last message was on sunbmitting to God's will. for discussion, kong wee sat in for my group and then we discussed on submitting to our parent's will as they are appointed by God in our lives to guide us. hmm.. i must confess that i haven't been very guai to my parents, esp my dad... haiz but i'll try..
message was followed by lunch and then we went to west coast park for camp outing! we took a chartered bus there. on the bus, majority of the girls, including me played games, like the animal game and mafia etc. it was a pleasant time on the bus.
when we reached, we settled down along a field of grass. there, cheryl conducted her games, the first being on the pavement. the first game was traffic jam, and i thought i was experienced in this cos i played this exact game in ks camp alr, but it turned out to be slightly different, and this version of the game was unbearably easy, while ks' was much more fun and challenging. the next game was some acid pool thing that which i didn't understand the concept behind it, but basically, we had to use whatever resources we had to take a bottle out of the acid pool, without us going into the boundary set by cheryl. while my group was pondering on how it could ever by possible to carry out, isaac chan, who was very playfully experimenting around different methods, very unintentionally slipped on the bottle and he went on his back with his limbs pointed to the sky. however, he got someone hurt during the process.. that was bernice, n i guess it hurt super a lot, cos it was her jaw line that was hit. being a very small surface area, there was definitely a lot of pressure on her jaw, so i seriously empathised with her, well knowing that this incident could cost her her entire afternoon of fun. so joanne and i we quick to comfort her and even pucked up courage to request for a bag of ice from the macs nearby. and boy, they were generous enough, giving us a bagful of ice, more than we needed. so the task was now to cajol bernice into rubbing the ice on her affected area, though it was be excrutiatingly painful. thank God, bernice was compliant and then she could join us for the rest of the activities!
what was up next was this super embarrassing game (at least to my group). it went like this. we had to do catepillar walk for quite a distance then train 'walk' and then prisoner walk, of course, girls and guys in separate lines. the first was bearable, but the second was abhorrible and the last, was impossible (cos the other teams had finished, so it was impossible for us to even do it, yeah, so pathetic...) what's worse was that we had to transport a cup full of water, yeah, so it was extra effort here and not that simple. at the end, my group was pretty slow, but our cups were almost full! so i guess that made up! and the last game was machine! bernice and i had also played this in ks camp, but what made it different was the presence of isaac chan! he was sooooooooo darn hilarious!!! the first of object was computer. nat n i were the screen, joanne was the com user, boaz was the cpu (with his nose as the button, ears as the volume control, nose as the usb plug in, and his mouth the cd player... lol! isaac injected humour when he said that joanne had to be careful cos boaz's nose very oily, lol!), bernice was the mouse, samantha was keyboard and lastly, isaac and elias were the computer characters. at first, joanne would play cs, which is counter strike, and then watch, superman and the baddie. i wondered whether prof hanko, wilma and eliane had any clue about the worldly things we were potraying, but im glad they were having a good laugh anyway, thanks to funnyman isaac! the second object was a car/bus/car.. lol, my group was so retarded! i was an ah ma, isaac was the fat driver and so on.. we really had a good time. after the game, we played captain's ball, while some guys played soccer. i played soccer for a while, scored my only goal and then played captains ball. LOL!
we played for about half an hour and then the bus had come. so we boarded and on the bus, we played more mafia. upon reaching the campsite, we had teabreak. nat n i utilized that time to prepare for my upcoming auction game that would settle dinner. i was very stressed cos we had many items that were not around, but the aunties really comforted us as they had prepared tonnes of food. plates of sushi, chicken wings, otah, omelettes etc.. oooh, thanks so much aunties!
after teabreak was workshop no 2 on propriety in dressing, by auntie ah moi. auntie ah moi made it a point to address the guys too, instead of just focussing on girls, which i thought was a good point cos pastors always singled it out on the ladies, and that wasn't very fair.. :)
i left workshop early to do the last minure preparation for my auction. finally, it was time! i was quite sure that i would lose my voice during the auction, but i didn't! things went pretty smoothly. there were a few hiccups here and there esp when i group got something out of a mystery item that they didn't fancy. hehe, it was so exciting! now, i now how jeff probst feels in survivor auction, hehe! all in all, we had a very full dinner and there was left overs, but not much. we had a 'finale' with ice cream and coke, u could combine them to make a float which was great! i had a float and the foam formed a hill on the rim of my cup! haha.
after dinner, it was the tedious journey. i must say that i w as a little disappointed with the games, cos it was supposed to be some sort of an amazing race, but iva did not have the time to do a good job, so i forgive her.. hehe. no lah, i don't have the right to forgive people or not to, thanks iva for the effort put im, i loved the limbo-ing! hehe. after tedious journey, most of the ckers played captains ball till 12 plus. it was here when i once again discovered a hidden passion of mine, that is being the captain! catching balls gave u the thrill! :) after that, we played a few rounds of mafia and bridge. i had comm meeting to wrap things up, then the day was over.
day 4, 13 dec sat
this day, we had no exercise! i quite wanted to protest! haha. anw, we had to do cleaning up and then we took a few group shots! by then i was very tired alr.. this is the effect of not having morning exercise! we sang the theme song once more and camp closed.
i went to jurong point for brunch with nat's family (excluding uncle chee choong). then headed home. this camp was enjoyable in its way, but very very exhausting, esp cos i was the comm member and thus i had an extra responsiblilties to carry. :) but i had thoroughly enjoyed the messages, the fun and the fellowship!
day 1, 10 dec wed
i can't really remember what emotions i was going through, probably more nervous than excited. i had packed my bag just the day before and shaking my head at how huge and heavy it was.. i had used the same bag for ks camp and when i got to camp, it was large in comparison to many other bags, and i told emelyn that i didn't feel secure having a small bag, if i had brought a smaller bag, i was afraid thathad left things out or worse, at the end of camp, with the cumulation of other additional items, i wouldn't be able to squeeze everything in and become a lobang auntie, so i just stuck to the big bag although it was embarrassing.
kind auntie wan teng volunteered to fetch me along with her 4 girls to camp. ps, vbs and ck/cks camp was held in the same venue and on the same days, so it was pretty convenient for auntie wan teng. btw, since nat and i were log, we had a few boxes worth of groceries and other stuff to bring to camp, good thing my dad could help us in this area, if not auntie wan teng's car wouldn't have any space left for sitting! yep, in the car, we were quite sien, so i took out my guitar and we had a mini sing along session in the car. :) it was cool. by 45 mins, we reached.
we assembled in the main hall for ck/cks and then we were given the camp opening by cheryl, the camp mistress. then we split into our groups to come up with a group name and hail someone as our leader. my group consisted of nat, bernice, joanne, boaz, isaac chan, samantha and elias. we elected boaz as our leader and out group name was gluteus maximus, aka backside or butt.. lol. other groups were itch and noelene's group (no creativity here... haha)
after that, we proceeded to the next programme, which was ice breakers. the first game we played was a can game, by which every group had a rubber band with strings attached to it, and also there were each member a can representing him/her. so every member had to arrange the cans using the strings to make them in a certain order of something, like weight etc. i will tell all here, lol, my group did a great deal of cheating! even though elias was the organizer and was playing with us, he closed one eye whenever we cut corners by using our hands instead of really using strings only. lol. the first pattern required was a straight row, followed by creating a row on a narrow curb and finally forming a pyramid with the cans. and boy, my group cheating unabashedly, of course we concealed it. haha, but we still did not come in tops.
the second game played was some food war. it was pretty physical and i didnt really like this game. each group had a station where it had all it's 'food supplies'. the aim was to steal other groups' food as well as guard the food we had. in addition to all of the above, we had to guard our 'lives' which hung on the tail that we had on our backs. once an enemy ripped off our tail, we had to drop all that we had and go to the tail giver who was located quite far away. so the point was, prevent ur enemies from grabbing ur tail off, and horde food!! for the 1st game, was more of attacker, but i never got any loot, i did not dare to take risk... haiz, i also rmb getting into a really rough tussle with auntie suet yin, and she scratched my arms, but i didn't rmb hurting her in any way, so i was quite pissed that she caused a few scratch scabs on my arms. during the first game, joanne and josiah arrived! i was so excited about their presence in camp cos i think it was time for them to assimilate into ck. so they played round 2 with us. in the end, my group had quite alot of spoil and they were for our teabreak, haha, but like what bernice had said, it was no use fighting so much, cos in the end, everyone would just share food.
following teabreak was message 1 by pastor goh on worship. something cool that i learnt from this message was the 1st 4 commandments each spoke about an aspect of worship. like the 1st was on who to worship, the 2nd, how to worship, the 3rd, what to worship and the 4th, when to worship. it was something that never struck me till that day. later during discussion, my discussion group which had members like isa, tze yan, elias and joanna and kong wee, our facilitator for then went to the guys dorm and parked ourselves on upper beds of 2 bunks. it was then i shared about the contemporary worship in my school and how much i felt it inapropiate for christian worship. i really dislike the type of chapel services we have in school and all the christian pop songs sung again and again. although my other christian friends are okay with it, i seriously think that it is not right.
after discussion, by right we had dinner, but joanne, nat, some guys and i played soccer. the guys were namely aaron, marcus, boaz, josiah and daniel. they were the soccer faithful throughout camp and always played soccer during free time, while i always switched about soccer and captains ball and volley ball. btw, in regards to soccer, lemme tell u something, i dunno why, but every single soccer game i played, i ALWAYS scored a goal and then never could anymore. it's weird... but at least i scored a goal.. haha, while some others didnt have that chance. yeah, so i played soccer till i was almost soaked with sweat. then went for dinner. the amount of veg left was pathetic so i had minimal veg and lots of rice and meat... oh, this was going to be one of my sacrifices if i wanted to play soccer before the meal.
after dinner, we had a workshop. oh did i forget.. i was the guitarist for this camp too. lol, my church quite sad, very little talent for guitar, but good thing josiah can play too, so we were the official guitarists for camp. the worshop was conducted by pastor goh and was on service. i basically learnt that whatever gifted i had, i had to give it God in service, which i am proud to say that i alr am, cos love to play guitar for singspiration during youth meetings and camps. then i paired off with nat to share about our talents and how we could use it in God's kingdom.
after the worshop, we had a 'night walk'. this was planned by kong wee and fortunately, i was the one who was not blindfolded, cos if i was blindfolded, i would feel super useless and handicapped as being alr impaired in hearing, i didn't want to have anything less. i had to lead my group through the camp site and there was of course some uneven trail and even one part when there was wet mud, so i had to guide them ultra carefully. however, the fun of the night walk was marred when ezra lost his specs, in the dark, it was impossible to locate his specs, so we were quite worried about it. in the end, ezra had to go home and wasn't back till the following day.
before going to sleep, i realized that ihad left my tooth brush at home! i was so angry with myself. goodthing mum was coming to the campsite the following day, my saving grace. other than realizing that my toothbrush was absent, i had some fun before lights out, i played bridge with friends. it was fun! :)
day 2, 11 dec thurs
day 2 started with exercise conducted by elisa and hui qi! yay, we jogged a little around camp then played h2o and finally chain catching. i played till i was sweaty again, hehe. then it was devotion time. i rmb we were sitting facing the sea and i was casually sipping on a can of 100 plus while michael led us with devotion. after devotion, we had breakfast, for me, it was cereals and milk again!!! :) i love koko krunch with honey stars in milk. that's the best combo ever! hehe, but we were fortunate to have the auntie cooks who prepared pau for us. it was a filling meal for me.
next up was message 2 by pastor goh on bible intake. i was reminded that the bible is authoritative and reliable, so we should not alter it to fit with what we want. discussion was with pastor goh and there i was encouraged to pick up a commentary to follow me through my daily devotion and also to find out whatever i didn't understand in the bible. thanks pastor goh! i will try to make these things become real.
before lunch, a large group of ckers wanted to play captains ball, but was stopped by cheryl as lunch was alr prepared for us on the table. so we no choice but to push play back, but i was afraid of getting stitch, so while i played soccer, i played goalie and later on, i went up and scored my lone goal for the game. after that, we played captains ball but i had to leave half way to prepare for my games slot which was next. noelene and i set up the obstacle course for the can-can game and got ready all materials.
soon it was time for my games! my first 2 games were in door games. the first was the plastic bag and laughter game, which i got from ks camp. it was just a warm up activity that made everyone happy and relaxed. after that, i introduced to the a game which was slighty more tensing, which was fox and squirrel.
after that, we moved outdoors. there, we played the can-can game. it was tremendously funny watching the groups work together. there were a few incidents when isaac tan (who joined my group in my place) piggy backed isaac chan, in between them, all the cans, i guess they were raring for first place that when i.t ran, the cans dropped, and they had to start from the beginning. more haste, less speed guys! though there were times when the piggy back theory worked well. but there was once it failed rather badly andddd very dangerously! tze yan was piggy backing isa and the string which they had to go under was caught in isa's eyes but tze yan went on and the string was pulled down by sheer force on isa's eyes. man! so scary and then later while tze yan had to climb up a chair, she fell forward, knocking isa and herself down. but all they did was burst into a heap of laughter. so i was glad that they weren't hurt.
sunbesequently, we played captains ball, this time, with wet sponges. i didnt play cos i was organizer and i couldn't get wet cos of my hearing aids. hehe, i dipped the sponges in disgusting egg+water+soap water. eww! and there was even cold water! but my friends all loved the game. aw wright...
after my games, which everyone obviously enjoyed, we played more captains ball and had tea break. then we settled down for message 3 on prayer by prof hanko. i learnt that we should pray to God for who he is, our creator and therefore, we have to offer thanksgiving to him. during discussion, prof hanko asked a few intriguing questions, like why didnt the saints of the old testament pray 'our father', while it was so in the new testament. it was because Jesus is our elder brother and we are adopted sons of God. oh, after the message, i understood it so well finally. also, i had some pleasant surprises! tabi, sharleen, phebe, and pamela had come to visit us and would be staying till the following night! oh, how exciting!
after discussion, we had dinner and then i played soccer with the usual group, this time we had more ppl like tze yan and isa. heh, i dunnid to say this again, but i scored! hehe, and i was beginning to discover my hidden passion and goalkeeping, although i wasn't that good. but at least it allowed my food to churn without entering my appendix. at 8, it was time for movie screening. we watched facing the giants, it was quite good as a chirstian show, but i guess it wasn't great, cos movies aren't the best way to impart christian values... we had a mini discussion on the movie. then i played more card games and then went to sleep. i had my toothbrush finally! thanks mum! :)
day 3, 12 dec fri
today started with exercise again. hehe, organizers hui qi and elisa were relying on me to give them ideas lol. so we played jacob's ladder, cowboy and dog and bone. then boaz gave devotion. he was too soft that i couldn't really hear what he was sharing...
after that was breakfast. my, i tell u that ck has ferocious appetite! i had gotten 2 large boxes of cereal and bread and nutella and other stuff for breakfast. on top of that, the aunties prepared pau and pandan cakes and milo. and within the first breakfast, the 2 boxes of cereal were finished, 3 cartons of milk were emptied and we were running on low supplies! later, i asked sharleen whether she had any idea on how much breakfast food nathaniel got for ks camp, she said, "probably a lot more, cos u noe who he is..." lol, okay, maybe i really underestimated the amount of food needed for breakfast. anw, good thing that uncle faichong bought 3 large boxes of cereal more, if not i would be in hot soup!
when we were still eating breakfast, the hankos had arrived. this time wilma and elaine came along, so we had to play host to more ppl! the last message was on sunbmitting to God's will. for discussion, kong wee sat in for my group and then we discussed on submitting to our parent's will as they are appointed by God in our lives to guide us. hmm.. i must confess that i haven't been very guai to my parents, esp my dad... haiz but i'll try..
message was followed by lunch and then we went to west coast park for camp outing! we took a chartered bus there. on the bus, majority of the girls, including me played games, like the animal game and mafia etc. it was a pleasant time on the bus.
when we reached, we settled down along a field of grass. there, cheryl conducted her games, the first being on the pavement. the first game was traffic jam, and i thought i was experienced in this cos i played this exact game in ks camp alr, but it turned out to be slightly different, and this version of the game was unbearably easy, while ks' was much more fun and challenging. the next game was some acid pool thing that which i didn't understand the concept behind it, but basically, we had to use whatever resources we had to take a bottle out of the acid pool, without us going into the boundary set by cheryl. while my group was pondering on how it could ever by possible to carry out, isaac chan, who was very playfully experimenting around different methods, very unintentionally slipped on the bottle and he went on his back with his limbs pointed to the sky. however, he got someone hurt during the process.. that was bernice, n i guess it hurt super a lot, cos it was her jaw line that was hit. being a very small surface area, there was definitely a lot of pressure on her jaw, so i seriously empathised with her, well knowing that this incident could cost her her entire afternoon of fun. so joanne and i we quick to comfort her and even pucked up courage to request for a bag of ice from the macs nearby. and boy, they were generous enough, giving us a bagful of ice, more than we needed. so the task was now to cajol bernice into rubbing the ice on her affected area, though it was be excrutiatingly painful. thank God, bernice was compliant and then she could join us for the rest of the activities!
what was up next was this super embarrassing game (at least to my group). it went like this. we had to do catepillar walk for quite a distance then train 'walk' and then prisoner walk, of course, girls and guys in separate lines. the first was bearable, but the second was abhorrible and the last, was impossible (cos the other teams had finished, so it was impossible for us to even do it, yeah, so pathetic...) what's worse was that we had to transport a cup full of water, yeah, so it was extra effort here and not that simple. at the end, my group was pretty slow, but our cups were almost full! so i guess that made up! and the last game was machine! bernice and i had also played this in ks camp, but what made it different was the presence of isaac chan! he was sooooooooo darn hilarious!!! the first of object was computer. nat n i were the screen, joanne was the com user, boaz was the cpu (with his nose as the button, ears as the volume control, nose as the usb plug in, and his mouth the cd player... lol! isaac injected humour when he said that joanne had to be careful cos boaz's nose very oily, lol!), bernice was the mouse, samantha was keyboard and lastly, isaac and elias were the computer characters. at first, joanne would play cs, which is counter strike, and then watch, superman and the baddie. i wondered whether prof hanko, wilma and eliane had any clue about the worldly things we were potraying, but im glad they were having a good laugh anyway, thanks to funnyman isaac! the second object was a car/bus/car.. lol, my group was so retarded! i was an ah ma, isaac was the fat driver and so on.. we really had a good time. after the game, we played captain's ball, while some guys played soccer. i played soccer for a while, scored my only goal and then played captains ball. LOL!
we played for about half an hour and then the bus had come. so we boarded and on the bus, we played more mafia. upon reaching the campsite, we had teabreak. nat n i utilized that time to prepare for my upcoming auction game that would settle dinner. i was very stressed cos we had many items that were not around, but the aunties really comforted us as they had prepared tonnes of food. plates of sushi, chicken wings, otah, omelettes etc.. oooh, thanks so much aunties!
after teabreak was workshop no 2 on propriety in dressing, by auntie ah moi. auntie ah moi made it a point to address the guys too, instead of just focussing on girls, which i thought was a good point cos pastors always singled it out on the ladies, and that wasn't very fair.. :)
i left workshop early to do the last minure preparation for my auction. finally, it was time! i was quite sure that i would lose my voice during the auction, but i didn't! things went pretty smoothly. there were a few hiccups here and there esp when i group got something out of a mystery item that they didn't fancy. hehe, it was so exciting! now, i now how jeff probst feels in survivor auction, hehe! all in all, we had a very full dinner and there was left overs, but not much. we had a 'finale' with ice cream and coke, u could combine them to make a float which was great! i had a float and the foam formed a hill on the rim of my cup! haha.
after dinner, it was the tedious journey. i must say that i w as a little disappointed with the games, cos it was supposed to be some sort of an amazing race, but iva did not have the time to do a good job, so i forgive her.. hehe. no lah, i don't have the right to forgive people or not to, thanks iva for the effort put im, i loved the limbo-ing! hehe. after tedious journey, most of the ckers played captains ball till 12 plus. it was here when i once again discovered a hidden passion of mine, that is being the captain! catching balls gave u the thrill! :) after that, we played a few rounds of mafia and bridge. i had comm meeting to wrap things up, then the day was over.
day 4, 13 dec sat
this day, we had no exercise! i quite wanted to protest! haha. anw, we had to do cleaning up and then we took a few group shots! by then i was very tired alr.. this is the effect of not having morning exercise! we sang the theme song once more and camp closed.
i went to jurong point for brunch with nat's family (excluding uncle chee choong). then headed home. this camp was enjoyable in its way, but very very exhausting, esp cos i was the comm member and thus i had an extra responsiblilties to carry. :) but i had thoroughly enjoyed the messages, the fun and the fellowship!
Saturday, December 6, 2008
KS camp 2008!
hey blog! i've come back from ks camp! and i shall blog about it while it is fresh in my memory. actually i was planning to finish u p my 3rd the final post of the written account of my china trip, and was pressing to do so cos da jie made a bet with me, haha. but i have decided that ks camp is MORE important as it involves my spiritual life. also, i have promised emelyn that i will blog, and that it will be a long post, so i don't want to keep her waiting! hmm... i've just napped for for 3 hs and when i woke up, first thing to do was blog, but i have to be super concious of the time, cos i don't want to infringe the law of christian liberty!
anyway, first things first, this post will be very alike my other recount posts, very long and sometimes boring, but all in the name of memory's sake, so bear with it.
day 1 - tues 2 dec 2008. 'i'm lovable lisa....'
first of all, that 'i'm lovable lisa....' thing was actually a qoute from me on the first day. wanna know why i said so.. find out!
the day before on monday, i had a contract with joanna and bernice to travel by taxi to the campsite itself, and with it, we had to adhere by certain rules like waiting at the main road for the taxi so that when it came, we could hop on without wasting money on waiting time. the taxi was flagged by joanna (and her sis jema who i did not have a fore-knowledge of her presence) and would travel to my house and subsequently bernice's. i had a set of bulky lobang that consisted of my guitar and my enormous duffel bag. good thing mum helped me to the bus stop, if not i would have used up a considerable amount of my energy... while waiting for the taxi to arrive, i was a little nervous of what i would say to joanna when i saw her, remembering that i had a year's worth of things to talk with her, i was both worried and calmed at the same time.
so joanna came and i saw jema too, i hopped on. in the taxi, i was surprised that i could talk freely with them, catching up with them a little, and sharing a few laughs.. my fears were unfounded. then we headed for bernice's condo and then she boarded. jema had a little joke about bernice being too big and the rear had no space for her so she had to lie in the boot. harhar, that was some lame joke that unconciously made me feel more awake and comfortable with them.
the ride was a pretty smooth sailing one, without jams or worse, being lost on the way. so we reached there in about 45mins, and the fare was $24.20. bernice smartly bargained with the taxi driver to give us a flexibility of $0.20 and she achieved it. so we had a fare that could be cleanly divided by 4. nice work bernice! when we reached, i thought we were the first cos the place was so quiet, but i was wrong, the bungalow had many footwear outside at the door, so i was preparing myself to be greeted by the follow youths and maybe get a 'long time no see' from them. but no one said that, maybe 1 year to them was a day? lol. although i had no 'long time no see' from them, i'm certain that they had missed me and had welcomed me sweetly with open arms, whoever i went up to gave me a broad smile. :)
anw, when i got in the bungalow, i first greeted emelyn! my best friend for camp! i didn't see lin yan around, so i thought she hadn't reached. and lin yan is also my best friend for camp! haha. anw, emelyn led me to the room she was sleeping in, which was the same old room we had slept in the previous year with rachel tan and joanne. this year, we had a new comer jemima sim, and she roomed with us. my bed was the upper bunk and emelyn's was the lower bunk. jemima had the double bed for herself (at least until part timer joanne claimed the other half) after putting my bag down, i went out and said hey to a few people, namely ben yeo, rachel (goh), nathaniel, kevin, hannah etc. they said hey back and exchanged smiles.
soon it was time to gather for the official opening of the camp. camp master kevin greeted us and welcomed us. we had the introduction of camp personnel and the camp theme song and verse. i was girls' dorm ic, and i had no idea whether my role involved anything other than waking people up, which i sucked cos i woke up later than them... so i immediately told emelyn to take over me, cos she seems better at it from past experiences. the camp theme song was new to me, but it was very nice and i liked it in no time. we had 4 groups. namely epistle, testimony, witness and children of light. mine was children of light (col) and consisted of johanna (jo) and jessie who were our group leaders, jema, jemima, ryan, kevin, tim quek and i.
it was time for ice breakers! joanna led us and we sat in a circle. there after, she explained that the first game was as follows, we had to introduce ourselves, by stating our name with an adjective that more of less described us and started with the same letter as our name. in my mind, i went oh... i've played this before in p5, when miss lam introduced herself as sleepy sarah and i as lovable lisa. so i probably carried a very confident expression, and that is probably why joanna asked me to start. and lol, my mind went blank. i wasn't lovable, besides, that p5 vocabulary... but i hate unwanted silence, especially whenever i was the cause of it. so i blurted out 'i'm lovable lisa' and i was relieved that ppl laughed, cos what i just said was rubbish. lol. after thinking about it, i realised im more of lisa, the leisure lover, in other words, the hedonist. back to the point, i also stated my age and which school i am from and how long i have been a christian. then i threw the ball to emelyn and then the game went on. this game generated laughs at a few points of time, when the ball was thrown to ryan, he deflected it with his camp booklet. LOL, it was so quick and i was surprised that he could respond that fast. also, it was entertaining watching the verbal squabble between the quek brothers. song jia said that she was sociable-not, i guess joanna meant that the adjective was meant to be a positive one, but she didn't define, so we left it at that.
after the first game, we had another game that was miming facts about ourselves. i partnered rachel and i mime that i like seafood and red. actually u could say i will red seafood like crabs and lobsters, but i didn't mean them to be combined cos i really love all kinds of seafood, all but the deplorable cockles! lol. rachel told me that she knew jap (which i alr knew) and that she was considering body building! LOL, i never never knew that fact, it must have evolved during the 1 year of my hiatus from fe, if not i might have known. for the finale of this game, we all had to guess what jo had to say which jessie had no clue on how to decipher. but i managed to guess easily cos i could lip read. lol, hamsters still pretty much are the highlights of jo's life.. her phrase was 'my hamster changed home'. LOL!
the game which followed was an improvision of the game blow wind blow. we had to state i love people who love.. yeah, so when it was my turn, i said i love people who love sports. :) and im glad many people share my sentiments. after the game, the game of ice breakers was to a close.
after the ice breakers, we had lunch. i remember having chicken rice, and it was brought to us by auntie saw huey. thanks auntie! anyway, next up we had SYLO, which was short for sing your lungs out. i found myself very familiar with the robust singing of the ksers. i have always enjoyed singing with them as they nvr lacked enthusaism when it came to singing, furthermore, there were a considerable number of strong singers in our midst, thus in pitch wise, we always met the mark. i was one of the official camp guitarists, so i played the guitar this round.
following that, we had our first message on guarding out heart by uncle joseph liow. i learnt that our heart is what God sees as most important, thus, we must do our utmost to keep it from evil and sin. also, that we could do so by relying on God to help us and centering God's word in our hearts. during discussion later on, i shared about pranking diane, haha, i still feel bad about the incident that also broke our clique up!
when discussion was over, it w as time for 'chapalang' game time! haha, i had no idea what on earth was chapalang, maybe it's the brother of hampalang... anyway, i asked emelyn at the start of camp when i was still flipping through the booklet and she said that i would noe later, of course i would if not how would i play her game? anyway, the game was sort of a team bonding game that required us to be able to spray out our team members' names in seconds, at the same time, be quick in passing balls from under our legs to above our heads. wow, it rhymes. haha. so the game is as follows (i hope i will be able to explain it better than emelyn as it is quite complicated at first). basically, there are 2 balls for 4 groups. so 2 groups will have a ball each while the other two have none. when the game starts the groups that have the ball will throw the ball as far as possible while the other group chases after it, the members have to stand in a circle and one person in the middle will shoot his/her tongue off with all the names of the group members, the more rounds gone, the better. once the other group chasing after the ball has gotten it, they have to pass the ball under their legs and above their heads and then shout stop, that is to stop the other group from saying the names, and then they will throw the ball some where else and then start reciting their group memebers' names, and the game follows in that cycle. okay, it that clear enough? eh i hope so, but i think emelyn did a better job cos we eventually played the game in the proper, while i think mine would make people never start the game. okay, im confusing myself now... :/ anyway, my team's alpha male kevin joined the another group for this game as we had uneven numbers, and my group was very reluctant of this, but later i learnt that he was more of a hindrance than help, lol, his excuse: i purposely made it so, so that our group could win.. um, okay kevin...
after chapalang, we had the game traffic jam, my group teamed with epistle and guess what, we solved the seemingly impossible to solve puzzle. anyway, we accomplished that after trying out many times, but it was sure better than the other group which never succeeded. it was thanks to the focus we had that enabled us to solve the problem. :) well done col and epistle! :) anyway, it was during this game that the penang brothers came, that's why there were a lot of distractions with nicholas and all. it's the forth time jonathan and timothy have joined us. :) im very happy for that. haha. hope that this will continue to years to come.
the next game played was depicting an object. i dunno whats the name for this game, but it involved a group forming a particular object given by emelyn. the first was toilet bowl if im not wrong. lol, so i rmb i was the toilet bowl seat with jess, we linked arms and squat down. then beside us was johanna, the flushing component, jema was the toilet paper holder and jemima was the toilet paper as she was wearing white then. kevin was the toilet user and ryan was amusingly the 'poop', so he hid behind johanna till kevin 'did his business' and then he would come from behind to appear and when kevin flushed the toilet, he would once again disappear. lol! it was really funny! the second object was a car. i was the car front door plus front wheel, jo was the other front wheel and kevin and ryan was the rear wheels. jema was the driver, jess was the flashlight (lol, she used her camera which unfortunately didn't coorperate during the real thing itself and led to a blooper) jemima was mutli-purpose steering wheel and wiper. whee, it was really funneh! that's was all i think for the games. great job done emelyn!!! :D
after that, we played captains ball. :) i must say that captains ball took over as one of my 'fun' during the camp as the table tennis table was removed (much to my despair) another things i like about ks was captains ball, cos we truly displayed team work and sportsmanship during captains ball. furthermore, we had many strong players, thus the game was always enetertaining and fast paced. i rmb being more or less active during this game cos i wanted to sweat it out. :) i LOVED sports rmb? :)
dinner came at 6.30, uncle wee beng was the provider. thanks uncle! :) i forgot what we ate. hmm... :( bad memory. anyway, i recall having bad appetite throughout camp for some unknown reason, so food was definitely not the best thing at camp. :( also i had some stomach pains, i guess was because of the water cooler water cos whenever i drank it, it sent some painful sensation through my stomach. after dinner, ben, lin yan, jonathan mohan (whom i shall 'mohan' as he seems very mohanish to me... ps, i called him that way at camp, lol, and he wasn't too happy, so make sure this doesn't reach his ears!) and i played cards (to be specific, taiti)! this is another 'fun' of mine at camp. :) also, it was dinner time when my group lost a memeber, tim quek, he wasn't feeling very well and had to leave. :( but he was back on the third day! fast recovery tim!
soon it was time to gather for SYLO, joanna played guitar as i was unfamiliar with most tunes and then we had message 2 on christian liberty. :) when our speaker uncle gim theng entered, ben quek asked where's marcus? haha, i was upset that he didn't come, didn't he want to meet up with his friends from childhood?! haha. when i met him later on fri, he said that he had wanted to go, but lazy, lol, is that his only excuse, and he said that he should have gone. yes, marcus, u should have gone cos u didn't know how much u missed :) lol. also, some interesting coincidence here, jemima was marcus' schoolmate and classmate, what a small world. :)
when uncle gim theng shared about christian liberty, i think what struck me most was that i had been doing too many things on sunday that wasn't really pleasing to God. i was made further guilty during tabi's workshop the following day. however, i still do not think that eating out on sunday is a crime, cos like what bak wei said, the non-believers are a 'tool' for us... umm. i think i've made it sound very cruel, but it wa s something along that line, that as long as we do not stumble fellow christians, instead, 'make use' of non-christians who find no wrong in working on the Lord's day, and maybe buy food from them or take a bus ride on sunday. hmmm, is the reasoning of mine sound reasoning enough? after that we had group discussion where we delved deeper into the examples of things we do in daily lives and whether they defile christian liberty. i learnt that worldly music is really bad, and so is christian pop, which is just world pop in disguise, so i shall try not to ever listen to them again. I'LL TRY and hope i succeed! :)
anyway, on a side-note, (this is for da jie) while i was writing notes, i kept writing christine liberty instead of christian liberty! lol, maybe i missed u so much that i wanted u to be liberated from america and come back to singapore. harhar. u will be soon! 16 dec! :D
after discussion, we had group bonding time. it was really funneh! thanks to jo and jess the organisers. at first, we were to play as a group, but then we saw the other groups loitering around, not having anything solid to do, so in the end, we included them in our games and it became more of camp bonding time, only epistle did not join us. the first game we played was lao ying zhuo xiao ji, but this time, the organizers steered the objectives to remind us about guarding our heart against evil. so the mother hen became the protector, the eagle became the evil and the chicks were the pink hearts, that looked too palatble to the evil one. :) after a few rounds, we gathered around in a circle to play a very interesting game. it was the plastic bag game. the game went as follows, while jess tossed the plastic bag up, everyone in the circle had to laugh, be it fake or real, but the catch was once the plastic bag touched the floor, all laughter had to cease. the game seemed so simple, but once u played, it was wasn't at all! i was sitting beside bernice and boy! she burst out laughing when the bag touched the floor, so much so that i joined in, cos... laughter is CONTAGIOUS! and i got caught for that. :(((( but good thing they did not make me perform forfeit as i hate it. :) likewise, we played a few rounds. and boy, it was good to play. there was a time when jessie kept hitting the plastic bag up and then we had to laugh non stop, it was then when our fake laughter turned real. LOL! it was very very very very very funny! after this game, we played hide and seek, although emelyn and i had been the champions last year, this year, i could not repeat it as i didn't have even enough time to hide! so i became a seeker almost immediately after the game started. hmph!
with that, camp bonding was brough to a close, i went to shower, played a few rounds of bridge and taiti with ben, lin yan, mohan, and jonathan tan. :) it was fun! and i also talked a little with emelyn about the little nyonya and being excited about the morning exercise the next morning. :)
day 2 - wed 3 dec 2008. 'why do zebras cover their eyes when they see women? cos they see bras!'
what's up there is what u have to read out to appreciate. so do u get it? haha... it was a joke coined by jessie, or maybe she had seen it else where, anyway, jo and i laughed like mad when we heard this, maybe we were too high then. lol. we were on our way back from 'i spy with my little eye' :) read out to find out!
as i had told u, emelyn was the one waking me up! haha. anyway, i had a very bad night sleep. the air con was way too cold and the blanket was way too thin, so i was awake most of the time, if i ever slept, it would be defined as a fleeting sleep. but i thank God, cos i didnt not fall terribly sick with flu the following day, which is pretty unnatural for my nose under such circumstances. and also, i learnt that emelyn did not sleep very well too. :( anyway, i was still more or less refreshed for the day.
morning exercise! i was looking forward to it! ben quek was suppose to lead in it but he was absent for too long, so jo took the initiative to lead! and boy, she did a fantastic job! at first, we played lao ying zhuo xiao ji again. it was not bad lah, but later on, we played what i would call the highlights, the one that really made me run and get out of my slumber, was the chain catching! i starting with lin yan and we caught many people, some of whom we are proud of like bak wei, kevin etc. haha, cos i noe they are the mean runners that hardly get caught!
by the end of morning exercise, i suffered from a teeny wound on my right big toe. haha, it's itching right now when im typing. haha. thank you joanna for attending to my insignificant wound. haha.
breakfast, i ate mainly cereals,milo balls, and milk. after eating, the card club went to play taiti and bridge again. lol, ben, lin yan n i could be the official card games club for the camp. lol. next was SYLO, sharleen played the guitar. then message 3 followed. it was by pastor berends, some canadian pastor, i must say that i didn't really appreciate his message. :( (anyway, i noe im not suppose to look on the outward, but i couldn't help thinking when he stepped in, that he looked like a goose, cos his neck is so long and his head shape so oblong too.) also, there were times when i didn't really understand what he was speaking about. his message was on prayer. but i did take some things back, like being reverent in prayer and trying not be distracted or doze off while sleeping and always, what ever we need, we have to constantly ask, knowing the He is able to provide.
after discussion, we had lunch, provided by some kind parent whom i forgot. haiz, i should quit trying to remembering who brought food cos it will only expose the weakness of my memory. :( lunch was followed by the briefing for 'i spy with my little eye'. this was an activity that involved us going out to take pics of the required things on the list. i shall name a few queer ones, like taking a pic of a flower with 12 petals and an item that has a price tag of $1.97 and taking a pic of a pair of identical twins, witnessing to someone etc... my group went to causeway point in woodlands to complete our task. there, we saw many ang mohs and we started taking pics with them cos we needed to have pics with foreigners from 5 different countries. and let me share with u the ingenious things my group did! to get a pair of twins, we went to minitoons and got a pair of dwarves, supposedly from snow white and the 7 dwarves. one looked sleepy and one looked happy, but nevertherless, they looked alike. also, when we witnessed to someone on the mrt, we gave tracks, so the person had no choice but to listen to our witnessing, we manually photoshopped bananas so that a bunch would have 11 by combining one bunch that had 4 with another that had a comb of 7. smart eh! we did other crazy things, like taking a pic of a car park and then conveniently claiming that there was a toyota car in there that had a christian bumper sticker. lol, obviously we failed for that.
on the way back, while on the mrt, jess made me do some stupid poses with jema, lol... i made a fool of myself there. later on the bus, jess, jo, jema and i got a little crazy about jess' little teeth. and then while walking back to the camp site, jo jess and i created animal jokes, laughing our way in. haha.
after all the groups came back, we viewed the pics. had a few laughs when the quek brothers presented. haha, many of the twins became soft toys and the was one flower that pitifully its petals plucked out so that it had 12 petals. how incorrigible could that person be who came up with that idea, first of all, it was cheating and it was also harming a poor flower that did no halm to deserve such treatment. :( anyway, when it came to my group, i feel that we had to most no. of things taken, all but the name key chain. haha, although we did cheat a little by changing one of the price tags from $1.99 to $1.97 just by covering the last 9 with a downturn 'j' created by our fingers. lol. when it came to the mrt pics, everyone was burst into a guffaw, the only one who didn't laugh was me. lol, so embarrassing, but i did allow myself a smile. :)
after the whole presentation, we play more captains ball. :) i pretty active this time too. :) after that, dinner, and of course playing card with the card club and then SYLO. i guess i took turns with sharleen to play guitar. then we had a workshop by tabi on keeping the sabbath holy. she covered many many things that pricked my conscience and made me resolute to change. i shall just put down what i think are the important points: i should keep the sabbath holy by question whether what i do is helpful to the service of God, and what is my intent of doing that thing, is it to glorify God or grieve Him? and that i should keep the sabbath holy with joy in my heart. lol, i rmb just failing to do that yesterdya when i went tracking with ks youths. when in bak wei's car, tabi asked why nat and i suddenly wanted to go tracking with them. and then i quite spitefully said cos of u lah! (refering to her workshop about doing things for God only on the sabbath day), lol, then i was reminded that i should do it happily. lol!
anyway, if u are wondering what on earth i was doing by tracking. i shall explain here, please forvive me for side-tracking. nat n i had to go fe yesterday cos we had to design the bottles for ck camp and needed tabi's help. so we met up with many friends of old, actually, not that old, only one year of separation and then we got cracking. by the time we finished, we had time to join the kser for tracking. nat n i hopped onto bak wei's car with 5 others in the rear. they were jo, song jia, qian hui, ben yeo, jema! lol, 7 in the rear and tabi and bak wei in front. LOL! this reminds me of the past ks camp when about 10 ppl from my group the wanderes squeezed into his car! it seemed like so much fun that ee jia wanted to come in too, but ben yeo protested, lol, 'no more space!' heh. during the ride, bak wei made a 3 point turn, much to the discomfort of us at the back. haha.
back to the point. i learnt that i have to keep the sabbath holy, and i will try very hard to. after that, we had night walk. ben quek as usual was the organizer. i think he had been at it for the past 3/4 years! and he is so pro at it! anyway, though this year's was not bad, i felt that last year's was the best. i loved the forest walk! haha! anyway, this year's was more confusing and i half didnt understand what on earth was going on, only the time when we searched for silver coins in the bungalow did i find myself active. i found 2 out of 6!! haha, i claim my credits! but other than that, i think i have learnt more about the different parables during this activity. :)
during free time after thati played cards again and then read my bible and then went to sleep. this time, i fell into a deep sleep. :)
day 3 - thurs 4 dec 2008 'what a shame!'
'what a shame!' it's the second last day of camp!
today was the same, emelyn woke me up with her soft pats. i was half unwilling to give up my snug bed, the temperature last night had been less extreme, so i had a good sleep which made up for my poor sleep the previous night. something i forgot to add in my post on the past day, i actually fulfuilled my role as dorm ic by waking up 2 of the impossible-to-wake-up-ers. they are lin yan and bernice. haha, emelyn and their room mates had no success in waking these 2 sleepy heads, but i had 100% success! maybe it is because i was close to lin yan and thus knew that she will not bear a grudge against me for stirring her from her slumber. so listen up for the 100% success rate method in waking my friend lin yan. i basically grabbed her hands and pulled her up, then she dropped down on her back. then i tickled her on the sides, she squirmed and squirmed, causing much 'turbulence' on the bed. in the end, lin yan woke up within a minute and her partner bernice woke up right after her, without me even touching her, she had woken up due to the 'turbulence'. yeah, so effective huh, in fact it is 200% success rate, cos i woke 2 people up in one go...
jema was in charge of this morning's exercise. she introduced to us the ben quek and ben yeo game! lol, it was probably created by her, cos this game was rather lame, but at the same time, it was funny too. we had 2 lines and they stood face to face with the other line. one line would be ben quek and the other ben yeo, so when jema called ben quek, the line that was ben quek had to turn around and run to its baseline before the ben yeo group catches it. i was in the ben yeo group, and it was pretty funny. my partner on the other side, tryphena could not catch me all the time, but i could catch her easily. haha. there was also another call, that w as bernice. when jema called this, both lines had to run to their baseline and then go on our backs and point our arms and legs toward the sky and wave them. lol. it was kinda stupid. after that, we played the island game. very enjoyable cos i could run. :)
anyway, first things first, this post will be very alike my other recount posts, very long and sometimes boring, but all in the name of memory's sake, so bear with it.
day 1 - tues 2 dec 2008. 'i'm lovable lisa....'
first of all, that 'i'm lovable lisa....' thing was actually a qoute from me on the first day. wanna know why i said so.. find out!
the day before on monday, i had a contract with joanna and bernice to travel by taxi to the campsite itself, and with it, we had to adhere by certain rules like waiting at the main road for the taxi so that when it came, we could hop on without wasting money on waiting time. the taxi was flagged by joanna (and her sis jema who i did not have a fore-knowledge of her presence) and would travel to my house and subsequently bernice's. i had a set of bulky lobang that consisted of my guitar and my enormous duffel bag. good thing mum helped me to the bus stop, if not i would have used up a considerable amount of my energy... while waiting for the taxi to arrive, i was a little nervous of what i would say to joanna when i saw her, remembering that i had a year's worth of things to talk with her, i was both worried and calmed at the same time.
so joanna came and i saw jema too, i hopped on. in the taxi, i was surprised that i could talk freely with them, catching up with them a little, and sharing a few laughs.. my fears were unfounded. then we headed for bernice's condo and then she boarded. jema had a little joke about bernice being too big and the rear had no space for her so she had to lie in the boot. harhar, that was some lame joke that unconciously made me feel more awake and comfortable with them.
the ride was a pretty smooth sailing one, without jams or worse, being lost on the way. so we reached there in about 45mins, and the fare was $24.20. bernice smartly bargained with the taxi driver to give us a flexibility of $0.20 and she achieved it. so we had a fare that could be cleanly divided by 4. nice work bernice! when we reached, i thought we were the first cos the place was so quiet, but i was wrong, the bungalow had many footwear outside at the door, so i was preparing myself to be greeted by the follow youths and maybe get a 'long time no see' from them. but no one said that, maybe 1 year to them was a day? lol. although i had no 'long time no see' from them, i'm certain that they had missed me and had welcomed me sweetly with open arms, whoever i went up to gave me a broad smile. :)
anw, when i got in the bungalow, i first greeted emelyn! my best friend for camp! i didn't see lin yan around, so i thought she hadn't reached. and lin yan is also my best friend for camp! haha. anw, emelyn led me to the room she was sleeping in, which was the same old room we had slept in the previous year with rachel tan and joanne. this year, we had a new comer jemima sim, and she roomed with us. my bed was the upper bunk and emelyn's was the lower bunk. jemima had the double bed for herself (at least until part timer joanne claimed the other half) after putting my bag down, i went out and said hey to a few people, namely ben yeo, rachel (goh), nathaniel, kevin, hannah etc. they said hey back and exchanged smiles.
soon it was time to gather for the official opening of the camp. camp master kevin greeted us and welcomed us. we had the introduction of camp personnel and the camp theme song and verse. i was girls' dorm ic, and i had no idea whether my role involved anything other than waking people up, which i sucked cos i woke up later than them... so i immediately told emelyn to take over me, cos she seems better at it from past experiences. the camp theme song was new to me, but it was very nice and i liked it in no time. we had 4 groups. namely epistle, testimony, witness and children of light. mine was children of light (col) and consisted of johanna (jo) and jessie who were our group leaders, jema, jemima, ryan, kevin, tim quek and i.
it was time for ice breakers! joanna led us and we sat in a circle. there after, she explained that the first game was as follows, we had to introduce ourselves, by stating our name with an adjective that more of less described us and started with the same letter as our name. in my mind, i went oh... i've played this before in p5, when miss lam introduced herself as sleepy sarah and i as lovable lisa. so i probably carried a very confident expression, and that is probably why joanna asked me to start. and lol, my mind went blank. i wasn't lovable, besides, that p5 vocabulary... but i hate unwanted silence, especially whenever i was the cause of it. so i blurted out 'i'm lovable lisa' and i was relieved that ppl laughed, cos what i just said was rubbish. lol. after thinking about it, i realised im more of lisa, the leisure lover, in other words, the hedonist. back to the point, i also stated my age and which school i am from and how long i have been a christian. then i threw the ball to emelyn and then the game went on. this game generated laughs at a few points of time, when the ball was thrown to ryan, he deflected it with his camp booklet. LOL, it was so quick and i was surprised that he could respond that fast. also, it was entertaining watching the verbal squabble between the quek brothers. song jia said that she was sociable-not, i guess joanna meant that the adjective was meant to be a positive one, but she didn't define, so we left it at that.
after the first game, we had another game that was miming facts about ourselves. i partnered rachel and i mime that i like seafood and red. actually u could say i will red seafood like crabs and lobsters, but i didn't mean them to be combined cos i really love all kinds of seafood, all but the deplorable cockles! lol. rachel told me that she knew jap (which i alr knew) and that she was considering body building! LOL, i never never knew that fact, it must have evolved during the 1 year of my hiatus from fe, if not i might have known. for the finale of this game, we all had to guess what jo had to say which jessie had no clue on how to decipher. but i managed to guess easily cos i could lip read. lol, hamsters still pretty much are the highlights of jo's life.. her phrase was 'my hamster changed home'. LOL!
the game which followed was an improvision of the game blow wind blow. we had to state i love people who love.. yeah, so when it was my turn, i said i love people who love sports. :) and im glad many people share my sentiments. after the game, the game of ice breakers was to a close.
after the ice breakers, we had lunch. i remember having chicken rice, and it was brought to us by auntie saw huey. thanks auntie! anyway, next up we had SYLO, which was short for sing your lungs out. i found myself very familiar with the robust singing of the ksers. i have always enjoyed singing with them as they nvr lacked enthusaism when it came to singing, furthermore, there were a considerable number of strong singers in our midst, thus in pitch wise, we always met the mark. i was one of the official camp guitarists, so i played the guitar this round.
following that, we had our first message on guarding out heart by uncle joseph liow. i learnt that our heart is what God sees as most important, thus, we must do our utmost to keep it from evil and sin. also, that we could do so by relying on God to help us and centering God's word in our hearts. during discussion later on, i shared about pranking diane, haha, i still feel bad about the incident that also broke our clique up!
when discussion was over, it w as time for 'chapalang' game time! haha, i had no idea what on earth was chapalang, maybe it's the brother of hampalang... anyway, i asked emelyn at the start of camp when i was still flipping through the booklet and she said that i would noe later, of course i would if not how would i play her game? anyway, the game was sort of a team bonding game that required us to be able to spray out our team members' names in seconds, at the same time, be quick in passing balls from under our legs to above our heads. wow, it rhymes. haha. so the game is as follows (i hope i will be able to explain it better than emelyn as it is quite complicated at first). basically, there are 2 balls for 4 groups. so 2 groups will have a ball each while the other two have none. when the game starts the groups that have the ball will throw the ball as far as possible while the other group chases after it, the members have to stand in a circle and one person in the middle will shoot his/her tongue off with all the names of the group members, the more rounds gone, the better. once the other group chasing after the ball has gotten it, they have to pass the ball under their legs and above their heads and then shout stop, that is to stop the other group from saying the names, and then they will throw the ball some where else and then start reciting their group memebers' names, and the game follows in that cycle. okay, it that clear enough? eh i hope so, but i think emelyn did a better job cos we eventually played the game in the proper, while i think mine would make people never start the game. okay, im confusing myself now... :/ anyway, my team's alpha male kevin joined the another group for this game as we had uneven numbers, and my group was very reluctant of this, but later i learnt that he was more of a hindrance than help, lol, his excuse: i purposely made it so, so that our group could win.. um, okay kevin...
after chapalang, we had the game traffic jam, my group teamed with epistle and guess what, we solved the seemingly impossible to solve puzzle. anyway, we accomplished that after trying out many times, but it was sure better than the other group which never succeeded. it was thanks to the focus we had that enabled us to solve the problem. :) well done col and epistle! :) anyway, it was during this game that the penang brothers came, that's why there were a lot of distractions with nicholas and all. it's the forth time jonathan and timothy have joined us. :) im very happy for that. haha. hope that this will continue to years to come.
the next game played was depicting an object. i dunno whats the name for this game, but it involved a group forming a particular object given by emelyn. the first was toilet bowl if im not wrong. lol, so i rmb i was the toilet bowl seat with jess, we linked arms and squat down. then beside us was johanna, the flushing component, jema was the toilet paper holder and jemima was the toilet paper as she was wearing white then. kevin was the toilet user and ryan was amusingly the 'poop', so he hid behind johanna till kevin 'did his business' and then he would come from behind to appear and when kevin flushed the toilet, he would once again disappear. lol! it was really funny! the second object was a car. i was the car front door plus front wheel, jo was the other front wheel and kevin and ryan was the rear wheels. jema was the driver, jess was the flashlight (lol, she used her camera which unfortunately didn't coorperate during the real thing itself and led to a blooper) jemima was mutli-purpose steering wheel and wiper. whee, it was really funneh! that's was all i think for the games. great job done emelyn!!! :D
after that, we played captains ball. :) i must say that captains ball took over as one of my 'fun' during the camp as the table tennis table was removed (much to my despair) another things i like about ks was captains ball, cos we truly displayed team work and sportsmanship during captains ball. furthermore, we had many strong players, thus the game was always enetertaining and fast paced. i rmb being more or less active during this game cos i wanted to sweat it out. :) i LOVED sports rmb? :)
dinner came at 6.30, uncle wee beng was the provider. thanks uncle! :) i forgot what we ate. hmm... :( bad memory. anyway, i recall having bad appetite throughout camp for some unknown reason, so food was definitely not the best thing at camp. :( also i had some stomach pains, i guess was because of the water cooler water cos whenever i drank it, it sent some painful sensation through my stomach. after dinner, ben, lin yan, jonathan mohan (whom i shall 'mohan' as he seems very mohanish to me... ps, i called him that way at camp, lol, and he wasn't too happy, so make sure this doesn't reach his ears!) and i played cards (to be specific, taiti)! this is another 'fun' of mine at camp. :) also, it was dinner time when my group lost a memeber, tim quek, he wasn't feeling very well and had to leave. :( but he was back on the third day! fast recovery tim!
soon it was time to gather for SYLO, joanna played guitar as i was unfamiliar with most tunes and then we had message 2 on christian liberty. :) when our speaker uncle gim theng entered, ben quek asked where's marcus? haha, i was upset that he didn't come, didn't he want to meet up with his friends from childhood?! haha. when i met him later on fri, he said that he had wanted to go, but lazy, lol, is that his only excuse, and he said that he should have gone. yes, marcus, u should have gone cos u didn't know how much u missed :) lol. also, some interesting coincidence here, jemima was marcus' schoolmate and classmate, what a small world. :)
when uncle gim theng shared about christian liberty, i think what struck me most was that i had been doing too many things on sunday that wasn't really pleasing to God. i was made further guilty during tabi's workshop the following day. however, i still do not think that eating out on sunday is a crime, cos like what bak wei said, the non-believers are a 'tool' for us... umm. i think i've made it sound very cruel, but it wa s something along that line, that as long as we do not stumble fellow christians, instead, 'make use' of non-christians who find no wrong in working on the Lord's day, and maybe buy food from them or take a bus ride on sunday. hmmm, is the reasoning of mine sound reasoning enough? after that we had group discussion where we delved deeper into the examples of things we do in daily lives and whether they defile christian liberty. i learnt that worldly music is really bad, and so is christian pop, which is just world pop in disguise, so i shall try not to ever listen to them again. I'LL TRY and hope i succeed! :)
anyway, on a side-note, (this is for da jie) while i was writing notes, i kept writing christine liberty instead of christian liberty! lol, maybe i missed u so much that i wanted u to be liberated from america and come back to singapore. harhar. u will be soon! 16 dec! :D
after discussion, we had group bonding time. it was really funneh! thanks to jo and jess the organisers. at first, we were to play as a group, but then we saw the other groups loitering around, not having anything solid to do, so in the end, we included them in our games and it became more of camp bonding time, only epistle did not join us. the first game we played was lao ying zhuo xiao ji, but this time, the organizers steered the objectives to remind us about guarding our heart against evil. so the mother hen became the protector, the eagle became the evil and the chicks were the pink hearts, that looked too palatble to the evil one. :) after a few rounds, we gathered around in a circle to play a very interesting game. it was the plastic bag game. the game went as follows, while jess tossed the plastic bag up, everyone in the circle had to laugh, be it fake or real, but the catch was once the plastic bag touched the floor, all laughter had to cease. the game seemed so simple, but once u played, it was wasn't at all! i was sitting beside bernice and boy! she burst out laughing when the bag touched the floor, so much so that i joined in, cos... laughter is CONTAGIOUS! and i got caught for that. :(((( but good thing they did not make me perform forfeit as i hate it. :) likewise, we played a few rounds. and boy, it was good to play. there was a time when jessie kept hitting the plastic bag up and then we had to laugh non stop, it was then when our fake laughter turned real. LOL! it was very very very very very funny! after this game, we played hide and seek, although emelyn and i had been the champions last year, this year, i could not repeat it as i didn't have even enough time to hide! so i became a seeker almost immediately after the game started. hmph!
with that, camp bonding was brough to a close, i went to shower, played a few rounds of bridge and taiti with ben, lin yan, mohan, and jonathan tan. :) it was fun! and i also talked a little with emelyn about the little nyonya and being excited about the morning exercise the next morning. :)
day 2 - wed 3 dec 2008. 'why do zebras cover their eyes when they see women? cos they see bras!'
what's up there is what u have to read out to appreciate. so do u get it? haha... it was a joke coined by jessie, or maybe she had seen it else where, anyway, jo and i laughed like mad when we heard this, maybe we were too high then. lol. we were on our way back from 'i spy with my little eye' :) read out to find out!
as i had told u, emelyn was the one waking me up! haha. anyway, i had a very bad night sleep. the air con was way too cold and the blanket was way too thin, so i was awake most of the time, if i ever slept, it would be defined as a fleeting sleep. but i thank God, cos i didnt not fall terribly sick with flu the following day, which is pretty unnatural for my nose under such circumstances. and also, i learnt that emelyn did not sleep very well too. :( anyway, i was still more or less refreshed for the day.
morning exercise! i was looking forward to it! ben quek was suppose to lead in it but he was absent for too long, so jo took the initiative to lead! and boy, she did a fantastic job! at first, we played lao ying zhuo xiao ji again. it was not bad lah, but later on, we played what i would call the highlights, the one that really made me run and get out of my slumber, was the chain catching! i starting with lin yan and we caught many people, some of whom we are proud of like bak wei, kevin etc. haha, cos i noe they are the mean runners that hardly get caught!
by the end of morning exercise, i suffered from a teeny wound on my right big toe. haha, it's itching right now when im typing. haha. thank you joanna for attending to my insignificant wound. haha.
breakfast, i ate mainly cereals,milo balls, and milk. after eating, the card club went to play taiti and bridge again. lol, ben, lin yan n i could be the official card games club for the camp. lol. next was SYLO, sharleen played the guitar. then message 3 followed. it was by pastor berends, some canadian pastor, i must say that i didn't really appreciate his message. :( (anyway, i noe im not suppose to look on the outward, but i couldn't help thinking when he stepped in, that he looked like a goose, cos his neck is so long and his head shape so oblong too.) also, there were times when i didn't really understand what he was speaking about. his message was on prayer. but i did take some things back, like being reverent in prayer and trying not be distracted or doze off while sleeping and always, what ever we need, we have to constantly ask, knowing the He is able to provide.
after discussion, we had lunch, provided by some kind parent whom i forgot. haiz, i should quit trying to remembering who brought food cos it will only expose the weakness of my memory. :( lunch was followed by the briefing for 'i spy with my little eye'. this was an activity that involved us going out to take pics of the required things on the list. i shall name a few queer ones, like taking a pic of a flower with 12 petals and an item that has a price tag of $1.97 and taking a pic of a pair of identical twins, witnessing to someone etc... my group went to causeway point in woodlands to complete our task. there, we saw many ang mohs and we started taking pics with them cos we needed to have pics with foreigners from 5 different countries. and let me share with u the ingenious things my group did! to get a pair of twins, we went to minitoons and got a pair of dwarves, supposedly from snow white and the 7 dwarves. one looked sleepy and one looked happy, but nevertherless, they looked alike. also, when we witnessed to someone on the mrt, we gave tracks, so the person had no choice but to listen to our witnessing, we manually photoshopped bananas so that a bunch would have 11 by combining one bunch that had 4 with another that had a comb of 7. smart eh! we did other crazy things, like taking a pic of a car park and then conveniently claiming that there was a toyota car in there that had a christian bumper sticker. lol, obviously we failed for that.
on the way back, while on the mrt, jess made me do some stupid poses with jema, lol... i made a fool of myself there. later on the bus, jess, jo, jema and i got a little crazy about jess' little teeth. and then while walking back to the camp site, jo jess and i created animal jokes, laughing our way in. haha.
after all the groups came back, we viewed the pics. had a few laughs when the quek brothers presented. haha, many of the twins became soft toys and the was one flower that pitifully its petals plucked out so that it had 12 petals. how incorrigible could that person be who came up with that idea, first of all, it was cheating and it was also harming a poor flower that did no halm to deserve such treatment. :( anyway, when it came to my group, i feel that we had to most no. of things taken, all but the name key chain. haha, although we did cheat a little by changing one of the price tags from $1.99 to $1.97 just by covering the last 9 with a downturn 'j' created by our fingers. lol. when it came to the mrt pics, everyone was burst into a guffaw, the only one who didn't laugh was me. lol, so embarrassing, but i did allow myself a smile. :)
after the whole presentation, we play more captains ball. :) i pretty active this time too. :) after that, dinner, and of course playing card with the card club and then SYLO. i guess i took turns with sharleen to play guitar. then we had a workshop by tabi on keeping the sabbath holy. she covered many many things that pricked my conscience and made me resolute to change. i shall just put down what i think are the important points: i should keep the sabbath holy by question whether what i do is helpful to the service of God, and what is my intent of doing that thing, is it to glorify God or grieve Him? and that i should keep the sabbath holy with joy in my heart. lol, i rmb just failing to do that yesterdya when i went tracking with ks youths. when in bak wei's car, tabi asked why nat and i suddenly wanted to go tracking with them. and then i quite spitefully said cos of u lah! (refering to her workshop about doing things for God only on the sabbath day), lol, then i was reminded that i should do it happily. lol!
anyway, if u are wondering what on earth i was doing by tracking. i shall explain here, please forvive me for side-tracking. nat n i had to go fe yesterday cos we had to design the bottles for ck camp and needed tabi's help. so we met up with many friends of old, actually, not that old, only one year of separation and then we got cracking. by the time we finished, we had time to join the kser for tracking. nat n i hopped onto bak wei's car with 5 others in the rear. they were jo, song jia, qian hui, ben yeo, jema! lol, 7 in the rear and tabi and bak wei in front. LOL! this reminds me of the past ks camp when about 10 ppl from my group the wanderes squeezed into his car! it seemed like so much fun that ee jia wanted to come in too, but ben yeo protested, lol, 'no more space!' heh. during the ride, bak wei made a 3 point turn, much to the discomfort of us at the back. haha.
back to the point. i learnt that i have to keep the sabbath holy, and i will try very hard to. after that, we had night walk. ben quek as usual was the organizer. i think he had been at it for the past 3/4 years! and he is so pro at it! anyway, though this year's was not bad, i felt that last year's was the best. i loved the forest walk! haha! anyway, this year's was more confusing and i half didnt understand what on earth was going on, only the time when we searched for silver coins in the bungalow did i find myself active. i found 2 out of 6!! haha, i claim my credits! but other than that, i think i have learnt more about the different parables during this activity. :)
during free time after thati played cards again and then read my bible and then went to sleep. this time, i fell into a deep sleep. :)
day 3 - thurs 4 dec 2008 'what a shame!'
'what a shame!' it's the second last day of camp!
today was the same, emelyn woke me up with her soft pats. i was half unwilling to give up my snug bed, the temperature last night had been less extreme, so i had a good sleep which made up for my poor sleep the previous night. something i forgot to add in my post on the past day, i actually fulfuilled my role as dorm ic by waking up 2 of the impossible-to-wake-up-ers. they are lin yan and bernice. haha, emelyn and their room mates had no success in waking these 2 sleepy heads, but i had 100% success! maybe it is because i was close to lin yan and thus knew that she will not bear a grudge against me for stirring her from her slumber. so listen up for the 100% success rate method in waking my friend lin yan. i basically grabbed her hands and pulled her up, then she dropped down on her back. then i tickled her on the sides, she squirmed and squirmed, causing much 'turbulence' on the bed. in the end, lin yan woke up within a minute and her partner bernice woke up right after her, without me even touching her, she had woken up due to the 'turbulence'. yeah, so effective huh, in fact it is 200% success rate, cos i woke 2 people up in one go...
jema was in charge of this morning's exercise. she introduced to us the ben quek and ben yeo game! lol, it was probably created by her, cos this game was rather lame, but at the same time, it was funny too. we had 2 lines and they stood face to face with the other line. one line would be ben quek and the other ben yeo, so when jema called ben quek, the line that was ben quek had to turn around and run to its baseline before the ben yeo group catches it. i was in the ben yeo group, and it was pretty funny. my partner on the other side, tryphena could not catch me all the time, but i could catch her easily. haha. there was also another call, that w as bernice. when jema called this, both lines had to run to their baseline and then go on our backs and point our arms and legs toward the sky and wave them. lol. it was kinda stupid. after that, we played the island game. very enjoyable cos i could run. :)
for breakfast, i ate the same stuff and then played the same card games after that. SYLO followed after that and the final message for the camp. it was presented to us by uncle kam loon on the topic of being the salt of the earth and the light of the world. i learnt that as christians, we have to be different from the world, being a salt of the earth in my perspective is like bring souls to Christ, a more pro-active measure, and adding the gospel to others' lives, thus like adding salt to a bowl of soup to make it different. as a light of the world, we have to be a shinning example for people who are lost in their lives, and guiding them to learn about salvation in Christ. haiz, i think it is something like that.
during discussion, my group went one round to share of what we are thankful to God for and what are our prayer requests. i said that i was very thankful that ks is still treats me so well, as if we have never been separated. i also said that i felt very welcomed and the fellowship was very warm. then jema adding, 'yeah, especially in this warm room.' haha, the warm room we are refering to here is the discussion venue my group had. for almost all the time, it had no air con on cos the remote control was lost. so it was always stuffing hot - this was why i was blur and unspontaneous during discussion, cos i couldn't really concentrate. and yes, we often referred to our room as the 'sauna'! haha. and i also prayed that i would be more consistent in my walk in faith. after the prayer, my group discussed on what props we wanted for the other groups to use for the upcoming skit performance.
next up was lunch. half way through, it started to drizzle, then it become heavier and started to pour. the schedule had water games following lunch, but seeing the condition of the weather, we had to push it back till the weather was more friendly. meanwhile, we prepared our song and skit. since group testimony was using the sauna, my group was exiled to the kitchen. haha, no lah, we were willingly 'exiled' and gave in to testimony. in the kitchen, it was rather hot too cos the windows were shut and there was no fan or air con. but fortunately, our ideas managed to flow coherently and we ended up with very good compositions of songs. after the songs, we planned our skit.
after rehearsing our skit for a few times, the rain was much lighter, so we decided to commence on the water games. the water games were organized by sharleen and hannah (i think). the first game was the toilet paper game. two groups out of the four were combined to make 2 big groups. col was with testimony once again. we had to wrap someone in our group with toilet paper and then later, we would have 3 attackers and the rest were defenders. johanna kindly voluteered for my group and rachel was the other. after wrapping them, we started on the game, the attackers had to try to toatlly drench the toilet paper mummy. ryan, ben yeo and lin yan were the attackers. the rest of us tried to surround jo to shield her from the water. the final result was close, but i think my group did better cos much of the toilet paper still clung on jo while rachel looked 'feather-less'. anw, here are some pics to relief your eyes of words and of course, to add colour to my blog! :)
day 4 and final day - fri 5 dec 2008
heh, this is our group photo (with testimony). :)
from left: camp master kevin, me, amanda (partly blocked by me), emelyn, jessie, jo, jemima, ben quek, lin yan, ben yeo, ryan (partly blocked) and jema.
we all look so hairpee!
big bully nat(haniel)! many many on lookers not doing anything! lol, im one of them!
after the toilet paper game, we had dog and bone, but slightly different. instead, it was more of dip and splash! we had to get water using our cup and within certain boundaries, splash our opponent.
after dip and splash, we played captains ball! this time, all of us were soaked to the skin, and the ground was pretty wet too. i took of my slippers to play, but didn't play as active as before cos i was afraid of wounding myself if i ever slipped and fell.
after captain's ball, we had pizza dinner! it was something different and i guess i liked it. and yes same story, the card club played more games. subsequently, we had SYLO and timo's exhortation. then we had the group presentations of songs and skit! the songs to me weren't every interesting, but i shall share with you what my group did for pride's sake! haha. we had in total 5 songs, 4 which included the memory verses and the last one to round up. the sang to many tunes like the colours of the winds, the lonely goatherd, heigh ho, a whole new world and where i belong! wow, what a diverse range songs! it was so hilarious that i couldn't sing properly! but i must say that it was a very very good job done col! cos although bak wei marked us down for worldly music, but i bet ours was most enjoyed by the audience.
after th song presentation, it was time for skit! the first skit was by testimony. it w as not bad lah, having the shield of faith and all. the next group was witness. lol, jonathan mohan was so comical as the ever holy deacon! haha! and his expression during the offering part was priceless! the following group was epistle! i love the 'remember ah maaaaaaaaaa' part! oh man, i laughed my guts out! furthermore, when it was nathaniel who said it, it was just perfect. and joanna as the ah ma on her death bed. i love it she would quote proverbs 4:23 - 'keep your heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life' and at the word life, her hand would drop and she dies! lol, they are putting irony to place here! also jia song-ah in her defensive tone purring mam, mam.. lol. also the part when ah gong-ah aka jonathan tan and his walking chair! LOL! and his toilet paper beard. hehe. i still can't stop laughing when i recall the part while 'remebering ah maaaaaa', ah gong-ah faints and ah maaa wakes up from her death! lol!!!! it was so crazily facetious!
but last but not least! col's presentation which won the the skit component! was snowlight and the 7 dwarves, a la snow white and the seven dwarves! we had seven dwarves, they are as follows - sleepy (jo), busy (jemima), shameful (me), grumpy (kevin), happy (jessie), shy (jema) and potty (the potted plant prop)! ryan was snow light and tim quek was the narrator. the wicked witch was part of audience participation, and someone who had an evil laugh could do it. and it was obvious who was going to render his service... it was nathaniel! boy! it was so funny, he had to trick snowlight into eating the poisoned rocky road chocolate. so snowlight was to eat it and be poisoned into an unnatural sleep and then lie on the mattress (another prop) the dwarves would come back from work, once again singing the heigh ho song. then they would realized that snowlight is in a sleep and is unable to be woken up. so they start praying and in the end, snow light woke up. it was kind of a typically story, but it was very funny, at least to the audience. and i will never forget how freaking nervous i was. hehheh, even jemima had to prompt me to deliver my lines to her... anyway, if u are wondering whats the line 'what a shame' up there, it was actually my main line in the skit, cos i wa s shameful.. yeah..
towards the end of the special night activity, we played a game by which my had to cut out words relating to guarding out heart from the newspaper. other groups did crossword puzzles etc on other topics. after the game, gifts of appreciation were given out to respective camp personnels and then we viewed the much anticipated camp photos, there were much laughter whenever an unglam of someone popped out. with that, the speical night activities was brought to an end.
for the rest of the night, i mainly played cards, not only with my card club, but with others too. and past midnight, we sang ben yeo his birthday song! happy 14th ben! :)
lights out was at 1.30, but emelyn and i chatted till about 2. :) we had so much to talk! :( but then sharleen came in to remind us to sleep.. oh well, i really miss emelyn now. and furthermore our common interests, like the little nyonya etc make me so excited when im with her! :)
day 4 and final day - fri 5 dec 2008
same story about waking up. :) ps, i woke lin yan again! :) but this time, we had no morning exercise. :( we had camp debrief and clean up. i was very very sad. :( i would not be really seeing the ksers till next year. but maybe i will go for some of the ks meetings! before we left, we took a few camp shots. here they are!
camp shot! formal take. i love everyone there!
lol... fun shot!
yep, so that brought camp to a close. majority of the campers went for lunch at lot 1 and i joined them. there, dad picked me up to go marcus' house. there i played even more. lol. i play badminton, ping pong, soccer and captains ball. it was very fun but very draining too, considering that i had slept for only about 5hs that night. hehe. but thanks marcus for opening ur house! it was fun.
okay, thus far are the proceedings of the few days at ks camp! :)
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
China trip (part 2)!
hey! here’s part 2! anw, about the link moat part in the prev part was actually cancelled at the last minute, no wonder I had no recollection of it! haha, good thing, if not i will be very sad that memory escaped me.
28 OCT Tuesday
woke up slightly later cos we were allowed to. today was different as there was no assembly and thus the shaoxing teachers gave us some leeway. they hold their assembly only on mon every week. no wonder the students are so robust during assembly cos it is only once a week and they give it their all then and then can slack for the rest of the days. haha.
we attended maths, science and music (again) lessons. for maths, it was pretty exciting as the students were given the opportunity to qiang da. and the questions were simple algebraic problems that were no match for me. haha. but I wondering whether the teacher had purposely downgraded the questions so as to not scare us. should be lah, cos shaoxing school had maths as one of the pet subjects, surely their maths standard wasn’t easy peasy.
next up was science. we were having class with students that were of lower standard. in singapore terms, maybe sec 2 or even sec1! maybe the underestimated singapore student’s ability in science. haiz, they think we stupid or what huh! we had to do some science experiment dealing with onion skin. yes the epidermis cells. this is what we did in sec one and they thought we never did… lol, good thing the teacher gave her presentation and instructions in Chinese, if not I might have dozed off. anw, I pity those pure bio students in our midst, they must have been so bored, but I guess they could show off their prowess in this simple activity.
this lesson was kind of horrid for me cos I was sitting beside some idiotic snobbish china student. (we had to pair up with one and sit in rows of four, like our science lab.) and I had to carry out the experiment with her and another pl-china student pair. I forgot who was in the other pair. anw, this snob of a china girl, spoke to me as though I was some stupid person, she enunciated every syllable of her speech and talked as if I was some dumb deaf idiot. anyway, maybe she saw my hearing aids, but who cares! I think im smarter than her lor… she asked me in super slow manner what is my name. I said hui xin and then I ask her hers and she said yu kuai (as in happiness in chinese). I think she was out to make fun of me cos I think I saw something else on her namecard. so be it, yu kuai the madwoman! then she asked me a few more questions, I answered painstakingly and some of her stupid china friends laughed… okay… whatever, sam ang and charissa in front of me told me to ignore her cos she was ‘making fun’ of me.. what the heck and then we started conversing in english, making sure that we spoke super fast so that those brainless china idiots couldn’t understand. after that, that snob went a little quiet for a while.
soon it was time to do the experiment. I discovered that my partner quite sucked at the experiment so I took the reigns. and she had no choice but to praise me for being so good at it. I was saying to myself, ‘of course, snobs don’t do well in life, AND Singaporean students are not to be look down at! what’s more, we are better than u china dorky simpletons and have better character even though we are so much more superior than u!’ I was so pissed. when the lesson was over, I was so happy… that stupid girl! I just had to remind myself that china has the good, the bad and ugly, I had just witnessed the bad and a little of the ugly (cos the girl wasn’t pretty at all!) I just have to be optimistic about the good!
after that, we had music. it was more of rhythm class as we played with drums and clapped rhythms. I saw that snob again and shunned her. yeah, so this class was quite easy for me as I knew music and knew how to read the different durations of the towgay (musical notes).
in the afternoon, we went to the lu xun memorial hall. we basically toured lu xun residence. it was kinda interesting yet frustrating at the same time. it was interesting cos I was smelling lu xun air and was viewing all his possessions. the kitchen, I remember, was really antique and had all the cool equipment. haha. but the tour was a little irritating as there were hordes of tourist there, but the worse were the locals, the shoved and pushed and always formed a human wall in front of us so that we poor pl girls couldn’t really catch a glimpse of the view. but keeping in mind about the good, the bad and the ugly, I reminded myself that the people there were mainly old folks, so I hope that this bad manners of theirs has been washed away in the next generation.
after lu xun, we went back to school to for the happy hour programme. basically it is like our cca kind of activities. we had a ‘gallery walk’ around the art room. we witnessed the art students in action. wow, I was mesmerized by the talent of the students, they were especially good at sketching irregular objects. their work was just in pencil shades, yet they reflected every detail and shadow. I wondered how long did they take to complete a piece of work, I guess it took them a few sessions to do so, wow, their effort is really remarkable.
we ended the gallery walk and proceeded to the calligraphy class. there awaited us students and we had to a take a place between 2 china students and then they will teach us calligraphy. since I had some experience last year during the enrichment classes, I was quite confident writing my name. though I managed to write decent looking characters, the problem was, the strokes were not deep enough and not well defined enough. so when the china friends taught me the thick stroke kind of calligraphy, I stumbled and never could do a good piece of work. and im glad that I had a pair of friendly and helpful teachers. they were more patient and had much better character than that snob earlier that day.
the calligraphy class ended and the teacher gave us each a breathtaking piece of calligraphy work done by the students themselves. it was a prize! we said goodbye, after which we assembled at the conference room where the parents of our buddies would could come to pick us up to our buddy’s home. I was darn nervous!!!!!!! argh, I still can rmb the feeling, my heart wanted to scream so bad! I was so scared of the homestay and so scared of how things would turn out at my buddy’s house. a few parents came and went, until there were about half of the no. of pl left, my buddy’s mom came. clad in black from top down she looked exactly like some high class tai tai/businesswomen, but she at the same time, she looked sooooooooooo freaking scary, u could pass her as a mafia’s woman. boy, I wanted to pee in my pants. why did my buddy’s mom look so different from her. lol.
anyway, my buddy said that she was cycling home and that meant I would sit in the car alone with her mom. I told myself, tahan 2 nights and then I will be liberated!!! of course, I had to be polite, so I introduced myself to mrs xu (xu is yi jia’s surname, so I shall call her mom mrs xu here, cos she’s to scary looking to be called mamma xu) and then she told me that she knew alr. anq, I could feel that she was trying to accommodate me well and be caring for me. and her car was as black jeep! why I was seeing everything black? is it some foreboding? and her jeep was super high, so high that my unstretchable jeans combined with my short legs made it hard to mount her jeep. the platform I could say was at my waist. so frigging high that I quite embarrassed myself by taking a little bit of time just to get up. in the car, we talked, but a little only. mrs xu asked me what I liked to eat and asked how many siblings I had. I said 2 older sisters and then she said, ‘oh. yi jia is the only child!’ I so much wanted to be smartly spontaneous and to inject a little of humour to break the ice by saying, ‘yeah, the one child policy, nvm! I can become yi jia’s sister these days.’ of course, nvr managed to put them in chinese words. n the last thing I wanted was to embarrass myself in front of this seemingly haughty woman, so I just smiled and said yes yes….. btw, the traffic conditions were terrifying. thank goodness mrs xu’s car was big, so many cars gave way to us. there even was a point of time when mrs xu’s jeep was the lone vehicle against the flow of traffic and was in the middle of 2 streams of the other cars going in opposite directions on both sides! it was an ugly sight, and not to mention, frightening too!
when we reached the house (it was like an apartment building, or large condo in sinagpore terms), I had to come down from the jeep so that mrs xu could park her car. when I was going down, my shoe got stuck in the underneath of the stupid seat. I so embarrassed myself! mrs xu was understanding and she said slowly slowy, and smiled. while mrs xu parked in her garage, yi jia came bounding back on her bic. when I entered the house, I realized that my buddy was somewhat wealthy. they had a homemaker, a mini gym, a juccuzi bath, a study room for her dad which had a piano, an attic that was dedicated to her dog (my buddy loves dogs and has a dog, but it was residing somewhere else, maybe she has another house!) and my buddy had 2 rooms conjoined together for her use. she gave a choice of which room I preferred. I choose the room which had red bed sheet and a red blanket on the bed. the other room had blue. i choose this way cos there wasn’t much of a difference between the 2 rooms and picked the one that looked more appealing to me. haha, I like red!
it was time for dinner. the dinner wasn’t great… was a little too salty. the homemaker was some old ah ma probably wanting to earn some money during her retirement years. I was much more comfortable with her as she smiled all the time, whereas mrs xu frequently stiff smile reminded me of some cold and ruthless mafia woman. lol, I dunno why I felt that way, maybe I had built a barrier against her since I first saw her. I was scared of her. but I really could feel her effort in trying to make me feel welcomed.
after dinner, mrs xu and yi jia planned to bring me around the lu xun place (which was just a stone’s throw from their house) but since I had visited it in the afternoon, we decided to take a walk about the periphery,
before going out, yi jia and I used the com for a while. there, I realized that she knew vitas and loved his shrill and falsetto voice! I loved that of him too! so we discovered a few od our common interests. I let her listen to coldplay’s viva la vida and she was quite surprised I liked this kind of songs, she had probably never heard them before.
yi jia and I talking about ourselves. i learnt that she liked music and loved dramas too. then she asked about me, about my family, hobbies and likes. there, she got so interested in me cos I had musical background and was quite ‘cool’ cos I was like an ‘all rounder’, knowing sports and music and loving maths and sciences. I told her that I knew how to play the piano, guitar, recorder and handbell (I doubt she had a clue what it was) to impress her, cos I wanted to make her hold me in some admiration to make up for my poor Chinese. n I succeeded, she was very interested in me after that and asked what grade I was in for piano, I said 8, and then she got all excited and insisted that I perform for her on piano when we got back. actually, she wanted to go back just then, so that she could hear me perform asap. lol, she was so eager. she told me that she had learnt piano when she was young but only for 1 month cos she was too busy and had not time given that she had to be in school till 5.
back at home, I played for her some of my exam pieces and then I played cannon in d. she was so happy and made me perform for her mom. haha, I made a few mistakes here and there cos I was so nervous performing before mrs xu. after that, I suggested dropping by at melodi’s buddy’s home. yi jia said it was a good idea and she said she would check if they were home. I thought she might phone them, instead, she went to her kitchen and shouted over. she reported that there was no reply, but we could try.
so along with mrs xu, yi jia and I went to melodi’s buddy’s (I forgot to ask her name) house which was just one block away. when we were at the door, it was opened and there was commotion inside. I thought whoa, maybe melodi’s buddy’s is so hospitable that she even invited her extended family to welcome melodi. instead, a shocker was in stall for us! after melodi’s buddy’s mother gave us ‘mittens’ to wea over our shoes to save us the trouble of taking them off. I realized to my horror that the teachers were visiting melodi’s buddy’s home! the teachers were both from pl and shaoxing combined, and the camera man was there too!!! I saw melodi and she looked a little traumatized by the attention. lol, she looked so cute, sitting beside mrs lee on the sofa while the teachers were bombarding her on how she was etc. lol! when I entered the house, I greeted the teachers and then fled to melodi for ‘solace’. lol, I nvr knew I was inviting myself into this situation by coming to the house. melodi and I conversed like long lost friends, thankful that we finally had someone to speak english to. melodi showed me her room and it was pretty much like mine, the same conjoined room story. lol, we were so excited being together and likewise, my buddy was with melodi’s buddy, chit chatting away. lol, and we hid from the limelight till the teachers commanded us out to eat fruit. I ate I grape and then poor melodi was presented something bigger although she was very full. it was something like an apple and she could not bite it even after a few attempts, thanks to her braces that forbade her open her mouth too widely. lol, it was a sight seeing her desperately trying to bite to no avail. after that, we had a group photo with the teachers on the sofa. the 2 pairs of buddies stood on the sofa, I rmb being a little conscious of the fact that I was still wearing my shoes, but realized that I was wearing mittens. lol.
after that, the buddies suggested going over to yi jia’s house to play for a while. yi jia’s mom said okay, for an hour. yay! I was so excited and so was melodi. haha
at yi jia’s house, I played more piano for melodi and her buddy. my buddy was so excited to show off her talented buddy. I asked melodi whether she knew how to play the piano, she was a little embarrass and said no. she lamented that she did not have any talents besides maths and was very flustered whenever her buddy’s family asked her cos she knew that shaoxing was famous for music and the arts. haha, I had to console her a little. she added that it was an irony that her name’s melodi. and we laughed. btw, melodi’s taking the exact same combi as me and is going to 3A2! except for the higher Chinese part, she’s quite similar to me! and I realized that with melodi, I was more natural in conversing in Chinese with my buddy and melodi’s buddy. after that, we went to the attic where there was rusty metal swing which was actually for her dog but melodi and I sat on it. lol. I was having so much fun joking around with everyone.
later when everyone was a little tired. melodi and her buddy went home. then I went to shower and had some trouble with it. I couldn’t figure how to turn on the hot water, so I showered in cold water, and when I got out, I was a little chilled, but I survived. mrs xu noticed that I was cold and then she apologized to me for not adjusting the shower. lol, and then she said that she would do it the next day for me. haha. then I read my bible and went to sleep.
whoa! I’ve talked so much on one day! it was a really eventful day that’s why. so this shall be part 2! part three present the rest of the trip. or maybe a day or 2 if my posts are too long.
28 OCT Tuesday
woke up slightly later cos we were allowed to. today was different as there was no assembly and thus the shaoxing teachers gave us some leeway. they hold their assembly only on mon every week. no wonder the students are so robust during assembly cos it is only once a week and they give it their all then and then can slack for the rest of the days. haha.
we attended maths, science and music (again) lessons. for maths, it was pretty exciting as the students were given the opportunity to qiang da. and the questions were simple algebraic problems that were no match for me. haha. but I wondering whether the teacher had purposely downgraded the questions so as to not scare us. should be lah, cos shaoxing school had maths as one of the pet subjects, surely their maths standard wasn’t easy peasy.
next up was science. we were having class with students that were of lower standard. in singapore terms, maybe sec 2 or even sec1! maybe the underestimated singapore student’s ability in science. haiz, they think we stupid or what huh! we had to do some science experiment dealing with onion skin. yes the epidermis cells. this is what we did in sec one and they thought we never did… lol, good thing the teacher gave her presentation and instructions in Chinese, if not I might have dozed off. anw, I pity those pure bio students in our midst, they must have been so bored, but I guess they could show off their prowess in this simple activity.
this lesson was kind of horrid for me cos I was sitting beside some idiotic snobbish china student. (we had to pair up with one and sit in rows of four, like our science lab.) and I had to carry out the experiment with her and another pl-china student pair. I forgot who was in the other pair. anw, this snob of a china girl, spoke to me as though I was some stupid person, she enunciated every syllable of her speech and talked as if I was some dumb deaf idiot. anyway, maybe she saw my hearing aids, but who cares! I think im smarter than her lor… she asked me in super slow manner what is my name. I said hui xin and then I ask her hers and she said yu kuai (as in happiness in chinese). I think she was out to make fun of me cos I think I saw something else on her namecard. so be it, yu kuai the madwoman! then she asked me a few more questions, I answered painstakingly and some of her stupid china friends laughed… okay… whatever, sam ang and charissa in front of me told me to ignore her cos she was ‘making fun’ of me.. what the heck and then we started conversing in english, making sure that we spoke super fast so that those brainless china idiots couldn’t understand. after that, that snob went a little quiet for a while.
soon it was time to do the experiment. I discovered that my partner quite sucked at the experiment so I took the reigns. and she had no choice but to praise me for being so good at it. I was saying to myself, ‘of course, snobs don’t do well in life, AND Singaporean students are not to be look down at! what’s more, we are better than u china dorky simpletons and have better character even though we are so much more superior than u!’ I was so pissed. when the lesson was over, I was so happy… that stupid girl! I just had to remind myself that china has the good, the bad and ugly, I had just witnessed the bad and a little of the ugly (cos the girl wasn’t pretty at all!) I just have to be optimistic about the good!
after that, we had music. it was more of rhythm class as we played with drums and clapped rhythms. I saw that snob again and shunned her. yeah, so this class was quite easy for me as I knew music and knew how to read the different durations of the towgay (musical notes).
in the afternoon, we went to the lu xun memorial hall. we basically toured lu xun residence. it was kinda interesting yet frustrating at the same time. it was interesting cos I was smelling lu xun air and was viewing all his possessions. the kitchen, I remember, was really antique and had all the cool equipment. haha. but the tour was a little irritating as there were hordes of tourist there, but the worse were the locals, the shoved and pushed and always formed a human wall in front of us so that we poor pl girls couldn’t really catch a glimpse of the view. but keeping in mind about the good, the bad and the ugly, I reminded myself that the people there were mainly old folks, so I hope that this bad manners of theirs has been washed away in the next generation.
after lu xun, we went back to school to for the happy hour programme. basically it is like our cca kind of activities. we had a ‘gallery walk’ around the art room. we witnessed the art students in action. wow, I was mesmerized by the talent of the students, they were especially good at sketching irregular objects. their work was just in pencil shades, yet they reflected every detail and shadow. I wondered how long did they take to complete a piece of work, I guess it took them a few sessions to do so, wow, their effort is really remarkable.
we ended the gallery walk and proceeded to the calligraphy class. there awaited us students and we had to a take a place between 2 china students and then they will teach us calligraphy. since I had some experience last year during the enrichment classes, I was quite confident writing my name. though I managed to write decent looking characters, the problem was, the strokes were not deep enough and not well defined enough. so when the china friends taught me the thick stroke kind of calligraphy, I stumbled and never could do a good piece of work. and im glad that I had a pair of friendly and helpful teachers. they were more patient and had much better character than that snob earlier that day.
the calligraphy class ended and the teacher gave us each a breathtaking piece of calligraphy work done by the students themselves. it was a prize! we said goodbye, after which we assembled at the conference room where the parents of our buddies would could come to pick us up to our buddy’s home. I was darn nervous!!!!!!! argh, I still can rmb the feeling, my heart wanted to scream so bad! I was so scared of the homestay and so scared of how things would turn out at my buddy’s house. a few parents came and went, until there were about half of the no. of pl left, my buddy’s mom came. clad in black from top down she looked exactly like some high class tai tai/businesswomen, but she at the same time, she looked sooooooooooo freaking scary, u could pass her as a mafia’s woman. boy, I wanted to pee in my pants. why did my buddy’s mom look so different from her. lol.
anyway, my buddy said that she was cycling home and that meant I would sit in the car alone with her mom. I told myself, tahan 2 nights and then I will be liberated!!! of course, I had to be polite, so I introduced myself to mrs xu (xu is yi jia’s surname, so I shall call her mom mrs xu here, cos she’s to scary looking to be called mamma xu) and then she told me that she knew alr. anq, I could feel that she was trying to accommodate me well and be caring for me. and her car was as black jeep! why I was seeing everything black? is it some foreboding? and her jeep was super high, so high that my unstretchable jeans combined with my short legs made it hard to mount her jeep. the platform I could say was at my waist. so frigging high that I quite embarrassed myself by taking a little bit of time just to get up. in the car, we talked, but a little only. mrs xu asked me what I liked to eat and asked how many siblings I had. I said 2 older sisters and then she said, ‘oh. yi jia is the only child!’ I so much wanted to be smartly spontaneous and to inject a little of humour to break the ice by saying, ‘yeah, the one child policy, nvm! I can become yi jia’s sister these days.’ of course, nvr managed to put them in chinese words. n the last thing I wanted was to embarrass myself in front of this seemingly haughty woman, so I just smiled and said yes yes….. btw, the traffic conditions were terrifying. thank goodness mrs xu’s car was big, so many cars gave way to us. there even was a point of time when mrs xu’s jeep was the lone vehicle against the flow of traffic and was in the middle of 2 streams of the other cars going in opposite directions on both sides! it was an ugly sight, and not to mention, frightening too!
when we reached the house (it was like an apartment building, or large condo in sinagpore terms), I had to come down from the jeep so that mrs xu could park her car. when I was going down, my shoe got stuck in the underneath of the stupid seat. I so embarrassed myself! mrs xu was understanding and she said slowly slowy, and smiled. while mrs xu parked in her garage, yi jia came bounding back on her bic. when I entered the house, I realized that my buddy was somewhat wealthy. they had a homemaker, a mini gym, a juccuzi bath, a study room for her dad which had a piano, an attic that was dedicated to her dog (my buddy loves dogs and has a dog, but it was residing somewhere else, maybe she has another house!) and my buddy had 2 rooms conjoined together for her use. she gave a choice of which room I preferred. I choose the room which had red bed sheet and a red blanket on the bed. the other room had blue. i choose this way cos there wasn’t much of a difference between the 2 rooms and picked the one that looked more appealing to me. haha, I like red!
it was time for dinner. the dinner wasn’t great… was a little too salty. the homemaker was some old ah ma probably wanting to earn some money during her retirement years. I was much more comfortable with her as she smiled all the time, whereas mrs xu frequently stiff smile reminded me of some cold and ruthless mafia woman. lol, I dunno why I felt that way, maybe I had built a barrier against her since I first saw her. I was scared of her. but I really could feel her effort in trying to make me feel welcomed.
after dinner, mrs xu and yi jia planned to bring me around the lu xun place (which was just a stone’s throw from their house) but since I had visited it in the afternoon, we decided to take a walk about the periphery,
before going out, yi jia and I used the com for a while. there, I realized that she knew vitas and loved his shrill and falsetto voice! I loved that of him too! so we discovered a few od our common interests. I let her listen to coldplay’s viva la vida and she was quite surprised I liked this kind of songs, she had probably never heard them before.
yi jia and I talking about ourselves. i learnt that she liked music and loved dramas too. then she asked about me, about my family, hobbies and likes. there, she got so interested in me cos I had musical background and was quite ‘cool’ cos I was like an ‘all rounder’, knowing sports and music and loving maths and sciences. I told her that I knew how to play the piano, guitar, recorder and handbell (I doubt she had a clue what it was) to impress her, cos I wanted to make her hold me in some admiration to make up for my poor Chinese. n I succeeded, she was very interested in me after that and asked what grade I was in for piano, I said 8, and then she got all excited and insisted that I perform for her on piano when we got back. actually, she wanted to go back just then, so that she could hear me perform asap. lol, she was so eager. she told me that she had learnt piano when she was young but only for 1 month cos she was too busy and had not time given that she had to be in school till 5.
back at home, I played for her some of my exam pieces and then I played cannon in d. she was so happy and made me perform for her mom. haha, I made a few mistakes here and there cos I was so nervous performing before mrs xu. after that, I suggested dropping by at melodi’s buddy’s home. yi jia said it was a good idea and she said she would check if they were home. I thought she might phone them, instead, she went to her kitchen and shouted over. she reported that there was no reply, but we could try.
so along with mrs xu, yi jia and I went to melodi’s buddy’s (I forgot to ask her name) house which was just one block away. when we were at the door, it was opened and there was commotion inside. I thought whoa, maybe melodi’s buddy’s is so hospitable that she even invited her extended family to welcome melodi. instead, a shocker was in stall for us! after melodi’s buddy’s mother gave us ‘mittens’ to wea over our shoes to save us the trouble of taking them off. I realized to my horror that the teachers were visiting melodi’s buddy’s home! the teachers were both from pl and shaoxing combined, and the camera man was there too!!! I saw melodi and she looked a little traumatized by the attention. lol, she looked so cute, sitting beside mrs lee on the sofa while the teachers were bombarding her on how she was etc. lol! when I entered the house, I greeted the teachers and then fled to melodi for ‘solace’. lol, I nvr knew I was inviting myself into this situation by coming to the house. melodi and I conversed like long lost friends, thankful that we finally had someone to speak english to. melodi showed me her room and it was pretty much like mine, the same conjoined room story. lol, we were so excited being together and likewise, my buddy was with melodi’s buddy, chit chatting away. lol, and we hid from the limelight till the teachers commanded us out to eat fruit. I ate I grape and then poor melodi was presented something bigger although she was very full. it was something like an apple and she could not bite it even after a few attempts, thanks to her braces that forbade her open her mouth too widely. lol, it was a sight seeing her desperately trying to bite to no avail. after that, we had a group photo with the teachers on the sofa. the 2 pairs of buddies stood on the sofa, I rmb being a little conscious of the fact that I was still wearing my shoes, but realized that I was wearing mittens. lol.
after that, the buddies suggested going over to yi jia’s house to play for a while. yi jia’s mom said okay, for an hour. yay! I was so excited and so was melodi. haha
at yi jia’s house, I played more piano for melodi and her buddy. my buddy was so excited to show off her talented buddy. I asked melodi whether she knew how to play the piano, she was a little embarrass and said no. she lamented that she did not have any talents besides maths and was very flustered whenever her buddy’s family asked her cos she knew that shaoxing was famous for music and the arts. haha, I had to console her a little. she added that it was an irony that her name’s melodi. and we laughed. btw, melodi’s taking the exact same combi as me and is going to 3A2! except for the higher Chinese part, she’s quite similar to me! and I realized that with melodi, I was more natural in conversing in Chinese with my buddy and melodi’s buddy. after that, we went to the attic where there was rusty metal swing which was actually for her dog but melodi and I sat on it. lol. I was having so much fun joking around with everyone.
later when everyone was a little tired. melodi and her buddy went home. then I went to shower and had some trouble with it. I couldn’t figure how to turn on the hot water, so I showered in cold water, and when I got out, I was a little chilled, but I survived. mrs xu noticed that I was cold and then she apologized to me for not adjusting the shower. lol, and then she said that she would do it the next day for me. haha. then I read my bible and went to sleep.
whoa! I’ve talked so much on one day! it was a really eventful day that’s why. so this shall be part 2! part three present the rest of the trip. or maybe a day or 2 if my posts are too long.
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Whoopeedoo!
yay, dad has given me the green light! im going for both ks and ck camp! yipee! i hope that i will be able to make use of ks camp meet up with the people i miss so dearly! n for ck camp, i hope that it will be fun. im a little scared cos im in the comm n i half dont understand what's going on. but the messages from prof hanko makes me very excited!
then later dec, when da jie comes back, my family might go up north with auntie hannah, samuel and uncle steven! yay. but this is all a possibility, not confirmed. haha. :)
okay, i have watched the first episode of the little nyonya. it's not bad lah, but i hope things will get more exciting as the plot deepens! i love this kind of history. jap occupation and all. haha. :)
ps. survivor's getting better n better. i love it! randy's was so pathetic and sugar's getting sweeter. n ken... is learning to be a man! a smart one at that. yay, i love it!
then later dec, when da jie comes back, my family might go up north with auntie hannah, samuel and uncle steven! yay. but this is all a possibility, not confirmed. haha. :)
okay, i have watched the first episode of the little nyonya. it's not bad lah, but i hope things will get more exciting as the plot deepens! i love this kind of history. jap occupation and all. haha. :)
ps. survivor's getting better n better. i love it! randy's was so pathetic and sugar's getting sweeter. n ken... is learning to be a man! a smart one at that. yay, i love it!
Monday, November 24, 2008
Horriday!
holiday.. it's supposed to be free from any work!
i hate work!
i hate studying!
n im a bad steward!
anyway, i think im going to have a few good weeks! ks camp then ck camp! yay, i want to enjoy! i dun wan mrs chong's whatever homejoy.. or miss dong oh so cheem homework! im stressed. btw, it's out of the topic but there's this article that says that ppl who watch tv are generally the unhappy lot. :(((((( i dun care, im going to watch the little nyonya. :) they say it's singapore's parallel of jewel in the palace. it had better do justice for the excitement im in right now. tmr it premiers!
i hate work!
i hate studying!
n im a bad steward!
anyway, i think im going to have a few good weeks! ks camp then ck camp! yay, i want to enjoy! i dun wan mrs chong's whatever homejoy.. or miss dong oh so cheem homework! im stressed. btw, it's out of the topic but there's this article that says that ppl who watch tv are generally the unhappy lot. :(((((( i dun care, im going to watch the little nyonya. :) they say it's singapore's parallel of jewel in the palace. it had better do justice for the excitement im in right now. tmr it premiers!
Sunday, November 23, 2008
Flash back
i just realized that i hadnt talked about a few things. firstly, the clique outing and class party on nov 10. i shall recount this very briskly. secondly, nat and mine 'outing' together. :) and lastly, my 'outing' with nadine and the prof. the prof i refering to is prof hanko, i revered figure in my church.
i met janice at kovan then we met up with sam and elyssa at ps outside auntie annes. went to pasta mania to eat a haiwaian pizza, it was very delicious. aniwae, janice and i were commenting on the self proclaimed number of pasta the restaurant had served, they boasted that they had 8 million plus in all their outlets, we were thinking that they could have just put up any number to please the customers.
subsequently, all of us went to buy tickets for the movie the coffin. harhar, a horror movie, the first one i would be watching! not counting the excerpts miss dong showed us for lit. yup, then since the movie started in 1hs time, we went shopping at carrefour for the dessert stuff for class party. and elyssa wanted to grab her david archuletta cd the time it was released but unfortunately it hadn't arrived. so we went macs, bought drinks to smuggle into the theatre by putting them inconspicuously into our bags. then got our popcorn and then went to the hall. the movie was okay lah. i was a little scared here and there cos horror movies always catch u when u are unsuspecting. though i didnt really enjoy the movie cos i was half the time figuring out what was happening (and i never managed to) but i definitely learnt what's the best thing to do when i watch a horror movie next time (though i doubt i would) i have to always anticipate what's next and the best time to do that is when everything is so quiet and still, that is the favourite time of the director's cos her/she would most likely succeed in frightening u badly if u do not be careful and fall into the trap of suspense. haha, actually i learnt a bit of this in lit, so im was very wary of every suspense in the movie, i guess that made me more prepared for the scary scenes. poor janice and sam (even though she's in the same lit class as me, i guess she's more fragile by nature) were screaming and yelping. janice even went to the extent of hiding behind the popcorn box, haha, then i was wondering why on earth did she pay 6 bucks to watch a still picture in front of her.
after the movie, elyssa finally got her david a cd and sam bought too. then we made our way to to kovan to buy diane's birthday present. n as tradition entailed us to trick her, we did and she ended up with the wrong company. the rest of the day pretty much sucked.
we got lost a little on the way to mrs wong's house cos elyssa rmbed 21b but there wasnt any 21b, instead it was 11b! so we were walking a little aimlessly and even asked a few not-so-eager-to-help passer bys. finally we got to the house after sam called sarah. n there was the start of all troubles. but im glad we've patched up.
last sun, my family and nat's decided to meet up for dinner! we were all sooooooooo bursting with excitement cos it had been years since the last time had dinner together. her family and mine had this tradition since young to meet up at each others' house alternatively for dinner every sun after church. that explains the strong ties i and erjie and dajie have with nat and her siblings (or sisters u can say. :) ) and our moms cooked the bestest food to savour. haha. however, when i was a bout p2 or somewhere thereabout, we discontinued this tradition, probably cos everyone was getting more and more busy and i think nichelle was born so it was hard to have this kind of visitations. :( so last sun was special cos we were meeting up once again, and this time of course with dear nichelle! buy, er jie and i were so excited that we wanted to bring our cam. sadly we only took 1 pic, at the restaurant.
we went to soup restaurant at changi airport. the wongs went first so they had a table ready by the time my family went in. i sat with nat and aunty wan teng (nat's mom). we ordered or rather, uncle chee choong and dad order our dishes. we had chicken meat with lettuce, fish dish and soup etc.... i forgot alr! haha. the food was not bad, but since i came out from china being pampered with all the chinese food, i somehow had expected more food, like the treatment in that i received in china, lots and lots of chinese food, unfortunately, i had to be brought back to earth, chinese food did not equal tonnes of food. :( haha. so i was a little disappointed cos the food wasn't a lot, but i guess i have to change that ridiculous idea of mine.
this the pic! but it's so dark, haiz. :( er jie, nicole (biggest sis), noelene (third sis), nichelle (the baby of the family), nat (the sec sis and of course, my best friend!) and me. im wearing my man u shirt! btw, for extra info, a man probably in his thirties, sitting at a neighbouring table was so captivated by the no. of girls my table held. lol, if only if dajie was around, that would have brought the tally to a perfect 7!
after dinner, while the adults were all praising prof hanko to the skies for his wonderful sermon that morning, all the kids went for our tour around the airport. it started with us going to the toilet. i accompanied nichelle and then nat decided to come along. on the way, nat felt naseaus and complain that we stomach was giving her a little problem. lol, then nichelle and i joked that she was preg. then we walked past a real pregnant lady and compared her with nat, lol, nat was unfortunately too thin to bear any resemblance. cos we were so happy go lucky, we were laughing our way to the toilet. there, the rest of the girls joined us. after each one of us had visited the toilet, we embarked on our self organized tour about the airport. boy! that night was absolute fun! and we bonded very well. i will just share the highlights.
as girls, we are most self concious about our weight, so we weighed ourselves on the luggage wighing scale, both individually and in total (the platform was wide enough to stage all of us). our total mass was 255kg! haha, we were crazy, but we were happy. we didnt care the stares we got from others and maybe the security officer couldnt be bothered by there few good for nothings.. lol. and er jie was a little too unhappy about her weight and kept complaining to us that she's fat... lol. then we explored the enormous lift that transported all the heavy trolleys and baggage. when er jie walked in, i was naughty enough to set the overweight 'alarm', of course, it was my noise but it was real enough to get er jie into a split second of shock. lol! she really thought that the lift despised her weight! everyone dropped in peals of laughter at the trick, er jie laughed too!
after that, we decided that we wanted to explore T3 since T2 was so boring. it would be my 2nd time there after departing for china there. i rmbed the interesting decors the ceiling had. i was excited, cos i had an 'advantage' over the others were entering for the first time. we hopped onto the skytrain and it brought us to T3! we were so away from our parents and they didnt know. at T3, we went to see the new crowne plaza. it was cool and high class, but the lift denied us access to the corridoor of the rooms. the security was strict and only by the presentation of the card was one allowed access to the corridoor and all the facilities. haiz, too high class that we kids could not even go and dream about going up. T3 also did not offer much except for shops. we planned to go budget terminal but instead caught the skytrain to go back to T2.
nic had a craving for ice with waffle and i too. we wanted to be merry and get fat. er jie was tempted too. so we went swensens but never had the cheek to order something cos we had not a penny on us. noelene called her mom to come but the adults, who were at macs, refused to bulge. so in the end, we had to be satified with fires and mac flurry from macs. then the event was brought to a close. oh man, it was so fun! :)
just yesterday, on sat, i went tennis with nadine. thanks to a few good games as mix doubles with isaac and xavier, her passion for tennis is revived! haha, now she can't wait to go back n play. after tennis, nad cam over to my house to help mum bake. we also looked at my pics on the com, had some good laughs. haha. then upon my invitation, she went with my family to the reformation day conference. prof hanko was the speaker and he spoke about the unconditional convenant of God. i hope nad understood a little, cos she said it was cheem. but im glad where prof was a little funny at times and nad did laugh, that meant that she was listening! i hope God will work in her heart so that she can become more sister in Christ. :)
after the rdc, my family and aunty ee fong brought prof out for dinner at pow sing restaurant. aunty ee fong is super funny, and prof too. u noe, prof's so tall that when he was walking to the table, his head could hit the ceiling beam that was so high for asians, good thing he bent a little to avoid it. he even joked a little when he said that his head could ring the bells (the christmas ornates hung at the beam). prof settle between aunty ee fong and dad, i was beside aunty ee fong and er jie beside me. when my dad gave prof the honour of ordeing some dishes, aunty ee fong made him order a few dishes by the pictures presented in the menu cos prof wasn't too familar what was nice. so said he could look at which art appealed to him and when he pointed at them, we would make sure it turned edible! lol! okay, so we had sweet and sour pork, fish, black pepper chicken, lotus root soup and veg. a simple fare but the food was great. anw, throughout the time together last night, prof was super cute and funny. i laughed so much! he's actually much different from his what his usual stern expression during preaching tells u. i once thought that he seldom smiled, what more joke, but he really prove me wrong.
at the end, my family and aunty ee fong had the opportunity to see his room at YMCA. it was more of a super comfy apartment. the room was very very nice and was like a sophiscated 2 room condo. the was even a sheltered swimming pool. btw, a fact to prove how tall he is, his shoe size is 13 to 14! that's twice my feet size! and most of his clothes are tailor made. lol, amazingly tall guy here, probably 2m ++. haha. and if u didnt noe, he's 78 alr, but still as fit as a 50 year old! haha, i really respect prof now!
i met janice at kovan then we met up with sam and elyssa at ps outside auntie annes. went to pasta mania to eat a haiwaian pizza, it was very delicious. aniwae, janice and i were commenting on the self proclaimed number of pasta the restaurant had served, they boasted that they had 8 million plus in all their outlets, we were thinking that they could have just put up any number to please the customers.
subsequently, all of us went to buy tickets for the movie the coffin. harhar, a horror movie, the first one i would be watching! not counting the excerpts miss dong showed us for lit. yup, then since the movie started in 1hs time, we went shopping at carrefour for the dessert stuff for class party. and elyssa wanted to grab her david archuletta cd the time it was released but unfortunately it hadn't arrived. so we went macs, bought drinks to smuggle into the theatre by putting them inconspicuously into our bags. then got our popcorn and then went to the hall. the movie was okay lah. i was a little scared here and there cos horror movies always catch u when u are unsuspecting. though i didnt really enjoy the movie cos i was half the time figuring out what was happening (and i never managed to) but i definitely learnt what's the best thing to do when i watch a horror movie next time (though i doubt i would) i have to always anticipate what's next and the best time to do that is when everything is so quiet and still, that is the favourite time of the director's cos her/she would most likely succeed in frightening u badly if u do not be careful and fall into the trap of suspense. haha, actually i learnt a bit of this in lit, so im was very wary of every suspense in the movie, i guess that made me more prepared for the scary scenes. poor janice and sam (even though she's in the same lit class as me, i guess she's more fragile by nature) were screaming and yelping. janice even went to the extent of hiding behind the popcorn box, haha, then i was wondering why on earth did she pay 6 bucks to watch a still picture in front of her.
after the movie, elyssa finally got her david a cd and sam bought too. then we made our way to to kovan to buy diane's birthday present. n as tradition entailed us to trick her, we did and she ended up with the wrong company. the rest of the day pretty much sucked.
we got lost a little on the way to mrs wong's house cos elyssa rmbed 21b but there wasnt any 21b, instead it was 11b! so we were walking a little aimlessly and even asked a few not-so-eager-to-help passer bys. finally we got to the house after sam called sarah. n there was the start of all troubles. but im glad we've patched up.
last sun, my family and nat's decided to meet up for dinner! we were all sooooooooo bursting with excitement cos it had been years since the last time had dinner together. her family and mine had this tradition since young to meet up at each others' house alternatively for dinner every sun after church. that explains the strong ties i and erjie and dajie have with nat and her siblings (or sisters u can say. :) ) and our moms cooked the bestest food to savour. haha. however, when i was a bout p2 or somewhere thereabout, we discontinued this tradition, probably cos everyone was getting more and more busy and i think nichelle was born so it was hard to have this kind of visitations. :( so last sun was special cos we were meeting up once again, and this time of course with dear nichelle! buy, er jie and i were so excited that we wanted to bring our cam. sadly we only took 1 pic, at the restaurant.
we went to soup restaurant at changi airport. the wongs went first so they had a table ready by the time my family went in. i sat with nat and aunty wan teng (nat's mom). we ordered or rather, uncle chee choong and dad order our dishes. we had chicken meat with lettuce, fish dish and soup etc.... i forgot alr! haha. the food was not bad, but since i came out from china being pampered with all the chinese food, i somehow had expected more food, like the treatment in that i received in china, lots and lots of chinese food, unfortunately, i had to be brought back to earth, chinese food did not equal tonnes of food. :( haha. so i was a little disappointed cos the food wasn't a lot, but i guess i have to change that ridiculous idea of mine.
this the pic! but it's so dark, haiz. :( er jie, nicole (biggest sis), noelene (third sis), nichelle (the baby of the family), nat (the sec sis and of course, my best friend!) and me. im wearing my man u shirt! btw, for extra info, a man probably in his thirties, sitting at a neighbouring table was so captivated by the no. of girls my table held. lol, if only if dajie was around, that would have brought the tally to a perfect 7!
after dinner, while the adults were all praising prof hanko to the skies for his wonderful sermon that morning, all the kids went for our tour around the airport. it started with us going to the toilet. i accompanied nichelle and then nat decided to come along. on the way, nat felt naseaus and complain that we stomach was giving her a little problem. lol, then nichelle and i joked that she was preg. then we walked past a real pregnant lady and compared her with nat, lol, nat was unfortunately too thin to bear any resemblance. cos we were so happy go lucky, we were laughing our way to the toilet. there, the rest of the girls joined us. after each one of us had visited the toilet, we embarked on our self organized tour about the airport. boy! that night was absolute fun! and we bonded very well. i will just share the highlights.
as girls, we are most self concious about our weight, so we weighed ourselves on the luggage wighing scale, both individually and in total (the platform was wide enough to stage all of us). our total mass was 255kg! haha, we were crazy, but we were happy. we didnt care the stares we got from others and maybe the security officer couldnt be bothered by there few good for nothings.. lol. and er jie was a little too unhappy about her weight and kept complaining to us that she's fat... lol. then we explored the enormous lift that transported all the heavy trolleys and baggage. when er jie walked in, i was naughty enough to set the overweight 'alarm', of course, it was my noise but it was real enough to get er jie into a split second of shock. lol! she really thought that the lift despised her weight! everyone dropped in peals of laughter at the trick, er jie laughed too!
after that, we decided that we wanted to explore T3 since T2 was so boring. it would be my 2nd time there after departing for china there. i rmbed the interesting decors the ceiling had. i was excited, cos i had an 'advantage' over the others were entering for the first time. we hopped onto the skytrain and it brought us to T3! we were so away from our parents and they didnt know. at T3, we went to see the new crowne plaza. it was cool and high class, but the lift denied us access to the corridoor of the rooms. the security was strict and only by the presentation of the card was one allowed access to the corridoor and all the facilities. haiz, too high class that we kids could not even go and dream about going up. T3 also did not offer much except for shops. we planned to go budget terminal but instead caught the skytrain to go back to T2.
nic had a craving for ice with waffle and i too. we wanted to be merry and get fat. er jie was tempted too. so we went swensens but never had the cheek to order something cos we had not a penny on us. noelene called her mom to come but the adults, who were at macs, refused to bulge. so in the end, we had to be satified with fires and mac flurry from macs. then the event was brought to a close. oh man, it was so fun! :)
just yesterday, on sat, i went tennis with nadine. thanks to a few good games as mix doubles with isaac and xavier, her passion for tennis is revived! haha, now she can't wait to go back n play. after tennis, nad cam over to my house to help mum bake. we also looked at my pics on the com, had some good laughs. haha. then upon my invitation, she went with my family to the reformation day conference. prof hanko was the speaker and he spoke about the unconditional convenant of God. i hope nad understood a little, cos she said it was cheem. but im glad where prof was a little funny at times and nad did laugh, that meant that she was listening! i hope God will work in her heart so that she can become more sister in Christ. :)
after the rdc, my family and aunty ee fong brought prof out for dinner at pow sing restaurant. aunty ee fong is super funny, and prof too. u noe, prof's so tall that when he was walking to the table, his head could hit the ceiling beam that was so high for asians, good thing he bent a little to avoid it. he even joked a little when he said that his head could ring the bells (the christmas ornates hung at the beam). prof settle between aunty ee fong and dad, i was beside aunty ee fong and er jie beside me. when my dad gave prof the honour of ordeing some dishes, aunty ee fong made him order a few dishes by the pictures presented in the menu cos prof wasn't too familar what was nice. so said he could look at which art appealed to him and when he pointed at them, we would make sure it turned edible! lol! okay, so we had sweet and sour pork, fish, black pepper chicken, lotus root soup and veg. a simple fare but the food was great. anw, throughout the time together last night, prof was super cute and funny. i laughed so much! he's actually much different from his what his usual stern expression during preaching tells u. i once thought that he seldom smiled, what more joke, but he really prove me wrong.
at the end, my family and aunty ee fong had the opportunity to see his room at YMCA. it was more of a super comfy apartment. the room was very very nice and was like a sophiscated 2 room condo. the was even a sheltered swimming pool. btw, a fact to prove how tall he is, his shoe size is 13 to 14! that's twice my feet size! and most of his clothes are tailor made. lol, amazingly tall guy here, probably 2m ++. haha. and if u didnt noe, he's 78 alr, but still as fit as a 50 year old! haha, i really respect prof now!
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