Camp

Got back from camp yesterday. And i doubt my memory will allow me to narrate the entire camp out but I'll try. Keyword is try. Don't expect too much because even I myself don't know how much I can recall.

Day 1

Arrived at church in the morning. I got this irking feeling that I forgot something but I can't remember what. But heck, I can survive even if I forgot to bring a slipper or two. We were tasked with somewhat complex or rather troublesome filling in of cards, ribboning of bags and passport issues. which were....simply troublesome. i don't like the idea of a passpor. because losing it means great headaches and because of that that means great responsibility is needed to look after the passport. Even though chances of losing it are slim if we take care of it, but...you never know what will happen. that's the scary part. I don't want to stay in Msia forever wor

We took a bus. Obvious because it was the most feasible means of transport. I was onboard Bus 3. As for the singapore part of the journey, the ride was normal, ordinary. but as for the msia part, we were introduced to roads of endless hums and bumps which are......annoying. Okay im exaggerating. I brought my DS and the only time spent playin DS was on the bus, and teng jin was playing it. Super mario!! lol. it was entertaining though. I settled comfortably at my seat and just wanted to catch some sleep. Enthu, yes. I was. But the stopping and dropping at the customs twice really turned me off badly. It was troublesome like anything. I don't like the feeling of being suspected of an illegal immigrant or the somewhat tight security. but fortunately, nothing really happened because nothing is supposed to! it was just a boring queue and go thing. And twice we got to go out of the bus and have our bags checked. I can understand the need for this....but somewhat it's on everyones expense.

Reached somewhere in the afternoon. And we were greated with buffet style lunch. The food was decent, if not not bad. I liked it because I was hungry. The fact that it was buffet style made it comfortable because we could take as much as we like, as and when we want to. I forgot what we had. I only remembered the suspicious looking lychee or soap tastealike drink on the table that no one dared to drink till it was declared safe. (or unpoisonous for what mater).

After a somewhat satisfying lunch, we had to go for this Aloha Special. It was a this welcome event thing, cum worship session, cum group introduction, cum camp staff and special higher level than "normal campers" people like logistics heads which included my brother. But before that there was some time inbetween for us to go slack! go to where? the bowling alley.

I played 2 games, yes 2 games I think it was. It's really cheap. 2RM per game which means 1SGD per game. That's like the lowest it can get. It's almost 3-4 times cheaper of the prices in SG (which make me think of the word ripoff). but different places have different prices and another factor is that SG has really small land, and on top of that, it was better systems somewhat.

Bowling, seems weird when you have a problematic lane. When darius threw his reverse hook ball onto the lane. A huge grunting sound could be heard from the ground. the GRUM GRUM GRUM sound really sounded awful and it's a hint that there was serious damage and uneveness on the lane. Talk about maintainance. Well that was the first lane I played on. And even people who are not bad to me like darius and ronald scored really bad scores like 50+ and 70+ respectively. I scored a 40+ as I drained my first 5 frames away.And lag! the pins took really long to reload (like 10 seconds each time a different player goes up). and it's really really slow. Imagine this, a game with 4 players would take about 1 hour to complete. That was man, annoying.

Cheap prices but cheap systems and cheap lanes. The screen wasn't much better. It was almost as if it had spider webs and dust,dirt surrounding the tv system that showed scores. and the system was some really outdated bowling program which was somewhat ancient. In conclusion pertaining to bowling and bowling alleys, everything there in the resort is different from here in Singapore. Bad systems, bad lanes, and cheap prices, in contrast to the good systems, good lanes and bad prices.

That wasn't really an attempt to digress because bowling is infact a part of church camp for that matter or one of the more popular stuff to do during freetime.

Aloha special. Got to know my group, named Mee Goreng. I don't know a single soul in my group besides Qi heng and jared. Really sad. the adults seemed really uncool and I couldn't really feel hyped up just because of that and for that matter i was really thinking of how this would OWN and rock if it was a youth camp. I didn't like my group, to be frank because everyone seemed so old. Only like 3-4 youths. And alot of aduts, old people, maid/helper. And babies. That didn't seem too ideal. So halfway during the 'minigame' section me and glen sneaked off to play some stuff.

Bowling was fully booked so we went play snooker. Wooo...everyone knows how badly I suck at things involving a ball and a stick. So I decided to play along with him because Glen insisted we do not need to play. End up, we were supposed to pay RM 6 bucks for playing 20 minutes out of an hour. Great great great. So glen went argue with the guy. And his basis of the argument was "if we never play one hour we don't need to pay". that didn't make sense, but since it was fun i played along. the poor guy attending to us was reall having a headache, I could tell. His english was limited and when included the part about the list of prices not putting "part thereof". that nearly killed him. Well he was persistant and remainded calm repeating the same thing over and over again. Nice try, and we couldn't flee. I admit, I was reluctent to play because I nearly did not play any shit at all. and glen was doin all the talking actually. finally, we made a compromise to pay 2 RM. which was 1 buck Sing. they had no choice but to accept. That was kinda, entertaining. but morally wrong. it might not be wrong, the truth is, I actually think it's controversial...because these people in these golf resorts don't really need to actually report what time the table was booked. and to add on, we didn't even register our names. do you think aircon fees are worth 6RM. will they DIE if they actually overlook the fact that we were "kids" and just tried snooker for fun for like 20 minutes? I may be wrong, and i don't know.

That was one long random thing to talk about.

Back to the schedule. Actually not really. next up was free time and so we went ahead playing tennis. Tennis!!! but it wasn't really fun and got me sweaty instead. then I had to go to the villa to bathe/change before dinner. Dinner,dinner. It was good food actually. I don't really have a habit of taking down what we ate.......but. i thought it was good.

At night what was it again? a sermon. Yeah boring stuff. Pttf. the speaker wasn't interesting at all. Boo. And the topic wasn't too attention grabbing. Boo.

Went back to the villa. It was a decent bungalow like thing. more of terrace actually. it was decently spacious and survival was possible in it actually. the airon was chilly, cold. and because of that, it worsened my running nose.

Sleep was fine. Kevan was in the same room as me. And i was glad the first night passed, safely...

Day 2

I opened my eyes and found myself on a bed. (nice introduction?). wow! where am I? Okay that is the strange feeling I get whenever Im overseas or staying over or whatever. I always got to recomfirm to myself that Im not at home. I wonder if people do experience this? maybe not.

Okay so it was like freeznig and snowing in my room. got up to bathe and I realised I forgot my toothbrush!. (<--so that was the thing I forgot! wow). so I thought of this genius plan. It was to use my finger as a toothbrush substitude. I squeezed colgate (and like it's name suggests it was freezing on my finger somewhat)...onto my index finger. I counted ThREE tWo oNe in my mind and stuffed it in my mouth somewhat imitating the orthodox action of brushing teeth. To my horror, a sharp pain developed!!! braces

Damn braces.

The freaking metal slashed my finger real badly. It bled. It was gross. White and red colours merged together. Blood and toothpaste, it was horrible, and a disgusting sight. I quickly neutralised the grossness with water and try to lick the pain. to no avail. Horrible horrible horrible. I really regretted what I did. I could have considered the fact that I had braces but it was early in the morning and Im a zombie at that time

900,23287,29382 damage on my little index finger. Metal damage.

Ouch *faints*

It was bearable somewhat as I embraced it with a plaster. Msia have really sticky plasters I wonder why.

After breakfast was sermon (again! damnit). the topic didn't really interest me. it was glueing in fellowship but the speaker was merely talking about church, caregroups and stuff and stuff that relates more to adults. I managed to stay away though due to some particular reason.

The gist of afternoon was mainly the fearless factor. It was again, an array of Youth-styled games. Nothing really captures my attention but the games were surprisingly troublesome. It wasn't the funnest thing down there (bowling beats them hands down) and my group wasn't really enthu. like I said, the abundance of adults kills the spirit of youth in the air. But they still participated and after a while I felt as if I was the only one SIANZzzzzing away myself. The games were troublesome, if you ask me. Some involved camo-ing your face with green stuff if you guessed letters wrongly. Another involved bread with mustard/wasbi and ketcup (really, those are highly EDIBLE actually). the swimming game was realy irrelevant and unnessecary and maybe a chance for gals to oggle and guys but i don't know? some guys are hot and even I think so...LOL. Okay that was mainly the entire afternoon.

I didn't do much during free time. Just slacking around and finally it was night time. Worship, Workshop, Group prayer. then sleep. Then it was Premidnight bowling till 12am and then off to bed in our villas.

3rd day

Same thing repeats. I didn't hop out of bed, felt tremendously sleeping for some reason. The thought of sermon was really turning me off. I don't mind worship sessions cause we're praising and exhalting god. my the sermon was really NO LINK to me. If i could find someway or someone to pon with...

Breakfast. then sermon. Same thing.this time, i fell asleep. Woo.

Afternoon was glory night performance preperation. It was to do a skit with our groups. My group merged with Murtabak which was tanya's group. Our skit was really lame and we had the Metal box/orange/knife lame joke in it. I think many people don't get it but nevermind. I just had this fantasy of acting out the metal box joke!!!!

Overall, our skit was okay. Im fastforwarding to glory night. A picture speaks a thousand words so many a video speaks like 1000^100000000000000000000000000 words. maybe more. I can't really narrate what happened. but it was humour, pure humour.

IMO, glory night was actually the main event of the entire camp. If im not wrong. My group didn't win. and had some mixed feedback about our performances. I don't know, but all these are solely for entertainment and fu. there's no use being so competitive in it. it just kills the fun.

Day 4

Day 4 begins at 12am. Where most of us were hanging out at stanley/roy's villa. Some played Wii and the rest were playing some lame word game. The "continue new word from last letter of previous word" game. loser had to drink water and no one is allowed to use the loo (realy dumb idea but somewhat feasible). if under serious cases of urgent need to use the loo, one would only be excused by putting camo on his or her face, and then taking a picture (talk about blackmail!!!)

Yeps. i know you're waitin for this. I got camo-ed pretty badly. Ate alot mustard chips....not because I was noob or what. At 2:45am playing such a thinking intensive game is not exactly a good idea. We make more mistakes than we use to. not to mention they put special rules and restrictions restriction all sorts of words...and the words left are really really little.

So following that we played some Wii. Playing Wii at Wee hours (no pun intended ) could really kill some cells in our minds because mainly it's a grudge war between "sleepiness VS fun" within ourselves. not exactly a good thing.

Fortunately, we had some selfcontrol and stopped at 4am whereby we settled back into bed and dreamland (which took seconds!!). byt 4:30am. not a good thing to sleep considering we were supposed to be up and ready by 7am. one word, suicidcal!

Trust me, im getting sick of typing. Check how long this post is man!!

The mood changed. I could feel it. It was the deadly "go home day". i was reluctent. because it was fun!!! The remainder of the day, the boring sermon, the thanksgiving/Sharing session...etc etc. and then the bus ride.

Our noob bus 3 took the wrong route and somewhat landed itself into a torrential rain and some annoying bottle of traffic jam. not a good idea!

we took a 3.5 hour bus ride home and I rejuvenated myself somewhat. Feeling better, less sleepy.

And that marks the end of church camp 2007. A priceless adventure.