Back from camp

Back from Apollo Camp.

Felt that some parts of the camp was OK and interesting, but some were utterly nonsensical and rubbish.

Day 1:
Reached Ubin at about 11 am, was told to set up tents on this concrete ground near a generator, which would be humming througout the day 24 hours non-stop. Got an instructor by the name of Diana, later realised that she was one of the best instructors around, fortunate to have her for my group. And my group - Group 6, aka Psychohexane (don't ask me how we came up with the name, it was pretty random and "unwelcomed"), was made up of 11 people from 7D and 5 from 71.

On a side note: can you infer the attendance of the whole faculty from the above figures? Ha, it was a meagre 30%...

So after lunch, went to do this Team Challenge Tower - a tall metallic tower filled with obstacle courses. There were rock walls, nets made up of cargo ropes, "Leap of Faith" (a metallic bridge with a rather wide gap in the middle, located quite high up the tower), etc. Then at the end of it, flying fox down the tower. My group took about 1+ hour to complete the whole activity. Considered this activity as one of the more challenging and exciting ones throughout the whole camp, though it didn't really challenge my limits. Could have been more challenging.

Cooked dinner ourselves over a fire pit. Ate mostly raw carrot and potatoes, with some nicely cooked sausages. Pretty good experience.

Then for the rest of the time, basically just learnt some cheers and planned some performances for the campfire night. This part was the most irritating of all: the instructors were like repeating each cheer for dunno how many times (esp "Hwa Chong OOOOOOI"), and they tried to lame each other out, for dunno what good reason. There was this instructor who tried to get everyone's attention by couting the number of seconds we took to keep quiet. -.-" Overall the whole session was rather lamed and sianz. Don't really like it at all.

Day 2:
Morning did something real fun and cool - DIY rafting. We were given barrels, poles and ropes, and we had to build a raft that would transport 5 of us each time across the lagoon and back. All thanks to Edmund, our scouts, who tied most of the ropes around the structure, and it was the perfect knots that he tied that allowed our raft to stay in one piece when all other groups' rafts just disintegrated in water. Was an owning experience! And 3 cheers for everyone in the group as well! Ha, the most fun of all.

Then in the afternoon, it started raining. Again, the mood entered into a very sian one since we couldn't do outdoor activities, and those indoor activities were obviously not well-prepared. Spent most of the time playing a game which we often played when we were in primary school...

When the rain stopped, we continued with some outdoor activities. First we did Giant Finger. Both Chia Ming and Soon Huat got real dirty after moving the tyres in and out of the pole. =D Then we did something that required us to do something like tight-rope walking. Quite challenging, but it was very slippery due to the rain.

At night, campfire. Most of the performances were just OK, including our own one. Nothing very interesting actually, except that I realised that it was the first campfire that I have ever attended which had loudspeakers, microphones and laptops around. -.-" Reminded me of the school camp we had in Sec One (or Two?) which had the artificial campfire instead of a real one.

Day 3:
Finally the last day. In the morning did some outdoor activities, with the scorching sun burning at our backs most of the time. Then cleared up our tents and packed and then went home. Thankfully we were allowed to leave together with the earlier group instead of having to wait for another 2 hours.

Yup, so that was the end of the camp. Most of the programmes could have been much^1000 better. But there were also good things about the camp: relatively good food, not very crowded, safety was greatly emphasised. Nonetheless, would say that OB Sabah still the best camp I have ever attended.

One camp down, one more to go this weekend!