PPP 3D2N (BAAAAAAAAAW)

If there was no God, he would have to be invented.
- Voltaire

At the end of the camp they played a little slideshow with parts of "When Six Songs Collide". Now I really like Superman by Five for Fighting.
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Skip this post unless you're really interested in what happened, no new exciting philosophical insights here.


Day one

The rooms are badass. The guy in charge of my room from team six asked me if I wanted to sleep on the comfy sofa with extra pillows and a fan, but there's also a bunk bed here, and I don't think I've ever tried the top bunk.

2 bathrooms, 3 bedrooms, a spacious living room and a kitchen. It's supposed to be structured very much like a HDB, but the wooden doors are so sexy with their fresh white paint and balconies and numpad locks. The numpads are the reason why I'm writing this on the bed instead of downstairs. I came up to get my stuff, and to my surprise, the door wouldn't accept my code. I tried about five times and rang the doorbell twice before I noticed I had been harassing strangers for the past five minutes. Gosh fuck, I sure hope that nobody I knew was in there.

Bad stuff first. One, aforementioned blurfuck incident. Two, travelling all over campus with team five made my feet all owchy inside. Now I can't jump from the top bunk.

Lost my wallet with IC inside. Games played can be pretty retarded, and they keep trying to advance their pop psychology into things. There was one guy from Mikana's former class and a girl from Giant & Panzer's former class. There were both generally quiet like me.

On the other hand, my wallet was found and tomorrow I can collect it. The campus is huge. The food has vegetables. Thanks to my absence of mind, I wandered into team five by accident when I should have been in team six, and so I've had the privilege of making the acquiantance of a girl who looks quite a lot like Quirr (that's quite hot). =3 We got to give each other back massages too, woohoo. Now so long aas she wasn't in that room I tried to barge into - NO! Bad Nosey! bad Nosey! Thank happy stuff.

Nobody gave two hoots about the fact that I'm with team five. It's polytechnic freedom. No wonder they feel the need to preach so much about personal responsibility. Altogether there are about 80 plus people in DPA for my polytechnic. Team five has 17 people, and one second-year facilitator - that's right, Glenn is only one year older than us. Makes for easy communication.


Day two

Got out from the top bunk at seven. It was a cold night, but I managed to sleep reasonably okay without sedatives.

In my first primary school, I played "Freeze and Melt" with my friends, a slightly modified form of catching which encourages "saving" others from the catcher. All the freshies plus the student facililators played it today.

It was epic for a while, but the aches from the day before, not to mention my poor stamina, caught up with me soon enough and I could soon no longer handle short sprints. Still, nothing like rushing into a bunch of randoms and saving them all. Good feeling.

Then it was replaced by nausea. I remember early last year, I vomited during morning PE. So I downed three cups of soya bean for breakfast and skipped the bee hoon.

Because I was too much of a chicken to even venture near my team's table, I had to be invited over. Godammit. Then this big Malay guy joins the team - he wasn't here yesterday. He really didn't fit the usual stereotype of "nigr who keeps to his own racial group".

First activity: Form two rows of people; a person in one row holds the end of a thick wooden stick while his buddy in the row across from him holds the other, forming what I'd describe as a human ladder with wooden rungs stretching from one end of the room to another. Volunteers were to climb across, climb across with a blindfold, or not cross at all - the rest of the groups were to support the person's decision no matter what it was, via cheering, clapping, etc. The guy who just joined our group took initiative to help out other rungs. I tried to do the same and I think I forgot about my own rung and dropped it, which may or may not have caused the climber to fall. I must have looked pretty stressed after that, because someone asked me if I was okay. D:

Returning to the same room after a tea break, Glenn, our team facilitator, told me he could take me to find my wallet. It was only a little way away. Got my wallet back after a little bit of embarassing fussing about. Nothing was lost. There wasn't much chat - I had no idea what to say, as per normal with me. He did mention out of the blue that the DPA students this year weren't as enthu as the 2008 batch. I didn't have much of a response to that, and I agonized later over whether he had been trying to tell me to open up, or if he was really disappointed. Probably both.

The next activity took place in a grid made out of rafia string strung between desks. The 4x6 grid consisted of squares that could admit one person and the while thing came up to waist height. The objective was to get everyone on the team to the other side. After failing badly for a while, our team watched another more successful team and we basically emulated their strategy of working with the team from across the web. There was some discussion, and eventually things began to work right. On one of my expeditions into the grid I came down too fast and face-smacked one of my roommates in the back, not to mention sending the whole of team five back to the starting line. As usual, I obssessed about that mess-up even after the day ended. By this time, the new Malay guy was more "in the team" than me and half of the rest of team five were.

Lunch passed and we went out to buy ingredients for the BBQ. When we entered the supermarket, we watched speechless as a fellow team outside rushed by the window, pushing a van up a slope. It was truly a WTF moment.

Team five was pretty cool. A lot of us just blindly followed the leader, but plenty also took the initiative to peel off and return with useful things and suggestions. I couldn't navigate the place well enough to be anything more than a hindrance, so I stayed with the cart and didn't help out much. I was really lost.

Coming back to campus, we passed time with riddles and puzzles that ran the gamut from lame to fucking lame, but hey, puzzling people out with Fuzzy Wuzzy is always amusing, if only vaguely. Then the room was quickly turned into a danceroom. The second-years led first, and more and more began to join in gamely. This was in the middle of the day. They switched off the lights, the photographer went around spamming flashes with his camera and three-quarters of everyone were going at it like madmen in no time. It was epic. Again, I couldn't add to the experience, so I sat aside with the rest of the quiet social (or dancing) failures and waited for it to be BBQ time.

Got a plate from my bag and contributed it. Glad I could do that at least. Helped do garlic bread and Glenn's super special awesome cheese taupok. Around us, the sun set and other groups did their own thing. A bunch of second-year DPA students came in and said hello, and we ended it off with some bottle-spinning (I used the virgin joke question like thrice at least). Once again, someone took the initiative to get everyone else to clean up, then organize a meeting at night.

I showered, played a bit of cards with my team and we all trooped out to a little hut at the edge of a field. Full turnout. We sat there, filling the night air with some jokes and chat. Regrettably, I was still tongue-tied to join in much beyond smiling and nodding. I am such a loser. Glenn arrived, and we ordered Macdonalds. Like me, he was really surprised that some of us were already progressing to organizing a chalet or outing for team five.

While we waited for delivery, Glenn told some ghost stories about certain parts of campus, which pretty much ensured that I was never going to go near the Engineering block at night. It was pretty creepy. The conversation meandered off into aspects of poly life and laptops. All of us, including Glenn, stuck around until it was two in the morning, despite that he hadn't had proper sleep for two nights already and still had stuff to do.


Day 3

I woke up a bit late, and allowed my team six roomies to leave first. After I got my stuff together, I went downstairs, where the realization slowly dawned on me that it was a bit late for me to redeem myself much. I did manage to try my virgin joke again, shake his hand and pat him on the back, but I had the feeling I had let him down. God damn, this was India all over again. I didn't manage to overcome the shortcomings I had discovered back then. Meanwhile, team five was broken up and and we were sorted according to our schools of study.

Everyone studying film and media went to a conference room. Task: complete a lipsync music video. In ninety minutes. My new group here consisted of two girls from team five, and three strangers, including one American. They were fast. Don't ask me how they did it, but they quickly formed into another cohesive think tank, spamming ideas like crazy. Again, I didn't participate much. They knew the song and they knew what they were doing. We hit ground floor, I did what I was asked of me, filmed the damn thing at the last minute and came back up for pizza. Then everyone watched the gay music videos they had created; strangely, all were entertaining. My group was crowned the best. On the way back, someone took the initiative to start a conversation with me (did I mention that I'm a fucking loser).

Back at the activity room, there was a briefing, and we were asked to pick Sports & Wellness modules for the next few months. I had Lifesaving/Swimming, Orienteering and Yoga all down as possibilities, ignoring rock-climbing and dancesports. The yogi teacher said he could help with the Sit and Reach for my NAPFA, he could help with breathing, and basically it was a good deal. Orienteering was useful too, but only a few places were open. As for Lifesaving, the hot girl from team five was joining that, but lifesaving is really too situational and I'm not sure of my swimming abilities after a year of stagnation.

Believe it or not, we had to race to the other end of the room to chope the limited places for the Sports & Wellness module we wanted. It starts next week. Things are moving fast. I need to keep up.

I skedaddled out pretty quick after we were dismissed - wanted to avoid more fail on my part. You may have noticed at some point I'm pessimistic. Back at home, I had an anxiety attack and checked all my current contacts to see if anyone else was going to be at my school. I ate chocolate and had emo time hoping that Glenn and everyone else didn't think too badly of me.


/wrist

OH NO THEY ADDED ME ON MSN

This entry was completed January 18, 4AM (explains the terribad writing). Had a cappuchino while I was out with the rest of the Pforters. It came in handy.