My first camp

I am writing this on the request of Shin Loo.(see, I am sacrificing study time for you). And also because last Chinese New Year, I meet Lee Eei, my old friend from the camp.

Yes, after so many years, i think it must have been 8 years or so, since i last saw Lee Eei in high school.. and suddenly, out of the blue, she found me on facebook!! After 8 years!! and she's currently working in Singapore... to think of it, what of the chances of two people in different parts of the world, lost contact over the past 8 years, and finally got in touch together again? i MUST give credits to facebook! facebook does wonders, you know.. it's a miracle that i met her again... sometimes, maybe it is fate...

So, we met up last Chinese New Year and had a great long chat. We went to Secret Recipe for dinner and chatted till they closed... all those good old memories... how i missed them very much... and guess what? Today, Lee Eei found some pictures of the camp Shin Loo and i attended in Form one... and she posted them up on facebook... oh dear, i looked really silly back then... haha! Seeing those pictures brings back those good old memories from Form one... that was the first camp i ever attended,.. allow me to share it with you here:

The first camp I attended was a camp during Form 1, organized by the Chinese Language Society in my school

, KGV (King George V). Which was kind of ironic, as I was not Chinese Educated. Anyhow, my zhi mui, Shin Loo, magically convinced me to teman her join the camp.. I did not know how she managed to convince me, but I am glad she did, as, we had a great time.

It was not one of those training camps which required you to drain yourself physically and mentally. Instead, it was a fun camp, meaning, a camp organized for a group of friends to go and have fun. Our schedule was mainly playing from day to night. The camp was in Port Dickson, in a rented bungalow house, opposite the beach.

I remembered I shared a room with Shin Loo, Lee Eei and Tay Lu Ping. Have you heard of ‘Tuan Kang’? it’s like group singing with some simple body movement. How I missed those.

And I remember we had this game of ‘breaking in to a house’, where we had to pretend to be a thief and steal something, while the AJK(committees) will pretend to be some dumb residents. Seriously, you can stick yourself on the wall like a ‘cicak’ and they will pretend they did not see you.

And I remember the senior AJK Ah Fatt, who used bilingual throughout the camp and translated the language, although I was the only participant who had poor Chinese command.

I remember, my group had to do a stupid sketch. It was a sketch of a teacher giving a lesson in class, which was suppose to be a comedy sketch, I suppose. Because of my lack of vocabulary, I had only one line in the whole entire sketch. And I was to wait for the signal, and stand up to say that line. Our sketch, must have been really boring, coz no one actually laugh throughout it. The teacher was lecturing his student not to go to Seremban Lake Garden, because there are lots of ‘wong kiok kai’ there. And this was the part I was suppose to stand and said: ‘Yellow Leg Chicken??’.. well, the audience laughed, I wasn’t sure whether because the joke was funny, or because they understood the reason why I had only a single line in the sketch. Haha!

Oh yes, I remember we were blindfolded, and we had to walk through a forest. You have to hold the shoulders of the person in front of you as you walk through the dark. Well, I didn’t really like the dark.. but luckily, Shin Loo was there. I guess we were suppose to learn about trusting others.

And there was the game where everyone was blind folded and you will be put face to face with a stranger, place your hands in each others and start talking. Really, I cannot understand why the AJK liked to blind fold us. I’m just glad I didn’t talk about too personal things, because, after a couple of years, when I became an AJK, I had a surprised. While the two person was talking to each other, the AJKs would be eavesdropping next to them!! Giggling, they were.. how silly, right? And when the AJK gets bored of your conversation, they started changing you with another person. Worse, some might just trick you by pretending to be blindfolded… haha! So ya, I never played the game again.

I remember we had to write letters to an assign person and keep our identity as anonymous. We were suppose to encourage each other. And we have to reply to each other. I remembered we were given the nicknamed ‘xiao bai tu’ (white rabbit). And I did a quite cruel thing, when I called another friend , ‘xiao hei tu’, which I wished I had not. Why was I so mischievous back then?

I remembered having fun with my housemates. They wanted to put toothpaste on those who did not wake up in time (evil right?). And I remember leaving our names (in Chinese) on the white wall behind a cupboard in our room.

I remembered playing by the beach, I remembered the beautiful sunset.. I remember many things, patches of them.. I don’t know why. I just do.

Okay, there you go, Shin Loo. A bit messy, as i had written this in a rush. I better get back to study now =)