SMU CSP Red Cross Project “I Can!” (Camp Day 1): Deja Vu

Foreword: Since SMU has this curious requirement for all undergrads to have completed 80hours of COMPULSORY COMMUNITY SERVICE before one is eligible to file for graduation, and the 80 hours would only count if one could turn in a well-written essay on the entire experience of the Community Service Project, which of course has to be written very positively, I thought I should start early by recounting what happened today during my Day 1 at the Red Cross Project “I CAN!” before all the laughter, smiles and sweat today fade into distant memories.

(This is Part 2 of a series of blog entries regarding the SMU CSP Red Cross Project “I Can!” Journey camp which I attended. As the blog entries were stitched together from bits and pieces I had written during the camp on my iPod Touch, and I had to rush the entries out before going for the next camp tomorrow, I had to be straight to the point. Hence these blog entries will not be as interesting as intended, and served only to remind myself of the events during the camp.

To visit the other entries, check out Part 1, Part 3, Part 4 and Part 5.)

The day began in a manner which gave us a curious Deja vu of what happened on last saturday. The same gathering at school of business, similar ice breaking games as well as of course the same fantastic group mates.

Like little lambs we were led to our sleeping room to store all our belongings and to our horror we realized that 2 groups had to share the same sleeping room. After stimulating how crowded it would be at night and the assorted sounds that would otherwise be heard at the zoo, i felt pretty turned off an entered a denial and kept trying to convince myself that this room would only be used for storing of bags. From the look on the faces of various group mates, I could tell that many were thinking the same.

After settling down we had to go for lots and lots of briefing, on blood and bone marrow donation. Rather un-interesting I must say, so lets skip this part.

After dinner, we had a little bit of games, which was pretty fun and exciting. However, for some reason I was pretty sianzi-fied at that time, but there was a particular game station which totally woke my mind up. At that station we had select someone to tell a joke to the 2 game masters, to make them laugh, and if they don’t laugh, we failed. After deciding on what jokes to tell, and who to tell it, I was horrified when the game masters choose me to tell the joke. I was pretty confused at that time and was not confident that the joke we decided upon was funny enough, while at the same time my mind was a complete blank and could not think of anything else to tell, so i decided to put on some silly actions to go with it in hope that I would make the game masters some laughter. I was also unable to pronounce “brunette” properly, hence decided to use a more funnier substitute for the word. It came out as “Bu-nei”. When half way through the joke, one game master claimed that she had heard the joke before, i panicked and then decided to just randomly change the story into an a joke I heard before about a naked male and a naked female trying to flag down a taxi. It worked, but not because the joke was funny. As a friend put it, “they were laughing more at you than your joke.” Oh well, still get the result right? Hehe.

Sleep that night was hard to come by, imagine trying to sleep on the road between a pig pen and lion’s enclosure.. The night was pretty eventfully. One moment, IS mate Chuen full was using me as a wall to lean against, and the next moment, he was facing me. He was also making some weird sound which prompted a girl nearby to mumble “Whats that?” in her sleep. Didn’t get much sleep (was hardly aware I was asleep), but it is time for the next day.