SMU CSP Red Cross Project “I Can!” (Camp Day 2): The Collection

(This is Part 3 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 2, Part 4 and Part 5.)

It was difficult to sleep last night as while I enjoy music from good bands, the music that flooded my ears last night was one that was played totally out of tune and participated by l the animals in the animal kingdom. (no offence to anyone, but I am really a very light sleeper and I have much difficulty falling asleep in new places, not to mention while listening to a totally foreign orchestra.

Because I was lazy and chuen full did not intend to bring his sleeping bag, I did not bring mine as well. What a mistake it was, as we ended up troubling our fellow camp mates when they offered to share their sleeping bag with us.

And oh what fun it was. For much of the night I was used as a wall as my fellow is mate was leaning against me and at other parts of the night facing me. There was also a girl who in a dream posted a question “what’s that?” to the ceiling. It was much fun pretending to be asleep when I was obviously not so.I guess I did fall asleep somewhere in the middle of the night but by the time the girls start getting up sponenasously as if they had all been through army before as bunk mates, I was fully concious of my surrounding and woke up as well to conduct my daily big business.

I also cut myself while shaving in the morning simply because I was too sleepy and ended up getting blood stain on my Tshirt. Oh well.. Little would I know how this would foreshadow what will happen on the last day of the camp.

Breakfast was uninteresting although not bad in my opinion, and after a short briefing we set off for bishan for rice collection.

I was really sleepy but I guess I really woke up after makig a fool of myself (as usual) with the very fun camp mates and was feeling pretty hyper throughout the entire food andcanned item collection.

Through it, I realized that most Singaporeans are varied bunch. While some outrightly denied the total existence of rice in their household, there were many others who helped us enthusistically big huge bags of canned stuff. The experience was more of a present one and it sort of changed me as a person. I was originally one of those bastards who would not open the door up for suh donation drives, but I hae now decided contribute whatever I can if approached by representatives from such charity organizations in the future.

After lunch we approached additional hdb blocks, even those that were not informed of the donation drive when we did our flyer distribution last Saturday. Despite expectations of a lukewarm response, there were many compassionate singaporeans who contributed greatly to our collection drive.

Still, there were some singaporeans who refused to contribute. Of those most memorable was one discrete voice tellig me “no” when I said ” hi we are from smu red cross” which momentarily caused me to doubt the very fact that I was representig smu red cross. I also kindly told the invisible occupants of a flat to remember to close their wooden door when they are pretending to be not at home.

All in all it was a very fun experience as I did many crazy things and had lots of fun, for I know, all the fun would be coming to an end soon and the harsh reality of life and academic demands would inevitablity sets in upon the conclusion of this camp and the start of the school.

Afterwards when we returned to school what happened was the uninteresting repacking and classification of food where I noticed that sibgapreans make very baited mistakes as well. Some had mistakenly gven us abalone and sharkfins, while others had mistakenly given us expired canned food, some of which had been expired for more that 3 years.

In my opinion, this was the most fun day of all.