Hello dear Red Cross Journey Camp Facis!

How are you guys? I am missing you guys already! And welcome to my humble blog! I know you guys are stalking my blog and feeling bad about it!

MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

SMU CSP Red Cross Project “I Can!” (Camp Day 4): Humpty Dumpty had a great fall

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

Sadly I had to return home slightly earlier from the very enjoyable SMU Red Cross journey camp due to a little accident.

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the king’s horses,
And all the king’s men,
Couldn’t put Humpty together again.

While piggybacking Linda during the piggyback relay, I leaned forward too much and fell forward. The next thing I could remember was me looking at the floor with drops and drops of blood and a huge pain on my entire lower jaws. I remembered kept asking Linda if she was alright, feeling very guilty that it was my clumsiness that resulted in the fall and I must have frightened her badly. She did told me this was the first time she was piggybacked, and sending her maiden-piggyback voyage crashing into the floor is the worst thing that I could have done. I think I was then assured that Linda was alright by somebody, but I can’t remember it exactly well. Then, my mind woke up and I start panicking. “Where did the blood come from? Where was I cut?” I remember asking, although not sure whether I was asking it aloud or in my mind. I was helped to the toilet to wash the blood from the wound, and that was when the pain increase and I began to feel very light headed. I lost my ability to stand, sat on the floor of the toilet, and went into lala land.

I ears hear static. My eyes see static. Then I was suddenly rudely awoke from my nice nap. There was this strange sensation when the static noise and vision start to resolve into something, and I felt as though I have just woke up from a normal sleep. I began to doubt the reality of what happened as everything felt like a dream. I asked again if Linda was alright and was once again assured she was. Then I was helped to the SMU clinic to receive my FREE medical treatment. On the way, I also remember asking those guys if all my teeth are intact and I was assured so. I felt so relieved.

By the time I reach the concourse area under the library, almost all my vision are restored and I started joking with Gary and the 2 guys holding me. At the clinic Dr Chew suggested stitching my cut and I asked if it was painful. He assured me I won’t feel it, but I replied that I would have to look at him stitch me. Then, he abruptly suggest the use of Tissue glue to put me out of my fear (I was still feeling pretty shocked and afraid at that time, perhaps fooling around with the 2 person who held me was my self-defense mechanism to put my mind at ease). I was then discharged and told to return on Monday to change the dressing. And yippy! MC until Monday! Good reason to skip FTB. But then, Amanda, the faci of my FTB group, now still keep trying to push me to go for the FTB..

I returned to the group to attend some briefing, and then we returned to to our sleeping room when we had a nice round of Bluff! I thought I was going to win early, because I was the first to be left with one card, but others still won because really trying to win with one card is a patience game and dependent entirely on luck. I could also win by bluffing my card while the center pile was huge, but that move was too risky. It was really a boring way to win a card game and I decided to do something different. Thinking through, I began to pick up many complete sets of cards (8 cards of the same number) and then to whack them into the pile one by one. No one dared to doubt my declaration of what those cards were, and with some deceit I won while having the most number of cards in hand compared to the rest of the remaining players. However, the side effect of this method which I overlooked while devising it during the game was that no one else dare to call a bluff, hence making the game more boring after I won. Oops.. Sorry.

Anyway, the success of this impromptu method made me laugh so hard that my bleeding started again, and by 3pm my dressing was like a a sanitary pad on the first day of women’s period. Unfortunately, because it was a Saturday, the SMU clinic had closed and none of the SMU group of clinics where I could get medical help for free were opened, so I had to leave the camp early to visit a 24 hours clinic near my house to change the dressing.

Still having some difficulty chewing (lower jaws still damn pain), while my cut like no pain one, pain in my left knee cap, my couple ring slightly flattened on one side, and I have no idea how to wash my hair or face without wetting the non-waterproof dressing…

To conclude, the camp was pretty fun, in fact the most meaningful and fun camp I’ve been to for ages. The people were great, and the facis were wonderful. Looking forward to seeing these camp mates again when school starts, and hope everyone stay happy and funky.

Once again apologize to Linda for scaring her, heard she cried.. (OOPS)

I wear pampers on my face!

Kudos to all the facis and ex-co for putting together such a fantastic camp!

SMU CSP Red Cross Project “I Can!” (Camp Day 3): Distribution

(This is Part 4 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 3 and Part 5.)

I was pretty shag througout much of today and was unable to enjoy it as thoughouly as I had hoped.

All the groups were intially supposed to set out to our assigned blocks for distribution of all the canned food and rice which we had created yesterday. However there was a last miniute change of plan which meant my group would only set off later in the day at 12pm as compared to other groups which had to set off much earlier. A slightly contradictory consequence of this was that while we get to slack hard before setting out to do the food distribution, we were also expected to help out in the loading of the food items.

After a rather interesting breakfast with huge thanks from the girls, we proceed to slack in our “bunk”. There was a full menu of things which I could make use of the available time to execute, but I ultimately decided to use it to address my body’s more pressing needs, which was to take a quick nap. However, after accidentally squashing my spectacles I still couldn’t get to sleEp so I joined in the very fun card game of ass hole daidi. After awhile I felt sleep coming and exited the game to give sleeping another try.

It was then at this precise moment that a request for help was issued and i decided to to help out along withgary and the others. Helping was fun but also tiring, and I was particularly impressed by Linda who came alone to offer us her help and also by my group faci Jie yin who was inside the van looking all the heavy lifting and stacking. This is an incredible feat if u take into her small size. Fatigue work was never interesting, so I’ll just end this part with a mention that I did nearly 2 full hours of it.

We set off after lunch and arrived at the HDB block containing residents who are recipients of our food. While unloading the food items near the lift lobby, a crowd of old people living nearby had gathered. While some of them does really get on our nerves by repeating the same request for those items when they are obviously not the intended recipients, i realized the harsh reality of helping people in a systematic manner; it can never be fair. How would we know that those old folks bugging us at the void deck were more needy than our intended recipients? Things are never fair as after the whole distribution those old folks who were not intended recipients of our help had to watch us transport the remaining canned food and rice away…

At night, went on a ghost trail. Nothing much to blog about, just walk and walk only. My Ultrafire and green laser came in handy.

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.

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.

SMU CSP Red Cross Project “I Can!” (Flyer’s Day)

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 1 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 2, Part 3, Part 4 and Part 5.)

The dress code for the day was white top with at least Bermuda length bottoms and also covered shoes. I wanted to wear jeans, but out of concern of the day’s weather and some mighty prediction on my part (we were not told what we were going to do today), i decided on wearing bermudas instead of my usual jeans. Feeling rebellious, I also decided to take the definition of “covered shoes” abit too far. I wore a pair of crocs.

Well, if you ignore those little little holes, crocs can be considered covered, right?

Anyway, back to topic.

After the usual formalities of taking temperatures and declaring that you are not someone who had taken the spirit of sharing and caring too far (including H1N1 virus), I was directed over to a gathering point at the “T-junction” of SMU concourse, the large monstrous underground cavity underneath SMU into which magically SMU buildings had not yet collapse. No clear instructions were given then, and it was after some luck that I managed to find the group I belong to and settle down. I believe the same goes for others, though my sense of direction was probably the worst in the group. T-shirt for our activity was collected, and I wondered why we had to come in white top when white t-shirts were provided to us.

Leaving the solving of this million-dollar question to my sub-conscious mind, i settled down on the bench. It was curious that my group settled on 2 adjoining benches, and one consisted of all the guys, while the other one consisted of all the girls with one guy busy talking to the girls. Being the shy freak I am, I wanted to join in the all-guys bench to re-live with them the glorious days of serving as a slave of the nation, but there was no space for me and I had to settle on the other bench with all girls and one guy. Perhaps my role was to balance the distribution abit. I was sleepy at the time due to the late night gaming session the night before and it is best said that most parts of my brain were asleep and the parts that were awake were busily trying to wake the sleeping parts up so that they can catch a nap as well. Everything swirled around me and I couldn’t participate in much of the conversation, other than the random one or 2 sentences which I somehow shoved into the conversations at both the benches. I did notice that Andrea and Justyne has got large pretty eyes though.

We did some self introduction and I sheepishly told them that I have difficulty remembering names since young. This was not a lie. Still, I tried my best and I only managed to catch some of the names that were easier to remember; names like Gary, Cheun Full (full battle order?). I was thinking, memorising this handful of names would allow me to fake my way through what ever ice breaking games that would be coming up.

The first ice-breaking game was a game where we take turn reciting the names of those before us. For example, Person D had to recite names of Persons A,B,C, and Person E has to recite the name of persons A,B,C,D and so on. Unfortunately I was the last person. Lucky for me, someone soon commented the game was boring because it was taking too long and there was no excitement value. By then I was slightly more awake and was keen to avoid the certain disaster that was about the befall me where I could see myself stuttering over everyone’s name. Not only would I seem noob, I would be rude as well. I suggested to one of the Faci, why not we play another game instead, this is getting boring and getting nowhere. Suggestion was accepted and my seemingly unavoidable disaster was averted. There were some other ice breaking games, and hearing that anyone who lost got to sit down, I decided to play to lose. It was no coincident that I was among the first to sit down in all the rounds.

After some briefing we set off for Bishan and when we reach there we had an uninteresting lunch. I was very tempted to visit the VirtuaLand just beside the Food Junction but I held on to myself and reminded myself that I am a University Student now, not some primary school kiddies. After lunch we moved out to our destination and we were split into groups and allocated to different HDB blocks to cover.

Unlike other groups that has 2 guys and 2 girls each, my group was bigger with the size of 5 and only 1 girl. This made life easier for me as yours truly was a shy freak.

Anyway, what we had to do was to distribute pamphlets highlighting the SMU Red Cross Rice and Canned Food collection drive that was going to take place on 16 July(the following Thursday), to residents living in the blocks we were assigned to. Sounds easy enough, but door to door visits in my opinion is one of the most inefficient way of spreading a message. Still, I decided to go along since as it seems fun, and really, how many times can you get to knock on the doors of random people for a good reason?

Perhaps my expectation was too high. I paired with Chuen Full, the only other guy in the same faculty as me, and after knocking on the first few flats we were quite demoralized as nobody seem to bother opening the door for us. Then I got lucky when an old lady opened the door for me. That was my “First Blood!” and it kind of lifted my morale abit. Chuen Full soon got his “First Blood!” as well, but all hopes of getting a “Double Kill” was lost for both of us when we encountered more and more closed door. The doors were closed not because there were nobody at home, but Singaporeans, on top of the “Kiasu and Kiasi” seemed to have also cultivated a new “Kia”, the “Kia-ran”. Those occupants who refuses to open the doors seemed to be inherently be afraid of other people. Still, maybe as what I had casually commented earlier today, it was “our face” that frightened people off. Imagining peeping through the peep hole on your door and finding yourself looking at someone smiling like a retard, waving frantically at you. You would have thought the world had gone insane.

Overall, it was still a quite enjoyable experience as I marveled at the various beautifully designed doors, the 20+ umbrellas hanging at the window of one of the flats, and had fun barking along with the cute doggies belonging to the residents there. Perhaps I took my barking too far, as one particular dog barked in response to me which caused the occupant to “Bo Bian” (no choice) but to open up the door since it was quite obvious there was somebody in the house. He slammed his door after taking the flyer. Bad example for young puppy. Will the cute little puppy grow up to be a door slammer?

Perhaps because we were all guys, the success rate of us getting occupants to open their door was quite low. This is in sharp contrast with the success rate of our big-eyed beauty Andrea, which prompted me to suggest taking a photo of her and placing the photo in front of all the peep holes on the door when we were knocking or pressing the door bell. I even suggested asking “Anybody at home” in a girl’s voice, which I did, much to the horror (and goosebumps) or everyone around, including myself. But hey, at least one occupant did open up his door while I was speaking in a girl’s voice, after someone failed while speaking in his normal voice. I have proven my theory!

The activity was finished early, and all in all I had fun interacting with other members of the group. Am looking forward to the coming CSP camp, which was 4 days long, albeit on the lengthy side. But, if my experience today is any indication, I would be expecting more fun with fantastic group members and facilitators, mixed with slightly cock up planning with would provide an interesting element of surprise.

Stay tuned.