GTC lasted 4 days. I came late for the first day, because I came back from NZ at midnight, but was fortunate enough to get a taste of zhi xuan's meaningful activity. Soaking wet! Survival Night in Ubin was different from that of VC, in that we actually managed to get some food cooked, and they didn't taste too bad! Liked the potatoes (we dumped them straight into the fire and then peeled off the skin about an hour later), as well as the rice. The chicken was unfortunately a mess, and we just ate a bit. The head we threw into the fire. XD
Day 2 and 3 were hikes around mainland Singapore. Singapore doesn't have much change in scenery, once you seen one HDB, you've seen them all. Anyway, as hike goes, it was a good hike and we covered distances which are definitely not to be scoffed at, such as a whopping 42km on Day 3, while carrying a 15+kg bag!
Back in RI for Day 4. Had a late night after failing to find the spot where our hopes and dreams were buried (somewhere near a particular tree), and had 'dinner' at 1am, and an early morning when we had inspection at 4am. Then, there was a cunning move by the VTLs, which signalled the start of the clearing of points. We had 900+ points. We cleared them all on a 1-to-1 basis (eg 1 pushup = 1 point). Normally during other camps I would be ok, but after the long hikes my shoulder was really GG from carrying the haversack (by the way, that same haversack strap broke under stress during Vcord a few days later). Felt really bad about that. Luckily, we found other less arm-intensive exercises to clear the points and we finished GTC.
You know, one thing we always talk about during the hikes is what we're going to do once it ends, but somehow I never actually follow the plan. Thats usually because right after I throw my bag down and bathe, the next time I sit down I'll fall straight to sleep... really takes a lot out of you. Then, the next thing I do when I wake up is brush my teeth, even if its in the middle of the day, because camp hygiene is really disgusting. And get a proper meal that doesn't involve anything in the canned, packed, or powder form >.<
The next day, we went to Hiok's house to do the hike log. We worked (sometimes), played, visited SU at east coast, walked through the park, chionged work at night, slept a bit. Great that we could work while still having fun! And when we left, we finished all the maps as well as day 1 descriptions, which was amazing by our standards XD
And that was our last GTC (in our secondary school lives). (:
