For me, it started with jungle navigation with the Ventures at Changi, after a quick inspection. The plan was rather good, as we had marked out the checkpoints a few weeks earlier with red ribbon and armed with accurate pacing and straight line distances. However in the end the checkpoints were super elusive, up to the point where it was practically impossible to spot them. Got my group (yi ming, brandon lum, kai jun and jason) to backtrack and attempt what we did at MacRitchie last year: "Rambo-style, aka blind reckoning" XD it worked quite well until we reached an especially thorny jungle of bushes, but I convinced them to push forward (led by example. ouch) and it was quite fun in the end! Overall they didn't complete the route but I'm quite proud of their effort.
Back to RI for Annual Camp soon after, where it was drizzling slightly. The kitchen tents were seriously foamy and Kestrel had installed a second-floor swimming pool. Over the next few days all of them made great improvements, and in the end all the kitchen tents were all quite impressive, although slightly tilted. Eagle totally demolished their old tent and rebuilt another with an extension at the side, Hawk and Owl decided to position their second floor directly above the cooking area (what the...), Falcon's still resembled a circus tent and KF... well, KF kept its simple design. I guess some things just don't change huh?
While the SU were pioneering, we stepped in with some games to break the monotony, like twister, tug-of-war and captain's ball! Testing out twister in the J1 room was tough work, and the J2s came in with a super funny run during Parents' Night. And the 3-way tug-of-war was retarded (i mean retired) but successful! The War Game rocked and cross-country wasn't that bad haha.
After a long day's worth of pioneering there were the meals! Although the pioneering standards dropped quite a bit, the cooking standard is still awesome. Stingray/shark, caramel apple, chapati, fried chocolate-blob-sludge-mess and some pretty awesome cakes. Kestrel's oyster-sauce-on-biscuit really draws the line though -.- Mealtime was always exciting tasting the patrol food as well as listening to the crap storylines (inevitably involving shit, dandruff and medusa for some reason).
When it came to night, there were the activities! No fright night though haha. Stupid quiz was awesome fun to plan and awesome funny to carry out. Know pokemon #201 yet, KF? (its unknown). Skill-o-rama revealed some weird skills (matrix-style gymnastic, pen under lip) as well as uncovered the ravenous beasts that were the Sec 1s. Deal-or-no-deal saw some cool backstabbing moments and an auction with the ultimate prize of a J1 hug haha! And see the twinkling lights during FoL on the last night, followed by some zombie action.
Haha it may seem I'm kinda rambling a little but really, just losing myself in the memories of not just this year's AC, but the ones from Sec 1, 2 and especially 3. A lot of my best memories in 01 came from this camp. Building your campsite from scratch, cooking those awful/awesome meals, screwing up over small things, lighting up the candles for the Festival of Lights. Miss being in the SU.
Haiz, growing up is ever so hard.
(without anurak, who wasn't there yet)
