So last night was the 75th Anniversary Campfire for 01 Raffles Scout Group, but preparation started way before hand. On Thursday the ventures went to load poles to be transported to Sarimbun but I wasn't there, so I have no idea what to write about that.
Then on Friday, there was an activity after school for one last prep before the campfire started. The haka people took the bus to Sarimbun while the souvenir comm members (Rong Jun and I) stayed in school with the others to rush the final few souvenirs.
Souvenir comm is easily one of the most saigang comms in the process of staging a campfire. This year was even worse; not only did we have to prepare 15 group souvenirs for the scout/ guide groups who would be attending, we had three guests of honour who needed special souvenirs, as well as ONE HUNDRED old boys who would be attending. For the groups, we made hourglass towers, with decorations, while the VIPs' souvenirs were bigger (like twice as big) versions of those. Then for the one hundred old boys' souvenirs we decided to use bottles of sand, with a nice scroll inside.
By that Friday, we had finished making all of the smaller hourglass towers, but were left with the three VIP souvenirs, the Most Enthu Group award and the foaming old boys ones. I decided to make the award first, and came up with a random plaque which looked like this:
Haha, nice font eh? The rest of the time was spent lala-ing around the third floor atrium and filling the sand into the bottles. And supervising the rest of the comm, which was pretty much quite bored by all the saigang. Then we discovered that the glass tiles on the ceiling cast a nice rainbow effect on the wall and Jeremy was busy positioning a souvenir for an artistic effect:
Oh I just discovered I took a picture of one of the certs which was stuffed into the bottles. We had to stain them with coffee to give them a vintage kind of look, which came off pretty successfully:
In the end, we ran out of sand and had to stop filling bottles, but continue to stuff/tie certs inside the bottles until the act was over. (We still had 1/2 the bottles and the VIP souvenirs to do.) Then after packing up the foamy logistics some of us headed over to J8 with the J1s for dinner. After that, all of us took the MRT to Kranji and then hailed three taxis to go to Sarimbun. This part was quite funny, because all three had no idea where the place was. In the end, Yan Wei took the first taxi and directed the guy, while the other two were just told to 'follow the cab in front'. The first cab ended up making a turn and disappearing from sight, causing the second cab (which I was in) to foam, because the driver didn't know where to go. Naturally the third cab also followed us. In the end Yan Wei called us and told us where to make the turning.The road to Sarimbun is quite scary at night. Very dark, long and ulu; Chuyong kept commenting on how scared he would be to walk along this road at night. Then Trach turned around and told us that we might be walking along here for GTC...
After we got there, we unloaded all the logistics from the back of the cab and trudged into the MPH, where Rong Jun and I joined the rest of the ventures to lala around. I can't exactly remember what we did then, but I suspect it was mostly cock-talking. Then washed up in the Sarimbun toilets (which all smelled like urine, for some reason) and lay out our groundsheets in the MPH to sleep. Some of us ended up in the A-huts, which was quite shuang but I decided to sleep in the MPH because we could play cards there. I was quite shagged then so don't remember much apart from Sups' 'Picassos' and 'Picassios', which turned out to be 'Pistachios.' Which are incidentally quite addictive to eat until I ended up crunching an unshelled one ><
After that I fell asleep on my groundsheet and woke up the next day...
Since it's quite late now (though not for Jack xD) I think I'll finish the next two days another day.
Ok now it's the next day so let me start again. After a restful night's sleep, on a groundsheet in the multipurpose hall, we all woke up at around 6 to wash up and get ready for the day. Actually I woke up a bit before that, feeling quite jack; the previous night I had spammed Rongjun's insect repellant on my body, which worked quite well. What I forgot was that the soles of my feet went unsprayed so I woke up in the middle of the night frantically scratching at my feet, which were then covered with mosquito bites.
At six thirty a horseshoe was blown and we ate breakfast. At first, there was no spread and we only had plain bread to eat. According to Amos, it tasted like chicken rice. Then Chuyong found out that our kaya had been in the trash and gave it to us, after describing his experience of the previous night where he also had to search through garbage to retrieve his handphone.
After that we were broken into commitees and finished up our stuff. I joined the rest of the ventures at the gateway, which had thankfully been mostly erected the day before. All that was left would be to tie up the walkways (or the ladders, as they were called) up on the pythons and inset the handrails. We did this pretty quickly and I had fun climbing the thing to secure a bowline or something. All this while we had random suans flying around; the previous night Rongjun brought some shortbread biscuits, which I said were for me. Then Ziheng walking around without his shirt, and some others followed suit.
At seven or eight the lower sec people arrived and assembled in the multipurpose hall, and the ventures were mostly done so I joined the souvenir comm from this point onward. The other ventures went to set up the AV tent and rehearse for haka. It was at this point that someone discovered the ice machine. ( I think it was yiming, who somehow overheard the lock's code as well.) Within moments people had discovered the ability to fill entire water bottles with little bits of ice, as well as just crunching the ice directly from their palms. This proved to be a trend, as during break times there would always be a rush of people at the machine, which everyone also knew how to unlock. (The code, incidentally, was 114.) Haha ok will continue this another day, quite late already.
Ok back again for the third edit to this post. Hmm so we were all stoning and making the souvenirs at the dining area. The dining area is quite a cool place, being very conveniently close to our beloved ice machine (which explains why Rongjun's bottle was almost always filled with ice), but also the toilet and sinks. That area has many benches and tables on which we worked. The previous day, we had run out of the nice colourful greenblackwhite sand, and Jeremy being so neow didnt like our other bucket of sand, so we sent a group of people out on an epic journey to find sarimbun beach and bring back the sand.
After their return, we opened their plastic bags to find them - shock and horror - empty. Turns out that their epic journey was a wasted trip. They had walked quite far to the seashort, but then came to a locked gate. The only way around this gate would be to walk along some breakwater, next to a fench with barbed wire. So they ended up with no sand. Luckily Nigel spotted some in Sarimbun and they later brought it back, where we used John's pouch to filter the chunky bits out. (This sentence hardly makes sense, I know.) So anyway yeah we finished all the old boys' souvenirs, and later started on tying all the guest of honour. In the middle of all of that we had lunch, which was with our patrols and the other ventures. The food was quite nice. And surprisingly filling.
Anyway yeah we finished all the stuff that we needed to do by four o'clock, because we needed to clear up for the campfire which was starting in a few hours' time. We were given a briefing on the various usher commitees and sorted out; I found out that for the first part, I was a VIP usher and was supposed to spot for VIPs coming into Sarimbun and escort them about. After taking a quick shower (because I didn't want to stink in front of the VIPs), Kenneth and I proceeded to the entrance area and met the welcoming/road commitee.
We came up with this weird system where Kenneth would spot a VIP car by number plate, and then I would run up to it when it went to park and escourt the VIP in. Needless to say, cars travel faster than humans so I had to run up and follow each to its eventual stopping place.
After everyone was seated for the campfire, Chee Yeow asked me to help paint his face/ chest. So I start experimenting with the various face paints and ended up with quite a nice design on him, with all four colours.
Then the rest of the batch came and I painted them. This one really went wild, playing around with the patterns and the colour combinations. I distincly remember trying out a lot of weird styles like whiskers... Ok will update another day.
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