0106 Venture Blog

Ironman 2!

2010-05-05T21:28:00.002+08:00

Now we can say that we not only watched Ironman 1 together, we watched Ironman too (2)! xD

Anyway, due to us being busy people living busy lives, it was super hard to find time for a proper outing! But thanks to the insistence of an extremely cool person (ahem) we managed to arrange a time (:

Such an awesome night. Watched the imba people come in left! right! center! as it all came together for that 2 hours (and 5 minutes). But, enough about us xD Anyway ZJ was the first to arrive, winning the early bird award by hours when he arrived in the morning. The explanation behind his great feat: "I had econs lesson..." I was next to come, responding to ZJ's call to 'play carrom'. However, problems with my ez link card -.-" so we just stoned and waited for the rest.

And the rest... arriving in the following order: marcus (my ezlink got confiscated wth), amos and anurak (circle line whoopee), bryan (eh, you're there already? i'll set off now), and the rest in approximate order cos y'all just started spamming: kenneth, hiok, jack, francis, joel, tak. We were there to watch a movie, Tak was there to watch us buy drinks from NTUC :D (Y)

Dinner was the standard 01-06 fare (read: food junction). Luckily our food wasn't like Francis and Zhong Jun (read: burnt to a crisp). After -ahem- stocking up on essentials, we said goodbye to hiok, francis and tak and went to watch Ironman 2!

Movie was pretty cool. (: I liked the humour. Joel liked the car. And the ex-wife was epic! And the short scene after 5 minutes of credits wasn't really THAT worth it. But yea, since we were there heheh.

Thanks to Tony Stark for his awesome donation of art to the Scouts though :D

And that was an 01-06 outing (: Can't wait for the next one haha!

2009

2009-12-30T15:17:00.003+08:00

The year of 2009 is coming to an end. Our venturing year has come to a close. We had joy, we had fun, we had seasons in the sun. And rain. And forest. And Ubin.

Yesterday was 01's annual Group Celebrations. The BBQ was awesome, the parasites in the pavilion were lazy, and the atmosphere was one of.... i dunno how to describe. Ask some lit dude.

Hope 01-06 keep in touch. ((:

Our next batch outing will be in....

(Someone fill in the blank next time.

2009-10-14T18:45:00.001+08:00

Good Luck for EOY!

Hillary Challenge

2009-09-12T09:29:00.002+08:00

Haha just a quick post to congratulate Kenneth Kuan and Francis Yee!
Both RI teams first and second place in Hillary Challenge on Monday.
Yeah guess of them were damn imba. Haha and the rest of the batch cause we went down to support them. But yeah woo.

Pioneering and Night and Hike

2009-09-08T14:50:00.001+08:00

HEY!

its PnH!

We started off the day like always - buffing around. some of us buffed around and took the rope buckets to bradell westlake and the rest buffed around and helped to pick poles for the SU

After that, we started building our 2 hourglass towers, which we completed at around 12. the night hike was supposed to start at 7.30, so that leaves us with 7 hours to slack buff around.

we went to pick up lunch and drink bubble tea and then walked back and faced our greatest challenge of the day. After countless hours of hard work, we managed to eat 15 packs of nasi lemak for 8 people, thx to those who pon the act.

And it was time for phototaking (: it was not that tiring or anything, so we changed out of Scout U and then proceeded to packing up the great structure.

And we ate and started the night hike. Nothing much to say about the hike though, it was purely walking, running at traffic lights, stopping after traffic lights, getting scolded to not stop after traffic lights, and then stopped at the end point. RI. Some of us were "zombified" during the hike, such as amos and some ppl from the SU.

so the pioneering and hike were over. Whats's next? of course, the NIGHT. PnH stands for Pioneering, and Night, and Hike.

We were allowed to order Macs, so some of us did, and our dear VTL helped us get all the stuff. (we havent payed for the drink yet. $2 for non-upsized, $2.20 for upsized) and whoever has a G2 07 Blue Pen please return it to zhi xuan.

We lied down at the field for about an hour, talking cock and listening to people snoring. and in that one hour, we realised that sup is gay. so after that hour, we went to eat Macs and had fun outside the J1 room. it was about 4am then.

We persevered on to play cards, and some went to sleep. I was on a streak at the start but ended up as the asshole. Chee Yeow was there with us too.

Then we played, and played, and played until it was 7.15 when we packed up, went for the last horseshoe, buffed around, and gave out the interUG medals.

and then we went home, some of us went to eat breakfast, and some of us buffed around.

SEE YA!
hiok

PnH photos

2009-09-06T17:26:00.000+08:00

PnH (pioneering and hike)
Pioneering: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=105891&id=597022487&l=283d37b241

last act of term 3!

2009-09-02T21:16:00.000+08:00

this blog shall not die!!!

today we had a random act that consisted of pt + pm + PnH briefing. i like abbreviations!

ok for those who couldnt figure it out, pt is just pt, pm is post mortem carried over from monday, and PnH briefing is really just night (nike) hike briefing. pt was running rounds and rounds around the junior block, and also spending quite a lot of time at Raja Block.

post mortem was...confidential :) Everyone seems to be like Hiok, and Hiok likes to suan Tak.

and the briefing was just boring and noisy because of the SU.
------------------------------
and to make up for the past few missing posts, last wednesday we had first aid revision and tests. started off with PT, then went to seminar room to mug first aid, and lastly had SRIT.

monday we first had PT once again, then did a short session of knots revision, before we started R&R on the entire year. a lot of talking for this part, but it was good to just reflect on the entire year so far.
------------------------------
next act is PnH, which francis and i will be missing :(

till then! (psst, someone update whenever you are free)

Good Luck!!

2009-08-24T21:55:00.001+08:00

Good luck to everyone taking HMT papers tomorrow!! ((:

Acts starting soon. ((:

vpas are over

2009-08-12T22:56:00.000+08:00

i (kenneth kuan) has made a damn stupid, silly mistake of typing the wrong email address to send to. i felt dam screwed up and shitty after that.

oh well.

and today was the last of VPAs! but sadly next week no more act until HMT EoYs are over.

good luck to all for all the CCTs/assignments.

and shit i still feel dam screwed up

Camperama

2009-07-30T20:18:00.002+08:00

video of deo-spray XD

lorry journey

i posted pictures on facebook.

its public, so everyone can see (even those without facebook)

(:

go view it OTOT

Camperama: A Summary

2009-07-27T22:52:00.001+08:00

Just a short post to recount Camperama.

Gathered after school.
Oreos.
Bradell Westlake.
Mini-Pudge.
Leonard Leng and his imba skills.
Sitting in the lorry.
Carpark.
OTOT is the new Dubyew.
Tying gateway.
Bony!
Red ants.
Deo flamethrowers.
$4 Hokkien mee.
Go Fish!
Pavilion.
Next day.
Putting up banners.
Tak's $4 knife.
Roti prata breakfast.
Softball!
Mervin's Monkeyfist Madness.
Alvin the caveman.
Kitchen tents.
Angsty ice-cream man.
Blasting music.
Tying balloons.
Balloons within balloons.
Balloons within balloons within balloons.
Pitching dome tents.
Retrieving the tent which went into the sea.
More softball. (Knotball?)
Prepare for campfire.
Reverse tepee.
Kerosene bomb.
Dinner.
Campfire.
Durian shelling.
Movie screening which we didn't see.
Cycling.
Cycling even more.
Park connectors.
Foam.
The bridge which we crossed the long way.
Getting lost in Bedok park.
Pasir Ris.
Snickers and 100 Plus.
Cycling.
Back to camp at 3am.
Sleep.
Wake at 7am.
Foam.
Breakfast.
Unpitch stuff.
Lorry.
Siglap CC.
Bradell Westlake.
Unload stuff.
J8 and lunch.
Good to go?

Return of the Acts

2009-07-15T21:21:00.002+08:00

Test taking next Wednesday.

Ventures who have passed their gold standard need not take the tests again. Ignore what the excel file says about that.

For the ventures taking tests, good luck and all the best! (:

Acts are finally starting again.

Some reminders:

NYAA Kayaking, remember to sign your forms and bring money to hand in.

NYAA skills, wait for more info.

Camperama

NYAA CIP

And most important of all currently: SELL YOUR DONATION DRAW TICKETS!!! It's time to start if you haven't already.

See you guys soon! (:

H1N1

2009-07-07T22:27:00.002+08:00

Lull in acts...

VPAs didn't get carried out.

Sad.

But on the bright side, we have 4 less activities to plan next year. (:

Ah well, the SU loses out. They didn't get to experience our awesomeness. Haha. Joking.

But honestly those were fun acts. (:

Oh and MJ died quite a while ago. Dunno how that is related...

Think of it, we live in the era where the King died. WOW!!

And we also live in the era where H1N1 broke out!! Wow! Broke out like lions in a cage. Rawr!

We've lived through SARS, H1N1, Asian Financial Crisis, Global Financial Crisis, MJ's death, Den renovation, VPA cancellation, etc.

Work going on now:

NYAA CIP
Camperama

I was bored. And i'm livening this thing up.

What We Said During Venture Camp

2009-06-21T21:15:00.004+08:00

Hi everyone, remember the scene where we stood facing the sea(though we couldnt see it), heard the waves and shouted out our true feelings?

Well, here is a recap of what we said.

¯\(º_o)/¯ says;
Yo, say what you wish! (:

Chee yeow says:
Yo, say what you wish! (:

anurak says:
i'll be a nicer guyand spend more time with batch

amos says:
I want our batch to be more bonded

ғrancis>> says:
hope we remain as a batch forever

[RongJun][01-06][RMUN'09 PressCorps] says:
want us to have fun as a batch

hiokyang says:
i will never pangseh

Jack says:
I will do my best in whatever I do!!

Kenneth says:
I hope we stay in contact forever

-ace- says:
I want to speak out more and take initiative

Joel says:
I promise to be more self-motivated

Tak Wei says:
I promise to contribute more to the batch and myself

Leonard says:
I promise to be more selfless and committed

Jonnn. says:
01-06 is my family!

Taste paste [0106] says:
I promise to put in my best in everything that I do!

VLC hoohaa!

2009-06-16T00:12:00.002+08:00

On the 13th and 14th of June, some of us went for VLC (Venture Leadership Course).

Hoohaa!

It was a lecture-filled, sleepless-night, laughter-a-plenty, self-directed, network-forming, initiative-taking, knowledge-acquiring, and of course VENTURE-filled, camp.

(:

We had joy, we had fun, we had not a lot of time in the sun, but hey thats a good thing! (:

The lectures were very informative. What is venturing, leadership styles, RAMS, Programme planning, SIC (Scout Instructorship Course) and more! We sat through lectures, had activities, improved ourselves. And of course we all made a lot of friends.

We were split into 6 ExCos, namely: Wildcats (miao), Nitrogen (N2, enthu), Marlot, Zebra (later known as WhiteHorse xD), Hi 5 (1-2-3-4, HI 5!) and lastly, Sixers (Cub scouts?).

Each ExCo planned a detailed activity, this was for assessment by the Instructors. We planned an activity, with all the objectives and everything included. All it needed was to be rearranged and it would be a proposal for an activity already.

Oh and i forgot to mention the instructors. The people who made it all possible.

I shall use their scout names since i can't remember all their real names. (paiseh)

Our lecturers, Wisdom Keeper (Justin), Staunch Owl (Ruhan), and Roving Ferret (is that correct? i really dunno how to spell his real name. sorry!).

Our Camp director, Steady Wolf (Yang Chen).

And DC Smiling Ox (his real name is on his name card. Check it out! or knock at 12 midnight...)

And all the staff at Terror Sea Scout Camp who cooked the delicious food and allowed us to use their campsite. (:

As Wisdom Keeper taught us, APPRECIATE! And of course, ATTITUDE!

Hope all the ventures who went learned something knew and will apply it in his scouting life. Remember, we are Ventures now.

VLC!
Hoohaa!!

VENTURE CAMP!!

2009-06-06T11:16:00.003+08:00

hi.

venture camp was held last week and here is a brief recap of what we did.

First, we had the closed terrain hiking thing which was so fun but i didnt go, you probably know who i am now. So i joined in just before survival night, ready to go through a whole new experience. Well, Me, Sup and Ziheng went in to our location and Sup wanted to get mushrooms so we stoned and waited for him. due to that, we got lost. But we heard Alvin calling us so we found their location, then Zhi Xuan and Chee Yeow brought us to a new unknown location (they didnt know where ours was so we went to another new location which wasnt so good).

Upon reaching the place, we started thinking. How to build a shelther? Sup had an idea, but the ground was sloping so it was not so good so we changed to another place. We had to saw down many trees before making the area suitable for building a shelter. and we wanted to build a beach shade shelter! (: i went around picking up dead leaves and twigs for the fire (and that hurt my back) and ziheng and sup went to build the shelter with vines and long branches.

Then it turned dark. our shelter was almost done, we just had to spam leaves on it, and thus we went around finding big leaves. We walked around and this tree with big leaves caught our eyes. We were dam happy. so we tore down all the leaves and brought it to our shelter. But, we were not so lucky. The leaves had millions of ants on it after we cut down the plant and they started crawling all over us. GG. no more leaves. lots of ant bites.

we decided to leave some parts of the shelter to later, because now we better start lighting the fire and cook the food which attracted hell lots of ants. screw the ants.

Our first fire lasted 10 minutes, not even enough time for sup to degut the fish and so it turned dark. we were foaming there, saying "eh wth la so dark already how to find leaves and twigs" and i kept saying "oi sup... pick up leaves la my back pain". And ziheng dug a big big hole.

We lighted our second fire and it was a success! we had 3 pieces of chicken, sup dropped 2 into the fire and everytime he drop he will say "oi walao ziheng/hiok... knock me..." we didnt touch him but oh well.. lol. so we had 1 piece to be shared among 3 people. we cooked the fish too.

Then we went to sleep. or at least we tried to. One hour later we were like "eh why all cant sleep?"and we had the same answer "ants." So we took a torch and looked around and there were ants all over. So anyway we cleared some ants and started cooking the mushrooms. we ate them and tried to go to sleep.

4.30am. Me and Sup went around looking for dead leaves and twigs to start another fire to chase the ants away.

5am. We tried to kill the ants but we couldnt get near it because there were too many.

5. 30am Me and Sup threw away all the leftovers ( yes we were dumb and didnt throw them just now)

6am patch up shelter

6.30am finally get back to sleep

7am Chee Yeow came and we woke up.

So having 3 dumb people in one patrol is not that good. lessons learnt:

1) dont cook beside ur shelter.

2) throw the leftovers away

3) dont let sup hold pieces of food over a fire, and dont let him crack an egg on a groundsheet

4) when the cracked egg is on the groundsheet, just claim its sup's one.

5) dont leave your bag unzipped in an ant infested area

Second day was the run which was dam fun. Mr Raymond Chan asked me what "w" is -.-

Then we had an amazing dinner and campfire.

And on the third day we had reflection and we went back.

Sorry sup didnt swim today, i dam tired.

Venture Camp Pictures

2009-06-02T17:34:00.002+08:00

http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/album.php?aid=78097&id=540809573&ref=nf

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2027064&id=1182120747&ref=nf

courtesy of Hao Qin and Rong Jun (:

open house +prep

2009-06-01T21:28:00.002+08:00

I LOST THE GAME

opn house prep:

on friday, we had open house prep. when i first called the horseshoe, the sight was miserable, each patrol was represented by at max 2 people. for the ventures, many had either humans club or chinese remedial. despite that, we made use of the man power we had and brought all the poles we needed to the raffles square.

by this time, those who could make it reported to the raffles square. we then started work. hiok helped to manage the building of the swing and i managed the building of the gateway/ observation tower. we soon got to work, and it ran smoothly, tying the basic foundation of the gateway - trestles. however, i soon ran into some problems. we were short of some poles and had too many of the other. therefore, i had to rethink the dimensions of the gateway. it was soon solved and the height of the gateway was changed -again, and became taller, only slightly, by about 50cm, than it was supposed to be.

soon, we were done and started to erect one side of the gateway. by this time, mr yuen had come down to observe us, and soon after, dhm mrs tan too. ever since mr yuen, who kept calling me "eh IC ah...", had arrived, he was extremely concerned about safety. he was busy testing out the half completed structure, scurtinising every knot was tied. to be honest, i was quite impressed with the SU, particularly the sec 2s as they were much better then i expected and there was little "...can you please go and re-tie so and so knot..." that was said during the whole tying part.

after the second part of the gateway was erected, the tricky part came, the connecting of the 2 triangular things. i had meant for someone experienced like the campfire-ac 1st-pro amos to scale the uncomplete gateway and connect the 2 triangular things together. however, it turned out that alvin and jack were very tall and we could just use a canteen table with a chair stacked on top to reach of the connecting pole. it worked and soon the uncompleted gateway was standing on its own. seeing that the connecting pole was bending and the rope ladder's rope breaking when hiok attempted to climb up, mr yuen, despite my persistence and persuasion, said that no one is to climb. sigh. so we just snaked lashed about 5 poles at each end, to make it look like it actually could be climbed, cunning the p6 students into thinking, "wow". and so, shockingly, the act officially ended for the SU about half and hour earlier than expected and it ended for us after the banners were put up.

open house:

715 report. i arrived at 720. i was about to start to worry, so i called jack. jack said he was sleeping and had just woken up. luckily, mr yuen arrived at about 735 and came to our rescue with the storage area key. we started shiifting the logistics to the gazebo. we arranged the stuff neatly and francis got to lighting the charcoal stove. apparently, i was blacklisted by mr yuen and ms goh cause i forgot to buy marshmallows...

soon, parents and p6 students started to come. the rest that happened later on was pretty much standard, parents given a tour of the booth, some people slacking, talking among themselves, next shift comes in first shift leaves, so on and so forth. there were some gl people who came to ask funny stuff like, "can scouts be used for DSA?" and there were children who stayed at the carrom board playing as much as they could before they had to leave with their parents. also, quite a significant number, 3 or 4 (if my memory serves me well) of old boys turned up, sjut to see the 01 booth. one of them even went up to the table with all the old photos and pointed at one of them, saying, "hey, that's me!" on the whole, most people turned up for their shifts and the whole open house ran rather smoothly.

time flew by, and open house was over. at the end, the ventures in the last shift started to la la around with the structure,climbing up and down. we then took down the structure, and efficiently, everything, including the logistics and poles within less than 45 minutes and there open house was over.

anderson clover guides' gateway

2009-05-21T22:52:00.003+08:00

we (zj joel francis rj me) went to anderson

we took 3 hrs

we built their gateway

we the pro!

monday, wednesday and everything in between

2009-05-20T22:42:00.004+08:00

i think the roster is pretty screwed, so whoever wants to update just update. if no one updates then poor blog will just have a missing page in the book =(

monday we started off with PT, which was more like a run. we ran to rjc track, ran 5 rounds according to bryan, and ran to pullup bar to do 3 sets of half our max pullup number.

following that we went to a seminar room in JB which subsequently led to it being more like a chem lab with the ammonia from zj's shirt/swimming trunks. we had a lecture on orienteering, a basic run through of the basics like taking bearing, reading map etc for the not-so-new comers. then we had the more medium stuff like pacing and back bearing and the somewhat high level stuff like dead reckoning (super impt!!), handrail, triangulation etc. and we also had the random stuff like how to find the height of a tree (hint:use trigo), how to find the length of a river (hint: either use the long but imba method involving 2 teckos and a lot of walking that was presented by zj, or the dam short and easy method which needs a bit of brains presented by amos), how to find the speed of the river, how to find the depth of a river etc. for the last one, according to hq you stick the tecko into the water. if it doesnt reach the bottom, you know its too deep to cross.

and that was basically all we did for act that day! although after that there was a vexco meeting + joel which was really just an update on each of our work progress.

and on tuesday some of us had a really fun time moving poles from braddell west lake to RI while some other ppl also had a fun time playing interug but losing 0-2 to npcc. and we discovered a shorter route to get to bwl from the den, after going there 3974384 times. ohoh and i had a showdown with my nemesis, The Bee(tle)s, in which i was victorious and left a bit of them on my shirt in the form of bee paste.

and today we first had a shelter building lecture conducted by yanzhi, before we went to our 2nd home bwl to chop up some poles belong to *ahem* for firewood. bryan was the physicist, im the brute, and hiok/amos is the handicapped. and every one else is the dub-dew. oh and anurak is the dood who lost his phone in the poleshed but found it later on. and joel is the latest dood in the hiok/amos back injured club. and our vtl zhixuan is the dood who can fly up the wall!

of course in between all these stuff theres all the small stuff we laugh about that makes us this wonderful batch of 01-06, and typing them out here will not do justice to how great these stuff are. a very minor reason is also because my memory fails me =D

poles

2009-05-19T22:37:00.003+08:00

today,
alvin, sup, kenneth, jon ed, zhong jun, francis, jack and I had a fun time at braddell westlake

2009-05-18T20:28:00.000+08:00

Here's info about VC.
-Jon Ed

Date: 30th May - 1st June (3 days 2 nights)

Reporting venue: 7am at MacRitchie Venus Drive Carpark
Dismissal: 12pm at an unconfirmed venue

Venue: Whole of SG and outlying islands
Pack: Whatever you think you'll need (including FA kit (number not confirmed) & Survival Kit (1 per person) - inspection standard)

Skills needed & other stuff:
- Plot and Pace (bearing, plot location every 20/50/100m, control card, aperture card, pacing)
- Physical fitness (be able to run/cycle)
- Pack light
- Bring 10 stones per person
- 2 breakfasts, 2 lunches ($1.50 per person for breakfast, $2 per person for lunch)
- Staple, veg, meat required
- Emergency rations for 24 hours (sealed)
- Basha stuff
- Proficient fire-lighting skills
- No bathing points
- Scout uniform not necessary
- 1 piece of solid fuel per person
- Mess tins
- Parangs
- 2 maps for entire batch
- Groundsheet and poncho
- Patrols will vary from 2 people, to a quarter of the batch, to half of the batch.
- Sationary including OHP markers (EVERYONE)
- Ez-link and $10
- There will be inspection
- 3L of water per person
- Sandals/slippers optional
- Bring newspapers; about 2 days' worth

Survival Night:
- Leave you somewhere to survive for one night (in pairs)
- Prepare: rice, bread dough
- Build a shelter with available materials (vines, leaves, etc)
- Water procurement
- Build traps
- Prepare firewood
- Prepare food baskets

VC Briefing

2009-05-14T20:22:00.002+08:00

today was maths test. hope everyone did ok (:

and yesterday was our first official act in ages. TWO WEEKS. haha for other ccas 2 weeks won't really be a short break, but for scouts its shocking! :o

came late as Mrs Lim held her classes back after RE period. but we didn't miss much... just in time for the start of PT. -.- in fact, when we ran in, the rest had just finished their stretching. PT with haoqin was quite ok, but since this was NAPFA season hq took it easier on us, so thanks! haven't done much exercise in ages...

then came VC briefing with zhi.

here are the notes of the briefing:

- bring bashir stuff, first aid kit, 10 stones, portable stove, two 1.5 litre bottles, mess tins, rations, full day emergency rations, and everything you think you'll need.

- pack light.

ooookay.

unfortunately since both our VTLs fell sick on the same day ("Eh, you sick? Ok set, I sick too." -lol-), we didnt have vexco meeting, instead going to braddell westlake to ~~mutilate poles that didnt belong to us~~ cut firewood. serious. anyway, 02 didnt want the poles anymore.

before that, went to get the toyogo boxes with kenneth, kenneth. ghosh. by the time we reach BWL the rest had started working. cutting poles with axes and saws, picking up sticks covered in ants.

and soon time to go. with a full bucket of poles and boxes of twigs and leaves, we went back to RI. and then went home.

Run!

2009-05-04T18:57:00.002+08:00

Today, 11 of us, ok fine 9 of us went for a jog around Bishan, Thomson, YCK, AMK, and the total distance covered was 11.8km! Good job to Amos, Sup, Joel, Alvin, Francis, Anurak, Tak Wei, Rong Jun, myself (Kenneth), and of course Yanzhi and Cheeyeow who wanted/had to follow us. Terrific achievement for all, especially to those who have not done it before!

For those who are interested, the route was this.

Hooray on completing your first, of many, hopefully, 10Ks!

Campfire!

2009-04-26T22:33:00.007+08:00

Hey my first post on this blog :D
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.

Campfire's drawing nearer, drawing nearer

2009-04-19T00:27:00.003+08:00

First things first.

The product of today's effort and the effort of the past few activities can be summed up in one sentence.

http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=94378820990

Well technically its a hyperlink, but why bother getting all "technical" and stuff. Its a sentence. Yes, because i say so.

So ya. The day started with many people at the annual ORA walka-jogathon. However its spelled. More like a walk-a-talk-a-jog-a-lala-a-go-a-just-a-to-a-get-a-a-a-new-a-free-a-shirt-a. xD Have fun reading that.

People like Kenneth, Alvin and I (francis), ponned the 2.4km walk halfway through cos honestly it was boring and damn waste time. The rest went the whole distance then came back for campfire prep. We assembled at the drama room and readied ourselves for the transformation into maori (warriors?).

We went through the rounds of visualisation, solemnisation, respiration, concentration, execution, distraction, revision and finally PERFECTION!

Amid the chorus of "PERFECT!"s, Chee Yeow and Jonathan Kenric Trachsel watched with a trained eye, looking out for every little mistake, ready to pounce and gobble up any one who made a wrong move.

Ok fine i'm exaggerating. They were lying at the back and watching us practice in our pairs and triplets. I think they were bored.

And our guest for today was: YAN ZHI!!

He randomly came in and took videos of us. Even all the sad and unglam moments. All stored in his phone, on that little memory card. Oh the scandals of the stick performance. The multitude of sticks rolling aimlessly on the floor, the clatter of sticks on the ground, the random flying STICKS that can't seem to stick to our hands. Yes, even the one that dropped on my head. Some how...

I was practicing with Kenneth Lam and Jack in the triplet move. I think we improved tremendously. Ok, we didn't shout "PERFECT!" like the rest. Cos we are modest people. =D But we did do a lot of perfect ones. 4 perfects ones in succession. =D Must show off a bit mah.

Of course, in the clan of maoris, fights would obviously break out. This would explain the random "TAU POK!!!" warcries that occured, and the sudden appearance of a mass of bodies piled atop of each other, with a hint of a voice at the bottom.

Soon, it was time for us to leave the comforts of our cave and to venture out to the real world. Also known as the gym hall atrium. We were to show off our newly acquired talents in hand-eye coordination and our new maori selves.

First we watched the sec1s and 2s do their performances. I shall not comment on that. And then the sec3s performed for us their "Chu Yong choreographed" dance. I shall not comment on that either.

And then finally it was our turn. The stick dance was pretty well done. Not that many screw ups.
We heaved a sigh of relief when we finished. Then the sticks went aside and it was time for our manly side to take over.

O PEK!

And the haka began. I think we did quite well. The volume can be improved. And i guess sharper actions and stuff. But other than that, it was pretty good.

Then we had some coffee thing.

And then off to lunch. On the way to J8, we saw a bunch of cub scouts. Being the idiot i am, i waved at them. And they waved back. And then everyone started waving. And the cub scouts went crazy inside... All become hyper or something. Haha.

And then Sup suddenly became damn lame. And something about differentiating Jack came up.

So to differentiate Jack.

dy/dx= 1(Jack)^0 = 1.

So the gradient of Jack is 1. Whatever that is supposed to mean. Sup damn lame lah... Differentiate Jack from Jim.

Both still equal 1. Haha.

Lunch at food court of J8. We talked about stuff.

Then Amos, Zhong Jun and I camped at Bishan library to waste time until River Valley camfire started. The campfire was damn fun. But i want to sleep now and so i shall not write about it.

Sitck Performance! (15/04)

2009-04-16T23:03:00.003+08:00

Hi all,

Kenneth Lam here!

This will be my first blog post on this blog:D I'll be blogging on Wednesday's Scout activity, which was basically campfire prac.

We did about 36 pushups (separate from the SU) to start off the day.

Then, the dance commitee, basically the haka and stick performance group, gathered at the area outside the second level of the hall, close to the gym, to practice our stick dance. We started off showing chee yeow the full routine, ("level 1", then "level 2", then "level 3") but our "mission failed" and so we decided to practice (and perfect) our level 1, which was basically forming 2 single files and thrusting and catching the sticks. (Personally, I feel that stage 1 and stage 3 are the hardest parts to master). I think it was here when hiok yang injured his finger slightly and the teacher i/cs were to be informed. Then Jun jie came in and i think his region became the new "hot spot" where he held like 7 sticks at one go (although he said it was sup - who was later found out to be a good thrower).

It wasn't long before the decision had to be made - our position when we were performing. Chee Yeow recommended a pose for us, basically kneeling down and sitting on your heels (?!). But we decided it looked too unmanly (??). We tried it out, and Chee Yeow said we looked okay (well, not *** at least), but looking back at his pose, we were highly doubtful. So this was the time when we spent like eons deciding which pose to take. Amos apparently came up with quite a good pose (not the one where you put your leg behind your head). We tried it but it was unbearable on the ankle for most of us, after a few minutes (or seconds) as we were bare footed.

Then Ms. Alicia Goh came, initially to look at Hiok Yang's finger, which I think was rather ok by then. After a thorough examination of his finger, we asked her to determine if the chee yeow's position looked ok. Her sentiments were same as ours, thus we eventually adopted the "zi heng's stance" (i think he came up with it right). It turned out to be the most viable alternative to sitting, so it was then decided (or was it tentative?) that the front row was to sit down (yay us) and the back row was to adopt that posture. Ms. Goh asked us to sit up straight (not too straight) though, for the front row, as it would look distasteful slouching. She also commented on our faces when we were doing the stick dance-performance. It was then we decided to show her all the 3 levels of our performance, which she took a video of our expressions (which I knew must have been rather dull).

Thanks to Ms. Goh's resourcefulness, we managed to get the drama room (which I have never been into before) with a big mirror to look at ourselves as we threw the sticks. I think this was th e point where we showed a marked improvement. Ms. Goh asked us to set targets as we couldn't just spam throwing aimlessly, hence she timed us for 3 minutes and counted the number of mistakes we made (mistakes were mostly dropping the sticks). Chee Yeow counted an approximate 60-70 mistakes. This meant about 0.36 mistakes were made per second, or one in every 3 seconds [which wasn't exactly positive]. Ms. Goh then found out that we were only to do this (stage 1 as I call it) one time during the actual performance, hence she reduced the time span to 1 minute, and set us an aim for 15 mistakes. We made about 12 mistakes, which was a marked improvement. (0.2 drops per second, 1 drop per 5 seconds). Ms. Goh then did some psychological training on us, asking us to imagine the beautiful moves perfected and executed nicely, and she asked us to close our eyes, and open only when we were 100% ready). We did the performance again, and we only made about 7 mistakes. (0.12 mistakes per second, 1 per 9-10 seconds). Our first performance was usually free of mistakes, which was a positive sign. Ms. Goh got different people to share their views on our AOIs (area of improvements) and this allowed mutual learning. [What are the key ingredients of a successful performance? I would say the right attitude is the key. (a calm state of mind, a willingness to exceed). Of course, chemistry between you and your partners is also important.] We repeated our stick dance several times, till about 650, then we shared on what we thought were the strengths and AOIs of the group. Thanks Ms. Goh!

As we left the room thinking about the performance, we were greeted by music by the string ensemble (or was it CO?) we were mesmerized by the melodious music for a while before going to the field outside the 'gym hall atrium' for dismissal. I think that this act was one of the most fruitful, as many of us perservered till the end and really concentrated on practicing on our performance, despite the temptation for 'soccer!'.

一份耕耘，一份收获

As the Chinese saying goes, you reap what you sow. I believe our hardwork will lead to the success of our performance!

go 01!

Campfire Prep 13/4 (special day!)

2009-04-15T20:38:00.002+08:00

special day's blog done by special person. its also (e)specially late.

Attendance was all here except for leonard who had some leadership thing, marcus who didnt go sch and of course, not forgetting firdaus for reasons only he knew.

As you can guess act was campfire prep as usual, and this post will be on sec 4 performance. After attendance taking, we did 32 pushups despite having only 4 count. After that we went to the audi/gallery level and demonstrated the haka to yanzhi, who made a special appearance today. Thankfully we only had to do the haka once, and our thighs were spared. And yanzhi, being himself, could not control the laughter that was stuck at his throat and so desperately wanted to get out. However, us being trained maori warriors, resisted the contagious laughter zhi tried to spread.

after the haka was done, we "officially" started the stick performance (ill try to avoid stick dance, sounds too last year). First we went through the whole thing, with Chee Yeow showing us and forgetting some parts of it. Then after a lot of time wasting and very little actual work, we got down together and started practicing the first part of the performance, which was the solo/group part. we thought it was QUITE ok, but apparently from today (wednesday), we found out there was lots more to improve on. so we took only a very short time for the first part, before proceeding to the pairs part. at some time around here or maybe before this, the j1s had to leave for a meeting with the teachers, and they pangseh-ed us for the rest of the act.

the rest of the time was spent at the pair part of the stick performance. at first we just lala-ed around and practiced with our own individual pairs (except for amos who was the odd one out), then after that we got more organised and did it together, with someone to see and comment. the rest of the time was spent doing that, and we got better at the 2nd part.

after act was soccer with, firstly, 01 dudes only. then after a while 01 dudes + a couple of random ppl. then after a while was many people + few 01 dudes. hooray!

2009-04-11T17:26:00.004+08:00

the day started off for some at like, 9.30? that was inter-ug soccer against red cross. apparently we won 4-1. go 01!

for me, the day started when we had our nyaa lesson. today's lesson revolved around our homework from the last lesson, which was to prepare a 2-3 min speech on any issue. i talked about comics, and why i liked them. since we couldn't use the projector, i ended up drawing the comic strips on the board, so it was quite epic fail. in case anyone was wondering, here are the comics i was referring to.

yeah. so here's what everyone else spoke about:
- rongjun (time)
- joel (cars)
- takwei (conflict management)
- leonard (lies)
- anurak (AMD)
- hiok (being a good listener)
- sup (movie review)
- zhi xuan (life)
- amos (leadership)
- kenneth kuan (his 156 bus journey)
- kenneth lam (pastimes)
- jack (animes)
- francis (why he wants to be a doctor)
- alvin (er...shit...what did alvin talk about?)
- zhongjun (pen-spinning)

after our nyaa lesson, we went for lunch. some of us went to s-11 while the others went to foodjunction. subsequently, we bought bubble tea and walked back to ri to work on our haka. the first few tries were damn fail, since everyone kept laughing, what with all the "TAUPOK" and other random stuff. haha. then when we tried to do the haka again in a louder and more manlier voice, hiok suddenly zao xia'ed, making us all ROFLMAOZEDONG.

after some haka practice, we sat down for a while to discuss a possible 01 magazine/handbook thing, the hillary challenge, and some ymca stuff.

so that's it for today. lol.

jon ed
(still can't figure out the author thing)

Campfire Prep 2!

2009-04-09T23:45:00.006+08:00

Please note that I will be writing from the perspective of a haka group person, so not everyone's experiences will be covered! =) Yesterday was yet another campfire prep session, and the first thing we did was our haka. Think all of us would agree that this time we were more familiar with the haka than before! So I think as a whole we have done pretty well in remembering the lyrics and actions! But Zhi Xuan and Chee Yeow said that we still need to work on our style, like the basics, the VOLUME (which I dont know what to say about myself), the straight face (NO smiles, and again, the same for me), our postures, and the firmness of our actions, among others.

So we split into 3 groups, of which 2 of them joined to become one, haha. This was the lone group:

Anyway, after some practice sessions in groups, and correcting each others' mistakes, we again did once as a whole, before moving off. Kenneth Kuan's voice was really man! Haha.

Yea so after that, we moved to the space outside the audi, so that we could really let our voices out and shout! See this nice, windy place?

Haha, we practiced our haka more times here, and we got better everytime, making some modifications along the way, especially to the ending. Scary faces vs Jump? Haha. And please dont remind me about my 'scary face'... Lols, my 'towel' was seriously saturated from wiping all the smiles by then, every time before we started. Although it was meant as joke, I find this method rather effective for me, haha. =)

After a while, at about 5.30pm, most of us were restless already, and wanted to go play soccer, haha. Inter UG is this Saturday! But then it was decided that preparing for our campfire was more important...(hm...or was it that certain matches dont need training...? sorry!) So some people suggested gym instead, but then we didnt have towels! (or all of ours were already soaked from the smiles by then, lol) Someone said I have a Chiken mouth--->(denotes because)Foul mouth--->My 'towel' was really dirty and wet--->Wiped too many smiles, and some even required 'soap' to remove. Ok, understand? haha.

So it was decided that we would practice our stick dance instead, and i went to get the sticks, while the funk people, funked. Gosh, nearly switched the letter 'n' with something else. Anyway, its really cool to see them dance, haha! Hope their funk can be a success too! Anyway, when we were ready, Chee Yeow demonstrated the actions in the dance, and got us to try it. Surprisingly, it wasnt as hard as it looks! Think most of us got the hang of it rather quickly. Just loved the continuous left right throw thing. So fun. Haha. Especially when we get excited, counting the no. of times we can do it before anything falls. We even tried different variations, such as throwing the sticks from a greater distance, speed throwing, quad throwing-via stagger method and up-down method. Lols, sounds so complicated, but you should be able to get it, lol.

Yep, so after all the practicing, we had some fun, like taking group photos, and tow-poking/towing-pok! Haha. Then we were dismissed. No time for soccer today! Jeremy commented that Im too cute for haka. Could that be a compliment? Hmm...

Lets go on and make our performance and the campfire a success! =D

photos!

\

8 Days Ago - Campfire Prep 1

2009-04-07T21:04:00.003+08:00

Yeah, the title says it all, the act happened 8 days ago, so sorry for the mega lag, no one told me the need to do this blog until quite recently. So lets begin quickly to what happened 8 days ago.

First of all, Marcus was back, and we were all happy to have him back!!! RE ended early (again...) so that made us go to the den early to slack off. By the time act started, we were waiting for SU to form horseshoe, then followed by attendance taking, where due to dismal attendence, led us to pump the count down. Ventures however, were doing it as a batch and this was, naturally, done much faster then when we were with SU. We then went on to pull up bar to do more pull ups, 8 days ago

After which, CY took us to around Artspace where we began the rehearsal for CF 01's stick dance. At first, CY just told us to wait for the Maori sticks to be found by Jack and Ziheng, which turned out to be bomb long, so basically talk kok, like what to put on our bodies with paint during the performance. Then came the sticks, which were small sticks, maybe the size of the axes that the Troll Warlord throws. So CY told us to imagine about what the campfire was going to be like (like how Kirk says 'let me paint you a picture...'), and then told us to work hard to ensure that what we thought of does happen. Then, we officially entered 'Practice Mode', 8 days ago.

CY started of with lyrics, which were damn hard to say at first, but everyone soon got the hang of it. Then, he began doing actions, which looked damn easy to do, but we realised after a few throws, that for everyone to do it perfectly, it just will screw up by 3 throws or something. So we split up to two groups, thinking that the smaller numbers means higher chance of success. This proved otherwise, where the group will still screw up by 3 throws. But like Maple (the REAL ONE, not the Private Server), you grind like nutz, you will own like nutz and that was what happened to us. Throw after throw, we gained experience and slowly began entering perfection. Then, came the part where two becomes one, and the two groups began to combine again, 8 days ago

This time, we didn't screw up that fast, but the effect was unavoidable, and one 'clang' sound of the stick touching the ground leads to laughter and many more 'clang' sounds. This basically went on for so many times, we decided to call the first person who screw up 'hotspot', which resulted in hotspot galore left right and center. With hotspots, screwups and constant switches, we just practised the basics until CY stopped us to go through the next stick throw movement, which he perform with Jon Trec. Again, that looked damn complicated, but i'm sure we will learn it somehow. By then, it was time for dismissal, so CY called Venture Call in the Gym Hall Field, 8 days ago.

By then, CY and Zhi Xuan debriefed us and told us about spiritsticks, which were the symbols of leadership some long time back, and we shouldn't play with it like it was a poking stick or scratching stick or something along those lines, and then dismissal. Time now, 5.30pm, 8 days ago.

So only one thing to do, BATCH SOCCER!!! Sup went to take the ball as we left to the Raffles Square, 8 days ago...

hakka1

2009-04-07T07:51:00.003+08:00

i'm screwed up. Its 7.58 in the morning and I'm writing this on my phone in school. Anyway, yesterday, we had hakka practice or campfire prep. I came for act, unable to recall more than half of the moves we learnt on wednesday. As a result, i had to depend heavily on the pros such as sup and hiok to help me remember all the moves of the hakka.
so after the horseshoe we proceeded to the 3rd level admin block (the place where we used to paint banners) to practice the hakka. we were first unofficially split up into groups by sup, with me in the all blacks which included jon ed franis and i. (surprisingly soham pang seh-ed. just joking.)we practiced the hakka together as a full batch (excluding you know who) and we ran into some problems. first of which was that we didnt have enough of the hakka spirit and secondly marcus and tak didnt come for the previous act so they didnt really know the moves. because of that kenneth, the one with the hakka spirit embodied in him went to teach marcus and tak and the rest had to be more maori-ish.
throughout the course of practicing, some moves had to be changed. this was because we forgot some of them and implemented a mix of tee yong style and morris-junjie style, ending up with the 0106 remix of the hakka. after the change, it took me quite a while to adjust cause i was still quite unsure and still mixed up the v 1 and v1.2+0106 remix hakka. now, this was while we were being officially split up into groups with h!ok sup amos and i in 1 group. i was screwing up. i had to rely on hiok's moves. and when he made a mistake, i also made a mistake and i killed everyone. sigh. some fail. after the 3 groups had done the hakka in front of everyone, the ones who had been imparted the hakka spirit returned with kenneth, we were again split into groups with our respective teachers. they included hiok [who was sabo-ed], francis, kenneth, and sup [who sabo-ed himself]. amos and i were thought by hiok.
we went to the semi circular area of the 3rd level atrium to practice together. we immediately went into problems (caused by me). the problems can be sumed up by saying that i didnt show enough of the "hakka spirit" + i wasnt very clear with the moves, what came after the other. hiok and amos were helping me to try to get rid of this fear of 'screwing up' by encouraging me to do it alone. but i let them down. hiaz.. but in the end, after what zhi xuan had reminded me of about self motivation made me do it. honestly speaking, it wasnt so bad.
from then onwards my attitude towards the whole thing totally changed. i tried my best to remember what i had been thought and what i was told.enough about that. moving on, at about 530 we went to the gym (jim) field where we lined up in the v formation and took off our glasses and did the hakka. i must say it was quite okay, the strange thing is that in my row, i could only hear myself and not the rest despite having takwei behind me (maybe cause he's sick). according to the manly ram, we didnt look manly enough cause we basically, didnt look like the (real) all blacks.
nevermind about that. after that act ended and there was soccer training which, as usual, hiok tried to escape from and pangseh the rest.

Pioneering Act

2009-04-05T21:38:00.001+08:00

Pioneering Act started as usual, at 8 am at the den, and we lugged even more stuff to Braddell Westlake. This time we brought a lot of pegs. Like seriously bomb lot of pegs. By this activity, the design was suppose to be finalized, and the structure should work out. This time, the damn fun mound of some construction crap was take away, so it was some distance from the top of the fence, to the ground. The gate that's suppose to keep people out also changed. Due to the pass few weeks of people climbing over, a small hole in the gate became a big hole, and we could fit through that hole.
Being the number X pioneering act of the year, most of the parts were already settled and only needed tightening. As usual, by the first 2 hours, I ran out of sweat, so I was technically sweat free for most of the pioneering act. Which is some miracle. The usual things happened like tying stuff, finding poles in the pole shed, etc. This time, cause most of the time was spent setting up stuff, there was a new part of pioneering act, which involved avoiding/stepping into some sick muddy shit. Sadly, nobody stepped in, cause the marshland so sick that it emitted a sick aura, so everyone knew when they were about to step in.
In the end, the ground too fail, so for the front panel, the pickets all fail, so we couldn't bring up the bridge, which was suppose to be the coolest part of the act. After lifting up half the bridge, we took it down again, packed up again, and went to eat. And as usual, my shirt was foaming.

April Fool's activity.

2009-04-05T11:59:00.003+08:00

the act started during RE, when most of us had free periods. Or rather, those whose RE couldnt get into the semi finals, like mine, had free periods. yay. And surprisingly my form teacher did not take the free period to explain to us the wonders of chemistry.

And on April Fools', we had to have Mustar Parade. How i wish it was a joke. But anyway, we went down to the den, complaining while changing into scout uniform and then gathered outsdide the gym hall atrium. on the way, i found out that zhong jun did not bring his scout u and francis did not bring his PE. so francis must wear scout uniform for the next act.

Ziheng was at one corner looking at the mustar parade while we were standing there in the hot sun waiting for the mustar parade to end. Then the Guest Of Honour came, inspected everyone and luckily did not ask me any questions unlike the last mustar parade, i might say something wrong >.<

and then mustar parade was over yay. and we went outside the gym hall atrium again to stone and watch The Hakka perfomed by the J2s. wow. and then it was time for us to learn. yay.

we memorised the first part, then went on the the next few stanzas. it was a really long process, just like the time when we were practising for the dance for the previous few campfires. its like a process whereby u do something repeatedly for many many times. and its just like school, you go to school every day and every day except 2 days a week. so no one likes that.

but we perservered and made it to 6.30, where we roughly grasped the content of the hakka and could do some parts. Sup pants was like XS size so it was impossible for him to do half squat. This act was just mumbling the words that was on the paper. hopefully we can get over the memorising part sooooon...

Pathlight Songs Session 2

2009-04-03T22:58:00.003+08:00

today, after school and remedials and meetings, we went to pathlight for the second (and last) song teaching session.

after the first session, we of course learned from our mistakes. lets review what we should have learnt.

1) Don't come late

During the first session, due to 55 coming in late and us leaving a bit late, we arrived about 15 minutes late. This time, with the benefit of hindsight, we came in... 10 minutes late. The bus was late again, although we left a bit earlier... haha but anyway we came in 5 minutes earlier! improvement!

2) Don't underestimate the Pathlighters

Revising the songs with them was rather quickly dealt with, because they mostly remembered! It was great that they all could remember at least most of the actions of Gako, Father Abraham. Haha if it was me I might not have remembered so fast. lol.

i think this sessions are great for helping us revise our songs too (:

3) Stations are over too fast

like i said, they learn fast. so nothing we can do about it... for this session, even the long songs like jamaican farewell and BP spirit was finished quickly. so to compensate we had another station, which was BP spirit. i was in charge of that station... but since amos station of edeweiss before me took quite long i went to help them a few times (:

4) Sore Throat!!

quite a lot of singing today, being a station master. lol singing the same song over and over again 4 times after a while starts getting a bit sian... luckily people come and rotate and help to teach the song! didnt get a sore throat this time, but the Pathlight students must have suffered a bit too singing for an hour, so they were quite happy to go for a water break.

5) Sweets!

this time we got sweets! thanks francis. he bought around 200 sweets o.o in the end even though we give each person two each we obviously left with loads of sweets. where are they now? ask kenneth...

note: never throw opened sweet package (otherwise we tell your class...)

6) Don't believe Hiok

('SPRAINED ANKLE!) luckily we (sup, amos and i) managed to convince him to play though sheer willpower and a little phone-kidnapping. lol. but anyway he did play soccer, so good job! score like a hat-trick or something. we might have hope for inter UG! and tak wei was solid at the back too. firdaus as keeper? lol he not that bad...

overall, i think we did quite a good job with the song teaching sessions, and managed to convey the enthusiasm and fun of the songs to them! i was guide in first session, station master in second, and i feel that both are important. one thing to improve one could be the level of interaction with the Pathlighters, cos sometimes we are too focused on teaching and not on them learning.

On a related note, CAMPFIRES tmr! everyone sing loudly like today hahaz XD

pathlight

2009-04-01T20:58:00.005+08:00

before i start, ive uploaded the haka video of jun jie and norris to youtube so you'all can go take a look.
on friday, we were supposed to meet at 145 at the gym hall atrium but for some reason we ended up being late for the thing at pathlight. apparently, amos had realised that sup had the slackest job and wanted sup to exchange job with him. this was despite the fact that amos only had to teach 'campfire's burning' to the students which had NO actions. so there was a heated debate on the bus.
nevermind about that. we proceeded to the basketball court at pathlight where the students were all ready and excited about us teaching them campfire songs. after everyone was introduced, while the guides (someone thought girl guides were coming) which included alvin, jack, jon ed, kenneth(s), zhong jun, and sorry if i left out anyone...were playing some ice breakers, the SSMs (song station master) went to get ready at each of the 4 corners of the basketball court.
i had to teach father abraham, amos had to teach campfire's burning (-.-). rj had to teach thousand legged worm and francis with gako. i was overwhelmed by the first group's enthusiasm for learning. to be honest, i was a little, how shall i put it...i was a little shy or not able like raise my voice at them even though i was required to cause i was a little scared that i might say something wrong. but then, all this changed when the full-of-leadership kenneth came (i seriously think so, im not suanning). instead of me teaching when his group (which was the first group) came, he took charged and did about ~60% of the talking. i tell you the truth i was like inspired by kenneth.
from then on, much of the teaching went quite smoothly, i was quite surprised that most of the students were extremely cooperative and had a good time. i also had a good time, sabo-ing the guides and making them demonstrate the song to their groups.
after the teaching ended (which was earlier than expected), we had a mass song singing session and sup promised that the loudest group would be awarded the next session. sup decided that everyone was winners and so as you would have figured out, everyone would be getting a prize. the whole session ended and we had a debrief. a pathlight staff came to tell us that he was happy with us being so open towards the students :) another debate arose from the hot spot and sup debated with hiok about going back to play/ train for inter ug. sup, "dont pang seh lah hiok"... and so the song teaching session ended.

St Margaret Campfire

2009-03-30T20:37:00.004+08:00

Saturday, after Pioneering Act (the blog post for it is LATE), was St Marg's campfire. It started about 1 hour late, so they had to cut off some parts of the campfire. But the game, Don't Forget the Lyrics, was fun, even though not very original. There were songs that everyone knew, like Love Story or Poker Face, and there were also songs that were super cock, like Girly Man (pronounced Marn) that only people like Yanwei and Rong Jun knew. And of course not forgetting their own version of Earth Hour, they had Earth 3 minutes!

The campfire itself quite fail, but still dam fun to go with friends. And Yanwei has a sister called Chan Yen Mei in St Marg.

Attendance for ventures: Bryan, Anurak, Tak Wei, Rong Jun, Kenneth
Date: 28 March 2009

i'm BACK!!

2009-03-25T22:30:00.001+08:00

yay!! i'm back!!

after 1 year!!

let's hope things haven changed tat much (:

Job Week Quotes

2009-03-18T14:42:00.004+08:00

This is 1 day late.

Hiok Yang's sms: "wtf. got gay"

Francis' reply: "where?"

Hiok Yang: "auntie house."

That was cleared up later... Gay in condo block.

Gay: "Want to come in for a drink?"

Zhong Jun: "eh dude your house tio scout or not?"

Hiok Yang: "Lol. i just got surprised by a surprise party"

Jon Ed: "Let's go to pulau merambong for jobweek."

Joel, in response to statement above: "PFFFT (sprays out chrysanthemum tea all over nearby dudes)!"

Kenneth Kuan: "omg. Degen!!"

Zhong Jun and Francis went to Little India for Job Week day 3. 90% of the time, they were speaking chinese. Ironic...

$2 job. His Mee Pok cost $3. He gave Francis and Zhong Jun $2 each. Worth it?

Hiok Yang's company.

Cool lift.

Cool lift's brother.

NYAA Session 2

2009-03-17T20:01:00.002+08:00

attendance: jon ed, francis, zhi xuan, alvin, jack, sup, hiok, amos, joel, rong jun, zhong jun, kenneth
time: 10am to 12pm

location: 4C classroom (S Raja Block 2nd floor)

homework: Prepare a 2 to 3 minute presentation on any subject of your choice. Focus on delivery. No notes allowed.

2/12 done. hooray!

An insight part 3- road trip!!

2009-03-13T17:40:00.002+08:00

50km+

Francis- 50km+
Kenneth- 53km+
Joel- 67km+

Joel cycled 14km more cos his house is 14km away from Kenneth's.

We started at 10am. Ok actually, i started at 10am cos Kenneth and Joel met me at my house. And then we cycled for about maybe 6 hours. I think reached back at 4pm. Or 3+ anyway. We cycled along Tampines road. Ya the damn screw up long road that we all curse at during GTC. But this time it was a breeze. No kick sia.

We managed to reach Tampines Park Connector and from there we just followed the connector. All the way to Changi. So far so good, no one injured, no near-death incidents.

We saw quite a lot of cyclists. All look so pro with helmets and stuff. We were 3 dudes, with small backpacks, water bottles, Kenneth and I had gloves, we were wearing shorts, Joel and i were wearing RI PE shorts, we had mostly everything to look pro. Including our bikes of course. The one key difference between us and them pro cyclists is: no.1 speed. no.2 helmets.

A bit dangerous right? Cycling on the road with no helmets. But happy to report that none of us lost a head of any other limb.

How do you describe a cycling trip? Very windy, enjoyable, fun. We stopped at Changi Village to eat lunch. Quite an early lunch. We locked our bikes and chose a seat where we could see our bikes. So that we could make sure no one would steal our seats, wheel, or any other detachable part. There were a bunch of old dudes sitting at the table next to us and their bikes were nearby. And when they got up to go off, one old dude pointed at Kenneth's bike and then they all went to look at it. Lol. Like never see road bike before. Joel's and my bike got ignored cos ours were mountain bikes. Haha.

Lunch and then off again. Trying to out run the dark ominous clouds. Which we didn't manage. So we camped out at a pavillion. But after a while we continued cos the rain was sort of lighter and a bunch of dudes cycled past anyway. And we got royally wet. Not drenched. Just wet. Stopped at another shelter quite soon. Where we waited for the rain to stop. And then we set out again.

This time we were cycling along the park connector next to the Changi Airport runway. And we saw an A380 take off. Quite cool sia. Try racing it. Haha.

But the rain sort of started again and we got wet again. And the wind was damn strong and it was damn cold. Wind chill factor. But it was damn fun. Cos we could go damn fast there since the road was mega straight.

And then to East Coast park. Boring there lah. Same old same old. But damn empty. Very different from the usual saturday and sunday there.

We then took an underpass to Siglap link. And from there we saw Victoria school. Kenneth was angsting cos he had to go there later for CCA briefing anyway. Haha. Then into Siglap Linear park and to Amos' house.

Amos got sore throat. Damn funny voice. He helped us refill our bottles. Then talk cock a bit, lala. Then Amos went back to watching the construction going on opposite his house and we went on to Anurak's house. Actually Yi Ming's house first cos it is nearer the entrance of the road. Anurak's is just after Yi Ming's house. On the way out we admired all the rich houses in Amos' estate. The 4 storey giant house. All the rich rich one. Haha

So we went there. Hardly much of a distance. Honestly walkable. Like maybe from RJC to J8. Anurak was at DI, so we didn't bother bothering him. Joel tried calling Yi Ming but no response. So assume he was out lor. Sat there a while looking at the houses and see the difference between them. Then off to Hiok Yang's house. Again!

Hiok Yang's house. Nothing to say lah. We all see before. Hiok Yang wasn't at home so off back home now.

Jln Eunos to Eunos Link to Hougang Ave 3. Finally!! We cycled on the road most of the way. Buses and lorries and cars and taxis all rushing pass us.

Finally we reached Kovan MRT and then we split up. I went home, Kenneth and Joel continued on. Kenneth heading for home and Joel heading for Kenneth's house and then home.

Pictures!! For proof. So you won't say we scam.

The second shelter we stopped at. Quite a cosy place. Left bike is mine, center is Joel's, bike seat on the right is Kenneth's

Tada! Amos!

Lunch at Changi Village.

The first shelter we stopped at. Watching the great blue sea.

Our bikes at Changi Village.

Thus conclude insight part 3. Where we had an insight to the outside of 4 houses. And went around one-third of Singapore.

Den upgrading

2009-03-12T19:38:00.004+08:00

The den was not a very nice place to live in, especially for the hamster since its stays there for like every day except weekends. So there was this activity called... Den upgrading + flagstaff building to show the SS how pro we are!

we first started off with attendace taking like always and because it is the sports season now, it is kind of obvious that a lot a lot a lot of people had match support. although actually even if you dont support the sportsmen they will still own.

Anyway, there were 9 of us left. Me, Jack, Tak Wei, Amos, Rong Jun, Kenneth Lam, Sup, Anurak, Jon Ed. And 9 of us were left there, doing 8 pullups because some people late. So... we walked slowly to the pullup bars and were about to do when SUDDENLY. the head of bio came and talk to us. THE HEAD OF BIO DUDES.

and thus we went to start the Den upgrading + flagstaff building to show the SS how pro we are! activity. Jack and Tak, the two most imba at talking to teachers people, went to learn how to sew using a machine with Mrs Foo (related to one of the ventures, confidential though), while the rest went to paint...

We had 4 boards, each 0.8m x 0.8m. so the length is 1.6m and width is also 1.6m. if you cannot figure this out your maths cmi. Ok anyway, we took the boards and the first question that came to mind was "where to paint..." and so we decided to use our old AC spot that brings back good/bad memories of Ironman. Then Anurak the Aep started telling us what to do. Although it stated in the proposal that we must first outline the drawing with black paint, but it is still better to listen to Aep. and so we decided to first outline the drawing with black paint.

then after a long while later when the outline and background has been done. (it took us a really long time because there was only 1 paint can and everyone was crowding round it) We went to wash the brushes. with purtenpine. We went up to the toilet and started washing with Sup's imba method of "laying newspapers to collect purtenpine and the sink and then wash the paintbrushes by scrubing it against the newspapers but in the end still made the sink dam dirty".

and just as we finished we saw a sink at the far corner that was used to clean paintbrushes. hooray.

and so... we went down and started painting colours! (: since my painting sucks, I went to do the GC and AC thing on the green cloth. When i went into the den to take out all the stuff I needed, i saw the prototype of the cushion covers that was done by Mrs Foo and it was nice. much nicer than the old covers that had mould on them.

So i started typing the laminated paper onto the cloth and that was when Zhi Xuan asked if we could include more stuff on the green cloth like formal group photos, achievements, announcements, den rules etc. We talked a bit and then he started sleeping on the green cloth. That can be described as skinny pig.

Anyway, while i was sewing, we talked like a lot of cock. like from how foam everyone was in the past when bad memories started filling our minds to how pro we think we were in the past when good memories filled our minds. And also about subject combinations and teachers and many other stuff that came to our minds. It was fun sitting down there, painting and cocking around. as for me, I was sewing and talking cock also. Amos and Anurak and Sup and Rong Jun and Kenneth Lam painting skills were pro so they finished painting quickly and was waiting for me and amos to finish the tying. With our pro needle and thread skills, we finished it in a jiffffffy.

That was when we went to wash the brushes. again. this time with green and red colourss (: one bottle of the purtenpine was used up. awwww. anyway, Zhi Xuan asked us to finish up and go down for a surprise.... (:

We went to complete the second part of the activity, which was the tying of a flagstaff. So we went off, lala-ing around and started tying. That was when Kenneth called me. Anyway, we started tying and me and Jack was tying the 5 poles figure of eight lashing with a rope that we thought was long enough. But the rope cunning us and shrunk and thus we had to connect another rope, which caused us to waste like 1000 minutes. We only had 1 minute left when we had to tie the knot and the rope was fei. One part was super big and if could not pull through. So we changed the side of the rope and success! we did it in 11minutes. not bad for a 5 men team with cunning ropes. (:

and then we ended the act by doing 32 pullups because we were late by 4 minutes. those match support dudes came back and did 32 pullups too. Then we decided to dunk the basketball by climbing up the basketball goal post. We were too bored haha.

Anyway, we went to put everything back into the storage area after that and everything was a SUCCESS! then i gave the present to Chee yeow and he was soooo touched. partly because Yan Wei did not give him anything and we gave him some super nice present. The tennis racquet grip and some wrist thing.

JobWeek Briefing

2009-03-08T16:00:00.003+08:00

since no one knows who's supposed to update, i'll just briefly run through jobweek briefing last week (:

on wednesday, 1st wednesday of March, so there was muster parade was as usual, quite boring. this year's muster parade is much better than last year's though, since they reduced it to once a month and cancelled the marching part. however, still, footdrill is never fun. this time, the principal was down to do a check on all the UGs, and she went around and talked to some of the UG members. At 01, she stopped at hiok, who was in front of me. lol. anyway she asked him what he liked about scouts, he gave quite a good reply, and that was it.

oh yea, and the weather was screwy. giant drops of rain one minute and then sun.

the ventures then went to help carry mugs to the seminar room, where the briefing was held. 40 mugs in total. why? read on...

at the room, we waited for the SU to finish their pumping and commerce with the briefing. jeremy, the finance sect talked about the usual Job Week objectives, details, tips. Amos was taking notes for the ventures this time (and when he left, francis). thanks! writing notes/minutes all the time is damn sian ba...

jobweek special activity. i went with kenneth, zhong jun, joel, tak wei, jack to our station, which was scenario testing. lol one of the more interesting stations. we split into two groups, with jack, tak wei and me in one group. here are the four scenarios to be acted out:

-phaedophile (-.-)
-robber
-lazy unwilling uncle
-dangerous jobs

then came the first group to our station, Eagle! Jack was the phaedophile (lol). I was the robber and tak wei was teh uncle with dangerous jobs (we combined)

"you look tired... do you want to come into the bedroom and rest?"

long story short, the sec 1 we tested was unable to resist jack's charms and failed.

jack then went off to talk to zx, so left with tak and me at the station. luckily, at the next station, leonard joined us. he was a very good lazy uncle that gave dangerous jobs. potential haha.

"Hmm... can you stand on one leg with your hands raised?"
"Hmm... can you stand on that window sill?"
"Hmm... can you juggle these sharp knives?"

while nicholas kok tried to be funny.

Tak: "Freeze! This is a robbery! Hand over your money!"
Nick kok: "Eh oh no... look over there, i dropped my money on the floor over there!"

i must admit i am not a very good phaedophile. lol one career option out of the window.

last patrol was owl, and anurak joined us to act as the phaedophile. do check next year's academy awards to see if he has won the best actor award (he's the favourite) or check the news to see if he has been arrested yet.

all in all, the activity was quite fun, and i think that the SU also learnt and revise about the different scenarios. i was damn impressed with one of the sec 1s from owl. actually i wanted him to fail terribly so i could ask lionel to try and do a better job, but he was so good that i couldn't find any flaws. he even spoke in perfect sentences! omg.

back to the seminar room. heard how francis' station added an extra step lol. jeremy gave out the mugs to the highest job week and donation draw earners for the previous years. now u see whats the mug for.

the ventures then did 32 chin ups. while waiting for jack, i got owned by zhong jun in carrom. thanks jack.

and then we went home.

sad day

2009-03-05T19:07:00.001+08:00

On this faithful day, 5th March 2009, one of our hammies disappeared due to a couple of reasons. let us all mourn for it as it is probably dead by now.

BACKWOODS

2009-02-28T09:59:00.015+08:00

hey dudeys, if u are wondering when is this post uploaded, and where, then guess what, when all of u were busy watching digimon, playing cards or playing dota, and in Hi Ok 's house! lol saw some people wearing black t shirt that got 'Hi, Ok' printed on it. nvr took a picture as joel and i were foaming with the Jerry Can, yes the Jerry Can. ok, before we go into the specific details in backwoods activity, there was pre- backwoods activity...

Joel, Jon ed, Rong Jun and I helped tak wei to move some of the logistics to Braddell Westlake first as we did not have chinese remedial like the rest, as our chinese were all rather good. so we all took some stuff like saw, pa-rang, portable stoves and jerry can. so its was like everyone just chiong and took everything, other than the fully filled jerry can, so joel had to carry it alone. so we all left for Braddell westlake. when one hears this name, one tends to think, or have a feeling that this place is like paradise, fill with fine powdered sand, or whatever Jon ed's mom wants to describe it as. but the reality is that it is not 'Bridge to the West Lake', although it sounds like it, instead, it is a place that all of us dread to go to, or only me and joel + jerry can. background info: this braddell westlake place is situated just south of RI-JC, dilapidated abandoned school, foaming looking somebomb place, it is a place that 01 scouts like to hold more adventurous activities, like pioneering, backwoods cooking or NSPC preps. yap, this is where we dudes do stuffs like these. ok, so back to the main pre backwood activity, unfortunately, joel injured himself, so i helped him. it was really heavy that joel and i had to take turns every now and then during our trip from den to braddell westlake. before the activity even started, both of us foamed alr, literally and figuratively...

anyway zhi xuan called joel and we had to go back and helped the rest with the rest of the logistics. how did we get into rjc again? simple, we chiong in when some random rj girl was going out of the gate of course. but that random girl was going out when joel and i were halfway the overhead bridge, thus both of us really chiong all the way to the gate. thought that we could not make it, but luckily, a snap from Alvin, the gate somehow did not close, it remained open until we finally passed the gate, then it slammed shut. ok, let's be scientific, the gate door some screwed that was why. so we met the rest of you at raja block. saw 2 boxes but did not know what was inside, so i just opened the box that hiok was carrying and i got the surprise out of me, a chicken, not just a chicken, but a brown one, but not just a brown one, a living brown chicken one, yeah that one. the other box, which was carried by anurak, had many many birds known as quail in it

wonder what was anurak thinking of, with this weird expression printed on his face...

little quails...

so we made our way to braddell westlake once again, but with excitement this time, as we were going to watch chicken and quails being decapitated, and we were also told before hand that each and everyone of us had to try, experience purposes. the idea did not really scared anyone, as we were all still happily camp whoring...

am i even suppose to upload this type of picture?

god the second

after collecting the tinder and kinder, we started making different methods for laying fires: francis' group did tepee, hiok's group did pyramid while kenneth's group did cross-ditch which was almost the same as tepee, only that the hole i dug was not just a hole, but a cross shape hole. it was too deep so it was not as efficient as what it was supposed to be.

tepee

fail cross-ditch

after we were done with the set up of fires, yan zhi decided to demonstrate the killing of chicken instead of kumaran as he would be late. yes, it is Kumaran, dont refer him as Sir, or Mr, as that was what i did, and zhi+the vtls were laughing their head s off, and Kumaran told me to acknowledge him as only Kumaran. ok, so zhi held the poor chicken by its legs, surprisingly, it did not struggle then, until when its head came off, ok almost came off, then it shook really badly, not because it was in pain or anything, but it was just 'a natural reflex'. hopefully.

before the killing...

while killing...

after the killing...

didnt upload the video as it was too sick + violent+ holy bomb...
everyone of us screamed like crazy when we saw the 'natural reflex' of the chicken, after that zhi promptly de-skined the chicken, but with difficulty as he did not killed it fast enough, thus the chicken muscle was not relax, so very hard to tear it apart. after that we started the fire until Kumaran came. every groups' fires were da bomb big, da imba.

tepee in the making

who is that dude scratching his 6 packs?

while everyone was busy setting up fires, jack, zi heng, ken lam and i went to refill the jerry can again. going there was a breeze, but coming back with the fully filled jerry can was a blast. zi heng and i carried until we reached the front gate of braddell westlake, we decided that we couldnt da han the weight anymore, so we gave it to jack. jack was able to carry it without any problem, but he was grimacing, so i asked jack whether he could still continue or not, and he gave me another lame answer : "i cannot... but Jerry can..." the three of us were speechless... -_-"

so Kumaran came, he demonstrated the fast and humane way of killing the quails, fast and furious, the quail became headless in a second, or two. we should cover the quail's sight to calm it a little, stoke its head whatever, just to calm it, so that after after decapitate it it will be easier to de-skin it, wow, cunning. the little quail fell for this, it looked rather calm and it made some weird sound that sounded like this "twitch twitch". beheaded chicken before his lunch everyday, experienced as he was, kumaran twisted the head of the little quail, *snap*, or *piah*, the little quail became headless. it did not have 'natural reflex' afterward, because 'it didnt know that it dies'. all of us looked at the demonstration in awe. as u can see in the picture below, the j1s looked awestruck.

so the first three dudes to behead the quails were kenneth, hiok yang and kenneth. all of them snapped quails' head with their manly fingers.

then everyone tried, except bryan, who refused to snap quail's head.
i had to kill two quails, likewise for anurak, chee yeow and zhi xuan. there were extra u noe...

after that everyone proceeded on to the cooking. roasted the chicken and quails, taste rather plain though, but nonetheless nice. my personal fav food was the egg, or half cooked egg. simply delicious. so i kept cooking the egg, it was really fun, u need to poke a hole on top of the egg to prevent the egg from exploding, which happened a lot in the pyramid's group. and waited a while, then it was cooked!

holy crap, look at the broken egg and the burned pineapple. but the pineapple rice was nice (:

the broc and carrot were soft but plain, while the egg below was i dun noe, solidifying?

one moment that was not captured in picture was the dough that zhong jun made. some bomb dua. he left it roasted until it some how looked like a big mushroom, like zombie mushroom in maple, yap, this is the perfect simile to describe, as mushroom-ish as zombie mushroom. the dough. one other event i could remember was that i throw one screwed up egg into the pyramid's fire and after a while, it exploded. but when it boomed, the pressure was so greatly accumulated that the pineapple lit was blasted 6-8 meters away. initially we thought that the pineapple exploded, but actually it was the egg, as there was only a broken shell left, and some cooked yoke on the burned firewood.

after this we quickly packed up and dug all the bio degradable materials into the hole we made. not the carcass of quails or chicken of course. anurak loved the box of quail's inner organs and feathers. he said that it looked very artistic, indeed it was, after i looked at the picture. i doubt i can upload the pic here, but if u want, u can go get from anurak.

after the act, we made our way to hiok's house, which hiok, u should go blog about it. u noe best.

'Interesting' Backwoods Prep

2009-02-26T19:57:00.015+08:00

Yesterday was backwoods prep.

For the SU:
As you have seen yesterday, the VU was working very hard, lugging all the equipment needed to Braddell West Lake, like the saw, parang, mallet and lots of firewood. We promptly started on the backwoods practice session, collecting more dry leaves and considered using the bow and drill method. We knew that the firewood was supposed to fuel the fire, and that there will be smoke produced.

So basically, we did some work, and endured the heavy rain! =)

-----The Next Section is Only for The VU-----

For the VU:

Nothing much.

Ok, so we met up at the den, then went off to Braddell West Lake with just carrying a few pieces of equipment. However, after the stroll there, the skies turned dark. And it was about to rain... and wet all of the perfectly crispy and crunchy leaves on the ground! So we had a leaf collection fun-thing, and got many of the leaves on the ground in a pile safe under the building:

And it started to pour. Water from the skies.

Backwoods + Lots of water = No cooking

Yep, so that was how it transformed into a batch bonding session instead. For some reason there was suddenly a sparked interest in the batch to play truth-or-dare. Really puzzling. So we just played some games, like one particularly dangerous game:

Look at how Jon Ed is reacting...and Sup, if you were unlucky it would have hurt. a lot. haha.

As a result of throwing the ball around...

Wow, so cooling.

Yep, and then we had the truth-or-dare session, which was really fail because nothing interesting came up, and it should really be forgotten. =)

Then Chee Yeow and Zhi Xuan taught us some fun games, like the WHACK, oww, oww, obie, obie thing, and the tapping hands game. Haha, it was a blast. =D

Lols, some people were particularly cunning...(tap reverse skip, all in a second. lol)

Haha, after some games, and ghost stories...haha, the sky cleared, and we cleared up. (haha) We wrote a message and placed it on the pile of leaves, hoping that noone would remove it...haha. And to make it more friendly and persuasive...

And then we left, and went back to the den to dry the metallic equipment and stuff...before we were dismissed.

See how the sky rewarded us for making full use of the afternoon in the rain? =D (Took this on my way home with Alvin, haha)

1st session of nyaa skills

2009-02-24T21:34:00.002+08:00

attendance: jon ed, sup, hiok yang, francis, anurak, rong jun, zhong jun, amos, kenneth kuan, joel, alvin, jack, kenneth lam, tak wei, leonard

time: 10am to 12.45pm

location: seminar room 7

homework: read the 2 newspaper articles

1/12 done. hooray!

Backwoords Prep

2009-02-16T22:05:00.002+08:00

Today was backwoods prep.

Nothing much to say. Not because nothing happened, but cannot remember and think of safety precautions for CCA pre-hike log at the same time. I just got the order to do so paiseh no pictures at all. Just words.

Anyway, act started out with some pumping as usual, even though we had perfect attendance. That's something you don't see everyday. But still need to pump. Bzzz. Then we went to get the stuff to cut and mutilate like the bamboo some of us picked at the thomson forest. Cause i didn't go, and the people who went describe the journey like some foam, but the bamboo like some five-star hao liao, so there was a certain degree of suspense. At first, when the bamboo was unvieled from the trash bag, it looked like some god like cause it was actually green, unlike hamster poo. Then when we took it out, it felt like some god like, cause it wasn't dried up. By this time, it was starting to rain. Then zhi xuan asked amos jon ed and me to teach new members rope-tying skils. So we chiong to the den, totally un-demoralized. Then we saw something. More like the absence of something. The bucket of ropes were at bradell west lake from the pioneering act. Just to suan us, the rain suddenly got a lot heavier. Then we had to go the bombed up long way to the storage shed. After going up the overhead bridge structure to the canteen, and all the way to the stadium steps, in the end still kena soaked. Jon Ed the most sadded, cause he kena the job to unlock and lock the storage shed, which was not sheltered. Luckily, he was quite fast so he wasn't much more wet then amos and me. When we zhao all the way back to the gym hall atrium, we saw francis coming, with a umbrella. Totally dry. Then turns out the umbrella was zhi xuan's. The same zhi xuan with us in the den when we started the chiong. Bzzzzz. After the epic race for the ropes, some of us taught the new members to tie cool knots, like square lashing. I got the suang job of sharpening thin bamboo.

I swr sharpening bamboo is some kind of art. Like pen spinning, only a lot more different. The first bamboo to sharpen was hollow. With some cunning method, we managed to sharpen it. Then came the easier solid bamboo, which was even easier to sharpen. After the 2 bamboo sharpening, they were both foaming blunt. Then i moved on to copying francis's hax carving of the y-shape twigs to fit a bamboo skewer. After the carving of the sticks, my thumb officially gged. It gged so much that i couldn't 100% perform thumbaround with the mega small stick of bamboo. Neither could i do a 75% rev thumb. After i finished the stick, all three groups finished the bamboo containers for the backwoods cooking, which was dam smelly. Then we packed up.

After packing up, it was only around 5- 5.30, then had to go parade square practice founder's day procedures with 02. That one was the most bomb sian thing of the whole day. It was just footdrill with mega long pauses. Nothing much to say about the founder's day practice, except that most people find it difficult to differentiate between baris and contingent.

After foot drill it was about 6.45, then we went canteen eat abit then go home ci fan do cca pre-hike log le!!!

an insight part 2 - joel's house!

2009-02-16T20:29:00.002+08:00

so yesterday francis and i were cycling around, and since we ran out of places we decided to go joel's house. thinking it was quite near, we headed for his house and all we had to do was just cycle along yio chu kang road. pretty simple right? wrong. i was a beginner only, 1 day old cyclist. however we persevered and in the end, we met joel along the way, who led us to his house or rather mansion. and just as we were about to reach there, my tire punctured, so the last part my bicycle was making wierd random sounds.

once we reached joel's house, we parked the bikes and joel went to take out the hamsters! so cute! although the cage was obstructing quite a bit of view, we could still see how cute it was and joel fed the hamsters. so basically we all just stood around the cage and play with the hamsters for friendster.

then the bio teacher came out and got a bit of shock cos she didn't know we were there. and she recognised francis as her student, so it was quite an...awkward scene.

francis: hi auntie
joel: auntie ah
francis: oh...err hi m'am

but she was quite welcoming and gave us drinks! thanks! after playing with the friendsters for a while, we cycled to joel's neighbour who has 9 cars, and saw the imba garage and 8 cars. apparently the owner is out on a spin, so joel took the opportunity and snapped a few shots of the last car which he didnt have any picture of. and as you can probably imagine, he was grinning the whole time. even though i didnt really have any particular interests in cars, was still quite a sight, having a car parked on top of another car.

then we went back to joel's 3 story house and his mum offered to send me back since my tire gg. and poor francis had to cycle back. in the end, i reached home at 7.20 and francis reached my house at 7.50. next insight would probably be....amos/anurak/hiok?

Valentine's with the Ventures.

2009-02-14T21:32:00.006+08:00

Please refer to the previous post by Jon Ed to see what happened before this.

I am posting about the forest adventure for fun. Kenneth is at some hotel lala-ing. Hiok Yang had to go for some dinner kind of thing. And i just have too much time anyway.

This is how the activity went for everyone.

Ya just click on it to see clearer. So anyway. This is from the point of view of the 6 retarded people who went to Thomson forest to get bamboo. We went on the adventure of a lifetime.

When we split up, we first went for lunch. Joel and Amos and Anurak joined us. Us = Jack, Alvin, Rong Jun, Kenneth, Hiok Yang and Francis (myself).

So yea, lunch and the usual idle chatter. Then off to Thomson forest. On the bus ride there (bus 163), Kenneth enlightened us about why it was called Thomson forest. Basically, the long story is that, it is a forest in Thomson. So there is no sign or anything. When we actually got there, i recognised it as the "place we stopped to eat our lunch during sec 2 GTC". And Hiok Yang and Rong Jun also rememebered. It was at Old Upper Thomson Road. Yep, the screw up road where there are many accidents due to the way it is made. And Hiok Yang was recalling some cyclist who was suanning us with his bike while we were foaming during sec 2 GTC.

So anyway, picture this. 6 guys. 1 carrying a suspicious looking bundle. The bundle being 5 saws and 1 parang, wrapped in newspaper and held together with rubber bands. =D Hiok Yang and I, trying to be manly and being quite stupid, were wearing shorts, while the others were wearing long pants, after Kenneth's countless warnings of a screw up forest, they decided to play safe. However, Hiok Yang and I cared more about how hot our legs would be if they were in long pants. Anyway, this was a blessing in disguise for me.

We walked to the Fire Hydrant marker. From there, Kenneth roughly gauged the distance to where Kenneth and Hiok Yang had last entered the forest with the guidance of Zhi the almighty parang wielder. In the end we just aga-aga a bit then just chiong in from some place that looked like it was walkable. I dropped my Plum Juice there, to mark where we came in and so we had a drink to come back to later.

The forest "entrance".

I had the honour of taking over the position of Zhi and became "parang-man", AKA, "sacrificial lamb", AKA, "clear the path". =D Quite fun. Take the parang then anyhow whack and chop. So we kinda bashed in. Occasionally turning back when it got too thick to go through. With the rough and general direction of the bamboo in Kenneth's mind, we just anyhow whacked. Chiong through the forest and all that. Basically, we were lost and just bashing around.

So yea, all was fine and dandy until we stepped into an ant nest. Those giant red angry ants. For some reason, even though i was first, Hiok Yang got bitten worst than me. But i did was into a spider web while chionging away... I had to chiong so the others could chiong also. Then we went down slope cos Kenneth could see the clearing where the bamboo was. And soon we could actually see the bamboo. After going downhill a bit, we were there.

We stopped and whacked the ants off ourselves and then down to business with sawing bamboo. We were damn happy cos the bamboo was damn nice. Damn young and green and clean. And it owned the bamboo they cut for NPC last year. With orders from Kenneth, Hiok Yang and I didn't help with the sawing, instead, we walked further on to find an exit out. Cos no one wanted to walk back through the ant nest...

The two of us went further downhill and found another bamboo mini-forest. Cos you know, bamboo grows in groups. Then further down, we found yet another one. We were kinda bashing around and Hiok Yang was recalling the way they came in last time. We found the original bamboo group which they cut the NPC bamboo from. It was quite old and foamy. Haha.

Then, disaster struck! As Hiok Yang would describe it later: "... i was walking behind then suddenly his head disappear." And as Francis would later describe it as: "*squelch*" And everyone was laughing about it later. But as both guys would admit, it was freaking scary at the time it happened and both Hiok Yang and Francis panicked when it happened.

Let me first show you the end result:

Awesome isn't it? A perfect work of art.

To cut a long story short, Francis fell into mud.

For the long story however, this is how it happened, in high definition and with all details included.

Hiok Yang and Francis were just talking and stuff and Francis was swinging the parang around and clearing the way. Francis had a parang in one hand and his handphone and wallet in the other. Hiok Yang had a saw in one hand and some newspaper in the other. And then Francis stepped on to this innocent looking piece of ground, which looked just like any other piece of ground and had leaves all over it, just like any other piece of ground and had twigs on it, just like any other piece of ground, and had a tree nearby, just like any other piece of ground, and it sucked Francis' whole leg in, just totally unlike any other piece of ground.

That would have been a damn "wah thaaaaanks" moment if it wasn't so damn life threatening. My first thought was: "shit my shoe dirty now." Second thought was: "oh crap i can sink all the way in and die." Third thought was: "WTF!" All three thoughts came in within a second. And Hiok Yang shouted: "grab my hand!" Which was quite impossible for me cos i had a parang in one hand and my valuables in the other. And so i panicked and tried to use my other leg to push myself up by stepping on the "innocent looking" ground next to where i sunk in. And guess what... my left leg went in also... Now i just felt screwed... So without thinking and relying on natural instinct, i just stepped fast and tried to go BACK instead of FRONT, cos FRONT is probably more shit, while BACK is where i know there is solid ground and a good friend who can pull me up. And yay i got out =D. And both of us laughed.

We circumvented the now "not so innocent looking" piece of ground. I mean, after it has been trashed up by 2 legs, it just looked like mud. And Hiok Yang and i were discussing the screw up-ness of that situation. "I thought it was quick sand" and "Wah damn scary", kept coming up. But we walked on towards the sound of cars and the road. We stopped and then went back cos Hiok Yang could recognise the route liao. Went back and we were like shouting to Kenneth, Alvin, Rong Jun and Jack about the screw up we just went through. Then Hiok Yang said: "you all have to see". And we walked up the slope and they could see my legs and shoes. Alvin thought i was wearing scout shoes cos they were all brown and blackish. Haha.

So then Hiok Yang and i helped out with the sawing of bamboo and stuff. Kenneth got a deep cut from the bamboo. We all suggested using saliva. Cos you know, saliva is a natural antispetic. And being the random retards we were, we didn't bring a first aid kit or water with us. Damn screwed up right? But yea, the saliva helped. And we sawed and cut the bamboo into sizeable chunks to fit into the garbage bags and for us to carry.

We also found out that bamboo has hair. Hairy bamboo. Go into puberty liao. Meanwhile, my legs were just foaming in the mud. And Alvin, Jack, Rong Jun and Kenneth were all complaining about bites on their necks. Hiok Yang and i didn't have any. New hypothesis: Because the 4 of them wear long pants, so the insects bite their necks. The 2 of us wore shorts, so they bite our legs instead. Haha. And due to my mud caked legs, the previous bites felt ok cos the mud has healing properties or something. And the insects couldn't bite me liao, i got mud armour!

And we had our photo-taking before we left. Just to show that we were there.

Wow, all of us are inside.
Guess who the photographer was?

Remember our other batch photo? The one at the recce for SUTC orienteering? The "Hiok Yang phone on a branch" photographer? Go archives and check. 2008, march or april period.

Now we are Ventures. Level UP!!

Use vines! Got counter-balance! Natural Tripod!
This just shows that we are modern scouts. Mixing modern technology with our skills with nature!

Awesomeness upon awesomeness.

And then we bashed our way back out. The rest were careful not to make the same mistake as i. And i volunteered to go in front. For a few reasons. Number 1: I am parang-man. Number 2: my legs and shoes all screwed up liao, step into mud again never mind one. Number 3: its damn fun!

So we just bashed back out. And we came out damn happy and full of that "victory" feeling. And we walked back to my plum juice bottle to see how big a circle we went. With a bit of guesstimation. And then i stupidly went and took off my shoes. The results:

Some Michael Jackson.

But yea it was damn fun. And we were all talking about it on the way back to RI. Like how we got ownage bamboo and stuff.

And the bamboo smelled nice. =D

Back at RI, Joel and Amos opened the RJC gate for us. And we went den. And Jack and i went to storage den. To put the bamboo there and for me to wash my shoes. Thanks Jack! For helping me wash my screwed up shoes.

We then went back to the den with a first aid kit to aid the others. Kenneth was going off and we met him at the security guardhouse there. So he got the antiseptic and a plaster. Then back to the den to treat the other wounded warriors. Then the hamster people arrived. Jon Ed, Sup and Zhong Jun. Soham the Zohan had to go for his class. And we were all saying the hamsters were "soooo cuuute" Cos they were.

And after the hamsters went off with Joel Foo, people started heading home. Hiok Yang and I went to the swimming pool toilets to shower. And then both of us and Zhong Jun and Alvin went to J8 for dinner. I walked there barefoot because my shoes not dry yet.

It was a great day.

2009-02-14T18:11:00.011+08:00

by joned.

well, today is valentine's day.

so one might wonder, what does 01-06 do on valentine's day? of course, the answer is... PIONEERING ACT!

well, we reported at 8am at the gym hall, along with the SU. while the SU was being briefed on sec 1 orientation, the VU was dismissed, then we went to carry poles to braddell west lake. this time, the poles weren't as bad as pioneering act 1, since those poles were like, double the length...

we choose poles.

emo elmos!

imbalanced as usual. ;D

carrying poles through ri(jc).

see above.

to get into braddell west, we had to employ some uber-cunning espionage skills, ie climb over/crawl under the gate and throw stuff above/push stuff below said gate.

yay poles!

whose socks could those be?

omg it's francis yee! (rhymes with the first line lol!)

the group i/cs discuss i/c stuff. like "I SEE you have a cool piece of paper. can lend me?"

tired from carrying poles lol. and pioneering hasn't even started yet.

so, for the first part of pioneering act, the VU split into three different groups - one group to tie the bridges, one to tie the trestles, and one to...do something else (paiseh can't remember!).

my group was the bridge group, so we just sat around spamming square lashes to make the bridges. of course, our wonderful vtls popped by once in a while to help out with the square lashery.

zhi xuan ties a square lash. :O

tak wei ties a square lash while alvin looks at something in the distance.

francis is climbing a ladder! omg! oh, wait...

2v2 square lashing!

the trestle doods.

sup is the king of the bridge. lol.

the bridges!

hiok's human flag so imba. -.-

one of the station games for the SU, where they had to carry cheeyeow for one lap in braddell west lake.

another game type thing, although only the first patrol played it. they had to keep cheeyeow from breaking away, which of course, they didn't.

our super imba combo of two trestles and one back thing. they're not tied together. at all.

from the back.

owl got the special pleasure of carrying their ex-pl. (:

trying to set up the camera on timer so that a batch photo under the combo structure could be taken. in the end mr yuen helped us to take a picture. (:

hiok: "oh yeah i'm so awesome."

our dear vtl giving bryan a piggyback ride.

joel: "come on guys! wwjd?"

sup carries the mighty symbol of 01-06: a bunch of leaves.

so, pioneering act was quite successful, as we managed to pioneer a safe and commendable structure. yay!

after act, we split up into two groups - one to cut wood, and one to go collect our batch pets and buy hamster equipment. i was in the latter group, along with sup, zhong jun, and soham.

since the person donating the hamsters to us lived in boon lay, we took a pretty long time to get there. when we didn't know where to go, sup called the owner of the hamsters, then said that the voice sounded like a maid, because, and i quote, "i heard tagalog". well, it turns out the owner was a chinese lady. so sup damn jack. haha.

after collecting the hamsters, we took the mrt back to bishan, then took a bus to thompson plaza. we got off at the wrong stop, then sup went back on the bus while me and zhongjun were like, "wtbomb?" then we walked to the next bus stop. lololol. we bought the shavings, sandbath, and food for the hamsters, then took the bus back to ri, where we set up the hamster cage properly with all the stuff in it. and everyone was like "OMG they're so cuuuute!"

they currently don't have names, and we're pretty sure they're both female. possible names are "boon" and "lay", since they were from boon lay. haha.

and that's how the cookie crumbled for 01-06 this valentine's day.

Survival Lecture

2009-02-11T22:23:00.003+08:00

Hi guys. This is your flight captain speaking.

Actually, it's only me, RJ. As I was attempting to mug Bio with its action potentials and whatnot, Bryan kindly reminded me on MSN that it was my turn to blog today. I was like "Shit really?", and it turns out that shit, really. So here I am trying to type a blog post while struggling with my Na+ gated channels.

Today started off fairly well - beginning horseshoe with the new Sec1s joining in today. However, the Ventures got called off to Chee Yeow after a while. Chee Yeow, trying to find enough space for us to do "something", changed location a few times. When everyone was at the horseshoe, we used the "space" to do "something", which was go into pushup position T.T

With Zhi Xuan questioning us why we were in pushup position, for a few moments everybody was dumbfounded. The occasional answer popped up but naturally it was the wrong one. Finally, Joned (past tense of Jone) mentioned that incident which happened the previous week, in which things broke down a bit (refer to Tak's blogpost). In any case, after an admonishment from the VTLs about our batch spirit and expressing their shock at the incident (because they said our batch was actually one of the most bonded batches they have ever seen, go 01-2006!), we realised our mistake, and ended up owing 200, which we were about to clear off during PT, led by Chee Yeow.

The great run began. Start point: Area near Gym Hall. End point: RI(JC) track. GLHF. Chee Yeow started running at the speed of light towards RI(JC) track, with the Ventures following closely behind. Along the way, we met the Sec 2s and 3s, who also happened to be running. Anyway, about the linkway between RI(S) and RI(JC), some girl shouted, "Hi Chee Yeow!" at who else but our dear VTL. Possible scandal? Maybe.

In any case, we reached RI(JC) track alive, after breaking through the many obstacles and hurdles the track team had placed in our way, literally. Owing 200, we started to clear it off by doing 40 pushups. Simple enough I suppose. After that we owed 160. And then, we did 40 crunches. Cleared another 40. Then, Chee Yeow asked us to run 2 rounds round the track - for each round done under 2 minutes, 20 would be cleared. First round done was ok - under 2 minutes by a bare minimum, partly cause we had to stick together, but batch spirit more important than clearing or timing.2nd round did not manage though, since Soham had a stitch, so we all ran at his pace. Didn't really matter though. After this, we did 30 squats, leaving 70 left to clear. Giving us a water break, our VTL headed towards the chinup bars...

Well, here we are at the most dreaded physical training apparatus yet - the chinup bars. Our objective: Complete 20 pullups each, while the rest of the batch cheers unrelentlessly. Sounds like a plan. So we did. The main part was not so much the pullups - we all completed the 20 in the end. The fun part was the crap load of cheering. Well we cheated and used "01, 01 *clap clap* 01, 01 *clap clap* 01, 01 *clap clap* 01, 01 *clap clap*..." spamming it continuously. There was also the intermittent cheer like "01! OI! 01! OI! 01! EHBAH!" and other such uncontinuous cheers to spice things up. Apparently the group of girls who happen to be playing the clarinets of some sort near us were quite disturbed by our cheers - anywho, they stopped playing the instruments everytime our cheers got louder. In the end, we were asked to go to Sem Room 7 in the Junior Block to find ZX, leaving the RJ students playing music and doing homework and whatever crap to their own devices. Oh, and we met Wee Kien.

After assembling in the Sem Room, Survival Lecture officially started. What can I say, it was quite interesting and entertaining. After all, it was interesting because our VTLs made the powerpoint (:D), and entertaining because of ZX and CY's random quips about the slides (:DD). In any case, it was quite lala. Some Youtube vid was showed where some imba guy made a fire with the bow and drill method, as well as his imba embers. Apparently, in the part about getting water for survival, we realised that Zhong Jun was more often than not dehydrated, and Joel more often than not overhydrated.

After the Backwoods Briefing (we are SO looking forward to it. Right guys?), some info about Overnight was disseminated to us. It turned out that the plan was we were not staying overnight. Then why call it Overnight? Overnight was not fun without staying overnight, so we petitioned. Apparently we could stay overnight, but we had to plan what activities we wanted the next day: So how guys? Soccer tournament? Basketball tournament? Sports stuff? Cooking? Pioneering? Movie screening? Crashing Hiok's house? Zhi Zhi Zhi Zhi Zhi's leadership talk?

Finally, before we were dismissed or bersurai-ed, we still had that infamous 2n^2 formula to contend with. We needed to do about 13 more pullups, so we headed to the bars yet again. Lalaing, Chee Yeow asked as to shout "01 I love you" while doing a pullup for each syllable. So we split into front and back team, taking turns to shout each syllable towards the SU who were horseshoeing in the Gym Hall. After that, we were finally dismissed and ritually headed towards the canteen.

Muster Parade 1 + Batch Meeting

2009-02-04T21:41:00.004+08:00

Written by Tak

Well, hi, Tak Wei here, and its my first blog for the batch. Wow, yay. After about a month of acts I finally get to write a blog entry about act. So anyway, the activity I'm writing about is the act on 4th Feb, a.k.a Muster Parade and Batch Meeting. I think you knew that (see the title you dummy!)

So let me begin my story. RE was some fail, since my teacher-mentor didn't come, and it was declared free period, so I left for the den at bout 2.50pm, which was early, and I thought that no one else was there. But when I arrived, I noticed that quite a few others had arrived liao. zzz... Oh yeah, I and Kenneth's RE group, which had like 5 scouts, have the same teacher-mentor. -.-"

Act was to start pretty soon, but not before we saw Sup, Hiok and Francis funking in the den, and I getting the chance to whack a few carom seeds with Alvin. By the time all of us changed into Scout U, the other batches started to arrive. Wow, and the VU decided to slip from the Den to allow the rest to change.

Being Muster Parade, the unit started walking towards the Raffles Square (after all, we always did that last year), then Kenneth Kuan and Francis decided to blow horseshoe near the monkey bars, which left everyone scrambling, including the VU. (Thanks...) Attendance taking took place after that, and then Kenneth decided to size up there and then. However, this quickly changed when Mr. Chan started making announcements at the Raffles Square. With that, we quickly ran to the Raffles Square.

At the Square, we (as in the VU) formed up behind the SU,and sized up accordingly. Fortunately the footdrill by the SU wasn't so 'birdsh*t' as from Monday act, and we sized up successfully. Then Mr. Chan started to brief us about the new procedure about Muster Parade and did two dry runs to test out the new procedure. Of course this included Uniform Check and there was no longer a need to march into the square as compared to last year. (another yay).

The Muster Parade proceeded on quite smoothly, and with some quick announcements from Mr. Chan, we were dismissed from the Muster Parade, and thank the heavens (better known as Alvin Chua) that we did, seeing that it started drizzling. However, as soon we were dismissed, Alvin called another horseshoe just steps from where we were.

The SU didn't have act today, so after that, they were dismissed. Good for them. For the Ventures, we had other plans, and we went to confirm with Kenneth about the venue of Batch Meeting, and all he told us was to find a classroom and the security guard would open the door. And all this was done in the rain, so by the time we entered the sheltered Junior Blk, we were drenched with rainwater. We sat down for a while and watched an NPCC Sec 2 footdrill session, which turned out to be about the same standards as the Sec 2s of 01, before walking up to find a classroom to have our meeting in.

Our meeting venue was finally confirmed to be 4F classroom, and until the guard was there to open the door, we had to stone outside and wait for him. While ZJ, Joel and Amos went to the toilet, the rest of us was trying to enter the classroom through other means. Alvin for one tried to open the window with brute force, which (being God and every other almighty being) he did successfully. -.-“ Of course we still waited for the guard to come open the door, and he did, like after 3 mins. By then I went to the toilet and didn’t see the thing.

By the time I entered back the classroom, I was quite pleased that everything was arranged already. (No work for me!). So I just took a seat on one of the tables already laid out and waited for Kenneth, Hiok and Francis. And we just waited until they arrived, and they did, with Mr. Chan, who decided to attend a portion of our meeting. So he just stood up and with that, our Batch Meeting started, with of course our first and most important project, our Batch Project cum NYAA CIP project with Pathlight School about the organizing of several scout acts for their students.
Alvin happily told us that we have established contact with the school and we had to meet them up on Friday, which conveniently was Venture Funk or Venture-Organised PT or my Golf training, so I couldn’t make it, which wasn’t really essential since they only needed 3 people, so we got the 2 I/Cs and KK. Nothing much about this part since it was only in its preliminary stages. Part 1 done.

Next part was about Den Upgrading, which Hiok and Joel were overseeing, and they just reminded us about the details of the upgrading, which, amusingly, all came from the proposal sent out by them, but they just reminded us anyway and confirmed some other deadlines and logistics. Rong Jun was also kind to remind me he was going to his (and mine) Bio teacher’s house as part of this project, and I joked that Mrs. Foo might just get him to dish out some last minute Bio homework. Part 2 done.

Part 3 was the more ‘closer-to-deadline’ thing we had to worry about, Overnight Games. Bryan, who arrived after Maths Club selection tests, just told us that the only thing needed was to allocate the new 4 Ventures who will join us to their respective jobs and the games would be settled. So, other than some deadline changes and final things, this part was also done. Yay, 3/10s of the batch meeting settled, the time was about 4.45. Next part was about Pioneering Act, which ZJ and Amos was in-charge.

ZJ told us about the planned act on Saturday which was to pioneer and test out the new proposed structure, which was of a much smaller scale as compared to what was suggested during the first pioneering act. (More details please read the earlier blog post about Pioneering Act). Then he asked for help to pick poles for the act and he suggested on Friday, which is again our VU day of full activities. Wished I can help, but I can’t do much, seeing that I have golf. Part 4 done.

KK then went on to brief on the acts that would happen after the Saturday Pioneering Act, where we would split up into 2 groups. One group goes to the air-conditioned area to buy pet stuff for Sup’s batch hamster project, while the other group goes into the murky, humid, lala forest to cut firewood and bamboo for Backwoods. So we decided that the only to settle this was to, well, spin a bottle and see where the cap points at. I know, not the most intellectual of ways but one of the most fair. In the end, I still got lucky and will get to follow Sup to buy our new batch pet. Part 5 done.

Now, Part 6 was on Skills segment for NYAA, about this time Zhi Xuan also stopped by to check on the meeting. Our latest update from Jon Ed was that we had to go to some CC to do the cooking, but have too little stoves and ovens, and might decide to settle with 01 Stoves, which, from QM experience, might leave Ram a bit pissed. So we had a long discussion on what to do. Either do cooking and face what might (and will) become a logistical nightmare, or look for other options, one of which was about doing writing and PR skills. We put it to a vote and finally it was decided that we had to change seeing the possible problems that we might face. This of course was not nice, but yeah, these things do happen.

Kenneth went out to inform the VTLs about the change in plans, and Anurak went on to update us about the batch shirt thing. He gt 3 quotations and wanted us to choose 1. There was the cheap one, the not so cheap and unworth one, and of course the super expensive but good one. We at first didn’t mind paying more for the name to be printed on the sleeve, but then still changed to choose the cheaper one. Then Anurak wanted us to pay 20 bucks for our birthday presents thing, which was to pay for presents for other batchmates. Eventually, the scheme was just allowing us to pay for our own presents. But still, the thought counts.

So we made our next part, with KK back from calling the J1s. What timings to allocate for the Skills NYAA. Seeing that almost everyday I had something to do with 01, I really didn’t want another afternoon. Most of us wanted Friday night, but ZJ couldn’t make it and then of course others wanted to have it on other days, then others cannot make it, and to cut it into a nutshell, this was really CMI and everything really broke down (*sniff sniff sob sob*). KK decided to just carry on with the meeting.

The final part was about AOB, and we had some things like Den Duty, which KK wanted VQMs to check again about the dates, and of course about the Den Cleanup. Then there was still the procedure regarding the new 4 Ventures, which was to be confirmed by Kenneth. Of course, the final thing was that Vijay was to be our new unofficial VU-SU correspondent, seeing he was the SU Secretary. But other than these AOB, the meeting ended, and we started to pack up the tables again. Anurak at that time dropped his money on the floor, leaving us in laughter as always. But other than that, our batch meeting was over and with a singing of a birthday song for Soham, and a chocolate from Soham’s stash of chocolate, our act reached a rainy end…

Yeah, sorry for the short blog entry, I didn’t want to flood it with hardcore info. That’s what Alvin’s minutes are for, so look out for them. Anyway, as promised, here are the pics from today’s act. (will upload onto photobucket soon)

Footdrill Session - Venture Organised

2009-02-02T20:45:00.003+08:00

Written by KK

Today was footdrill session. Yay. Today was footdrill session that we were in charge of. Yay. Today was footdrill session that we were in charge of but did not need to plan. Yay! Today was footdrill session that we were in charge of but did not need to plan and we could lead PT. YAY!!

That was the act. The end.

Of course not la!

3 minutes before 3.30, Tak Wei called for horseshoe. Good job. 2 minutes later, people were still walking in. Includes Ventures. Even better job. And the SU were all fidgeting. What a sad start to a wonderful activity. So we started off with attendance taking, in which ventures were all there except for:
1. Anurak - Raffles Players
2. Bryan - Pon
3. Firdaus - Sick
4. Amos Liu - Late
5. Leonard Chua - Late (house meeting)

Who cares about the SU attendance. So after that was PT, where Francis, Alvin and Tak Wei led the Sec 3s, Hiok Yang, Rong Jun and Suphasak led the Sec 2s and the rest of the ventures followed me. The PT started with a run to Raja Block, and we scaled the 7 stories high Raja Block and reached the top all out of breath. After a quick stretching exercise, we did the first foamer of the day: Pushup crawl across 2 classrooms. May seem little, but it really is a lot. A LOT. Earlier in the day, I was thinking across the whole level. Then later I saw it was so far so changed it to halfway, which was 3 classrooms. While doing it, changed it to 2 classrooms only. A great deal of overestimation. So we reached the end of the 2nd classroom and everyone was foaming.

After that foamer, we went down 1 floor and did planks. 2 minutes of normal planks, and 30 seconds of one arm planks x2 since we all have 2 arms. So that is 3 minutes of continuous planks. So after many valuable minutes of whining, we started and the floor started to change colour due to the effects our sweat had on the darkness of the tiles. Naturally, the change of colour was more obvious for me and Zhong Jun and I don't think I have to explain why. And Zhong Jun's plank position was something like /\, although it should have been --.

After that we did the 2nd foamer: lunges across the Raja Block. And we didn't do the sub standard lunges which the Sec 3s did, we did the REAL lunges. The one where you actually lunge and can feel a strain on your thighs and asses. And guess who was on the other side of the corridor? The Sec 3s. So they were there having a water break and the traitorous Francis said,"Eh guys you see they 1 year older than you yet they foaming much more than you." Duh right they are just taking mega big steps. So after reaching the end of the corridor, most of us couldn't stand properly while some were still smiling. Right, Jack?

Then we went down 1 floor (5th floor), jogged across, went down another floor, sprinted across, and jogged across again. THis time, we did another exercise called Buddha Clap, although it reminded me of those emcees at year-end countdown parties, trying to hype everyone up and clapping their hands in the air. So we did 50 of those, although Ziheng said Buddha didn't clap so many times.

After the clapping, we went down all the way to the ground floor and jogged to Main Block. One reason was to, well, jog, and the other was to find out if we could conduct our footdrill session there. We went up to the 2nd floor and sadly, the musical groups were blowing whatever instruments they had and if we did footdrill there nothing would be achieved at all. So we went back to the pullup bars and did 8 pullups. Hooray. End of PT.

After PT we had a horseshoe at clocktower, where the batches were told their ICs, which would determine their fate for the next 1 1/2 hours. Sec 3s had Tak Wei, Amos, Rong Jun and Hiok Yang. Sec 2s had me, Joel, Alvin, Suphasak and Jon Ed. Ventures had themselves. So the Sec 3s did their footdrill at ground floor of clocktower, Sec 2s did theirs at 2nd floor of clocktower and the other ventures went to Gym Hall Field. The reason for putting Sec 2s on top was because their footdrill quite cmi so if we put them at ground floor, everybody else would see 01's standard. But that is not to say that the ventures footdrill standard soo cmi that they were banished to a land far far away. It's just that our footdrill is so good that we didn't want to suan the other UGs.

Anyway the Sec 2s went up and the actual activity began. I was calling out the commands, while the other ventures with me were looking out for their mistakes. Turns out that their standard was really oh my ghosh. They did not know what was Ke Kanan, Ke Kiri, etcetc. And when we tell them something, they need us to tell them 10 more times before they finally get it. As you probably can tell, the session didn't go that well for the ventures, who just kept adding to their count, and them, whose count kept going up. If we were to add 5 for EVERY birdshit, fidgeting, screwups, and everything else, they would owe more than whatever they owed in GTC. So from 4.35 to 5.15, we went through the basics with them, and they had their water break.

At 5.15, we started on Muster Parade commands, which was just sizing up. Memorising those commands killed many of my precious brain cells, but I was glad I memorised it well. The only screwup I had was saying "Paras" instead of "Gerak". But of course no one spotted the mistake, as no one actually knew what it meant. I think it will be the same thing on Wednesday. So we went all the way to the Orang Yang blahblah Pusing, and when we did the cepat Jalan, their marching was the ultimate omg. I wouldn't even call it marching, just a group of people trying to walk in an order and swinging their arms around like chimpanzees. So we had a marching session until 5.45 from about 5.25, and we made them march in 3s and correct each of them individually. A few of them had serious psycho motor problem, like Wesley who perma walk with right hand and right leg, or Gabriel, who was just dam funny. He march with 90 degrees leg, and his arms were bent.

5.45 to 5.50, we went through sizing up again, and it was time for combined muster parade practice. It was held on the ground floor of clock tower and involved everyone except the new members. So we just did the sizing up, and the ventures formed up behind the SU. After 1 round of sizing up, we went to the road between boarding and Raja Block, and did sizing up + marching there. Overall it was quite ok and acceptable, but far from perfect of course.

Something GL that happened. I was at the front of the contingent, and Francis was at the back. After they were sized up, I had to move left so that I was standing in front of the contingent, and Francis had to move as well. Then I gave the command Ke-Kanan Lurus, and they spread out and now I was too left, so I had to move right to the middle of the contingent. And we didn't just walk there, we had to move one leg then stomp the other leg, basically move in the footdrill way. So when we had to move back again, I looked at Francis and gave him a GL look. He looked at me with a GL look as well. Then we both just laughed. Not so bad for him as he was at the back, but I was in front and quite hard to control my laughter.

Anyway after the sizing up, they were dismissed and Sec 2s were told to meet me. They owed me 50 and they cleared it 25 pushups, 25 situps. Not normal ones, really sub standard ones. For example, ____ just bent his elbows SLIGHTLY. Actually most of them were like this, except for Nicholas who was doing proper pushups. And they self jack la, go cheer than only a few cheered, and they got owned by Yanwei who asked them to redo. JACCKKKK! And after that Tak Wei and Jack wanted to meet the Rec Comm chair and vice chai, Wenhao and Nicholas, who apparently couldn't remember his post. Anyway Tak Wei totally owned them, and they pumped like 20 at Tak Wei's pace.

Thats about it for the footdrill session. And now we have pictures!

Pushup Crawl with me looking back!

Jack getting ready for...

Jumping Jack!

Hiok socializing with the SU

QM Session 1 :)

2009-01-28T22:32:00.003+08:00

Hi guys this is RJ. Originally I wasn't supposed to be writing today's plog, but, as Anurak wasn't present for act today, I conveniently traded my Venture Camp blog post for this.

So, Quartermaster Session held by Tak Wei and Jack, both of them part of our very own 0106 batch. Generally as most might agree, today's act was rather slack for Ventures. Anyway, after the first horseshoe was called by the Venture Quartermasters and attendance taken, we got pumped. Acutally, we were pumping because the PLs and APLs were pumping for phailing attendance, so us pump happy doods also go and pump for fun. Only after we pumped finish the 28 then I realised the Ventures just got pumped by Tak Wei and Jack. Thanks.

So, the patrols were assigned to do the saikang associated with QM sessions: Kestrel and Eagle cleaning metallic objects, Falcon and KF doing Sailmaker's Whipping (jaaaack), Owl stock checking patrol tents and Hawk cleaning stoves. At least that was what was said in the proposal. I apparently saw Falcon cleaning stoves and Hawk whipping ropes though. Some switch.

Since the PLs go back to their old patrols to assist them in whatever they were doing, Francis went back to Eagle, Hiok to Hawk, Sup to Owl, Kuan to Falcon and Alvin to KF. Anurak, on the other hand, somehow joined Raffles Players two weeks ago after auditioning, according to him. So he now has LitRA, AEP, 01 and RP. Bomb. Prob because they needed to sabo someone to play the female roles, so might as well get one who will always do it. So I went back to Kestrel.

Since our job was to saikang and clean the metallic objects like saws, parangs and axes, we had to use sandpaper. When I looked at Eagle though, what they were using obviously wasn't sandpaper, and it turned out to be some 01 Official Receipt Paper. Imser, some foam, so I changed it for sandpaper. Later I found out Tak Wei had said to "Make do with it first", which is quite screw up for the VQM.

After all the saikang which was quite fast and 30 min ahead of time according to Tak, we went to go and help whip ropes, but almost everyone was stoning around talking cock. Only some were trying to even Sailmaker's Whip, which probably everyone forgot. Admittedly some were talking cock and whipping at the same time, like me *ahem*.

So next part of QM Session was distributing of cutlery, so we all went to the Den Storage Area to have fun. The APLs started to arm wrestle for the cutlery, and meanwhile the Ventures were huddled around Firdaus, very puzzled and suaning him a lot for his mat jokes.

"Bang who die?" "Hiok die." "No lah you die!"
"Bang who die?" "I DIE!" "Ya you die."

We all couldn't figure it out until it was realised that the first person who made a noise died. Damn lame la.

"How many meh meh jump over the wall?" *accompanied by a series of hand actions which probably had something to do with the answer*

Apparently only Amos (Leong) knew how to figure out the answer at first, dunno about whether we figured it out later.

Then got Francis' "____ can touch?" No one got it. A few people like Kuan or Amos (again, Leong) thought they got the answer, but after one more clue, they both realised they failed again.

Meanwhile the SU was having some lame joke competition, including some old jokes like "Pau eating himself", "blonde buying a T.V.", "A man walked into a bar ouch" which ended up being quite retarded. VU sent up two reps, Amos and Francis to tell lame jokes also. However they were so lame I can't remember them now. We kept asking Sup to go up, but he insisted he only knew racist jokes. Eeyur. Which was quite true anyway cos he started telling all the racist jokes he knew to the VU. Foaming, we went back to the den to get our stuff and to the canteen. Apparently what the SU did after that was rather *fun* (from the perception of the VQMs), but you'll have to ask Tak and Jack for the details.

It's Amos looking bored because he knows he can tell better jokes.

Tak and Jack sitting on the box, stoning and watching the SU.

YouTube random video from Owl Plog

2009-01-27T00:17:00.002+08:00

lol, nothing better to do, post/ publicize these hilarious videos for all of you to see, dun want these funny moments in 01 left unnoticed, so yeah, take a look and enjoy!

Interpatrol 2006 result:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enkKcwisz-0

Anu Got Pumped In SUTC:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rd7ysfmu8_g&feature=channel_page

more in youtube, dun wana spam in this blog so if ya wana go take a look go there yourself.

HAPPY CHINESE NIU YEAR

新年快乐！

2009-01-26T09:47:00.000+08:00

Happy Chinese New Year to all! Go out and grab those hongbaos that are waiting for you!

joel random- an insight into the ccal's house

2009-01-23T20:49:00.004+08:00

after buying scout uniform from the scout shop (yesss that 'bring them to coffee shop teach them about scouting guy' wasn't there), alvin, kenneth and I went back to our primary school. after talking to our teachers, asking about the borrowing of the home econs room and stoning there for a while, i followed kenneth to his house. which was super random. while waiting for the bus, kenneth had to call home to tell his sis that i was coming as apparently, there was a possibility that she would scream when she realised that her 二哥 had brought someone to the house and the someone would see her without her pants on as she sometimes did that when she was at home, even when kenneth was around.

we took a bus to his house, nouvelle park (how to spell?). on the way to his house, kenneth kept saying that his house was small...but actually, the minute i stepped in, i thought that it was very nice. i was greeted by kenneth's sister at the com watching something on youtube related to miley cyrus and kenneth's bro who was lying on the bed. kenneth later confessed that her sis was obsessed with miley cyrus and easily gets obsessed with stuff. kenneth took over the com and started with his patrol logs.

at the com, kenneth was sorting out his patrol's patrol logs. downloading them from his email and copy and pasting the logs into the big word document. oh ya, before i forget, kenneth's computer screen is bomb big, i think its a 22 inch screen. anyway, good job jack, for staying up until 2am to finish your patrol logs. i really admire your devotion to the patrol. as for ming e... your logs are exttttrrrreeemmmmeeeelllllyyyyyyy hilarious. copy and pasting from wikipedia (how a refrigerator works), typing the word spam 72 times, having more than 600 words out of the 1k plus words in the patrol log being not related to the patrol log itself and copy and pasting words from an online thesaurus without removing the links. and kenneth's longest patrol log is 10k words. i had a real good laugh. kenneth said he was sian of doing patrol logs so he decided to show me some of his movies, some sick parts in 'hot fuzz' movie and some funny parts from 'dont mess with the zohan (soham)' dont forget to lend me your hard drive when school re opens.

kenneth has a pull up bar in his house! quite cool huh. maybe we can have a batch meeting at kenneth's house next time (i wont mind the lack of space). haha just joking. sadly kenneth kept emphasizing the point that his house was small. honestly, his house is the type of house i wouldnt mind living in. it was quite cosy and nice.

when it was around 3.45, we left, keeping to my promise that i would follow kenneth to collect his photos and then go home. kenneth and i crossed the road and walked through some hdbs to the photo printing shop. on the way, as we passed a bicycle shop, he asked me about bicycles as he wanted to be something like francis, the cyclist. but sadly, his dad would not allow it. after collecting his photos, kenneth walked me to the from where i could take a direct bus home. on the way, we talked about francis, kenneth and i cycling to the houses of the different people in the batch. oO maybe we can have that some day.

today's pics + video

2009-01-21T20:44:00.003+08:00

Midweek Update

2009-01-21T19:47:00.006+08:00

Hello! This is Bryan posting on this blog for the first time and the first time since P6 or sometime during that era.

Sadly, this post will be void of any pictures until someone(like Joel or some other guy who took shots and would like to post them here) edits my post and injects some colour into it.

Moving on to today's act. Well, there wasn't an actual name for it, unless you use the one on the VU calendar: "Survival Lecture" which is epic fail description.

So at 330, horseshoe was called and Anurak responded to the SU breakoff call for the Xth time. Maybe you have to break a certain height barrier to be free of the urge to respond to it. After breakoff, Chee Yeow called a Venture call about 20m away from the Gym hall atrium, but Mr Tan wanted to speak to the entire group, so it ended up being a "prank call".

Before I forget, welcome to the 4 new members of the Venture Batch; Amos, Kenneth, Ziheng, and Leonard.

Then we had PT (which, "by the way, means Physical Training" as quoted by Sup). The cunning Chee Yeow took careful measures to ensure that all muscles in our body were exercised well. Some examples were arms, legs, brains, abs (thanks to Anurak), and etc etc. Dunno why, but the leg training route was much more curvy than usual. Brain training involved finding X = Y^2 where X is the number of crunches we had to do and Y was some fail because it was always expressed in surd form! Should have done it in decimals, so there'd be a better challenge. But I'm not complaining, X = 35 is quite enough for me and probably the floor of the 3rd floor raja block.( I wouldn't be surprised if the sweat marks are permanent, especially Zhong Jun's)

And while training leg muscles, I got knocked down by a stationary car. Actually it was not stationary per se, because we all know that we are moving at 29,800 metres per second around the Sun. SO technically the so called "stationary car" was moving at 29,800 metres per second and I was moving at 29,801.5 metres per second, and we sort of crashed into each other. Something like that is inevitable, sadly. But I wonder why no one else has met with such an accident.

At 4+, we reached the Pull-up bars and since the SU was doing 15 pullups we had to do 16 because VU > SU. Or maybe because there exists some competitive spirit within the VTLs that cause them to automatically assume that VU > SU. Which may or may not necessarily be true. In the end, CCALs and ACCALs had to do 16, and the rest had to do 8. I think.

You see, a PT session is like a snowflake. No two are alike. In terms of distance ran, number of pull-ups done, number of push-ups, number of crunches, number of accidents with a stationary car. So its worthwhile to spend time commenting on every single PT session!

Now back to the REAL act of the day. The batch of 21 - 2 = 19 proceeded to the Junior Block. Supposed to be J1-07, but ended up as a scam because we got J1-03 instead. The main part of the act would be to introduce to the new members of 01 what we do regularly. Which according to Zhi Xuan, doesn't exist. I mean, he said something along the lines of "We have no routine activities in 01". But I'm getting ahead of myself. So there were like 7 presentations, ranging from 10++ slides (Money Matter$) to a really brief 4 slide show (CIP).

So basically there was Routine activities, by Sup, Rong Jun and Takwei. SPammed all the "routine" activities like PT in big, large, size 44 words, etc etc. The highlight of the powerpoint presentation was when the slide showed "Nike Hike" instead of, "Night Hight". Wait, I meant "Nike Hight". I meant "Night Hike". In other news, we caught a glimpse of the real Anurak in a picture.

In the presentation about camps, we learnt that VTC'09 is made up of 9 question marks in a row, and 2007 was a year with no camps as Francis had pictures for only 2006 and 2008.

THen came the Alvin "One-Man-Show" batch project presentation. He expertly analysed that all the 01-2006 batch projects have failed to various extents in 2007 and 2008. Just hope that this year won't be such a fail year I guess.

Then somewhere in between (Dang, I forgot the order) Anurak impressed us all with the 10++ slideshow Money Matter$ (I couldn't find the euro sign) and the importance of Jobweek and Donation Draw. Actually we all know that money is important, don't we?

CIP presentation. What to say? Very short. Like these sentences. We learnt that an ingenious board game designed by some people was inspired by the iPod game of the same mechanics! That increases the number of uses for an iPod to 357,392,102.

During the campfires presentation, we found out that 700 people came to our 01 Annual Show in 2008!(Thanks to Zhi Xuan). We also saw the impressive display of light energy created by the Owl Patrol in AC. Then came the 01 Annual Show 2007 Fantasma videos. All 18 minutes of them. For some reason, Joel had to click "Watch in high quality" when a video was fully loaded so we had to restart buffering. But luckily RIWLAN >>>>>>>> RI-Boarding internet, keep that in mind if anyone decides to live in boarding. Also shown was the Venture dance in that same Annual Show.

So at 620, Kenneth(the CCAL) taught the new members of our batch Horseshoe-ing 101. So now they should be very proficient.

Shortly after we were dismissed, the manly J1s showed us an 11.5 metre sherlashed pole which was supposed to be so much better than the one we built on saturday. But still, cannot lift up without seriously endangering the lives of anyone in the 11.5metre radius. Lol.

So that's all that happened today. Yay!

2009-01-17T19:50:00.005+08:00

hi.

today was PIONEERING. yay. we gathered at the den at 8am, actually the activity was supposed to start at 8.30 but since we were so enthu we decided to come at 8. And the moment i went in i saw Amos Francis and Zhong Jun playing carom. i slept on the sofa.

and woke up when more people came and soon we were out of the den at the pole shed. Sup said we had a lot to carry and there were many bundles at the pole shed so he was right. i was left. after about 15 minutes of "sian... so many" and "WHY NO LORRY"... we started carrying bundles by bundles to braddell westlake.

i carried with sup, and sup carried with me. and amos carried alone. so me + sup = amos. and after about 10 metres we decided to take a break. the 4 poles were made of some dense material, maybe its some kind of thai product. Anyway, we carried past the RJC side, it was tough but we made it to the gate, and then there was another foam long way bevore we reached braddell westlake. but first we had to cross the overhead bridge. and all of us foamed. but it was still ok (:

FINALLY. we reached. and now activity officialy starts. Bryan oeverslept at the right time though, he didnt have to carry the poles. slacker. but anyway, he did came, which would be a surprise if we were still in year 2008.

anyway, zhonn jun, the i/c of this activity, was hardworking and aligned the poles for us. thanks. and then we started shear lashing. it seemed easy but when you shear 2 poles of uneven length and some are not even straight, it doesnt seem so easy. its like trying to frap with no space at all. imagine having to go through so much to get to the frapping but you are faced with an impossible problem. we just used shear force for shear lashing though. nice joke.

after a while i was told to go into the pole shed for some fun. indeed i had some fun picking 30 3m poles. it was tough but we eventually manage to get 27 poles. which was quite amazing. the place was super foam though, its like having a nightmare while being surrounded in poles.

anyway, after that i came back to reality and started shear lashing again AND WE MANAGE TO SHEAR LASH EVERYTHING WOOHOO. so we await the part where we erect the structure, or rather, the sheared poles to see if they can stand.

hmm, the outcome was not very pleasing. the shear lashed pole or long pole bent, so it was an obvious fail. no matter how hard we tie it would be no use. sobs. sobs. sobs. anyway, we made an achievement though, we tied everything yay.

zhi xuan munching on bread

joel drooling

anurak angsting

but in the end... the verdict was that we had to untie everything because there is no use for them anyway. and like what sup said, we cant leave the ropes here, because "the rats will hyperfang everything".

we were also talking about thailand, and sup wanted to bring us there some day some time to say some "ladyboys" LOL.

anyway, we had to untie everything (: it felt bad because we took so much effort to shear lash everything but still it was fun because no one died.

sup knocked into the pull up bar... jaaaack

amos falling down.. jaaaaaaaack

joel falling down with a smile... jaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaack

jaaaaack untucked his shirt. omg!

ccal loves 01

BYE! (:

hiok

Batch Meeting

2009-01-14T21:07:00.003+08:00

Today for act we had batch meeting. When I arrived at the Gym Hall with my other RE people, we found out that we had 3 new members joining 01 this year, Ziheng, Kenneth, and Amos, and all of them going to join the VU. From having an undersized batch to an oversized batch was no mean feat, but it was made possible thanks to our ambassadors Hiok Yang and Sup.

Anyway, since it was batch meeting, those who had scout uniform went to change before reporting in for horseshoe. Even after the horseshoe, some members were still coming in, so they were considered late. We went on to pump for a while with the PLs, before the J1s announced the PT I/Cs for the SU batches. After horseshoe, the ventures went to get their writing materials for batch meeting, and proceeded on to meet with our VTLs, which proved to be a cunning task.

We went wandered around the first 3 levels of the Raja block, due to some weird miscommunication between our dear CCAL and VTL. Joel joined us then, as he finished his prize presentation rehearsal. After quite awhile, Zhixuan finally revealed his hiding spot, which was in RJC.

Zhixuan designated the generic meeting spot for everyone in RJC, which was less than 50m from the linkway between RI and RJC(or RIJC). We spent awhile forming the horseshoe shape, which turned out pentagon, and got down to the meeting proper.

The batch meeting seemed more fruitful than any other batch meetings we had, and the scout uniform really helped in making the atmosphere more formal. Topics we touched on included our reflections on our sec 3 journey in 01, our goals for our venturing year, and our job scopes.

Before I forget, our VTLs got us up to participate in a lame circular activity. Quite obvious what it was from the start. It started out with a backrub, and I got to massage the shoulders of the bony god, before changing direction and massaging Firdaus. Due to our wealth of knowledge and experiences in batch bonding activities, we guessed what was coming next, and we guessed right. We sat on each others' lap in a circle, and the whole idea of the game was that if we did it right, we wouldn't really feel the weight of the guy sitting in front of you.

Anyway, Chee Yeow got Zhong Jun to draft out a rough timetable for future Pioneering Acts, in order to gage the time needed per act, so as a helpful co I/C, I closed one ear on the meeting to help out with estimating the manpower and time needed.

When the meeting was going to end, the VTLs passed around a stack of coloured paper for each of us to choose from. It wasn't really important, as they collected it back after the batch meeting ended as there wasn't enough time. -.-

We were running out of time, so our VTLs decided to dismiss us, and maybe continue with the coloured paper activity another day.

End of story.

Amos

Mini-Orientation

2009-01-13T22:11:00.004+08:00

Monday, first day of the week, however, it was also the first PSGM session, and so all the sad class-based PSLs had to go to see their classes while the lucky ones like us waited for them. The SU also had activity; for them, it was a sort of a random PT act. Heard that the new PSLs had to do 200 push-ups. I say Good Job.

PSGM ends at 4.30, so the rest of us had a mini batch meeting to go over the agenda before the actual meeting after act. At about 4.40 everyone was there (woohoo everyone except marcus and soham, who had valid reasons), so we put our stuffs back and reported to third floor, admin block, to start the grand gala opening venture act (not counting Raffles Trail) of 2009…

**MINI ORIENTATION**

Woohoo. Session was hosted by Zhi Xuan and Chee Yeow, who were lubbing along a pretty shifty plastic bag. Full of suspicious shifty stuff… more on that later. First task of the day: All of the ventures linked arms and formed into a circle, with Chee Yeow inside. Then he tried to get out and we’re supposed to contain him. Haha, simple enough.

We failed.

Anyway, because we were all reeling from Chee Yeow’s surprising strength, we got another chance. This time, with experience, Chee Yeow had no chance of escape. To be sure we can ask Bryan to calculate his chances, but its quite pointless la. Next, the VTLs decided to switch mode to ‘cunning’ and get our beloved CCAL to join Chee Yeow in the circle. Tight fit haha. It was a bit harder, but certainly no kick for us. Not even Mas Selamat can escape. We just bent our knees and stood our ground until they gave up.

A short water break later, the fiendish ZX and Chee Yeow were ready with their next evil plan. It involves flour, mentos, a bowl, newspapers and a big mess. What a mess. Anyway the game was picking up mentos from a bowl of flour using only your mouth. We split into two groups for this game based on the chain of command. There are two sides: The Hiok Side or the Francis Side. Kind of like the two sides of the force, only easier to decide.

Starting off, Anurak dashed in for our team and emerges 0.1 milliseconds later with the mentos in his mouth and about a fifth of the flour on his face. The other team were just starting to move haha. During my turn I faced up against Jack, locked heads in an epic contest before I got my first taste of flour. It tastes… like the gunk at the bottom of milk containers, only thicker. Got the mentos first! =)

The game progressed for at least 3 rounds, and the teams were both quite evenly matched, although we were leading by a bit. This despite Kenneth colliding heads with Joel in his first round and getting owned. Apparently Joel has a pretty thick head. Around the second round, a new tactic emerged, which was to blow into the flour whenever the oppositions head get too close. This leads to an explosion of flour particles. Jon Ed jacked himself with this tactic. Hahaz.

Finally, the game ended and the Francis side won. And what a mess there was. We spent the next 10+ minutes cleaning up. Suffice to say that circular area looks about the same as it started. Our face became less pale lol.

Next game was the eternity game I think. Counting up to 20 was pretty easy because we followed a pattern and I think the game ended up a bit screwed. But never mind.

Moved to the S.R. field next, for another ‘very fun’ activity. It’s the activity where we lie in a row and one person from the start of the row rolls over everyone to get to the other end. Then the next person continues until you move a certain distance. Yeah, kind of like the push-up bridge except with higher emphasis on the effects of gravity. Pain. And apparently I’m pretty bony. Haha paiseh.

Rolling stone gathers no moss then.

It was about 6.10 then, and the activity was drawing to a close. But first…. Some group pictures! The 15 of us formed the numbers ’01-06’ on the field, with ZX going up to the 7th floor to take a picture. Pretty cool. We were doing a cheer at that time so many people had their mouths opened. Like me XD

And then another group picture with our beloved VTLs.

Venture 09! =D

(batch meeting after that. Reached home at 8.40pm haha)

Day before the trail...

2009-01-10T22:26:00.012+08:00

So...today is the day before the Raffles Trail, where the sec 1s will be looking through all the CCAs booths and get to know what they are in for if they join the CCAs...blah blah. SO its basically an important event to showcase our best. The preparation session was quite usual for us i guess, i would think that we have done this many times before...

Ok so the day started off with the kitchen tent falling...due to the unusually strong winds, which were a constant bug throughout the day, but of course also rather cooling... We decided to go for lunch first, in hope that the winds will subside after that and make our job easier...but even after lunch the wind didnt change much, so no choice but to continue...We splitted up into a few groups, each group focusing on a particular task, like joel and amos were doing the bridge, and hiok, sup and rongjun were doing the gateway, while the rest started on the kitchen tent. There were some slight problems with the verticals, cos some of the nails/screws at the top were either too short or loose. Fortunately after some creative ideas, we managed to get everything up and standing. So I went over to help with the gateway, while Francis and Amos was doing the fencing. A lot of climbing up and down was involved la, to adjust the structure, hang up the flag, and then the banners, too long, fold in, slanted, retie. All for the sake of quality! Haha. An interesting sight, carrying tables around to climb on...

Then we did up the basha, which was one of the last things already, and I realised that we have been left with less people, haha, people have been streaming off slowly since the afternoon...busy people. Haha, so by now some people were taping up the display boards while Joel and I went to the storage to clean some metallic equipment. Might as well put the more specific steps here cos some patrols would have to do this for the upcoming qm session anyway, haha. ;) So first was the most tedious part of removing the rust using sandpaper. Heard that last year, the equipment displayed was below standards, so we tried o$ur best to really get off as much as possible... Then wiped the surface briefly to check the surface for any obvious marks and stuff, before using what we call the WD4D solution, to spray on the metallic surfaces and then wiping with the thin green sponges. This not only helps to remove the dirty stuff, it also makes the surfaces shine! =) Ok so thats about all... We all worked hard! haha, the cool strong winds were an interesting challenge too, blowing stuff around while also cooling us down. A good day of prep! =)

When the sails are up, we just need to wait for the winds...

Jack

Raffles Trail

2009-01-10T22:26:00.009+08:00

After a day of mentally tiring lessons...okay i must admit it wasn't too bad since it was a friday and i got dismissed about half an hour early. anyway, after coming down from class and going to the 01 booth, some of the logistics were already there. i guess you figured out that the first thing i had to do was to help to bring the logistics. since some stuff was already there i only had to make 1 trip from the den. after all the logistics were brought to the booth, mr tan appeared with the marshmallows (yum) and some guys and i had to go help to tighten/ re-tie the lashings on the gateway and bridge which was quite shocking as most of them were quite loose. while we were doing that the logistics were being arranged.

when we finished our job, amos and i had to go to the rige/ rico classroom/ project room to get tables, 8 of them in total to be precise to be stacked in 2s so we could set up the poster boards. after finishing that task, we had to use our favourite gorilla tape to tape the poster boards to the table, which proved to be harder than it sounds. first thing: the wind was bomb strong, and due to the large surface area of the poster board, amos had to help to hold it down while it was being taped. the problems did not stop there. the second thing: after taping the poster boards to the tables, the poster boards caught the wind and the stacked table was blown down. because of that they had to be taken down and pasted on the gateway. getting owned by the wind...notice boards and tables being blowned down, it was like some hurricane was approaching the field in front of the raja block

the troubles brought by the wind did not stop there. i was asked over and over again to un-tangle the banner on the gateway and paste more gorilla tape onto the raffia securing the flag or banners to the gateway so as to prevent the wind from doing anymore damage. after that there were even more poster boards to set up on the fence. seeing that the wind was very strong, kenneth had to peg the tables used in the booth to hold up poster boards down to the ground.

it was kind of late when we finally went to change into scout u. after changing in the den, the j1s whom had tied a flag staff asked zhong jun and i to carry it back to the booth so it could be erected (maybe to keep up with the competition?) the sec 1s were already streaming in by the time i got there and the guides were doing quite a good job. and firdaus arrived! making it kenneth zhong jun, rong jun, amos, francis, firdaus, bryan and i there. the ropes on the bridge was getting loose again, while the sec 1s walked over the bridge, i had to hold it up so that john trach could tie the sq lash :S because the wind was so strong, the guides, amos and i switched to booth maintenance (MAN-tenance - add in the jensen accent) to keep everything in check.

then some food arrived and we took turns to eat our lunch. this is where kenneth started to angst (i understand) us to stop slacking. the parents trail started and i took some parents for a tour around the booth. talk talk talk...explain explain explain... until it was over. the sec 2s helped to take down the kitchen tent, gateway and bridge and helped to bring the logistics and the poles back to the den. the sec 2s were dismissed and (half) the VU had a short debrief about the whole raffles trail thing (planning and the acts) i felt quite bad after what kenneth had told me...sorry :/ after that we had to pack up and wash the pickets and pegs and put everything back into place.

Hamsters for Friend-ster

2009-01-10T18:37:00.005+08:00

Hey all,

I have been doing some research regarding hamsters, and HURRAY GOOD NEWS, we do not need to spend a cent on our new batch pets, because we can simply get it for free! why is that? i surfed online and i found out that there are many people putting their little hammies for adoption! There are many types available too, and some of them are only a few months old, so I see no point in spending our money on a hamster, don't you agree? If you are afraid that the hamsters are of low quality (disfigured or lame), then I am not so sure about this part, all I know is that the owners want to give away their hamsters because they accidentally breed them, so yeah, ignorance, never used condom. But all the hamsters look the same to me, the only way I can differentiate them is their colors, so I don't mind getting any of the hamsters for adoption, as long they are only a few months old. there are some jokers putting up hamsters which are like 2 years old plus for adoption, weirdoes...

Any of you that got a violent objection against adopting hamsters, and rather buy, please tell me, we will see how it goes. Buying a hamster is also not that expensive, plus it will be of pure breed, the cheapest you can get is $10+, at the pet shop in Plaza Singapura, not sure of the type though, usually the cage is expensive, if it is a good one, costs $30 at minimum. this is worth spending for as hamsters love to chew and nib at almost everything, so their cage is not an exception. Silent wheels cost $13, food bowls cost $2 or less, bottles about $6 for quite a big one, bedding around $6, sandbath cheapest $13 for 1 kg.

so to summarize, the total budgets for everything the little hamsters need are as followed:
a hamster - at least $10
a good cage - at least $30
a silent wheel - $13
a food bowl - $2
a big bottle for 2 hamsters - $6
bedding - $6
sand for bathing - at least $13

TOTAL --- $80 (at least)

ya, this is what I have researched, so maybe the pet shops are not that generous, lol rhyme.

so give me your opinion on this, if we want to adopt, no prob, if we want to buy, also no prob, so everything no prob, any prob tell me, i will go and do the proposal now

this is our virtual hamster, it's blue, it's kinda cool, it's Ignatius, name after my friend who looks like him. ;p

adopt your own virtual pet!

Briefing: Raffles Trail

2009-01-08T22:12:00.003+08:00

Well the day started rather well. Most of the Ventures reported to the den quite sleepy. This was due to an amazing and absolutely fascinating RE talk that everyone kinda fell asleep at due to its nature. Seeing as its the first week of school and all, thats probably just natural and expected. We haven't fully regained our 1 hours attention span or even our 1 hour sleep-with-eyes-open skill.

We changed like as though it was our first SUTC night call. Slow and half asleep. Thats just exaggeration. We were actually talking to the GC who were there and changing. You see, the thing is that, you don't do that in SUTC. SUTC is like a wife nagging at her husband. The J1s talk, you shut up and give standard answers like: 3-2-1 PER START! And how in the world did i get so out of point... So yea we changed and soon there was a horseshoe. Kenneth talked to the sec 2s and then attendance taking occurred.

First problem. Kestrel got no attendance to take. There were 5 patrols. It was kind of comical, but expected actually, seeing as there is only 1 batch attending these activities. But Adam did turn up in the end and so we had 6 patrols again.

The Ventures present were: Kenneth, Francis (myself), Joel, Amos, Zhong Jun, Rong Jun, Soham, Bryan, Firdaus. Yes, that was NOT a typo. Firdaus was there. Yay!! Oh and the whole GC. They are all ventures also.

Next up was a quick run to LT 2. Only Zhong Jun, Joel and myself were running. We ran, with Zhong Jun carrying his laptop and about 20 metres away, trailing us like a bunch of sec 2s trying to meet a deadline, was erm.... a bunch of sec 2s trying to meet a deadline.

We set up the laptop and Joel and i realised what a cool and innovative password Zhong Jun had. And as some other ventures also learned earlier in the day, Zhong Jun's laptop's touchpad buttons are SPECIAL. Left button is right click and right button is left click... The epitome of GL.

Then was a briefing on Raffles Trail. Roles, what to say, what will be happening, when to report, etc. First failure was that, LT 2 did not have a cable or port to connect to the projector... So that was a pretty big fail. But never mind, people with great skill and dexterity use their brains and still briefed the sec 2s with the relevant information they needed.

Failure no.2 was that i used a permanent marker on the board. Personally, i think that whiteboards should be made such that permanent markers are not permanent on them. Yes i know that make permanent markers redundant. Do you have a problem with that? Look man, nothing in this world is permanent, stop fooling yourself with these illusions and fantasies of PERMANENT markers.

But yea we got through the presentation. And Mr Yuen talked to the sec 2s also. Meanwhile Joel and i tried to undo my giant ugly handwriting on the board. Mr Yuen helped us through most of the FAQ that the parents ask and also he helped us brush up the sec 2s' knowledge of 01.

And we chionged to S.R block to start setting up the gateway and bridge and kitchen tent.

I was with the gateway people most of the time, so i didn't really know what was happening. Fail no.3 kind of involved 02, but we settled that and now things are fine.

Fail no.4,5,6,7,8,9,10. etc are most of the square lashes and one quadrapod lash that were loose or coming loose. Oh and the mega one where the base of the quadrapod wasn't aligned. But never mind, all those were fixed and settled. I guess the sec 2s were having fun setting up the booth.

We corrected some things and also modified some after some discussions and comments from the GC.

Now that is basically what we did for most of the act. What surprises me is that the sec 2s seemed to have done a better job at Westlake than here in home ground, RI. Maybe it was the PT? Or the environment? Well, we'll never know will we? Let this be a mystery that shall ever astound you and make you ask: Why? Why do ducks quack and chickens cross roads? Why did Kenneth mallet the picket so deep in?

Now let me tell you a story of a boy. Now, in AC'08, in the photo slideshow done by Ming E, this boy was the boy that wanted to fly. Or something along those lines. Now he apparently was sick of the sky and wanted to live underground. He took a picket, and using his well trained and mega muscles which were once used for flying, he hit the picket into the ground. With one hit, and using his bare knuckles, he hit the picket in so deep that it nearly reached hell. (Well in all honesty, it was a few hits and with a mallet, but where's the fun in that?)

The next half an hour was spent undoing this latest fail. By then the PSLs had already ended the Secondary One Orientation Camp, themed: Infinite. (the last "e" should be some frenchy line kinda letter thing). They ended off with a loud {SAY RA-RA-RA-RAFFLES} x3 *clap clap clap* RAFFLES. I have no idea what the name of that cheer is.

So yea, most of the batch was there. Now back to the story. This boy then had a problem. He couldn't pull out the picket. So Kenneth was there trying to pull out the picket and meanwhile everyone else was there commenting and trying and giving advice. Some Excalibur thing. Whoever could pull the picket out of the ground becomes King or something. So yea we slowly tried all sorts of methods. The rope we tied through it to try pull it out broke. The hammer nearly detached it's head. The hammer handle made creaky noises. The ground got wet. We found a random metal rod and we stuck that in the ground also.

After many many tries and methods, it was finally getting loose. And then Rong Jun, reached the climax of his cunning plan. He just pulled out the picket. Well... Seeing as it was already quite loose and the people who had been working on it were quite tired... It's quite a cunning and successful plan.

Then we packed up and left.

No we did not take down everything we just set up... We packed up the loose bits and then left.

First VPA! (Venture Planned Act)

2009-01-06T22:13:00.003+08:00

Success!!

We had just come back from sand-castle building and we were sandy, burned, lala and HAWT (as usual).

Seeing as the PSLs wouldn't be joining us, the few of us met at the den at 1.30 after lunching at the canteen.

For attendance, there was: Kenneth, Francis, Amos, Joel, Zhong Jun, Rong Jun, Soham, Bryan.

So we met at the den and then moved to the storage den with Ram the GQM. Where we then proceeded to get stuff we needed for the act. Getting the python was some obstacle course lah. I crawled under the table which was covered and overflowing with cooking utensils and cutlery and pots and pans and all that. Then once in there i had to pull out the pythons and then also the pegs. 15 pegs. We got out the banners and pickets also. Ram and Kenneth played with the discus... Which honestly can be used as a carrom seed, you use that right, confirm win. Cos the white cannot score the discus. =P

After moving stuff over to the den, some of us went to see the sec 1s doing their blindfold walk thingy. And we "helped" the PSLs there. Looking at the sec 1s, i think they are generally ok lah, but some quite screw up, like the "kicker" and the "spitter". Those that respond when i talk to them are generally ok, at least they don't dao.

Then the Teenage Mutant Neeeeenjas went to Braddell Westlake with Ram. They were an advance party to go set up the place to receive the sec 2s, the only batch coming for this act. This party consisted of Amos, Joel, Soham and Francis (myself). Ram being there to make sure we didn't accidently kill anyone along the way with our awesomeness.

Ok enough with the cockster stuff. We got there, gave the guard the letter, started picking poles. *Vibrate vibrate* *Pick up phone* And taadaaa Kenneth told us the sec 2s were at the RJC gate... And we hadn't even picked out 1 pole yet...

So we went into hyperdrive and started ripping poles out of the pole shed. Ram sat there to make sure we didn't damage the poles. Suddenly the weight of responsibilities of the QM falls on Ram and with his "Lock Cutter of Proper QM Procedure", he makes sure we didn't destroy the poles. Basically he sat there and warned us not to own the poles.

The sec 2s arrived. Help in the form of the other Ventures arrived. Pole picking leveled up. The poles flew out of the shed. Meanwhile, Jonathan Trachsel and Poh Chu Yong, our beloved and most inspiring STLs distracted the sec 2s by running around the place and doing our favourite activity: PT!

And our very own VTL Zhi Xuan helped us pick poles. So the building of structures started on time, as according to the timeline on the proposal. The sec 2s, +Francis + Zhong Jun + Rong Jun + Soham were set on the task of building the gateway for Raffles Trail. While Kenneth, Amos, Joel, Bryan and the STLs and VTL and Ram and Wayne and Jeremy went on the build the bridge.

I think we pretty much accomplished teaching the sec 2s figure-of-8 lashing AKA tripod lashing. Then we erected the 2 tripods and one quadrapod. And the sec 2s got to work on tying square lashes. Most of them were pretty tight and only a few were loose lashings. And then we started tying on the other decorative parts of the structure.

Overall, i think the sec 2s are quite close as a batch and can work together. Although this time there were too many of them stoning and not doing anything. Or some lashings had 4 people around it... Too many cooks spoil the broth. Too many scouts spoil the lashing. But in general, good job 01-08!

But i have to say i'm quite jealous. Their first batch structure quite big and nice and simple. Ours was spam lot of lashings. 3 trestle frames man... Haha. But we had fun. I think we have to do one more batch structure together soon. Like for pioneering act... Haha.

And that is it for our first VPA.

On a side note, on Tuesday, 6th Jan 2009, Zhong Jun, Joel, Amos, Kenneth and Francis stayed back in school to print, cut and fold pamphlets. Wow that was fun! (insert sarcastic tone)

This programme was brought to you by Francis. Please don't make him spam posts here, he has another blog to keep alive. And he thinks the other blog is getting jealous.

Official start of VENTURE 09

2009-01-02T17:52:00.003+08:00

Kenneth

First day of school today, first near-full batch meeting we had. And also first parade commanding of the year, done by ME!

Attendance:
Kenneth
Hiok Yang
Jon Ed
Alvin
Anurak
Tak Wei
Jack
Amos
Zhong Jun
Suphasak
Rong Jun
Joel
Soham

So the meeting was at a very nice and cosy meeting place, 4th floor Junior Block. No one disturbed us at all, which was really perfect. Only thing is its bomb hot there, dumb fan wasn't working. But other than that, we had a good 2 hr meeting from 2-4pm.

The issues we discussed were:
1. Raffles Trail
2. NYAA CIP
3. Batch Project
4. NYAA Skills
5. Batch pet
6. Friday PT
7. Campfire grouping
8. Batch Clothing
9. Scout Uniform
10. Next meeting

First thing was basically to inform them whats happening currently for RT, and clarify some stuff with them as well as tell them their roles. After that we talked about NYAA CIP and decided on doing tutoring with kids. Following that was batch project which would be den upgrading. Then NYAA skills, turns out Jon Ed's Mum agreed to teach us. Thanks a lot! We agreed to have a batch pet, a hamster. Then Friday PT was just to tell them about my plan, and we fixed the tentative timing as 2pm every Friday. For campfires, we decided to split it into groupings, and it is as follows:
1st group: Kenneth, Anurak, Soham, Joel Bryan
2nd group: Hiok Yang, Zhong Jun, Amos, Jack, Tak Wei
3rd group: Francis, Alvin, Suphasak, Rong Jun, Jon Ed

For clothing, we decided to make a tshirt after all for our batch clothing. Next was Scout Uniform, and the tentative date for going to Scout HQ to buy uniform parts would be 23rd Jan, Friday. And the next meeting we would have is gonna be 12th Jan, Monday after activity.

These are the tasks to be done:
1. Raffles Trail - Kenneth/Anurak
Final changes to proposal and pamphlet (4th Jan)
Print out pamphlets and photocopy (5th Jan)
Pass to teachers for cutting (6th Jan)
Folding pamphlets (6th Jan)
Check logistics (5th Jan)

2. NYAA CIP - Alvin
Find list of emails of organisations for tutoring(12th Jan)
Draft email to be sent (12th Jan)

3. Batch Project - Hiok Yang/Joel
Work with Jeremy for den upgrading

4. NYAA Skills - Jon Ed
Find out if CC allows booking of classroom for cooking and price (4th Jan)
Find out what they provide in the classroom (4th Jan)

5. Batch pet - Suphasak
Find out price of 2 hamsters, cage, food, water (12th Jan)
Draft proposal with prices and roster (12th Jan)

6. Friday PT - Kenneth/Francis
Find out NAPFA results of Sec 3s and 2s (4th Jan)
Draft proposal (12th Jan)

7. Batch Clothing - Anurak
Draw multiple designs for tshirt (12th Jan)
Find out price quotation (15th Jan)

8. Scout Uniform - All
Buy uniform parts together on 23rd Jan (tentative)
Those unable to make it on 23rd are to email to Kenneth
Sew First Aid Badge, District Badge, Name Tag and Venture Tag

9. Pioneering Act - Amos/Zhong Jun
Design the structure (11th Jan)

10. Others
Jack to register for NYAA ASAP

Venturing forth to do...

2008-12-24T11:52:00.004+08:00

(Francis)

Work.

The second post and yes its about work. Here is the list of events coming up:

Venture meeting on 2nd January, Friday, 1pm. At 4th floor Junior Block, the side with the tables and benches.
Agenda for the meeting:

CIP for NYAA
Batch Project

Things to bring for the meeting:

Whatever you were supposed to have done (refer to the list below)
New ideas concerning the agenda.
A lot of coins for the special surprise. Those that have gone for the 18th Dec meeting would know.
Writing materials to take down what you are supposed to do.

Now for THINGS TO BE DONE:

Jack: Collate replies and response from everyone about the Project Chicken, as soon as possible, everyone is in Singapore today.

Jon Ed: Find out from Haozhi about the 2G'07 animal CIP, by 2nd Jan.

Alvin: Come up with a list of different categories of CIP and find the emails of external organizations linked to each category, by 2nd Jan.

Francis: Call the CC asking for updates on our cooking course, by today, 24th Dec.

Kenneth: Get all feedback and comments about Venture Calendar.

Hiok Yang and Francis:

Raffles Trail related. Edit proposal to include changes that Yan Wei and Chee Yeow suggested. Get the pamphlet done and send a copy to all the 01 teachers, by Monday, 29th Dec.

Everyone:

Miscallaneous things to do: Plogs.

Everyone please take note of your jobs and get them done by the stated deadline.

UPDATES:

We had one meeting on 18th Dec and another on 21st Dec. Both were very fruitful meetings. Everything else is supposed to be confidential to 01-06 and our dear VTLs, Zhi Xuan and Chee Yeow, and thus i cannot post anything else here. =D

Also, please remember to do your holiday homework.

And thats it for this post.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. =D

Welcome

2008-12-16T00:30:00.000+08:00

Hello, and a warm welcome to the inaugural post on the blog of 0106. The purpose of this blog would be to document, and by extension reflect upon the activities of the batch of 01-2006, or, those who entered the 01 Raffles Scout Group in the year 2006. This blog shall follow us through the trial and tribulations of our year as Venture Scouts, and will be used to keep track of our progress and thoughts.