Camp

Just came back from BB leadership training camp, which timeslot was extremely convenient to be on the first day of holidays. Imagine something like your friend saying "Hey what have you been doing in the holidays? Ive watched a movie, hanged out with friends, played granado espada.... "

And you reply "Camp." He would be like "..HUH??"

Really its pathetic but glad that its over at last. Its the first camp that is combined with the Girls brigade, though we had different activities. First day straight after school we were whisked away in those yellow buses to Sembawang BB/GB campsite. The sleeping quarters suck totally. The walls were like made of hollow wood so we could punch them and the paint would sort of crumble. Cracks everywhere. Beds were ok, only no bolster, because I like hugging bolsters to sleep at night. Ventilation came in the form of two small KOK ceiling fans that (fortunately) were able to oscillate, and also slitted glass panes like those in school. Allocation: ten boys to one room roughly the size of one-third of a classroom.

After some sian drill and dinner and bath time (we showered in the girl's toilets first cos the GB didnt come until 9pm) we went night cycling at 12am on 21 speed bikes. We covered around 50 km in 3 hours, going across 5 mrt stations and some places i didnt even knew existed in Singapore which looked like some malaysia backstreet. THEN we got chased by stray dogs! Once I cycled past a black dog and then it kept barking at our pack and gave chase, which eventually gave up after awhile. Another time was when we were going back to the camp site and some dogs from the coffeehouses gave chase for no reason. We pedaled like crazy for that one to lose it, and luckily it gave up cos we would have started cycling uphill. Made it back to camp at around 330am then showered and slept.

Second day was pretty much uneventful but we had a night campfire organised together with the GB and BB. We had an icebreaker game that needed two persons to be trees and another to be a squirrel and when the MC shouts something like HUNTER! or FIRE! squirrels had to find other trees or the tree had to find other squirrels. Obviously it wasnt successful cos the boys would group with other guys and girls would group with other girls and there werent enough squirrels to go around. Those left without squirrels (only BB boys) were called up by Mr Ng and we were cursed to meet him after the campfire in FULL UNIFORM. wtf. anyway after that no one really sang the campfire songs with heart (only the officers were singing) and we cant see or hear anything for the skits other than the one that gb and bb performed together. dek guan suxiang and jemimah were the main characters. dek guan was acting a boy who had low grades and joined bb. He insulted the officers there, but the GB people helped pull up his grades by tutoring him as they were one big family. And eventually he liked bb and gb. They were acting hilariously retarded cos the girls were super twit-ish and dek guan was like an idiot. Pity Li wei was sick so he couldnt act.

After the campfire we fell-in in the basketball court in full u for Mr Ng. He told us we didnt cooperate with the GB and made them look stupid and feel like failures, but despite that they even pleaded with him not to punish us, all while we were in push up positions. Following his speech we did 11 push ups. Not very heavy punishment but after that ordeal many people in my bunk (i was the room IC) were all livid and cursing and threatening never to go camps anymore.

For me I sort of envied the girls. They are really united in GB and they have fun. So unlike us, because we go to camp for training instead of relaxing. When parading I hear their laughter and screams coming from their bunks all the time. When I walk around the corridors I see them in groups practicing for skits and other nice stuff. I guess that though their drill totally sucks they sure utilise their time much better than us. What is discipline? What for having discipline? I rather be labeled slack and have thrice as much fun as we are having currently. Isn't bonding more important than the so-called discipline we gain after having those drills and strict regimes (though NCC is much stricter, so I pity them)? Girls have aircon rooms and fun camp schedules. Boys have fan rooms and crazy surprises like fire drills when officers wake boys up in midnight and shout fire, and then later say some one is missing so we have to run around at 2am in the morning. I dont mean that I dont like the discrimination, cos im fine with it. My point is they are allowed to enjoy themselves, and more importantly they really KNOW how to. Like as if they need to care about being 'tough' and 'man' and do stupid things to show that.

Sometimes I really do wish I was born a girl.