a day a week and evermore

a warning before you read on. this post is going to go on into almost every detail of the five days of obs, meaning it's going to be really long winded. if you give up reading halfway, it's fine with me, so just read the parts to you want. it's just that i want to remember every single thing that happened to me in these days, so there.

ok. here goes.

monday morning. woke up at 6.30 so we could have breakfast in time to catch the bus. the hostel people got a bus to take us to the jetty, so i didn't have to worry bout getting there. had our last meal in civilisation, which, now that i think about it, wasn't much better than the meals in obs, but at least we had the comfort of seats XD. 2 chocolate muffins and a nice warm milo, and we hurried to the office with our gigantic bags, where we would be boarding the bus.

made it in time, but i realised i was actually not supposed to be there, cause the bus was technically only for the scholars, but they let me board anyway. fell asleep on the way, hugging my backpack close to me. for some reason i aways find it real easy to fall asleep on vehicles, but impossible to do so in my own bed at night. funny thing about me. well the we ended up late and hurried to our mentor groups for attendance taking and a last glimpse of civilisation.

sat down at the back of my class on the grass. the sun was rising to our right, and made shadows of the trees that got cast down on us like pieces of soft black silk. the wind was nice. i was sitting at the foot of a slight slope that led to a railing before reaching the road. the 301 to 304 people were sitting below the slope and the 305 - 308 people were all behind the railing. when i looked up, i saw rashidah and darryl and other people leaning against the rail, talking and chatting excitedly just as we were. haha nice to see everyone out of our usual places and looking so happy. thinking of kylie and how it was so sad that she couldn't come. darryl decided to slide down the slope and poke me, which took me by surprise, though it didn't shock me, cause you get used to this kind of stuff when you hang out with him all the time. chatted a bit. climbed up to rashi and talked until it was finally our turn to get on the boats that would take us to palau ubin.

did you know that the sea is beautiful?

rushing past us in waves of blue and silver, behind us a trail of white. the wind hitting us full on in the face, whirling around us, whisking our hair here and there. the movements of the boat on water are comforting, a rhythm that soothes if you get used to it, know it. up and down, up and down. took a few pictures here with my cam. comparing hats with other ppl. (haha yeah we were bored) talking talking talking. the island drew nearer, and we reached the jetty. got off, and took our first steps on the land we would be on for the next 5 days.

there was this long flight of steps leading from the shore to the buildings and stuff where we were supposed to gather. we climbed up these, every step leading us closer to our doom, to our adventure, to our discoveries.

we waited together to know, at last, our watches, which are the groups we were going to be in. this was my first glance at SHACKLETON, a group of people who i will remember for the rest our my life, for together we... well you'll see =). jia yu, shu tong (my roommate), chen fei (cluster mate), vanessa (a girl i only knew as kaihui's friend), trang (another hostel know-you-exist-but-don't-know-you-at-all person), dominic (haha the coincidences continue), isaac, derek, sri, lu xi, wong xi (new guy i really didn't know), qiang xiang (no idea who he was til then) and xavier (also no idea) . you have to admit it was an interesting watch. very random, very unsorted, so i knew there probably were going to be good times ahead.
like the stars.... can you count them?
by the way, our watch instructor was AZA, who till this day i will still say is the best instructor ever xD.

mm had briefing, took group photo, and became STORE IC, which turned out to be a much bigger job than i realised. my duties started immediately, cause we had to make sure that all the equipment they provided for us was all there and in working order. chen fei was also store IC, so we worked together real closely on this. got to know her quite well. life vests, whistles, compasses, camping sticks, harnesses, helmets, maps, ponchos, tents, grounsheets, flysheets, backpacks, mess tins, waterbottles, jerricans, jacknifes, brushes, entrenching tools (more commonly known as shovels), tent pegs, tent poles, tent bags, coverlitters, food (haha), brooms, dustpans and the great STORE KEY all entrusted to us. whee. everything was fine in the end, whee.

next was lunch. we were all starving by now, and the food ICs, jia yu and trang, had their jobs started too. basically all our food was to given us at one go, so we had to ration it out. our first meal at obs was strange, but also highly representative of the rest of our meals. one packet of oreos, a bun, a fruity bix bar, some crackers, and a packet of ovaltine mix. haha. yep that's all. rather sweet. the thing with the ovaltine was that we didn't have any cups or stuff to mix it in. so we had 2 choices. either get a few friends and pour all the mix into one big water bottle and share it, or eat the powder straight from the packet with gulps of water in between. we mostly did the powder method. haha...

err then our first activity started. it was belaying, but first we had to learn to trust our group members first. so we had the BLADE OF GRASS activity. basically it's like you have one person in the middle and two people at the side. the two people pushed the person in the middle from side to side, and the person in the middle had to trust them to catch him/her. whee. it was very fun haha. being pushed from side to side, with no worries that you'd fall... haha. mm yeah. then we had the SHEPHERD activity. we were paired up, and one of the two blindfolded. basically we had to walk a path with our eyes closed and the other person giving instructions on where to go. no contact, just verbal instructions. whee. so i went first and chen fei led me around. quite ok, and really fun too. did you know that staircases seem extra long when you have to climb them without your sense of sight? haha. no major accidents. then i had to lead chen fei, and she kept saying "cancy, i trust you" haha before getting blindfolded. she's real nice yeah? err i think this path was actually more difficult than the one i had to take cause it involved climbing between trees and over logs and across drains they couldn't see. well she almost hit her head on a branch once, and i had some trouble trying to get her to walk straight and in the direction i needed her to, but in the end we did it, so whee! haha fun.

the last trust building activity was the TRUSTFALL. yay! so cool. mm basically you get on a raised platform and all your groupmates are below you holding a coverlitter (something like a stretcher). you fall backward and get caught by them. wow. it's real nervewracking to some people, i know, cause you have to be brave enough to really trust that you won't fall, and make yourself fall backward into the unknown... yeah. but for me i was ok, cause in gymnastics i've had to practice falling backwards confidently cause there's this move on the the bars where you have to fall backward before being swung upwards again. yeah. haha before we fell we had to do some calls, to ready everyone. "shackleton ready?" "ready!" "falling!" "fall on!" then you'd fall. one way to tell if the person's scared is to see if they bent in the middle. mm dom said my fall was nice cause i suppose i didn't bend. whee. yeah it was nice... falling falling and being caught. i think trust is nice.

mm then finally we did belaying. basically it involves 4 people, the climber, the belayer, the anchor and the assistant belayer/rope manager. the climber is the one that wears the harness and climbs upward, then gets let down slowly purely by the rope attached to the harness, which is the belaying. the belayer makes sure the rope is taut at all times, and is the one that lets the climber down, with the rope attached to him as well. the anchor holds on to the belayer so he won't fly away when the climber puts weight on the rope and the rope manager takes the end of the rope not attached to the climber and makes sure it doesn't tangle and stuff. mmm i suppose it takes some effort to really trust the belayer to not let you fall when you completely put weight on the rope. fun anyway, though the belaying is a little complicated. "six o'clock, twelve o'clock" haha.

mm so we settled down to our first night in the outdoors! our first campsite was the one on top of the hill. one of the better ones. we had to pitch tents and cook our own dinner. so the guys mostly did the tent pitching and the girls all crowded round the cement area where we lit little fires with the solid fuel we had to bring and and put the pots with rice on them. we had to put toothpaste on the bottoms of the pots, cause it keeps it from getting all black and sooty. by the way, the water bottles all had a really weird smell, so for 5 days all our water was weird tasting... ergh. mm... trang was rice cooking pro! she really knew how to cook the rice with only a pot, all the water ratio and time controlling and stuff. wow. i'm sure we would have burnt everything without her haha. erm... baked beans and sardines and mushrooms... ate in the dark cause the sun had set by the time we were done. not bad actually. cause we were all starving and didn't care what we ate. apples were heaven....

err showered and washed up the pots and stuff, which made us late for our meeting with aza. mm... the shower water was nice and cold. haha. real refreshing but a little shocking when you first touch it. err aza gave us the maps and taught us how to navigate with coordinates and a compass. quite interesting. mm there was a fire drill after that and all the watches gathered again. the alarm was a manual one, like one of those old fashioned school bells, rope and all. haha. fun. mm.... yeah nothing much. left after that, lights out at 11, tents were boiling hot, and the stars were obscured by clouds and stuff... mmm yeah. end of first day.

wow i sure am long winded.

woke up, washed up and stuff. packed up tents, and ate a bun or two for breakfast. trang made a big pot of warm milo for us all. best drink ever! haha. mm met aza and had our morning circle, which is like a daily journaling time where we got to reflect on what we did yesterday. mm it's thanks to this that i have a nice record of most of the events that happened and i can remember everything =) mm then we had our watch charter and shield making activity. basically the shield is a piece of cardboard that we bring around with us, like a logo or something. whee the charter is the brainstorming for the shield, and basically we trash out all the values and stuff that we want to have/already have/working towards having whatever. haha had a lot of fun on this. our charter had the word SHACKLETON in the middle and our names all around the edges of the paper like a border. then we put random values all around the empty space, including stuff like punctuality, determination and the school values as well XD haha. our shield was nice. lu xi drew a real nice shield shape and i added like a banner at the bottom. came up with a logo - a sun with 15 points for the 14 of us and aza and a hammer to symbolise passion, strength, determination... whatever xD. whee. then dom wrote shackleton in one of his nice fonts and we added the logo behind that and i wrote WE DARE as our motto on the banner. yay. outlined everything and added colour and cut it out and done! quite nice =)

mm then we packed for our 3 day 2 night land expedition! wow managed to squeeze everything in, but the waterbottles were a problem. we had to bring 2 each, and there was a space in our backpacks for them. but maybe cause i was so short compared to the bag, everytime i tried to stand up i would need a really big effort to make sure i didn't fall backward. like a little humpty dumpty. so then i ended up carrying them by hand. paired up with trang who was carrying them like me too, so we put all four on a camping stick and carried it together. yay.

dom was our navigator. basically we had 4 coordinates and a map and we had to go to these places to find our checkpoints. a 4 hour treck over around 3 km i think. not sure. whee so we all walked along, struggling with the weight of our bags, stopping now and then... found the first three in ok time, the coordinates were quite accurate and they were all behind trees haha. it rained after that and we stopped at a temple cause it was category 1 (lightning) and we weren't allowed to continue activities. mm played untangle, game were you hold hands with persons opposite you and have to untangle the entire group to make a big circle. quite unsuccessfull haha. mm went to the last checkpoint, which was near a beach, though we didn't manage to find it in the end. started to set up camp, but it rained again and everything got soaked, including ourselves, of which the latter was a good thing cause we weren't getting a bath taht day. moved campsite cause the other one was flooded and made dinner. the tents were still soaking though. meal of noodles and alphabet soup. mm... the stars were real nice that night. aza taught us how to find north with them and we sat by the beach in the dark ... mm dom got homesick and we were talking about home and stuff which made me homesick too XD mm yeah. i suppose we find comfort in each other when we're all alone, and facing the same troubles... drew little things in the sand by the light of our torches, rubbing them out...
sharing our heart's thoughts with each other
mm found out that my dad has the same birthday as his mum! haha what a coiincidence.

haha went to sleep eventually. even more uncomfortable than the night before cause out tents were damp and it was still really hot....

ok day three. woke up real uncomfortable, and this was the day that my skin started to flare up. i'm really sensitive to the environment, like just a little more dusty and i'll get itchy. but this was the trees and stuff i suppose. i was expecting this actually, cause 14 years of experience with this skin problem means that i know it quite well. ah well. a price worth paying though...

unpitched tents in the dark and set off again. went to a quarry. there are quite a lot of these in palau ubin. err got 8 pipes and 4 barrels and 16 ropes from the storeroom nearby. now's the cool part. we had to build a RAFT out of them! enough to hold 15 people and it had to be sturdy as well... whee. got taught how to tie the right knots and got to work. wow. mm a little unsmooth at first cause we had a bunch of disagreements but in the end our structure turned out quite nice. yep. but we were running out of time and had the choice of skipping this quarry activity or making up for it later by trecking extra fast. well obviously we made the choice of the quarry. got life jackets on and carried our masterpiece to the quarryside and pushed it in. then we dropped of the edge one by one. wow. the water was so refreshing - quite clean and really cool. after one night like that it was the best bath ever. swam out to the raft with was floating away and all climbed on, paddled out to the middle. haha. real fun. then aza told us about the quarry and a story...

"did you see those glass bottles by the edge of the quarry just then? well truth is, there are a lot of workers that live here, really depressed workers, and sometimes they drink a lot to forget their troubles. well there are also cases of suicide, where they jump into the quarry and drown themselves... a lot of suicide cases. and sometimes when you come to the quarry, you can feel them touching your legs. you want to see what i mean?.."

now it was a very convincing story, except for the fact that he was slowly edging himself to the middle of the raft where there was a hole and lowering himself XD. ok ok. so we all laughed and he's like ya lah i'm joking XD. haha. whee. then he let us swim in the quarry for a while. yay! i loved that part. the crystal clear and cold water and the just right sunshine and all your friends nearby, laughing and splashing and floating.. yay... a bath i'll always remember xD

yep so we pushed the raft back to shore and dismantled it, changed into dry clothes and had a hurried lunch. then came our really intensive treck back to camp 2, and from there to camp 1. more than 5km in one and a half hours. grasslands and racky paths, uphill and downhill.... aza let us put down our wet stuff at camp two, but we were off in 15 minutes. arrived at camp 1 at last...

yes. threw down our stuff and had a tour of camp 1. after the night before, it seemed like heaven. complete high class luxury. whatever. concrete floors and tiled rooms, air coned offices and proper toilets (much cheering to this). really nice facilities too. mm after the tour we pitched tents and met aza in the multi-purpose hall (yeah there was a HALL) where we had out late morning circle (more like afternoon) haha and then we had rock climbing! wow. there was a climbing wall in the hall and we got harnesses and helmets and stuff and got to take turns to climb it. whee. i climbed all the way to the top - 10 metres!! whee! haha i wasn't expecting that i'd be able to do it. got a lot of encouragement from jia yu and qiang xiang who were belaying me yeah. haha there was an even harder to climb wall next to it that a few of us attempted and naf, the other watch's instructor, completely owned it. we were all awed. like WOW.... most of the ones that tried couldn't even get past 7 metres and she did all 13...or was it 14?

anyway, we had our first decent meal after that. whee! rice and veges, with chicken and fish (which i didnt't touch) yummmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. haha... and orange juice. cold too!

proper bath! yes!

err met for our sea expedition planning. we were going to kayak from camp 2 to palau ketam and back. whee! real excited. taught us the paddle signals. vanessa became our mobile (that is, shackleton plus cheng ho, another watch) navigator. yay go her! shu tong became left marker, cause we had to go there in a diamond formation so no one would get left behind. mmhmm....

had supper (haha yeah there was SUPPER) and enjoyed it to the last crumb. played some games with the other people in the watch and talked a lot too. we were getting real close by now...

went to sleep at 11 again...

day four. guess what time we had to wake up.
four thirty am.
yep i'm not kidding you.
in order to get to breakfast in time and to avoid the low tide we had to get up at this hour in the morning and start to prepare to leave. unpitched tents and washed up in record time. all done by five thirty XD. haha. ok. sat around and talked, playing 7 up and teaching people the clap... haha went up for breakfast, which was late, though not due to us. played with morse code while we waited. lu xi has taken to swearing in morse now. XD. nice breakfast. packed and left. trecked to camp 2. organised our stuff and went down to the shore where all the kayaks were and then got taught how to paddle. chose our groups for the kayaks. actually they were called tri-yaks cause they fit 3 people so i was with sri and derek. they wanted to mix up the girls and guys you see. whee.

there was a little catch at the back of the kayak which i personally find very cute. put all our stuff there. then we had to check our life vests. basically that means get completely wet. walked into the sea as a group with our arms linked XD my skin stung cause it had become increasingly worse in the past day, but some people had gotten blisters and they were all wincing too. ouch. share the pain. k. we were one hour late, and hence we were all quite united as we set off with our sunblock and hats and long sleeved shirts and life vests into the sea...

yay. paddling with sri and derek was interesting. never really knew them well, but we were fine. haha. derek kept getting confused which way to paddle when we wanted to turn, so it was really funny how we'd be like... hey how come we're going this way? plus the current and the random big waves XD. whee. overall a really really REALLY fun time. oh yeah there was the self-rescue as well. in case our boats ever capsized they wanted to make sure that we would know how to get back on. so we had to capsize ourselves on purpose and climb back on, paddles and wet clothes and all XD. whee. completely soaked for the entire trip but WHO CARES kept us nice and cool anyway. haha. had lunch in the middle of the sea =) haha. vanessa was quite a good leader, and considering how hard it was to control the kayak that we were all new to, she made quite a good navigator too =) did you know that the word quite means very?

whee so we got back in record time! yay! haha we didn't expect it at all. apparently we took 2 and a half hours when usually they'd take 3 or 3 and a half =) haha real proud. as a result we got rewarded with the JETTY JUMP. wow. the experience of a lifetime yeah? a step off the jetty and you'd fall fall fall.... eyes closed, wind rushing past you, nothing in the world mattering exept that you were falling...falling...falling... splash. the water rushes around you and engulfs you, welcoming you. you're back to earth, after a few seconds in a place where space and time seem to have frozen, or completely mixed up....

yep. moved the kayaks back, washed them, showered ourselves and dried off. whee. that night our campsite was the best. seaside! with a wonderful view and a breeze too! haha no more hot and stuffy tents. bad thing was that our store IC duties were here again. now it was the collection and checking that everything was back. ahhh headache galore.

first it seemed that we had lost 4 whistles, then we found 2, then one got itself lost again. two lifevests were missing, but then we found one more. the groundsheet had disapeared as well. had to get all the pots and mess tins clean and sparkling, the harnesses organised, the ponchos clean and hung up... blah. everything seemed to be missing one or two things, and everyone was exhausted from getting up so early that morning.... sigh. the only good thing was that we founf the life jacket in the end, which was the most pressing thing since it was the most expensive, near the guys toliet. dont ask me why....

then we had the NIGHTWALK. as far as i know we're the only watch that did this, so i'm really gonna treasure the experience. besides, the walk itself was special.

there is a path leading from our first campsite on the hill to camp 1. it goes downhill for a while surrounded by trees and stuff and flattens out. it's quite straight, but at some places it's really dark. have to guess where the path is. as a watch, we walked in silence and single file down from from the hill to the fountain, which was a place halfway between the two camps. we were not to use our torches, so we walked in the dark, drinking in the sounds and the shadows, thinking, feeling... after that we stopped and were to walk back, but one by one. it was here that i found out more about dom. he's really afraid of the dark, and almost couldn't make himself do it. i went before him, and i was praying to God all the way, cause i myself was a little scared and i knew he was the only one who could help me. i thought about a lot of things, mostly the people in my life, and our friendships, contemplating, thinking. listening to the sounds of my own footsteps on the rocks and gravel. hoping, praying that dom would be ok. yeah.

i came out fine. everyone did. dom came out last, with a big gap between him and the second last person. aza followed him. then we all went to the highest point on palau ubin and shared our experience. some people were thinking of family, loved ones, some were thinking about school and their aims, and what they wanted to do with their life, some weren't thinking much, which i suppose was fine, cause everyone's different, some sang songs, or thought them. isaac was praying too, i think it's nice to find someone who's also a christian and know how each other felt. dom was the last to share. he ended up hyperventilating at the end, cause he was really scared, but then aza told him he'd be right behind him, and he made himself do it, and i really admire him for taht. cause to overcome your fears... well it's a really big thing, you know? yeah... i know we all took away something from that walk that night. it'll be something taht we'll remember, yeah? well then....

ah. sleep....

last day. got up again and unpitched tents. chen fei and i started our store IC duties once more, while munching on biscuits (funnily enough, none of us got food poisoning throughout the 5 days despite never having proper hygiene) haha. grown used to the strangeness of it all, getting up before the sun and eating whatever there was. soon we had to meet aza again so we left it for a while.

our last morning circle. aza took us to the jetty for this one. the sea breeze and the sunrise and the waves underneath us.... yeah. wonderful feeling. we all got to share this time. usually it was only 3 people, but i suppose it was the last day so it was special. wow. yeah. nice...

i'll always remember shackleton

we went back to our duties. managed to salvage a few more things. really, when everyone's helping things move much faster. started counting waterbottles and found like half of them missing XD ok.... so obviously we had to look for more. jacknife found eventually, groundsheet got mixed with next door, a few camping sticks got from next door as well cause they had extra. tents folded and hanged, whistles found, mess tins unscrambled and polished... whee. wow in the end we weren't missing anything. real glad of that... only the rope from the rafting activity. lost one of those. but yeah...

mm hmm. after that was the puzzle game, where all the nus high ppl had to get together and do puzzles in the watches. sounded easy enough until we opened the envelopes.... the pieces were scrambled! not only mixed around, i mean like interchanged between each set. so we had to go to other watches to search for our pieces yeah? interesting way to meet everyone again. "have you seen any seashore pieces ... oh hi rashi ... crabs, octopuses....? ... hi!! oh......elephants anyone? ...." haha real cool though. there were 3 rounds, and the last one everyone put the pieces together in the middle and completed it together, and we had to make a really big circle, cause one of the rules was that the puzzles ended in the middle of the group's circle haha. wheeee.... the passion cheer was lead by a bunch of people and then we were dismissed....

oops forgot one important thing. before that aza got us all together again and gave out some souveineers (oops still can't spell it...) a red wristband and a pen and a sticker haha. whee the wristband was one that aza wore every day. yeah. then he read out somehting called "i wish you enough". it was about a person who saw a father and a daughter saying goodbye, hugging each other and saying to each other, i wish you enough. the daughter was leaving and the father looked like he was going to cry, but he went and spoke to the person, asking him if he had ever said goodbye to someone knowing it would be the last time. the person said yes, so the father said so then you know how i feel. the person asked him why this was forever goodbye, and the father explained that his daughter lived far away, and he was old. reality was that the next time she came to visit, it would be for his funeral. so then the person asked him what he meant by i wish you enough. the father smiled and said it was a tradition in the familty. i wish you enough basically means... then there was a few things like this: i wish you enough sun, to keep your spirits up. i wish you enough rain, so you can appreciate the sun. i wish you enough.... there were quite i few things but i can't remember, but it was one of the most beautiful things i've ever heard.

then aza said to us, i wish you enough.

the part about the father and daughter saying goodbye made me cry. i suppose, sadness is like that, hitting us at the most unexpected moments. i really didn't know i would cry. it just sprung up on me... i've never done that before. but yeah....

so afterwards before we all had to go down to the jetty to go back again we all got together and said "aza, WE WISH YOU ENOUGH" yeah. i'm going to miss him, and shackleton, and all the stuff we did together....

waited around for out turn to board the boat, chatting and comparing experiences with other watches. my watch let the hostel people take the extra food back (there was a lot) so nice right? it's the reason i didn't starve this morning XD. yeah. seeing everyone again and seeing how they'd changed physically haha. all a shade darker and redder and tousled-looking whee. yep. but much closer.

there was a little confusion about the boats, but everything was fine in the end. was pooling taxi with dom, movin and alvin. sat next to rashi on the boat. nice to talk again. whee.... love my hat XD. ok. zooming back to civilisation. stepped ashore.... haha. seeing darryl again. seeing jun yup again. seeing yuting and steph and a whole lot of other people... i dunno. real nice. then rashi, alvin and i saw the ice cream booth and all went off to buy chocolate chip ice creams =) you know the roadside $1 kind you get between biscuits. whee.....

yeah. it was wonderful. grown closer to so many people, especially the girls in my cluster and dom as well. found out a lot about myself and other people. learnt that almost anything, no matter how difficult it seems, can be overcome. that if you dare, and strive on, you'll do it. that responsibility, care for others and a snack now and then are vital. yep. that apples are delicious and milo is the best thing ever. that home is as far as you make it out to be. that sand is a nice medium to think next to. that friends are truly there for you. that trust and comfort can be found in other people, and that we're all in it together. what it you ask. life, this journey, this discovery... yeah.