The camp started on 09 November 2009 (Monday) from Bukit Merah Student Hub Centre with a group of 10 staff, 9 volunteers and 64 Cabin Club students and the entire group traveled all the way to Pasir Ris Holiday Flats and Dormitories for the residential part of the camp.
I was in charge of one of the eight groups of students and was also in charge of a group of 14 students in the male dormitory whilst the rest of the campers were residing either inside the female dormitory or the holiday flats. It will be too cluttered to write everything inside this post so I will just highlight some of the major events and what I considered to be really memorable encounters during the camp itself.
Night Trail at Pasir Ris Park Mangrove Boardwalk:
This was one of the biggest event for Day One where students would have to traverse the Mangrove Boardwalk in pitch dark conditions to reach five different stations within the Boardwalk to perform certain activities to earn tokens for a subsequent camp event the following day.
Although each of the groups, led by a volunteer group leader, was allowed to bring torch lights, the lighting conditions inside the Boardwalk were so bad that none of the torches could shine beyond 5 meters before the darkness enveloped each group. Hence, the Night Trail was of considerable challenge to students who had to overcome their individual fear of the dark and rely on the strength and courage of the group to complete the tasks at hand.
Special Encounter - Dark Presence in the Forest:
(Disclaimer: I am not advocating any idea of superstition or negating any form of religious beliefs here. I am merely stating what I have encountered during the camp.)
During the second station, where each group was supposed to visit a unmanned pavilion to search for some tokens in a treasure chest, my group, which was the last one, made quite a racket in the darkness, talking and discussing loudly about the search for the tokens when I noticed the surrounding darkness becoming "thicker" and "thicker".
Logically, darkness should only constitute the color of black, but the longer my group lingered at the station (they were really keen on finding every single token), the darkness surrounding the pavilion seemed to have increased its shade of black multiple times over in the space of a few minutes and the surrounding air became much colder.
Realizing something was amiss, I quickly warned my group to keep their volume down and exit the station as quickly as they could. As we were leaving the pavilion (I placed myself as the last person of the group), a deep chill ran down the entire length of my spine and I felt a huge dark presence standing right behind me. I remembered what my National Service platoon commander told me - resist the temptation to look back in the middle of the forest so I did exactly that - I walked quietly without a word as my entire group proceeded to the next station.
For what it seemed like an eternity, the dark presence followed right behind me, and I had to resist the urge to push my group to go faster lest I aroused the curiosity of the students who might look back at me. We prodded until the next station was nearly in sight and suddenly the dark presence just stopped following me and seemed to have turned back. The cold chill in my spine disappeared instantly as well.
When I reached home, I "googled" what I had encountered and realized that dark presences are part of paranormal activities and cross-checking with some of the more experienced ones revealed that a possibility of that particular dark presence was a manifestation of what they would call as a shadow giant - an ancient of the dark dimension that resides in extremely dark places. Reputed sizes of these shadow giants could reach up to several stories high. According to what I had estimated, that dark presence was at least 9 feet tall so it could have tallied with what the experienced ones had said.
Thankfully, that shadow giant seemed more intent on escorting the entire group out of its territory than on harming us. I was so worried that the students in my group might be harmed in any way while it was following us for that seemingly forever few minutes. I am going to stay away from that particular pavilion from now onwards.
Loss: Thankfully none.
Gain: +1 Luck, +1 Wisdom
Outdoor Fun at VivoCity:
The second major camp activity was on Day Two where the groups had to weave in and out of the many shops within VivoCity to try and compare prices of items. Simply put, they are supposed to find items starting with a set number of letters in the alphabet and to collate the prices of these items. The group with the lowest prices from all these items wins. The activity was enormously draining because groups had to run around the entire VivoCity to fulfill the task which was further interspersed with three game stations that they had to find using only clues.
Special Encounter - The Defiant Rebel
My group, in my opinion, was the most difficult group to lead in the entire camp. That was because the group was fractured into very different groups - half the group had such close friends who were allocated to other groups was always clinging onto their friends for most of the time, refusing to temporarily leave their cliques even for the camp. The other half consisted of loners who barely uttered more than twenty sentences in the forty-eight-hour camp, sleepy heads who would grab any possible time to return to the sleeping quarters to nap, and rebels who would want to defy any instructions because their philosophy of life was "rules are meant to be broken".
What I considered to the most obnoxious rebel happened to be in my group. During the Outdoor Fun activity at VivoCity, he was shouting and ordering another volunteer group leader around at one of the game stations in front of many groups and members of the public that I had to yell at him to shut up. Although I was given pre-camp advice that "everyone had some good in them", I did not seem to see what good was there in that blatantly rude behavior of that Obnoxious Rebel.
After lodging a seriously-worded complaint with the relevant staff member from the Singapore Children's Society, a meeting between that staff member, the Obnoxious Rebel and myself was convened later that afternoon where the student in error apologized for his behavior, citing the reason that all his friends had always been giving way to his antics. I explained that although some rules could be broken given the circumstances, not all rules and decorum are to be abandoned at the cost and embarrassment of so many innocent others. I also told him that his actions at VivoCity had put his fellow groups to shame, offended the other volunteer group leader, disgraced his authority over the other group's campers and brought bad light to Singapore Children's Society in the eyes of those members of the public who witnessed the incident.
The Obnoxious Rebel subsequently tried to participate and cooperate more actively in the remaining activities without a single word of complaint and the camp eventually passed with no further incident or conflict. I learned that some rebellious youths expected everyone to give way to them and to understand their every action and word, no matter what the potential consequences are. I also understood that I had, and will continue to have, nearly zero tolerance for selfish individuals when they are supposed to take into consideration the best interests of the group before themselves.
Loss: The remaining members of the group caught on his bad example of rebelling and began to laze during most of the camp, making my work even harder at times.
Gain: +1 Speech, +1 Knowledge
The Night Watch at Pasir Ris Holiday Compound:
On the final night of the Project Cabin Camp 2009, all the nine volunteers agreed to take over the night watch duties for the entire camp compound so the over-worked staff members could take some much-needed rest. What followed was a night of eating, drinking, playing, observing and catching of some naughty campers who tried to slip out of their sleeping quarters for unknown objectives.
The nine volunteers dragged out a number of chairs and arranged them in a circle in the middle of the only road running through the camp compound at around 12.30am. We also lugged our favorite items with us to accompany us for the long watch of nearly 6 hours ahead of us - soft toys, mini pillows, torch lights, windbreakers, ipods, video cameras and not forgetting, loads of packet drinks, snacks and leftover food from that night's buffet dinner.
For nearly an hour, the volunteers were talking about some of their most interesting personalities within their respective groups. At around 1.30am, we began to play the game "Murderer" to pass time. Believe me, it was really difficult in the semi-darkness to see those winks and we had a lot of fun trying to find out who the murderer and the detective was. We surely had a good laugh over one of the volunteers who seemed to be always one of the first victims to be "killed", one of the most unobservant detectives who took a long time to seek out the murderer and also one of the most reluctant murderer who took a long time to seek out his victims. To sum it up, we labeled him as the worst player for the game which he still took it within his stride in good sport. ^__^
Special Encounter - The "Night Crawlers"
Somewhere around 3am to 4am, two of the male campers tried to slip out of their holiday flat quarters for reasons unknown. A stealthy and quiet opening of the door followed by two crawling figures in the semi-darkness. However, my night vision was better than what they had expected and I already spotted their movements and pointed out the little misadventure. One of the volunteers immediately recognized the identities of the crawling figures and quickly ran up to stop them from crawling towards a back stairway.
The volunteers continued their night watch by playing a prank on one of the female volunteers who had just returned from a regular patrol session around the camp compound. The prank was hilariously simple - totally ignore the presence of that volunteer as if she had already returned to the sleeping quarters to sleep. The results was wriggling fun as the volunteer was stomping her feet and going around "strangling" all the volunteers seated at the circle, only to be answered with "Oh my god! I felt something touching my neck! Was it the wind?"
The whole prank continued to balloon with the inclusion of the "Flying Plastic Fork". The female volunteer had a white plastic fork in her mouth then and we all commented with pretentious awe that a "holy fork" had joined the circle of night watch and whenever the "holy fork" moved, we would hail it as some sort of divine sign of communication. The end result - the female volunteer was so tickled that she played along with the game and used the fork to continue some silly charade for another hour or so.
When the night watch ended the next morning, I thought to myself - it was definitely the most entertaining and enjoyable night watch that I had ever participated in as the jokes were great, the pranks were hilarious and the watch was fruitful with another four more students caught walking out of their sleeping quarters before the reverie hour was approaching. If I had another chance to go on another night watch, I would definitely seek the company of those eight people.
Loss: I only managed to grab 15 minutes of sleep after my night watch duties ended.
Gain: +1 Fun, +1 Experience in Night Watch
The volunteers were under strict instructions not to take any photos or videos of students during the camp so as to protect the identities of these students whom the Singapore Children's Society consider as children/youths-at-risk. Hence, I could only take back memories and recollections on this blog. The following are some of the more scenic pictures that I had taken.
The sunrise photograph was taken on the morning of Day 3 when I was nearing the end of my guard duty. I was stretching myself and waiting for the campers to wake up when I noticed the beautiful sunrise creeping up from the tree horizon.
The sky was full of alto-cumulus clouds - small and fluffy like numerous cotton buds. It provided a really serene touch to that particular morning. It has been so long since I could find time to cloud-watch and snap such pictures. What a beautiful world of Nature if one could only stop and smell the flowers and feel the breeze.
As a volunteer group leader and dormitory in-charge, my in-camp schedule was usually so tightly-packed that I could only have time to put up a picture of the dinner that was handed to us during Day One - packet lunch with rice, eggs, chicken pieces, beancurd and mixed vegetables. It tasted delicious because I was already famished from all the work from settling in the campers, briefings and ice-breakers.
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