World Vision Singapore 30 Hour Famine Camp 2011 @ Ngee Ann Polytechnic from 17 June to 18 June 2011 Camp Review and Afterthoughts

Finally, after a long hiatus at blogging, I've finally found something to blog about extensively - my most recent camping experience at World Vision Singapore's 30 Hour Famine Camp 2011.

The 30 HOUR FAMINE Camp in Singapore aims to transform the mindset of youth in Singapore towards issues of poverty, and to motivate campers to take action steps towards achieving change.



This is the third time I joined them as a Camp Facilitator to try and do some good. My primary objective is, of course, to help World Vision Singapore reach out to the youths of Singapore through experiential activities in the camp to raise awareness about poverty and hopefully, spur them further to help impoverished children around the world through World Vision Singapore's various programs. My secondary objective is to do something I enjoyed all my life - camping and leading groups to achieve something for themselves so they can grow to become better persons through camping.

For this particular camp review and afterthoughts, I shall be going through the key activities within the camp which started from 17 June 2011 at 1300hrs and concluded at 18 June 2011 1900hrs and bring across my thoughts about the hits and the misses of the camp. It is intended to provide a clear reflective view of what has transpired through what I have seen for myself so that readers of this camp review can have different perspectives through which they can understand the camp better and learn more about it if they have not experienced it themselves during that duration.

To conveniently sum up my thoughts for readers who wanted something to reflect all those wordy paragraphs, I will use a blue ☺ to signify my personal approval of each key activity or a red ☹ to represent my personal disapproval of each key activity.

Click the subheadings for beautiful camp photos provided and uploaded on Facebook by Eric Chow, one of the volunteer photographers of the camp.

Without further ado, here we go...

Day 1/1300hrs/Opening Ceremony:

The Camp Facilitators, Logistics Warriors, Game Masters were already waiting in positions to receive the newly-minted campers from the Convention Hall of Ngee Ann Polytechnic. None of these groups actually attended the Opening Ceremony of the 30 Hour Famine Camp 2011 because we had plenty to do - final administration work and program briefing for the facilitators before the campers were released, logistics (primarily water and securing of the bags of the campers) to be moved around, game stations to be set up and checked by Game Masters so that campers can enjoy Day 1's experiential activities without a hitch. Personally, I would love to enjoy watching the Opening Ceremony with the campers but I suppose this arrangement, which differs from previous Famine Camps I had attended, is better because there was so much more groundwork to be done and those groundwork was better coordinated if all those three groups of camp volunteers were not inside the convention hall for the Opening Ceremony. ☺ X 1

Day 1/1430hrs/Beginning of 4 Phases of Experiential Activities:

One of the major highlights of Day 1 is the experiential activities which are divided into four phases. Once the campers has been grouped into "families" of different "countries", they are briefed by the Camp Facilitators about their objectives which will included accumulating iconic food, water, health vaccinations, education and monetary savings in Game Dollars for their respective families to survive in simulated Third World conditions. The Campers were then to explore Ngee Ann Polytechnic with a very simple map and a token sum of 10 Game Dollars for the entire "family" which averages around 10 family members comprising of Family Head, Family Vice Head, Adults and Children. I loved the series of experiential activities because it allowed the Campers time to bond together and interact with one another to solve problems at dozens of Game Stations scattered around the campus grounds of Ngee Ann Polytechnic. I am glad World Vision Singapore did not deviate from this and continued to use interesting Game Stations to test the strengths, tenacity, intelligence and even wits of Campers. ☺ X 2

Day 1/1500hrs/Dialogue In The Dark (D.I.D):

Dialogue In The Dark is a completely new program in the camp itinerary compared to previous 30 Hour Famine Camps. This is like a blind man's trail but it is conducted in a completely dark maze and small groups are actually led by visually-handicapped guides through a selection of tours with different themes. The idea is to let Campers experience the loss of use of their sight in the maze so they have to rely on other senses to find their way inside, listening to instructions, learning how to trust their fellow group mates, overcoming simple obstacles within and learning how important it is to communicate in such a context. As a Camp Facilitator, I have already experienced D.I.D and I thought it was quite a challenging and intriguing experience which lasted approximately about 20 to 30minutes.☺ X 2

Day 1/1500hrs/Bottleneck outside D.I.D:

A problem developed when one of the groups inside D.I.D was delayed long enough for other groups to start gathering outside, creating a bottleneck as only five Campers from each "family" got to experience D.I.D, which meant those five members had to suspend their Phase 1 or even Phase 2 activities to wait outside D.I.D and that actually defeated part of the experiential purpose of the Phase 1 to Phase 4 activities as the "families" were split up and thus could not really bond well enough to be tackling Phase 3 and Phase 4 as a closer "family" unit. Personally, I thought D.I.D should not be interjected within the experiential activities, which would disrupt the flow of the activities but it should be made as a separate activity on perhaps Day 2 instead, alternating with some of the written work activities. This bottleneck obviously was not a good thing in the camp. ☹ X 1

Day 1/2300hrs/Sleeping Arrangements:

The female Campers and female Camp Facilitators were to sleep in LT56 while their male counterparts are to sleep in Block 50. So after collecting our bags in the holding area, I made my way to Block 50 with other Campers and Camp Facilitators. Block 50 was a way off from the Convention Hall area and the bag holding area so it was quite a trudge for many who were now running on empty engines and fatigued from an entire day's worth of physical activities. Most of the male Campers were too restless, however, to fall asleep and they were trying to clean themselves up as best as they could since there was no shower heads available for anyone to use. The Camp Facilitators were quick to fall asleep as they knew they had a long day ahead the next day. After briefing my roomful of Campers about how to overcome some of the possible "uncleanliness" from the story I had heard from Ngee Ann Polytechnic Campers about Block 50, I turned in at around 12.30am and woke up at 5.30am, giving myself a full five hours of undisturbed sleep. The next morning, a number of Campers and Camp Facilitators were grumbling about how cold the place was for all the sleeping rooms had air-conditioning within. For me, I think the accommodations were much better than most of the other camps I had attended. ☺ X 1

Day 2/0900hrs/Fish To Infinity:

Fish To Infinity is one of the less physically demanding activities in the camp which requires Campers to break into small groups to come up with a business proposal to help children. The Campers were given some parameters to work with and they had to submit the proposal after consulting information within a catalogue provided by World Vision Singapore. As the Camp Facilitators were not briefed or trained to provide any direct guidance to help the Campers, most of the Camp Facilitators just left the Campers to their own for their brainstorming sessions. I felt that forty-five minutes were a little too short for proper organization of a decent proposal and some of the Campers made use of this time to take naps instead of participating. Perhaps, more could be done if Camp Facilitators had a preview of the catalogue and a better idea of how to assist the Campers instead of milling around. ☺ X 1 + ☹ X 1


Day 2/1100hrs/R.O.M.A.S:

This is an outreach activity aimed at Campers to interact with members of the public outside key shopping venues along Orchard Road so as to raise public awareness of World Vision Singapore, its 30 Hour Famine Camp, as well as the plight of children who are in dire need of help. It involved photo-taking sessions with members of the public, as well as Campers to take jump shots and creative shots of themselves to be uploaded to a specific Flickr account created by World Vision Singapore. My group had only about less than twenty minutes outside Paragon to accomplish all the activities and I thought it was far too short compared to the originally allocated ninety minutes so most of the photos taken were hurried though the Campers enjoyed the short excursion away from the confines of the camping grounds.

I thought the outreach was successful to a good extent but it could have been better if the Campers stayed at Orchard Road longer with more planned activities to keep them in the limelight. Then again, activities along Orchard Road always had to go through stringent checks and approval from the Singapore Police Force. ☺ X 1 + ☹ X 1

Day 2/1400hrs/Reflection Time:

Reflection times are necessary in such camps as they involve more cozy discussions about learning points which should be aligned with the learning objectives of the various camp activities and overall camp focus - awareness and action. Most of the Camp Facilitators had gone through at least two and a half day's worth of training, which is a good thing but the reflection time in that afternoon stretched more than three hours till 1700hrs. That posed a serious problem for Camp Facilitators whom some of them commented that they were running out of ice-breaking games to play and were worried that idling time would bring the thoughts of hunger back into the minds of the Campers who had then been keep busy since the moment they woke up.

Fortunately, the Camp Facilitators from my country, Ethiopia, whom I wished to commend publicly here, were a resilient bunch who tried their best to keep the Campers entertained after reflection time by combining all the "families" under Ethiopia for mass games. A total of three mass games were played which somehow worked the Campers to peals of laughter, brought smiles to their faces and thankfully took one hour off the possible idling time. I guessed somehow this lengthy time slot did bring the Campers and Camp Facilitators closer. I just thought more ice-breakers taught to the Facilitators, some of them who were completely new to facilitating groups, during pre-camp training, would have helped a little more in situations like that. ☺ X 1 + ☹ X 1

Day 2/1800hrs/Closing Ceremony:

The Closing Ceremony was much more entertaining than the previous year as the performers were much better prepared and they took efforts to whip up the mood of the audience who were hungry but ecstatic enough to enjoy popular English songs. Some of the more energetic ones even stood up to dance! I recalled games played by deejays from FM91.3, a cheer-leading performance, two sets of songs performed by Jack and Rai and a female singer whom I could not remember her name at the moment. There was then a countdown event though the official Break Fast timing was supposed to be at 1900hrs (which marked the official end time for the 30 Hour Famine Camp itself) but the Closing Ceremony ended at around 1920hrs.

Dismissal from the Convention Hall was also delaying the collection of the break fast meals and I thought the delays were probably excruciating for those Campers who had already made plans after the Break Fast timing of 1900hrs. After more than thirty camps under my belt, I completely understood that no camp could end exactly on the dot but the thing was that the Facilitators were not briefed on such a contingency and thus some of them were a little lost when Campers asked about delays and collection procedures of the Break Fast meals.☺ X 3 + ☹ X 1

Day 2/1930hrs/Break Fast Meal Collection:

That, in my opinion, was the biggest and most visible glitch in the 30 Hour Famine Camp 2011 because by the time my group of Campers were dismissed from the Convention Hall where the Closing Ceremony was held at, it was already past 1930hrs and without knowing exactly where to collect the meals, I only managed to spot two queues forming outside the Hall. I joined one of them only to find out that that was but the drinks queue and the other one was actually for the food. Deciding to collect drinks first since I was far ahead in the queue, someone then shouted to the Facilitators there to get a helper from the Campers since there was a lot to carry. That posed an immediate problem because I had already dispatched my Camper to the allocated Facilitation Venue which was at least 400 meters away from the queue. So I took out some large plastic bags to try and carry every packet of drink and food for my group as I moved to queue the food queue.

To my utter dismay, the food distributors announced that they ran out of rice and thus everyone had to wait for at least 15 to 20 minutes for the next batch of rice to be cooked. The time on my watch was nearly 2000hrs so I decided to head back to my group of Campers and dismiss them straightaway without the Break Fast meal as they would be waiting far longer than 20 minutes on empty stomachs. It was, of course, not a good piece of news, because some of them seemed really keen to break fast on an official note but a few were really in a big hurry to leave the Camp as their parents were waiting. I made the decision but I was in quite a foul mood as I thought the Break Fast was an important finale to the Camp and should have been more well-prepared instead and that it was not the first time World Vision Singapore had organized a 30 Hour Famine Camp. After talking to the various members of the organizing committee, I finally verified the reason behind - the newly appointed food caterer was not well-equipped to handle the sheer number of people requiring food to the point that one of their two rice-cookers broke down in the midst of cooking. It was one spanner in the works thrown into the final hour of the camp when everything else was relatively smooth and the hiccups paled in comparison to that rice-cooker problem. ☹ X 3

Nonetheless, I felt that the 30 Hour Famine Camp 2011 was all in all much better organized than the previous ones with a lot more attention on Camp Facilitators' training, clearer program objectives, more variety of programs to keep the Campers engaged, and much better camp accommodations so that everyone was better taken care of.

Of course, there is still room for improvement and every Camp Facilitator had even received an email which asked for their feedback about the camp. This alone speaks volumes of how World Vision Singapore remains pro-active in improving themselves and their activities. ☺ X 1


I believe this blog post would suffice as my reply. For now, I am already looking forward to attending World Vision Singapore 30 Hour Famine Camp 2012 because it surely has the potential to become one of the best camps in Singapore!

Thank you for reading such a long and lengthy post. I'll end with a Youtube video of photo montage of the camp itself. Have a great week ahead! ^__^

Movie Review: The Devil (2010) NC16

(Image credit goes to this url website)

Initially, I was daunted by the length of the movie, which is but a mere 81 minutes, but I was really intrigued by the storyline of how everything can be compacted so tightly within an elevator so I went ahead and watched the movie anyway.

I did not regret my decision - it was worth a full five popcorns rating. If Avatar is widely recognized as one of the best action movies of the year, I think this movie will go well as one of the best suspense/morality thriller of the year. The story revolves around how five strangers in a office building's elevator were trapped and suffered a series of horrifying experiences which led them to believe that one of them was the culprit. The story is then narrated by a South American security guard who goes on to reveal that according to a folktale by his grandmother - the Devil sometimes transforms itself into human form and punishes a group of sinners in the most bizarre ways unimaginable.

Expect a lot of deaths and blood in the movie, which explain its NC16 rating but for those readers who are able to watch this movie, please don't miss it. A strange suicide off the 35th floor of a building with the victim holding onto a string of rosemary, a brilliant and hardworking detective who recently lost his family, a temp security officer, a senior-looking office lady, a rough man with a missing red sack, an arrogant and talkative mattress salesman and an attractive girl looking for a lawyer. The story brings all of these people together a way to explain how the Devil manipulates the fears, doubts and suspicions of people in the modern world who have so many secrets hidden in their lives.

The detective works as hard as he can, summoning policemen, mechanics, firefighters to the scene as well, but as he begins to realize that none of his excellent detective skills and logical reasoning is able to make sense of the scene, he begins to believe the South American security guard that something supernatural is involved in the whole scheme of things and that he is actually the intended audience for all that is about to happen in that fateful elevator.

Why is the detective chosen? Will any human being actually make it out of that elevator alive with the Devil lurking as one of the passengers? I won't spoil the surprise. Please do not go to Youtube to read the comments because some of them have actually posted full spoilers ahead. Go with an inquisitive mind and an open heart about The God, The Devil, The Man and how all these three beings can possibly interact and have a great 81 minutes in the movie theater!

Chinese New Year Celebrations and more photos of food during outings.

Birthday Celebrations with The Changed Man and his girlfriend at JurongPoint:

Outing With Ex-Student At West Mall Swenson's Restaurant Before He Goes Into Army:
Chinese New Year Eve Dinner Preparations In The Kitchen:








Sumptuous Chinese New Year Eve Dinner:

An after-dinner glass of red wine as traditional of my family.

Chinese New Year Day One Breakfast- Fusion of Western and Eastern Goodies:

Chinese New Year Day Three Lunch:

Chinese New Year Day Eight Lunch With YuSheng:

Birthday Celebrations For 2010

Birthday Breakfast Celebrations at White Coffee Cafe at Toa Payoh:

Siew Ching invited me for a early birthday treat at a cafe that I would not have found myself in Toa Payoh Central, near Sizzler restaurant. We ordered two breakfast sets and spent the morning there eating, talking and amusing ourselves with the clumsy waiters there who would misplace our food on the wrong tables, place the bill before the meal started and confused about the billing again. Hahaha. Oh well, all those did not matter that much since I had my treat satisfied. Burp.
My Western Food set - the sausages were to my liking but the egg yolk was broken. It was filling at least since I had to make my way early down to the Toa Payoh Central whilst still yawning.
A couple of photographs taken after we had our breakfast, talking about photographs, cameras and why some pictures are worth the taking.
We parted ways around 11.45pm because Siew Ching still had another appointment while I had another family celebration in the afternoon before going to work.

Birthday Cake Celebrations in the afternoon at home:

My parents always remembered my birthday and bought a delicious chocolate cake, red eggs and juice drinks for a simple family celebration. It's a tradition that has never been broken for all my life and I loved such simple gatherings, with the cake in my mouth and the thoughts of contentment in my mind.

To show my appreciation, I bought a huge packet of cereal prawns for dinner since it's their favorite food as well as mine. My thanks to all my Facebook friends who remembered and gave their timely well-wishes on my wall too!

A Sand Drawing of World War II by Kseniya Simonova

Kseniya Simonova is a Ukrainian artist who just won Ukraine's version of "America's Got Talent." She uses a giant light box, dramatic music, imagination and "sand painting" skills to interpret Germany's invasion and occupation of Ukraine during WWII.

And I thought it was a beautiful story told...enough said.

Amazing Sand Drawing @ Yahoo! Video

Singapore Children's Society Project Cabin Camp 2009 9 Nov to 11 Nov

I have just returned from the above-mentioned camp as a volunteer group leader and this blog post is all about all the interesting encounters that have happened during this camp. The objective of the camp is to enrich the values of the students using the core motto of the camp for this year "No Man Is An Island".

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.

Enjoying Fallout 3 again on new PC, Reward Lunch at Swensen's, Conversations Between A Master and A Disciple

Enjoying Fallout 3 again on new PC:

Finally, after two weeks of deliberation, I had my new PC up and running.

Intel I 7 Quad Core
Gigabyte Motherboard
Vista Home Premium Operating System
4GB Ram
Geforce GTS 250 Graphics Card
500GB SATA HDD
2GB DDR 3
DVD Writer

It's not exactly THE best configuration around the country but according to my computer technician, it's already a very impressive setup which will power the latest games and ensure a good performance whenever I surf the Internet.


Here's a picture of the Quad Core I7 Processor which my technician whistled with approval.

Reward Lunch at Swensen's:

I have been working real hard and clocking overtime so my blogging took a back seat for these two weeks. Just a couple more days and I'll be able to enjoy some seamless rest and recreation, especially when I have a goody computer at home to play around with whenever I am not out meeting my VIP friends.

I took a nice lunch to reward myself for working so hard and ordered at Swensen's Holland Village since I was there to finish up some work. A slow lunch is also good for the mind and body and I took my time to savor it. I think I should do this more often since I've been chowing instant noodles and cornflakes with milk for a disproportionate number of my meals recently.


A picture of the main course - roasted chicken with basil herbs for lunch.

Conversations Between a Master and a Disciple:

Disciple: Master, this is so difficult - why are we working so hard? Life is so impermanent and shouldn't we be enjoying ourselves instead of slogging so hard?

Master: Life is indeed impermanent and far more unpredictable for so many of us yet we should not stop working hard because the more we do, experience and engage, the more we learn. As long as we are learning, we are doing good to the quality of our lives. Of course, we can still enjoy ourselves whilst working but we should not crave quick gratification without the genuine sweetness from hard work.

Disciple: If we are so impermanent, it really makes very little sense to even work so hard. Everything will still come to nil when our lives ran out.

Master: We may lose everything we think we possess the moment we expire but the indirect benefits that we have exerted on the lives of others may endure for many years to come. For example, a soya bean milk seller may have lived out his life but his service to have provided drink and nourishment to so many others may have yielded far greater good that he can ever imagine - those people may in turn bring benefits to further others. So we should commit ourselves to whatever we are at so we may prove to be useful, be it during or after our lifetimes.

Stay tuned. I will have more photos and blog posts coming up, now that I will soon have time to really blog about the things around us. Time for dinner! Bye! ^__^

Afternoon Tea with The Modest Insomniac Facebook Application - Dungeon & Dragons: Tiny Adventures

Afternoon Tea with The Modest Insomniac:

I met up with one of my Facebook friends for the first time for an afternoon tea whom I shall henceforth name as The Modest Insomnia because she is suffering from some sleep problems but has been modest about how she describes herself and her life.

We met at an undisclosed Coffee Bean outlet to order some hot caramel tea and double chocolate ice-blended on a Saturday afternoon and settled down chit-chatting about online auctions, foreign immigrants in Singapore, books and work for about an hour before hopping over to one of the community libraries to try and find some essayist from Taiwan whose works she highly recommended to me. Unfortunately, those books were on loan and we have to find them some other time.

We walked around and found an ice-cream parlor and decided to try out some of the flavors offered - Rum and Raisins and another flavor which I had given up trying to spell (P....something) and a second hour was spent there eating and talking about countries with cold weather, shopping, Facebooking and other small talk.

The afternoon tea concluded and we went about our own ways as the Modest Insomniac was trying to look for some stylish winter clothes for her overseas work assignment at the end of the year. Compared to some of the really demanding people I have met up with, the Modest Insomniac is a nice enough person who can joke around with and I suppose she will be a definite candidate when the next opportunity for a leisure afternoon out comes along.


Facebook Application - Dungeons & Dragons: Tiny Adventures

I am currently playing a game using a Facebook application called Dungeons and Dragons: Tiny Adventures and it brings back fond memories of how the original board game was played during my younger school days. Dungeons and Dragons are considered by many experienced role-playing gamers as one of the first organized formats where the genre itself was created from.

Though this application is a mere simplified version of the original, the player still gets his/her share of fun deciding which class of character to play and by going on quests and adventures, gain experience and more importantly, valuable and powerful equipment to use until the character retires at level 11. The application uses a method where one can transfer one piece of equipment or weapon from a previous-generation character to the next-generation character.

My current character is a 3rd-generation Human Druid called Earthmaius who did quite badly for his earlier character levels but slowly gained strength and stability. The two characters which I used were an Eladrin Female Paladin and a Male Dragonborn Warrior. Earthmaius now packs quite a punch at his late stage development and is ready to retire and pass on one of the game's most valuable item called the Mithral Shirt of Corellon.

Personally, I would recommend this game to my blog readers who have an interest in understanding how Dungeon and Dragons works in a simplified and easy-to-understand application to try out the game, which does not really require much maintenance and attention since whenever the character is out on adventure, there is almost nothing much to do except wait for the adventure's encounters are over, occasionally switching equipment only if one prefers to micro-manage one's character.

Overall, it provides some good entertainment because whenever the character succeeds or fails an encounter in an adventure, there will be paragraphs describing the characters' intelligent or foolhardy actions, which makes for some reading fun. Here's an example:

Encounter 3: Castle (Constructs)

While searching one of the impossibly many rooms of the wizards tower, Earthmaius found a seven foot tall, half-sculpted clay statue of a dragonborn warrior. The lower portion of its left arm and the left side of its chest and head were still unsculpted. However, its unfinished state did not stop it from lurching to life and attacking Earthmaius.

Earthmaius made an Attack Bonus check with a difficulty of 28 . . . and rolled 30

The golem slammed its fist into Earthmaius's chest, knocking him against the wall. For his reply, Earthmaius plagued it in its head. The creature's half-formed head smacked against the ground and the battle was won. Earthmaius continued his search, content that he was now truly alone in the room.

Earthmaius took 6 damage.

Earthmaius received 153 XP and 33 gold.

Earthmaius received a Dynamic Belt.

《我要唱下去》22 August 2009 Roadshow at Jurong Point, Melben Seafood Dinner and Clark Quay Desserts with VIPs

《我要唱下去》22 August 2009 Roadshow at Jurong Point:

Been wanting to upload these photos since last Saturday but my uploader refused to cooperate so I had to spend several days to upload them by batches. Sorry for the delay but here it goes:

As usual for most outdoor events, I would arrive early to recon the area and I was there before the majority of the crowd had gathered. I saw Andrew aka Spicymac along with a number of others already standing in front of the stage but I did not approach. I went for my lunch at Coffee Bean instead and took a leisurely one reading newspapers before the event started promptly at 2pm.
This was the host for the Roadshow. I have never seen him before but he was alright.
The guest performers who were supposed to help the audience participants with the songs, from left - Carrie Yeo, Diya Tan, Shawn Tok, Jarod Lee and Teresa Tseng.
The position where I had been occupying was a little obstructed by the decorative plants on the ledge so poor Carrie in this photograph was blocked but you could still see her smile.
The host warmed up the stage by trying to crack some jokes and converse with the guest performers and I believe this was Shawn's turn to answer the questions from the host.
Teresa Tseng was trying to help one of the audience participants who seemed a little too nervous to be remembering her song lyrics well.
So Teresa tried again, redoubling her efforts and bending forward because the audience participant was so timid that she was barely audible in the noisy Jurong Point atrium.
Diya was encouraging one of the audience participants to choose his categories - apparently, the audience participants followed the same gameshow format - pick a category and choose one of the two songs behind that category to attempt to remember the lyrics after the guest performer has sung.
Shawn's turn in trying to help the audience participant.
Diya was singing her way to the designated portion before the audience participant must continue - sometimes it's just a phrase of three words whilst others can be as long as fourteen words.
The audience participant was trying very hard to assist the audience participant while the rest looked and cheered him on.
Carrie's turn to try and sing her portions while the audience participant was listening intently.
Teresa's turn to help another audience participant who also had some trouble remembering the lyrics but the overall roadshow was fun to watch most of the time.
Shawn's turn again and it was a very difficult song so Shawn was really trying very hard to make sure the audience participant could pick up from where he had left off from.
Jarod's turn to help the audience participant - who turned out to be Andrew aka Spicymac. The latter suddenly had a memory lapse and he took quite some time to remember and decide the lyrics portion he was supposed to remember.
Jarod was singing his portion again so that the audience participant could somehow remember the next line.
Diya was doing her signature marching steps again while the audience participant was trying to catch the song in tune.
Teresa seemed to be particularly "lucky" because the audience participants kept picking the categories in which she was the designated singer for those songs so she had to appear again and again to sing. Thankfully, she was well-prepared.
Shawn was trying to help a rather bored looking audience participant with his song.
I experimented with my camera to zoom in further but the pixels were not cooperating so I left the remaining pictures with their original settings except for this shot with Teresa and another audience participant who was looking for clues from the enthusiastic audience who were trying to help as well.

I tried to contact some of the more professional photographers on the Internet who had higher quality photos of the events but they wanted to be paid for the use of the photos but I did not have a budget for such photos on such a short notice. If my blog readers are interested, you can try to search Flickr for more roadshow pictures.

The roadshow ended at around 3pm and I left the place for another appointment. Catch the actual gameshow every Tuesday at 8pm if you are interested to sing how members of the public vied to crack their memories to remember their way to a grand prize of SGD$500,000.

Melben Seafood Dinner and Clark Quay Desserts with VIPs:

Yes, the waiting time was long but we were used to it so we entertained ourselves with jokes, chitchat interspersed with feedings of peanuts.
Strangely, it was the vegetables dish that was served up first.
The buns are deliciously spongy, oily on the outside but soft on the inside. One of my favorite side dishes when I dined there.
The Changed Man complained that the quality of these supposed yam sticks were not as good as they should have been but I was not too choosy as I was really hungry by then so I gobbled them down anyway.
The Married Soldier's wife was the main organizer so she ordered two types of crab dishes - this one being the butter crab.
The other crab dish being the soup-based crab. Both tasted heavenly with their huge pincers with incredulously succulent crab meat within. The pincers were already crushed before serving for easy access to the meat within. Yummy.
The aftermath of our Melben gathering with the VIPs - we were so full that we had to sacrifice the soup which was really tasty after all.
We proceeded to Clark Quay because someone suggested trying out a dessert restaurant there with wine-laced fruits and waffles. I was too full of dinner so I ordered a double chocolate mudcake and iced lemon tea while the other VIPs ordered some apple strudels, waffles with wine-soaked pears and some other drinks unidentifiable in the semi-darkness because we sat outside the restaurant along the main streets inside Clark Quay to watch the crowd move by. The place was choked with party-goers once the clock hit 11pm - sizzling people with sizzling outfits but it was really not suitable for anyone below 18 years old because the place would be smelling of alcohol and cigarette smoke as the night gets darker.

We adjourned for home after desserts as some of us had work to do the following morning.

Time to crash. Am really exhausted this week... Zzz....