the post title is alrd telling you what this post is going to be about so no need intro lah hor.
ok first, ytd morning we had scitare farewell! it was great fun and everything, though a bit disorganized in the front part but it wasn't too bad. jiayou juniors! all of u were really wonderful. hope my farewell speech wasn't too bad. i decided to write the points down on the way to the farewell bcos im afraid i would forget haha...yeah. and i hope u like my farewell cards. =P
not bad lah, we sang and goofed up and did all sorts of stupid things (like translating lao shu ai da mi into english for srishti to understand while singing it) and stuff. i guess i'll really miss this kindof bonding sessions once i leave rgs, bcos they have the most memorable memories for me. i wonder if guys actually like this kindof bonding thingies, bcos if they don't that means in rjc we won't be able to get this feeling back again.
esp from what i experienced from the orionids, i think guys really dun like those bonding games and stuff. their only bonding sessions vaguely close to ours were ghost-story telling which suck and were so obviously fabricated (wasn't this reclaimed land? how could it be possible for japanese to have masscred chinese here during occupation? HAHA as cx would say, GG!). and yeah "talk cock" sessions. but they were so obssessed with starting a bonfire and releasing CO2 and greenhouse gases and killing the grass and burning the whole place down. ecological footprint my dear! they were playing with those mushroom candles and starting fires on the grass. i wonder if anyone has pictures of that. gillian have?
yeah so to all scitaré juniors: you'll always be my great juniors, and i'll miss you all so don't ever forget me. ):
on to orionids. wah this orionids had many of my firsts. i had much much much more excitement than i ever had in a night. more than enough actually. T.T im surprised i didn't even have a heart attack.
just goes to show i've got a healthier heart than i thought.
ok, first, everyone except me was late getting to republic poly. i was practically panicking the moment i realised i was alone and no one was going to come in time. haiyan and sufen were of all places, at PENDING ROAD?? the old republic poly isn't even there! are u sure you were at bukit panjang??? they followed some outdated map going to the wrong place...
then blaws and the others were just late from eating dinner at causeway point, then siyi was somewhere on the other side of the campus. in the end mpastro group was going to leave for east coast park alrd, then it's like they couldn't find the E5 block and stuff. aiya in the end my heart attack for the night subsided bcos they managed to find their way to the buses and so were "earlier" than me.
gosh. never was i more relieved to see them. it's nv till u "lost" them that you really appreciate them for being there. gosh.
after that i realised jovina practically knows almost everyone around. and was alrd socialising the very moment we stepped on the bus. siyi asked for my help in solving a math qn, and surprisingly
and fortunately!!!! i could solve the qn in the end! even her tuition teacher (from acjc) couldn't solve it! luckily i didn't malu myself in front of my pro junior >.<
anw we reached ecp and met up with haiyan and sufen who went straight there bcos they wouldn't have made it in time to the correct republic poly, then we set up some picnic mat and dumped our stuff there. jovina had nice cookies she baked! it was really good plus we were planning on staying up the whole night so we're sure to get hungry.
we walked around a bit, but it was cloudy and we couldn't see any stars. there were planes taking off and landing practically once every minute. NOW i realised how busy our airport really is T.T no wonder my fren who was at some camp near the changi airport complained about the noisy aeroplanes disrupting her sleep.
jovina proceeded to telling ghost stories. it was REALLY SCARYY. ok lah not that bad but the red and white swirls one... >.< and oso i decided not to let jovina tell me the one that made blaws cry. it must have really be so shocking and scary that she got so frightened. -patpat- i got afraid of ghost stories so i refused to let her tell me. apparently it involved jovina clutching your arm suddenly at the end. quote blaws: "please give me a moment to cry. -buries head and cries-" that's so blaws! -HUGHUGHUG- it's ok! cheer up! it's just a story to scare.
then briefing and bonding games. the organisers are totally lousy. lousy leadership skills, lousy organising skills and lousy everything. they couldn't even get ppl to play dog and bone properly! they just didn't start the game until half an hour later? and by then half the group has dispersed to go do their own stuff (including jovina!!!!!!) GAH. actually it was those poly guys who caused all the disruption and stuff. they were so noisy and not paying attention at all and not enthu in what's going on! such lousy attention span. eurgh
in the end we didn't play and we sat down for some talking session.
scitare juniors! make sure u all can do better than mpastro's organising ok! theirs is so lousy.
uh then we told some ghost stories, and we learnt that jinpeng has really atrocious english. it's really bad, like "there were two couple" when he meant "there was a couple" (two people) and worse stuff. he would make some grammatical or pronounciation error once every few minutes and stacey would pounce on it like a tiger pouncing on meat. hehe...well we have OCD with good english! and oso jinpeng can't tell ghost stories scarily. it's just not scary. at least the acsi guy's stories were a bit scary.
then me and blaws and stacey lay down on the mat and watched for meteors and listened to our mp3 players at the same time. it was really nice, looking in the skies, being at peace and solitary, yet not quite since you have your friends beside you. then the first shooting star of my life streaked past in the sky. it was the most beautiful experience ever.
haha it was big and fat and really close, and looked about 3 times the size of the stars! and it looked like a big white rocket head with a tail behind and it just streaked past in a second. it was right in front of us, right side of orion. it was so big and obviously not a hallucination. we were so excited screaming and squealing and laughing and giggling and all that we forgot to make a wish T.T after all, it WAS THE FIRST METEOR OF OUR LIVES! and it was so PRETTY! i think it looked even bigger than the planes. my inner camera went KER-CHAT and caught that moment forever.
then we started preparing ourselves for what wish we want to make for the next meteor, and we lay back and waited. and waited. and waited. it took at least over half an hour (more than that? dunno didn't keep track of time) b4 a second one streaked past. this one was much smaller, about slightly bigger than the size of rigel in the sky. it streaked right past rigel, the left knee of orion towards the other knee, and disappeared in a split of a second. it was much shorter and smaller than the first and if you blinked u could have missed it! plus it came out of the clouds bcos the night was rather cloudy and we could barely see orion, so it was difficult to spot.
after a long while waiting for another meteor to appear we decided to stretch our legs and walk around. as we talked to gillian we missed our 3rd meteor!!!!! sigh oh well. haha im sure there are many more meteors just to we couldn't see them. even during the peak times we could see very few. it was too bright there; there were lights behind us and across the sea, and singapore's too light polluted. what's more, it was so cloudy and the clouds would move over to cover the stars and then move away sporadically.
haha there was this band of light thingy that we saw since we arrived, and we were trying to decide whether it was the milky way. it was moving across the sky though, slowly but faster than the stars were moving. we called it the milky way, but in the end we decided it was probably a cloud. ): i wanna see the milky way!
all in all, i saw 7 meteors. i made wishes for all but the first one. for the 6th one me and blaws both wished fervently and aloud for "THOUSANDS AND THOUSANDS OF METEORS TO APPEAR BEFORE US!" bcos when the 5th one appeared we lamented how isit we were seeing so few even though it's like 2+am alrd, the peak time. then i suggested how about we wish for many meteors to appear and at that very moment another appeared! it's like to amazing! to see 2 meteors within a minute of each other!!!!! another first.
yeah so immediately we started squeezing our eyes shut and said "THOUSANDS AND THOUSANDS OF METEORS TO APPEAR BEFORE US!" and it was BOTH of us! should have been double potency right. in the end it didn't come true at all. maybe it did, just that we couldn't see them, or the clouds were blocking, or it was too bright T.T or maybe wishing aloud makes it void. sigh at least should appear mahh.
oh and we went cycling around 3+am (im surprised im still awake) actually i was really tired around 11pm to 12am, but once i got past that time then i was fine again, perfectly awake and no longer yawning. odd eh.
jinpeng the organiser suggested that we go to some jetty at the other end of ecp, where it is the darkest part of ecp and so we could star gaze better. so he asked us to take those bikes that bpgh rented, particularly since they were not using the bikes and they were lying around somewhere (in their tent?)
now that i think of it, why didn't i bother to ask who those bikes belonged to? i think we should really have asked them b4 we borrowed right, if not it was really mean bcos they wouldn't know what happened to their bikes. i guess it was the spur of the moment and he asked us to go so we just went lor, we didn't think that much. sigh. im feeling super guilty now.
yeah and we cycled a long way. and this is like what, the second time im cycling? and the first time i was learning how to uh, balance. so this time it was terrible. i stop-crashed at least 10 times and more, and i was practically slowing the group down bcos i kept veering off the path and stop crashing. ): but hey! i could turn and swerve somewhat now! and can control my speed better! im happy.
oh jinpeng and gillian were on the double bike bcos gillian couldn't cycle. jovina was elsewhere socialising (with bp i think). jinpeng could cycle quite well and so once gillian got the hang of it they zoomed off and disappeared. ack but luckily i got the feel and i could cycle somewhat. but i need loads of space when i start off bcos i take ages to get my other leg up and i will swerve all around with one leg on pedal and the other looking for the other pedal and stuff. u get the idea. more often than not i stop crash into something. but after a while i got better at starting off so yeah that's not too bad.
and everytime i was going close to someone else i would have to warn them to stay to one side or i'll risk crashing into them. TO THINK OF IT i crashed into the acsi guy the first time i was getting on the bike and i couldn't get the feel yet. poor guy. he was nice and he didn't make a big deal of it at all, even though i think i hurt his hand or something. what's his name again? T.T
so another first. first time night cycling (or morning? it was like 3+am to 5am). first time cycling SO FAR! like stacey said, we cycled 12 km? i totally can't believe it was that far. yet another first. i was feeling worse than my tennis lessons, and trust me. my tennis lessons are really bad. also, i nv felt better to be back on the ground again after all that cycling. good old feet. 做人应该脚踏实地
also YES my stamina is lousy bcos my arms are super weak, plus i was so scared of falling that i was practically gripping the handlebars too tightly. my hands were really cramped up sometime halfway through to the jetty. i was so afraid of getting lost, and i was so tired, all the muscles i nv use in ages were all forced into use during the cycling. that's why i was so tired, i had a lot of lactic acid and my muscles were really aching, plus it was more than an hour of cycling. 2.4km or cross country or whatever at most half an hour surely over. what's more i nv train now. and what's more those particular muscles were rather tired out bcos we were "training our muscles for FAM" haha during PE at the new gym!
yikes. but particularly my arms were tired lah. even now it's tiring to type. i don't really want to cycle that far again. it's scary to know that u can't possibly turn back just like that, and u have no choice but to go on forward. and there was still the return trip to think about. i was thinking how would i ever make it back?
yeah by the time we got to the jetty, there were clouds all over and we couldn't see a thing. we were late. jp and gillian arrived 10 minutes earlier and saw a really spectaculr view of the nightsky with all the stars, but then the clouds took over when we arrived ): i had no mood to look at the stars anw, i just wanted to flop over and die. BUT THEN it was going to rain bcos lighting was flashing and all and we had to rush back bcos we had to return bp their bikes and everything. so no rest at all and immediately we had to turn back and chiong ah. in the end blaws and i lost the rest and we kindof lost our way. we were trying to decide which road to take (it branched out) but we decided both ways would lead to the same place so yeah. still, afterwards we overshot and i didn't realise at all until i was totally alone and then i had to ask for directions from this weird couple smoking and making out on the beach. eurgh.
IMAGINE why would u want to wake up at 4am in the morning to go to EAST COAST PARK of all places and make out? ok lah the 4am thing maybe is bcos they were sneaking out of their houses, but ecp? it's so far away from anywhere and so ulu, and all there's to see is the sky. even if u want the sea and stuff oso a bit de weird to go in the middle of the night. it's not exactly very comfortable there and u can't see the sea properly. there were seriously loads of couples around there, like almost one every bench or so. making out, or hugging, or dunno what they doing. staring at the sea. if i wasn't so desperately lost i wouldn't even want to bother them.
yeah in the end i found the burger king and i rmbed that the camp was nearby, so i got off my bike and walked it, if not i might miss the campsite again totally and stuff. all the campsites just look the same lor. and i think there was another astro group somewhere further down, bcos i saw green laser pointers shining at the sky there, but it wasn't our camp. cool eh? maybe it was for the meteors too. just a pity it was so cloudy and ominous and going-to-rain and lightning.
er and in the end i got "picked up" by bp and the acsi guy i think? dunno lah the weird chauvinistic guys who seemed to decide that i was a damsel in distress in need of help and everything. they grabbed my bike and insisted they help me with the bike and i walk on back. we had a tug and pull war. of course u know who won, esp since i was so tired. yeah so i ran back to camp (to escape them and to prove i had strength left anw. oh good old ground. feet on the ground felt soooo good.) and uh left the bike in their hands.
while i might have wanted some help, i definitely did not want help there and then. they were a bit late hor. i wanted help like earlier on and where were they huh? haha aiya but i just feel pissed that they think im lousy and i need help and everything when i don't need it! i was making my way perfectly fine back. i feel super insulted.
hmph. im an independent young woman and a geog student, and of course i could find my way back lah! no matter how frightened i was, or how lost i was, or how alone i was, i overcame them all. im really proud of myself that night/morning. i survived all that fear and everything and i actually found reserves of strength i nv knew i had (both physical and mental). it's a really unforgettable experience of my life. the whole night, everything. i wouldn't say they were all good and wonderful, bcos im still feeling guilty over the bikes and over slowing the group down and crashing into the guy and stop-crashing so many times and interrupting the making out couple and spoiling their wonderful night.
and chauvinistic guys were actually trying to help me one poor little girl. while it's nice and all, i just can't mistake their meaning. im helpless and weak. AND I WOULD NOT STAND THATTTTT! GARHHH.
most importantly, first time i managed to stay up the WHOLE NIGHT! nv slept at all! not a single bit! and i watched the sunrise but too cloudy ah, nothing much to see oso. just some colours only =P
overall i hope everyone enjoyed the orionids. and now we know the difference between hallucinations of meteors and real meteors. haha and oso that jovina can tell scary ghost stories. and she can really socialise a lot. like 80% of the night she spent it socialising and not with US GREAT SENIORS AND CLUBMATES FROM SCITARE HUH HOW CAN YOU ABANDON US LIKE THAT i was supposed to go socialise with u too T.T haha but i feel the time was better spent with blaws and the others. there was this feeling of bondship and love in the air that night, as we watched the stars streak across the nightsky.
