Final Five

The final five days of school.

MONDAY

Let's see...that day, we had 'leadership camp'. In summary, it was rather bad. For icebreakers, we played a tic tac toe thing to find out more about each other, the usual questions and snswers and ask each other for their answers game. That is really old. Then we were briefed on an activity which we were going to do later.

We were simulated in a village slum and have to upgrade it to full level by doing tasks. People working in the marketplace upgrades the level, making basic needs work easier; while basic needs people work to keep the marketplace going.

So as tung and I went to the water station, we found that we were supposed to transfer water over from a pail to a leaking cup, but apparently it was really easy, and to prevent it from overflowing, we walked around and waited for it to drip.

In fact, we did not see how the basic needs people not working would affect the marketplace. All we had to do is to wait for the marketplace to upgrade our level.

Then I got into the marketplace group after a swap and we went around doing puzzles. Tangrams were easy to me, while the 1-8 sliding puzzle was tung's speciality. He has the game on his handphone.

Thus when it was over, I could not see the leadership involved in this. And the instructor came up with a very odd and stupid yet sensible explanation, that marketplace people were leaders and that they had to do the basic needs jobs once in a while so that they can serve. And this is 'supposed' to teach us servant leadership.

I find it a waste of time, to spend such a long time on an activity to demonstrate something microscopic relative to the activity. The servant leadership involved seemed like a value that had to be squeezed in into a long ago planned activity, in order to make the activity have something to do with leadership.

In addtion, I could tell that the instructors were trying to make the activity similar to a strategy game, with upgrading, and resources et cetera, however they are failing very badly.

I would not have minded going for a plain lecture about leadership for hours, provided that it was good, but this is wastage of time on an activity that could have been covered in a lecture slide in a few seconds. Probably being able to argue that it would not only help us know, but understand the need for a leader to serve, I would say that it did not make a difference.

There are many such services out there which advertise such leadership programmes, but little are effective. I remember clearly, a one hour lecture about leadership during assembly held either early this year, or late last year, and it had grasped my attention throughout. Not only was the person a good speaker, but his points on the presentation make sense. I can positively say that I would have attended 10 days of such lectures, than to attend a single day of this leadershi* camp.

After the break, there was a presentation about leaders serving a purpose and serving people. However I disagree, because leaders serve people, but everyone serves a purpose. That does not mean that everyone is a leader. In addition, I could see that Mother Teresa was an extremely kind-hearted and caring saint, but to say that she is a leader, like jk, I would not be too sure...

The school should be more careful in hiring these organizations, either that or the school thinks that it is an excellent programme, which is a very probably possibility too.

Later I went to play badminton with jk. Wanted to go to hougang CC, but although when we asked they said that there were courts, the system crashed when we got there. According to the people there, the system always crash on rainy days.

So we went to hougang sports complex which was a rather nice place. Managed to find our way there thanks to my always ready Map of Singapore in my bag.

While playing badminton, my skin tore due to the lousy grip of jk's racket. It took a few days to heal.

TUESDAY

Went for religion tour around the city area on this day. First we went to a chinese temple, and I got quite a headache from all the incense burning.

After that, we went to Maxwell food centre for break which is extremely big. I had breakfast in a lunchbox and bought some kiwi and watermelon.

Then we went to a mosque, followed by St. Andrew Cathedral which I have went many times.

Lastly, we went to a hindu temple which was the worse. Feeling very tired, we entered the crowded place with socks. It was rather hot in there, and it became worse when we entered the courtyard, which had wet floors, which never goes well with socks.

When we finally got back onto the bus, the level head started asking about where we should go for post exam activities for next year. She asked if a concert would be okay, but I, having attended many concerts before, tend to be more picky about attending concerts. So when she asked me whether it would be okay, I replied that it would depend on what type of concert.

Then she asked me if music concert would be okay. And I said depends on what type of music concert.

Then she asked if a musical would be okay. And I said depends on what musical.

And she stopped asking and got rather impatient but I knew that had she continued asking I would have gone into musical style, era, composers et cetera.

Then the discussion went on to finding an educational activity for post-exam, and when people started recommending sporting activities, the idea was not greatly encouraged by her. Then she started talking about the lack of participation in sports day.

The people sitting at the front of the bus gave suggestions, but she was not too receptive of other's logic, as usual.

Personally, I think that in order for maximum participation on sports day, the recruitment of participants should be more active, instead of waiting for people to sign up, which is currently the case. Either that, or only the pros are approached.

On an extreme basis, everyone should be forced to participate in at least one event, so as to promote sports day. The problem is that now we watched the pros running, and thus the rest would eventually get bored and move on to other places. However, I am quite sure that the school would not be so ready to take on this approach...

WEDNESDAY

We had Hari Raya and Deepavali celebrations that day. After watching several performances, we went back to class to make some art and crafts.

When we were done with it, we were released to view the exhibits, which I got quite bored of them after a while. Unfortunately, we could not exit school yet.

THURSDAY

Thursday was the school's so-called CCA Day. It was rather meaningless. First we went to the orchestra room and talked a little about future plans for orchestra. Then we came up with the nominations for next year's orchestra commitee. And I do not know who shouted my name, and in the end I got nominated for several positions. Don't know whether I can manage it. I felt quite nervous, although the time was still long, and it was not even voting time yet.

Then, while the convocation players rehearsed, the rest went to the canteen to discuss CIP. The big idea was to go to KK hospital to entertain patients, but 9am - 12:30pm was a rather long time to discuss CIP, and after the 'break', people started leaving and doing their own stuff, although some people were already playing games before the 'break'.

Went to meet jk after that, and went to the fitness corner to pass the time while waiting for ben to arrive. Once again, I tried moving across the monkey bars double handed, like a jumping motion. For the first time, I succeeded and did not only one, but 3 - 5, and so I got carried away and overestimated my grip strength and fell as my legs swung forward while my grip gave way.

From a height of around a metre, I fell butt first onto the ground. I felt my innards jerk upwards. I felt weird, like having suffered a severe shock. I stood up shaking a little, and took quite a while to recover and walk properly. Taking a rest, jk and I walked to the canteen to continue waiting. I realised that my base of the spine was injured, and it hurt when I sat at an angle of around 45 degrees...

I felt really lucky to have recovered now, without having to undergo any treatment.

Back to the story. Jk and I went up to the tennis court after waiting for a while to search for ben, where he was taking his time.

Feeling rather impatient by the time he was done, the three of us left school and went to jk's house (as usual). We found dillon and edwin along the way, so five of us took the bus together.

I had to sit up straight on the bus seat to avoid feeling the pain, which would be felt if I was slouching, which is probably a good thing for my posture.

We wanted to go to hougang sports complex to play, but found that the hall was in use for some function, so we went to play billiards at Regentville condominium instead. It was rather fun, but it took a lot of time waiting for one's turn. Compared to badminton, its fun to time taken ratio is much lower.

FRIDAY

Although my back was a lot better on this day, my wrists start to develop a loose and aching feeling, similar to my back pain, without the loose because there were no joints on my butt. Ben proposed a theory that it was because of the game of reversi we had played the previous night, that his back started to hurt instead of mine and his tennis elbow transferred its pain to my wrists.

We had a one hour assembly that morning, and my back felt terrible after that from the sitting. Then we went back to classroom for cleaning, and some of us started throwing and kicking basketballs around, which escalated into throwing, so the hardworking girls had to confiscate them from us.

We finished the work quite fast, because unlike the other table-cleaning classes, we simply pushed our tables aside and stacked them. That hid the unpleasant sight of the dirty surfaces away well.

Next, we sat around in a circle playing a werewolf game, similar to 'polar bear', which got to my nerves because of all the boring 'sleeping' in the game.

Then we got back our progress reports. My results this semester was not too bad. 4.6 CAP. I would be glad to aim for 5.0 next year.

After that, the class went to play netball. Mario was rather violent, tackling me from the back, which undoubtedly hurt my spine from the previous injury.

While I attempted a spinning pass, wenli blocked me and my release caused my thumb to whack her hand, which caused pain for sometime. Great, another injury is just what I needed...

The last day of school was over! The original plan was for jk, ryan and I to go to his house to either play billiard or badminton, because hougang sports complex was CLOSED FOR A WHOLE YEAR!!!

However, the plan was soon heard of, and jorgin, tecklim, cmc and ben went along too. It was quite okay at first, but got rather irritating after that, because of the conflicts a big group always brings along.

The rest went to have lunch at some other place, while I went to subway alone. Finishing my footlong in less than 10 minutes, I walked around, and when I called the rest, they were still eating.

After sometime, jk parnk smsed me to say that they ditched me and had left for his house already. Recalling what jk had said the days before, "Maybe sometime I should just leave you alone so that you will learn how to go to my house on your own."

So I assumed it to be true and walked towards the MRT station until they told me that it was a prank, so being engrossed in looking at shops, I simply told them that I was already on the way home.

They told me to come back, so I walked back, taking my time, knowing the time that would take a big group to get around places.

What would have taken 15 minutes by going to jk's place to have lunch, took 1 hour plus thanks to a large group at amk hub.

Feeling rather pissed for the rest of the day. Had a feeling that the additional people had ruined our plans. Went to jk's house and found that the billiards room was already booked. So we played connect four, octiles, with many people engrossed in the computer games such that they refused to come and take their turn in the board games.

Later we watched several Rowan Atkinson videos and a duck song which was rather humurous, and livened up my mood a little.















My joints still hurt, so when I went home I took some calcium tablets, and just like magic, I was healed the next day!

:)