Micro Lives!!!

Yes, I am back home, in civilization, alive from A.C.E camp. Admittedly though, it was less tough since I was a leader there, which allows me to stone during most activities, cut the food line, stay up all night etc etc...

Day 1
-------
Despite getting up late, I still managed to make it to school in time to catch the bus. Such a pity... Anyway, I find out I'm in charge of Force S.O.Z along with Jared and Azriel, and since the teachers were probably too lazy to jumble up all the classes, it consisted entirely of 212 students, which happened to contain the sons of some very influential people in the school, namely the vice principal. Bus board at Singapore Customs spelled out "F**K" in nice capital letters for all the public to see. Rest of the trip was uneventful. We arrive at the campsite at around 11, set up and repair tents damaged by inconsiderate bastards from Camp 1 and clear the rubbish left behind by them as well. I stay in one tent along with Khai Sam, Azriel, Jia Lei and Joon Kiat. A.C.E camp involves 6 activities

-Rafting
-Kayaking
-Mountain Climbing
-Rappelling
-Jungle Survival
-Orienteering

Two are carried out on full days, and one is carried out on half days like the first and last day. We drew the worst and most exhausting of the lot, which is mountain climbing. Mr. Arul designated me to the back of the group to make sure no one gets left behind. With the pretty female instructor. Everyone struggles up the mountain in the afternoon heat, and even the instructor looked worse for wear. Three boys, the school counseller and the instructor had to be left behind half way up the mountain since they couldn't make it up. Discovered the local fauna is not very friendly when I broke open a termite tunnel when grabbing a tree for a handhold. Finally make it 20 minutes after everyone else after lagging behind to look after the slow ones, and also because I took some time to interact with my charges. South Africa won the Rugby World Cup 15-6 when they won the final against defending champions England in a tryless

Day 2
------
Grateful it didn't rain on the previous night, we go rappelling first. Already an easy activity, made even more so because the leaders have practically nothing to do. Unable to repeat my feat of not taking a dump for 4 days like last year, I am forced to go today due to dubious, but still palatable food served at the camp. In between activities, I was so bored that I slept outside the tents in the noon sun.

Next up was kayaking. Expecting to paddle around lazily with my fellow A.C.E leaders, I was ordered by the same instructor as yesterday to go with one guy was short of a partner since the force had an odd number of people (27) and no one would take him since he was so unpopular (On interaction with the rest of the group, I found out he was a real mama's boy) in the two man kayaks. Halfway through, exhausted and not alert, the son of the English HOD accidentally collided with my own kayak, and since we just happened to be off balance at the time, the force of the impact was enough to knock us over and capsize the boat. My first instinct was to grab my leaders hat, which was one reason I was even at the bloody camp. My second was to flip over the kayak, which turned out to be so full of water already that it was sinking instead of floating, and was far too heavy to float. After bobbing around, Mr. Nathan had us grab hold of another kayak, and we got towed around till the activity was over. It certainly beat doing all that rowing myself. Mr. Nathan takes a picture of me after I capsized as a reminder that I deserve my title of blur blob of the rugby team, and promises to put it on his website. Azriel is so preoccupied with John Foo's Rubik cube he almost forgets dinner and skipped supper all together, preferring to stay in the tent to try and solve the cube while swearing at it. South Africa won the Rugby World Cup 15-6 against defending champions England in a try-less match.

Had a little debate with Mr. Ghazali today

Micro : Mr. G, I had no idea you were here!

Mr. G : What, I was always here.

Micro : But I never see you around.

Mr. G : You don't see God around do you?? But He's around right??

Micro : True, but you can't make sure that it won't rain tonight

Mr. G : Who says I can't?? I just don't feel like it.

Micro : Okay...

Mr. G : This is just turning into a philosophical debate.

Day 3
------
The day began with Khai Sam's high pitched voice telling me to get up. When I realized it was only 4 in the morning, my first thought was "Screw you, bloody tree rodent". My second thought was "Why the **** is the tent sagging downward??" It was raining so hard that the tent was in very real danger of collapsing from the weight of the water. Everyone in the tent gets up to help prop the tent up and prevent the water collecting there again. Jia Lei has the wild idea of going to fix the tent from the outside, which is drowned out by a chorus of swear words and the pounding of the rain. All went back to sleep at 5 when the rain lightened a bit.


Orienteering involves finding your way to a certain checkpoint via map reading and clues like the Amazing Race, and was pretty easy for me as well, as I merely had to sit at one checkpoint with the A.C.E leader in charge of the activity. While waiting for a group to arrive, we chatted a bit and laughed at the groups who thought the stamp they were supposed to be finding for the activity was on top of the nearby water towers. Our checkpoint required for the people in the group to link together to form an imaginary creature with only a certain number of limbs on the floor (For example, 3 legs and 2 hands), then walk in the that formation for a short distance while making a common sound. Out of the three groups who were supposed to arrive, only 2 showed up, and the first didn't appear for a good amount of time. Still, they took only 2 minutes to do the task, while the second group took 20.

Jungle Survival was slack for the leaders as all we had to do start a fire for the instructor (Sadly, not the pretty female one, but the male one with a very bad habit of throwing lighted firecrackers at the floor) to keep the mosquitoes away, and unlike the Sec 2s, we were given a lighter. Helped them finish the food they prepared in their mess tins but didn't dare to eat(Sardines mixed with rice, the sardine sauce from the can and half cooked eggs is good eating), as well as half a stock cube that was left over. My night duty was tonight from 1 to 3. Amazingly, I looked forward to this, as all the leaders on night duty report the teachers and instructors bringing back food like Ramly Burgers and murtabak for them.

They showed a slide show of all the photos taken during the camp. My photo was there as well, but the screen quality was supposedly so bad Miles remarked that Oliver "looked Asian". (He's half Australian and English with blond hair)

On my night, it was a fish Mr. Nathan caught himself. 2 actually. While they weren't wonderful, Mr. Soo's magic show was worth the while. Caught some of my rugby juniors (Oliver, Arjun and so on) out of their tents looking at the stars at 2 in the morning. The night sky was so beautiful, the poet in me overpowered the leader in me, and I let them stay up. Though I could bluff Jared by saying they were leaders too, Loy recognized the whole lot of them as our juniors, and promptly sent them all back to their tents. During duty, as I was flipping through the sports section in the newspapers brought from Singapore, I happened to flip to the report on the Liverpool derby when Luu, one of the two the Vietnamese scholar along on the trip as leaders, asked to see the Premier League table. Surprised that scholars did anything else aside from study, let alone watch soccer, I asked him which team he supported. Turned out to be a fellow Man U fan, which didn't go down well with Mr. Arul. (He's a Spurs supporter) Decided to sleep in front of the teachers hut since it had began to rain, I didn't feel like going through a repeat of last night.

Day 4
------
Yet another disastrous morning.

Marvin : Cheng Heng, get out of your sleeping bag very slowly

Micro : What for??

Marvin : Take a look at your bag

The bloody thing was covered with flying ants. Not the small kind you find in Singapore, but the ones the size of your thumb. Freaking out, I jumped and it scattered a few of them. After trying to spray them with my insect repellent, which was no use, I had plucked up the courage to wave the bag to get rid of the remaining ants.

The final activity, rafting, is the bane of the camp. Conducted in the puddle/pond that has water that looks like slightly less viscous mud, the campers must cross it in a raft they build themselves out of barrels and rope lashings, which capsize and sink very often, sending the campers into the muddy slop. If one is lucky enough not to capsize, fear not, as they'll force everyone to cross the water by pulling yourself through the mud/water with a rope tied between 2 trees on either side of the bank. To top it all off, the instructor in charge was nicknamed Mr. Hornet.

The cry of "HORNET!!" is a sign to all campers to adopt the Hornet position, a protective posture where you lie face down in the ground and cover your neck, which will minimalize the number of stings you get should a hornet swarm appear, though I'd rather take my chances running for the nearest water, although the instructors have warped it to become a punishment, making campers do it on hard gravel roads and muddy patches or wherever they happen to be standing, so you can guess how Mr. Hornet got his name. We broke a record, with 22 hornets in a single session.

But of course, I was an A.C.E leader, and exempted from punishments and actually doing the activity, since force commanders are only supposed to follow the force, not do all the activities with them. So me and Jared sat on a couple of barrels and laughed to ourselves while they were horneted time and again, and Azriel and Luohan got to go out in the rescue kayak, from which they were given the order to splash as much mudwater on them and slow the force's progress down as much as possible, and were allowed ram their raft with their kayak, and anything was okay, short of actually boarding their raft to enter melee combat and bonk them on the heads with the paddles. They were also asked to rescue people who had fallen into the water as a side order. Sadly, since they wanted to save time on the last day, the instructor had already finished up with most of the raft for them, so it was too well made to capsize.

After cleaning out and un-pitching the tents, we were all given a Ramly burger and piled onto the coach and FINALLY sent back to civilization in air conditioned comfort.