Camp Diamonds 2008

Woah! I'm finally back from Camp Diamonds 2008! It was a really tiring, yet fulfilling leadership camp. I slept immediately after I came home and had my shower in the late afternoon. I woke up after 9pm for dinner before checking my email. But I still have to complete my Stats tutorial for tomorrow! However, I decided that I should blog about the camp before I forget about the experiences that I had!

I met with the A-Team people after registration for the camp at Blk E, Level 3. They are Chermaine, Faizal, Farah, Itin, Jasmine, Maria, Melody, Paulina, Sariman, Shu Hui, Suzanne, and Wei Liang (I hope I didn't leave anyone out!)...

I was placed in Group 3 or 'Ang Dou Tng' aka 红豆汤! My team consists of Jeremy as our facilitator, Charlene, Derrick, Hui Ying, Jay, Jovin, Matthew, Nissa, Terrence, Vati, Wing (Hui Ying), and Xue Mei! Marjuk was supposed to be in my group, but he couldn’t make it for the camp because he had to work…

Anyways, the camp started with some ‘ice-breakers’ which we didn’t really follow in the end… We came up with our flag and prepared our small backpacks for our overnight night walk! Each group was given 7 loafs of bread, a few dozens of Vitasoy and Milo to help us to last through the night…

After a simple supper of bread and spread, we took a bus down to East Coast Park where we started our walk all the way to Changi Beach! I don’t know how long we walked but it definitely felt good/tiring as we had walked for at least 4 hours!

Along the way, we did many tasks including ‘Entangled’, transferring a ball using bamboo poles, counting to 100 but leaving out numbers with 3 or the multiples of it, Morse-code and even Sudoku at the end of it all! I’m proud to say that our team managed an impressive 2nd Place finish despite several obstacles along the way!

After that gruelling ‘night’ walk, we returned to NYP after a short breakfast with the usual – bread and spread! We had about 2 hours to wash-up and rest! Thereafter, we took the bus back to Changi with all our bags and slept again along the way… We had lunch and signed our indemnity forms for kayaking! YAY!

I had been waiting for it even before the camp started! What a nice Saturday afternoon for kayaking! Good thing it wasn’t too sunny! So we managed to enjoy kayaking in the sea for about 5 hours! It was fun at first, so Wei Liang and I started off really fast… Until a few hours later, I suddenly felt really hungry and had a bit of gastric half-way…

Thank God that I was kayaking with Wei Liang. He helped me to continue paddling when I felt weak and my arms were tiring due to a lack of energy… Seeing him persevering, I was motivated and decided not to give up and continued paddling when I could!

Finally, it was over and we all headed back to shore! I was totally starving! But, there was no time for food yet! We had some time to wash/clean up before heading to the park for some ‘team-building’ activities with the whole camp! We played an entanglement game where we all had to go through an obstacle course of raffia strings that were messily strung around some trees – all in pairs. It seemed like an easy task, except that we had to do it immediately after kayaking! So it took a toll on our bodies…

After all that, we took another bus nap as we were all brought to the Dairy Farm Adventure Centre’s campsite to bunk in for the last night! And I was still feeling so hungry! I couldn’t wait to start ‘dinner’!

But, we had to prepare it by ourselves for field cooking. It was also a competition! We were given spaghetti, and canned tomato puree, mushrooms and baked beans. After serving the judges’ share of food, we started feasting soon after that!

Despite having 4 servings, I was still feeling super hungry! Joan then treated everyone to ICE CREAM! We all enjoyed it as we sat around the campfire area before it started…

Then, Joan declared the campfire open! We had an awesome time with each group’s cheer, the usual campfire songs, dance competition, mirroring game and all! Team NYP even did our Poly Forum cheers - at least we scraped through it (: We ended off with a friendship dance, the committee’s cheers and each facilitator’s word of thanks!

We had our lights out at 2am and woke up soon after at 645am. We did an ‘eye-opening’ morning exercise that I really enjoyed. Then it was time for station games around the campsite! I got herbal toothpaste on my left cheek, made water bombs but didn’t throw any, ran around in the ‘island game’, and got myself all wet just to collect a few drops of water in a bottle. LOL!

We finished off with the mass water bombing – where I guess the objective was simply to let everyone throw the remaining water bombs at each other to have FUN!

After the wet games, we had time to wash up and clean the toilets… We cleared our bunks and gathered around the campsite for debrief in our individual groups and – of course – photo-taking!!!

We finally boarded the bus for NYP and got our valuables back! Amazingly, no one seemed to be sleeping despite the gruelling activities and less than 8 hours of sleep over 3 days! I guess it was because we all got our technology and mobile devices back!

I had received 18 new messages and tons of missed calls after I had turned my phone on! I was so busy that it took the whole bus ride for me to finish replying to all my calls and messages!

Anyways, we had a final mass debrief and prize presentation at the Forum @ Blk E! Our group earned ourselves a 3rd place! I think we all did an awesome job! We took a final camp photo with everyone forming the word ‘DIAMONDS’ and the shape of a diamond!

Overall, I had enjoyed myself in the camp! I got to know many new friends and I can’t wait for more exciting things to come! Yeah! :D