MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

"Have a Heart, Share a Gift (with me)!"

ME-rry ChRiStMaS everyone!!! (:

Well, it has been a great few days before Christmas Day! Last Thursday, I helped to organize our class' first-ever Christmas party cum BBQ at Jonathan's place! It was a great time of fun and fellowship through games and random activities! (I'm still waiting for photos from mel!)

Then on Friday, a group of us Primers helped out for the BBSGB CEO Car Flag Off! It was a cool event where CEOs from Jetstar Asia, CapitaLand Finance, Charles & Keith, and many others who personally came down to deliver some PA bags in their cool cars!

After that, I went to attend the A-Team Christmas Party aka 'Red Carpet Glamour' in the evening! Here are some photos from the awesome night!

[More photos HERE!!]

WOW! Then from Saturday onwards, I've been involved in my BBSGB shift doing Delivery duties! I made at least 4 Delivery trips each day! During breaks, I had fun helping out in the warehouse! Because we had to go down to HQ almost every day, Jun Ning came to stay over at my place for a few nights...

It was really tiring serving in the BBSGB during this period. But at the same time, I had fun and got to know other Primers even better! Besides that, I've also learnt more about the spirit of volunteerism! Within my means as a Primer in charge of the delivery lorry, I had the opportunity to lead and educate the boys who went out with me on the deliveries! This experience has made my holiday more than I could have ever imagined!

On Christmas eve, I had lunch with mum and the 3 of us at Sakae Sushi. We enjoyed the food and fellowship there and continued for dessert over cakes and hot chocolate drinks at The Coffee Bean! After which, I joined some of the guys at Heng Yong's place for an afternoon of Mahjong (using chips)! ZJ & I won $15.40 (in chips)! YAY!

Well, tomorrow's the last day of SGB for me! I hope to finish it well and properly hand my job over to the next Delivery Primer! May God take control of everything! I believe that this will be an awesome december holiday!!!

SERIOUS?! Really?! 不会吧。。。那里可能？！

Primers Challenge 2008!

12 December is the last day before my mid-semester break. I didn't go to school. Instead, i made my way to BBHQ for the Primers Challenge from 12 - 15 December 2008! (:

We had lunch at the Zion Riverside food centre before gathering back at BBHQ for the briefing. The brigade president said a few words to encourage us to challenge ourselves during the trip. Then, we did some self-introductions to get to know a little bit about each other. We split up into our groups. I was with Jun Ning, Yvonne, Benjamin and Sherman. After a quick prayer for safety, the Primers Challenge began!

We had some tasks to complete before we could receive our next clue. We had to form a square with several pieces of shapes & Jun Ning also completed a sudoku puzzle. Then we made our way to the train station! We ran to Tiong Bahru MRT and took the train to Tanjong Pagar. Then from there, we got directions from a lady who walked with us to her office building before directing us straight towards the KTM train station!

We had a briefing from the expedition instructor, Sue, before boarding the train towards Pahang! It was a solid 7-hour train journey and we arrived slightly after 1am. We made our way to our hotel where we spent the night.

The next morning, we had roti prata and milo for breakfast at a nearby coffee shop. Then, we cleared from the hotel and took a 1-hour bus ride towards our new campsite - an empty cave with ready made tents!

Finally, it was time for adventure caving! We spent 3-hours enduring leech bites, scaling rock formations and visiting the bats cave, 'turtle' cave and 'snake' cave (with only the bats cave that really had bats living in it)! It was tiring, scary, yet awesome experience to me! I felt a sense of accomplishment after completing the whole trek!

After having lunch at the campsite, we headed back out for a short 1-hour visit to the 'moonlight' cave. Then, we collected firewood and dry leaves for the campfire. Our group was to be in charge of the campfire. So we stayed to plan out and set up the campfire while the rest of the primers went back to the campsite.

Unfortunately, by dinner, it started to rain. So we had to return back to the cave and make do with a 'torchlight' campfire. Yvonne & I led the campfire, which I felt was quite a success despite the dampening weather! We played Whacko, Musical 'Ball', created a story about Ken, and closed with a sharing of the day's experience. Finally, Catherine did a speech before closing the campfire (and the day) with a prayer...

The next day, I woke up early and washed up before waking the rest of the Primers up. We packed our stuff and made our way down to the huts for breakfast. Then we took a 1-hour bus ride towards Taman Negara! I was kinda looking forward to it since I had been there in 2005!

We finally got there and memories started flooding in. We took the river boats across the river and walked to the Canopy walk. After an unexpected wait, we finally set foot on the World's longest Canopy walk! We took several photos up there and enjoyed the breath-taking scenery!

After that, we trekked up to the summit of Bukit Teresek. We took a few group photos before heading down to one of the floating restaurants for lunch! It was already 3pm! So most of us we feeling really hungry! I ate everything like I had not eaten for a day!


It was finally time to leave Taman Negara. We took a sleepy 2.5 hour bus ride back to our hotel in Pahang. After a short rest, we walked to a Chinese restaurant and had a filling 6-course dinner to reward ourselves for all the good effort put into the expedition!

After dinner, we went shopping at a nearby supermarket. I found some good buys including 3 bottles of cologne spray! We even had time to grab a bite at KFC!

The train was expected to arrive at 1.47am. So we got to the station at 1am. Unfortunately, an announcement in Malay informed us the the train was to be delayed until 830am due to technical problems!

So, we headed back to our hotel rooms where we played card games until 430am! We finally conked out and went to sleep. I spent the night with keqin alone in another room as we were locked out by the main gate to our allocated room!

We woke up for a sumptuous dim sum breakfast before heading back to the train station. But, the train was said to be delayed for another 1.5 hours. Yet, it did not arrive until 10am! Finally travelling towards Singapore, we were all tired yet bored on the train. We could not fall asleep as we would have if we took an overnight train ride.


We thought after all that, we should be able to head home with no trouble. But, another surprise awaited us! The train suddenly terminated at Johor Bahru! So close yet so far from Singapore! So we left the train station with our refund, leaving other angry passengers crowding the station.

We walked to the immigration and took a public bus back to the Woodlands immigration centre. By then, it was already 6pm! Everyone was tired after a whole day wasted on travelling when we could have been back home half-a-day earlier! So, we all made our way home from there.

Zheng Jie & I decided to have dinner at Kim San Leng in Bishan. We were so hungry that we ordered a Chicken Rice set for 3 people! We complemented our feast with homemade iced lemon tea! Then, we too made our way home...

Overall, I felt that the Primers Challenge expedition helped me to overcome many fears and gave me many memories and experiences that I will never forget! I got to know more Primers from various BB companies better too!


However, it was the last minute turn of events on the last day that made me realise how unpredictable life can be! I've learnt to be more independent from the trip and I can't wait for more experiences like this to come! (:

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