Outward Bound Singapore
7-day course
5th - 11th november 2007
Destination... PULAU UBIN! [feel the excitement.]

22 of us happy people and not so happy people had to go for 7 day obs at the end of the year since we missed the mid-year one due to ccas and germany trip and other reasons, so we met at the atrium at 0700h to take a bus to pulau ubin.
When we got there, gideon talked to us about stuff like introduction and all that, and then we were introduced to our instructors, cindy and mauricette. Our two watches were NEHRU and ELIZABETH CHOY.

Nehru[SEMANGAT.CINDY]:
Xiu Rong
Chuyun
Davina
Saniah
Eugene
Matthew
Geraldine
Shu Jen
Christine
Bee Him
Diana

Elizabeth[ENDEAVOUR.MAURICETTE]:
Desiree
Jolene
Jocelyn
Amanda
Rachel
Wen Loong
Zile
JiaSheng
Tiffany
Gillian
Sherlene

Day 1
I was separated from xiu rong!! and left alone with jiasheng -_- and other random people that i never really talked to... other than tiff of course. So it started out quite lonely. We had to do some activity where we had to walk around the place and look for checkpoints and it was in pairs, so i paired up with Jiasheng and we went searching around. Met xiu rong along the way. This activity was nothing much, just to get us warmed up i think.
Afternoon, we went kayaking to the other obs camp on pulau ubin to do our jetty jump. I kayaked with sherlene and jiasheng and it was pretty ok. I think Jiasheng was giving most of the power though XD. Jetty jump was not so bad. Jolene and I were the last to go and when i walked on the plank it was ok, until i reached the end of the plank, where i threw myself off before i could think of being scared cuz my legs were starting to shake. It was a looong drop down and i wondered how come i hadn't reached yet.. and then splash! All the shyt water goes into your nose and mouth.. wa lao eh. dam disgusting taste. > <

then at night we had to learn how to read maps because of a small little expedition the next day. zzz

Day 2
So the next day we had to go for our expedition to find checkpoints with little black signs with alphabets on them. I grouped with sherlene jolene and diana and we got lost. -_- We went climbing up a rock wall and coming back down to the same pathway that we climbed up... We didnt know where we were supposed to go although we tried to follow the map.. it looked weird :(.. so we tried to go into the forest instead, where we followed the path until it disappeared. We walked on and got lost > < . So we decided to turn back. Since we didnt know where we were at all cuz everywhere was just trees... and grass and spider webs, we just anyhow walked. Somehow, by some miracle, we found a sign! Except that they didnt even put which checkpoint it was... and it was so tiny and hidden on the dam tree! so we still didnt know where we were, but we were glad we found at least one checkpoint [out of 4 assigned to us, out of 21 in total] so we continued our way back... higher... and higher... and higher... until we realised we were like staring at the top of the super high flying fox! Shocking man. Then we had to climb all the way down and decided to follow the sea and we finally managed to find back the path and got out of the dam forest... all shytty and crappy with our shirts full of mud and spider webs.. When we went back to the room we were the only group that were so covered in shyt > <> <
That was the main activity of the day cuz after that we had to go pack our stuff for our sailing expedition!!

Day 3
Sailing! We were introduced to our cutter, Endeavour! Nehru got semangat, which means spirit in malay. and endeavour, well, means endevour! We were taught how to hoist the sails and all that. There are 3 sails in total, the sail at the back's name sounds like me-son, but i have no idea how to spell it. Then the middle big one is called the main sail and the one at the bow is called the jip! I was in charge of the jip so i had fun hoisting it up with other people also in charge of the jip. Clipping it onto the metal cable thing was painful though, cuz the stupid clip was so hard to press, together with the dam wind that kept anyhow blowing the sail.
Before leaving we had to pack a lot of stuff, and carry all the necessary things for the cutter, like one 10kg anchor and one 5kg anchor, and a box of rope together with this lighting diamond thing to make us detectable by radars. We had lots of rations like rice and lots of can food, instant noodles, biscuits and so on.
Finally when everything was done, we could go out to sea! Cuz we couldnt possibly push the whole cutter out, it was like driven into a sea by a truck on the structure with wheels, then we took a little speedboat to it. We climbed on and had to rooww ourselves away from the jetty. ROWING!! Like a kayak! Super strenuous man... Finally, we could hoist the colours~ After hoisting the sails that we were in charge of, we all had to help out hoisting the main sail, cuz its super heavy and big and goes across the whole center of the cutter.
So yay hip hip hurray we hoisted it [though a bit slowly] and started sailing! whee! sail sail sail. we sailed to the other camp where we did our jetty jump earlier, and had our dinner there. Instant noodles and apples. Jolene kept drinking all the soup and eating apples only -_- left me to eat the noodles.. then couldnt finish of course.. i saw a wild boar yay! [We had to go in an avon to get to the campsite from the boat and jiasheng and zile paddled us all the way!]

Day 4
Shall not be too long winded now [how appropriate], we sailed off again, to our reeeaalll campsite, at sembawang! We had to take down and pull up the main sail a few times because of the random wind, which was tiring.. but we learnt to do it faster and faster, and we also sang miracles! and then the wind really came! dam pro la... XD

We also played and practised a bit of our jives and tacks. I was the person pulling one of the sides of the jip ropes and that was dam hard la. Feel like youre gonna fly off the boat cuz the wind is pushing against the jip sail and you have to hold on to the rope so that it doesnt lost the bubble shape. so the rope is like giving you a slimming session...

When we reached the campsite, Jolene, Sherlene and I helped to set up tents together with the guys while the other girls went to cook food. Food was dam nice that day! Jolene and I shared instant noodles. Plain flavoured. But we were trying to open the can of mushrooms so we poured mushroom essence into the soup too, then there were baby sausages and then we poured a can of curry chicken in as well. Super nice!! We finished the whole thing unlike the night before and had cups of orange flavoured isotonic drink. It was raining while we were eating, and we saw fireworks from malaysia too. That was dam nice.

After that we slept in our tents, mine consisting of gillian, sherlene and jolene and me. It was dam hot in the tents at first but in the middle of the night it started raining and the whole tent shook like crazy and we were swinging about like a blade of grass. Then my tent had to wake up for sentry duty at 4 and go outside and shiver in the cold to watch the cutters. In the middle of the night jill was like waving her arms around like some possessed thing, dam scary. I had to push them away cuz i was sleeping beside her. And she was tapping her fingers on Jolenes legs... :b like a hentai...

Day 5
The race "home"! A race between Semangat and Endeavour!! Guess who won?? Endeavour of course! Everyone was singing like crazy all the way home and we were so bent on winning we rowed all the way back from Sembawang to our camp on pulau ubin, and sailed at the same time. This time we sailed with minimal help from Mauricette. I gave up rowing halfway and went to do the pulling of the jip sails instead so everytime we did a tack or jive i had to release one side of the jip rope and pull the other while two other people had to dip the main sail, like flip it over to the other side so that we would turn the whole cutter like 90 degrees or something. We chiong-ded like mad cuz at first we were first, then second, then first again and semangat started slacking halfway, they stopped rowing, so we just continued on to finish the race and win! yayyy...

After that we had to wash all the stuff on the boat like the ropes, and take down the sails and wash them as well and so on. Then we sat down to eat the remainder rations together. The mad wen loong actually made a peanut butter mountain 5cm tall and 10cm across on top of a natural or nature valley bar and ate the whole thing. And felt like dying after that. Jolene ate a spoonful of peanut butter and strawberry jam and 3/4 pack of prunes while the rest of us ate normal stuff like spreading peanut butter on biscuits. Jolene also drank one cup of isotonic drink, one milo and one ovaltine at one go. During dinner she drank like 6 cups of sarsi. After that she lao sai-ded many many times.

We were super tired and had the rest of the afternoon to ourselves so we went to do our own stuff like bathe!! Since we hadnt bathed for 2 days... and then sleep some of course..

Day 6
It's still not over!! Another small expedition! This time, kayaking around half of pulau ubin through a mangrove. It was the same route that i went last year though, yet totally different. We had to set off early so that we wouldnt miss the high tide and get stuck in the stupid mud bank [like we did last year] We got lost once or twice but other than that, we were great and were done in 4 and a half hours! The tide was so high, the last time we had to climb over the whole wall of mud, but this time we could just slide our kayak over the little bump of mud. of course i was dumb enough to forget it was a mud wall, so i flew over the other side while pushing the kayak across the mud wall halfway, and plopped into the shyt water... then i had to climb back onto the kayak. Jiasheng and i came out to push while Sherlene stayed inside cuz she cant get back onto the kayak... > <>

After that, washing the kayaks was fun too, had to get all the shyt mud off though, by rubbing and rubbing. Then bathe and meet up with instructors again... and we had to do a... MUSICAL!

The musical was dam crap la. It started out with us being segregated into our classes at first then having to be separated into different watches. Rachel and Eugene did solo start of somthing new, then everyone joined in to show how we started to accept the whole thing about being separated.
After that was the jetty jump scene, where jiasheng and zile did some titanic you jump i jump thing and then everyone started singing and humming the titanic song while the rest of the guys did stupid poses while pretending to jump. It was dam funny la all so gay... > <
Then after that was the trekking scene where the guys kept knocking into us trees and how when you walk in front and push the branch away it swings back into the face of the person behind, which swaying like retarded rag dolls, we sang the lion sleeps tonight and then did a wavy arm parting to introduce... the spiders!! So the spiderman song came along! And matthew, wen loong and zile made up the spider, they did really gay wavy arm actions which was dam hilarious and dam entertaining.
Next was high elements, where the guys acted as really really daaam gay belayers [especially zile who was waving his butt from one side to the other while pretending to pull the rope] and the rest of us sang i believe i can fly [but changed to we believe you can climb] as diana pretended to be scared of climbing. Then she did a solo of i believe i can climb. Sounded so opra.
Then finally we had the sailing one where matthew said, theres no wind. and zile goes OOOOOOWH MAI GOED [oh my god ] in his china boy way which sounds dam funny. And the rest of us did kallang wave at the side while the rest sang miracles i think, and then we ended off.. with everyone being happy together at the end with the song, we're all in this together.

the end!

of the musical.

and then we had new guests halfway so we had to do the front part for them again. But it was nice! We churned the whole thing out in about 3 hours or so? yea.. so at least it went pretty well :D

Day 7
The final day!! They still wouldnt let us off!! We had to do a stupid scary trapeze jump which i totally couldnt do!! I wanted to grab the bar but i couldnt even push off the platform -_- since it was so small.. and i didnt dare to jump at the same time.. so when i jumped [after a long while] i panicked... and so i didnt really reach for the dam bar but grabbed onto the stupid rope holding on to me instead, where i got ropeburns from -_-
So i didnt even touch the bar. NOOOOOOOOOOHHHHH..... but it was really really scary... wa lao eh. So far away and so slanted some more.. i tried to picture a platform below me but totally failed -.- oh well. tiao-ing lou is not for me, at least now i know...

The guys all managed to grab on and hold, although zile, who was the first to go, was dam scared and stayed up there for 10 minutes crouching in a ball and crying out to the world that its dam scary. It was really dam scary anyway. The other girls didnt manage to grab hold of the bar, but some touched it, some slipped off and others just didnt even reach for it [like me.] arhhg.g. im quite regretful. But i didnt even want to jump off at all anyway... couldnt take it like jetty jump....

after that, souvenir shopping! yay, our whole watch got the same shirt yay. Then i got a notebook too which is really nice, the cover is a drawing done by one of the instructors.

then.. home! home! home!!! yayyy!!

will miss everyone.. but we have sushi buffet on tuesday together yay! so not so bad. it was fun although it was lonely at first.. but after that it really ended up all right.

A lot of funny stuff happened along the way like imitating diana lol.. dam funny la... and we had a zile cheer which went like. When i say zile you sayyyy!! OWH MAI GOED!

Oh yea, and Jia Sheng totally flew off the plank of the jetty jump. Like, flew.

*and oh yea.. the me-son thing is actually mizzon..
for more information, do tune in to xiu rong's blog to read about what heerr watch experienced!

bye bye. [aiyo. so long this post.]