OBS and BACK

100th post!!!

k. that's not the point.

I'M FINALLY BACK FROM OBS!!!

ahaha. after 5 days of suffering, I'm finally back home. WOW. it's been really tiring indeed. let's recap the 5 days.

1st day:

I was in the same watch as Mark Tay (strong!), Brian Ho (Lol!), Eugene Gan (COOL! haha.), Han Bo Jian (bo bo... lol. jk...), (Lumpy) Lum Jian Yang (the dictator), Lee Jie Liang (pitch the tent!), Shu Kiat (LOL!!!), Ivan (MATHS!), Li Jinghui (DOTA!), Benjamin (Ban mian...), Long (WORK AND WORK AND WORK AGAIN), Ying Xiang (china!), Er Dong (sunburnt), Ming Jun (CHINA) and of course... me...

Set off from RI to pulau ubin on bus then on ship... that was rather ok... got to camp 2 (mobile) in due time... ahahaha. nothing much there. got introduced to my watch and instructor. Our watch had an instructor named Samuel. haha. really nice guy. He's rather particular about everything but he's really pro. he is damn strong and damn fluent in his speech. everyone agreed he had to be a scholar... he knew so many things... hahaha. anyway, that was that. then, we went to take our photos in front of a rock climbing thing... after that, we went to our store. our watch was called cheng ho, named after the famous chinese explorer... haha. well, we took stock for all the things... i was in charge of the tents. haha. I thought it was rather bad... I was standing under the scorching sun packing the ground sheets, tents and fly sheets according to their numbers and looking out for any holes... i was wrong though... it was one of the easiest things of the camp. hahaha. den, we had lunch. it was one of the best lunch we had in the course. i had a red bean bread, 2 digestive biscuits, an apple and a fruity thing... lol. It was really one of the best meals in the course. Not long after, we set off for our first activity, which was belaying. It was the basics or fundamentals to rock-climbing which we were to do later on. nothing much there. it was rather easy... then we had dinner which was instant noodles. hahaha. Yum. Lol. Then, we had to pitch our tents in pitch-black darkness. our campsite was in the woods surrounded by lots of trees and stuff and on a rather muddy soil. There were no lamps around or anything so we had to use our torches to pitch the tents. It took rather long for us to finish this task as most of us were inexperienced. However, we managed in the end and after a quick bath, we headed off to our tents to sleep at 1130. It was hard to fall asleep given that sleeping on rocks was not exactly that comfortable. It was however, one of the better nights already. I think I slept at around 12 onli for... me to wake up at 130 finding our tents leaking water. like ARGH!!! it was raining. damn. for the next hour or so, Mark, Ivan (the maths genius in our class) and Shu Kiat (the humourous and cool guy... haha...) tried to make ourselves dry... we made contours to prevent the water from getting to our butts. hahaha. not like we succeeded or anything. I had one of the cleanest butts at the end of the hour and Shu Kiat kept complaning about his wet underwear. like LOL. not like it mattered in the end... Samuel came along and called for an evacuation as the rain was getting heavier and we were soaked in water by the time we got back to the multi-purpose hall which was quite a distance from our campsite. SIAN. some other groups were forewarned and had ponchos to keep themselves dry. argh. we got changed quickly and went back to sleep for the next 3 hours.

Day 2:
Woke up at 530 (supposedly 6 but i woke up a bit early to go shit at the girl's toilet... haha... the girl's toilet was much cleaner...) Anyway, after that, we got off to pack our backpacks for the next 3 days cuz we werent returning to the store till 4th day evening. haha. grabbed some breakfast which was like some biscuits?.. haha. anyway, we unpitched our tents, didnt bother to clean them and stuffed them into the tent bags. It was really hard to stuff them in given that the tents were full of water (from yesterday's rain) and sand (on the ground)... haha. we succeeded in the end though and started our trek to camp 1 (residential camp)... Let's see... I was carrying my backpack and was sharing one of the tents with Long. haha. Damn the backpack man. it's so damn heavy... argh. i realised in the end however, that this was one of the easier treks and the harder ones were still to come... Anyway, it took us 1 hr 30 min to get to camp 1 where we unpacked... We ate some lunch which was a bun and the fruity thing again before heading off for rock-climbing! haha. it was quite fun la... there were 10 panels altogether (going upwards...) In the end I managed to get to the 7th one before I got stuck and had to come back down.... sigh. got to do better next time. nevermind then... haha. anyway, later on we had our first try at kayaking. haha. paired up with Mark. hahaha. we were one of the best pairs i think... we were quite fast at kayaking (or rather mark was damn strong) and we did the rescue work (where someone purposely capsize and someone rescues them) really quickly... haha. so it was great work there... haha and fun too... onli thing was that i got myself wet hahaha... We got our best dinner of the camp at the cook house (onli present in camp 1 cuz it was the residential camp) where we had curry chicken, rice and vegetable. WOW. hahaha. YUMMY. anyway, after that, we had a briefing and pitched our tents again in pitch-black darkness. This time we could not use tent pegs as the ground was too hard. Instead, we used rocks to tension the ropes. Although it also worked the same way, it was rather hard to pitch a tent as many people kept tripping over rocks and causing the tent to fall esp. in the pitch-black darkness. In the end though, we still managed and we went off to sleep at 1145. This time, I slept with Eugene, Bo Jian, Mark, Benjamin and Jinghui as we onli managed to pitch 2 tents (we pitched 4 yesterday)... In the end though it did not matter much as it... RAINED AGAIN! woke up at 1 something to find our tent leaking once again... SIAN... Yet another evacuation... this time though, we were quite lucky as we brought along our ponchos... haha. not as wet as yesterday... hahaha... slept at multi-purpose hall again for the next 3 hours...

Day 3:
KAYAKING! YAY FUN! lol. we packed our bags, tents and whatever things we had onto the safety boats and set off on kayaking... haha. Anyway, we were rather lucky it wasn't raining. if not it would be very bad. haha. so we set off. At first Mark and I were rather quick. However, we got tired and fell back. We had one big problem too - we kept going towards the left. like ARGH. so we had to paddle on the left for like 10 times before pedalling left and right for 10 times before repeating the cycle again. AHHH!!! my left hand was getting rather tired. Luckily, before long, it was time for lunch. We had lunch on our kayak. We had to eat a few bites and pedal forward as the current was pushing us towards the shore. hahaa. anyway, it was rather ok. We were supposed to kayak around pulau ubin. However, due to the strong currents going against us, we had to turn back after completing 1/3 or a bit more of the journey. So, we went back. haha. It was rather fun. Some people jumped off their kayaks to pee, some people purposely capsized cuz their kayaks were already almost full of water... haha. It was all really fun. hahaha. Anyway, we ended off by landing at a rather deserted place with no toilets, no halls no nothing place. We placed the kayaks back on shore and went off to our campsite. We had dinner which was real bad cuz we had almost nothing left. In fact, I onli got one small curry chicken, a few mushrooms and a few scoops of curry sauce. LOL. what a dinner. Then, I had to wash the mess tins and pitch the tents. Like ARGH!!! hahaa. and we also had a powder bath and changed our clothes at a corner which was easily accessible but was rather dark... HAHA... Anyway, that day, we had to sleep in our tents even if it rained cuz there was no hall anywhere near our campsite. Well, as we expected, it RAINED. lol. Well, we woke up to find ourselves really soaked but we still had to continue with sleeping. So we slept... and when we woke up for our shift of guarding against wild boars, my head was already soaking wet and I had many sand fly bites already... like ARGH!!! sian... Still, it was ok... Anyway, we went around the campsite once and went back to sleep after our 15 min shift...

Day 4:
We woke up on the next day not really refreshed after that really uncomfortable rest... well, it was still ok i guess... hahaha. anyway, we unpitched our tents, got changed and set off for our hike. It was a very tiring hike indeed. We had a map and a compass and our navigator was Ivan... We started off on our first checkpoint which we took 2 hrs to reach. Then our next checkpoint was the highest point of Pulau Ubin. It was a real difficult hike up there as it was uphill and it was raining then and the mud was very slippery. Well, we got to the top in the end where we were supposed to select a stone, shout out your name and make your dreams known as you throw the stone down the hill into the sea. hahaha. Then, we went downhill again and ate our lunch in a hut. Not like there was much lunch. I ate 2 pieces of plain bread and 1/2 a piece of butter bread (the other half was given to Mark). haha. it's not disgusting. When you get to OBS, sharing saliva, being knee-deep in muddy water and hugging a really sandy and wet tent to your body is nothing much. haha. Well, later, we set off to the quarry where we were supposed to do our next activity (build a raft and set sail in it) but it was cancelled due to cat. 1 lightning... Well, so we rested for 15 mins before starting our hike back to camp 2. It was supposedly a 1 hr + hike but we made it 2 hr++ almost 3 hrs. Reason? We went the wrong way. like ARGH!!! damn... by the time we got back to camp 2, we were really really tired. My shoulders were on the verge of collapsing, my arms were like jelly and my legs like they could not hold my body weight any longer. Well, still, we completed the hike which was 8 hrs and i must say, if I had not been to OBS, i would never have done this. hahaha. Though tiring, it was a really good experience and I will never forget it. So we got showered and had the best dinner of the course. There was noodles, rice, curry chicken, mushroom, soup, sardin, ikan belis... hahha. a lot la... biscuits, pringles... HAHA. WOW. well, anyway, we finished up and for the last day we didnt need to pitch our tents! We were supposed to but it was raining real heavily and so we slept in the hall... hahaha...

Day 5:
Not a tiring day but a rather boring day. It was time to keep stock of what we had left and what we had lost. To my utmost surprise, we didn't lose much. All our helmets and ponchos were intact, all our tents, ground sheets and fly sheets were also back... I was really surprised. The only things we lost were: 20 water bottles, 38 tent pegs and 1 set of mess tins. Actually we had 13 sets of mess tins and 3 extra small ones. But we gave the 3 sets and 3 extra small ones away only to find out that 1 of our sets of mess tins were actually 2 small mess tins that were stuffed together. Like AWWW... hahaha. anyway, it wasn't bad. We lost around $38 worth of stuff. Much better than 3G who lost $240 worth of stuff. We actually had all our water bottles also. But since we left them outside our store on day 4, all the other watches came along and took them.. hahaha. Well, so that ended the course. Before long, we were back on the boat and the bus back to RI. haha. Sat 410 back home and slept from 4 in the afternoon to 8 today. HAHA. k. that's all for now. OBS was real fun although tiring. haha. It was a mentally and physically challenging course but it was this point which made our characters show. The class bonded, friendship was created, leadership outshined, talents discovered... It was a whole new experience. What I have said above is just a very very brief outline. There were still many things which I have yet to say and these things mattered a lot too. Like the stories Samuel told us, the sharing of load during the hike, the details of everything. It was a very fulfilling experience which I will never never forget...

Patrick