For those uninitiated ones, our IP week basically comprises of a project that is aimed to test what we've learnt from year one til now, with the project brief being released at 0900hours on Monday, and the report due to be in by 1700hours on Friday of the same week.

Each team comprises of 12 members, which we inevitably split into 4 groups of 3 to tackle the 4 parts of the project brief.

3) nostalgic outdoor cooking! honey chicken roasted over embers. someone's specialty.

Obviously, yours truly isn't culinarily inclined, so I was helping out with the slicing of ingredients, washing of pots and utensils, and taking care of the embers to earn my share of the meal. Some of the food turned out chao tah, but the majority of it was yummy to the last bite, especially the kangkong, sugar apples, honey chicken... well. Basically everything was good. Of course the sense of nostalgia while cooking old camp food sure played a part.

Another nostalgic trip down memory lane was singing campfire songs. 想当年，the last campfire was also my first time taking it; Stepping in for my girls to take the campfire, I was kinda trembling inside, but luckily everything went smoothly and my knowledge of songs did not fail me. This time round, after the disappointing campfire, our team of instructors and old girls sat down together in front of the campers and led them through some forgotten classic campfire songs. The mere act of sitting together and singing those songs after so many years was a simple joy, as is the passing on of knowledge to the girls.

...on the IP Presentation

Due to the presentation for the IP project that was scheduled on the same day as the last day of my camp, I had to leave the camp early and head down to school in a sleep-deprived state. Was very much disappointed with myself about the presentation later on that day. It was too late for regret for not leading the presentation discussion and being present to share my views on how the presentation should be like. Guess the extent of disappointment was also due to my high standards and perfection-seeking attitude, always a bad habit of mine. oh well. What else can I say? The thing is over and done with, and I'm still glad for the team mates that I have. Without them, I wouldn't have been able to complete this entire project in its demanding time period.

...on Huili's (Belated) Birthday Celebration

After the whole IP and D thing, we had a celebratory lunch for the dear Pink ambassador - Huili, at this middle eastern restaurant at Arab Street. It was a Tuesday afternoon, and one of those can-go-and-buy-4D times that the whole gang was present. The buffet was filling and sinfully satisfying despite the limited variety of food, but the service left much to be desired. Somehow, there was a mis-match of understanding when we informed the staff to bring out the birthday cake. Yes, conforming to the letter of the word, she brought out the cake. Without the candles. To her credit, at least she took the cake out of the box, even though we expected the staff to KNOW that a birthday cake (with candles on the box) is meant to appear on the table, in front of the birthday girls, with the candles STUCK IN and LIT. hmm. Maybe we should have been more specific in our instructions.

Huili was such a sport and attempted to act surprised when the cake was finally presented to her with the candles in and lit up. She loved her presents too, which was a huge relief to the few of us who went shopping for it. Kudos to Sherlin and Asilah whose taste in the colour of bags matched that of Huili's. I dread to imagine having to return to the shop to change the colour of the bag if we had gone with the colour that Xian and I liked!

Here's group shot of us happy fellows:

A couple of us went on to catch 'Step Up 2 - The Streets' at The Cathay later on and had the unfortunate experience of being issued the tickets for the next day's show at the same time and same cinema theatre. After settling in comfortably and congratulating ourselves on getting good seats (4th row from the back), this bunch of guys kinda alerted us that we were in the wrong seats. Only upon close scrutiny, did we realise that our tickets had been issued wrongly, and had to give up our comfortable seats to the guys. If not for us not wanting to miss the starting of the show and for the ticket guy's prompt response upon us approaching him regarding this matter, I would have sent in a complain to The Cathay cineplex's management. Luckily for them, the movie was also good enough for us not to harp on the matter of the tickets. In fairness however, I must say that we were also careless in not finding out the mistake earlier.

...on Resumes and Job Applications

After the big D and IP week, it was finally time to get down to writing my resume and applying for jobs. I've been seeing panicky people around me frantically sending out their resumes and talking about having gone for interviews when yours truly was focused on finishing up the big D. Took one night to churn out the resume and some narcissism to shoot an pick a decent enough photo for the resume. Filled in a pretty challenging application for 2 civil service jobs in the public sector and am currently waiting anxiously for their reply.


Ok. I'm getting lengthy again, so I shall end of this post with a narcissistic shot of myself, taken while trying to get a decent shot that can be used as a resume photo:

Labels: birthday, camp, IP, jobs