Christmas Eve/Last-Minute Shopper's Day
2003-12-24 @ 11:44 p.m.

News flash! I got the Humanities Scholarship. I know, it sounds like a very lame piece of news, but that's a nice Christmas present to have. The Christmas Eve service today was average. I didn't like my singing, although some people did. I'm quite amused though. For some arcane reason, everyone I talked to keeps telling me how wonderful my harmonising was. The only problem is, I wasn't doing any! Anyway, here's the slightly more detailed account of Youth Ministry Camp 2003 that I promised yesterday. By the way, guess how long I slept after I came home? I started from 3 pm on yesterday, all the way to 8 am today. The only break was for dinner, which was like 15 minutes, so it doesn't really count as much of a break. It was like, my mum had to wake me up at 11 pm to get me to change out of my clothes and brush my teeth, before I collapsed back into bed for another nine hours. Amazing what sleep deprivation does to people. After typing that, I don't feel like writing about my sleep-deprived existence at the camp! Never mind, I shall persevere...

Saturday
I went there very early, considering our reporting time was at 11.30 am. I went there at 10.30 am, only to learn the hard way that (most) girls are (almost) always late. Disclaimers there, so you girls can't bitch at me! Okay, so let's skip ahead to the bus trip, where I rode with the youths from the Chinese congregation and half of YE. We did this self-introduction thing, where some of us lied about our age. I sympathise, growing old can be such a pain, literally. Anyway, without naming names, suffice to say they lied. So now I technically didn't know if I had a place to sleep yet, so I just dumped my bags in the committee's room, the male one. I think it's stupid to extend the gender separation to the committee. It's simply because I think they ought to know better already. Whatever. Then I was photographing the icebreakers, and snapped this shot of Debra in some funky pose! I already mentioned the rocket-making activity, so I'll skip that. Scavenger hunt was cancelled due to the rain, and the campers were left to finish up their rockets. Maybe that was the wet weather plan? Cunning! The worship was nice, would have been better if more people knew more of the songs. Again, I repeat, people we need to learn more songs! The message, like all the rest, was quite simple, though it didn't really seem to have much to say. Call it sermon-lite, easy to digest, but doesn't make for much discussion material if you ask me. Then it was off to mentor a group! Quite fun, there was this debate between Nicholas (BB), Amelia (CC), Esther (GB), and myself (YE), over whether Catholicism is a branch of Christianity. Amelia and I disagreed, but Uncle Kenneth says that while Anglicans recognise there are differences between Catholics and the other main branches, they still accept the Catholics as Christians. I can live with that for now, until I go and study this myself. Now it was off to bed, and that's where there was a screw-up. No bunks. So I slept in the canteen, and caught a cold.

Sunday
Woke up with a chill, but failed to recognise the fever for what is was until after lunch. I caved and messaged Shirley looking for Panadol. That's when I started popping pills. (That makes me sound like some junkie!) Anyway, they were playing wet games throughout the afternoon. They started with a fairly tame game involving a rope, then on to something involving a parachute. Now it was time for the crazy stuff, mud! Picture about 20 people lunging at a huge inflatable ball, rolling around in lots of mud! I tell you it's hilarious to watch, even with a fever. Half of the campers were off canoeing, but I don't know what happened there, so go look elsewhere for what happened there. Basically, I was popping pills the whole day, until I resigned and went to bed early. Shirley was very nice, she took over my mentoring group for me and bought back a bottle of green tea which I proceeded to share the next day with everyone.

Monday
Sunday and Monday had identical programmes, so I'll just concentrate on the unique stuff that happened at night! It's quite messed up in my head, so I'm liable to confuse the order of things. Okay, it started with us viewing photographs on Shirley's laptop, because we'd just taken some photographs of and together with the Chinese congregation youths. They were playing freeze tag around the canteen with Gerald and the camp's resident dog. A very cute dog if you ask me! I took so many photographs of it, and Shirley you better develop those photographs or at least e-mail them to me. The stupid uncle was damn mean to the dog, every time he saw it he whacked it with something. No idea why though, maybe I'll ask Gerald about it sometime. So when we wanted to join them, it was too late, because someone from the other camp sleeping on the second floor complained about the noise. We moved up to the third floor and played squeeze murderer. Most people thought it was dumb, so we switched to plain old murderer. Then we played Gerald's game, something I learnt in primary school but haven't played much since then. Can't remember what led to it, but we ended up having James, the 11-year-old drummer from the Chinese congregation whom some of the YE girls were gushing over, go up to Ivan and say something stupid. After that we all sort of dispersed.

Tuesday
That's when Shirley called me to bring down her laptop and we watched the movie. My room was locked by that time, so I ended up watching them play all manner of weird games with the cards. I would have played bridge with Amelia and Phoebe from the Chinese side, but we were short of one player. So sad! Heeding advice not to sleep in the canteen again, I didn't. I walked up and down the stairs countless times, just to keep myself occupied. In the end I caved and slept for 10 minutes after the sun was up and people were starting to trickle in. Allow me to fast-forward to when we were loading up the bus to leave the campsite, because nothing much happened other than me leading my worst worship ever! Shortest practice time, and worst microphone. Whatever, stuff happens, so you just have to suck it and move on. I think us musicians and worship leaders were slacking when it came to packing up. We packed our instruments and the audio equipment, then we all helped out a little in various areas, before promptly settling down to play poison ball and whacko! It was damn fun man! My conclusion, the next camp we have should be a combined one with the Chinese side, because if you ask me, they're the most open of all the four organisations to people outside their usual "circle". I think the uniformed groups are a bit exclusive, because they've bonded as CCAmates. Not their fault, but I just feel it's very hard for an "outsider" to really feel comfortable among them. They like to say that YE people are being distant and not warm enough, but think about it. Most of the people who are currently in YE moved up from Sunday School, meaning they practically grew up together. It's going to be very hard for someone to just click straight away with us because of that. That said, YE can open up more to newcomers, but the Boys' Brigade and the Girls' Brigade need to do their part too. Goodwill is reciprocative...