Social Science Orientation Camp 2006


What can i say? It was a crazy 2d1n man....lol. Hung out with a really the really cool group 2 aka "the Mafia Family". Yesh even though we weren't the most ra ra group, always ROCing, i dare said we were the most cool group, chilling out in style.... wahhahaha

From this camp, I learned that social science peeps were uberly wicked sick in their forfeits man!!! Whats singing, dancing and getting numbers when you have to perform insane tasks like stealing trophies, ask to see people's briefs or perform " Hard Gay... Hooo~" in every single room!!!!!

Anyways, here's a few phrases to hopefully sum up the camp. Food race achieved with $5.10, sess trophy challenge, visiting ROM at night, proposing to fellow team members and running around like Jack sparrow in PS on a freakingly busy FRIDAY night!!!, roti prata at 2+am, finishing a bottle of bailey's caramel ( courtesy of Cach... thanks babe) playing " big titties cow girl" till 4.30am, playing REAL LIFE GTA vice city, drug running, raiding the "police" of their weapons and selling them off at the black market, weapons smuggling, attempting to run a prostitution ring.... .... AND OVERALL GENDER CONFUSION!!!!!!!! WAHAHAHAHAHAH

After all these, i really wanna thank my fellow group mates. You guys were wonderful we should seriously chill out together next time man. I also wanna thank our dear facis deborah and david. These 2 are like the coolest facis around. No ra ra crap but always all so relac man...hahahaha Not to mention all so porn minded...hahahahaha.

Vice pride!!!!!

The "Beach"



This week as one heck of a week for many of us. I met alot of new school mates, friends that i'd definately remember down the road.

During matriculation, around 150++ of us freshmen signed up to take part in a CIP project deceptively named " The Beach Party". A point to note is that throughout the whole 5 days, we never actually got to set foot anywhere near a beach nor get tanned under the sun...lol

Anyways the whole idea of this project was to us to create pieces of sand art and to sell it off to raise funds in lieu of racial harmony day. Thus, 3 days were allocated to us for planning and designing our pieces, 1 day to create dem and the last day to atempt to sell them off.

To me, this was some sort of my first "orientation" to smu. It was throught this 5 days of fun that i first got to noe fellow freshmen.

Day 1 was on tuesday, directly after matricualtion. I met up with jwo and andrew. We set around waiting to things to get going. It was here that i started my first attempt at socialising.....hahahahha

Well, i was hoping that i would be assigned into the same group as jwo and andrew but in the end they were in grp2 and i was in grp 10.... which wasnt such a bad thing cos i can tell u that GROUP 10 ROCKS man!!!!! wahahahha

At first i felt rather awkward cos it's been soooooooooooooo long since i was placed in such a foreign situation where i did not know anyone. Well, after the initial uneasiness, things started to get along quite well (well... i thought so...hahah) and after the 5 days, i think will be hard to ever forget every single on of them in the group.

Our group was loads of fun. I felt that we were one of the spunkiest groups of all. Somehow along the way throgh wadeva reason, the name spiky durian stuck with our group. Quite apt i must say. We possesed rather vibrant group dynamics and were also focused when it came down to work. As one, we were united and each of us fitted well in the group. Our spirits were constantly high and we even went about coordinating colours of our clothes...lol

Day 2, warm vibrant colours

Day 3, squeakingly white

On wednesday, day 2, we went to the esplanade to supposingly take photos for inspiration for our 2 art pieces. For us, it became more of a nice slow walk around session cos we had already decided on our designs on the 1st day (talk about efficiency man!).

We went about, shutter happy, snapping lotsa photos and irritating the hell outta others...lol. By lunch, we were back in school and started to draw our full sized replicates of our pictures and prepare for a presentation the next day.

The spiky durain at the esplanade

I volunteered to help out with the contents of the presentation. Boy it wasn't easy. It has been ages since i actually had to prepare a presentation (brains are left behind when one's in the army you know....lol). I felt so outta touch with tping and phrasing things out. Luckily, jolene and shilpa were around to settle most of the stuff!!!! hahahah. Along the way, jolene and i were also somehow volunteered by the rest to do the presenation the next day. haiz....lol

Day 3 was rather slack. The 2 main focuses of the day was the bout of presentations b all the groups of their projects and the recce to republic poly in preparation of friday.

What struck me the most that day was the presentations. I was shocked at the standards of presentations and the competiton among all the groups. Despite the fact that it was only a freakin CIP PROJECT and that no matter how well you did, you would only get 80 hours, various groups put up things like sketches, peoms, songs and complicated power point presentations!!! I was like wa de hell man.... ... Imagine if it was a school project and presentations counted for grades den wad? Invite celebrities down r? Or better still, invite steven spielberg to shoot a movie for you?

Anyways, since we were group 10 and thus was last in line, by the time it got to us, our project seemed unoriginal cos alot of other groups which shared fragments of our ideas would already have presented them.

For my presentation, i felt that i screwed up. Even though i had given lessons on first aid to company sized groups of NS men in army, giving a short presentation to a seminar sized room of freshmen felt so different and so much more scary.

I started out well enough but by the middle and end of the presentation, i was freezing up and starting to freak out, making blunders like chinese mosques and the likes...lol... I even almost knocked into jolene who was standing behind me during the presentation. Talk about checking blind spots man....wahahahahhaha. I think that things are gonna get worst cos in smu, it seems that presentations take place very frequently... zang zang zang....... shit...hahah

LAter that day, we headed down to republic poly and started to lobo yet again. We played games and did forfeits. Jolene was officiall our forfeit specialist, doin go forfeit after forfeit, dragging in quite guys one after another...lol... Jolene by the way is a fun loving, spontaneous and spunky lass to hang out with. Guys take note.... she's single too!!!! waahahha

Friday saw us at republic poly at 9am in the morning. We started work at 10am and ended at around 5+pm. We placed glue, scattered sand, drew stuff using fabric paint. All of us knew our roles and we were among the first groups to finish.

Eat durians for racial harmony

Ooooo... look at all the pretty colours

By nightfall, after the hoo haa of the mp coming to grace the event, the bulk of us went for dinner at causeway point and had a bout of trash talking. After that, jim and i headed back to republic poly for the night. Even though we weren't required to stay over, i managed to convince jim taht stayting over with dorothy and rachel would be fun and so that was wad we did...hahahah

Finally done!!!

Andrew was kind enuff to lend me his semi- acoustic guitar for the night and at first, my plan was to serenade everyone but in the end, i realised that there was a gao shou namely joel, present so i decided to save the serenading for sometime else...hahahah

In the end, we spent the night learning the basics of salsa as i attempted to teach dorothy, rachel, jim and si yang the basics of salsa. I tried teaching them the basic mambo, right turn and cross body lead. They were good and picked stuff up really quickly... by 1 plus am, i managed to dance resonably well wif rachel and dorothy....Am i a good teacher or wad....wahahahhahaha

Soon after, dorothy was hungry and we trooped in the wee hours to causeway point and back for food...ahahahah

I tried to sleep after that but due to the fact tha the facis and some of the freshies were playing drinking games wif newwater and were making a hell lota noise, i oni managed to drift to sleep wif the help of my zen neeon. I was bitterly cold as i wore shorts and swee hock's jacket was too small to cover my legs despite me trying out different positions. I drifted in and out of sleep throughout the night muttering.... f**king cold....hahaah

I woke up at around 8.45am on saturday. I was shivering like hell man...lol. The da went on with all the usual crap. What i enjoyeed the most was the drnking game that we played. It involved people, a deck of cards tons of bottles of new water and strong bladders...hahahahha. It was wickedly fun man...lol... Watching people haplessly down bottles after bottles of new water. Jolene lived up to her name again by gulping down tons of new water. I personally finished about 8...hahahahahha

At 3pm, it was home sweet home. I returned andrew's guitar and we packed up. We said our final few words to one another and said our good byes.

We started out as a group of strangers thrown together to complete a task but walked out together as closely bonded friends. This has been a wondeful journey for me. I'll never forget u guys man. Do say hi when we meet again in school!!! Till next time, ta ta :)

All smiles - GROUP 10!!!!!

Lamb chops, whiskey and ice cream


Since it has been commented that young has been slacking away and not updating his blog for some time now, here's a little something for you guys to chew on.

This week saw many many things happening to dear ol' young. On wednesday, we were invited to sondha's place for a GREAT dinner gathering of sorts. There were lotsa people and even more food!!!

Talking about the food, it was pure sinful indulgence.... waahhahah. There was sondha's signature LAGSANE, drunken lamb chops ( Lamb chops that have been marinated in beer and red wine for 3 days!!!!), swedish meat balls, prawn paste chicken wings, dark chocolate mousse, fudgey brownies, dark chocolate ice cream from awfully chocolate, hageen daaz lychee ice cream drenched in absolut vanilla, cockburn's pot and late harvest white wine (courtesy of clarence:))!!!!! Talk about banquets man...wahahah

I seriously must say that sondha's a FANTASTICALLY DIVINE CHEF man!!!! Her dishes are seriously to die for. The tipsy lamb chops were all so tender and litterally bursting with flavour. Not to mention the rich lagsane and mousse. Seriously hotel standard man!!!!! wahahahahaahah!!!

Notice the lack of photos.... we wolfed down the chow too quickly...hahahah. THANKS FOR EVERYTHING SONDHA. YOU ROCK!!!!

After dinner and it's subsequent trash toking session, it was off to Phuture and zouk mambo night with the gang. It was packed.... literally to the brim. We were very lucky cos soon after we got in, it was full house.

We went to phuture first, got a drink and headed off to the dance floor. It was very very very very packed. We were constantly shoved, compacted and pushed around. We tried to hold our ground, sticking together in a circle formation to limited success. There was this particulary character that really got on my nerves. There was this small and pettite ah lian that was dancing behind me for quite a while. Despite been soooo puny in size, she kept trying to push and shove me from behind which was irritating to say the least. Even if she wanted me to pick her up or something a simple "hi" would surfice right....lol

From the rest of our ganga, it seemed that i can really " zhi high"... Get very high by myself. According to them, i was very high, bobbing and gyrating away to the music all by myself, despite us having little to drink and thus quite sober....lol. Well, i guess for me, being high boils down to the atmosphere and more importantly the music and not how much i drink. If there is soul shaking groovy music in the air, i can be lost in my own little world :D

After phuture, we took a stroll across to zouk. It was mambo night which meant retro music. What tickled me the most however, were the moves that came with the songs. There were throngs of people on the stages making different hand guestures that corresponded to the lyrics of the songs.

It was freakin funny. Really reminded me of para para and mass dances in school. The lao jiaos on the stages did it with so much confidence and gusto and the masses on the floor were trying to follow with varying degrees of success. Seriously machiam during orientation, the OGLs trying to lead the students in mass dance lidat....freakin funny...lol

Needless to say, it was babes galore. Tons of chio lians and hot gals alike in various degrees of undress. Lotsa skin and bare flesh. I saw a particular gal that was particularly good looking( to me at least :) ). She was wearing a white sphagetti top and jeans, clean cut face, tied up shoulder length hair. She was 1 of those para para leaders on the central stage. A pity that there was like an army of clubbers on the floor between me and her, rendering squeezing through almost impossible. Well, im not the "pick up gals" sorta guy anyways...lol. Saw a couple of familiar faces. People like jinn, elayne, xenbar gals, timothy... ...

thursday and friday was rather platonic.

Thursday night was spent at hard rock. Went for door to floor's free salsa lesson. Learnt a new turn pattern and shine from suman. Social dancing wasn't spectacular (guess i was still reeling from a lack of sleep from zouk) cept for a fun dance i had with bianca from xenbar. Freakin spunky and fun gal to dance wif. You go gal!!!

Friday saw me marking papers at sondha's mum tuition center. Finally, after like forever, i got a job :). Anyways, i was so tired the whole day that i skipped loco at ladc even though lionel was teaching free shines. Toppled and slept like a log upon touching my bed at home.

Saturday afternoon was spent practising salsa at a friend's place. After that, it was off to shop for stuff at orchard for me. Went to far east and got a hat and red tie:) Later at night, i met up with victor and jian at paradiz.

Victor cam whoring....

Young in a hat

At first we wanted to go to minds cafe to chill but it was full house and we trudged down to the cathy cos both of dem wanted to check it out. The place is still quite unoccupied and so we ended up at ben and jerry's. Victor being victor, was flirting blatantly with the female staff behind the counter...lol

Ben and Jerry's... Duh!!!

I must say that ben and jerry's offer many creative ice cream flavours with equally colourful names like "chunky munky", "phish food" and "dublin mudslide". They tasted quite alright but the prices weren't though...lol. It was like 4 bucks for a small cup sia!!!!! We settled with a mix and match ice cream, 3 scoops of different flavoured ice cream. We took "Gracia cherry", "New York Super Fudge" "and "Dublin Mudslide". Topped off with chocolate fudge, it was $8.60 + $2.00 (upsize for bigger scoops) = $10.60 of pure calory bliss...lol

Mmmmm... YUMMY!!!

2 guys, 1 bowl and 3 scoops of melting ice cream

FEEDING FRENZY!!!

Thats all so far. Esther's having her birthday party later. HAPPY BIRTHDAY ESTHER!!!! Thats all for now.... cya :P

OH YAH AND I FORGOT TO ADD THANK YOU BIAODA!!!! FOR ALL DE HELP U HAVE GIVEN ME ALL THE TIME IN SALSA!!!!

(P.S. ALL THE WORDS ARE CAPPED AND BOLD....LOL)

Merlion International Dancesport Championship 2006

Woah... what a journey it has been for all of us. Since the beginning of june, we have started preparing for it, building up to yesterday. It was definately a great experience. The times we shared, all the frustrations and make up...lol

All of us, no matter what placing, were winners in our own right. I believe all of us went home with our own personal lessons learnt and experiences gained. Well it was quite a feat for all of us to pull it of, considering that it was the first time they organised a salsa category in a traditional dancesport setting. All of us had no idea how we would be judged, what song would be played so basically, we just had to go there and just do it...

Elieen and clarence were placed 4th while shervonne and i were placed 3rd. I personally felt i could have done better but im still happy nevertheless...lol

Anyways, here's to the competition... ...

I woke up at 12pm. Didn't really have a good night's sleep which must have been due to anxiety i guess....lol Anyways, I had to go and get flowers for my partner to put in her hair so i called my mom who was at the market to help me. In de end, she got pink carnations and my kiasu grandma plucked like some other flowers from our house. When i finally got all of the flowers together, there were like red, purple, yellow, white and pink flowers!!! Machiam going to temple to offer flowers lidat...wahahahaha

We decided to meet at yishun mrt at 4pm. By 4.30, sondha, clarence and i had already finished eating at yoshinoya but elieen was nowhere to be found. Apparently, she was rushing down after getting her hair done (i must say her hair was not bad.... very sparkly...hahahahah)....

Upon elieen's arrival, we took off to orchird country club in a cab. By the time we got there, it was just after 5pm. We started to get changed and stuff. For the competition, i decided to keep it simple and decided to go wif a rolled up black shirt, black pants and a silver tie. I guess i looked pretty ok... until... .... .... THE MAKE UP WENT ON!!!!!... GAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

One last look at young before the application of ghastly make up... lol

Let me tell you. Make up isnt meant for guys (normal straight heterosexual males... none of those metrosexual crap too) under normal circumstances. Only under very extreme and dire situations, should they be subjected to the torture of cosmetics.

The only thing that i have ever put on my face was yucky camo cream in the army. It came in 2 colours. Black and green. It felt uncomfortable putting green and black on my face. I thought that i was bad enuff to put on camo little did i noe that putting on make up would be worst...wahahah. CAmo came in 2 colours... make up came in like... a GAZILLION colours!!!!!! OMG!!!!

Slow painful torture

I went under the knives... erm brushes of elieen, sherv and sonn. They put alien stuff like foundation, blusher and lip gloss on my face.... It felt downright WIERD and GAY lah... !@#$!@$!... ... Anyways after the make over i turned out like this ...

ZHENG ZHENG ZHENG.... I hear screams already....

I seriously looked damn gay lor... My lips were like small pouty and red... EEEW....wahahahaha. Soon, i was melting away... literally... So was my make up...wahahahaha

Anyways, it seemed to me that salsa dancers (those at the competition at least), wore only 3 colours... red, silver and black....wahahahahaha. Like some sort of unwritten rule that says "Yer only a salsa dancer....... IF YOU WEAR RED,SILVER OR BLACK!" lol... Seriously like some sort of uniform lidat...wahahah.

Black and silver

Silver, black and red

Black and silver

Red, black and silver

Black, red and silver... you get my point...hahahah

Besides, we were way way way underdressed compared to the ball room dancers who came in all sorts of funky colours and eye catching costumes. We seriously looked rather shabby compared to them....lol

Anyways, we went in to watch den competiton and i must say that ballroom dancing is very different compared to salsa. All of dem are very stiff. Even for dances like jive and rock and roll which are supposed to be more energetic were stiff and not as impactful as salsa.

However, even having said so, i must say that i was very impressed by their poise, grace confidence, expression, body movement and feel. Even the kids were very nice to watch too... They were bubbling over with energy and oozing with cuteness...lol

Of all de dances, the 2 dances that i enjoyed de most were pase boble and tango. These two dances are very impactful and yet graceful at the same time. If the dancers managed to find that perfect balance of grace and energy ( many did...lol), the dance would be mind blowing..lol

Anways back to us... ... we were slowly getting pumped up with adrenalin. Soon, we reported to the event staff and got ready to enter the floor. We went round wishing each other luck, slapping each other on the back. By the time we were lining up to enter the floor, i could literally hear my heart beating....lol.

When we finally entered the floor, I started to feel very nervous. Everything started to tense up (think straight r...lol). All i could think of was "Oh shit.. oh shit.. oh shit...." ... wahahahah. My palms were sweaty and stuff... Really reminds me of that eminem song from 8 miles...lol

The music went on and we just started to move lor... I was so nervious that i think i screwed up abit...wahahah. It went much better during practice...hahahaha. I realised that my timing bwang abit and got a few mistakes...lol. Well no choice lor... just continue and try to do my best....

After the dance i asked sherv how it went. She said that she also blanked out and just followed me. Many of the rest felt de same too. I guess it's the stress of competition....lol

I was feelin glad that it was over but at the same time i was rather dissapointed that i screwed up. We went away and watched the rest of the competition with heavy hearts. We were fearing the worst.

After quite a while, we were called out to await our placing.It was really a moment of gloom for us all. Soon. they started to announce our placing... Name after name, couple after couple. As the placing went on, we felt more and more relieved. Soon 4th placing was announced.... IT WASN'T US!!!!! WE WERE 3RD!!!!!WAHAHAHAHAHAHA

I was so happy from screwing up and expecting the worst, we had gotten 3rd!!!! wad a relief!!!hahahah. We went to collect our medals wif glee. I was sooooooo happy when we stepped on the stands and had our photos taken!!!! What an experience!!!!! Yay!!! I was over the moon...wahahahahahaha!!!

Moment of glory... I was in estasy

The man that made it all possible for us

Great friend, loyal fan...lol

With the winning couple

At this moment in time, i'd like to sincerely thank the following who have walked with us and greatly helped us along on our journey. This award goes out to u guys too. You guys made it possible.

1) Dear ol' buddy jwo. Thanks so much for helping us logistically, providing us a nice cave to meditate in and for being such a great buddy, standing by me and listening to my rantings time and time again. You rock man!!!

2) Shervonne, partner in crime, for giving it all you've got even though u have studies to manage too. I couldn't ask for more....

3) Clarence, sondha and elieen, for listening to my nonsence and also giving us tips and pointers on how to improve. More importantly for being such great friends and standing by us all the way :D

4) My parents for putting up with my numerous late nights dancing!!!

5) Corina, for spending time givingus sound advice on how to sharpen our moves and getting our act together and helping us out in so many other ways.

6) Greg, Raymond and many other everyone else who have helped us with valuable advice, guidance and kind words.

7) Last but not the least, Jackson!!! for starting, guiding and grooming us along our salsa journey. You made it happen for us all! Thank you so much!!!

Oh wells, the salsa competition's finally over. Time to look for more trouble to get into...wahahahah

:p

The pioneer batch of dancesport salsa dancers

The salsa competition is finally over...

Im happy... ... that we got 3rd!!!! :)

i felt that we could have done better but still im happy...hahahahha.

Will blog about it soon...

Quick quick ... buy 0244 for 4D!!!