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!!!!!