Ixora, shine beyond the stars

♥ Monday, September 7, 2009

heys!
If you haven't heard, sally and I are really proud of yall for saturday's jihe, keep it up! :D
well but of course there is still room for improvement, so here are some things to take note.
Firstly for Camp D, there should be more of a sense of urgency, even though the time given is like 1 hour plus.
It seems long, but actually there are quite some things that need to be completed.
the Camp D PL has to be the one who checks whether the structures/gadgets are straight, and tell the rest how amendments are to be made.
if anyone got nothing to do or finished their task, take initiative and ask the PL what to do, but PL also gotta allocate manpower properly.
yup as yall pointed out, constant baoshi, cos when the baoshi is constant, we will be reminded of the time, and will be pushed to work faster.

For outdoor cooking, I was there only for a short period of time so can't say much also :X
just that yall need to choose your kindlings wisely, your thin twigs should be no more than the thickness of a pencil so that they catch fire more easily.
The thick twigs are to sustain the fire.
So basically let the fire light up the mumahuang first, then when the fire is more stable yall can start to add in thin twigs, then can add in thick twigs.

For OJ I was at the minesweeper station so I can't really say much about how yall did for the whole OJ, but can tell your spirit was quite high, cos I could hear yall cheering constantly when yall were at the red tile area.
which is good, cos cheering constanly will remind us that everyone's doing this together, and it will boost our morale, also make us forget the tiredness we feel from running/ding-ing.
but something for yall to take note is not to spend too long discussing after an instruction is given.
if yall have any questions about the instruction, ask the seniors(:
it is important for the PL to be decisive and ensure that time spent on discussion is minimised and yet productive.
and also to be more firm, like when progress is really slow, yall gotta push your members on, but not neccesarily shouting at them.
so year2s jiayous hope to see an improvement the next time yall lead the patrol(:
then I also heard some year1s starting to ling cheer now and then, which is good cos it is an improvement from last time, so I hope that soon, ALL of the year1s will be ling-ing cheers constantly and not just the same few people(:
but overall I can see that you guys are putting in effort to improve so jiayous!
ATC is like in 2 months!

anyways, just wanna say that you guys are maturing, really.
yall are having more initiative, cheering more.
remember when yall came in during your first jihe in yr1, yall dao-ed the seniors?
like dont dare to talk.
haha my batch also oops :X
don't know about the previous batches in yr1 though.
btw some other patrol seniors applaud yall for your high spirit too, keep it up!
can see that yall are acting out some of the things we told yall during the 'patrol evaluation' that monday morning.
like the 5-second rule.
when yall are comfortable with it we can change it back to the 3-second rule, which was originally what it was supposed to be when I was in yr1.

2 more things I challenge you guys to do:
1) let's be the seemingly shortest patrol during company jihe-ing.
that is, to kao long such that we look as if we're the shortest patrol :D
without the yr3s reminding yall to kao long.

2) ling songs during company jihe-ing without the yr3s prompting :D
initiative(:

IXORA.
Initiative. X-cellence. Open. Realisation. Appreciation.
Initiative to help others.
X-cellence (excellence), to strive for the best always and give your all.
Open, to be open to new ideas, that means being creative and not sticking to the standard way of doing things.
Realisation. Know your mistakes made and learn from them in future.
Appreciation, be grateful to the people who have helped, are helping, and are gonna help, cos they make the workload easier for you so that things can be done more efficiently.
(:

okays anyway here are some announcements:
1) Some of the year2s have expressed their desire to learn how to do minesweeper, fireman's ladder and shengqiao, so I was thinking we could do it for a monday patrol activity after the eoys.
But most probably we'll be combining with another patrol.
any objections from p6?

2) The seniors who have passed down are interested in p6 having a 6-generation patrol outing/patrol chalet during the dec hols. haha sounds quite fun right? :D yall can give suggestions like where we can go or what we can do?
If we total up the 6 generations, there should be about 22 people, including those who transferred patrol/school.

for now, jiayous in mugging for eoys! :D

with loves,
cherisse

♥-ing P6

8:56:00 AM

♥ Sunday, September 6, 2009

Hiyo peeps.
I am going to talk about yesterday’s jihe, what we learned and what improvements that we could have for the next jihe. My first posting, so bear with me.
On the whole, yesterday was rather less tiring, as compared to other jihes, I had been worried, that it will be a very long and hard day. But I believe that we learned a lot and had fun.

First, we had Camp D, which is Camp Development. We were to set up the xiao dui qi first. Sadly, we were slow and did not do a good job. We took too long, they say that the flag was supposed to be up in ten minutes, but we took more than 15 minutes.
Even then, the flags were not aligned and some patrols did not chou properly, leaving the flagpole rather loose. The year threes and the year two PLs had to pump for that. I feel rather guilty. We will have to improve on that, be faster and listen to our PLs. Also, not to focus too much on small details and neglect the bigger picture. From what Miss Ngau told us, I realize that there is a whole well of life lessons that we can learn from all these activities alone, just depend on how we see it and how deep we dig.
Then, we were given an hour to build a kitchen shelter, a fire outer, and a dustbin. However, some of the patrols had to correct their xiao dui qi first, including P6. We went back correct all the wrongs that the seniors pointed out. The others were building the kitchen shelter. It was a big structure, with one dark blue spur, two red spurs and four green spurs tied together to form a house shape. At first, they laid the canvas on the ground, and then placed the dark blue spur across it. I was wondering how they could have gotten it up; the dark blue spur was the heaviest of the lot. But evidently, they did. It really had a house shape, it looks big and four patrols can cook under it. At that time, I was at the flagpole. Then I went over to help with the dustbin. The dustbin was actually an inverted tripod stand. It was ingenious, I think, cause they said it was a new idea. However, after we tied the whole thing and tried to turn to upside down, it looks unbalanced and was not very stable. In doing all these, we were going to overshoot the time yet again. We jihe-ed and the seniors said they will help finish the kitchen shelter and we were to do our fire outer. It turned out that we were missing one mu. The seniors once again helped and supplied us with one. We started to build, but had no mallet, so we borrowed from other patrols. Due to lack of time again, we did not measure properly, the poles were not of uniform length. In a rush, we started tying, almost tying wrongly. The whole thing was a little unbalanced.
After that, we jihe-ed. Again, we were reprimanded due to lack of urgency, no constant bao shi and cheering. Too manyof us were focusing on the dustbin and there were not enough people to help with the kitchen shelter. We could have done better and fen pei ren shou better.

After Camp D is outdoor cooking. We were cooking chicken curry. Many of us do not know how to cook. We took a table and laid our food. The year twos was starting the fire, the year ones looked and tried to help. When the food came, we started to prepare. Few have peeled potatoes with a knife before, or opened a can using a manual can opener. We wasted some of the potatoes when peeling. Also, nobody wanted to cut the onion, so Rou Ling had to, and also the chicken. The eggs were scary; there were some things and shells that we scoped out. Finally, the ingredients were finished. The fire was hard work. One person was cooking, the rest had to constantly feed the fire and blow it. The year ones tried, but the smoke was painful and our breaths were not long enough. The teachers also come to help us and make sure we were not spoiling our food. When everything was over, we sat down and eat. It curry was cook by us, and it taste great. Though I think none of us knew how to cook, it still was quite a success.

Then, it was OJ. We had to change into our OJ kit. Given six minutes but took almost fifteen. One of our problems was that all of the staircases were locked; there was only one spiral staircase that we could use. Some of us forgot, and were very late. Changing to OJ kit was easy, just pull on slacks, buckle the belts and put on the scarf. I hope that we will not be so late again and take so much time.
First was the traditional games station. We built a roman chariot and fan five rounds with it. We cheered, and bao shi-ed but walked more than run. We had time left and were given bonus questions. The next was trekking signs and ye li xing jun. Our communication was not very good. Finally, we went to the minesweeper’s station. Our morale was high, we had cheering and bao shi-ing.
When we were done, we ran back to the general science lab to jihe.

We were the first two patrols. We rested and talked. Everyone was surprised by how fast time passed. For me, I had thought that more than two hours of OJ is long, but all the stations passed quickly. Then, there was debrief, and we got third!!
In a nutshell, we have to improve on our time management, chou-ing, fen pei ren shou-ing and bao shi-ing. Yesterday was fun and a step nearer to ATC. We should also not forget to look at the big picture and not just want to get things done.
We should always give our 100%, then turn to seniors for help.
Jiayous,
Cheers,
Jia Yi ;D;D;D;D;D;D;D;D;D;D;D;D;D;D;D;D

♥-ing P6

6:00:00 PM

♥

Hello (:

Yesterday, we had jihe to prepare us for ATC.

We started off with Camp D, where we were first given 15 minutes to tie flagpole. However we could not complete the flagpole and had to ask for time extensions, but even after that the flagpole was still very loose. Therefore we had to use part of the time given to build kitchen tent to finish up the flagpole. All the patrol's flagpole were also not aligned and the spacing between each flagpole was different. Next time, we should not just focus on completing the flag pole but also look at the bigger picture and make sure that the flagpoles are aligned to each other.

After that we were given 1 hour to build the kitchen tent, dustbin and fire altar. We took a long time to qi the kitchen tent as most of us were not familar with how to do it and also partly because the canvas sheet was spoiled. There were also some people who were doing nothing, we should fen pei ren shou better next time too. The year3s helped us with the kitchen tent while we started building the fire altar.

After Camp D was outdoor cooking. We were given some ingredients and had to cook curry chicken and eggs! We first had to start the fire and also sustain the fire after it is going. meanwhile there were also people preparing the food by cutting the onions, tomatoes, chicken, etc. The year ones also got to try out blowing the fire, when it is extingushing. After everything was done we sat down to eat curry chicken with bread and eggs. After eating we went back to clear up the camp site and chai-ed everything down. The stuff needed for OJ was then brought to the General Science Lab area while the rest were put back into tuanbu.

After that, we jihe-ed and was given 6 mins to change into OJ kit. Although most people were not back at around 5 mins, no one asked for time extension. We should all change into OJ kit faster next time as 11 mins is a very long time. After that we carried on with the OJ. We combined with p3.

Our first station was at the red tile area, where one patrol had to tie firemans ladder and another to tie the roman cheriot. we were given 10 mins to tie the roman cheriot. Most of the knots were quite loose which resulted in difficulty transporting people later. We had to tighten the knots every now and then, therefore the knots should be tied tighter and need to chou sheng and hold tension to make sure its tight. After the roman cheriot was tied we were given 8 mins to run 5 rounds for a certain distance, but could not complete it in time. After that we also had time for bonus questions where questions about survival skills was asked.

Next we proceeded to the senior high block. First, we had to follow the treking signs which lead us to the guides code. We took quite a long time to figure out the guides code but still manage to do so. After that we did 20 jumping jets and burpees before proceeding to the 2nd part which was ye li xing jun. I think that communication in the patrol could have been better as some messages were not passed down and we also had to zhao gu dong xi better. Like the water bottles and even watches.

After that we went on to the minesweeper station. Each patrol had to be in boys style pumping position while one patrol member crosses the minesweeper with the help of the PL. There were also paper strips pasted at the walls and mu, each of the different colours had different points worth too. After one has crossed the minesweeper, she would be in zhan ma position.

After that we returned to the general science lab for debrief for the day's activity. P6 got third overall -claps- (:

For the whole jihe, i felt that our patrol spirit was genrally ok and quite high for some stations. However, i feel that the year1s could ling more cheers and also cheer louder as most of the times it was the year2s who were ling-ing. Our knots should also be improved, cause during atc we would be using the gadgets that we build and if the knots are not tight, the whole structure will just kua and cannot be used. Lastly, our sense of urgency could also be improved.

good job for ytd's jihe (:

-amanda (:

♥-ing P6

2:41:00 PM