Ixora, shine beyond the stars

♥ 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