This one time, at RYLA (the rest of it)

And this is the rest of it... I got some speech notes which is a mk2 of the intro... but like all my writing, it's all over the place. So you ain't gonna see it. And although I thought I might as well cut back on the posting of each day... it seems like the amount of writing I did for each day became less and less, either because I got tired of it, or those days had less stuff crammed into it.

Wednesday: Lazy day

Sleep in

Oh precious sleep. Being relieved of carrying the stretcher and sent to fill up the remaining seats of the bus to go back to camp meant dibs on the bunks in the dorm. Being scrawny does have its perks. Since all the guys had to carry the stretcher, and a few of us were relieved of this duty, we got to pick the good bunks- in the corner away from heavy traffic, and shelves! MUAHAHHAHA I could finally unpack my stuff and not in a ready to go state.

And we got to sleep in til 12pm.

Values walk

This was just a look inside yourself and determine what are your values activity. There were just a bunch of hypothetical scenarios and how would you respond, such as reporting a fellow athlete for performance enhancing substance abuse, doing the same as him, punishing a child, and dealing with illegal immigrants. There were a lot more scenarios, but we got bogged down on these. I would have liked to gone through the other scenarios.

Games night

As though we haven’t been having enough fun- we had a games night, where we had to compete with the other groups to complete a quiz/random acts thing. Man, the facilitators would help us if we did favours for them, like bringing them coffee (precious stimulating caffeine) or giving them a backrub. The end result- a 5 way DRAW!

Oh, one of the random acts we had to do was a scene from a movie. Tip: battle scenes involve the entire group, and not a lot of lines are said. We did Braveheart. Well, bits and pieces of it pieced together- “They may take our lives, but they’ll never take our freedom!” *flash kilts* *fight*

This was also the start of The Nuggets’ use of funny accents.

Thursday: quiet day

Leadership Panel

We had guest speakers come in to talk to us about… LEADERSHIP. Well, actually we had following your goals, inspiration and finding a mentor, communication, and some other random blabbering. I’m afraid that a lot of us were zoning out since we were sleep deprived for the past few days. However, some parts of the speeches did sink in and had an impact on us.

Adventure Journey

This was fun. The adventure journey was a series of puzzle games that tested the teamwork, leadership and problem solving abilities of our small groups. Each puzzle had about 10 minutes for it to be completed.

First puzzle- the spiderweb. We had to pass all eight of us through the gaps in a net. Pretty difficult since each gap could only be used once, and you couldn’t touch the edges of the rope. And we killed the net by trying to dive through it. Oops. I think our game plan for this was to get the coordinated and stronger people through first, so that they could support the heavier and larger people from the other side, followed by the lightest. That was a very slow process. And Rachel was always eager to go next, taking her loose top off and having to put it back on because someone else would go through. “We don’t mind you taking your top off!” Why do I open my mouth…

The swinging rope was quite easy. Get all 8 of us to swing on a rope and land on a tiny space… and stay there. We had to huddle up in order to fit on that tiny rug, and Tim did not like the intimacy of it.

I don’t want to know what the groups before us did with the pipe with holes. We had to fill a big leaky pipe with water and grab a rubber ducky. Since it was leaky with holes, we had to block the holes with whatever part of our body- including our tongue.

The walk of doom, was a puzzle much like one in Broken Sword. There was a grid, and you could only walk on a defined path, which is not marked. Slow and steady wins the race for this. Well, only after you rush through it to determine which squares are safe to step on, and mark with minty wrappers.

The Towers of Hanoi type puzzle was one I am proud of, as the Nuggets were the only group to actually solve it. And it was tricky as there were 4 to each side instead of the usual 3, and we were the puzzle pieces. It’s a lot harder to solve a puzzle from that view point, and also when everyone wants to do the directing. Who’s the genius who decided to step back and plan the manoeuvres before actually doing it? Me! Mind you, I couldn’t figure out how to do it with 4 a side, but my initiative to get everyone to step back and plan (using our shoes to represent us on the pathway) got it solved.

RYLA Photo

Here we found out I was the shortest guy at camp. -_-"

Rotary Dinner

I couldn’t find my sponsoring Rotary official to have dinner with, so I leeched onto Jenni R’s. Learnt a bit about how Rotary clubs are organised and what they do. Hehehe- Fork and knife Rotarians are those who just attend the Rotarian dinners and not take part. And apparently there are other youth and leadership related programs organised by Rotary and Rotaract, but RYLA is the best and for the best. That made me feel really good about myself. And you can see that the RYLArians were either really good people that oozed with confidence and leadership traits, or were strong in other fields and have the personal growth potential.

Sarah, Tim and I went around doing evil glare faces. Heheheh

After the Rotary officials left, majority of us started messing around having fun and dancing, with the minority taking up the slack and cleaning up the hall. Good fun. No sleep for many of us tonight.

Friday: Zombie day

Wakeup call

I’m pretty sure it was today, otherwise it would have been Thursday. We were woken up to a refreshing change. Sweet Home Alabama. No more Shine! WOOHOO!

We later found out it was one of the Rotarians who hid the CD.

Blur

We were all bloody tired, and many of us could not concentrate. Trust games were cancelled because of safety concerns. Most of us went swimming instead ^^

Last night event

Let’s see… This was organised to be a talent show combined with a funny awards ceremony. Very well executed. Kudos to the guys who planned it.

For some reason, majority of the groups had a thing for cross dressing, and also for that acting where there are 2 people acting as 1 (person behind uses their hands). And worst of all, they all put managed to use Shine, in some form.

With the exception of Purple Monkey Dishwasher, I’d say our Pirates, Ninjas and Aztec Gold was the most original (in a completely plagiarised manner). PMDw was long. And had a bloody script! But Mario was hilarious with his little kid acting. He even made forgetting his lines, funny. Unlike Nathan who had to refer to his script before saying MUAHAHAHAHA!

Why was our pirate/ninja act plagiarised? We took bits from Russell Peters’ act, and Little Britain, the name Steve from Dodgeball and we used tshirt ninja masks. But it was original since we didn’t do that arms with a mind of its own, or use Shine. Plus the entire thing was relying on pirate YARR jokes.

And we pretty much made it up on the spot.

But here’s the general script:

Steve the ninja starts hearing voices in his head, much like in the schizophrenia exercise.

“You do not want to be a ninja, you want to be a pirate, go look for Aztec gold…”

“What shall I do?”

“Get a cutlass and goto the port”

So Steve goes to the sword shop. Where we then use the Russell Peters “50c is a lot of money” act, but using a British accent like from Little Britain. Tim couldn’t do a Hong Kong accent, and I couldn’t do a Japanese accent convincingly, hence him doing a weird British accent. I just kept changing the way I spoke.

Steve then joins the Pirates who then ROW to where the Aztec gold can be found. Crack a few YARR jokes. Steve cracks a dodgy one.

Then the Ninjas confront the Pirates to get Steve back, because he left the Ninja order. Instead of fighting, they end up “debating” with the Pirates coming out superior because they have “oarsome” pirate jokes.

The Pirates find the treasARRR, but it’s gone… time for another adventchARR!

No soup rest for you!

More dancing tonight. I showed my eagerness to learn, ignoring how embarrassing I am, and tried copying, observing, doing whatever. Unlike Tim and Angela who stood around, and did not try. No game.

Since it was the last night we would all be together, some of us stayed up for as long as we could physically muster. We actually did that on Thursday night as well, hence the zombiness during the day.

Saturday: last day

Affirmations/Warm Fuzzies

Throughout the week, we were supposed to be writing warm fuzzies for everyone. Warm fuzzies, are… warm fuzzy positive comments. And affirmations are, pretty much the same, except more personal, I guess. Everybody in the small groups give affirmations for each other on cassette (which I now converted to MP3… don’t trust that ancient technology… quality can degrade) so basically, we can listen to it anytime for a morale boost. Basically what we all said to each other was what we thought of them throughout camp, how they performed and their growth, advice, and anything funny or meaningful. It was a very touching moment. You don’t get this kind of feedback in reality, and this is really positive. After all, you can’t maintain growth if you keep getting cut down.

Farewell

We kind of ran overtime with the affirmations. So before we knew it, it was closing ceremony, and home.

We were going back into reality.

Thanks for letting me share this amazing experience with you, and thanks for putting up with my dodgy writing. I had no idea which audience I was going to cater to so.. .yeah... (It was originally meant to be just a hard copy of what I remembered for myself, so it would have been pretty much full of coarse language)

This one time, at RYLA (part 3)

Tuesday: (Edit: removed)

Surprise visit (not!)

Mario was the daily coordinator for today. One of the roles the daily coordinator does is setting the evil Shannon Noll alarm. Signs of insanity began to show when some of the guys in our dorm thought Shannon paid a surprise visit to give us a live performance for the wakeup call. That’s because Mario kind of looked like him.

High ropes & egg drop

This is the alternative activity to abseiling. As there was not enough room for the ~20 of us to climb around the high rope obstacle course, we split into 2 groups with half doing the high ropes and the other half launching eggs.

The task for egg drop was where we had to design a mars lander with the egg as the precious cargo and straws, balloons, and paper as the materials for the lander. Ours (Dan C, Jeni R, me) was the only egg that survived. We used a combination of principles- slow down the approach and increase the impact time. Most groups did either of the principles, not both. So some had landers that just plummeted but absorbed all the impact, and others had ones that floated down. Good fun. We never got to do any of that in TEE physics.

High ropes basically involved climbing up a ladder, or rope ladder, or a knotted rope, and then monkeying along a horizontal rope, pole, wobbly bridge, or cargo net, and then let down by your partner(s) who were controlling your safety line. Holding the safety line sucked. You had to keep looking up, so that and wearing a helmet led to a sore neck.

The highlight of this would be the “Leap of Faith”. You had to climb up a pole- much like a power pole, onto a small platform. When you’re at the top, the pole wobbles… A LOT. Then you had to jump off and grab a trapeze thing. This was another challenge I got all wimpy on in primary school. Back then I managed to get to the top, got freaked out by the height n wobblyness, and simply walked the plank. This time round I got up, got freaked out by the wobblyness, but ignored the height and jumped. W00t! I got hold of the trapeze. Oh, and the superman harness had to be fastened really tight coz I’m a “skinny lil bugger” as said by the supervisor (forgot her name =( ).

Disability Awareness

This activity gave us a more involving view on what certain disabilities are like and how to deal with them. It was a role play activity where we were in small groups of 3 or 4 and rotated between the disabled and the person interacting with the disabled. The disabilities we looked at were blindness, being wheelchair-bound, ADD, cerebral palsy, and schizophrenia. The ADD one gave birth to the RYLArian injoke, well… a Nugget/Clare joke:

How many ADD kids does it take to change a lightbulb?

I wanna ride my bike!

(EDIT: Removed)

wheeeee drivey drivey!

I'm a Honda S2000!

You live on the edge, and you live for the adrenaline rush. You don't need luxuries, snob appeal, or superfluous gadgets. You put your top down, get your motor revving, and take all the curves that life throws at you at full speed. So what if you spin out occasionally?

Take the Which Sports Car Are You? quiz.

Hehehehehe... Mind you, I got the RX-8 last time, but I couldn't be bothered posting it.

Check out the new 2006 civic sedan line up. Bloody awesome. Fancy scifi looking dash, and they say its "longer, wider and less tall" That's gotta be way better than the previous generation. Damn that hatch was ugly. It's a shame they're only bringing in the one body style- sedan. But on the other hand, this streamlining of models will allow more of what we "want" in the dealerships, and maybe lower costs.

In fact, this whole streamlining of model ranges is something that these car manufacturers are doing. It would make a good case study for either economics or accounting. Hell, even marketing. Leave a comment if you care to explain this...

What's got my attention is the Civic sport. 2L twincam ivtec engine... I believe it's the same as the Civic si. And for under $30k... Looks like I've got some saving up to do. Dude... it's got like twice the power of my rolla, and about the same fuel consumption.

This one time at RYLA... (day 1 cont & day 2)

Tent
This is the first activity involving all 40 of us. We found out the meaning of “too many cooks spoil the broth”. Well, it was quite hilarious. We didn’t have enough tent poles, and made it worse when some people decided to use the poles to peg down the tent walls, on an angle. Then we had to make a 2nd tent. More improvisation, using a log as a centre pole, and rope tied around every tree that surrounded the tent. Talk about risk management, it was risk central. Oh, it didn’t make things easier with the fact that the facilitators took great pleasure in being “Nazis” and disabling people by blindfolding, muting or tying up their hands.

RLQ
Rotary Leadership Qualities are lectures, no questions asked. You can’t hide the fact that we are sitting in a room listening to a facilitator speak about the elements to leadership and looking at a projector screen. There were also activities that demonstrated the theory covered.
We would have one or two RLQs a day.

Tunnels
The tunnels are a maze of concrete pipes laid out on the ground and covered in dirt. That’s right, artificial tunnels.
I would say the tunnelling activity was more about taking on a challenge rather than building teamwork and leadership. However, there was still a leader who would determine which direction to go and at what pace, as well as negotiating traffic with other groups. In the tighter adventure tunnel the budding adventurers had their nerves tested, with some cramping up and the others giving encouragement to get them to continue forwards.

Showers
After the tunnels, everybody wanted to go shower as we were covered in mud and sweat. Tim ran off to the showers so that he could beat the crowd. He also beat the roll call. The missing number 24 became famous for the rest of the week.

Monday: Day 2
The rude awakening
Being woken up at 5am, after about 4-5 hours of sleep, to the sound of Shine by Shannon Noll at max volume was not a pleasant experience. By Saturday, I think we all went insane. And breakfast was 1 hour late. We were not happy.

Abseiling
Abseiling… what can I say? I’d say about 20 of us took the buses to some place which used to be a quarry. There we met Yuri, who showed us the ropes on how to abseil. Nothing too special about abseiling. Except I was determined to go crazy going down since I chickened out on abseiling in primary school and regretted that since. So basically, I was facing my previous fear of heights. That wasn’t too hard as I was already determined to overcome it. Or simply because the approach to the top of the quarry face did not reveal the height. Probably it was all mind over matter. A lot of these tasks required mental strength to overcome fears and break comfort zones.

Rafting/Crates
If I had known Monday would be a really hot day, I would have signed up for rafting first and then abseiling. This is because rafting had limited numbers for Monday only whereas abseiling was either a Monday or Tuesday activity. Rafting involved the group to split into 3 teams and building a raft from limited materials. I was told the team that only used two barrels instead of three won because they were lighter. However, they were pretty much submerged under water.

The crates activity just brought nightmares back to me. A few weeks earlier I was playing Broken Sword for Xbox. And that game was filled with crate puzzles. Every area you went, you had to shift crates to get access to a door, window, grate, trapdoor, you name it. In this activity, we had to stack milk crates into staircase designs and climb up to whack a rubber chicken. There were 3 difficulty levels. On the easiest level, we had just enough crates to climb up on and reach the chicken. But the other 2 required us to pull apart the crate staircase and rebuild it with someone standing on top of it.

I’d say the crates activity brought out a lot of leadership, management and teamwork. This is because we needed a general overseer to watch over the whole construction, allocation of tasks such as having the tallest (Paul) to lift the crates high so that more crates could be stacked underneath, and everybody working together to make sure that the bloody safety hazard doesn’t come crashing down on top of us.

It did, by the way.