nothing more, nothing less.

« Friday, January 18, 2008 »

the best way to overcome withdrawal symptoms is probably to blog / write / talk about it, and as much as it might seriously backfire and put people into an emo-mood and all, i am here to do just exactly that.

very briefly and in three simple words, OBS WAS AWESOME. :D

it almost seems kind of ironic, considering that we've all heard more than our fair share of horror stories about (pick one) sandfly bites / sunburns / horrid weather / tent-pitching / 8-hour kayaking - list not exhaustive, and on the first day we were thinking how we would probably be so tired of everything that we'd be whining to get home, but OBS was truly, truly brilliant. (so brilliant that i want to tell you in the face that you're a loser if you haven't been for OBS, but okay you didn't just read that.) it was emotionally fulfilling not just because you find yourself completing challenges and conquering fears that you never think could have been possible, and you learn so much about yourself as a true person, but also because of the immense amount of watch bonding that took place over those 5 days, and how you've gotten to know each and every single one of your watch-mates a whole lot better. like juliagandres said (okay she's going to kill me if she ever reads this, and i'm not even sure i'm quoting her correctly D:), it feels as if i've known these people for ages, for lifetimes even, because there's really nothing that you can achieve alone at OBS, and the support and encouragement from the rest of your watchmates is just so, so necessary and crucial.

to be back on mainland singapore now gives me a weirdly surreal feeling; to a certain extent, it doesn't feel as if i've actually been away for 5 days and gone through everything that was OBS, but getting back home and relaxing in a comfortable air-conditioned room in front of the computer feels significantly different now. then again, there was also this weird unqualifiable feeling when we were all at pulau ubin; at first, it really didn't sink in that we were going to spend a whopping 5 days there on ubin, and then after a while, it even felt as if i'd fallen out of my present life and gone into an alternate universe of its own. i guess that in itself is wonderful testimony to how OBS was: it just plucks you out of your usual comfort zone and immerses you in a brand new environment, and the entire journey is so intense that you basically feel like a brand new person. but it's also a great feeling, and i must say with that you start to appreciate every little thing, every little blessing that comes your way, even if it just means a dry tent to sleep on for that night. so i guess to that extent i've grown, and i'm glad for that, because if you can't find the joy in the little things, then life's really going to be miserable, especially if things get a little difficult along the way.

i think it's really quite hard to do a round-up of OBS, considering how it was an experience that is one of its kind and hard to qualify in words, and just about everything left a really great impact on me. hmm it's starting to rain now, and then that in itself reminds me of day 2, when our tents were all wet and literally flooded, and when we had to do some emergency rescue work and stuff like that. but argh okay i'm going to get incoherent if i start to link everything i see now with obs experiences (like handphones with walkietalkies that the instructors have and uhm, water bottles with our obs replacements and s-washing and stuff like that!), so i think it'd be better to go in chronological order. that basically = long (rambly) post, but well, the experience's seriously worth consolidating, so why not. (:

day 1
more or less a warm-up day, with icebreakers and all that. but hahaha even the icebreakers were hopelessly, hopelessly amusing. like the scissors-paper-stone game where you had to jump in some pseudo-parapara style steps (which made me feel kinda childish, but was good fun too!) before putting out your preferred handsign, and also the random 'let's celebrate' thingy, where they were celebrating really well, stupid things like people who knew what colour their ahemunderwearahem was. -.- but of course there were also the little tasters to the things that were to come, like the kayak capsizing and the float test and all that. i guess i was a little apprehensive at first, considering i have a very, very miserable disability when it comes to anything remotely connected with water. but it was good to have let go of all inhibitions and just try (while keeping the faith in the reliability of the lifejackets O:), and i must say the float test gave me such a liberating feeling, hahaha. (: on hindsight it's actually quite interesting how much i enjoyed that small float test, since it bears so much similarity to just floundering in the great expanse of the ocean, but i think what made it so significantly different was the simple fact that everyone else in our watch was there and holding hands, and that communal spirit really put things in a different light.
oh and we also had our first cooking and tent-pitching demonstrations, hahaha. :D i don't know why, but whatever food we cooked (or should i say, helped to cook, because we didn't exactly do much) just tasted fantabulous even when it was simply canned sardines and a mix of curry chicken and tuna flakes. i guess it's true that whatever food that we'd cooked by ourselves would always taste good, because after all we'd put in so much effort into just raising the fire, getting things going, opening cans with irritatingly prejudiced-against-left-handers jackknives (though i insist it did work with my left hand!) and everything else. oh, and the brilliant 'lion dance with tarp in the rain' feat when getting more canned food from our stores, hahaha! :D we were basically singing in the rain and creating well, quite a scene, but y'know, i'm awfully glad that we're actually such an enthusiastic (and perhaps slightly off-centre) watch, because when things starting getting a bit more frustrating and tiring for everyone, it would have been very hard to continue to coexist peacefully and enjoy our time together as a watch if we didn't have all that optimism and hyperactivity. i think to a certain extent it sort of died down as the day went past, but we should be thankful that it never did die down fully, and there was always just that little spark at the very least, that little spark which really meant a lot and made a good lot of difference.
argh this is getting irritatingly rambly and threatening to degenerate into some stupid depthless recount thingy, but we got new tents, yay. (: hmm things like that aside, i think being mobile was a good thing because it definitely made the entire experience a whole lot more complete. pitching your own tent was certainly back to the very basics, and to have to adapt to all sorts of weird situations and make ourselves comfortable with the limited resources we had was truly hard. but there was also that immense sense of satisfaction and fulfillment when you finally get that tent up and ready; plus i find this very cosy feeling sitting / sleeping in a tent, like your own personal space that's just so exclusive but also so close to the wonders of Nature and Earth (and possibly there's also something with the use of torchlights - it just gives it such a warm ambience and all). but the flickering light was irritating. :/

day2
backpacking across to camp1 from camp2! actually the 'steeper' route wasn't exactly as steep as elton had made it out to be, so i'm glad we took on the challenge because we shaved a lot off the time that we would have taken to reach our campsite for the 2nd day. sophia and shanjee are fantastic navigators! :D the backpacks were awfully heavy, and it becomes twice as torturous when you're carrying a tent bag as well, but there's again this real sense of triumph when you actually make it through. like 'ha! i trekked through the forest with XXkg of stuff in my backpack, and another XXkg of a tent bag! nyaknyaknyak!' alright that probably would only apply to me, but it's just such a great feeling when you finish your ascent / descent and look back to see exactly how far you've come, and honestly, if i'd known just exactly how much i'd needed to climb, i might not have done it. it's really so heartening to look back at times to appreciate how far you've come, and when you put that into perspective it can really spur you on to go for that extra mile.
camp1 has a cookhouse, which naturally meant good food! (: it was a good change to get some proper and more palatable food, i guess, but there's still that subtle difference between eating your self-cooked food and eating food cooked by someone else (though the isotonic drinks were good, heeheehee).
and then we did rock-climbing! one of the first greater challenges for me, since i'm mildly acrophobic and i'd never exactly relished even the rock-climbing stuff in school. so when i first saw the rock wall i was like O: (okay so some people say it's actually quite easy but for me it didn't appear that way hmph) and tiffany, stacey and i immediately formed this society of acrophobics. it didn't help that i was already feeling kind of unstable inside when we did the simple belaying practice thingy (don't laugh!), and combine that with an inherent fear of falling from heights and uh, plummeting to my death, you get a perfect combination to unsettle michelle, very very badly. but in the end i just gave it a try, and perhaps it was because the rock wall was sloping inwards towards the hall walls (do i make sense D:) it didn't feel half as scary. (: so i managed to climb a lot, lot more than i'd expected myself to - like up to the 8th panel! hahaha personal best please! :D even though it probably isn't anything compared with other people, but i'm really glad for this little 'achievement' 'cos through it i more or less conquered my fear of heights and i get closer to invincibility muahaha! okay no, but i do agree with what they always say, to remember that there's always someone down there holding on tightly to you, belaying you and watching over your safety, and the best you could do is to truly show that you trust that friend of yours, and just to believe in both yourself and the people around you. oh and it's better not to look down; don't look down at all the difficulties and challenges that you might face along the way, but look up towards the goal, and enjoy the process! encouragement does wonders as well, so yay thank you fantastic watchmates for all the cheering and ra-ra-ing! :D oh people like shanjee are really, really pro! plus kristy who reached the top and wasn't let down by (evil) elton until she sang a verse of the school song. D: but then again, it's also classic moments like these that truly define what my OBS experience was, what hillary's combined OBS experience was. (:
dinner was the amusing spam-all-you-can lame jokes session, with sophia being the prime star, hahaha. :D ohyeah i forgot to mention, but at OBS they have this tradition whereby before you start your meal, you feed the person opposite you a spoonful of food <- so sweet right. :D anyway, we basically spent the whole dinner laughing our tummies out while filling them with food (okay that sounded weird), but it was really good hahaha. (: after that was the land expedition briefing, plus our failed attempts to act serious. -.-
and then we had slack time, which was the equivalent of a mini-"campfire" with elton on the guitar and us on vocals. it was quite amusing because everyone else was scuttling away doing up their tents or trying to figure out their routes for their sea expedition, and there we were bumming around. but seriously i think it was really nice of elton to play stuff for us and entertain us a little, especially when we need a little mental reprieve from time to time, and music does that best. :D 'pass it on' totally took on a new dimension, and i just realized how much nicer it sounded when you do it slower and actually take time to think over every word in that song. plus brenda's cool opera-ish voice! subsequently there was Operation Disturb Others (i shall call it that, even though it didn't have an official name, but i like giving things weird names anyway), which got aborted because everyone else was all serious and sombre about sea expedition and everything. and so i guess we were really, really lucky to have gotten such a nice instructor, who tolerated our occasional lapses in efficiency and gave us so much freedom, who really tried to make us as happy as possible and who showered us with so much care and concern without overdoing it and defeating the purpose of OBS itself. i think this was also one of the main reasons why our OBS experience was so very different from the common 'i-can't-wait-to-go-home', because we had a truly great instructor that made the 5 days worthwhile and a lot more enjoyable, helping us to discover ourselves and bond with our friends without having all the scary i-shout-at-you-so-that-you-will-listen-to-me kind of thing.
but! day2 was a little mean because it rained right during the evening, and our tents became really efficient sponges in the process, what with our flysheet falling off. >:( so throughout the night we couldn't really sleep despite lining the wet tent with ponchos, and in brenda's words, we were literally practising all the various yoga positions just so to get to sleep, but of course it didn't really work. eventually brenda and i decided to just go and wash up, plus do some drying of clothes and everything, without knowing that it was still a deathly 2:45am. D: and then because we really didn't want to get back to our tent, we decided to take a short little nap outside the toilet (your cue to go O: D: !!) until a dog came trudging along, and we decided to take off after all the german girl's shrine stories - but more about that later.
[i just realized my recount of day2 is horrendously long, but i desperately want to crystallize everything when it's still fresh, because i don't want to forget all these wonderful experiences that i've had. and i'm too lazy to pick out pertinent points - especially when just about everything is pertinent.]

day3
half-day land expedition, also going by the names of 'the full 7/7 of the trek from camp 2 to camp 1', 'severe back torture, part 2' and 'revealing the german girl's shrine'. the rucksacks were really, really, really x100 heavy, and then my shoes had to choose a brilliant time like this to disintegrate and give me everything like feet-ache (i confess that i coined that word) but just no proper cushioning. -.- so it also tested a lot of my perseverance and determination; i have to admit at times i really felt like giving it all up and just sinking to the floor under the sheer weight of everything, but all the singing and dancing and cheering and other various forms of encouragement really spurred us on together as a watch, and it really kept me going for a lot longer than i would have had if i were alone. a lot of things really can’t be done solitarily, because after all humans are very much social animals, and i’d think the best thing you could do for another human is to give them encouragement, give them a compliment, or just do something positive to them to show that you care, because at the end of the day that’s one of the very things that all of us crave to have – the all-encompassing love. :D but okay, pseudo-insightful lines like that aside, i thought some of the quotes were quite interesting okay! (other than the fact that perhaps it wasn’t the most flattering thing to be compared to as a teabag, but hey, i understand that analogies are supposed to be as creative and imaginative as possible.) oh, and the german girl’s shrine! the name itself makes it sound a little creepy, but actually it’s just in commemoration of a poor girl who died during the first world war, except elton decided to beef up the story a little by adding in random supernatural elements that more or less freaked brenda out, a lot. (oh, just a side thought, but i think i’ve also become braver during OBS – like i don’t get that easily freaked out by ghost stories anymore, even though imaginings of the horrific still likes to poke me once in a while.) but apart from the gruelling process of the land expedition, i think it’s also cool that i know something more off-the-beaten-track about pulau ubin, and that in itself would have made the entire trek a worthy one. :D
the second major part of the day was devoted to raft-building (alongside with the quarry jump / dip, but argh more on that later), and hohoho, that was when our watch’s / 314’s fantastic offbeat humour came into play. basically, we had to build our raft within 50 minutes, and because about 20 minutes was spent discussing what was the best structure for our raft and tossing ideas about, we only had 30 minutes left to construct, which is of course, barely enough. on top of that, most of us sort of forgot how to do the different kinds of knots, so we were all either desperately waiting for someone who knew how to tie the knots to tie a knot, or just spontaneously improvising knots of our own – like the grand creation of kristy and i, the krichelle knot, hahaha. (: <- technically, that knot was really secure and also easy to tie, just that we sort of forgot how to do it after that. :/ but krichelle knot it still is! (and see, it perfectly alliterates!) and then because we couldn’t exactly secure the entire thing in time, three out of four of the barrels were just very loosely tied to the poles, so they could totally have come off if our raft were to be put in water. but then joyce came up with this really amusing idea about how the barrels could be opened to serve as ‘toilets’ in the open sea, and even as separate cubicles for the two genders – inside joke, really.
quarry dip quarry dip quarry dip! a little prelude to jetty jump, i guess (grr grr grr i should stop cross-referencing and spoiling the whole chronological order :/), but oh the water was so, so comfortable to dip in! :D and i’m also glad for people like michelle (fung! i’m officially known as zongmin now, anyway) and kristy, who kept holding on to me, trying to navigate this poor little soul (literally) all lost at sea / quarry, and just told me not to worry and everything. so yes a million thankyous to y’all! (: and then we had to play the watch game, katong laksa! (hurhurhurhurhur!)
i remember day3 dinner the best. our first self-cooked dinner! :D and then because we were way too lazy to bother with cutlery and all that jazz, we just decided to cook food in bulk in the messtins and pass the messtins around, with everyone taking a bite or two from it. eventually it sort of degenerated into people acting like mums, bringing messtins around and feeding people with it, but i love doing that, because it heightens the communal feeling so much more. there’s just this nice fuzzy feeling when you share food with other people, and eat out of that same messtin as someone else. it’s a really nice reminder of how far we’ve grown and bonded as a watch – i mean, you technically wouldn’t exactly share food with people you aren’t familiar or aren’t comfortable with. and then washing up, which entailed us going down this rocky sloping path (but i didn’t get panic attacks for this, hurray me!) to the beach and letting the tide wash away all the yuck and muck. plus we had to bury all our organic waste, hahaha! imagine pseudo-funerals and that sort of thing. xD (so well, the ahem, entrenching tool, sort of took on a more, uh, civilized duty.) speaking of entrenching tools, we also had to settle all our personal solid/liquid waste at this little, relatively secluded stretch of beach, and although the feeling was kind of unsettling (plus argh the stink!), i’ll just call it another experience that i couldn’t have had if not for OBS. xD
okay i need to stop rambling on, seriously, but the night sky on day3 was superb! as stacey would very proudly tell you, there’s hardly any light pollution there at ubin, so you can make out a lot of stars – and see a lot more than you ever could in singapore itself. and boy, was it pretty. (:

day4
sea expedition day! with our fantastic sea-ex leaders, joyce & brenda & weiqing & lingxi, plus the combined watches of hillary and junko, conveniently termed as (drumroll) hunko! (i command you to laugh. :D) i’d been looking forward to kayaking all the while, because there’s just that whoa feeling when you slice your oars through the waters and propel yourself forward on the horizon-spanning face of the sea. and plus i’d heard a lot of interesting stuff about kayaking, like how the long hours equated to good talking/bonding time, so of course i was all ‘yay!’ and ‘cool!’ inside, hahaha. (: i think it never crossed my mind at that point in time, but we were actually kayaking right out there in the open sea, and that should have freaked me out very much, but i guess because i didn’t think of it i consequently didn’t get affected by it, whee! :D since brenda was the starboard marker, we basically spent the whole of our journey frantically trying to get people to move towards the left and away from the shore, whilst attempting very valiantly to simultaneously navigate our own kayak to the rightmost point of the diamond formation without getting too close to shore either. so throughout much of the journey you basically have stacey continually blasting forth three loud beeps from her whistle, and the rest of us shouting at the top of our lungs to ‘keep left! keep left!’ then of course there was lunch, which basically involved (perhaps illegal) parallel parking in the middle of the sea and passing down a whole hoard of crackers, buns, prunes and what have you from boat to boat. and yes, i must give you the classic moments of our sea expedition! (: inclusive of: (a) ‘drifting’, defined as either paddling maniacally for about 20 strokes before lying down flat on the kayak and letting the current take us wherever it wanted to or (i personally prefer this one) slacking; but after just about 5 seconds we would have to snap back into action ‘cos the waves would be pushing us back to shore :/ (b) forced capsize, just because we couldn’t swop for a junko person in time hmph (c) the sky the sky the sky! (d) rowing backwards towards camp 2 – and us rushing like madcaps when everyone was just taking their time and enjoying themselves (e) the subsequent kayak washing, lame jokes galore part 2 and even more splashing good fun!
then there was half-debrief and the concluding jetty jump. and it was also then when it really hit me that good old OBS would be ending in just about 24 hours’ time. argh it was just so sad and ): when elton was talking about how on friday, we would see a boat coming from punggol jetty, slowly sailing in, slowly sailing towards the obs jetty, how all of us would pile on to the boat with all our luggage, and all our memories, and how the boat would then slowly set off away from the obs jetty, and slowly sail back towards mainland singapore. :/ it was awfully sad to consider the fact that we actually had to leave all the brilliance of OBS back for sometimes-dreary school life (and y’know, only after OBS did i ever for once consider my present life dreary!), and that all of it had to end just so fast, so soon. but jetty jump! :D symbolic in the sense that it was sort of like a commitment activity, such that when you jump off the plank at the jetty, you’d emerge as a brand new person, like what OBS has done for you; but elton brought it one step further by asking us to get stones, such that when we jump in, we’ll release our stones and with it our fears and inhibitions, so that when we break the surface once more, we’ll be free of these burdens that have sunk into the deepest recesses of the sea, and we’ll be afloat! seriously that made it a whole lot more meaningful. (: so now, i no longer fear having no one to trust or depend on, and i will continue hoping to be happy throughout this year, come what may! mhmm. :D
night was rainy and category 1 storm #4 (of 4 days), but we still had a good dinner, very much like the one on day 3. :D oh yeah before I forget i must, must, must give special mention to kristy and her wonderful maggimee cooking skills, hurrrrrrrr. there was also this ‘make-your-own-palatable-dish’ competition with junko, whereby we had to create this dish for our instructors that was symbolic of our OBS journey, and we made a really cool dish okay! like ants (represented by raisins) in this desolate desert (of digestive biscuit crumbs), building a pyramid (out of peanut butter crackers) with ladders (of granola bars)! (: oh and the really pun-ny chrysanthemum tea, hahaha, and the side-splittingly funny semi-skit. :D and while we were talking, dogs came to grab our half-eaten food. O: (lesson learnt: always clean up after yourselves!)

day5
the end.
as sad as it was, it was really, really, really the end. ):
packing and all that stuff doesn’t count as part of OBS, but there was the trust dive that will really stay with me after OBS. (: you had to climb up this flight of steps and dive off from there into this outstretched mat held by your friends, while attempting to hit the bell that was suspended at a distance from you as a sign of showing appreciation. and so i showed appreciation for team spirit and love, because after all, that was just about what made the bulk of my entire OBS experience, all the joys and (no) tears about working together as a watch, and all the courage and determination and energy derived from our being together as a watch. i’m glad i rang the bell because it gave me such a good feeling to have been able to mark the significance and importance of my watchmates during the course of OBS with a concrete, absolute action. so yay love love love watchmates! :D
and because i forgot to put the trust fall in day 2, and so as to not make day5 seem peculiarly malnourished, we also did the opposite of a trust dive which was a trust fall, where you had to fall backwards down into that mat. i have to admit that i didn’t exactly fall with all the trust and belief that i should have had, but at least i tried, and that’s good in itself! i must, must remember that there are people who will always be there looking out for me, and just to leverage on that strength that others are giving me to give whatever challenge my very best shot, because as stacey told us during reflections, when you aim for the moon, you’ll at least land amongst the stars (as much as it may be astronomically wrong).
but really, day5 was short, because day5 was the end.
the end. ):

some food for thought
hmm our palatable dish of day 4 was also called ‘food for thought’! (: but digressions aside, OBS has seriously given me a lot of food for thought. on top of timely reminders that friends are always there to hold on tight and be with you in times of need, i think it has also called out that little portion of courage within me that had always been concealed, concealed largely because there was also always someone else there you could depend on when you chickened out, and also because courage was not always necessary here in sheltered environments. things are a whole lot different at OBS; you need to have the courage and the belief in yourself in order to dare to scale up the rock wall, in order to even raise the fire and cook your own food, in order to take that final leap of faith off the jetty and into the sea (don’t chastise me for sounding cheesy; i mean it)! as much as there will still be people around you who will give you all the necessary support and encouragement, inner demons still need to and can only be conquered by yourself, and yourself only, and because for such things you are one for yourself, you need to brave.
plus i think all of us have grown a lot more resilient, and a lot more persevering. i mean, nothing good would have possibly come out of OBS if not for that tenacity of the spirit, that strong-headed wilfulness against unfortunate circumstances, that determination to make something good out of something that threatens to be downright horrendous. we had to learn how to ‘hang in there’ a lot, because tents wouldn’t be pitched if we didn’t, land/sea expeditions wouldn’t have been completed if we didn’t, campsites wouldn’t be reached if we didn’t, and the final triumph of reaching goals wouldn’t have been there if we didn’t. and that is just about the best anyone can do in the face of challenges not only in OBS, but also in real life – keeping the spirit, keeping the faith! and this is also why i love the OBS motto so very much: ‘to serve to strive and not to yield’ just about sums up the attitude we need to take towards life and everything else, particularly the ‘not to yield’ bit.
personally, i think OBS has also forced me to learn how to be more tolerant of other people, and also to forgive and forget. it’s always hard to strike a balance between looking out for your own skin and looking out for others, and it’s never easy to make the right decision. sometimes tempers might rise over inefficiencies and selfishness (though this was really downright uncommon in our watch, yay us!), and sometimes we might just get frustrated with the little things that other people do which we find stupid, but we need to learn how to understand people from their point of view, from their perspective – and even when we think them wrong we can only attempt to influence, and not force our own perspective on them wholesale. but yes, OBS did force me to empathize with people even more, and try to get to the spirit of people’s actions even more, because it would have been absolutely foolish if i were to get irritated by my watchmates. they are, after all, the people whom you will depend on for mental ‘survival’ over the next 5 days, and if you can’t get along with them, it only makes yourself miserable like hell, not them, not other people. hold grudges against the actions, not the people – or don’t even hold grudges if you can. forgive and forget, forgive and forget. (of course, i think i might also have been mightily irritating over the past 5 days, and for that, hillary, i’m really sorry. :/ please forgive!)
but above all, i think i’ve also shown myself that i can possibly survive sans handphone, sans MSN, sans TV, sans chocolate, sans proper sleeping place and sans just about any other materialistic comfort, even though the lack of comfortable shoes and socks was a tad disturbing. i’ve even grown so acclimatized to the chlorinated water of ubin that now mainland singapore water tastes slightly weird, and through OBS i’ve also mastered the ability to bathe in heater-less conditions. so simultaneously, although i’ve seen how i’m able to survive without depending on these external things, i’ve also grown to become more appreciative of these things that i actually have. like after OBS, when shanjee, kristy, brenda and i trudged over to subway for a couple of cookies, i was swooning over it like a country bumpkin – but why not. there are so many things in life we ought to be thankful for, that we’ve taken for granted so long that we’ve almost forgotten that their existence in itself is already a blessing in the first place, and it is only apt that we sometimes remind ourselves just how lucky we are and learn to appreciate these little things that we have. and hopefully i’m growing up, because now i find myself seeing things in a bigger picture, in a lifetime, instead of being horrendously obscured by short-sighted things like a small tumble in the journey of life. hmm i remember telling someone that to a certain extent, i think school systems make us horribly myopic, because we end up getting so caught up with grades, achievements and what have you without even finding out what exactly it is we eventually want out of our life and out of our schooling. and that would be sad, because while school is a stepping stone to thinking big, we must already keep on thinking about the whole picture, and really find out what’s important to your own life. i think that’s what education really is for – having a more conscious understanding of the world around you and of how other people have led their lives, so that you can seize on that information and mould your own life into something that you can be proud of having lived.
and that’s why i love OBS to bits and pieces. it got me thinking so much more about the essence of life and what it is, and it’s also highlighted to me the values that i as an individual, that everyone, should truly hold dear to ourselves. during debrief the instructor was telling us about how as much as our OBS journey had ended the 5 days, the real journey only begins when we step off the OBS jetty and head back to mainland singapore, because that’s when life in its entire complexity comes charging at you, and that’s when you need to get ready to not only take life by the horns, but actually ride it successfully. and i find it so, so true. OBS has taught me so much more than a normal cle lesson could ever have done, because we were immersed in such an environment that it’s either you do, or you die, and that truly brings out the best in people.

and to end off, a little dedication to (performing!) HILLARY♥. thank you kaiyuit shanjee amanda julia(g) julia(s) sophia joyce tiffany stacey brenda kristy michelle minyee japna for being such fantabulous watchmates, for always being there, for always sharing in my joys, for being oh-so-entertaining and hilarious, for being enthusiastic and never getting jaded, for having made my OBS experience nothing short of magical and for loving OBS as much as i love it. little things like the hornet drill, s-washing, the 'i am a man' song and stuff like that really made my day everyday! i heart you guys a lot okay! :D we seriously, seriously need to have a watch outing / hunko outing - and hahaha, remember that we’re more or less going for another OBS thingy to commemorate this OBS after we graduate or something yeah! argh i think i’m gushing uncontrollably again but HILLARY HILLARY HILLARY. ♥♥♥ (: of course, for elton, our dearest course instructor that would probably never read this (but nevermind): thank you so much for having made our OBS journey a brilliant one – for all the care and concern, all the lame jokes, all the support and encouragement, all the pseudo-campfire and entertainment, all the sudden spurts of randomness when everyone else was all serious and also all the insightful discussions and activities which really helped us find out a whole lot more about ourselves and who we are. we probably wouldn’t like OBS half as much if we had another instructor, and OBS would certainly not be the same if we had someone else accompanying us all the way. i believe hillary will miss you to bits, hahaha. xD (and yes, hillary, one day we will go out together, and one day we will spam pints of macadamia nut brittle ice-cream!)

OBS was so awesome, i took about 6316 words (so far) to write about it (and still counting). it’s quite weird, how at times it just feels like a dream: so real, but just a little way out of our grasp, but i think, it doesn’t really matter, for these memories, despite how waif-like they might be, these memories are enough for you, and enough for me.

they will be.

composed; 5:08 PM :D