OCIP Selection Camp 2014

(30th May - 31st May)

This wonderful, fun, crazy, loud group of people that I've had the opportunity of working with!

That photobomb, hehe :-) You can see Alvina's ridiculous face!

The same spot we took a photo at least year when we got to know each other :')

S E V A N N N N N (inside joke, hehe)

- Day 1 -

The serious mood kicks in.

Our S-Queen AKA Discipline Comm

One of my favourite pictures for the camp.

Broken spaghetti = broken trust :O 

Our Night Trek IC~

Beautiful :-)

Beautiful :-) Torture, oh man.

- DAY 2 -

Look at this joker.

GAY. hehe

Last group to arrive!

The mood of the camp is starting to liven up.

Seniors doing their job, hehehe

Beautiful moth~

Cute chipmunk, hehe

Beautiful moth~ Pretty creative :-)

Cutie Pristolo

One of my favourite candid shots :-)

Act cute

Swag GLs / Camp Chiefs / Discipline Comm / ICs

My favourite China aunty, hehehe!

Group 3 / Grap3 / Grape Tree

Pun on so many levels!

Claw! These cuties :-)

With the best Camp Chief ever! Hehe, my boob buddy :-)

Caf Cleaning, hehehe

Weilin - The awesome teacher / ah lian IC

Our Camp Chief being the best scolder ever~

One family unbroken - Saint OCIP Team :-) I hope in time to come these juniors will learn to be as one.

Kind of a nostalgic picture. The room in which a lot of activities and bonding happened.

Just the beginning of the strenuous physical training!

HEHE! I love this picture! Lucas is always too funny without him realising it.

Our Cambo X-Queen~

Look at those hands! Awesome seniors who press on with the juniors :-)

That's a lot of pictures! Hehe, but truly the OCIP Selection Camp was amazing, fun, enjoyable, tough and even enriching for the seniors. I never stop learning from OCIP, no matter what we do, and that is something I am really grateful for :-)

Day 1

The seniors were excitedly gathered at the Trophy Room, preparing ourselves for the entrance of the J1s. When we had all positioned ourselves in LT1, the juniors walked in and there was nothing but silence. It was extremely difficult to put on a stern face the entire time, so I had to turn around for a small smile once in a while. For the discipline comm, they were pretty new at scolding, so many times they stumbled on their words. However, we cannot blame them because it is indeed hard to reprimand people or even recite a list of instructions. The scolding began by telling off one of the groups for irresponsibly leaving their group pole at the hockey lockers, and the punishment was to carry two poles throughout the camp.

The girls and boys were immediately split up into their bunks, and it was time to check their belongings. Some AGLs were having slight problems in being fierce with the students because their felt bad for scolding them. However, for many of the other bunks, especially the guy bunks, were scolded pretty harshly.

The first mass game was "Together As One", led by Dora. By this time, many of the spaghetti sticks they were given had been broken into many pieces. This was quite shocking because we felt that the sticks were much easier to protect than eggs. Anyway, the game began and as predicted some groups were much faster than the others. The seniors almost forgot to go behind the juniors to support them, until I reminded them to do so. From the game, we could see who were the J1s that took the initiative to lead the rest, separating them from the group as potential selected ones. When one group had accomplished the task, they went on to help the rest (of course with the seniors reminding them) by giving them support.

The second mass game was "Super Glue", with Junjie and Nic in charge. Here, the juniors were blindfolded and were tasked to stay together at all costs. In the meantime, the seniors would pull them apart by the waist, attempting to break apart their links. The seniors lacked manpower, so I went to help some groups. It was super difficult! I did not know pulling apart people was so tough, respect to our seniors who did so last year, haha! I also helped one group carry out the debrief session, and I felt that I did well :-) hehe!

The third mass game was "Hold It Up", where the J1s had to use their feet or hands to hold up a bucket, while some of their group mates ran across the track to fill up cups of water used to fill up those buckets. Slowly, the buckets were filled up, and suddenly this one group began to struggle. I think they had fewer members and could not hold up their bucket as easily when it got heavier. Furthermore, their bucket almost broke due to the pressure from their feet.

Before the last mass game, the juniors had their dinner. After which we made them bring out the tables from the Caf to the track area and clean them. This was to install in them the important rule of "leaving the place cleaner than before". The last mass game was the most dreaded one. Memories of last year's "Green Bean Game" flooded our minds - the shouting, yelling, panicking - all packed into one session. Terrible! Lucky for the J1s, they were much more privileged (throughout the entire camp, in fact) as they did not need to crawl through muddy grass. Furthermore, the seniors were told not to shout at them halfway through the game because the teachers felt nothing could be heard from all the random shouting. I guess camps will be revamped and tweaked as each year passes, allowing feedback to make selection camps more effective in the future. However, it is sort of disappointing on the seniors' part because we do not get to shout at the juniors the way we'd like too, hehe.

That ended the juniors' first day of the selection camp, but it was just the beginning for the camp committee. The seniors conducted a debrief of the first day and we listened to our seniors and the teachers' feedback of how effective they thought we were. To our disappointment, we were shot down in almost all the areas. However, we are not to be fully blamed because this is the first year corporal punishment is not allowed, hence we have to rely on other methods such as scolding to bring across the lessons we wish to teach the juniors. Having such a unfamiliar task to fulfil, we were practically always trying new methods on the spot. To our dismay, we also felt that our scolding was slowly numbing the juniors' senses, making them even annoyed by our shoutings. The seniors were also thought to reflect on our actions as when some people were giving instructions, others were fooling around taking pictures. I am guilty of this and do need ashamed that I did not adhere to the correct decorum of the camp. However, I see all these pointers as a learning experience and this is why I say I always learn something new from OCIP. It is most probably because Miss Ho always gives us reflective questions to think about that really push ourselves to consider different perspectives.

On a side note, I remember a OCIP senior from a few batches back telling us about his army experience. He said he always recalls this particular sergeant who scolds, but he truly respects that sergeant for all the shouting he did. Every time he shout or scolded, the senior knew that it was for a reason and for his own good. His scoldings were never condemning but rather uplifting. From here, I felt that we did take a learning point from this, and made changes to the way we reprimanded the J1s. We started to scold with a purpose, and always relating it back to OCIP, which allowed the j1s to understand why we were shouting at them.

Day 2

Jia Wei and I did not sleep because we stayed up selecting music and making the video, it was c r a z y!!! My body was so tired, I did not know whether I was dying from physical or mental fatigue. We took a break at 3 a.m. to wake up the juniors for their nigh trek. In the process of it, we kidnapped some of the J1s. Weilin and I took this girl from group 6 and sat on a bench directly opposite the SA Hostel field, behind a fire extinguisher. It took the rest of the juniors incredibly long to find us, and to find Lucas who was near our hiding spot as well. We asked the girl how she was doing in the camp, and she said this was not the most tiring/worst camp she has been to. It was pretty heartbreaking and disappointing to hear that response to be honest. Last year, I remember wanting to die during the camp because it was incredibly difficult. Weilin and I discussed about her response and were worried whether the juniors would actually learn something from the camp :-(

After thirty minutes of frantic searching, some of the seniors had to bring they hostages back to the basketball court where everyone was located. It was sad that the juniors did not thoroughly check the entire school compound for their friends. Nonetheless, we had to move on because the camp had a schedule to complete. I did not go along on the night trek because the farewell video still needed to be completed. It was amazing how majority of our seniors who came back were actually sitting around talking to each other like they had a good night's rest. Everything from here till the juniors arrived back is a blur because it was too draining for me.

When they juniors finally came back, I remember nodding off while sitting down and Jia Wei also kept taking short 3 minute naps while waiting for the video to render. We went to have breakfast and then proceeded onto the station games. By this time, the camp's mood was incredibly happy because there was much less shouting. However, the seniors never forgot to ensure the juniors stayed on par with their mission. Some groups offered creative solutions to the tasks they were to complete and it was enlightening to know some were were as a group together :-)

After lunch, the juniors embarked on one of their last camp tasks: Caf Cleaning. The most dreaded, horrendous activity of OCIP Selection Camp. Memories of last year's panic and utter chaos came rushing back. However, always attempting to make each camp better, the teachers suggested that we do not take on such a harsh tone towards the J1s this year. In fact, only 7 seniors were allowed to conduct any form of shouting or scolding. I felt that the chosen 7 (Nic, Weilin, Stephanie, Alvina, Wayne, Evan, Isadora) were really the best people to be picked :-) They carried out the scolding well as they shouted with reason, always linking back to OCIP. The shouting was also more organised. Hehe, Alvina told me about one of her scoldings going like "you think you cleaning a genie's bottle ah?!" She told me one of the girls in the toilet laughed, haha!

Finally, the juniors were tasked with their endurance stations. This was the only time we could make them do physical punishments/training without violating any laws (bummer). Due to time constraints, we could not carry out our original plan: 60 crunches, 60 lunges, 60 jumping jacks, 60 burpees, 60 skips and 60 squats. Instead, the juniors had to complete 50 burpees, 100 crunches and 50 push ups. Even completing these three stations was extremely tiring! A lot of the seniors joined in to push the juniors on, including me (though I was supposed to be taking pictures) :-) After that we were suppose to run 2.4km to end off our camp, but again due to time constraints we only ran 1.2km...

Jia Wei and I finally managed to showcase our farewell video to everyone and I really enjoyed it even though the sound system was broken. I hope everyone else enjoyed it just as much :-) It was really nostalgic when Miss Lim gave a short speech thanking all the OCIP people involved in the camp. It reminded me of last year's end of camp were my batch sat in the first few rows, turning behind, stretching our necks to see our seniors who had put in so much effort. I hope the juniors felt the same way I did :-) To end off the night, the seniors partook in an annual dinner buffet celebrations! It was kind of awkward with our seniors, but we had a lot of fun among ourselves (not to mention tiredness). After dinner I just laid my head down on the table for about half a minute and I was on my way to a deep sleep.

Again, I just want to say how grateful I am to OCIP. I do not regret any single decision I had in choosing to join this programme. When I think back about selection camp, the first thing that I remember telling myself halfway through it was "what am I thinking? This is crazy, I want to go home. I don't want to do this anymore." However, I am glad I did not. I am thankful I went through everything, always giving my best. I really learnt from everything I did. When I think back about our Cambodia Trip, I remember the very good and the very bad. However, I do not regret anything. We might have made mistakes, but the lessons learnt from it were important. Also, the patience and understanding shown by others around us made me more grateful. If I had a chance, I'd do it all over again with this crazy bunch of people.

Thank you, OCIP.