youth orientation 2007

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so last saturday was the orientation for rsp youth.

we met at 0930..waited around..ice-breaking games started at around 1030..actually, ice-breaking game, to be exact. there was only 1 game: double whacko.

it was quite fun..first played with the boys' home ppl..then everyone played together. but it was a bit impossible to remember everyone's name..too many ppl le!


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the more exciting part of the day started after lunch. the amazing race! i think we were quite unlucky coz we got quite a lousy route..had to do a lot of unnecessary travelling! but we were too good to be stumped by that!

and we entertained ourselves during the train rides by playing lame games (: the bang bang 1.. mrt stations 1.. the open-close 1.. fuzzy wuzzy.. etc etc. boon meng (not sure how to spell his name hehe) had quite a few lame games to torture us with! think jianwen was the most tortured, coz for some reason, he has never played any of them before and we had great fun torturing him

oh forgot to intro the people who were there.

old volunteers: me, jianwen, junhan and rabin
new volunteers: hui wen, hui koon, michelle, khalissa, christine (at the beginning and end haha), boon meng, hock heng (aka ah cai4), boon meng, kian lye (i think)

the new volunteers were all nice nice ppl (: and we all got along very well! obviously we did right..that's why we WON!!!

yupz we won even though we got a lousy route!

i think we really deserved it! coz we worked really hard for it..it was really tiring..coz even though we'd said we wouldn't run, obviously we ended up running in the end. and we ended up running a lot. oh yes, have to thank hui wen, coz she was literally our walking street directory, helped us save a lot of time by directing us to a lot of places (esp those in chinatown).

the amazing race was quite well-designed..liked the part about taking photos with people of different nationalities! and the new volunteers were all quite onz..which was definitely the key to our success. khalissa was fasting and yet she was running as hard as the rest of us! super admirable!

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one of the highlights of the day was definitely the interrogation session on the steps of clarke quay mrt station! the new volunteers + rabin were intensively interrogated and gamely shared many interesting things about themselves.

of coz, the other highlight of the day was our celebratory dessert session at swensens! went there to use up our prize: $80 swensens voucher. the ice-cream was super shiok after the day's exertions! and of coz, the high of our victory made it exceptionally sweet (:


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yupz think i've covered everything le. all in all, it was quite a fun day..and i'm looking forward to meeting the new volunteers again when they start coming for the sessions! (:

of secret missions and rowdy soldiers

ok i'm a bit nervous because it's my first time writing for this blog..well. here goes..

*warning: long post ahead!!*

i'll just start from last week's session, since we sort of had a new start with the new group of boys. yupz so last week we got a surprise when we realised that the home had actually arranged for a new group of boys to come for the weekly sessions. so we carried out an impromptu get-to-know-you session. i'm not sure about everyone else, but i was a bit intimidated by the new group of boys coz they didn't seem to be as welcoming as the previous group.

so i was a bit apprehensive about this week's session, initially planned to be an 'interaction session' where we'd talk to the boys one-to-one (or one-to-two, seeing as there are only 7 of us and 13 of them..). luckily (at least for me), our dearest blkhead came up with this new game.

basically, we gave them a scenario to work with: it was wartime. we were all soldiers on a mission to infiltrate enemy territory and lie in wait there for a week before starting our attack when given the signal to. each team (comprising 4 boys and 2 volunteers) was to come up with a list of 10 items to bring on this mission. the teams would then present their list to the rest of the group and everyone would vote to decide which team came up with the best list.

the objective of the game was to let the boys express their creativity and also practise some analytical thinking skills. in addition, it would also allow us to interact with the boys in a more relaxed setting.

so we split up into 3 teams and started brainstorming. the game started off quite well..everyone looked like they were having fun. think the war+guns+shooting+fighting theme went down quite well with the boys, as expected. boys will be boys hahah.

unfortunately, for my team, things went a little downhill about halfway thru the discussion. to summarise, it was coz of edmus (or edmas or admus or..yea i'm not quite sure how to spell his name). i think he will be quite tricky to handle. a short fuse + ego + a loud voice + tendency to violence. tricky in the sense that he may affect the other boys, like what happened today. but 1 thing that we have working for us is that he seems quite receptive towards the volunteers so once we get him to trust us enough, it probably won't be too hard to keep things under control.

ok back to the game..

so after about 30mins of brainstorming, the teams were ready to present their answers. our team went first..and was showered with a barrage of questions, both intelligent and less-intelligent. we almost died. hahah. i was a bit taken aback by the hostility of the other teams, and i think the boys in the team were too (although we only had 2 actively participating boys by this time). almost right from the start, there was quite a shouting match going on. it was fun la..some of the things the boys said were really quite funny..but coz all of them somehow have super loud voices..and coz they somehow have this idea that whoever is loudest wins, things really got quite chaotic. and i really think the acoustics of the room is really bad la..really bad echo..once everyone starts talking at the same time, which is basically most of the time, u really can't hear what anyone is saying at all.

yupz so our team took quite a beating..and we moved on to the 2nd team. i think the team dynamics of the 2nd team were not bad. the team spirit was more apparent. their list was not bad..though i personally think it wasn't as good as our team's hehe. the 2nd team's presentation went quite fast coz of our deflated boys and the unspoken (i think) alliance between them and team 3.

team 3 seemed to me like they had the most fun during the brainstorming so i was quite looking forward to their presentation. their list turned out to be quite an..unexpected and definitely very creative one. they had characters like the genie (aladdin's friend), osama etc. u get the idea. their presentation went quite fast too coz i think the rest of us were a bit stunned by their list hahah. they really thought out of the box. sadly, i think we were less amused than they expected us to be. maybe it was, like celine said, coz the 1st 2 teams went with very practical ideas and so this 3rd list seemed rubbishy in comparison.

to end the game, everyone voted and unsurprisingly, team 2 emerged the winner! which reminds me of something..are we getting any prizes for them?

to sum up..i think the session went quite well. most ppl had fun which was good coz the boys will probably be more enthusiastic about future sessions. and i think we also achieved our aim of interacting with the boys and getting to know them more. guess we have to thank jianwen for finding this wonderful game (:

whew. finally got to the end of this longggg post. was so stressed when writing it la..coz jianwen kept saying he wants to see what i will write! and my normal blogging style is definitely not so formal hahah but no choice..this blog is too public..find it weird to be too informal.

yay finally made a contribution to this blog (:

*jw: changed ur mind abt putting me in charge of the orientation blog entry? hahha

Upcoming WSC Orientation!

"Dear members of Blk D,

Do you remember how all of you got to know each other? Was it during the first WSC session? Or was it during the YOUTH orientation? Do you still have any ideas what you guys did? Nope? Well, let us take a look at the following photos and see if you can recall anything!"
Regards, Jianwen

Our group in last year's orientation

Yammie, Alvis, Chin han, Daisy, Sandra, Rachelle, Yoke wen, Rabin, Jia yin, Rachell, Celine and me are the remaining survivors in this pic =)

Making a YOUTH sign

What are you looking at, ladies?

All paying attention except for the guy in BLUE TSHIRT.