record breaking vigorous activity!

its badminton with my "guardians" nanny and naiyi at WEST SIDE!

Mission: to burn the fats

the two twinnies in action

and we broke our record!

its 20, 25 and then an awesome continuous 30 shots :))

hmm..lets try for a 50 next time..ahaha

THAT NEL MRT STATION

alright, something big indeed happens when my age last starts with a 1...

Simple pleasures

I am again hooked on to durians this period of the year. DURIANS ARE DELICIOUS~~Its durians and durians consecutively for "i dunno how many days", even aft the PP buffet which made the clique feel like pregnant ladies. I wonder if its a blessing when your siblings don't go crazy over durians and you get to eat their shares and start to grow sideway..hohoho, come on peeps, eat durians :)

Omg, I have been eating and eating and eating non-stop since kayaking. I think it sap me of my 19 years of food or rather oil reserve in my body so now I have to rebuild my reserve. These simple pleasures of eating have successfully resulted in me being unable to fit into the JUST NICE office wear de skirt today. O wells, congrats to me!

back to basics de OBS!

Here comes the super late post on OBS (30th june – 3rd jul)!

Day 1!
The day started super early with me and wuzhen on bus 82 to punggol jetty and boating to OBS site. The “locals” got sorted into different watches and mine was KURT! Its after kurt hann, the person who founded OBI. Hah, my group is so noble. Whee, 4 days of fun and excitement ahead!

the kurt poster and our watch rules!

Then it was games to break the ice. ZOOM really tested my angmoh (which I haven’t been working on for very very long) but its cool to see how the group try to make sense what each other was talking about and work together to get the task done.

High elements up next. Three to work on. At first I thought I would just go for the minimum two but the experience was so great I went for all three:). The highest 9m was a nice one though I forgot to look at the scenery and perhaps spot a monkey saying hi to me, lol. But nth beats jacoobs ladder which vibrated n times the rate my legs were shaking-_-’

And food preparation for land expedition and camp over at Jelutong Campsite..

Lots and lots of food =D
eh, i think i shall leave reflections to the back!

Day 2!
The activity I was looking forward to the most – land expedition

say cheese before we set off (diana and shaoxun mia cuz of med checkup)

heavy bags loaded with food, life jacket, ..., ...
i finally learnt navigation! thanks to shifus - LJ (the instructor in red) and jasmine ahma!

activity!

oh, we had Du-licious lunch under some Durian trees! Then, there was this shopping centre stop during land ex. A few of us talked to this auntie who mans this "shopping centre" full of fruit trees and her two dogs ah orh (black in hokkien) and baobei! haha, i wonder if ahorh and baobei know doggy ugh at Ubin GreenHouse. The auntie lives in ubin all along and she uses water from a well! She shares yummy durians with her dogs and ahorh and baobei eat whatever auntie eats and of course, always ready to protect her against strangers like us. so sweet:) and i think auntie really enjoys her simple life there. nice nice..

Live discovery channel on spiders (presented by LJ)

And we mount the highest peak in ubin! Puaka Hill :D

A picture is worth a thousand words..but its really nicer you see it real

Greenlinkers! rmb a similar photo we took at this very place too? with lollipops in our mouths!

Overnight camp at Jelutong Campsite. The first time i tried cooking with solid fuels, stones as stoves and sea as the sink to wash our utensils. FUN and our mushroom noodles were not bad too, with the curry chicken and fish luncheon that tasted better with yuting's cutting skills! Discovery channel ep 2 was on that night with LJ teaching us constellations :) after that, its sentry duty with jasmine and diana!

Day 3!
有惊也有险的 sea expedition!

The day started off with morning circle and a story shared by LJ

the circle with each one of us contributing our 3-word morning blessings for the day

the main highlight - LJ's morning blessings for us. low tides, storm, capsizes, anything sway that you can get for sea ex ><

out on sea when we are still glam~

I was with a tri-yak at first with Yuru and Jeysthur. It was singing session at first as we go 左三圈，右三圈， 脖子扭扭，屁股扭扭，... while kayaking. Soon, our singing became "ready, 一，二，三， 推!" *a few minutes to get our legs out of mud without donating our shoes to mama earth* "ready, 一，二，三， 推!" ...

alright, mudgroves do love me in the end, didn’t get hit by branches after that, got free mud bath to smoothen my skin and a chance to get up-close to mudskippers and worms. Mud lobsters are still too shy to make their appearance. hais

when everyone turned the same colour XD. shan (with red cap), the perfect example to show the deep MUD we were in.

It was storm after low tide! Frightening experience, especially when the giant waves threatened to capsize our triyak and somemore a few of us missed the entry point to the river where we could take cover from the storm. Pandemonium when the waves pushed us towards the barnacles on the fences and people were like shouting everywhere to warn us against hitting it (i can't imagine a capsize there!). Paddling seemed useless against the strong waves. But thankfully we had this small shore :)cover under the ponchos! we are like refugees..

survivors' photo before we set off again when the weather improved

Its kayaking back to OBS and intensive washing up, esp with all the mud~

hah, we got a catch on our triyak! the "swordfish" at its final deathbed (my syf flashcard cap) before it was buried in the bin.

3rd day night was "awesome", i went for dinner, sharing session, bla bla bla, feeling as if i was still on sea with the floating feel and sounds of waves. Imagine sleeping on a bed that is floating on the sea..摇呀摇呀摇~

Day 4!

Last day~

Breakfast time! Its buffet as usual :)

See our wonderful breakfast!
OBS meals are great, they make diana feel 感动everytime ;)

Had our bunk clean-up

peanut butter and ahma and their beds!

Had our last activity that had got something to do with commitments. You have to climb up to a height, leap and try to grab hold of a bar. Sadly, i couldn't reach it as i didn't jump far enough(like my SBJ, lol).

We then had sharing and reflections before the boat ride to punggol..

What's your biggest takeaway from OBS?

LJ posted us this question at the end of the 4 day course. On hindsight, I thought I really learnt a lot from this camp.

I may have painted a very beautiful picture of me as a moe scholar, having a job that I am really passionate about in the future and everything would just go smoothly. However, OBS really taught me to expect the unexpected. Just like the sea ex, who would know that we would meet low tide and storm and become like LJ mentioned, the suayest batch in his eight years in OBS. And when it really happened, it would take one's courage, initial beliefs and confidence to brave through it and go on with the never give up attitude and you know, your belayers in real life will be there to support you, just like what happened during the course.

My life is in the hand of some of my watchmates (whom I just knew that day) and theirs in mine on the very first day when we took turns to belay each other. I think trust and teamwork were the most important factors when everyone attributed the largest percentage of success to their belayer team. I learnt to appreciate the people around me and LJ's words make me realise the importance of my "team of belayers" in my daily life. Its very heartwarming to see everyone working together to get the task done, how we cheered each other on, how familiar and unfamiliar faces took care of diana during the storm, how we all felt like crying too when diana cried, how we shared about our aspirations, how we help each other to discover our inner self, how we learn which of the 3P (people, product and process) do we belong to as a watch, how we survived the storm and low tide as a team, and the list goes on...

I believe all these and much more would not be possible without the 12 other kurt peeps and of course LJ! While I am back from "back to basics" to this urban life of mine, my kurt journal with quotes, learning points and much more, kurt knot, post-its, and everything I've gotten from OBS will always be reminding me of this camp and most importantly, the friendship gained and the valuable lessons learnt through an OBS experience.

12 wonderful people who made my OBS experience fun-ner, more enjoyable and crazier!

chers to be! (that's how some instructors call us =D)
(left to right, back to front)

shaoxun! Jeysthur! Din! PohShen! Kaixin! Yuru!

Diana! Shan! Yuting! Jem!

Jasmine! Me! Elizabeth!

not forgetting LJ (the one in orange)!

He defines commitment as making promise a reality. I think he really achieved that and perhaps went beyond. I don't think other instructors shared so much with his watches. I don't think other instructors do clean-up with their watches and much more either. His words and actions are really enlightening and make me delve deeper, be it in my passion, my life, etc. And his morning blessings are super accurate! Haha, he has supernatural powers (just like you, goddess!) and I really thank him for the blessing, it certainly made me learn more and make the experience UNIQUE. He has wonderful things to share about ubin too! Some much more compared to the little I know about Sensory Trail. I love Ubin!

I went for OBS on the first day thinking of the last day, I left OBS on the fourth day, hoping there was a fifth day in OBS.

So Qad and Goddess! you will love OBS, don't worry!

Hello hello

Testing testing 1, 2

Alright, its done! =D