During the 7th of March, or last week, I attended the school camp called SOAC, or Secondary One Annual Camp, which is compulsory for all secondary ones of Hwa Chong.
Firstly, we gather at the Khaki hall, where the guys from the scout camp give a briefing of the theme of the camp. I am not sure about the ones last year, but this year they base it around 24 human qualities, where each class needs to create a cheer which contains around 3 to 4 of the qualities, which will need to be recited at the Campfire section of the camp. Not only so, at the end of the camp we also need to dance to a song that was chosen by the organizing team.
At about 10 o'clock, we start to board the bus, which obviously as you might expect, when we finally arrives, it was noon and lunch time. During lunch time, they told us to have this weird goofy cheer called the Makan cheer.
During lunch, they just gave (probably three-quarter cooked)rice. Then for meat, they gave (a lot better cooked)chicken and ordinary vegetables. Then they gave that type of weird tasting red syrup for drinks. The good thing was that they gave water-proof oil paper, so if you fold it nicely into your container, then you do not have to wash it. Yeah, just in case you were wondering, you have to use your own containers and wash them yourselves.
After lunch, it was conveniently raining, so we can not have any outdoor activities, instead we played Werewolf. If you do not know how to play the game, you should search it yourself, as I might spoil to much, and explaining it also takes forever on a computer.
Okay, so you are back with the full knowledge of the game of Werewolf now? I will continue on then. We played for quite a while, and it is pretty easy as long as you are really observant and have a constant face. If you really want to be a pro though, you would need to up your game and not only be really protective of your identity, but also try to know each other's identity, no matter which side you are on, so you know who you should trust or be careful of. Not only that, always be the sheep during the voting session. Vote too early, too late or have different opinions and people may suspect you, it does not help when you are trying so hard to keep your identity a secret. However, of course, you may reveal you identity as a seer, oracle, augur or detective once you have enough information to know who or at least most of the werewolves are.
Just before dinnertime, the rain stopped, so we played another game instead where one third of the participants play as attackers, one fourth as defenders and the rest as civilians. It is really simple, the defenders and civilians stay in a circle, and the attackers each have a ball to throw and kill the civilians. The defenders are invincible so they can block the balls. If a defender or a civilian pick up a ball, they can pick it up and throw it at an attacker to make them freeze for 30 seconds.It was really boring, especially when only 9 people were playing.
After dinner, there were more activities. One was where the OT(organizing team) tossed like a hundred or probably two hundred balls onto a field. Around thirty of them had stars on it.If you find one of these you get a point for your class. However, some of them have stickers that are not stars, and you cannot keep the balls without stars. In the end my class won.
After that, they let us use clothing as eyemasks, then we formed a line and everyone put their hands on the shoulders of the person infront, then everyone walked forwards together and the facilities tried to spook us. I did this 4 years ago!
Just after supper and before lights out, I took a shower. The cubicles were mostly occupied so there is a big chance you would need to use the public shower.
At night, our class slept in the dorms, it was really dusty and sandy. My classmates also made a lot of noise, which was a pain.
In the morning, it was a miracle I did not feel like dozing off, because I only slept like 6 hours due to my classmates.
For the morning activities, we went jungle trekking. The problem was that the main part was instead walking in mud. Yep, that's it, the trekking was a cheap one. thatlasted a few minutes with nothing interesting. There was also this milo pond thing where everyone has to go down a slide into a muddy pond. I wonder if the pond is muddy due to the amount of mud from the jungle trekking?
For the whole afternoon, we practiced our cheer and dance. Our song for the dance was Symphony. The problem was Symphony was not only a song you would not normally dance to, it is also a hard one to dance to as it is not only slow but the words are hard to be shown by actions. We ended up posing everyone 5 seconds.
At the campfire night, we found out that not only the classes have to dance. The OT, consortium representatives and student councilors also danced. The OT made a joke by starting off with a Rick-Roll, then bleeping it off to some Korean song. I do not listen to Korean songs, nut not because I hate them, but I just prefer songs with understandable meanings. Do not judge me.
Speaking of the campfire, the facilitates put up a treat for the eyes. Instead of normal wood, they added fireworks. Now that answers what happens when you burn a box of fireworks. They all go off at the same time normally(I guess).
The lights out was just as before, no need to go that far. During the last day, they made all of us cheer one more time under the sun, then they showed a montage of the two days. It was not that special though.
Anyway just like on the first day, we boarded the bus and arrived at school at noon.
