Disclaimer: It's gonna be a really long but heartfelt post. And this is just my personal opinions so don't take them to heart. :)
I'm finally back from Malaysia. Seeing all the class photos makes me really sad that my face isn't present in any of them, that I didn't get to close the year as 204'10 with a bang like the rest of them did and that they had so many awesome food and I didn't get to eat any of them (HAHA a pig's perspective!):'( Seriously I feel like crying now. Also, seeing all the psb photos on fb makes me feel sad again because I know that I'll not be able to experience this for my whole life. :( Honestly, when I heard from Kim that Kim Tsai got in JPSB'11, I was both happy for her yet sour inside. I guess being rejected twice just makes everything worse. But anyway, I think she'll make a great jpsl so :)
Anyway, I had alot of awesome takeaways from this rsp malaysia trip. We went there with the purpose to learn and polish our malay language, but honestly, I think my malay still sucks HAHAHA. I didn't learn much about the language but instead, I learnt so much about myself and the culture there. It was really an eye-opener trip about self-discovery and reverence for the locals there. :)
Before this trip, I thought that I wasn't a spoilt kid. Instead, I thought that I was already not bad for a Singaporean kid. But this trip opened my eyes to a whole new level. I just wanna say that Malaysian people are really really really nice people. I can admit that they are actually nicer than us. They were really selfless, kind, helpful and every other positive vocab available in this world. I'm not exaggerating here because they were really so nice that I was moved by their sincerity. And I'm talking about both males and females here. In fact, the male students there were so gentlemanly and selfless I couldn't stand it HAHA. (I'm not having a crush on them btw)
This trip was an immersion program to Malaysia, a joint program between 3 Malaysian top schools and yeah our school, namely SMSTJ-RGS-TKC-SBPIJ. Only RGS and TKC were all girls school. The other two schools were mixed schools. We first went to TKC on the 3rd day of our trip for an opening ceremony. SMSTJ had already arrived and they were wearing their blazers. Even though they were also guests in TKC, I couldn't tell because I thought they were the hosts too. Everyone of them was being so friendly and warm to us I was taken by surprise. Then, we were being introduced to our buddies from TKC and mine was Diyanna. She was feeling sickish and she had a slight fever but in spite of that, she wasn't allowed to rest because she was the overall in charge for the program. I felt so bad for her and yet so touched because even though she was sick, she kept apologising to me for being in that state and she even tried her best to teach me malay words during the malay language activities etc. I knew how lousy she might have felt because I know that when I'm just down with a runny nose or something mild, I would have been yearning for my bed every single moment at that time. And yet, there she was, touring around with me to visit local palaces and museums. :( Omg I felt so damn sad and bad for her. :( Later in the evening, we went to SMSTJ which had a local campsite WITHIN THE SCHOOL ITSELF. They even had a forest HAHAHA. But it was bad because there were like a million mosquitoes and foreign insects there. I had to constantly spam myself with insect repellent and it made my hair oily ttm. When we arrived there, it was drizzling and it was the WORST TIME OUT OF ALL THE DAYS TO START RAINING. We were told to pitch our tents and it started raining relatively heavily. Thus, we braced the rain and brought the tent bag out to the open air on the muddy grass to pitch our tent on a raised platform which contained dirty sand. It was really damn annoying because we were all soaked wet and everything there had turned really muddy and gross. My group which consisted of Xiaoyun, KimGoh and WanQi, smartly didn't know that we had to zip the INSIDE of the tent so rainwater got inside. Before we could even ask for help to ask for directions to pitch the tent, a group of boys came up to us and just took the structures of our tent to start pitching it for us. Unfortunately, there were space constraints and our tent was the middle tent out of the 3 in one raised platform so they stepped on our tents to get to the other side while pitching, and it got really muddy inside. By the time the boys helped us to pitch up the tent which was sturdy enough to live in, the insides of the tent were sandy accompanied with pools of mud water swimming inside. And when we realised that we had to sleep there, we died inside. Like really freaked out and stuff. Since we got soaked in the rain, we knew that we would get sick the next day. Our jackets and everything were throughly soaked in the rain. :( After that, we got to the sheltered place which was beside another forest and realised that bee-like flies were landing on our belongings and basically the whole place. It was like a spam insect area instead of a sheltered area. At this time, all of us were screaming and shouting and totally jumping and freaking out. And we were stuck because we couldn't shift our belongings since our tents were unfit for putting stuff since they were all dirtied. :( Therefore, we left our stuff there at the sheltered area, constantly freaking out when a bee-like fly got close to it. At that time, we all kept grumbling and crying out that we wanted our hotels, our beds, our homes etc. We all then went to bathe and it was really annoying the wits out of me because we were wet, sticky, disgustingly dirty and extremely scared that while we searched for our clothes in our overly stuffed backpacks, a bee-like fly would land on us. Once we took our clothes and toiletries, we hurried to the toilet and we realised that it was like bursting with people because the other students from their respective schools were also bathing. We stood there, waiting for extremely long before it got to our turn. Anyway, the toilets were really dirty and muddy and omg the water was SO FREAKING COLD I just died bathing, spazzing in the toilet while washing my hair and everything. After we finished bathing, we went back to the sheltered area to sit, again freaking out when another bee-like fly came to sit next to us or something like that. We were sitting there, spoilt rotten, complaining of every single thing from the tents to the insects. The students from the other Malaysian schools were barbequeing food at a set-up shelter next to us while we were sitting there comfortably doing absolutely nothing but complaining about the undesirable conditions of the place and the smoke that drifted into our noses. What we failed to realise was that those kind people barbequeing our food were inhaling the thick smoke directly and yet they were still cheerful and optimistic about everything.
When it was dinnertime, we settled down with our buddies to consume the barbequed food. We said 'Jemput Makan' before we started eating with our hands. I didn't trust my hands because even though I washed them, they still felt oily from my insect repellent. Anyway, I still ate with my hands and I was having a really hard time trying to stuff the food into my mouth despite my buddy's demonstration. :( We were all laughing at each other for looking like the only helpless people ridiculously trying to eat HAHA. We freaked out occasionally when a bee-like fly came close to me but my buddy and her friends always tried their best to make us feel comfortable by helping us to flick the flies and insects away. After the meal,students who weren't from the host school started taking up the swiper (Idk what that is called hahahaha) to sweep away the insects that had landed on the floor of the sheltered area so that we wouldn't have to sit on them. The place was filled with alot of ants too and when they asked me to move up and I said that that part of the floor was filled with ants, they understood and didn't impose me to move up anymore. :) My buddy then helped me to sweep away the ants so that I could feel more at ease. :)During the whole process even those locals that we didn't know constantly helped us to translate all the malay instructions etc. Basically the whole thing was in fast-paced malay I died HAHAHA. I didn't understand a single thing so I was just stoning over there. :( But they did try their best to help us understand and convey the instructions. During the whole time I was complaining to my friends that our group's tent was unsuitable for sleeping and about everything from the mosquitoes to the mud. The activities ended late at about 11. At 11pm, our group thought of ways to clear the mud water in our tent. We then decided that taking garbage bags and laying them over the water were the best solutions to the problem. Even till then, we were cursing and swearing, at least I was, at the screwedness at everything. The tent area was so damn dark and the grounds were so muddy and slippery I always almost slipped and fell like seriously if I fell on mud I would have just killed myself. To make matters worse, there was always a freaking ant or mosquito which would bite my foot/hands when I was already bursting with frustration okay I sweared alot and I feel bad now. :( At 11:11, Xiaoyun and I we wished for a relatively clean tent to sleep in. At 12, we were all settled in with our sleeping bags on relatively dry grounds omg thank God for that. :) Since the tent was too small for 4 sleeping bags, 3 people slept on 2 sleeping bags and WanQi was being annoying (HAHA)cuz her long legs kept kicking my head even though she was the only one who had one sleeping bag to herself damn comfortable lah HAHAHAHA. We eventually got through the night and I woke up to a roster calling at about 5 plus. I didn't dare to snooze my alarm like 7 or 8 times because none of our tents were soundproof and I was afraid to annoy people who were sleeping so it sucked cuz I had to wake up after snoozing my alarm for 3 times. :( We all then squeezed into the dirty toilet again which had a really small basin and the water was so pathetically little it wasn't even enough to wash my toothbrush throughly. :( However, somehow, I had calmed down after a night's sleep and I started to reflect on my behaviour the other night where I had complained about every single thing. Somehow, getting past the previous day made me feel that everything wasn't that bad already. When I learnt that those students from TKC and the other Malaysian schools didn't even bring sleeping bags, I counted myself extremely lucky because they actually slept on the dirty insides of the tents and yet, they were still so smiley and cheerful despite the undesirable conditions that they had to tolerate with. I really admire them for that. :) This made me realise that I was actually this spoilt little kid when immersed in rough conditions. :(
Anyway, breakfast was nasi lemak which tasted good even though there was only rice, 1/4 egg and sambal with 5 (or something like that) ikan bilis. By that time, I could already eat relatively well with my hands so I was proud of myself for that. :) Another thing was that I was overwhelmed when I saw how devoted the Muslims there were to their religion. It was really heartening to see that they prayed 5 times a day in such devoting manner omg it made me question myself if I were them how I would have reacted. :) After that was the dreaded jungle tracking. I thought it wasn't that bad at first until we actually ENTERED the forest. It was a whole new level of jungle tracking. It was like 10 times worse and more dangerous than the forests in WELL where we went for our geog AA. Hahaha I think that in fact, the jungles there are life threatening. The moment we entered the forest I felt like crying. There were like a million mosquitoes and everything were so muddy (from the rain the day before, it felt as though as pouring the whole bottle of insect repellent wouldn't work. :( The slopes uphill were so freaking steep I think there were like a million slopes inclined at 65 degrees inside there that we had to climb. Usually, I wouldn't want to touch a tree but in the forest, trees were my life saver. Big tree small tree the moment we saw any tree we just grabbed onto it. The paths were so narrow and beside us there was this steep slope down. The slippery mud made things worse because everytime I lost my footing because of the mud, I would envisage tumbling down the hill like jack and jill and my heart would just die inside for a second. :( The locals again, were super duper nice omg. There, we were so scared of dirtying our trackpants and shoes etc but they were actually sitting on the mud so that they could pull us up whenever there was a steep slope inclined upwards. Even the boys were really selfless. They sat on the mud whenever they were done with climbing up to another level and held out branches so that we could grab them and let them pull us up. My buddy was also remarkably selfless. Even though she was at the back, she would run to the front so that she could get herself up first so that she could lift us up to higher grounds during the climb. It was really slippery and alot of people fell down but whenever any one of us fell down everyone would shout 'careful' or something like that, it was really sweet. Inside the forest, it felt so never-ending. I kept telling Alicia that my shoes were ruined ttm and they were because the twigs scraped off the decorations on my shoes and they were spammed with mud. My trackpants were spammed with mud too. :( I was dying from climbing to the top of the first mountain when they told me that we still had another mountain to scale. Hence, we went down the first mountain and climbed to the second mountain non-stop. :( In the process, Rachel (Lim) she got bitten by a leech and her leg kept bleeding. :( I got bitten by a few mosquitoes and some unknown insect that left my left index finger swelling. :( Anyway, when we finally emerged from the forest after spending approx 2 hours trekking in the jungle, the feeling felt better than exam liberation. (Y) Nicole's shoe got stuck in mud so the right side of her shoe was mud-soaked. :( HAHAHA she kept complaining HAHHAA. Anyway after that was lunch then farewell to SMSTJ. We had to dismantle our tent after that but before we could even go to our own tent, a group of boys were standing outside our tent again, waiting patiently for us to clear our tent of our belongings so that they could help us to dismantle it. During the whole time they were helping us, we felt so frickin bad. :( We thanked them after that and they smiled and said it was okay. Omg so nice. :) Seriously, I doubt Singaporean boys would ever do that (no offence intended HAHA). After that was the english based activities by US and it turned out really good. I think they are really spontaneous people. They made our activities fun because they were so enthusiatic about it. We played taboo and word search and at the end, they had to combine the english words they learnt to form a nonsense story and act that out in front of everyone. My group, group 2 and group 1 combined and omg it was seriously the best. (Y) The boys acted super well they weren't afraid of losing face and everyone had fun because the performance was so funny HAHAH. And I bet Mr Azmizar likes Siti Norhaliza because everytime the name was mentioned he kept turning around HAHAHAHA. During the evening it was time for us to leave the school. When our bus came and we went up the bus to go to TKC, some SMSTJ boys stationed themselves outside the bus to give us souveniers. :) The rest of the SMSTJ boys stood outside our bus to wave goodbye. One of the boys even went to put his microphone speaker at the entrance of the bus and he shouted into the mike WE WILL MISS YOU. Awwww. When we arrived at TKC we went to our dorm and we relished the prospect of decent beds. The beds looked so inviting I felt so like sleeping HAHA. We had like 30 minutes to freashen up and I was one of the lucky few who got to bathe because after that our cikgus were pissed that we would be late if we continued bathing. Btw the water was so much colder than the one at SMSTJ it felt like I was bathing in iced water omg I was like spazzing in the shower jumping about. :( We were like 5 minutes late for dinnertime and we were in this sloppish state when we entered the dinning hall because we were dressed in long pants and school approved shirt with our hair let down (cuz it was wet) and the rest of the school population in TKC were so smartly dressed in their school uniform and tudongs and yet they stood up for us as a sign of respect. I felt so bad inside. :( After dinner we went back to our dorms and we had a major reflection session conducted by our cikgus. We wrote down our reflections and shared them with the rest of our rsp batch and cikgus. Everyone's reflections contained heartfelt thoughts filled with shame and everything and all of them praised the hospitality of the locals. Those reflections were by far the most sincere ones I've ever heard I just wanted to continue listening to them. Some reflections hit home that I felt really teary and everything. :) When the reflection part was over, we were told that we had to put up a 5 min performance the next day during the closing ceremony and we were also then given coloured papers and stickers to write letters to our buddies. It was super rushed because we were given like about 40 minutes to think and polish everything from scratch and yet the female cikgus were displeased at the quality of our performance. During the whole time we kept grumbling and saying that it was unfair because they only gave us such a short notice and yet expected so much of us. :( Yeah but it was and we were all annoyed. When one TKC student came in our dorm to call us to eat supper I seriously was so frustrated (when the rest still couldn't decide what to do) that I said 'I don't care already lah I want to go eat'. I bet we were all feeling shitty and everything. During supper we kept discussing what dance to do because we had to present to the cikgu our devised performance and we didn't just wanna sing semoga bahagia and dedication. In the end we scraped the dance and we slept at 12.05. :( I was so tired due to the jungle trekking and all the other activities that I slept 5 minutes or something like that after I hit the sack. My alarm rang at 5, where we planned to polish up the dance so that we maybe could show the cikgus that it was worthy to perform it, but I offed the alarm at 5 because I was just so tired I couldn't get up. I was shivering because our dorm was the only place besides the teacher's room that had aircon (omg they so nice they gave us the best room in the school to sleep even though the school was a full-time hostel school) and it didn't have any blankets so I actually wore my dirty sweater at my legs. My hands were still cold though so I wriggled myself into a ball and it helped abit. By the time Kimberly Lum woke me up, it was 6.15 so I had about 30 min to wash up,wear my pinafold write my cards for my buddies before going for breakfast. It was so rushed. :( By that time I only completed 1 card out of 3. :( Breakfast was good but after breakfast we went for their assembly and I was shocked at their patriotism. I was shocked at how they sang their national anthem loud and proud, unlike us. It sent this idk how to describe feeling that made me feel so weak hahaha. Like omg it was so andjsgjsfb idk what that feeling is called. :) We had rehearsal for our performance and the closing ceremony. At 10.30 am the closing ceremony started and the 3 Malaysian schools performances were awesome. Especially the performance from SMSTJ. It was awesome. The boys danced and sang to HSM songs, with solos, and even though their voices were so low and weren't a single bit cut out of singing, they sang so loudly and it was so hilarious we all couldn't help laughing. After that, the girls and other boys came in and they sang 'you are the music in me' with cool actions that it reverberated in my heart and made me feel like crying. TKC's one was so polished and awesome and they sang Satu Malaysia after that it was so UGHHH i felt so andsjfgs (again idk what this feeling is called). :) It was so heartwarming. And at the last part when they sang their national anthem, it was sung so loud and proud it simply rocked the whole hall. The boys behind us were singing their hearts out, it made me think about our assembly in singapore which were often so quiet and I admit that I'm always guilty of not singing and everything. :( It was so ajmdbgshdj that I just couldn't stand it HAHA.
After the closing ceremony, we started searching for our buddies. Omg it was so nsdjsd sad. :( I hugged my female buddies and gave them their letters. I talked and bonded to Diyanna and Farrah from TKC and SBPIJ respectively and they were so nice. I gave Diyanna my school badge and I gave Farrah my name tag. In return, Diyanna gave me her TKC school badge and Farrah went to her dorm to get me her favourite badge which was a Muslim cartoon. Omg I'm so touched she gave me her favourite badge and it felt so sincere. :( We took alot of pictures together. I ate with Farrah and Michelle during lunch and we exchange alot of questions, it was so heartwarming omg. <3 They also had their house system and their ironed on name tags were by houses. Farrah kept saying that she wished she could visit RGS someday and she kept saying she wanted to rip off her nametag to give me but it couldn't come out since it was ironed on. :( Ahh it was so sad. :( Michelle and I didn't get to bid them goodbye from the bus because when they left for their bus we thought our batchmates were at the dorm and then we searched the whole school then realised they were at the carpark and by the time we ran there the buses were already gone. :((((((( But at least I talked to my buddy and said goodbye to her. :)
We went back to our dorm to pack up and then we got ready to leave for Singapore. By 2, we were out of the dorm with our luggages. Our TKC friends came at about 2.20 to send us off. It was so sad we kept exchanging hugs with our buddies. :( When our bus came we all groaned. We then got on the bus and waved goodbye but then we went down again to do the raffles cheers for them. :) Hehehe it was so ajdbhsd! We first did our cheer then the TKC friends did their cheer (led my my buddy heheheh) and then we did the raffles iciban cheer then they did theirs and lastly we did unite cheer and they did they damn cute cheer! Omg my buddy and her friends taught me and my friends their last cheer which was so so so cute omg it started with a TKC HOT TO GO HOTTOGO...then something with AGUGAH AH AH AH AGUGAH AH AH AH AGUGAH AH AH AH (with the stirring hand action) ARMMMMMMMMMMMMM (the eating sound with the two hands outstretched to signify eating us) HAHAHAHA. It was so cute omg omg. :) Okay after that was really goodbye and we kept making heart shapes with our hands. Even when the bus reversed to go out to the school gate, we still saw our TKC friends waving goodbye with their heart-shaped hands. <3 It was so sad we felt so empty. :(
Reached Singapore's causeway at 6 plus and RGS at 7 plus. We couldn't believe that everything was over already. And I didn't know it was psb night no wonder milo's car was still there! We all wanted to buy school badges (everyone gave their school badges away to their buddies)from the PB room (Michelle was a PIT so she could open the PB room) but it was all sold out cuz the other prefects brought it back. :( So now on the first day of school I won't have a school badge HAHA. But it's okay. I think that giving my buddies my school badge and nametag were the best and most symbolising gifts ever. :) If I had another chance at giving gifts again, I still will give them my badges. :)
HAHA I realise that I never talked about day 1 and day 2. Basically, day 1 and day 2 were touring Malacca and staying at some 5 star GrandBluewave Hotel Shah Alam for two nights! I was rooming with Xiaoyun and WanQi hahaha. It pampered us so much that when we were suddenly stranded at the campsite with dirty tents we really felt like crying. The breakfast was awesome also. Sigh basically day 1 and day 2 were blissful days HAHAHA. The touring part was boring though and they didn't give us much time to shop so it was sad but it was really nothing compared to day 3. :)
In all, the trip made me more situationally and culturally aware. It wasn't the epitome of the best trip in Malaysia but I admit that it was the epitome of the best self-discovery trip I've been to so far. :) This immersion trip allowed me to gain alot of takeaway experiences hehe.
Hahaha I'm sorry that this post is so freaking long but yeah. :)
Look now is not too late Lift up your head Let the rain fall on your face You're not far from grace You're not too far from grace
tired of chasing after things that don't belong, tired of struggling to impress, tired of trying too hard then falling so hard, tired of heartaches, tired of getting back on track, tired of facades; facades that last only to reveal the inside that you'd desperately tried to conceal
Disclaimer: It's gonna be a really long but heartfelt post. And this is just my personal opinions so don't take them to heart. :)
I'm finally back from Malaysia. Seeing all the class photos makes me really sad that my face isn't present in any of them, that I didn't get to close the year as 204'10 with a bang like the rest of them did and that they had so many awesome food and I didn't get to eat any of them (HAHA a pig's perspective!):'( Seriously I feel like crying now. Also, seeing all the psb photos on fb makes me feel sad again because I know that I'll not be able to experience this for my whole life. :( Honestly, when I heard from Kim that Kim Tsai got in JPSB'11, I was both happy for her yet sour inside. I guess being rejected twice just makes everything worse. But anyway, I think she'll make a great jpsl so :)
Anyway, I had alot of awesome takeaways from this rsp malaysia trip. We went there with the purpose to learn and polish our malay language, but honestly, I think my malay still sucks HAHAHA. I didn't learn much about the language but instead, I learnt so much about myself and the culture there. It was really an eye-opener trip about self-discovery and reverence for the locals there. :)
Before this trip, I thought that I wasn't a spoilt kid. Instead, I thought that I was already not bad for a Singaporean kid. But this trip opened my eyes to a whole new level. I just wanna say that Malaysian people are really really really nice people. I can admit that they are actually nicer than us. They were really selfless, kind, helpful and every other positive vocab available in this world. I'm not exaggerating here because they were really so nice that I was moved by their sincerity. And I'm talking about both males and females here. In fact, the male students there were so gentlemanly and selfless I couldn't stand it HAHA. (I'm not having a crush on them btw)
This trip was an immersion program to Malaysia, a joint program between 3 Malaysian top schools and yeah our school, namely SMSTJ-RGS-TKC-SBPIJ. Only RGS and TKC were all girls school. The other two schools were mixed schools. We first went to TKC on the 3rd day of our trip for an opening ceremony. SMSTJ had already arrived and they were wearing their blazers. Even though they were also guests in TKC, I couldn't tell because I thought they were the hosts too. Everyone of them was being so friendly and warm to us I was taken by surprise. Then, we were being introduced to our buddies from TKC and mine was Diyanna. She was feeling sickish and she had a slight fever but in spite of that, she wasn't allowed to rest because she was the overall in charge for the program. I felt so bad for her and yet so touched because even though she was sick, she kept apologising to me for being in that state and she even tried her best to teach me malay words during the malay language activities etc. I knew how lousy she might have felt because I know that when I'm just down with a runny nose or something mild, I would have been yearning for my bed every single moment at that time. And yet, there she was, touring around with me to visit local palaces and museums. :( Omg I felt so damn sad and bad for her. :( Later in the evening, we went to SMSTJ which had a local campsite WITHIN THE SCHOOL ITSELF. They even had a forest HAHAHA. But it was bad because there were like a million mosquitoes and foreign insects there. I had to constantly spam myself with insect repellent and it made my hair oily ttm. When we arrived there, it was drizzling and it was the WORST TIME OUT OF ALL THE DAYS TO START RAINING. We were told to pitch our tents and it started raining relatively heavily. Thus, we braced the rain and brought the tent bag out to the open air on the muddy grass to pitch our tent on a raised platform which contained dirty sand. It was really damn annoying because we were all soaked wet and everything there had turned really muddy and gross. My group which consisted of Xiaoyun, KimGoh and WanQi, smartly didn't know that we had to zip the INSIDE of the tent so rainwater got inside. Before we could even ask for help to ask for directions to pitch the tent, a group of boys came up to us and just took the structures of our tent to start pitching it for us. Unfortunately, there were space constraints and our tent was the middle tent out of the 3 in one raised platform so they stepped on our tents to get to the other side while pitching, and it got really muddy inside. By the time the boys helped us to pitch up the tent which was sturdy enough to live in, the insides of the tent were sandy accompanied with pools of mud water swimming inside. And when we realised that we had to sleep there, we died inside. Like really freaked out and stuff. Since we got soaked in the rain, we knew that we would get sick the next day. Our jackets and everything were throughly soaked in the rain. :( After that, we got to the sheltered place which was beside another forest and realised that bee-like flies were landing on our belongings and basically the whole place. It was like a spam insect area instead of a sheltered area. At this time, all of us were screaming and shouting and totally jumping and freaking out. And we were stuck because we couldn't shift our belongings since our tents were unfit for putting stuff since they were all dirtied. :( Therefore, we left our stuff there at the sheltered area, constantly freaking out when a bee-like fly got close to it. At that time, we all kept grumbling and crying out that we wanted our hotels, our beds, our homes etc. We all then went to bathe and it was really annoying the wits out of me because we were wet, sticky, disgustingly dirty and extremely scared that while we searched for our clothes in our overly stuffed backpacks, a bee-like fly would land on us. Once we took our clothes and toiletries, we hurried to the toilet and we realised that it was like bursting with people because the other students from their respective schools were also bathing. We stood there, waiting for extremely long before it got to our turn. Anyway, the toilets were really dirty and muddy and omg the water was SO FREAKING COLD I just died bathing, spazzing in the toilet while washing my hair and everything. After we finished bathing, we went back to the sheltered area to sit, again freaking out when another bee-like fly came to sit next to us or something like that. We were sitting there, spoilt rotten, complaining of every single thing from the tents to the insects. The students from the other Malaysian schools were barbequeing food at a set-up shelter next to us while we were sitting there comfortably doing absolutely nothing but complaining about the undesirable conditions of the place and the smoke that drifted into our noses. What we failed to realise was that those kind people barbequeing our food were inhaling the thick smoke directly and yet they were still cheerful and optimistic about everything.
When it was dinnertime, we settled down with our buddies to consume the barbequed food. We said 'Jemput Makan' before we started eating with our hands. I didn't trust my hands because even though I washed them, they still felt oily from my insect repellent. Anyway, I still ate with my hands and I was having a really hard time trying to stuff the food into my mouth despite my buddy's demonstration. :( We were all laughing at each other for looking like the only helpless people ridiculously trying to eat HAHA. We freaked out occasionally when a bee-like fly came close to me but my buddy and her friends always tried their best to make us feel comfortable by helping us to flick the flies and insects away. After the meal,students who weren't from the host school started taking up the swiper (Idk what that is called hahahaha) to sweep away the insects that had landed on the floor of the sheltered area so that we wouldn't have to sit on them. The place was filled with alot of ants too and when they asked me to move up and I said that that part of the floor was filled with ants, they understood and didn't impose me to move up anymore. :) My buddy then helped me to sweep away the ants so that I could feel more at ease. :)During the whole process even those locals that we didn't know constantly helped us to translate all the malay instructions etc. Basically the whole thing was in fast-paced malay I died HAHAHA. I didn't understand a single thing so I was just stoning over there. :( But they did try their best to help us understand and convey the instructions. During the whole time I was complaining to my friends that our group's tent was unsuitable for sleeping and about everything from the mosquitoes to the mud. The activities ended late at about 11. At 11pm, our group thought of ways to clear the mud water in our tent. We then decided that taking garbage bags and laying them over the water were the best solutions to the problem. Even till then, we were cursing and swearing, at least I was, at the screwedness at everything. The tent area was so damn dark and the grounds were so muddy and slippery I always almost slipped and fell like seriously if I fell on mud I would have just killed myself. To make matters worse, there was always a freaking ant or mosquito which would bite my foot/hands when I was already bursting with frustration okay I sweared alot and I feel bad now. :( At 11:11, Xiaoyun and I we wished for a relatively clean tent to sleep in. At 12, we were all settled in with our sleeping bags on relatively dry grounds omg thank God for that. :) Since the tent was too small for 4 sleeping bags, 3 people slept on 2 sleeping bags and WanQi was being annoying (HAHA)cuz her long legs kept kicking my head even though she was the only one who had one sleeping bag to herself damn comfortable lah HAHAHAHA. We eventually got through the night and I woke up to a roster calling at about 5 plus. I didn't dare to snooze my alarm like 7 or 8 times because none of our tents were soundproof and I was afraid to annoy people who were sleeping so it sucked cuz I had to wake up after snoozing my alarm for 3 times. :( We all then squeezed into the dirty toilet again which had a really small basin and the water was so pathetically little it wasn't even enough to wash my toothbrush throughly. :( However, somehow, I had calmed down after a night's sleep and I started to reflect on my behaviour the other night where I had complained about every single thing. Somehow, getting past the previous day made me feel that everything wasn't that bad already. When I learnt that those students from TKC and the other Malaysian schools didn't even bring sleeping bags, I counted myself extremely lucky because they actually slept on the dirty insides of the tents and yet, they were still so smiley and cheerful despite the undesirable conditions that they had to tolerate with. I really admire them for that. :) This made me realise that I was actually this spoilt little kid when immersed in rough conditions. :(
Anyway, breakfast was nasi lemak which tasted good even though there was only rice, 1/4 egg and sambal with 5 (or something like that) ikan bilis. By that time, I could already eat relatively well with my hands so I was proud of myself for that. :) Another thing was that I was overwhelmed when I saw how devoted the Muslims there were to their religion. It was really heartening to see that they prayed 5 times a day in such devoting manner omg it made me question myself if I were them how I would have reacted. :) After that was the dreaded jungle tracking. I thought it wasn't that bad at first until we actually ENTERED the forest. It was a whole new level of jungle tracking. It was like 10 times worse and more dangerous than the forests in WELL where we went for our geog AA. Hahaha I think that in fact, the jungles there are life threatening. The moment we entered the forest I felt like crying. There were like a million mosquitoes and everything were so muddy (from the rain the day before, it felt as though as pouring the whole bottle of insect repellent wouldn't work. :( The slopes uphill were so freaking steep I think there were like a million slopes inclined at 65 degrees inside there that we had to climb. Usually, I wouldn't want to touch a tree but in the forest, trees were my life saver. Big tree small tree the moment we saw any tree we just grabbed onto it. The paths were so narrow and beside us there was this steep slope down. The slippery mud made things worse because everytime I lost my footing because of the mud, I would envisage tumbling down the hill like jack and jill and my heart would just die inside for a second. :( The locals again, were super duper nice omg. There, we were so scared of dirtying our trackpants and shoes etc but they were actually sitting on the mud so that they could pull us up whenever there was a steep slope inclined upwards. Even the boys were really selfless. They sat on the mud whenever they were done with climbing up to another level and held out branches so that we could grab them and let them pull us up. My buddy was also remarkably selfless. Even though she was at the back, she would run to the front so that she could get herself up first so that she could lift us up to higher grounds during the climb. It was really slippery and alot of people fell down but whenever any one of us fell down everyone would shout 'careful' or something like that, it was really sweet. Inside the forest, it felt so never-ending. I kept telling Alicia that my shoes were ruined ttm and they were because the twigs scraped off the decorations on my shoes and they were spammed with mud. My trackpants were spammed with mud too. :( I was dying from climbing to the top of the first mountain when they told me that we still had another mountain to scale. Hence, we went down the first mountain and climbed to the second mountain non-stop. :( In the process, Rachel (Lim) she got bitten by a leech and her leg kept bleeding. :( I got bitten by a few mosquitoes and some unknown insect that left my left index finger swelling. :( Anyway, when we finally emerged from the forest after spending approx 2 hours trekking in the jungle, the feeling felt better than exam liberation. (Y) Nicole's shoe got stuck in mud so the right side of her shoe was mud-soaked. :( HAHAHA she kept complaining HAHHAA. Anyway after that was lunch then farewell to SMSTJ. We had to dismantle our tent after that but before we could even go to our own tent, a group of boys were standing outside our tent again, waiting patiently for us to clear our tent of our belongings so that they could help us to dismantle it. During the whole time they were helping us, we felt so frickin bad. :( We thanked them after that and they smiled and said it was okay. Omg so nice. :) Seriously, I doubt Singaporean boys would ever do that (no offence intended HAHA). After that was the english based activities by US and it turned out really good. I think they are really spontaneous people. They made our activities fun because they were so enthusiatic about it. We played taboo and word search and at the end, they had to combine the english words they learnt to form a nonsense story and act that out in front of everyone. My group, group 2 and group 1 combined and omg it was seriously the best. (Y) The boys acted super well they weren't afraid of losing face and everyone had fun because the performance was so funny HAHAH. And I bet Mr Azmizar likes Siti Norhaliza because everytime the name was mentioned he kept turning around HAHAHAHA. During the evening it was time for us to leave the school. When our bus came and we went up the bus to go to TKC, some SMSTJ boys stationed themselves outside the bus to give us souveniers. :) The rest of the SMSTJ boys stood outside our bus to wave goodbye. One of the boys even went to put his microphone speaker at the entrance of the bus and he shouted into the mike WE WILL MISS YOU. Awwww. When we arrived at TKC we went to our dorm and we relished the prospect of decent beds. The beds looked so inviting I felt so like sleeping HAHA. We had like 30 minutes to freashen up and I was one of the lucky few who got to bathe because after that our cikgus were pissed that we would be late if we continued bathing. Btw the water was so much colder than the one at SMSTJ it felt like I was bathing in iced water omg I was like spazzing in the shower jumping about. :( We were like 5 minutes late for dinnertime and we were in this sloppish state when we entered the dinning hall because we were dressed in long pants and school approved shirt with our hair let down (cuz it was wet) and the rest of the school population in TKC were so smartly dressed in their school uniform and tudongs and yet they stood up for us as a sign of respect. I felt so bad inside. :( After dinner we went back to our dorms and we had a major reflection session conducted by our cikgus. We wrote down our reflections and shared them with the rest of our rsp batch and cikgus. Everyone's reflections contained heartfelt thoughts filled with shame and everything and all of them praised the hospitality of the locals. Those reflections were by far the most sincere ones I've ever heard I just wanted to continue listening to them. Some reflections hit home that I felt really teary and everything. :) When the reflection part was over, we were told that we had to put up a 5 min performance the next day during the closing ceremony and we were also then given coloured papers and stickers to write letters to our buddies. It was super rushed because we were given like about 40 minutes to think and polish everything from scratch and yet the female cikgus were displeased at the quality of our performance. During the whole time we kept grumbling and saying that it was unfair because they only gave us such a short notice and yet expected so much of us. :( Yeah but it was and we were all annoyed. When one TKC student came in our dorm to call us to eat supper I seriously was so frustrated (when the rest still couldn't decide what to do) that I said 'I don't care already lah I want to go eat'. I bet we were all feeling shitty and everything. During supper we kept discussing what dance to do because we had to present to the cikgu our devised performance and we didn't just wanna sing semoga bahagia and dedication. In the end we scraped the dance and we slept at 12.05. :( I was so tired due to the jungle trekking and all the other activities that I slept 5 minutes or something like that after I hit the sack. My alarm rang at 5, where we planned to polish up the dance so that we maybe could show the cikgus that it was worthy to perform it, but I offed the alarm at 5 because I was just so tired I couldn't get up. I was shivering because our dorm was the only place besides the teacher's room that had aircon (omg they so nice they gave us the best room in the school to sleep even though the school was a full-time hostel school) and it didn't have any blankets so I actually wore my dirty sweater at my legs. My hands were still cold though so I wriggled myself into a ball and it helped abit. By the time Kimberly Lum woke me up, it was 6.15 so I had about 30 min to wash up,wear my pinafold write my cards for my buddies before going for breakfast. It was so rushed. :( By that time I only completed 1 card out of 3. :( Breakfast was good but after breakfast we went for their assembly and I was shocked at their patriotism. I was shocked at how they sang their national anthem loud and proud, unlike us. It sent this idk how to describe feeling that made me feel so weak hahaha. Like omg it was so andjsgjsfb idk what that feeling is called. :) We had rehearsal for our performance and the closing ceremony. At 10.30 am the closing ceremony started and the 3 Malaysian schools performances were awesome. Especially the performance from SMSTJ. It was awesome. The boys danced and sang to HSM songs, with solos, and even though their voices were so low and weren't a single bit cut out of singing, they sang so loudly and it was so hilarious we all couldn't help laughing. After that, the girls and other boys came in and they sang 'you are the music in me' with cool actions that it reverberated in my heart and made me feel like crying. TKC's one was so polished and awesome and they sang Satu Malaysia after that it was so UGHHH i felt so andsjfgs (again idk what this feeling is called). :) It was so heartwarming. And at the last part when they sang their national anthem, it was sung so loud and proud it simply rocked the whole hall. The boys behind us were singing their hearts out, it made me think about our assembly in singapore which were often so quiet and I admit that I'm always guilty of not singing and everything. :( It was so ajmdbgshdj that I just couldn't stand it HAHA.
After the closing ceremony, we started searching for our buddies. Omg it was so nsdjsd sad. :( I hugged my female buddies and gave them their letters. I talked and bonded to Diyanna and Farrah from TKC and SBPIJ respectively and they were so nice. I gave Diyanna my school badge and I gave Farrah my name tag. In return, Diyanna gave me her TKC school badge and Farrah went to her dorm to get me her favourite badge which was a Muslim cartoon. Omg I'm so touched she gave me her favourite badge and it felt so sincere. :( We took alot of pictures together. I ate with Farrah and Michelle during lunch and we exchange alot of questions, it was so heartwarming omg. <3 They also had their house system and their ironed on name tags were by houses. Farrah kept saying that she wished she could visit RGS someday and she kept saying she wanted to rip off her nametag to give me but it couldn't come out since it was ironed on. :( Ahh it was so sad. :( Michelle and I didn't get to bid them goodbye from the bus because when they left for their bus we thought our batchmates were at the dorm and then we searched the whole school then realised they were at the carpark and by the time we ran there the buses were already gone. :((((((( But at least I talked to my buddy and said goodbye to her. :)
We went back to our dorm to pack up and then we got ready to leave for Singapore. By 2, we were out of the dorm with our luggages. Our TKC friends came at about 2.20 to send us off. It was so sad we kept exchanging hugs with our buddies. :( When our bus came we all groaned. We then got on the bus and waved goodbye but then we went down again to do the raffles cheers for them. :) Hehehe it was so ajdbhsd! We first did our cheer then the TKC friends did their cheer (led my my buddy heheheh) and then we did the raffles iciban cheer then they did theirs and lastly we did unite cheer and they did they damn cute cheer! Omg my buddy and her friends taught me and my friends their last cheer which was so so so cute omg it started with a TKC HOT TO GO HOTTOGO...then something with AGUGAH AH AH AH AGUGAH AH AH AH AGUGAH AH AH AH (with the stirring hand action) ARMMMMMMMMMMMMM (the eating sound with the two hands outstretched to signify eating us) HAHAHAHA. It was so cute omg omg. :) Okay after that was really goodbye and we kept making heart shapes with our hands. Even when the bus reversed to go out to the school gate, we still saw our TKC friends waving goodbye with their heart-shaped hands. <3 It was so sad we felt so empty. :(
Reached Singapore's causeway at 6 plus and RGS at 7 plus. We couldn't believe that everything was over already. And I didn't know it was psb night no wonder milo's car was still there! We all wanted to buy school badges (everyone gave their school badges away to their buddies)from the PB room (Michelle was a PIT so she could open the PB room) but it was all sold out cuz the other prefects brought it back. :( So now on the first day of school I won't have a school badge HAHA. But it's okay. I think that giving my buddies my school badge and nametag were the best and most symbolising gifts ever. :) If I had another chance at giving gifts again, I still will give them my badges. :)
HAHA I realise that I never talked about day 1 and day 2. Basically, day 1 and day 2 were touring Malacca and staying at some 5 star GrandBluewave Hotel Shah Alam for two nights! I was rooming with Xiaoyun and WanQi hahaha. It pampered us so much that when we were suddenly stranded at the campsite with dirty tents we really felt like crying. The breakfast was awesome also. Sigh basically day 1 and day 2 were blissful days HAHAHA. The touring part was boring though and they didn't give us much time to shop so it was sad but it was really nothing compared to day 3. :)
In all, the trip made me more situationally and culturally aware. It wasn't the epitome of the best trip in Malaysia but I admit that it was the epitome of the best self-discovery trip I've been to so far. :) This immersion trip allowed me to gain alot of takeaway experiences hehe.
Hahaha I'm sorry that this post is so freaking long but yeah. :)
Look now is not too late Lift up your head Let the rain fall on your face You're not far from grace You're not too far from grace
