Prefects' Camp

By De Ming

Ever wondered when was the time to open the lid for a steamboat and dig into its contents? Wonder no more, for renowned scientist, researcher and foodologist Mr. Yuvanesh has found the perfect solution after long and extensive research of steamboat (if you count one minute as long that is). In fact Mr. Yuva has even made it simple for those of us who does not possess the vocabulary of those in his line, for once the steamboat was ready, Mr. Yuva would say, “The thing is steaming!” Thus we knew it was time to eat.

It was our first night when Yuvanesh came up with his steaming concept, the first night for our three days two nights trip in Cameron Highlands, the first night of our annual prefect’s camp. Okay here’s where my voice should come in as the narrator. But long, long a go, before the steaming concept, in a place far, far away, there were two guys, one was standing and the other was sitting.

“Do you know why I told the prefects to come at one-thirty?”

“Cause they are Malaysians.”

“Yes! Cause they are Malaysians and when I say one-thirty, then they’ll be here at two.”

“Eh, but not fair larh, then people like us who are so un-Malaysians then how?” I remember complaining on that day.

Unfortunately I also remembered Dhaneesh giving me this answer back, “Too bad larh.”

This is how it had all started. Late. How typical of Malaysians. The time stated on the itinerary was one. The time the prefects were suppose to come was one-thirty. The time they came was two. The time the bus driver Mr. Mus arrived, two-thirty. By the time we finally left, it was three. What to do? We Malaysian ma!

Our facilitator, planner and event coordinator was none other than Mr. Lim who had also planned for the librarians’ camp, though I shall refer to him as Uncle Lim because it reminds me of the Kopitiam. Uncle Lim had introduced himself in the beginning of the bus ride and had invited people up to the mike to entertain us and to get ourselves acquainted with our fellow prefects. Okay let’s just skip the lame jokes and stories of Diana and Diana +. So we arrived at Tapah rest stop and right after toilet break (which typically, ended up late), we finally started our journey up Cameron Highland. The miraculous thing was that no one was dizzy on the way up, probably because they were too distracted by the zombie movie the bus driver had played. It was the zombie movie that made me see (a better word would be hear) a whole new side of Rushan Kee. Ouch!

Upon arriving at Cameron Highlands, it was already dusk and Uncle Lim decided to provide us a dinner of steamboat first. This is where I had made my wish upon the heavens; maybe I should let Beatrice to explain:

Prior to dinner, De Ming jokingly said ,

"Since we are going to sit in groups of ten, i want 2 guys, 8 girls."
(2 guys meaning himself and Danish.)

ROFLMAO.He got 2 girls and 8 guys.

So ladies and gentlemen, be careful what you wish for. *wink*

Dinner ended and we were soon sent to our apartments, Villa Dahlia. I remember the first time we read the signboard of the apartment, all of our heads started craning and looking for Filla Dalila, our Secretary II. My apartment was shared together with the 4A and 4B prefects and Uncle Lim, Mr. Mus and Uncle Lim’s friend. It was not a very stylish apartment, but it was clean and had a nice feeling about it.

After a bath, we gathered in the hall and were distributed into groups of ten or nine. My group was Group EL which stood for Extra-Chun Leaders, the group leader was Huang Xi and I was his assistant. Our motto was ‘Merging Ideas’ and we stood for many individuals coming together as one. Our mini facilitator was Tze Quan and our group members were Denise, Suman, Guat Yee, Edric, Filla, Nicholas, Yuvanesh, Huang Xi, me and of course Tze Quan. I like my group.

Having completed the sorting out of groups, Uncle Lim started to explain about the three different types of studying method. Generally each of us falls into one category, though this is not scientifically researched. He passed around a couple of papers that were like quizzes and we had to answer it based on our character and the way we do things. The three categories were Visual, Auditory and Kinesthetic. Visual people learn through observation, they are usually the kids that stares at teacher while she is teaching, they perform best after consulting the manual or instructions and they like to have written instructions and directions. The Auditory uses listening as a medium and they may be found to be the kids that stares at the table but absorbs everything in by listening and they love listening to music. No music no life. The third was the kinesthetic learning style; these are people who hold the Nike motto “Just do it”. They are usually the kid that throws the paper plane and taps the tables and anything else that requires a lot of movement. These people never plan. After the test, I realized that I fall under the Kinesthetic category (wow, what a surprise), but I had also a strong Visual, that’s why I stare at teacher when I’m listening to her (that’s if I do listen).

The next day, I had woken up quite alert as I had a good sleep on a king size bed alone. Morning exercises then took place and seriously, running in Cameron is painful to the lungs. The breakfast place was dirty and the French toast I ordered had flies on it. Also, while we were eating half way, another fly had crash landed into Dhaneesh’s Milo.

Breakfast ended after that and the Amazing Race had started. Our first clue was some torn up pieces of paper which we had to paste back to get the directions to the next clue (Maybank). We picked up a transaction receipt and asked direction to our next checkpoint, Carnation Park Apartment. We were soon flying off into the direction where we thought the apartments were and we found one that looked like Carnation Park, but was not. At that point, the other teams were heading off to one side, but Denise had said that she had been to Carnation Park before and I asked her if she was more then fifty percent certain that it was the opposite. She said she was and so off we went to the other direction and we found ourselves lost. We headed back to the place we had started off and decided to skip to part of the race and move on. From this alone, we had wasted close to half an hour!

The next task was rather simple because we had Huang Xi, runner up for Olympic Maths as it involved a lot of reasoning and mathematics. Having completed that perfectly, we were supposed to go to MARDI (Malaysia Agriculture Research and Development Institute). MARDI was actually in the opposite direction of where we were and by the time we arrived there, another half an hour had passed. At MARDI, we had to complete a few questionnaires and took a few photos of flowers. There was one question that had everyone stumped, “What does the word BOH stands for?” Ouch! So we had to ask our facilitator or angel for the answer (Best of Highlands) and we got punished to eat chilli padi! I can still see Nicholas jumping.

We ran off to Agro Bank once our task was completed and over there was my favourite part. We were given ten Ringgit and we had to buy a couple of items, the twist was that for every Ringgit left, we earn 10 points and according to Uncle Lim, there was a team that had searched the items from the dustbin and had used none of the money!

Other than the money, we were also suppose to take photos of our group with a family, a lady in red, a member of ours holding two cabbages, ugly faces and two members together with a tourist from out of the country. Another task was to get chops from restaurants, shops and hotels. The thing that had struck me the most about this task was how nice people actually were, for when we asked for a photo with a family, they had also shown us a market to get very cheap vegetables and when we asked for a little money from our lady in red, we were given RM10! Thank you God! Thank you lady in red!

We thought it was broccoli at first.

Then we realised.

Pn. Ung and Pn. Viani caught washing their hair while we were running and sweaty.

We finished this task and arrived at the next task as the last team, we were then instructed to eat raw onions to move on to the checkpoint. So we did. Yucks!. We landed ourselves in Lily Apartments and we had to answer another IQ questions. We got it wrong though! But although we were wrong, Huang Xi still insisted that there were two possible answers, nevertheless we asked him to save his complains for later and we had to eat 20 pieces of bread.

We had a decision to make at that point, the first was that we finish the race and play it safe; the second was to run to Carnation Park, complete the task and arrive back (hopefully) in time. There was only another half an hour before we got disqualified. We decided to take the risk. Off we went, sprinting up that all so familiar road to our beloved Carnation Park. It was a long walk and we wished terribly that we would be able to make it back on time. We got there in ten minutes of hurried walk and occasional marches. Edric, Suman and I were in front when we reached the apartment, Edric took the photo of the apartment. By the time Edric, Suman and I had ran down from the apartment stairs though, everyone else had already started walking back. So being tired and well tired, we had to try to chase them up. That moment, a miracle happen and suddenly a car stopped beside us, the window was wound down and lo and behold, the uncle (whose name I don’t know) who is Uncle Lim’s friend appeared and he offered us a ride! Oh, if you insist, we don’t want to break your heart.

So we sat on a car while everyone else walked, but of course, we had jumped off it the moment we saw the girls. Thank you uncle! So then, we waited by the junction for the whole team to arrive, we ran and ran like mad people and from Uncle Lim’s point of view, we came in one stream of people, running and shouting! Most importantly, we made it on time! After lying down for a couple of minutes, I finally got up and seeing as Tze Quan had promised to eat half a chilli padi if we were on time, I decided to accompany her. This time though, it really stings! I cried. Lucky there are no photos.

Lunch was served. We ate. We went back. We bathe. We came back down and we calculated the points. Our team was the last team and when we came to the part where Huang Xi thought there was two answers, Uncle Lim gave us two options. If we wanted to challenge him, we would lose 50 points if we were wrong, but would earn a full fifty if we were right. We decided to take up the challenge and although the explanation was not clear, but because Huang Xi had dared to stand up, we were given the 50 points. Another factor that gave us extra points was the task which involves collecting items with RM10. We were given RM10, we came back with RM16.40, and technically we earned money. In the end, our team got the most point in this event. 900+ when the other teams had 800+.

We played a game after that. The goal is to pass around a ball to all your group members as long as your hands cannot touch, you cannot pass the ball to the person beside you and the ball must start and must end with the group leader. We did a couple of rounds for this game. Then Uncle Lim said that his personal record time was one second. That’s when all of the groups changed strategy and jumped from 10 or 9 seconds to 4 to 5 seconds, then again it made a quantum leap until it was close to one second. Why this happened? Because we thought it was possible. The whole point of this thing was that we must always be willing to find ways to increase efficiency and effectiveness.

After that we played a couple of games and then came the Spy Game. There is one spy in your team and at the end of the game, the leader must eliminate the person he think is the spy who will try to disrupt the game. If he guesses the correct spy, the team gets some points, if he guesses the wrong spy, the not-spy will be kicked from the team forever and points will be deducted. Of course, after hearing Po Yee’s account on how she had cried when she was accused as the spy when there was none, I knew there was no spy. I told the team that and so our final decision was that we did not want to eliminate anyone even if it means no breakfast and a deduction of 300 points. Lei Wei’s group did the same, but Sharon’s and Wee Hong’s was different, Sharon chose Ashween and Wee Hong, Jzen Sen. Then Uncle Lim when on and on about “Are you sure?” “Think about breakfast.” “Think about your points.” “Please reconsider.” At long last, he announced that there was no spy and he explained that we must always think about other’s feelings and we must be certain before we point fingers.

Okay, moving on. There was dinner. There was pasar malam. Bought some jam. There was bread and jam (blueberry and strawberry) for supper and I ate some prawns. There was the Winnie the Pooh Uno with Winnie the Pooh rules. There was the wake Ben project (Failed). Then there was the sleep! This time I shared a mattress with Jit Heang.

Morning came once again, running started once again. Breakfast was better. Roti cheese!

Yuvanesh catching Mentos with his mouth. Please click the photo to see the Mentos.

After breakfast, we went to the Bee Farm. Well, there was not much over there as the bees were too far away and even if it was near, no one dared to come close.

Butterfly farm was next. That was more entertaining, we had a Nepalese guide who I think is either gay or bisexual for he likes throwing insects on Tze Quan’s chest, scorpions on Aiman’s head, but most of all, he likes to unzip Ashween’s Malaysian jacket and throw lizards on his chest. I enjoyed this part of the trip a lot though, because I found the way we are able to just hold insects and lizards and snakes cool.

“What is this?”

“It’s a hibiscus.”

“Yes.” Bends down and holds another hibiscus.

“What’s this?”

“Another hibiscus.”

“No. This lowbiscus”

The results for the winning team was announce and team Uno won by five marks from us! Actually, we would have won if we had not been deducted marks for talking too much. Oh well, padan muka. We went to Kee's Farm later and bought strawberries, sweet corns and flowers. I like the strawberry ice.

We went back after lunch in this Kopitiam where the service was so slow (forty minutes). I had to finish eating in 5 minutes, lucky the food was good. The first leg of the journey, I sat behind with the Form Sixes and I slept most of the way. When I woke up though, I asked Xiang Shan to sit back in his place, so I went to the front to sit beside Dhaneesh. Surprisingly, almost everyone there was dizzy or uncomfortable. What to do, Winnie the Pooh Uno mah!

The experience of the whole trip was quite an eye opener, I enjoyed hanging around with the Form Threes (not the part where Rushan screamed though), I came to like the Winnie the Pooh rules, I came to respect Tze Quan as our facilitator, I learned to appreciate the teamwork of our team, I enjoyed taking photos with my friends, I laughed a lot about Shu Shu (Suman) jokes, I learned quite a bit, but more importantly I enjoyed the whole experience of being together with prefects without the normal stress we would go through.

We are the leading team!