to Hell and back

ok, so my interpretation of the term "Hell" here is extremely liberal. there were no spouting pits of fire, nor were there deep cavernous abysses with winged harpies ready to devour your soul or anything. true, BTN camp wasn't as bad as I expected, but that was mostly because 90% of the planned outdoor activities (e.g. the 2.5-kilometre run, the 2am jungle-trekking, the physical endurance tests) were canceled due to a participant's untimely death during a jungle activity a few weeks back. (this may sound a bit flippant, but I hope the government gave a due amount of compensation to the poor student's family. :c) and it also helped that I had an awesome awesome group which made the activities for the third and fourth days a lot more bearable, but I digress.

I suppose I was lucky because my batch of participants were the second to test-run a new system of running the camp. So I can't really speak for all BTN camps - obviously seeing as there have been so many reports of racism and insensitivity (or ultrasensitivity?) at camps over the years the government must have finally decided to do something about it (because the power of blogs today is far greater than they ever reckoned, as they kept reminding us, actually), because there was never any outright insulting of other races during my week in Ulu Sepri, unlike previously reported. Yes, there were outrageous trains of logic, yes, at times it all did border on brainwashing, yes, there were a few times I was so silently inflamed I wanted to get up and beat the crap out of someone, but ultimately, it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. ...mostly because i'm a loser and any form of hardcore physical activity would have turned my opinion of the camp right around.


the 5 worst things about camp
1. the (lack of) bathing facilities. in the end, because I just couldn't figure out for the life of me how i was supposed to be using my kain basahan in order to use the public bath, I ended up having to shower squatting next to a hose in a toilet stall with a hole in the ground. at one point I actually ended up accidentally launching one of those water scoop-y things directly INTO the toilet because i was attempting to scare away a dragonfly :C um. if anyone else gets enlisted for Ulu Sepri Camp A, try not to use the water scoop in the girls' bathroom, second toilet stall on the left :/;;

2. my bed. it wasn't that bad, really......until the last night at camp. when my friends and I noticed a bunch of dark brown stuff all over my bedsheets and looked up (I was in the lower bunk of a bunk bed) to ultimately realize that all week long, I had been unwittingly sleeping on and showering in........termite eggs. WTF.

3. the wildlife. i hate creatures. all creatures must die. ok so maybe that just extends to include lizards, insects, rats, lizards, insects, and.......lizards. (frogs too, but i didn't see any of those at camp.) see, when we discovered the termite eggs on my bed the girl next to me volunteered to share her bed with me for the night. that is, until we returned that night, and found we had a house guest on our wall: a monitor lizard. A HUGE-ASS MONSTROUS GODZILLA WANNABE MONITOR LIZARD. that took a huge shit on my friend's bed (that my pillow was already on in preparation for that night. brilliant.) so in the end I moved to another dorm for the night, only to discover upon entering that they didn't have a lizard infestation, but a rat one. some girl's bag that was on the floor got chewed right through. lovely. :c

4. waking up early. i hate waking up early under normal circumstances. but these were not normal circumstances. these were run around doing misguided patriotic activities and listening to inflamed patriotic talks till 1am attempt to take a disgusting shower at 2am then wake up at 5.45am to be forced to watch a different historical documentary every day (which all recycled the same footage) and then march and then perform various physical exercises before being given a single morsel to eat at 8am circumstances. so at camp, i abhorred waking up. at all. period.

5. the food. oh god. i am generally a picky eater. about 50% of the time i'm not satisfied with what my mom cooks for dinner, so i usually end up consuming about 4 spoonfuls of rice and select forkfuls of side dishes each time. but this was on an entirely new level. I suppose some meals weren't that bad....but the best it usually got was one edible prepared dish out of three. the rest of the time none of the dishes were edible, so i'd get full on rice and lots of tea (or extremely diluted air sirap). and I have come to realize that I am......really just not a kuih person. like, I just don't like kuih. kuih-muih orang Melayu terlalu manis. manis gila. sampai I pun tak sanggup makan. saya rasa New York mungkin tak ada kuih kut. alhamdulillah. /Malay fail


the relatively nicer things about camp
1. making new friends! this is kind of a duh.

2. getting to interact with Malays again. I actually realized I haven't really had Malay friends for nearly ten years. it was nice to be reminded of how we're all the same kind of people, just with different backgrounds and different cultures, behind all the political agendas. and getting to hear some of my less fortunate friends' stories made me realize how lucky I am to lead the life I live. ..also, i sort of remember how to speak Malay without sounding like a Chinese immigrant again.

3. ok so some of the games were pretty entertaining. mostly the ones with no isi tersirat behind them. especially the "Jambatan goyang-goyang" song which was supposed to be performed in the style of an extremely effeminate male, complete with voice inflections and body actions...you do the math.

4. ...yeah, that's about it.


oh, let me just add that it was nearly impossible to get reception for two out of the three major mobile phone networks at camp. it soon became just another part of the scenery to see dozens of people walking around in between sessions with their hands waving around in the air staring at the little gadgets clutched in their palms and cursing nobody in particular. a random shout of "AAAAHHHHH TWO BARS!!!!!!!!" would invariably draw a sudden rush of people to the same spot, hands flinging around wildly with a renewed frenzy, in hopes of picking up on the same signal. suddenly i wasn't so weird for using every given opportunity to stand in the middle of a bridge (a hotspot) staring at my phone practically blind to the falling rain. it didn't help that i started running out of credit halfway through the week, so pretty soon it became nearly impossible for me to contact the outside world at all. :(

long-distance relationships suck, if you don't know this already.

or maybe i'm just not a relationship kind of person. ..actually, i think i'm too much of a relationship kind of person. I was reading one of those scientific analyses of my personality the other day and it said that I was an extremely needy kind of person who couldn't stand being alone. That I go from relationship to relationship extremely quickly (a relationship addict, I think it was called) because of that aversion to unattachment. hmm. it was something I had never really thought about before, but it seemed to contain more than a hint of truth in it. I suppose it did take me a year before I went from my last relationship to this one, but I'm pretty sure that was due to a lack of opportunity rather than a lack of readiness. I always did use to tell my friends that "the only way to get over a breakup is by falling in love with someone else instead", which was probably a rather telling statement, now that I think about it. I always did fall in love, by the way, far too quickly and far too hard - it's caused me more than my fair share of heartbreak and humiliation in the past, sadly. :( I guess I was lucky my last boyfriend shared that same kind of desire to constantly feel attached, that special "somebody out there owns me" kind of feeling, but what happens when you step back into the real world and realize your significant others aren't always made out of the same mold? suddenly that need to always feel like a part of a couple is no longer a blessing...it's kind of embarrassing. and you're never certain if you're being a loving partner or just an unwanted burden. (the word that was used is unreasonable)

here's the question: can you, do you, should you allow yourself to love another person more than it feels they love you?

other than the issues of pride and such. if you really love someone, shouldn't those things no longer matter?


k i need to shut up and pack. i've just been told i'm leaving for london/new york early tuesday morning (it is currently saturday evening) and i have not even begun, crap.


"And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it towards some overwhelming question,
To say: "I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all" --
If one, settling a pillow by her head,
Should say: "That is not what I meant at all.
That is not it, at all."