back from camp...

hey everyone! apparently i haven't been killed by something in the forest YET, so i shall write something about the days i spent in the forests in punggol/bt timah/sembawang. nothing to do with the technical stuff of survival skills, but the stuff all of us were talking about - scouts, studies and life in general ;) maybe i will drop a few random stuff we encountered during those few days :P

*random* we managed to get a lot of food from the sea! water (precious commodity) in bottles that floated from nowhere, orange, brinjal/eggplant, shrimp (not prawns, it's those xia mi thinggy) ... we had very little water so we just drank the water from the bottles that floated by (damn sick,right? but no choice :/). edmund tasted the orange and gave up on it, while 12 of us shared one *rotten* brinjal after roasting. but the most fun thing we actually saw were shrimp that were washed up the shore into a water collection contraption that one group made. when the tide came in, the shrimp were trapped in the hole and they started to jump around (they can walk too, but there was a plastic sheet beneath them :P) but to no avail. in the end, they were cooked by the sun (sounds sadistic, but ya, i bet they taste nice, free of the sand they died in)!

last night, i was talking to this other rj guy about scouts and studies. it seemed as though most of us have the same attitude towards these two subjects: that scouts at jc level should take the backseat and that we should concentrate on our studies. when we were in secondary school, we could use a lot of time just to pursue cca stuff and still manage our studies very well. but now, with so many changes to the environment (academic and scouting), priorities seem to change, and somehow, i just can't be bothered with this thing called scouts. it's taking its toll on me. to make things worse, we are the pioneer batch doing the revised syllabi and ip. so much uncertainty surrounds our future.

last night, a leader asked me to make my self-introduction. and i said something, which i haven't had time to consider carefully till then. that was, "this is my 7th year of scouting". 7 years. i only started to question my meaning and existence as a scout after so many years. the first 6 years was fun, just enjoying myself in abandon. this year totally sucked. i have no idea what i have been doing this year. totally lost. perhaps i am in a dilemma. some residual interest in scouts and greater concern for studies. which one to choose? after so many months and multiple entries, i still haven't resolved this stupid issue. why is it so hard?

perhaps a great (i don't know if i qualify as 'great', but i hope i can be one which my juniors can find pride in and look up to) leader needs no titles or awards. those titles probably just tell people how good your technical skills are, and let people say, "hey, we have a president's scout here!" in situations requiring those specialist skills. but leaders are much more than that. they have that ability to move, motivate and mingle with their subordinates/juniors. if i could choose, i would rather be a leader of the second type. 'cos a leader is a team player, a person delegating jobs and overseeing stuff, and he is the one who is able to make use of different talents and resources to come up with a solution to the problem. to me, that is invaluable and way harder to acquire, compared to skills. reminds me of the doc in "lost" and the commando officer who came to hc to talk to us the other time... people who do not have the know-hows of survival (at least, in the start) but manage to tide through by careful planning and stuff..

hmm. just some food for thought :)