teddY-risatioN™

I’m back, and kicking alive after being away from the Internet from five days, I’ve found more fun in real life. Stop laughing at me, but really, the Malaysian freshmen orientation camp this year was awesome! I feel bad for those who didn’t manage to attend it. We had so much fun, joy, laughter at the camp, the five days in the camp felt like eternity to me and it was definitely sad to let it be part of my life experience when it ended. I wouldn’t go great lengths to describe every single thing I’ve done  - I was so exhausted and thrilled by the experience that I stopped mobile tweeting on the second day in the camp - I’m pretty sure that’ll be a big turn off.

The Orientation Camp

Five words to make it short and sweet - the camp of my life! Now read on if you don’t mind long-winded writings.

The camp is awesome - everything went on as planned (except for a few unanticipated hiccups, but that’s okay), we really had lots of fun, definitely more than what I’ve bargained for. The seniors took really good care of us - they seemed to be more nervous than us if we did sprain an ankle or run a small fever. They made sure that we’re getting enough food and water, cared for every single one of us. They walked us through the boring and bland admin procedures, which we’ll have to do ourselves without their help.

I made a lot of new friends in these five days - people from my orientation group, Xomura, friends from my hall, friends of friends and etc. People are really nice over here, and we bonded like siblings over the duration of the camp. I sincerely hope that our friendship will be a continuity, and not a finale, as our classes start the week after this. On the first day of the camp, I only knew Huilin well - the reason was she sat next to me and we realised that we both studied in SG for the past two years, so at least we had something to talk about. I could still vividly remember Soonleong, our group leader, trying in vain to get us to talk on the first night - we’re too quiet, too unknown to each other. But eventually our friendship warmed up rapidly for the next few days, and we’re like a huge close family now.

Well that’s for the camp! Maybe I shall leave the details for future updates. I do keep a diary in my old zonked-out laptop, but I’m yet to retrieve it

Adults. Yes, we are!

Living in the university’s hostel made me realise that we’re treated as adults, and no longer teenagers. There’s no curfew time, no lights out time, no study time. You pay for the rental fees, you pay for your meals. You dry your own clothes, you take care of things yourselves. You can wake up at 3am in the morning and jog, you can stay awake all night going online. Blocks are no longer gender specific - members of opposite genders mingle around freely. Condoms are for sale at the in-campus 7-Eleven, which even have the glorious display multiple brands of lube. Hmmm. You can smoke as many packs of cigarettes a day you like, but there’s No Smoking signs plastered all over campus.

I love my new room. It’s near the road but it’s too noisy. It’s just a little too far from the pantry. I’ll have to climb two flights of stairs just to get my cup washed or for hot water. Washing my dirty clothes is a breeze because we don’t need to pay for it - just do it yourself! And internet is free, 24-hours waiting to be utilised, unlike in my old JC hostel where you’ll actually need to book for a slot in the computer room. YouTube loads incredibly fast, woohoo!

Tech Disaster

After surviving 5 years of abuse and handle by butter fingers of mine, my laptop’s motherboard turned her back on my the day I arrived at NTU (damn it, why this time?!) and so I could only wait till weekend to shop for a new one. I settled for an ASUS laptop ofr SGD1,800, with 3GB of RAM, Windows Vista (I couldn’t stop playing around with it), 250GB HDD and dedicated graphic card. So no more laggy photoshopping attempts, and no more hair-pulling crashes whenever I open iTunes, Photoshop and Firefox simultanouesly.

Being away from Plurk for 5 days nearly murdered my karma, but it made me realise that life still goes on without it, and that what I really need is some real life commitments. Withdrawal symptoms were fidgety feet for the first 24 hours, some worrying, some uneasiness, accompanied with multiple desperate and failed attempts to hijack a random unlucky unprotected wireless network.

Weekend!

Anything, no matter whether is it good or bad, enjoyable or sheer torture, has to come to an end. But we still had group outings over the weekend, which were definitely a joy to join! For Sunday, we headed over the IKEA to get some shopping done. I finally got a mug I’ve been needing desperately for the past week! For dinner, we dined at IKEA’s cafe, and later proceeded to Clementi for a late dinner.

Dinner @ IKEA Cafe!

Shrimp Salad from IKEA's cafe!

Unfortunately, I didn’t take any photos during the camp because I was stupid enough to leave my good old consumer-grade camera at home. You wouldn’t expect me to bring along a bulky dSLR right? My parents drove down to Singapore today and gave me the stuff that I’ve left at home, including my dSLR. So yay I’ll most probably be poking around the campus for the next few days as a shutter bug.

Too bad that I didn’t bring my Photoshop DVD, so for the moment being, I have to learn how to use GIMP! Ah wells, it’s better than nothing!