Came back from Pre-U Seminar on Friday. I'd say this camp was pretty meaningful and insightful. It was not just presentations and talks, but there were events that helps you bond with the rest of your group as well. I don't have photos on any of those events though, except photos of my room in NTU, which I won't put up here.

Let me just elaborate on what happened in this 5-day camp. Super long post ahead... you have be warned. If you cannot bear with it, exit immediately.



Day 1:

Had to juggle with my huge luggage on the bus to NTU, but I managed. When I arrived at my room in the hostel, it was more cozy that I had expected. They had a huge table, and the bed was soft... (I had expected myself to be sleeping on mere wood, but there was a mattress) It was really neat and spacious there. They even had a mosquito net (or whatever it was called) on the windows, so I didn't really bother to use my insect repellent after that.

Waited for quite a long time for my roommate to come. I was silently debating in my heart whether to wait until her arrival or to go change into the JJ shirt first since I was sweating like mad, even though there was a fan up there. In the end, I decided to just go change before she came, but after that I realised she arrived while I was in the toilet. Her name is Shenna, and she turned out to be a really friendly and sociable girl (not to mention with a really nice smile), and she's from MJC. She actually knows Winnie from my tuition class. :)

Oh yeah, the toilets have a password that you have to enter before you go in, for security purposes. Pretty cool, huh? But troublesome as well. Haha...

After that we got to meet the rest of the group, who are all basically nice and friendly people. After that it was the ice-breaking games. There's this girl called Al-Olympia (cool name, right?), and she's a mixed American and Korean. So cool... she's really funny too.

Nothing much after that... shower and sleep. The bed was pretty comfy...


Day 2:

We had to wake up early and change into our formal attire with blazers. I realised that this whole seminar is all about eating. It's like we're eating every second. For Day 2, we ate breakfast from 6.30am to 7.30am, then there's a tea reception from 11am to 12pm. After that there're some light refreshments given from 2.45pm to 3.30pm. Dinner was from 7pm to 8pm. And then from 10pm to 11pm, we have supper. We had 5 meals in one day!!! This is seriously fattening.

For the Opening Ceremony, we had a Q & A session with Minister Vivian Balakrishnan. People could either ask questions through the microphones or via sms. It was pretty interactive. Adi asked a certain interesting question which I shall not elaborate more on. Haha... but it was pretty insightful that day.

That day we had Digital Chase. It's like an Amazing Race, but in digital style. We had to run all over the campus (can you believe it, the entire NTU campus) to find clues that lead us to solve a murder mystery. The clues are all embedded in 2D barcodes. You have to capture the barcode with the camera on the laptop to see the clue. It's super cool, and I was really looking forward to it, because I just love to such events, like finding clues and the decodding part (but NOT the running part). Thankfully, my group wasn't all that into running, so throughout the whole journey, we were just brisk-walking. It's fun though. We got to do a lot of things, and I was pretty hyped up.

Do you know there was a guy named Nan Yang from NJC? (I wonder if Tan Min knows him) Such a cool name. So while we're walking across the campus, some of the guys were like, "Nan Yang, lead us... this is your school after all!" (Something like that... I can't remember what exactly they said...) Then they were also saying that in future if he studies in NTU, he should just introduce himself and saying that he owns the school. Haha... So cool.

Day 2 was basically my most favorite day of the whole 5 days. Love the Digital Chase, although we didn't get to finish it.


Day 3:

We had some more parallel presentations. The schools presenting were RJC, PJC and SP. I especially liked RJC's presentation... one girl was really eloquent and the way she presented herself was really confident. The whole presentation was super professional, even that tragic video. Haha... There were loads of questions fired at RJC, for which the guy answered them all confidently. Really pro... I spotted some really outstanding people during all these presentations. There was the RJC guy who always asked really complicated and difficult questions, and then there was an NYP guy who grasped every opportunity to ask questions, and a PJC guy who's really eloquent at answering questions. And then there was the RJC girl who's really eloquent in her presentation.

The Panel Discussions were cool too. Ann Wee, one of the panelists, was extremely hilarious. And she was, 82 that year? I can't remember. She kept making the whole lecture hall laugh and clap. Haha...

Asian FilmFest was really funny. We watched the movie entitled "The Blossoming of Maximus Oliveros", which a gay movie. The whole hall was super responsive and kept on laughing at certain scenes. I loved the last part where Maxi ignored and walked away from Victor (whom he had loved before) and everyone cheered... Haha...

My court shoes' rubber sole came off almost completely... and I had to worry about what to do the next day. No one had superglue with them, so I called my mum, and she decided to buy another pair of shoes and then go to NTU to give them to me at night. I was pretty lucky, as stated by Shenna, I guess.


Day 4:

More parallel presentations. This time it's DHS, NP and VJC. Many questions fired at NP this time, because of their interesting topic. Singawood? Haha... I like the video. Recalled lots of Hollywood movies...

More panel discussions, and then after that it was the Sandcastle Challenge and East Coast Beach. I never thought that we'd be able to build anything out of the sand, but we did. We built a casino and a sports stadium of what we thought would like in a global city, home for all (the theme for this year's seminar). It's pretty unbelievable that we'd be able to build such things.

Then they said we'd have a Beach Dinner, and made it sound really mysterious, but in the end it was packed food. I ate Chicken Rice... haha... it was good though...

My group wanted to stay up the whole night since it was the last night we'd all be together, but I was really tired, so I went to bed first.


Day 5:

The final day. Closing Ceremony was kinda boring. They allowed us to sleep for 45 minutes in the auditorium. Haha... All the schools took their chances by taking photos with each other. After that it was a tea reception. We finished quite fast, and realised that we had to wait for another hour. So I basically chatted with Silvia from SAJC about school, and time flew by...

After check-out, I left NTU for my home. Had to juggle with my luggage on the MRT and bus again. And I'm especially mad at the 945 bus driver for driving so fast like he was running for his life, while I was standing, trying to keep my luggage from sliding to the sides of the bus when he's turning (with his speed unchanged). Why is he rushing so much?! Hadn't he learnt about Circular Motion? Either you reduce the speed or increase your radius. (Or not. Because I hadn't touched Physics for an entire week... until today.)



Okay. That's about it. Really long post, huh? I apologise for that, and appreciate all (probably very very few people) that has been patient to read until the end. Thank you very much.