Sweet beginnings and bitter endings...

Saturday, May 26, 2007

Hahax! ok, i know that i haven't been updating much anymore. Well, let's just say that I've been both lazy and busy with school. Anyway, this post will be dedicated to pre-U Seminar 2007! Hurray! Lolx!

Pre-U Sem was fabulous! it was held from the 21st May to 25th May (Monday to Friday) in NTU. Students from all of the different JCs, polys and MI came together for this seminar. All of us were seperated from our own schools and mixed up into groups to work on different projects. this year's theme was 'iSingapore - Challenge, Create, Connect'. My group, SG14, was given Project Task 1: Singapore Outwards! - the Peaks of Excellence and our topic was Singaporeas as an Education Hub.

The people in SG14 were all super enthusiastic! As we had all met up at NTU on Monday the week before, this meant that we could start on our project earlier and that was exactly what we did. Being busy with council elections and YJC choir concert practises, I was unable to contact themto discuss our project till Saturday. On Sunday, a few of us, mainly the girls, met up at 8am at Bugis Junction to do some video filming around Singapore for our presentation. It was real fun going from Bugis to Clarke Quay (for a rock climbing competition) to Changi Airport!

On Monday, we all dragged our huge luggage bags to NTU to check into our hostel rooms. My room mate was Xiao Xian fom VJC. We all had ice-breakers and got to know one another better. Next, we headed for NUS for our learning journey. It was a fruitful trip as we got to know NUS and the courses that they offered better. We also managed to do some more filming for our video. Lastly, we were all seperated to attend 4 different software workshops which lasted till about 11pm. Velda (form Nanyang poly) and I were to attended a software workshop called 'Animaker'. however, we got mixed up and ended up attending 'koobits' instead while to other 2 members from our group ended up in our workshop.

Day 2. We were woken up by our SLOs at 5.40am. After struggling to wake up, both Xiao Xian and I met up with the rest of our group members to have breakfast and then headed off to the auditorium for the opening ceremony of Pre-U Seminar. Next, we attended the parallel presentation made by all of the different schools. It was funny to watch almost everybody falling asleep in all of the parallel presentations and even the panal discussions that we attended later. I almost dozed off to sleep too but there were so many cameras about that it would be so embarrassing if I was caught sleeping on camera! After that, we were transported back to the hostel area to work on our project.

Day3. Ok, maybe it was exactly the same as day 2. however, this was the last day for us to work on our project. While the other groups were rushing to finish it on time by 11pm, my group was just slacking. After all, we had started early, therefore, we were almost done. Most of our project time on Tuesday and Wednesday was spent on exercising by running round NTU campus or in Velda and Lydia's (our group leader and from MI) room playing card games and talking. Before i forget, we visited the provision shop at NTU and saw a sight -spongebob which was about to jump! It was hilarious and i even took some pictures of it for Geena. Hahax! In case her brother hasn't seen it. Oh, yes! I started the craze of switching blazers with everyone to take pictures and soon, my group joined in the craze. Before we knew it, everyone there were also switching blazers to take pictures. At night, i slept over at Padma (from Temasek poly) and Celina's (from SRJC) room where we started to talked about everything under the sun until super late before we all started to fall asleep.

Day 4. We had parallel presentations again followed by panal discussions. After that, we all went for security check before heading off to the Istana for tea with the President. We arrived quite early and therefore we had to stay in the bus for almost an hour before we finally went down to go to the lawn. in the bus, we entertained ourselves by singing and talking with one another. When we were n the lawn of the Istana, Dionne ( from Ngee Ann poly) and I started to get all excited at being at the Istana and started taking lots of pictures of ourselves and our group. It was super funny the way we were scrambling here and there, taking picture in front of the Istana and in front of the fountain in the lawn in Istana.

Last day of Pre-U Sem. We could all wake up half an hour later! Hahax! Thank god as majority of us all when to sleep at 1 plus. Ok, maybe only me. A few at 12pm. The rest fell asleep at the void deck (is that what it is called?) downstairs of our rooms and later woke up at 3am and dragged themselves back to their rooms to sleep. i knew the time because when Xiao xian came back to our room, I was awaken by the lights thinking thatit was time to get up. Lolx! In the end, i rwalised the time and fell back to sleep in my contact lens! Anyway, on our last day, we went to the exhibition hall in NTU to view the selected projects. Yes! our group was one of them. After all, we did put in a lot of effort in our project, especially Velda and Lydia! The Minister of Education was the guest ofhonour and he even complimented our project! too bad he didn't get to view all of it because he had thought that it was over and people started to ask him questions. After that, we had our closing ceremony. It was really cool as each of us were given light sticks to form cirlces and them connect them with other circles of light stciks to form a chain. Then, some of our group members like Dionne started to cry. even Seow Huan (one of our SLOs from PJC) started to cry. Finaly, after the whole ceremony, we went back to our hostels to pack up and leave from home.

It was super fun and I've never felt so bonded to my group members from any of the camps that I've attended! It's definitely a camp that I'll never forget, ever! by the way, I'll most likely upload my pictures in the next post. Yup, Geena, including suicidal spongebob! Lolx!

6:46 AM