Whoa what a weekend.

My mother recently asked if i'm being busy meaningfully. Zzz. I hope so.

NDP training yesterday was... rather sian, imo. :( Arghh i think i didnt do a good job in leading my group, hence sian x 2. Ironically, for all the games that i just praised last week, they all seemed to flop yesterday. I forgot to consider an important factor of - number of people playing.

The mass ice-breakers were far too crowded and messy.
The Caterpillar Walk with 16 people in the caterpillar, in half the space provided as compared to last week's caterpillar of 7 people, was quite a failure.
Inhumane Knot, with 14 people (Maurice and i sat out for this game. Oh yes we got paired up to be the leaders of NDP G2. [if any of my G2 members happen to read this, kudos for googling/being resourceful one way or another, hello] So i'm his Deputy Leader, which makes me the DL. HAHA k lah but i'm not dl about it at all, in fact i am quite relieved and happy :) ) also isnt as effective as it was for 8 of us (+tingwei) last week. Each person was supposed to hold on and not let go of their end of the twine, and the objective was cooperation and teamwork, and physically move about, while holding on to the twine, to undo the knot. But i realized quite a lot of them (not just our group) decided to just pick the knot from the center, and readily let go of their end of the twine to just pick and pull from the middle. To me, that's quite a dangerous sign of disregard for rules and instructions (ok the flipside is being flexible and creative, etc) and also, individualism with a penchant of shortcuts (flipside: able to seek alternative solutions)

We had a new game, which was called Toxic Waste.
Set-up: a regular 500ml bottle taped to the ground, and a cut-off 1000ml bottle (so it's like a container with a big opening) filled with water, placed about 15cm away from the taped bottle.
There's a perimeter marked out, so we're not supposed to step into the boundary. And using raffia strings, we're supposed to come up with ways to fill the taped bottle with water, from the cut-off 1000ml bottle.
And no talking.
CAN YOU IMAGINE HOW DIFFICULT THAT WAS. HAHAHAHAA wow when i first saw the set-up and understood the rules, i thought it was impossible.
And ok we didnt manage to do it, though we managed to lift and topple the cut-off bottle, about 3-4 times hurhur.
The "method" was supposedly to wrap the raffia string around the cut-off bottle, this will require great teamwork because 2 people are holding on to 2 ends of 1 raffia string, and with 16 people, there are 8 raffia strings criss-crossed everywhere, and everyone is excited and eager to move, and if you can imagine, with that mess of strings in the middle, someone else's move will also affect you, if they decide to pull taut and the knot in the middle will be pulled up, and possibly slip off the knot that was painstakingly wrapped around the cut-off bottle...

Haii anyway. Maurice was pretty much the "main" person leading, especially when we had cheering competitions and i was totally 0.0 Die, i hope i didnt affect my group. :( And then he left early and i was left alone to do the debrief at the end.
Omg that was the first moment of the day where i was super alert/awake because of the sobering flash of panic. And i think i did a horrible job of debriefing. :( It was the same "feedback" thing as last week-
3 things that were good, 2 that needs improvement, 1 that everyone dont like-
but somehow, maybe it's the establishment and distinguishing of a higher rank "Leader", (or maybe it was me - they cant reply that the thing they dont like is me) no one responded, until i had to prodprod and asked a few times before i got a reply.

Hai anyway, i hope it gets better from now on!! Judging by the enthusiastic adding-of-each-other + setting up of groups on fb, i think it's a good sign!

Right after debrief at about 6.20pm, i rushed down to NY Homecoming and reached at about 6.45pm. Hurhur um the steamboat dinner itself was okay lah, it was expected, and it wasnt that bad. Ah how should i put my feelings about 415 into words? Haha i cant.

At least to me, it was quite nice and comfortable, and amazing that whenever we meet up, we can easily pick up where we left off last time... From now on, it's really hard to say when is the next time we would all meet up again. Ah well, BU ZAI HU TIAN CHANG DI JIU, right. :) We left NY at about 8.45pm and walked to 6th ave for ice-cream, and thankfully i managed to hitch a ride back from my dad, and crashed out after showering.

And still woke up in time this morning for guitar. Sigh but today's lesson was rather boring. :( Didnt learn any new songs, but when i was keeping the music stand in the "storeroom", i spied this stack of Chinese Orchestra notes, and hand-itchy/randomly flipped through it, and saw this!!

张德财 was my CO instructor in Rulang!! :O:O:O I wonder how is he now... A serendipitous finding. :)