Camping and Reunion

I’ll be going Taman Negara this coming Friday!

For a city girl, I think I’m relatively comfortable roughing it out in the jungle, mainly thanks to my many years in Boys’ Brigade. In my 5 years in 2nd Subang Jaya Company, I guess I have went camping at least twice in a year, meaning almost 10 camps in total, either Drill Camp, NCO Training camp, or fellowship camp.

While people worry about being bitten by leeches or getting blisters in the legs, I think back about the worries I had during camps and laugh out loud. Back then, I have no time to worry about wearing the right type of hiking shoes or applying sufficient sunblock lotion or spraying insect repellant, because I had to be alert for other disciplinarian things. I gotta look out for bugle or whistle blows, to know when I have to drop all things, fall into line and start marching. I need to lose sleeping time to polish my uniform. My experience of Operasi Burung Hantu was to be lead into the jungle, be given raw fish, beras (uncooked rice) and few sticks of matches, and told to build a tent out of bamboo shoots, and make a fire to cook rice and fish with those few matches.

Once, I was awaken in my sleep at 3am, to fall into line and start marching in the dark. I don’t have time to worry about my clothes or shoes because I had one minute to get out of my tent and night trek blind-folded in my pyjamas and slippers. What hiking boots, what knee-length socks, what track pants…I had zero protection from insects and leeches. If I complained about leeches I would be given punishment lol. I also ended up doing 45 push-ups because I misplaced my camp booklet.

Some may say that it was plain stupidity to obey those kinda orders or endure such risky challenges, but I felt that those activities had made me who I am today. There may be little direct application of such obedience in real life, but it taught me to believe that I am capable of doing many things, that I am strong enough to face my fears.

Some people who didn’t know about my Boys’ Brigade days may have think of me as some princessy, whiney, protected girl. Hey, hey, hey, now you know not to look down on Selena! ^o^

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Yesterday I met up with a bunch of girls whom I last met when I was 10 years old. I had a reunion with my primary school friends, girls from SRK St Mary, who went separate ways when the school relocated to Selayang. We were displaced all over KL; I went to SRK Bukit Bintang 2. Thanks to Facebook, we managed to contact each other again!

From left: Syarifah Syaza Liyana, Sel, Mei Qin, Syazwani Pilus, Mariam Charliza, Athiqah Teo, Alia Hani.

We were all short and small little creatures, running around school, playing hopscotch, being bossy class monitor, chatting kiddy talk, and suddenly the next time we meet we’ve graduated or almost graduating @.@

We met up in A&W, KLCC for lunch. Then Mei Qin and I went to Mid Valley to meet up with Darling. We jalan-jalan bought stuff for Taman Negara (Mei Qin’s going too!), went to SME Fair, and pretended to be lesbo partner in Wedding Fair >.<

Then Darling belanja Pasta Zan Mai…their pasta were good! And so so many variety I think we took 15 mins to flip the menu and decide what to order! The only regret was the Salmon Sashimi…it looked so shrunken that I thought that they had stir-fry the fish…RM18 for 7 tiny thin slices of shrunken fish fillet??? @.@

It’s great to catch up with old friends again, especially now that I’m out of uni and it feels like everyone has went their own ways. I accept that friends come and go, but I also believe that real friendship survives the test of time =)