Cause They're Amazing Just The Way They Are

Break it down now.

I've probably mentioned this several times over the past week. I'll just do it again, to emphasise my point. Transition Camp 2011 for students of the Jeffrey Cheah School of Medicine and Health Sciences. A trip comprised of all the students from Medicine, Pharmacy and Psychology from Monash.

All in all, a total of approximately 200 students (not including student guides and lecturers) ; 130 from Medicine, 50 from Pharmacy and 20 from Psychology were a part of this camp.

Note : REJOICE! For now I am bringing in PICTURES into my ever so mundane and dull repetitive posts.

Day 1

The day began in the wee hours of the morning (I can't help but sense a sentence phrasing fail), and we (Pharmacists to be) were asked to gather at 7:30AM SHARP for registration. My car had broken down the day earlier but I managed to hitch a ride from Jon and made it there, ON TIME. I must've looked rather dazed at the time not being able to locate a single familiar face in the crowd of 100 or so people before I realized..

"Hey, these are all MBBS people" Nuts, I'm in the wrong place.

The exact moment I thought that, I ran into 2 people I recognised from the day before. Yes! I found some fellow coursemates. Then I learnt that the Pharmacy students were meant to gather at the cafeteria instead of the main foyer so I scurried along to join the rest of my cohorts.

*A few hours later*

We all were told that our actual registration session only began around 8:30AM onwards. I felt like I've just been robbed of an hour of precious sleeping time. Then again, nothing much could be done about it as we were delayed again and again. We only started moving around 9:00AM when we were sent to LT2 for our briefing.

That's when I got these.

My Transition Camp 2011 manual along with my nametag for the trip.

Then, we were sorted out into our respective groups. As displayed in the bottom right corner of my nametag, I was part of Group 3, which would later be renamed (will be written later) and with Yoke Yee and Mei Yi.

We were together with Jason, Amanda, Mai, John, Tracy, Fiona, Ping Yee, Priscila.

Thankfully, we were all herded onto the bus not long after that. After all the waiting, we were finally leaving!

It was a rather uneventful bus ride. I remember staring at the KESAS highway. In the blink of an eye, it was changed to this sight.

Ever so closer to our destination. Genting View Resort.

We chucked our luggage at the lobby and made our way to lunch. Om nom nom buffet style. Woot!

Check out the pool! (one we never got to use).

:D

The lobby of the resort.

We didn't have much of a break before we were hurdled into our first activity in our short stay at Genting View.

It's called "Pick and Choose". Somehow, I find the title extremely REDUNDANT. I'll now attempt to go through what I recall of the rules from that game.

Firstly, you are given 5 baskets to be placed at 4 different locations; each getting farther and farther from the previous. Then, you divide your team members into Throwers and Retrievers. Throwers, as you would have guessed from their names, are in charge of throwing the balls into the baskets. Should they miss, that's where the Retrievers come in. They are supposed to run about, gathering bouncing balls to be thrown back to the Throwers for another attempt. Trick here is that the Thrower can't step beyond a line. And with the amount of members each team had and the limited time to set up a strategy, things were bound to get messy.

At the end of it all, the "points earned" would be converted into cash counterparts to be donated for charity. That's what I heard, and vaguely recall.

Almost immediately after that session, we were hustled into our next planned activity. Ice breaking, composed of "Game of Evolution" and "Flag Drawing and Cheer". In the former, we were drilled on the rules. It was a rather simple game. Everybody starts out as an 'Egg' and walked around to other people. Once you find someone, introduce yourself and play Scissors, Paper, Stone. If you win, you move up a rank, if you lose you lost a rank.

The ranks were :

Egg --> Chicken --> Gorilla --> Superhuman.

After the alloted time slot, I found myself amongst the losers (Anyone who hasn't reached Superhuman rank were considered to have lost the game). We were split into 2 groups, winners and losers. The guide then told us to "Enojy the show" We had to spell Mississippi.. With our butts, yeah that game. Awesome, no? Being on the side that's lost, naturally I started to go "Ohh noooo.."

Until...

Those who WON had to do it! Finally, a game where losing is more fun. :D

Heh. :D

In the latter event, we were given 25 minutes to figure out a group name, draw a flag, and come up with a group cheer. Took us a great heap of time before we finally settled on a name. Short, simple, yet entirely meaningful, Pharmily. (Yes, this is the part where YOU, the reader, go AWWWW now)

Go AWW you people!

Then we were to describe the inspiration behind our flags and their meanings as well as a performance of our group cheer.

Group "Warferin" :D

Oh, we were evaluated too during our flag design and cheer. More will be elaborated later on.

Once all that was said and done, we headed back to the lobby to gather. The keys to our apartments were handed out, 3 rooms per unit, 2 people per room. I was sorted out into the Meranti apartments together with most of the Pharmacy students. My housemates for the next few days were Jason, who was also my group leader, Sam, Ivan, Weng Kong and also.. I'm so sorry, I can't remember his name. :O


My room.

I would say that the schedule seemed rather rushed as we almost always ended our activites behind schedule. We barely had enough time to pack and settle into our place when it was time for the next activity.

Not knowing where exactly was the field situated, the 6 of us ventured into a random path. We crossed bushes, paths that seemed to have not been used in years, a small creek (they called it a river), the Riverview apartments, the GVR clubhouse and found ourselves, at the field. Better still, we were all on time. Perfect punctuality.

Then we noticed. The whole crowd was MBBS students. We felt rather lost and disorientated as no other Pharmacy students were anywhere in sight. The lecturers assured us it was the right place. Turns out every single other Pharmacy student except the 6 of us would turn up at least 30 minutes late. Wow. LOL! Including some of the student guides. (Hey, I'm just stating what I remember)

MBBS students!

The telematch was rather enjoyable. It felt rather awkward for us as there were only the 6 of us when the first game began. After reeling in several student guides to join our group we had just nice for a single line, by then some of our missing Group 3 members had shown up. However, there were around 17 MBBS groups competing as well. We felt SEVERELY outnumbered.

Didn't stop us taking the first game. :P Hula hoops ftw!

Now, the rest of the Pharmacy students had shown up, in time for the second game. Brace for epic coolio name..

Flying Water Bomb!

Wow. Can't they just name it Water Balloons?

We had to line up, single file with around 2m gap between each group member and toss the balloons from start to finish. My group lost all balloons by the 3rd pass. Well, we gave it a shot. The game was taken by another Pharmacy team. (Go Pharmacy!)

The last game of the day was.. I don't know what you call it. It involved walking on a plank, or rather, wearing the plank as your 'shoe', 3 members at a time. Caterpillar feet...? Or something. It did not go well. My hands got rather aquainted with the ground during those short minutes.

A+ for effort! :D

Short break for dinner before we had a workshop to prep us for the coming year.

Short talk.

Mei Yi and Yoke Yee promoting the role of a pharmacist.

During one of the talks, we (group 3) discussed about why we chose Pharmacy. Yoke Yee, Mei Yi and I were all going on about how Accountancy was our back up plan. Can't remember much from that conversation but it was rather funny. (:

Went back to our apartments after that. I felt drained.

Lights out...

Day 2

First and foremost as I write this section, I apologize for the lack of pictures to.. picture the day's activities. Of course, I'll try to scour for the pictures from the Pharmacy dept. to be uploaded onto Facebook. So look there for photos on day 2 sometime in the near future. In the meantime, I implore you to use your imagination to visualise how the day went as I write them down into little sentences.

The night before, we were informed of the importance of PUNCTUALITY in the line of us pharmacists. Hence, we were instructed (and expected) to gather at the field, 7.00AM SHARP to start the day's planned activities.

7:00AM? Yes, JOGGING. Jogging, I get, but jogging at the steep hillsides of GVR, I was out of breath only 50% of the way. If not for the extensive jogging routine I've been forcing myself to do the past month, I'm pretty sure I'd have collapsed only 10% of the way. Frankly, I was never known for my stamina. It was horrid, I mean it.

A short hour break for breakfast before we had another lecture scheduled.

It was a short talk regarding the Pharmacy programme and we were also told about a certain activity later that evening. A talent show, where it was MANDATORY for each and every group to come up with a routine and perform it. My heart sank, somewhat, I was never one for stage performances. I've always battled a nagging stage fright and inability to come up with interesting sketches. So I did what I could, and kept to being a follower.

I tried. Turns out I wouldn't be able to relax. We managed to settle on a routine in the end though. That much, I am relieved.

We were given a short break for morning tea before being pitted in our next event, The Amazing Photo Race. Or something like that. Each team were given a list of 25 things to photograph in the most creative manner possible.

I do not have any pictures at the moment so I shall skip this part.

Course, it was one of the most fun activities during our short 3 day stay at GVR. (:

I shall briefly write on this activity. Among the tasks asked of us were to take a group jump shot. It took us almost 20 minutes just to settle this one shot, technical issues and stuff. Among other shots were a Beauty Pageant shot, a Wondergirls shot, Thousand Arms Buddha, and many more.

Thankfully Sadly, the scheduled Nature Walk at 4:00PM was cancelled due to the persistent rain. That gave us some time to practice our routine again.

Moving on, it was the night of the second day of Transition Camp 2011.

An event I'd like to refer to as the Talent Show, as we were instructed to come up with a performance to showcase our various and overflowing talents.

We had practiced our routine over half the day and just barely ironed out some kinks.

The stage.

A performance by a MBBS group.

I think this is the Psychology's routine.

Us, anxiously awaiting our turn.

The performances were evaluated on 4 factors :
- Quality of performace
- Teamwork
- Creativity
- Audience Response

Personally, I feel that the criterias are lopsided and rather favoured the MBBS students. Firstly, the MBBS had over 130 students while the Pharmacy had only 50ish, and the Psy had 20+. Jeez, I wonder. Haha.

Prizes were given up to the 6th runner up, that is the 7th place. Out of those 7 places, Pharmacy took 4 prizes. Not bad at all if I say so myself, of course some might say that I've a biased opinion, being a Pharmacy student.

Sadly, the most coveted first place was taken by the MBBS. >:( (Note the earlier criteria)

First runner up was Pharmacy, P2. Video on Facebook. (:

The girls from P3, Pharmily. Us. (:

All of us.

Us again, but blur.

Clearer shot with an almost complete heart.

Went back to our respective apartsments around 12:00AM.

Then again, THE NIGHT IS STILL YOUNG! :P

Day 3

So began the final day of our 3 day expedition to GVR. After being drained completely both physically and mentally, it was a refreshing change to have the morning jog cancelled.

Still, it didn't offer any relief that I had to be awake by 7:00AM to start preparing for breakfast at 7:30AM. It was time to gather our luggage and be at the lobby for checkout. I remember running after the van, looking rather comical, only to be told that it was already full and I should take the bus. Mehhh.

Regardless, Jason and I made it there just in time.

Some miscommunication occured and we were robbed of our tables and chairs. :(

Traffic Jam. It was another fun game where a lot of thinking skills was required. It was somewhat like a puzzle game. Figured it out soon enough, I like puzzles. (:

Went back into the hall for photoshooting and one last bout of mingling before we all departed.

Student guides. My seniors who had guided us throughout the duration of the 3 day Transition Camp at GVR. (:

Uhh...

The final activtity before lunch and departure? The student guides did a performance for us. It was the winning performance by them 2 years back. (:

Well..

All good things have to come to an end, and this was no exception.

Note how I seem to get lazier as the post went towards the end. Don't blame me, it's 1:30AM now. Cut me some slack people. I'm trying my best. I can't even dish out average level words at the moment.

All in all, Transition Camp 2011? Best possible way to kick start the next 4 years. (:

Perhaps I'll volunteer to be a Student Guide for next year's camp. That way I'd get to torment my juniors. (: