Update: I've received a conditional offer from Durham University to read English, requiring 38 points and a 7 in HL English. Not so dower anymore =)
If you need immediate indication of how the trip went, I think the MSN personal messages of my classmates sum it up nicely. Ron states that "it's such a perfect day", while Xin Quan puts it simply as "being happy" and asks what many of us have at the back of our heads, "whats next". I think it's safe to say that it has been a thoroughly enjoyable trip that marks the beginning of the next few weeks of similar nature.
Throughout the day, I sometimes encounter things that trigger a train of thought that becomes the centrepiece of that evening's blog post. Needless to say, I was met with many of those moments over the past 4 days.
Quite honestly, the whole exam experience seems but a distant memory now that I have just been through one of the highlights of my year. Despite having actively attempted to purge my mind of the academic phantasmagoria during my night out drinking with my classmates, there is nothing that compares with literally leaving the country and just losing oneself in something of a completely different nature. Deliberately not using the mobile phone adds to the sense of being dislocated in a good way. To that end, this trip has been thoroughly successful.
After the grocery run on the day immediately following the exams (I speak of it as if it's been forever, though in actuality, it hasn't even been a week since), I found myself lying around stoning in front of the television more than hyping myself up for the trip. I think that short 24 hours between exam frenzy and indulgence was space that was required to transition, and by the time I arrived at the ferry terminal, I was more than ready to jump right into it.
Being oddly early, I saw none of my classmates, but rather a whole other group of my year mates who were going to Bintan as well, but to Club Med instead. There was this brief complication involving ticketing, and having my name called over the intercom was an interesting experience. The early ferry that brought Ronald, Sean and I to Bintan was far more crowded than the later one bringing the other 10 (Yew Jin, Elendrus, Xin Quan, Clarence, Chang Yun, Guang Yi, Daniel, Justin, Ryan and Ronny). Probably from merely sleeping a handful of hours the previous night after tagging Melodie's photos from Angelshare, I was dead to the world for the 45 minute trip, listening to Kanye West's 808s and Heartbreak, my music of choice for this trip.
The other group arrived about 2 hours after we did to find the three of us beginning the first of many games of Munchkins, and I teamed up with Xin Quan in our first joint endeavor to win. Mercifully, the two villas (C 50/51) did not take long to be ready, and we settled down fairly quickly. The leisure centre would be one of two locations where we spent most of our time, the other being the beach. Our first visit there was for soccer and ping pong, though it wasn't particularly long 'cos we had to be back at the villa to cook dinner. The details of each meal I will leave to your imagination.
We eventually decided on the villa room arrangements, with me, Yew Jin, Ronald and Sean in the large bedroom and Elendrus and Chang Yun in the other, with the other 7 in the other villa.
At the prospect of a night in just playing Mahjong (this was after a rather hilarious round of Taboo where my team of me, Yew Jin, Clarence, Justin and Elendrus basically whitewashed Xin Quan, Daniel, Ryan, Ronald and Sean), some of them went to check out the in-resort club, Silk, to see if they were broadcasting that night's soccer matches. It was, and Elendrus drove back to pick me up to join Clarence, Chang Yun, Xin Quan at the club for some food (oddly cheaper than the crazy expensive food sold in the other joints throughout the resort), and we left early since the soccer match we wanted to watch was not being aired. This was also after we were treated to a dose of loud techno-electronica followed by a live act that tried to redo Billboard tracks in a loud pseudo-rock style to little success.
Day 2 was spent at the beach with soccer and volleyball, followed by a dip in the sea before it began pouring and I headed back earlier than the rest. Dinner was the Indonesian buffet spread which left quite a bit to be desired. We decided to head to the beach at night, but it was way to dark to even think of doing anything, so it was off to Silk again, this time for drinks. Nothing spectacular, but cheaper than some of the places I've been to back home. Insert an hour of pool in between dinner and Silk, 'cos the exact time eludes me. I was horrible when paired with Elendrus, but much better when paired with Ronald. Something must be said about instinct. When one overthinks shots it can be disastrous.
Day 3 was spent at the leisure centre, and I joined the second group for Laser Quest because of space constraints. My eventual score of 362 stands head and shoulders above the other next score, and contributes more than half to the green team's (me, Yew Jin and Sean). Plus I managed to dodge being shot once by one opponent and fulfilled my one goal of obliterating Elendrus' score by getting 160 of those 362 points off of him.
Clarence and I played ping pong for the first time in about 2 years, then we renewed our old doubles rivalry involving Yew Jin and Xin Quan that ended abruptly when we were buggy-ed back to the villa to get ready for dinner out. The French buffet spread was miles better than the previous night.
Day 4 was more ping pong 'cos Yew Jin and I gave bodyboarding a miss before checking out, more joint Munchkins with Xin Quan, and then back to the ferry point where we got to sit at the upper deck with the glorified couches known as Premiere seats. Xin Quan, Clarence and I managed to slip into a cab unnoticed by the long queue that had formed and were soon on our way back, before we met (with Daniel) again at Chomp Chomp, Serangoon Gardens for dinner. Clarence and I walked out to Yio Chu Kang road before he turned left and I right to head back home, having had the chance to chat about the year past and discovering that he shared my philosophy of living with no regret, at least when applied to the IB context. It was a good end to this brilliant trip.
So, about those Thoughts that would have otherwise been the focus of this blog post had it not been for the trip itself.
1. There is something almost necessary about white sand and clear blue water that just signals that a holiday has started. I think it's a personal thing, since the best memories I have of being overseas have somehow been marked by this perfect setting that I cannot find back home.
2. I have never had the chance to see a constellation of stars, and while waiting for the buggy to ferry the rest to the beach on Night 2, Ron asked me to look up and for a moment, I was just so taken in by the vast array of stars on so clear a night. Breathtaking.
3. I saw the sun set over the horizon on the ferry back, literally a sphere of red disappearing beyond a mass of land and water.
4. Unlike the photo-crazy people I've been around for the past 2 years, my classmates of '06 find no need to document our escapades to such an extent, and it doesn't make it any less memorable. 2 trips this has been repeated, and I do hope we do this again some time.
To echo Alice Walker, I would like to thank you all for coming.
