whee camp!

Hi everyone. back from camp. whee

Camp has been an interesting experience for the NPC team. We have finally realised that we are quite dead for NPC.
Everything was too slow. Camp development, too slow. We had to shift the gateway. Our tent collapsed once and we had to shift that out and build another one. Gadgets mostly failed, we didn't build our baggage rack or our table and bench.

Pioneering, generally ok but we kinda ran out of ropes at 11am, and it was too slow (wth pioneering from 8-4?)

Backwoodsman was probably the most fail. We had at most 30% of required ingredients. We had no salt, sugar, pepper etc. as well as the 'special' ingredients we wanted like Dancing Chef pineapple rice paste. And we had no firewood.

But what was the most shocking was the Panther story. With Nick Eu as a leader, we had been getting about 4th for camps. As the Dec camp approached, everyone thought that Panther would die horribly as without me, Nick Eu and Joel our sec 1 there was no one with adequate skills left. Except maybe Gabriel our sec 1, and Eugene for his initiative. We thought that Jon Tan would just fail.

Or so we thought.

On the first day, the Panther tent was up within 30 minutes. The other patrols were still erecting their tents and the Panther people were standing around looking happy. I thought," Ok maybe Eugene and Jon Tan rushed them and they finished it quickly."

Then Panther won again, and again, and again. To such an extent that we got first for every event except cooking (where we got second). Out of a score of 200, we got 194. I'll add a list of the stuff that we did here:

Ironman. Michael (our slightly AP and kinda unfit sec 1) won Tat Hsiang (our Senior Patrol Leader) to the ultimate Ironman award.

Cooking. We got second.

Hike. We started out badly but eventually overtook the rest to reach the middle mark 2 mins ahead of the rest. We then finished 15 mins ahead.

Campfire. First (not really sure about this one).

Wargames. The NPC team rejoined for this one. We still got first.

VOJ. A series of stations with tasks. We got first.

The ventures were so surprised/pissed/wth'd I can picture them in the venture room throwing their proposals in the air and swearing.

This brings about the question of whether the NPC Panther people are actually helping or hindering the patrol. Time for some evaluation.

First, Nick Eu. His skills are way past anyone else in the troop. Skillswise, Nick owns everyone. You don't even need to do it, he just owns you before you start :P

But I feel his leadership skills are lacking. To compare him and Jon Tan:

Nick Eu: Michael, just do it! Don't waste time!
Jon Tan: Michael, quickly do it. [on further slacking on Michael's part] Oi, Michael. Do it.

Nick Eu shouts at you to do it, whereas Jon Tan makes you feel like doing it. Nick Eu also makes learning from him difficult. E.g:

Josh asking Nick to learn a simple knot which I should have learned a while ago and the response: Hey [Nick/Jon Tan], how to tie [so and so] knot?

Nick: I'm sure you don't know how to tie. So noob. You fail and you don't listen.
Jon: Um, sure. But try to remember it this time. I may not be around next time.

See? Not that I hate Nick Eu, but learning from him has become a thing which I fear as he just makes me feel like some random doad (is that even a word?). Jon Tan makes me feel as if it's ok, I'm human too. Although Nick Eu regularly checks on me like *hey are you ok, if not, fall out*

That's something that I have learned as a leader: Care and always try to be patient.

Time for me. God, this will take a total lack of modesty. But lots of honesty.

I think my skills are ok.

Gah, i'll continue another day. Got work to do.

Joshua (hellogoodbye! Camp Holadios! Get the pun?)

ha!

well hello I'm back. After a long period of inactivity. Well, maybe it's shorter than before, but what the heck.

NPC preparation has been really taxing on the team, especially the sec 2s. I mean, we have 9 gadgets to design and make materials for (think 42 0.3m sections of tacko). For those who don't know what tacko is, it's the bamboo pole that is commonly used for hanging laundry.

God, sawing sucks. I got 3 cuts.

But what really ticks me off the most is the other people on the team. I mean, it's the first time for us designing gadgets and we're basing all our designs on designs we have seen before. Then the sec 3s walk in, look through our gadgets and basically run around the room shouting," We're screwed! God save us! Sec 2s suck!"

I mean, if our gadgets are bad we can fix them but there is really no need to point, laugh and facepalm at our designs. Give us a break. We've been coming down for the past 3 days to saw, and how about you? None. You're getting the troop down to saw for you. Because you're all sec 3s, and you have the ability to, in the sense that you could just easily mobilise the PLs from your batch to disseminate the message. As for us, we have to plead and beg for 7 people to come down. And only like 5 people came.

I know some of the sec 3s have good intentions, but just take note of the fact that we are human too.

Phew, at least that's off my chest.

I did a random Google search on 'portal of musings', and found that my page was 4th. Hoorah, considering all my previous efforts to get other websites failed. Horribly. Like the way I fail at TF2 when it's not a LAN game and I end up killing 5 people in 1 life with a syringegun, or the way I fail at DotA when I lose sight of my Sand King after I burrowstrike into a mob of enemy players. Gah.

But on to other things, Barack Obama has won the US election. I hope he fixes the economy after 8 years of Bush randomness messing everything up (*cough* Iraq war *murmur* about freedom *hack*)

So, that's it for now!

Whee!

Joshua (omgzorz I permed the wrong skill on my DB in KOL! Nooooo.......)