CAP’09 leaves me with a sense of bewilderment and astonishment. I have thought for five minutes how to put this, but even writing casually about it seems difficult. We had the “academic” stuff on one hand, which wasn’t excessively mind-nourishing. My greatest takeaway was Cyril Wong’s (the local poet) comment of my hastily scribbled poem:

“A bad Sylvia Plath.”
- Cyril Wong

So much for my lit capabilities. We had Agnes Meadows as well (a brilliant performance poet, but I accidentally blurted out “Meadowfields” instead – and have been mocked quite extensively ever since). The plenaries were sleepfestes, while the writing workshops were not bad. I was exposed to poetry writing – not my can of rootbeer, but still. For the performance workshop, I was allocated Contemporary Dance. Now I want you to imagine me. Then imagine me dancing. I know it looks bad. So stop imagining and get back to this post.

CAP was much more of a social event. We meet fellow students from different backgrounds and schools not as students, but as people waiting to socialise and be socialised with. I was privileged to be part of the “4AM gangzz” clique. (Somehow groups of friends make things more endurable.)

The 4AM gangz

this one with leon

Initially it was Rachelle (self-declared tyrant-tranny from VJ), Samuel (“good” samuel from TJ) and I. We caught on almost immediately, and stuck together throughout. It’s amazing how you can enter this camp and after 5 days feel as if you’ve known the person for such a long time. We were joined by Leon/TQ/Michelle (RJ), Liying (PJ), Yishu (AC) and Isaac (NUSH) soon after. On the last night 0f CAP, we stayed up at the campus’ “Reading Room” and went from playing iPhones to naughty gossip to music appreciation to plain talk. Some person lay sprawled across the length of the large tables, and some person – worse – spat blueberry waffles onto the iPhones! Various declarations were made – from Rachelle’s “I have eight boobs” and “all my underwear is on my bed” to Liying’s so-naughty-it-should-be-forbidden gossip – that it kept the conversation going. It was havoc.

I left at around 3:30 – apparently they stayed till 4:00 until some councillors caught the rest of them. I heard the next day that the councillors even thought that they were making love. The very idea still makes me laugh.

It all leads me back to my thesis: it’s darn refreshing to know people from other backgrounds.

The subsequent uploading frenzy of facebook photos was one of the most ferocious I’ve seen – scrolling, tagging, commenting – one entire night frizzled into virtual bits of colours joined together to represent friendships made. Camwhoring was another major feature in the last hour. Led by the indefatigable Rachelle, the 4AM gangz took over a hundred shots. (Facebook, we were sure, was going to crash that night, given the amount of photos taken. FB has created new purpose for digital cameras.)

And lastly, my recent invention is quite simply the most nifty thing in the World of Mugging: the Slack Quotient. It measures your work done over a period of time. Unlike IQ, it can vary at different intervals. For simplicity of use, Aaron Tang and Nigel have a moving SQ average of 1-24; while Wenjie has an average (self-declared) SQ of 180. This Wiki article uses almost humorous terms to describe IQ. On the same scale:

SQ Ranges	Slackness Classification
1-24	Profound Retardation in slacking ability
25–39	Severe Retardation in slacking ability
40–54	Moderate Retardation in slacking ability
55–69	Mild Retardation in slacking ability
70–84	Borderline Retardation in slacking ability
85-114	Average Intelligence in slacking
115-129	Bright in slacking
130-144	Moderately Gifted in slacking
145-159	Highly Gifted in slacking
160-175	Exceptionally Gifted in slacking
Over 175	Profoundly Gifted in slacking