If you asked me to…

Sorry for the absolute lack of updates on my part. It’s been very busy for me recently.

But here’s what I have to say!

I love bridge.

I missed school and all my friends. For an entire period of 2 weeks, I completely missed school – first, I was ill, then there was AYC. That obviously means that I have to blog.

The Asean Youth Convention was an inaugural event, involving students from 4 countries in the ASEAN+3. As a Facil (facilitator), my job was to facilitate group discussions and bond the group together. Robyn helped me out as my admirable co-facil, and we were in charge of Group 5 and Vietnam Hai (2). It was quite an experience – seeing people from different worlds and so on.

But this post isn’t about that. It’s about the bonding that the facils – and especially the ones from A13A – had. I would dollop a little doubt that AYC would have been even half as fun without Lisa (Boy-lovin’ bitch), Sally (Korean ah-mah!), Robyn (9-inch what?), Matthias (energiser bunny), Claire (my “closest” friend), Jingyi (makes a loud huh noise during math lecture), Nghi (give me a neck and tie now).

A little shout-out here to all the facils too – Lyn, Charm, Yi Tong, Joyce, Hong Yan, Weng Keong, Linxi, Kai Li, Zi Le, Jess, Glendon, Zan, Phoebe, Zheng Kai. And our cute, pretty SLOs – Jaren and Joelle (uh… respectively). Oh and Zhong Ming, Clarence, and those people who made it a great experience for us.

But still.

We stayed over at YMCA Metro in the basement bunks till about 2.30 am. The Monopoly game was quite hectic, and we were joined by Zhong Ming, the alternative chair, who was quite fussed over by the girls for his oh-so-unique concoction of geeky intellect and boyish charms. Clarence also came, and he got similar treatment, but more for his Aussie accent. The monopoly game began to devolve into senseless chaos until I valiantly (and admittedly, quite brilliantly) negotiated deals with the players on the board. Alas! My invocations toward a more playable game were crushed when they decided to play a mix of truth or dare.

“Let’s go in the next round, okay? Guys?”

I was quite bored (those around the table apparently weren’t, given Lisa’s impressive ability to invent truths and dares you wouldn’t realise could even exist in a somewhat decent mind), until we decided to play Bridge. The game is quite, quite intriguing and I found I had a very decent appetite for risk. The obsession with Bridge lasted throughout the convention – occasionally we would slip out of lectures and play it on the tables besides the theatrette. Robyn memorably commented on the addict-like nature with which we played the game. Then we would sneak back in just in time for Q&A. The Organising Comm obviously wasn’t too pleased and they made that known, after which we the decent facils sat through the entire lecture.

Another time we played at J8 before that night’s performance. For some reason we had 4 folds in a row. Statistically speaking, we reduced the chances of another group of 4 bridge players getting that. Oh! The sacrifices I make to make this world a better, happier place!

Stayover #2

Stayovers always excite me. There’s something magical about not returning home to do something – a project, a movie marathon, or just plain cards. But I simply don’t dig the immense enthusiasm where bathing and brushing teeth are concerned especially during camps. People just can’t wait to go and take a brush (cool) or take a bath (even cooler) and it’s almost like an uncontrollable urge. I’m going to hypothesise that it’s a communal thing that deepens the sense of community.

But we stayed over at Lisa aunt’s house! It was wonderful stuff. Before that we had the closing party, in which we performed a very phail version of the batch dance, which ended at 10:30. By the time we reached her house it was midnight, and we stayed till 5:30 with gaga gossip and blessed bridge. It was très cool. The entire convention experience was wrapped up very nicely like that, and at 6 the “next morning” we headed back to YMCA metro for breakfast.

My most important takeaway from AYC?

I love bridge.

And now it’s back to reality for me. It’s going to be a real hectic 2 weeks for me – planning and executing a tournament, finishing an overdue PW report draft, catching up on 2 weeeks of Geog, GP and Lit. If you see me down the corridor, ask me how I’m doing.

Hopefully we’ll get to catch up – unless I give a hurried smile and rush down the corridor, buried in my busy little existence.