Monday, January 31, 2011

What's up in NS?! [Full recap : 1st Semester]

So there's many opinions and thoughts about NS (National Service). But I'll just give you a rough idea here, and it's up to YOU to decide whether it's awesome or not.

Well, I really have to thank my awesome Camp Commander for approving my early leave out from the camp. ;) He's awesome, but the trainers are not. Believe me.

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So I was placed in the camp in Teluk Rubiah, Lumut, Perak. Pretty much the style of how the camp works varies between camps.

But in NS generally, they call Guys as Wira (Hero in Malay) and they call Girls as Wirawati (Heroine in Malay)

In my camp, they start EVERY announcement with the sentence "Wira dan Wirawati" (Heroes and Heroine) , okay that was irrelevant information.

But the relevant information is; Guys CAN NEVER eat with the Girls, nor be very close to the girls (even light touching is considered something to be yelled at by the instructors). It's something to do with the religion and safety I guess. But we are allowed to have classes together and all, of course.

THERE'S SO MANY THINGS TO SAY ABOUT THIS CAMP, I DON'T KNOW WHERE TO START.

Okay, back on track...





We have roughly 490 people in the camp. Girls and Guys.

And we are all given a "code number". Like for me, I'm number 82! :) Guys will be odd numbers, and girls will be even numbers.

And we are divided into 4 groups, known as "companies" in this camp.

Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Delta.

Basically, it's like Red House, Blue House, Yellow House, Green House and according to alphabets, like A, B, C, D.

And don't ask me how they divided us. It's just pure lame. LOL.

Anyhowww, I'm in Alpha! I heard that Alpha is always the first and the second (in competitions). So this time, we can't let our company down! :)


Our company flag. Designed and colored by us :)

"ALPHA PASTI BOLEH, HOO! BOLEH HOO!" (Alpha can do it, hoo! Can do it, hoo!) Yes it's our homemade cheer.

For our dorms, we are split like Alpha people in one dorm, Bravo people in another dorm, etc. etc.

Sooo, let me tell you about our EVERYDAY SCHEDULE (since day one till now), but as day passes the schedule will change.

5.30am - Wake up! (Bangun, bangun, bangun!)
6.30am - Morning exercise in the marching field (We're not marching, but we're doing morning exercises and singing our National Anthem and the NS song)
7.30am - Breakfast (Fried noodles, fried meehoon, fried rice.. A REALLY HEAVY BREAKFAST. Not bread and butter)
8.30am - Multi-skill classes (These classes are according to different modules. Module 1 - Bringing out the best in yourself, Module 2 - Bringing out the best in others, Module 3 - Work Culture. ALL CONDUCTED IN MALAY LANGUAGE!)
10.30am - Morning tea! (Light food, like kuih, curry puff, etc. etc.) 
11.00am - Multi-skill classes (Continuation of the class~) 
12.30am - Lunch (Rice + Fish/Chicken + Side dish like eggs + Vegetables + Fruits)
*rest time*
2.30pm - Multi-skill classes (AGAIN. Our batch is running out of time, so we're like cramping all our time on classes)
4.30pm - Afternoon tea (Light snacks again)
5.30pm - Sports! (You have a choice of badminton, basketball, volleyball. Depending if you're fast enough to book the ball/racquet :P) 
6.30pm - Dinner (Just like lunch)
*rest time*
8.30pm - Watch educational videos (Mmmm, boring :S Almost everyone fall asleep during this time)
10.30pm - Supper~ 
11.00pm - Gather at the hall, sing our patriotic songs (random pick) and say the prayers (especially for the Muslims) 
11.30pm - SLEEP! :D

*6 meals per day! 
And to top it off, we've been eating during our free time. :O !

And this routine goes on for another 26 days (For my 1st semester)~

For our Multi-skill classes, we are divided into 5 classes (For our first 2 Modules). And in my class, I met really nice and awesome friends.

Actually to date, I made at least 30 new friends. And I have really close girl and guy friends. (:

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We are not allowed to wear our own clothes during our activities. But only during sleep + being in our dorm area. The clothes, uniform, shoes are all provided by the camp on the first day!

List of things they provide:

(x2) Class shirt
(x2) Class pants + belt
(x2) Sports clothes
(x2) Sports pants
(x2) Outer "Celoreng"
(x2) Inner "Celoreng"
(x2) "Celoreng" pants + belt
(x1) Class shoes
(x1) Sports shoes
(x1) Spike boots
(x1) Shoe wax (Kiwi)
(x1) Brush
(x1) Towel (which can't absorb any water :/)

**NOT MY PICTURES. Got it from the net. I'm yet to take pictures of the clothes :P

Class attire


Sports attire

"Celoreng"


Spike boots

Class shoes

Sport shoes

Lousy towel :/


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Now I'll talk about my dorm! :D

Girls' dorm and the guys' dorm are far from each other. Those place are restricted places for the opposite genders. Like Girls' can't go into Guys' one and Guys' can't go into Girls' one. Understandable, right?

So we have 7 dorms altogether. Siti Hajar, Hawa, Mariam, Maisarah, Masyita, Aminah, Celoreng. Each dorm can accommodate at 30 people.

As for the Guys dorm, their dorm has really fancy names. Like Tok Janggut, Raja Chulan, Mat Salleh, Mat Kilau, Dato' Bahaman, Leftenan Adnan. They are all historical icons, for those who don't know :D

So in our dorms, we have NO AIRCON, only fans. We only have 4 sockets to plug in our electrical appliances. (So when we want to charge our phone, we have to rush to get it). We don't have an adjoining toilet. We HAVE to follow rules, like how you fold your blankets and arrange your shoes.

And our toilets are like, a minute walk out. And it's at the furthest end there. PLUS, when it's raining, the ground towards the toilet will flood, AND we have to walk ON the water, which is full of sand and grass. So imagine that, your slippers getting sandy and wet ALL the time. Errrghh. And the toilets are all SQUATTING toilets. No sitting ones. So it's really hard to poop. But I got used to it, so yeah :D ! And the shower, it's COLD COLD WATER. No water heater. And the drainage system sucks, like really. :/

Time for dorm pictures! (Taken by my camera)

My first dorm, Maisarah.

My second dorm, Siti Hajar. (We had to shift here)

Alex Jr. the bear :D Given by my mummy, named by daddy~ :)

:)

In the morning when everyone has to wear Celoreng for the activities


Another picture of the deserted dorm :P

My cupboard~


Now let's go out!

My dorm's door. LOL. Like some kindergarten :P

Our neighbouring dorms :P

The left side~

On the way to the toilet!


Siti Hajar's dorm toilet!

"Please always keep the toilet clean. Thank you"

Going out from the toilet~


Before going in to our dorm area~


"Residential complex for girls"



Enough of dorms, let me go to the fun part!

NIGHT PATROL! 

Okay. So there's this activity called "Night Patrol". Everyday, each "company" will send in their people to do the night patrol. Let's say, tonight will be Alpha's duty to patrol. Then it would be Bravo's turn the next night. And it goes on till Delta, then it'll be Alpha again. Get it?

The night patrol is from 12am-1am, 1am-2am, 2am-3am, 3am-4am, 4am-5am, 5am-6am. At each time slot, 2 people must be together to patrol. And they don't really encourage two same races to patrol together. It should be two different races (Malay, Chinese, Indian).

I've patrolled once before, and it was okay-ishhh. You have to sleep in the "Rest room" (not toilet, please) and not in your dorms when you're patrolling. And you have to wear the FULL CELORENG while on duty. :/  But at least you have a walkie-talkie with when you're patrolling. You have to like, report to teacher every 15 minutes. HAHAHA. And you can hear the guys one too when they're reporting, because you're on the same channel with them. It's so funny, like LOL. Cos there was one time the guys started to say "ROGER THAT!" and the teacher scolded them over the walkie-talkie because the teacher didn't teach them to say that.

One good thing about patrolling, is that you can get to skip the morning exercise and sleep till 7am! :D

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On Sundays, families are allowed to visit the trainees. ONLY FAMILY MEMBERS. They do not allow boyfriends/girlfriends. So yeahh.

A week ago, my family came to visit me. SO AWESOME, because they brought me KFC for lunch, and a bag load of snacks/food :)

And my sister took pictures with her DSLR ;)

So let me show you around the camp! :)

Our hall!

Our canteen~


the entrance to the campsite! + the guys section of the canteen


"queue up politely"


the hall and canteen are joined


the schedule board, where we check for our schedule everyday~


the fruits section :P

the memo board


 warm water container :)


I didn't take much pictures. But the above pictures are taken by my sister, when she came to the camp :)

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I know you're curious about whether we are allowed to keep our handphones (cellphones), but here is what happens in our camp.

We're only allowed to keep our phones on Saturday afternoon and return it back on Sunday. Exactly 24 hours I can say.

That's why people are really crazy over the "returning the cellphone" session. ;)

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Now let me talk about the training modules!

There are 4 main training modules, which are :

- Physical module (Where we do kawad kaki (marching), high rope activities, low rope activities, water confidence, creative sports.. etc)
- National-building module (We're yet to start this module, so I'm not really that sure about this yet :P)
- Character building module (I'll talk about this later :D)
- Community service module (As the name states, community service :D)

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Now let me talk about the Character building classes :) !

The classes are all conducted in Malay language, as it is the "official language" of our country, Malaysia. Anyway, we have 3 modules in this Character building module~

Module 1 - Bringing out the best in myself.
Module 2 - Bringing out the best in others.
Module 3 - Work Culture.

And this is how the workbooks look like:

Module 1


Module 2


Module 3


The book's contents


Signature of my first group :)


All of us are divided into 5 character building (CB) classes. CB1, CB2, CB3, CB4 and CB5 :) My friends and I are LUCKILY chosen into CB1 :)

My class name tag ;)


But CB classes don't last for long. Last week we just ended our last CB class :(

Now we are starting the NEW MODULE, which is the Nation-building module, where we are RESHUFFLED and now we're in different classes :(

One thing unique about this class, is we have to BE IN CLASS before the music stops. The teacher will play some songs out loud, and you have to be in class before the music stops. Or not you'll be considered late for class. Funny eh.

And the songs they use are those really popular old songs :)

Hijau - Zainal Abidin 




Gemuruh - Faizal Tahir



Senyum - Malique ft. Najwa


:D

These songs are definitely gonna make me cry after NS :(

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Now let me tell you about the people~ :D

The people there are mostly from Perak (Ipoh, Kuala Kangsar, Taiping) and a few from Selangor (Shah Alam, Klang, Subang Jaya, Kuala Selangor) ONLY. None from Sarawak, Kedah, Kuantan.. no :(

The people are nice, friendly and awesome :) ! But the guys can be a bit weird, like they really LIKE hitting on girls since most of the guys come from hostel schools which all are guys and no female species at all. Something pretty new to them.

OH THE AWESOME PART IS, I made SO MANY friends like you can't imagine. That's the BEST part (: !

Friends from EVERY background :)


I think that's it! :) If you want to ask me something about this camp, please leave me a message on my CBOX and I'll answer it for you! :D

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>>> PART TWO <<<

1 comment:

~zOeYi~ said...

NICE POST <3 LIKE IT!