Happy St John Day!

This day celebrates the Saint John the Baptist.

It also celebrates the founding of the Order of St John, and its establishment St John Ambulance. The actually founding date was lost in history so the monks serving in the Order use 24th of Jun bcos their patron saint was Saint John the Baptist.

This year's St John Day is also my first encounter that this day does not falls on a school holiday. During my secondary school life, this day always falls on school holidays and we only get to celebrate it on the first friday when school reopens, then at sometime it was changed to first wednesday...i guess bcos friday sometimes clashes with NCC day.

St John members, let's show our pride as a member by wearing symbolic items of our organisation today bah!

Lastly, enjoy this joyous day (even though it might not be but since it is St John Day, make it a happy one!)

It has been a tiring past two weeks for me. First week was CDI, a 3D2N camp, quite a relaxed camp as focus was on skills training. Tired for me even though i wasn't doing much drills but i guess people do get old cos all those long hours of under the sun, standing, walking around to guide the trainees kind of make me feel tired maybe also the lack of sleep. Not much to say about the camp cos most of the times we are doing drills and nothing but drills.

Then in 3 days interval, i departed for another camp, Combined Corps Camp. This time longer 5D4N for us trainers. This is the first camp that i am holding the highest appointment, Camp Commandant, but lucky for me many officers are very well experienced and that i can leave all the details to the departments heads to settle.

Firstly i'll like to write abt the objectives of the camp, this year's theme is "Bonding", which is also the long standing objective since the start of the camp. From my point of view, i see that everyone are getting along well, whether it is the officers, trainers, or trainees. So by this, i can say that the camp is a sucessful one!

The 2nd objective is to sort of trying out whether the camp can function well under the structure of a semi-training semi-leisure camp. Bcos the camp consists of sec 1s so i do not wish that they have a big culture shock. After observing and feedbacks from trainers i sense that the picture of a semi-training semi-leisure is blur, so i think in future we have to draw out the picture well in order to achieve this objective.

Now let's talk about the rest, for this camp i find that the barrier between officers and trainees are much lesser, which the trainees are more ready to speak to officers, i think this is bcos the camp is semi-leisure structured.

Some fun stuffs, during the night hike operations sunshine was activiated, ops sunshine is a renamed of ops freedom for those who ar familiar with it. Why code name sunshine? bcos we went to sun plaza for a short retreat. The fun part is when we are walking back we encountered the cadets hiking and one group is not far behind us, so in order not for them to catch up to us we brisk walked then we were stopped by traffic lights. Not wanting to jaywalk we waited anxiously for the traffic lights to change, and we were like those racers glueing our eyes on the lights and when it changed we dashed across the road. While dashing across we heard the trainees about to greet us, so it was like..."Good evening si..." then we dashed across the road.

Also we played a game which i fogotten the name liao, it was like everyone will draw a card and placed it on the forehead and we will bet the amount, then the loser either biggest number or smallest will be forfeited. Bcos lunch had alot left so we used the food to bet. It was so much fun and i ended up eating 5 drumlets bcos the total bet was 50, equivilent to 5 drumlets.

There's alot more funny stuff, which most of them comes from James, too may to list down here. You have to experience it and i'm lucky to have the chance to it, also the officers loved to "suan" james whenever possible!

May everyone enjoyed in this year's Combined Corps Camp and i hoped to see everyone next year!

Closing...

Ah Tan
Camp Commandant
Combined Corps Camp '08
One Camp, Four Corps, Many Friends!