Today, the MPX IV team went down to Pulau Ubin for a morning of fun, interaction and learning. Haha.. 9am at changi jetty, that was our intended time to meet and as usual due to some unforeseen circumstances, many of us were late.. So the gang of me, justin, jiamin, jiayan (wow.. j cube!!! hahaha), tian rui and beng hwa (aka bae yong jun lookalike) went down to the hawker centre nearby to eat some stuffs before the rest arrived. Justin bought an additional tau sar pancake, supposedly our miss mermaid's (aka jiamin) favourite, while i ate a coconut one. Soon after, patryce came with the rest of the team and we proceeded to changi jetty to board the bumboats. We were divided into 2 teams due to the capacity that the bumboats can carry and off i went with alison, charmaine, vicki, beng hwa, kia boon, fun ruey and ser xing on the first bumboat.


The 5 pretty girls...


Plus.. the 3 handsome guys.. hahaha


All of them from the first bumboat at ubin jetty.. excluding me who was taking the photo..


The second bumboat


The first foot on Pulau Ubin!!!


Welcome to Pulau Ubin!

And so we waited for all to arrive.. took some group photos before we went on to do what we set out to do today. Patryce separated the team into 2.. the villagers group and the YEP team. Then we proceeded onto the open area near the NParks exhibition area to kick start our cultural shock module.. or in a nicer name.. "Understanding Reciprocity".

The team basically roleplayed a situation where the YEP team was put through a welcome ceremony by the villagers team to make them feel uneasy and bring them out of their comfort zone. Vincent played the village chief and the YEP team was made to kneel before the village chief and asked to do a dance.


Vincent acting as the village chief.. giving a "Present" to the representative of the YEP team, eugene.


"The YEP team"



The dance by the YEP team..

We sat down for a small reflection session after this. Questions such as "how does the villagers and YEP team feel about the ceremony and were there any areas where the YEP members might have offended the villagers and vice versa" were posed.. Last year over in Cambodia, we were made to kneel down in front of a monk who sprayed water on us to bless us. The main take away from this role play would be how far are you willing to go to indulge in the host's culture without losing your own dignity and self-respect.. where are we going to draw our bottomline?? Its always good to be mentally prepared...

Due to the inclement weather, we were stuck at the NParks area for sometime until the rain eventually died down. The team was separated into 3 groups in the meantime to come up with a design for our MPX IV T-shirts.

When the rain did get smaller.. Chek Jawa.. here we come!!

On the van.. the route to Chek Jawa.. a wildlife reserve on Pulau Ubin..


At Chek Jawa


Walking on the boardwalk.. Mr Tian Rui..



A few random pics of the boards along the boardwalk


Where are we???


What is everyone looking at?


This? I thought there's supposed to be some pretty cool marine life inside? argh.. the girls must have scared away whatever was in this hole.. haha or issit the high tide?


The team taking a picture at the end of the boardwalk leading out to the middle of the sea


Proceeding on to go to the 21m tall tower!


Woah.. what issit again???


Hmm.. i don't see anything actually.. hahaha



The 21m tall Jejawi Tower


The 2nd group who didnt go up the tower with the rest because it can only take maximum 20 people..


So we went to look around and saw this crab.. can you see the crab? haha


Now its our turn to ascend the tower.. on top of the tower!!


Going back to Ubin jetty after the Chek Jawa tour.


Last shot on Pulau Ubin before we left the island.


On the bumboat back to Changi Jetty.

And so, that ends our morning tour of Pulau Ubin and Chek Jawa. Rather short but tiring.. everybody looked tired and hungry. Xinling and Charmaine got to leave us after that and the rest stayed for lunch under a shed near the hawker centre at Changi. All of us ate either the famous nasi lemak or the noodles and Alison and serxing shared with a few of us one "myth" regarding the famous nasi lemak chilli.. haha

After we ate.. it was home sweet home!! Thanks everyone for coming and for those who couldn't make it for today, i hope this entry will let you know what the rest of the team had done today! So for now.. mid terms are coming and good luck for your mid terms, everybody!! :)

- Qiu Rong

mpx4_unite @t...
9:09 PM :D

* mpx_4

Its time for me to blog again about what had happened so far in MPX IV.

Not too long ago, we had our first meeting on a saturday, meeting outside LT7A before proceeding to one of the tutorial rooms. A few people were late, and our dear treasurer, xinling, lost her way somewhere in architecture. I got to go fetch her in the end.. Haha.. but its okay.. if you're not from engine, you will probably not know where is LT7A just as i don't know where are the LTs in Arts. Haha.. We proceeded to self introduction where a metaphor describing ourselves was drawn on a piece of paper and everyone talked about why they wanna join this trip, their hopes and fears for this trip and also what they expect to gain out of the entire project. Joanne drew a very sophisticated drawing with a garden, food etc.. Xinling drew a dinosaur.. i drew a half filled cup and there were many others who drew very interesting drawings. Fun Ruey mentioned that wherever he goes, there will always be bad things happening.. hahaha.. so lets hope this wouldn't come true for the trip!! The objective of all these is to compare what you originally thought of this entire expedition with what you feel after the expedition and judged whether to see you are where you want yourself to be in the beginning. So here comes this philosophical statement, "The difference between where you are and where you wanna be is what you do to get there. "

We then proceeded downstairs to play a game called "Husband and wife". This game goes something like this, everyone would begin the game holding hands and standing in a circle facing inwards. The husband and wife would first start to walk around the circumference of the circle and once they tapped the hands of another couple in the circle, the two couples got to race in opposite directions to come back to the original spot of that couple whose hands were tapped, something like musical chair except there's no music. haha. So the couple who did not manage to make it back in time got to go and tap another couple and the game repeats itself. This is something that was very often played in Cambodia with the kids. And they really do run very fast, perhaps the only way to stop them from running so fast is to carry them and run! hahaha.

After the game which lasted for around 20 minutes, we proceeded back to our tutorial room where the whole project, MPX IV, was introduced to everyone. Pre-expedition, Expedition and Post-expedition commitments were briefed and roles were given out. The team was separated into 4 sub committees, 2 fundraising teams, 1 logistics team and 1 programs team plus a secretary, treasurer and photographer. Everyone then proceeded to discuss within their individual committees about what they are going to do and...

MPX IV IS BORN!!!

-Qiu Rong

mpx4_unite @t...
4:50 PM :D

* mpx_4

帅哥！！

Anyway, I hope our good "brothers" and "sisters" will have a good time during their "vacation".

Tin

mpx4_unite @t...
9:16 PM :D

* mpx_4

hello!
hahaha.

i'm so going to flood this blog until someone else writes in here,
or if i'm asked to shut up. haha

anyway,
today... i shall do a very short post....
which involves... copying and pasting conversations only.

it goes like this:

Qiurong - says:
eh go blog also le

Qiurong - says:
u also like quite free

Qiurong - says:
tell everyone u ate 11 tau sar buns today

Qiurong - says:
hahaha

hmmm...... not very entertaining,
but compared to the previous post,
i think...... still win lah!

haha.
someone, blog soon! (:

yay. monday's over!

love,
jiamin

mpx4_unite @t...
9:28 PM :D

* mpx_4

Alright.. alright.. i'm second.. shall post something here to make jiamin not so embarassed. haha



So this is the youtube video of what we done last year at mpx3.. in case some of you had never seen it before.. haha.. and some of the photos in cambodia..


The sunrise in cambodia which we all can catch..


This is the sunset..


Hmm.. who say guys cannot cook? I'm cooking!! haha.. and i cook very nice vege also.. but no.. this time round i will only be eating.. not cooking.. :)

Okayz.. post more pics next time.. busy with school work and webcasts and other things.. haha.. take care everybody~~ see you ard in school! :)

Qiu Rong

mpx4_unite @t...
8:30 PM :D

* mpx_4

hello people!

since Jiamin goes for cheap thrills
and there isn't any post here yet.
so I shall get the ball rolling......

actually!
I really have no idea what to type in here,
(and i don't think you people want to know what i did today also lah.)

but okay la,
there was something that happened today!
i bumped into Justin (whom is my logistic team leader. HAHA) at bedok reservoir.

and weirdly, as i went for my second and third round,
i didn't get to see him anymore,
(i thought we are supposed to bump into one another for every round.. HAHA.)

but the thing was that,
it rained......

so justin,
did you get drenched?

i did...
but it's good.
the rain is good.
i'm good.
haha.

ah. school's kicking in in a few hours time.
how i love dread it......
and it's only the 4th week of school.

okay lah,
enough of ranting and typing nonsenical boring stuff.

hope to see you guys for the next meeting.
and pardon me for my lousy ang moh.

i know, i rock suck lah.
but too bad.
HAHA.

love,
jiamin.
yay. (:

mpx4_unite @t...
11:48 PM :D

* mpx_4

To inculcate social values
and promote a better
appreciaion among
our participants of their
current lifestyle and way
of life and foster good
friendship with our host NGO



NUS Rotaract
MPX III
MPX IV Postcards


September 2007
November 2007
December 2007