Orientation 2008 was a blast, haha. It might be abit wrong for me to post about orientation about 1 week after its conclusion, but wanted to do a good long and details piece and couldnt afford the time.
As an OGL i throughly enjoyed the process, of working with the other OGLs and council, to organise the J1s, and never would regret the time i spent missing lessons ( when was i a studying sort of person anw haha ). Many many thanks to my OG, OG 27, ATHENA OGLs and the council. Met many new great friends and people, from this experience. Will breakdown the orientation process below lol.
Pre orientation (1): Got the news the house exco would have to send 4 people to be olympian i.cs sometime during the application period for OGLs. After one of the meetings, we decided to send me, Chris, Shi Xuan, and De Wei. Although i applied independly as well. At 1st was pretty afraid that Mr Pun wouldnt approve my application, as my attitude wasnt that great during his lessons, but things turned out well in the end. Then came the sentosa recce trip where 1 OGL per group is supposed to acconmpany the student council to sort of go throught their route to take during the actual orientation sentosa trip. Found out that i'll be grouped with the other house com members haha -_-", and with Zhi Yi and Chu Yi as our guides. Went for lunch with fong and some other OGLs at Vivo after. basically my OGs route was practically like walking to and fro the beachfront of sentosa 4 times. Not very interesting. Went late for training because of that, luckily, missed the intervals haha. Then on the same day, the contact list for J1s was out, and so had to call them ove rthe weekends. Remembered Chloe and Doris bombarding my phone with messages on who to call ( and i havent even met them yet ) WHILE I WAS AT TRAINING haha. like 7 unread messages, each with changing instructions on who to complie and call i was abit stunned haha, cos i havent read my mail and didnt know the contact list was out... i was at training, for goodness sake.
Pre orientation (2): Up next is the OGL workshop, held over the last thursday and friday of the year. Had my maths test in the morning, WONDERFUL start, its gonna be single digit, i swear. Met the other ATHENA OGLs then, quite a fun bunch of people. learned the mass dance .... no title, just called the 30th mass dance lol. It isnt too bad, but still prefer the superstar. Many thanks to Meixuan for being my dance partner. Had briefings about what to bring for the orientation, and other logitics/ admin stuff. Got notes about stuff that will be happening during the orientation as well as tried out games that will be played during the orientation. Athena won like the 1st 3 games haha, then it was all downhill....Damn Tedson for taking a bite out of every single biscuit lol, and we had to pass it back via our mouths, erm abit hard to describe, but OGLs reading this ( if any ) should know what i am saying. Found out that tedson, eric, glenn, and kelvin played soccer, nice one. JC abit hard to find people who enjoy a deccent game of soccer, so went to have a game with them after the workshop. Chloe designed our OG flag, not bad but, is that a picture of a male greek god that she substituted for athena? Had a torrid time tying our flag to the pole, phew lucky it didnt fall off the pole or anything during the orientation. Had to come up with a entrance for the 1st day of orientation during the later part of the workshop. It kinda screwed up abit when i found out that Hestia was doing almost exactly the same thing. So had to drag everyone back on monday, haha sorry to get the entrance settled. Went to play lan after the monday session with those athena OGLs. Rats + magnum + me + terrorist = owngae haha. although i got pwned in DotA, gotta thank Tedson for giving me the Aegis TWICE lol.
Orientation day 1: woke up at 5am, had to reach school by 6am to practice the new and improved grand entrance. managed not to be late and pretty much everyone that could made it on time, was glad. Got our briefing from the council and then the J1s were streaming in. Had to take attendace and get their shirt sizes for those who didnt give or cannot be contacted, introduced ourselves ( me doris and chloe ) and tried my darnest best to remember their names. After all its 20 people, you shld get credit for trying. After our entracnce, which luckily went smoothly, the OGLs went for lunch while the J1s went for subject talks. the talk kinda overan by 40 mins, so the OGLs were like languishing outside the hall, dead bored ( and the J1s thought they were bored inside, at least they had stuff to listen to ). After they got released for lunch, i brought them to the atrium to settle down and eat. Although technically they were not supposed to eat there, but canteen was so darn crowded. imagine all of the J1 population with a couple of J2s eating in the small canteen. Had a nice chat with some of the guys. The rest of day was pretty much a blur now. Basically played ice breakers, let everyone know each other, played more games, learnt cheers and stuff. Not forgetting teaching teh J1s the mass dance ( the council did most of the teaching ). kind of funny to see them stumbling ove rthe steps and occasionally each other, when teh OGLs all so used to teh dance already. Tried to get them hyped up for Sentosa trip the next day. Went home exhausted. Its pretty tough trying to up peoples' spirits after starting the day of with a 2/3+ hours worth of subject talks. Manage to get an OG contact list out and printed by the end of the day. 1st time i slept at 10.30 in a long long while.
Orientation day 2: Jun Jek as he told me the previous day didnt turn up, well at least he was nice enough to drop me a message haha. Lazy to walk in sentosa -_-". Reported at 6.30am, was slightly late. As usual, talk by council, J1s coming in, taught cheers, olympian time, mass dance in the morning ( i think so...). After that we headed to SENTOSA!. Oh and before that teh OG decided upon Macdonalds for our lunch. So we ordered macdelivery to Sentosa. Proud to announce that our OG was the only OG to get our food delivered to Sentosa :). Our OG was basically split into 2 groups, going via 2 different busses. My group went 1st, while Chloe and Doris followed the 2nd group. Bythe time we reached Sentosa they havent even set off yet -_-. Got the bus to stop at the end of the causeway to Sentosa to collect our lunch, but it turned out that the delivery guy was waiting on the other side of the causeway, so got a few of the girls along to help drag our lunch back to the bus. Long walk haha, :P my bad. After that we moved to Palawan beach to wait for the other half of the OG to arrive as our 1st station was there. Had our lunch then proceeded to the games. Too lazy to describe the games in detail so will do with a couple of highlights. Basically had fun playing teh games, and teaching them cheers and stuff, can feel that t he OG was gelling together more. Hestia got lost for our 2nd station, how did they get lost lol, just take the bus. made us wait for half an hour. Taught them more cheers to pass the time. During that time discovered a potential OGL, erm Leonard haha. Invented OG 27 trademark cheer. crapped alot, walked alot. Did cheers at the upper roofless deck of the bus we took. Shouting 'welcome to Singapore' to a couple of tourist we met. Our group arrived the latest towards the end. We had a parade by our Olympian eye candies and a debrief before we were dismissed. Forgot to mention, Morgan and Darren was our eye candy for the intra olympian preliminaries the 1st day. Pity didnt get selected. At night, teh OG went for dinner at vivo, walked from Siloso bech all the way to Vivo, wonderful experience... Darren went for tuition :( nice one... while Doris was abit sick, and Chloe went to see her bf lol. Had a nice talk among ourselves, carpped about the pull up guy at vivo did mass dance on vivo's roof ( will never forget ;) ). Then went home around 10, cos long day ahead the next day. Discovered that Charlton lives in Bishan too, although the other side.
Orientation day 3: The usual stuff in the morning. The council taught the trad. dance today ( or was it yesterday? ) damn funny see-ing all the J1s dare not put their hands on their partners waist. She aint infectious for goodness sake. Consolidated our combined olympian cheer for the cheering competition, during olympian time. Many thanks for eric and emelyn for getting everyone hyper and enthu doing the cheers. Most of our cheers revolved around the 'war' theme yea. pretty nice. Also invented a couple of new ones like the tokyo drift cheer and stuff. Played many water games during the day, some in the OG got real drenched :P haha sara worst victim. Lucky i stayed mostly dry. and our sissors paper stone too power already, cannot even lose once, and we had to lose to win, eh confusing?. Choose the dancing queen and king. Realise d that Elyssa can dance, not bad. Guohao told me his olympian confirm win haha, we'll see about that. Chose RJ and her partner cos she was simply awesome and she was comfortable dancing with him. Practiced our cheers, did our haka ( the original one ) for the rest of the day. We were based at the grandstand. Managed to get quite a number of volunteers from among the J1s to lead themselves. Thanks to those from OG 27 who came down, although i cant taotally recall who came down le. After that is dinner time, ate at the atrium when it was raining. Then the OGLs had to go practice the haka and get everyone back to the hall in a pretty short time. Didnt manage to finish my food. It sucks, lumpy rice and stuff, Being brutally honest here, pizza from last year was so much better, but that was just one small minor blip in the whole experience. After that was the cheering competition and the dancing king and queen competition. Cheering, gotta mention ATHENA was awesome although we didnt win. the J1s and the OGLs gave their all, pulled off the haka. Although eventually poseidon won, congrats to them they did well. Following that up, was teh dancing king and queen competition. The 1st 2 pairs of contestants were quickly eliminated. Leaving Athena and another olympian. Seriously the dancing competition this year is hardcore. Owns the standard of our batch. RJ was like Pwnage. Nvr knew the human body can move like that. The other couple was not bad too. The Athena girl and teh girl from the other house had like 2 rematches, because teh judges cant decide between those 2. Although in the end the girl from athena won. We kinda got the feeling that she'll win when they played the Toyko Drift music for them to dance to, We based one of Athena's trademark cheers on the tune. After that we had some awards. Athena got the best olympian for the points chalked up for the games played at Sentosa. OG 27 GOT THE BEST OG for ATHENA.. WHOOHOO. After that, it was DISCO NIGHT, danced and jumped like no one's business. Had lotsa fun. Did one final mass dance at the end of disco night, couldnt find my regular dance partner so danced with janelle and stephanie instead, sry meixuan :P. Had a debrief, group photo taking before heading to chomp chomp to eat with my OG/ ATHENA OGLs. Everyone was super high during this time, the OGLs basically couldnt stop cheering at the bustop althought it was like 10 at night. Did teh haka at every bus that came by haha. people must have really thought we were crazy. Went with them to chomp chomp. Joined my Og until the left then go and find the OGLs. Ate a couple of leftover sticks of satay, then went home with fong and joycelyn.
Its really an unforgettable experience ( sounds like primary school compo haha, and very cliche, but true ). I mean, everyone was great, the OGLs the OG. Couldnt ask for a 'higher' bunch of people to be Athena OGLs. Had breakfast on monday morning at macs, having mass convos at night almost everyday after orientation. I would take ages if i mentioned everyone by name, so wont. But everyone one of you did play a part in my whole experience of orientation so, i thank you all for that, not forgetting the council who made sure there were not hiccups along the way with their organisation, and Yilong our council attache, and Inez the OIC for orientation 2008. Cheers
