| Friday, June 09, 2006 |
| Athena Camp |
Oh my god!
I never expect myself to be able to complete that darn Team Pyramid Challenge (TPC).
It is a extremely physically and mentally demanding task that takes place on a 8-storey structure that has obstacles like tight-rope walking, rock-climbing, Jacob's Ladder, "Step-of-Faith" installed on it. You have to overcome 11 of such challenge to reach to the top of the structure before you "flying fox" yourself down.
It is really really really challenging.
My first look and my first attempt at the challenge seriously freaked me out. I was someone who had vertigo even when I stand near the window of the lift lobby at National Library at 7th floor. Never would I imagine myself to complete TPC. The sense of accompliment upon the completion of the challenge is priceless. I feel like I can do anything after that.
Fortunately, our TPC was done on a sunny day or its level of difficulty would increase should we have done it on the 2nd and the 3rd day of the camp which happened to be rainy.
Rock-climbing is deceivingly-easy. You would only realise its difficulty when you try it out yourself. Most of us breezed through the first half of it before the action of pulling yourself up took its toll on our arms. To make matters worse, there wasn't an obvious way for us to get up to the last tenth of the wall, so most of us ended up getting stuck at the 9th part of the wall and had to give up eventually.
Jetty Jump is also another activity that sounded deceivingly-easy. The name suggests that you have to jump down from the jetty. Literally. Nothing wrong about it, just that by the look of the name "Jetty Jump", one would not anticipate that there would be a 2.5 metre scaffold on the jetty for us to climb onto and dive into the water, which by the way, is home to corals and jellyfishs (which we happened to spot one during Jetty Jump).
It is longer than expected for gravity to pull you down 2.5 metres by the way. This is called the Theory of Relativity I suppose. On-lookers might think that it would only take a quarter of a second for you to reach the sea since gravity is at about 9.8m/s, but to the one that's diving into the water, a fraction of second is like eons. The person jumping down is "suffering", not you, that's why time passes so slowly for that person.
Abseiling was easy. Not at all terrifying. Only that the wall which you had support on is slippery due to the drizzle.
The scariness of "Leap of Faith" is probably on par with Jetty Jump. We have to ascend about 6 metres up a wooden pole, balance ourselves up there and leap forward to grab a trapezehanging down in front of you. Sounds simple? The real challenge comes in when you are about to take that leap. That's why they called it the "Leap of Faith" -- you've gotta have faith with your harness and whatever safety devices the instructors put onto you.
Once you have faith with the safety devices, all the other tasks that invovled heights can be easily overcomed like weak Vand er Waals forces.
Those burnt hot dogs, uncooked potatoes and extremely-spicy heavily-peppered onions aside that we made during the outdoor cooking on the first night aside, meals weren't as bad as expected. In fact, lemon fish and black pepper chicken were part of the menu for our lunches.
Lodging was terrible though, albeit we have no one else to blame except ourselves, for it is our responsibility to pitch out tents correctly to prevent dilapidation due to the heavy rains.
Toilets there were badly maintained. Not our fault. On the last night, the storm literally turned the Gents' into a haunted house (lookalike). The heavy rain forced all the insects out of their natural habitats and reside in the toilet. The following description may be nauseating:
The entrance of the toilet (meaning the walls, floors and ceiling) was covered (fully)and infested with unidentified flies. Seems like a crossbreed between a wasp and a housefly. Walked in further you can spot moths lying sliently next to the urinals. They seem like they are going to pounce on our family's jewels without warning on unsuspecting victims. Luckily I was suspicious of their behaviour and kept a close eye on them while peeing. Next, as I washed my hands in the basin, I see an earthworm slitherring across the porcelain basin right before my very eyes.
Eeeww...
I guess I should leave some events for the rest to cover. That's about all from me. Wait till you hear from the rest! Bloop bloop! |
posted by Terence (Hasegawa Masahiro) @ 7:50 pm  |
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