P to the R to the O to the

CRASTINATION! (It's a long word.)

Without aware, my blog has finally reached 100 posts. But i ain't proud of it because according to common calculations, it supposed to reached 200++ after 4 years.

But, it had ME as the writer. Damn luck for it.

Even my buddy had the same CAMP-posts done before me. And i start it first.

DAY Three

After an early breakfast, (For three days, Three days! I woke up before eight.) we were ordered to copy the Heart Sutra. Like before, we copied it on faded print papers. What's different was that we that get to copy it at our dinning hall, with a better lighting and music, i guess......

Then, we have to memorize it.

WAIT, MEMORIZE IT?

Fortunately, our counselor has an idea, which was
EACH GROUP MEMBER ONLY MEMORIZE ONE SENTENCE OF THE SUTRA, AND LINKING THE WHOLE THING CONTINUOUSLY. Having one member who had memorized it all as assurance.

The girl who is holding the mic at the right is our assurance.

The idea, though, was a common one, but it is better have a drama or rap it out. (But seriously, there is one girl whose aged 12 can rap it out non-stop in a minute, now that's high level.)

The whole pattern like drama and singing it bored us out after half a hour. Don't blame us, an average human only can concentrate continuously for 20 minutes. (......I think.)

Next event, we had a teamwork mission. The groups were given white cloths with printed images and fonts. All we have to do is paint them.

And everyone of you knew, that I am SUCK at coloring, especially poster paint or water paint. So, i didn't exactly do anything, and my group switch on their seriousness because it actually exist in the real world. They're considerate about painting the lotus from the leaves to the petals. Well, it's not a bad thing. (Yes, i was excluded.)

Everything turned out better than expected. (It's a banner!!!)

(By the way, chubby and the committees had some camera fun during the event.)

I said it before, we are good at being formal. The authorities of the venue is holding a lantern festival during the Chinese New Year. So they have us modeled with emperors and empresses.

The royals and the abbot.

But the photo didn't turn out in the paper, so i decided not to post it.

WHAT'S NEXT? Cleaning time!

From the auditorium hall to the little monk statues, (小沙弥)
We have to clean it all. After all, it is our responsibilities and they sure know where to find free helpers.

Auditorium hall. (Aye, i know they weren't cleaning.)

Bedroom. (They called it 寮房, imagine the wooden part fill with 60 mattresses.)

Toilets cleaning

小沙弥 and me~ (Actually this is a posing photo, i was actually scrubbing the feet.)

There's some touring family around our cleaning corner. (Yes, my group responsible on scrubbing the moss out of the statues.) And they started taking photos of the statues. OR DO THEY? 'Cause i think they included me and the rest of the members in the background, or was i thought too much. Didn't care! Concentrated on work!

Skipped through ALL THE formal stuff!! (Lazy thug!)

Final camp song.

We finally ended the camp with this photo.

All that's left is?
Exchanging E-mail adds. Thanks for the notebook for that!
(Present kids, when you knew a friend, you have him/her as a Facebook friend; when you liked a friend, you have his/her phone number. And the level kept going up till the lover thingy so i preferred skip it.)

The last assembly in the hall. (LE touching speech starts.....)

Typical message. (Translation: Remember to add me!)

It was quite a fun camp. Met new friends, played great games, learned new things and more about my religion.

RE-ENTER CONSIDERED

For Chinese version and more detailed included inner thoughts report, click here. (My bud's blog.)

定心组

And for the last time, PS: Photographs from Tham Joon Jern & 啊Weng相馆.

The End

[For the camp.]

The funny thing about blogging is

You have to be motivated to start 'cause when you started the post, the might wouldn't stop, unless your life was a disastrously bored. (Like mine!)

Day Two

The second day had arrived with the ray of ho......rrible fluorescent light that woke us through our eyelids. Talk about shinning dreams, i thought i was in heaven.

It was 5 in the morning and we were having the morning class, (早课，where the temple's teacher read the Heart Sutra, 般若波罗蜜多心经 with the whole camp members.) right before our breakfast time.

After our group's dish washing chore, (Which chubby stubbornly eager to wash the dishes. Oh my, did the sun rise from the west or what?) we found the groups practicing their slogans.

By the way, OUR (定心组) slogan is:
我们不同姓，不同名，定心定心一家亲，定心定心一定行！！！！！！

After that, we received a mission, (Oooooh, Tom Cruise-sy~)
MISSION IMPOSSIBLE!!!!!!

WE, have to pack 1000 packs of 2 sweets per pack packs in 2 hours!!! Well, we are the lucky ones.

The other groups have to finish these in 2 hours:

1. Get all of the group members to stand on an A3 size newspaper for few seconds. (We have 15~19 members per group.)
2. Memorize all the THREE CHARACTERS CLASSIC, 三字经。(Google it and see the length.)
3. Read a box of comics and answer one question. (Sounds easy, but ONE question?)
4. Roll up 1000 couplets.
5. Blow off 173 candle fire, all at once. (Unusual number......)
6. Copy 80 Heart Sutra, by hand. (It ain't easy.)
7. Fold 1000 paper stars. (Not all people know how to.)
8. Create a Facebook page and let it get 200 likes in 2 hours. (Like hell! Everyone is still sleeping!)
9. Rub 1000 tang yuan.

Everybody was like

At the same time, they get our counselors to do the 三拜. (Google it and repeat it for 2 hours.) To save them, we need to finish and complete our tasks/missions. Some of them fainted in the process.

In the end, everyone but the Facebook team completed their tasks. But all the counselors did their 三拜 for fully 2 hours. Even though some of the groups finished their tasks for half an hour ago, but the counselors just couldn't bear to leave their friends, (The other counselors.) TRUE STORY. They expected us to move as a whole camp to complete the missions, but in reality, we didn't, but luckily, we still built up some teamwork.

Right after all of those folding and thinking and liking and packing and rolling and writing and memorizing and rubbing and reading and lighting candles, we headed to the Audio Visual hall for the "Iron Bronze teeth " lessons. Actually, it was a speaking lesson by a news reporters. (He was shocked by the theme too.)

During the lesson, we did some voice casting like they did in the studio of radio stations. Every participants tried their best to give out the best BEGGAR voice. Moreover, they even have a RUNWAY SHOW to test their confidences and body language.

After our lunch, its the part where every camp has: 团康活动. (Can't translate it, seriously.)

What we did during the activity?

Camp sign language learning. (Absolute no Nazism.)

Happy Happy dances led by this guy. (Brought great atmosphere too.)

DIY tank's track from newspaper, led by him too.

Happy Happy dances 2.

Right after all the fun, we went to the audio visual hall AGAIN for movie watching.
And i thought, movie watching....... in here......... must be a boring one related to Buddhism.

I thought wrong, surprisingly.

The movie was

which talks about lots of philosophy, yet easy to understand, coincidentally related to Buddhism.

Forget the PAST, Ignore the FUTURE, Cherish the PRESENT, believe in yourself.

That night, an absolute w-t-firetruck moment just happened. As the luckiest winner of my group in the ROCK PAPER SCISSORS CARD GAME, (I have to admit, i drew my victory, LIKE A BOSS, YU-GI-OH style.) I was chose to test my luck.

Ten types of dinner table with different tableware and dinning ways. And FML, firetruck my luck, i got the MINI-TABLEWARE-SET.

OH man! This ain't enough to feed chubby!

Others have:

• Normal one. (Lucky them.)
• Tableware super-glued on the table. (What's the point then????!!!)
• Spoon replaced by spoon tied on the tip of a 1 meter rod. (Teamwork, switch on.)
• Dinner on banana leaf and no spoon or anything. (Feel like an Indian.)
• Dinning blindfolded. (Light bulb~: Switch their bowls with ours secretly.)
  
• Chopsticks replaced by drinking straws. (Both of these put......)
• Chopsticks replaced by broken chopsticks.(......the chopsticks skills to the test.)
• Buffet trays as bowls. (Holy-cow that's was big!!!)
• Dinning with your thumbs tied. (That wasn't so hard, oh snap......)

But, who said we only can eat our own meal? Teamwork for food! (I shared a tray of meal with my bud.)

Next event before the sleep, is "BLUE VS GREEN!!!" (Relate nothing with Taiwan.)

• Search for blues and greens in the room. (I'm wearing blue shirt. Almost forced to take it out before knowing that i can stand in the spot in person.)
• How good is your associated-imagination. (Imaginations? We're kinda weak at that.)
• Eyelash competition. (When you have 3 men in the group, the hilarious meter boosted damn high. )
• Make your phone-pal to speak out the specific sentence. (Pretty much both fail.)
• Tetris battle!!!(We lost to the high leveled committee.)
• Ten men walk with 11 feet. (Together!!!)
• So you think you can dance? (I don't think so.)

The competition ended in peace 'cause it's a tie!

[To be continued......................]

PS: Photographs from Tham Joon Jern & 啊Weng相馆.

My arguement is invalid.

Not much to report about my holiday. Yes, my holiday have started for over a month. For all these weeks, i have been doing nothing but LOG IN & LOG OUT OR STAYED LOGGED IN. From Facebook to YouTube to 9gag to {Kamen riders episodes website} to {Comic online}. My butt hasn't really leave the chair for over an hour unless i got to sleep.

I'm just lazy to write or create anything during the holidays. I forced myself to draw some comics because there's some event i am interested. But it all ended needed to be photoshopped. Sometimes i wish Picture or Graphic Editing Software isn't so expensive. Now, i am waiting my friend who has the software to help me with the editing process, which sadly, he is a busy man.

Slugging around for 6 weeks, (Man, i am pathetic.) a sudden Facebook chat appears on my screen.

"Hey, wanna go camp." he said.
"What camp?" I said
"Buddhism youth camp in FO GUANG SHAN DON ZEN TEMPLE of course."
"Like how."
[And all of you who've been in any camp knew the process.]

The venue located a approximated 2 hours trip from my friends. Since we're carpooling, that wasn't seems to be the problem. But the starting time was too early so we decided to stay overnight there, in the temple. (Don't get the idea that we're sleeping with the monks, the camp had prepared the sleeping unit.)

Me and my buddy met two new friends in the camp eve night. A good start in meeting people. But a bad start for my back due to the thin mattress. (At least we are sleeping on wooden platforms. Better temperature.)

The next day, we entered the camp and briefly met some camp-mates. (Not to mention the unforgettable stairs trip: "You have to take a spare set of clothes for the games." "You have to change into our uniforms.")

Our group were determined by lollipops, literally. I was settled in the group which named "定心组".(Stable mind) In the group, we have ordinaries, (People who attend the first time and hardly satisfied.) punks, (People who are ordinaries but acted to mess things up.) chubby, (Only 1, turns out to be the most popular kid in the camp.) silent, (Mostly girls, but they will become very friendly in the end.) Downgrades, (Once a committee but intended to be the participants.) and the counselors. (To break the ice, hammer or fire is needed, they are the hammer and fire.)

The counselors and the committees are a family like every other groups, clubs and societies. According to the first they've showed us, the camp was once a disaster 2 years ago. Till now, they tried to redeem their pride. (Sounds like a comic storyline isn't it?) I'll say, they did their best.

To break the ice between us, they let us understand the manners in the daily life of the Buddhist, through a video and played the wrong ones. Lollipops at the time were like tokens or gems in online games, the group which held the most lollipops wins the best group. We have to answer the correct mistake to get one of those. Everyone was competitive, (One of Malaysia's students' nature, presented.)

The cafeteria was as big as a hall. The do and don't in the cafeteria was strict. No one wants to do anything wrong, the hall was quiet as in the library.

培杰, the singer

The atmosphere was heated up by a singer, not a well-known singer (Because he never went to ASTRO's singing competition, which is a good thing, or he will end up singing GONG XI FA CAI every year.) but has the voice and sense of humor. The event let me forgotten that i am in a Buddhism youth camp, more like a class concert.

After two hours of singing fun, we get to play some station game. The temple is so damn big, half of us exhausted from all the running from one location to another. In the end, our group ended up like this:

lost a tug of war,

chubby won 2 lollipops for drum solo,

almost won a candle carrying race, lost a photographing race, made a love letter out of newspapers,

crawling in mud-pies. The clothes i wore eventually filthy and have unpleasant smell at the end of the camp.

After having a boring Buddhist monk life guides, (Where the sleeping photos were mostly captured.) (Hey, true feelings.) the camp committee announced that we have not enough place to fit 173 members in the bedrooms, so we have to win the best two nights. We were given 4 rock card, 4 paper card, 4 scissors card, that's right, we are playing

"Rock Paper Scissors CARD GAME."
When a person won a game, he earns 1 life sticker, if he lost, he lost 1 life sticker. The card used in the game must be destroyed. Players who gets to remain 3 life stickers on their Ts after all of his cards were destroyed are the winner. Players who don't are the loser while those who used up their life stickers are also losers no matter how many cards are left.

Eventually, i slaughtered my buddy and earned extras from another friends. The cards were used up and i have 7 life stickers. The percentage of winning in the end was a disappointment due the number of life stickers of the whole group.

But the whole thing was a lie.

IT turns out everything was normal, this was just a test for us, and the solution was according to one of the gambling manga i have never heard of: Team up with other group members, keep playing the same card to remain the life stickers from both side. Our selfishness fail the test. Mine too. (Yet, punks still love to be complainers.)

A teacher of the temple gave us a relaxing ZEN mind cleaning lessons, quite interesting and it do have some effects but my feet were numb at the end of the lesson.

[To be continued......................]

PS: Photographs from Tham Joon Jern & 啊Weng相馆.