the camp that was three weeks long.

Ok lah. It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be.

Just so you don’t get confused as you go along - the campers were divided into six chalets, each cared for by a pair of grandparents (either grandma-grandma or grandpa-grandma) and an aunt/uncle, and headed by a papa and mama. We had Grandma Eu Pui and Grandma Darshini in our chalet, but there was this one time we had Grandpa Michael too. For two days only la though.

 

 

The first night of camp, I saw this familiar shirt from far far away:

(compare)

 

Then it rained the day we were supposed to have our first Games Day, so we played indoor games instead. My chalet (Chalet 8 a.k.a. The Lapanites) decided to play Pictionary.

From left: Christina, Uncle Kenny, Grandma Eu Pui

 

My group won. Yay.

Also, me and my chalet-mates were supposed to tell everybody else in the chalet how we felt that everyday (for a week) through our mood forecasts on the wall. E.g.

(the purple thing on the left is a man in a coma with a tube running through his nose *bangga*)

 

Those who dubbed themselves ‘less artistically-inclined’ were more simple:

 

Others resorted to even simpler art:

 

Sometimes I received comments from others (like on Facebook):

 

On family matters, on the fourth day of camp, Uncle Kenny and one of the children (Choo Soon) tried to increase our daily allowance.

From left: Uncle Kenny, Papa Derek, Choo Soon

 

Also, a baby was born into the family!

 

No la. That’s Grandpa David and Grandma Lian Chui’s son la.

 

Anyway.

 

See, we have four meals a day, right? (breakfast, lunch, dinner, supper) Lunch and dinner were provided, but there was always room to improvise for breakfast. Some days we had fried rice:

 

Some days we had only bread and ice:

 

No la. That’s soap from the soap-carving workshop.

 

Anyway.

 

Uncle Kenny made pancakes for us once. =D

 

Oh ya, we went for outings too. The first one was to the Boh Tea plantation, where I heard one of the lamest things ever:

A: “Eh, here don’t have tea wan noe.”

B: “Har? Cannot be leh.”

A: “Really la.”

B: “How you know?”

A: “’Boh’ tea mah.”

(‘boh’ =  hokkien for ‘tak ada’)

 

The second outing was to Tanah Rata, where Grandma Eu Pui sat on a random motorcycle like it was hers.

 

The third outing was also to Tanah Rata, but we were supposed to try to hitch a ride there this time. And we did! At least some of us la. I managed to hitch a ride in Grandma Darshini’s car, if that counts. =.=

Ya, since I didn’t take a picture of the scones we had, here’s a picture of Ed trying to ber-jiwang with his bottle.

(the bottle was my substitute cuz according to Uncle Kenny, I looked like a bunny in the picture. like, a bottle is more photogenic than me? hahhhh~)

 

Anyway.

 

The highlight of each week was really the Camp Special. Three weeks meant three Camp Specials. Here’s a Camp Special #2 moment:

(John, the undisputed winner of Mad Hair Night with the cleaning gloves and banana skin on his head, later accompanied by a plant with four leaves like Doraemon’s helicopter thing)

 

Other stuff we did during camp (besides exchanging lameness with fellow lamers) was to give people unsolvable riddles like this one:

 

You’re supposed to connect each element to each triangle, meaning every triangle must have all three elements. BUT the lines must not intersect, and you cannot, say, draw a line through A and B to get fire to C. It sounds simple, right. But it got these guys thinking for quite some time, and one even fell asleep with the riddle in one hand and a pencil in the other. Ladida~

 

Ok lah, there was one guy who didn’t bother la.

(John: “After Camp Cam, I’m gonna be a chemist anyway, so these things don’t bother me. Yay!”)

 

We also danced.

 

And Thurston drew strawberries on people’s car windows.

 

Yeah. I had a good time in Camp Cam. But you know what? Even though they made camp even more memorable for me, I can do without those things – pictionary, lamehood, skits, and fun, even.

Because what made Camp Cam worth it for me was confronting what was happening in my life back then. Back then and now, actually.

Week One of Camp Cam was the week I was challenged to redeem my relationship with God and myself. What was there to redeem? I would’ve asked myself that a month before Camp Cam. But Week One saw me asking God “Why?”

Why? Why? Why?

Today, Wilber said that humans were made to ask “Why?”

If that is true, Week One was the week I was fully human.

I said before that in camp, I learned to doubt, then truly believe. It sounds nice when I put it this way. But when one is in doubt, one doesn’t doubt nicely. Doubt wasn’t just ‘why’, it was more “I don’t believe You.”

This doubt carried on to Week Two, where we were told to try to redeem our relationships with our families. Doubt became Blame - “If You could, why didn’t You?” and “If You can, why don’t You?”

By then I had begun to find that I couldn’t worship anymore. I began to be cynical towards songs that said, “I will soar with You above the storm”.

No, I don’t. I don’t want to soar.

Songs that easily said, “I offer my life to You.”

Do these people understand what it means to offer their lives? Do they understand what ‘life’ is? If we knew what life could be, we would not offer it so readily.

Songs that declared that “Jesus, I believe in You.”

I’m not sure anymore.

Then came Chapel in the middle of Week Two. Grandpa David gave us each a piece of paper, where we were supposed to write our struggles, our hurts, our hates, secret sins – anything that was holding us back. Then, when we were ready, and if we wanted to, we could go up to where two pots were -

One, where we could tear up that piece of paper and throw the pieces of our hurts into,

Another, where we would then take a nail.

“You can hold on to your chains, or you can surrender them to Christ, who was crucified for you.”

It took me a while. Like, I even considered waiting till the next day. But in a God-given moment, I realized the chains were too heavy to bear, and I tore my piece of paper.

As I’ve often said since then,

He chose the nails,

and so did I.

 

We were told to name this God, as personal as He had become to each of us. The name wasn’t hard to discover. I didn’t have a cool Jewish name of some sort for Him, but since then, He has become The God of Freedom.

Shortly after, Blame became Belief, Belief became Trust, and Trust became Faith.

And I found my voice again.

So if anyone should wonder if they should go for Camp Cameron in 2012, don’t even think about it. I’ll sign you up for it and forge your signature.

GO!!