The belated first post of the year!

School started on 4th Jan, 2 days ago. Went for DID (Dialogue in the Dark) on day 1, where we basically went through what it felt like to be a blind person. My group was the last to go in, so we played some games with other groups while waiting. We played stuff like Pictionary. If you don't know what it is, I shall explain. You get a word, and you have to draw something out without any letters/numbers, and hope that someone guess it right. But in our case, we had to draw blindfolded. And man was it hard. I got the word (or rather phrase) 'Star wars', and intended to draw 2 light sabers. But since I was blindfolded, the handle was totally out of proportion and looked really weird. So I drew a star and Melvin guessed it right. yay! lol

After that, we drew pictures blindfolded. This was done in pairs, and one was blindfolded. The one not blindfolded would have to guide the person blindfolded by telling him what shapes to draw where, so that it would form the picture. I was supposed to draw an Octopus or sth, and it was quite ok in the end. Mad drawing skills ftw!

The last thing we did was trying to get safety pins out of a box of rice blindfolded. The other guy would instruct you. And it was hard, cos you cannot feel the safety pin from the grains of rice.

Finally we went into the exhibit. And it was quite cool. We were guided by a visually impaired man, and were even given those canes the blind use to navigate. It was really an eye opener (no pun intended), as it was really dark (you can't see your hand in front of you) and we only could follow his voice/instructions. It was cool too, as there was among other things a rocking bridge, a statue of Stamford Raffles, A boat along Singapore river (where we took a 'trip' down the 'river'), a real Yellow Mazda (what the guy said), fruits and vegetables that we quite hard to recognise and a cafe where we bought cookie and beverages ( paying and eating in the dark).

The next day, we went for laser shootout. You could use 2 guns, a lighter SMG (I guess) at 1.8kg and a heavier rifle at 2.2kg. I tried both as we had 3 teams, and since only 2 teams could play at any one time, all teams played twice. There are 3 sensors they stuck on the harness which you donned at your neck, and one on your gun, so basically you could shoot at your opponent's upper body or gun to hit him. Everyone could be hit 7 times, be4 you die and have to go back to base to be revived. The number of deaths is the score of the team; the lower the better. We won both rounds, winning team A ( we were team B) 24 something to 34, and team C 25 to 60+. However, overall, we had 49 deaths, while team B had 47 deaths. So we lost. Dammit. But overall it was a really fun experience. Having NCC people in our team helped alot as they were quite experience with these kind of shooting things.

I finally had real lessons today. Just normal stuff.

I have 2 new form teachers, Mrs Lim Jee Nee (like genie in a bottle), and Ms Stephanie Lee. Mrs Lim just came back to RI, here 3rd stint here apparently (so says my PE teacher), while Ms Lee is a new Philosophy teacher, really young (maybe late 20s?) Both are really nice, since they take CLE and Philosophy anyway.

Tomorrow's Raffles Trail, and I have to miss it cos of HSSRP. When I was Sec 1 I didn't even visit the Red Cross Booth, and now I will never see it. sad luh.