This update might be slightly offensive to people who love small kids, so be forewarned =p
Saturday was Temasek Primary's annual Youth Development Camp, and after spending Friday fixing dusty oil lamps and preparing the lashings, HK and I made our way down and prepared to babysit some kids (and perhaps the 8 year 1s who had volunteered too =p)
Once again the organisers made the mistake of allowing participants from the lower Primary levels to join. Seriously, what's there to develop in, say, Primary 2 students? I don't think humans show leadership potential this young. Oh well. We do our jobs anyway.
This year's was slightly different; they had planned an Amazing Race at Sentosa. Amazingly, it was merely a walk around Sentosa. We had anticipated something Treasure-Hunt-ish, but it turned out that all that's gonna happen was that each group will receive a map of Sentosa (you know, the kind that are given to tourists) and they have to visit Attractions 1 to 22 indicated on the locality map.
The children grabbed a map and wandered off. It went smoothly at first, and they managed to locate a few checkpoints, such as the Flying Trapeeze and Siloso Beach, but soon after they kinda lost focus and forgot where they were. In fact, they couldn't even figure out where they were after looking at the maps on noticeboards around the island, even though the maps had huge stars with the words "YOU ARE HERE" above them. They had barely found half the checkpoints when they decided to board the Red Line back to the starting/ending point.
Oh, and did I mention that kids nowadays were rich? While I sipped on mineral water that was given to us before the trip, the kids spent their loose change on Coca Cola and other assorted soft drinks, the vending machine accepting no less than $1.80 for each can. And, back at the ending point, where HK, the year 1s and I sat down and sipped on mineral water somemore, the kids were off to Delifrance to get their money cheated willingly again.
We then returned to Temasek Primary School, where almost all the kids had their lunch. Almost all? Yeah, the cadet scouts and brownies had outdoor cooking! A potential recipe for disaster, no? A small handful of them did well, and managed to get a nice little fire going to cook their rice. As for most of the others... sigh. It's understandable if they fail to get any flames at all, but what was exasperating was that they assumed that flames, once going, will never go out. As such, most of them ended up cooking rice on what were termed as"magical fires" by Dunstan. Even after the solid fuel had burned out, they happily waited for the rice to cook on its own. Then they come to me and complain that the rice isn't cooking. I gave them this "I wonder why" look.
Fast forward to the preparation for the campfire. The kids were divided into groups of 20 or so, and there were *gasp* 11 groups. Each group was supposed to learn some campfire songs, and each group also had to come up with a performance. Teaching the campfire songs was sooo tiring. The kids seemed to have hand-eye coordination problems, and had lots of trouble with the actions accompanying songs like Gako the Frog and Cannibal King. Then they either refused to sing, or made up their own gibberish lyrics. Worse was getting them to brainstorm on ideas for their performance:
"Hey everybody... You all have to come up with a performance blah blah blah blah. What do you all want to do?" I'll ask.
*crickets chirp*
"Would you all want to sing, dance or act?" I said as I pretended to look cheerful. The only movement I could detect was the kids blinking at me.
Oh well, fast forward to the actual campfire. The first performance was a skit called "Temasek Idol"... ooookay. The kids had fun imitating contestants and the judges, but we, the audience, were suffering. Some "contestants" screamed into the mike (gawd these kids can screeeeam man!), the judges gave crappy comments, while other kids just forgot what they were supposed to do altogether.
Subsequently, we realised there were 5 groups going to do skits that had to do with American/Singapore/Temasek Idol, and it was as though we were watching encore after encore. The guest of honour looked as though he was in pain, and the staff of the school all wore frowns.
Anyway, we each received a plaque to thank us for volunteering. I guess that, plus the fact that the kids all went home with happy looks on their faces, makes our day worthwhile after all.
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kheng yong; 19th dec 88
[x] Ashley
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All About Them Words VER 1.0
