Well anyway, last weekend I was forced to attend this weekend sort of "camp" organized by the government called BTN, Biro Tata Negara. I admit I was infinitely disappointed when I knew I was selected for this kind of programme, not to mention extremely stressed out due to the fact that I was behind in like a dozen presentations, assignments and other works, you know,being so close to the final exams and all. To make things worse, my frineds told me all sorts of horror stories about BTN, like racism and excessive politics. It would seem I was in for one hell of week. And by one hell of a week, I mean HELL.
However the story unfolds as though it runs along a parallel yet alternate dimension to the vile stories and twisted fables of my ever-so-trustworthy dorm mates. First off, it started out a little off cause the bus was late by only TWO HOURS. And to top it off the driver kept getting lost. Not to flame the guy, but come on, really? But that wasnt in fact part of the BTN itself, so perhaps I'll exclude that little experience. Anyway, we arrived late to a, well lets say "squad" of guards who were supposed to be our facilitators. Anyway we started off with some introduction and appointing of penghulu and stuff. Somewhere along the track I got labeled Asyraf Sinclair, which made no sense to me but everyone else found it amusing. I dont even know who the guy is. Well, it was night time, so not much could be done. We were soon shown to our rooms. I must say the first thing I noticed is that the place was AMAZING. Not only was it clean and tidy, it seemed to be completely void of filth. The structures looked new and were neat and pretty easy on the eyes. The dewan ceramah was like OMG freezing cold (in a good way). The rooms were nice too, in fact I dare say they were better than cleaner and better than what I am currently having to endure at CFS Nilai, the beds were to die for and the room was cold despite there being no aircond. But the part that got me the most were the bathrooms. Ive never seen a toilet seat more clean in my life, a hose so attached to the pipe, a flush work so elegantly! You might think I'm being a little extravagant, you might think its just a bathroom, its just a toilet. Well you thought WRONG. Its the tandas from heaven thats what it is.
Anyway where was I? Oh yeah. The next morning we got up early for Subuh and had to proceed to some boring kawad for some morning exercise. But after all that, we went to the dewan ceramah and had all sorts of activities. There was this game which invloved a tupai, a house and an earthquake. FUN. Then we split into groups of about 15 and had to name our group and draw up a flag. I happened to get only the BEST group ever. We named ourselves 4.0, our motto being "Escaping the bounds of a 4 by 4". Heh, pretty smart eh? I thought of that myself. We drew up the flag and some other wordiness things and then proceeded to present this stuff. I must say it was just as fun as it was entertaining. There was then some group session with our respective facilitators, and I must say we got a very nice guy on our side. Other groups werent as lucky, or so I heard. Next was some intricate game where we had to work to get paid food to cook for our dinner. Complex, and initially quite difficult to understand, my job shifted from bodyguard to "flower" model. That was kinda gay, but I enjoyed the attention. We then proceeded to cook our food stuffs. I didnt have much involvement here, even though I tried, as the girls (who were the majority) were extremely enthusiastic for this particular activity. I must say we prepared some kick-ass grub out there, considering we cooked form mess tins. But aha, the twist came when we were actually supposed to eat. All groups were waiting patiently to chow down there grub, when we were ordered to switch our meals with the groups next to us. Tempers flared here and emotions exploded, to say the least. Nobody seemed happy with that notion. Personally, I didnt really mind or care for that matter, if it tastes good, I'll eat it. Apparently there was some lesson to be learned from this or something like that. ANYHOW, the last event for the night was my least favourite. It involved walking around in silent groups looking for clues.
(Not wanting to go to this topic as he finds it boring and uninteresting, the author skips to the next morning.)
You still with me? I doubt it, this thing is so long I might fall asleep just typing. Well, instead of kawad this morning, we had to do some... interesting dances instead. To exercise that is. We then proceeded to my favourite part, the mass-grouped debate/discussion sort of forum thing. We basically were given four topics to choose each time, everyone would rally to the topic they thought most important and lashed out against the other topics while praising their own. I found this very amusing and fun. I even had a say at one point. There was then some boring ceramah and Q and A session. I guess thats where the politics came in. I wouldnt know, I frequently visited the heavenly bathrooms to escape the freezing heat of the dewan ceramah.
Then we had some weird game where we moved around making paper chains in silence while walking on our knees. That was painful. The game was initially fun, but became quite annoying towards the end. Anyway, we finished up, took some pictures and stuff. Heres a snapshot of group 4.0, I'm the weirdo in the back whose face is half blocked ;D
