"Don't ever lose faith in who you are, for that's what makes you different.
Don't try to turn yourself into someone everyone else is, for if that happens, the world is a poorer place."
- Sept 2005
It's been a very busy week for me and i'm the worse for wear and tear. but the upside is: I'm happy.
One year ago, I was the one in the hot seat with a huge burden on my shoulders. One year on, I am watching as someone else takes on the burden with aplomb and pull it off once more. A different location, a different group of people, but we still retained our signatures, and I hope we will continue to make those signatures absolutely ours.
Things such as Samuel's Panda Bear and 1000-year Bamboo, the war movies fleshed out by the freshers, the spastic mahjong sessions with justin, michelle and Jingxiang, that seven-in-a-car escapade to macs in the morning, frying rice for the whole camp without seasoning, my 20-minute race back to pasir ris from sentosa, these are memories that I will always remember and hold dear.
Lounging around at FCUK'2005, a comment by a fresher left a deep impression in me. She said: "I really love how this camp works. It really introduced us to the one thing we need for life in London - Friends."
That was the shining light for me. It single-handedly made me feel totally vindicated that all I have fought for last year was worth it. I was never in doubt that it was the right thing to do, but now I will never once more live in doubt.
Many say that it's simply not worth the effort and the cost to organise this event, but just because the material rewards do not accrue back to us should not make it wrong to want to follow this path. But that being said, it's a reward that I will never understand for I never had a chance to be a fresher in an LSE orientation camp, to do silly things that only happen that once in a lifetime.
But the satisfaction I get knowing that I and we have made that little difference in their vision of their new life, to actually help them look forward to going on a journey, and letting them know that they will never have to tread that path alone. That's priceless.
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Slept the afternoon away and off we went to the Night Safari! haha, swakoo me, first time I ever went there.