Friday the thirteenth came and went without any bad incidents. You may say I am superstitious, but I had two worst days of my life that just happened to be on Friday the thirteenth. Probably it is just a coincidence, but everytime Friday the thirteenth comes along, I always try to be extra wary.
I had a very fun weekend on Sentosa island. This is the first church retreat I attended. When I heard my first ex telling me about how enlightened he was after attending a church camp, for a while I was rather scared to go as I thought it was going to be some sort of religious frenzy which I do not think I am up to the level to handle yet.
But this camp really enlightened me. It is nothing like what I have been told. There was only a short prayer session on Friday night, other than that, it was mostly fun, games, walks, movie screening and suggestions on how to improve the church choir. There was no praise and worship or long sessions of prayers. And it is the few rare times in my life that I can actually talk to people about religion without once being judged or looked down upon. And the best thing was that the weather was so nice and good for the weekend, no rain at all!
Since this is a church choir retreat, the discussions were mostly on how to improve the choir and what constitutes a perfect choir. We checked in on Friday night at Costa Sands Resort on Siloso Beach, near the Rasa Sentosa Hotel and the Underwater World.
We had an ice-breaking session where everyone did a quiz on how well they know the members of the choir, then a reflection on how being in a choir really means to each of us, before we had a prayer session. After which, we played some games and slept. I could not really sleep well the whole night as the air con was blasting directly at my feet.
I had to get up in the middle of the night and get my towel from the bathroom to cover my feet before I felt more comfortable. Even then, I could only toss and turn and hardly slept. Needless to say, I was almost a walking zombie the next day.
The next day (Saturday), I was supposed to go for the orientation programme for my course. But when I woke up (not really woke up as I never really slept anyway), I read through the programme and realised that I have already attended the orientation last year, thus I stayed on. We had a breakfast of sandwiches.
We went to the beach for some morning exercises, before going back to the room, where we had a brainstorming discussion on how to make a perfect choir. It was a very long brainstorming session, so after narrowing down to eight major components, we went to eat lunch.
After lunch, we proceeded with some games. The first game was on team spirit. There were two teams of three pairs, and the players of each team had to cooperate with each other to roll a tennis ball three rounds using just their upper bodies, from their elbows onwards. It was fun and creative to say the least, judging from the strategies each one of us came up with.
The second game was the "Murderer" card game. We played two rounds and I ended up being the murderer twice. But I was good, at least I managed to "kill" people without leaving a trace, and those "detectives" kept arresting the wrong people. I was never found out until the end, so I got off scot free. ;-)
After the second game, we continued our discussion and each of us had a clear role on how to improve the choir, before proceeding on to the third game of "Charades". It was a different type of charades as the thing we had to act out was written on slips of paper stuffed into balloons.
So there were three teams, and each of us had to burst a balloon and act out what was written on the paper. When the last balloon was burst, we had to combine all the slips together, and wrote out a story / sentence / song using the words on the papers. Very creative people I know, the stories they came up with were funny, nonsensical yet really good!
We had dinner after that. Then we broke into groups where some went to the Musial Fountain and the rest of us (me included) went for a slow night walk along the beach. The beach at night is really nice, calm and relaxing. We went down to Rasa Sentosa, enjoyed a little live music at the hotel terrace bar, then went back down the other side, sat on a breakwater and dipped our feets into the cold water before going back to shower.
The movie screening started at 10:30pm, after everyone had came back and showered. We watched "Les Choristers", the show of a French Boys' Choir. A real wonderful show, I wonder why I missed out on that last year? It was such a touching and heart-warming show. The child actors are really good, and the boys choir is really amazing! How I wish I could sing like that when I was young.
I slept better on the second night, probably because I was totally zonked out due to lack of sleep on the first night. We checked out this morning at 10:15am, but stayed around for breakfast, beach walk and took the new Luge Ride where there is a chairlift bringing you up, but a motor tram sliding all the way down. Fun and exciting!
Sentosa Island has changed a lot the last time I went there (which was more than a year ago). They even have a Sakae Sushi, New Zealand All Natural and Ben & Jerry's outlet along Siloso Beach now. We tried Ben & Jerry's ice-cream before we left, and it is really good! No wonder it is reputed as supposedly the best ice-cream in the world!
It was really great going there again, but the best thing is that I get to hang out with very fun and nice people. The choir is essentially an Indonesian Choir, made up mainly of Indonesian and a few Malaysian students and former students of NTU, where my sponsor is the conductor.
The best thing is that I can talk to them as equals and there is no discrimination at all, unlike the other church choirs where if they do not know you, they are reluctant to take you in. I do not think the attitude is right, as my take is that anyone wishing to serve the church should be welcomed and not made to feel ostracised. There should not be any clique as everyone's objectives is to serve the church well.
I had a very fun weekend on Sentosa island. This is the first church retreat I attended. When I heard my first ex telling me about how enlightened he was after attending a church camp, for a while I was rather scared to go as I thought it was going to be some sort of religious frenzy which I do not think I am up to the level to handle yet.
But this camp really enlightened me. It is nothing like what I have been told. There was only a short prayer session on Friday night, other than that, it was mostly fun, games, walks, movie screening and suggestions on how to improve the church choir. There was no praise and worship or long sessions of prayers. And it is the few rare times in my life that I can actually talk to people about religion without once being judged or looked down upon. And the best thing was that the weather was so nice and good for the weekend, no rain at all!
Since this is a church choir retreat, the discussions were mostly on how to improve the choir and what constitutes a perfect choir. We checked in on Friday night at Costa Sands Resort on Siloso Beach, near the Rasa Sentosa Hotel and the Underwater World.
We had an ice-breaking session where everyone did a quiz on how well they know the members of the choir, then a reflection on how being in a choir really means to each of us, before we had a prayer session. After which, we played some games and slept. I could not really sleep well the whole night as the air con was blasting directly at my feet.
I had to get up in the middle of the night and get my towel from the bathroom to cover my feet before I felt more comfortable. Even then, I could only toss and turn and hardly slept. Needless to say, I was almost a walking zombie the next day.
The next day (Saturday), I was supposed to go for the orientation programme for my course. But when I woke up (not really woke up as I never really slept anyway), I read through the programme and realised that I have already attended the orientation last year, thus I stayed on. We had a breakfast of sandwiches.
We went to the beach for some morning exercises, before going back to the room, where we had a brainstorming discussion on how to make a perfect choir. It was a very long brainstorming session, so after narrowing down to eight major components, we went to eat lunch.
After lunch, we proceeded with some games. The first game was on team spirit. There were two teams of three pairs, and the players of each team had to cooperate with each other to roll a tennis ball three rounds using just their upper bodies, from their elbows onwards. It was fun and creative to say the least, judging from the strategies each one of us came up with.
The second game was the "Murderer" card game. We played two rounds and I ended up being the murderer twice. But I was good, at least I managed to "kill" people without leaving a trace, and those "detectives" kept arresting the wrong people. I was never found out until the end, so I got off scot free. ;-)
After the second game, we continued our discussion and each of us had a clear role on how to improve the choir, before proceeding on to the third game of "Charades". It was a different type of charades as the thing we had to act out was written on slips of paper stuffed into balloons.
So there were three teams, and each of us had to burst a balloon and act out what was written on the paper. When the last balloon was burst, we had to combine all the slips together, and wrote out a story / sentence / song using the words on the papers. Very creative people I know, the stories they came up with were funny, nonsensical yet really good!
We had dinner after that. Then we broke into groups where some went to the Musial Fountain and the rest of us (me included) went for a slow night walk along the beach. The beach at night is really nice, calm and relaxing. We went down to Rasa Sentosa, enjoyed a little live music at the hotel terrace bar, then went back down the other side, sat on a breakwater and dipped our feets into the cold water before going back to shower.
The movie screening started at 10:30pm, after everyone had came back and showered. We watched "Les Choristers", the show of a French Boys' Choir. A real wonderful show, I wonder why I missed out on that last year? It was such a touching and heart-warming show. The child actors are really good, and the boys choir is really amazing! How I wish I could sing like that when I was young.
I slept better on the second night, probably because I was totally zonked out due to lack of sleep on the first night. We checked out this morning at 10:15am, but stayed around for breakfast, beach walk and took the new Luge Ride where there is a chairlift bringing you up, but a motor tram sliding all the way down. Fun and exciting!
Sentosa Island has changed a lot the last time I went there (which was more than a year ago). They even have a Sakae Sushi, New Zealand All Natural and Ben & Jerry's outlet along Siloso Beach now. We tried Ben & Jerry's ice-cream before we left, and it is really good! No wonder it is reputed as supposedly the best ice-cream in the world!
It was really great going there again, but the best thing is that I get to hang out with very fun and nice people. The choir is essentially an Indonesian Choir, made up mainly of Indonesian and a few Malaysian students and former students of NTU, where my sponsor is the conductor.
The best thing is that I can talk to them as equals and there is no discrimination at all, unlike the other church choirs where if they do not know you, they are reluctant to take you in. I do not think the attitude is right, as my take is that anyone wishing to serve the church should be welcomed and not made to feel ostracised. There should not be any clique as everyone's objectives is to serve the church well.
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