It's a new semester and I've been a bit drained and unprepared for everything to start.

I'm quite happy with my timetable though, and most of the modules I'm taking this semester (lit, social work and 2 CAPT modules) look like they'll be interesting. I was falling asleep in most of them this week :/ but hopefully I'll be more awake come Week 2.

Cat Baba was back to her habit of zi-pai-ing:

(haha I actually forgot why she always grabs my phone until she started doing it again. Some photos are too cute not to share)

Still, I'm glad to be back at CAPT (the residential college I stay at at NUS) and this is what's been happening the past week:

1. Late night captain's ball sessions
The same night I returned, I soon found myself playing captain's ball. Walking around on my heels (trying not to put pressure on the blisters from playing barefoot), and washing off dirty feet at 1am, that's when I knew I was really back in the craziness of CAPT. This week alone, we've played twice and we're playing a third time tonight. Love the game and how it bonds people :) we've been having orientation activities every night for the past 4 nights, and on the second last night Dragon Slayer (refer here for explanation of the weird names) asked the freshies to play. I liked it because I got to know the freshies slightly better - it's somehow easier to break the ice this way than talking to them.

2. Dinners with my OG
Throughout fledgling week (CAPT's way of describing our orientation activities. It follows the idea of a college ready to take off at the end of the week), our neighbourhood emphasized "family." Because that is really what our friends and neighbours have become to us over the past 1 year.

Today as I was thinking about my post, I realised that - cliches aside - these people have really become close to family. I realised that I had tried to set time aside to have dinners with my OG in the week, the same way I try to set aside time on weekends for family.

3.  Birthday surprises 
We planned a birthday surprise for Hat and Prawn. It was quite funny because while two friends were bubble wrapping Prawn's door, I happened to run into him in the lift, about to get off on his floor. I panicked and asked him to help me. I ended up asking him to come up to my floor, take a roll of bubble wrap, and put it in the common lounge on level 1.

Thinking it was safe to let him go to his level lounge as long as he didn't go near his room, I told him I didn't need any more help. But for some reason the whole group migrated to someone's suite, so he walked past his room and of course, saw two people sticking stuff on his door. "I didn't see anything! I didn't see anything!" But obviously he did.


Hat still didn't know what was going on, till we finally gathered as a group (5 of us in total, with Kiwi late as usual) and sang happy birthday to them both. Then Prawn very embarrassedly gave Hat his half of the cake (he started eating it because it was left outside his door lol). And then we started the short trail around CAPT. Prawn and Hat were given clues with tasks like "Play a duet together" and "Win a foosball match." With each clue they also picked up a kiwi (for Hat) and tabasco sauce (for Prawn) because one loves fruits and the other loves tabasco sauce with everything.

Our last stop? The common lounge where we took a photo with the bubble wrap:



Oh, and we bubble-wrapped the wrong door. Hat swopped rooms with his suitemate but we didn't know! Luckily the guy hadn't moved in, so Hat helped us to bubble wrap his own door.

4. One CAPT 
On the first night of fledgling week, we had "branding" which was basically writing "One CAPT" on our hands with henna. Sunny Side-up helped me to draw a ship's steering wheel :) and I drew flowers for her in return.


For black neighbourhood, we had our own special donkey (it's supposed to be a horse) called Tulee (?) that we took photos with. Turns out it's for our door label:



The door labels were presented to us on the last night of fledgling week ^^. Really a lot of effort went into planning the neighbourhood and college-level activities, and I'm proud of my friends/thankful to the committee for it!

5. Door gifts
Left a note on Gummy Bear's door, and she promptly returned a post-it and snack:


Couldn't help smiling at how familiar it was, and in a very nice way, to have people leaving friendly/encouraging notes at the door.

My Room
I loved my room last semester, but I realise I need the change in environment to help me kind of reset for the new semester. 90% of it is from last semester since I just decided on that today:



Favourite part of the room - moved Chip over because I haven't replaced the pillows on the grass mat.


Will write more soon about the new semester! :)

happy to be back,

Labels: author: stella, lists, school and schooling, themed entries