ISF: from the beginning (2/2)
We met for the O-camp at HKU. I was in blue group. After ice-breaking, we did an HKO (Hong Kong Orientation). There were many tasks, located in different areas over Hong Kong. The finish point, i.e. the camp site, was in Tai O. We first went through HKU, and headed for West Point for lunch. There were many arguments on the strategy during the game, the most significant one was about whether to catch a minibus at West Point, or get up the hill back to The Belcher’s to catch a bus for extra points, to cross the harbour. Luckily, we settled for it during lunch. We finally ran up the hill, caught the bus and got the extra points. After crossing the harbour, we changed to the MTR for Tuen Mun. On the train, we decided to get off the train at Tin Shui Wai and do some tasks there, before entering Tuen Mun.
With the help of Jenny (our group mum) and me, our group ran through Tuen Mun to do tasks. We got off at Siu Hong, did the tasks, then I brought the group to LU. That was only a short run, about 5 minutes, and I “churred” the group (made the group exhausted) through the way. We went to town centre afterwards, and did a long run (about 15 minutes) to Sun Tuen Mun Centre (Light Rail Depot). It was very demanding. Finally, we went to Tai O by ferry. At that moment, I just treated that as a game and aimed at getting the most points.
After dinner, we played a detective game. We had to gather information and find out who was the murderer. There were many ciphers that we had to get the meaning. Near the end of the game, we were masked and had to find all the group members without making any noise from the mouth. It was very magical that we actually formed the correct groups, with no “spies” in them. I still hadn’t heard of ISF yet at that moment, but when I thought of it later, ISF might have played some of the magic in it.
On the second day, we played mass games after breakfast and beach games after lunch. They were just ordinary games. We had a campfire party after dinner, but I thought that it was not good when compared to campfire parties I joined in the past in scout camps.
After the campfire party, there was a tradition called “candle night”, but due to limitation of the venue, the candles couldn’t be lit. The concept of ISF was introduced. Everyone expressed the feeling on ISF and I was so impressed that tears came out of my eye when I heard the story of a student from mainland. Some were decided to get into BBA(IS) very early; some just got in incidentally, without knowing what they wanted to study; some made a hard decision between this and other programmes; and some put this in band B and got in sadly and surprisingly, failing all their band A choices. I was surprised when I knew that no other programmes had such a family, with strong bonding between classmates. I felt really warm and harmonic.
We left the camp on the third day, but sadly I couldn’t went for lunch with our groupmates together due to the place being inconvenient to me. The bootstrapping process, from JUPAS to now, is itself a magic. Although I still don’t know whether business suit me or not, I feel good being a member in ISF. I hope that the feeling of warmth and harmony will be alongside with me in the following four years.