Rendezvous at MacRitchie

(Warning: Long narrative-like post ahead)

Word of the day (or these few days) would probably 'rendezvous'.

In classic fashion, trying to use a big word, Tim told Derek that he had a secret rendezvous on Wednesday, and had to leave soccer early as a result. Needless to say, being 'his usual smart self', Tim pronouned the word as it was spelt, the full three syllables. 'Ren' (rhyming with 'Ben'), 'Dez' (the 'e' as pronouned in 'mess'), and 'Vous' (as in mischievous). That was quite amusing, and it cracked Derek up. Soon the news was spread to the whole world.

How was one to know that it was a French word!? Kenny was there to teach me the next day at MacRitchie SL, we did have a fun French lesson, even as Kenny was musing over the Third Language lesson which he was missing that afternoon. In greater mockery of my wrong pronunciation, the Raffles girls were all wearing T-shirts (yes sean...with 'tim-style' folded sleeves) with the bolded words 'Raffles' Rendezvous' printed across. Derek was the first to point it out...not surprisingly.

So, perhaps I should comment a little on the whole SL experience. It wasn't too bad. But so few people went. And it was quite disappointing in that sense. Expected more, but there were so many things to be done, people had so many appointments, people had so many other important things to be done, people didn't feel like coming, people went overseas, people had issues to tend to, or people were just bo-chap. No offence to anyone in particular, let's just leave 'people' as 'people' in general and not go around pointing fingers now (we cannot forget that when one points a finger, he points three at himself)

In a word, it was tiring. The walk from Venus Drive, past the scenic route, with the winding road, the country club, the long grass, the lone jackfruit hanging from the tree, the occasional caterpillar thing climbing up the silken thread, the tortise, and the 'food-snatching monkeys, was just long and almost weary. The first day started off on a terrible note. Not having a handphone, it was uncustomary of me to take down the handphone number of anyone, so I did not have Benjamin's (the Big Leader Guy's) number. Unfortunately this meant waiting an eternity for them to arrive. We limboed under the road blocking thing, played carnival games (tossing wood into tree trunk holes from afar), to keep ourselves busy. But eventually still had to walk into the park by ourself.

At least the air-conditioned room was a comforting reception. We were introduced to the map of the tree-top walk, and how we were to set up the 100m by 200m plot of land for a research project - The research project being a census of the tree species present in the tropical rainforest. It was to 'inventorise', monitor tree dynamics and reach out to the public, so i guess in it's own funny way it was 'service-learning'. We were to set up the plot of land, using the tree-top walk bridge as the middle guide.

And so we set off, with white long spars, tent pegs, mallets, raffia, water bottles in hand. Splitting into two groups. Sean, Phil and Kenny went up to the bridge to drop raffia lines as gauges for the points along the bridge (25m, 50m, 100m, 150m, 175m). Bong (or Boone), Ian, Chongwee and I took the bottom of the bridge, and were to receive these lines and peg them down into the ground. Needless to say, we had a blast trying to position the lines at a perpendicular to the ground. Was more difficult considering we were working along a slope, and the lines were being dropped from like 50m above :P.

We placed our water bottles in a little corner at the foot of a tree trunk. An hour later, Ian claimed they were infested by ants.

After this ardous task, we were asked to walk outwards 50m to the left and right of the bridge, perpendicularly, in order to get the 100m width of the plot (recall the raffia that was dropped from above was to obtain the points of lengthwise distance in the middle of the plot). We had like 100m long measuring tape that had snapped off at midway between 32m (oh gosh...i still remember these details). With the measuring tape in hand, we walked 50m straight into the forest to the left first. Of course we had the help of Naga.

Which brings us to the rangers (don't get excited Bong) - Janet (da jie jie) and Christopher (Tarzan Boy). Plus they had the secret weapon Naga, with the parang. We all thought it was an inanimate object till we realised that Naga was an Indian worker there. Decked in blue t-shirt and wielding a parang, speaking broken english. Undoubtedly one of our best pals by the end of the two days.

So Naga hacked and we followed, and Ian and I emerged into this clearing with (lo and behold) lots and lots of pitcher plants!!! There were countless of them, apparently the sort that, with some decoration could probably fetch a price of close to ten dollars. It was a moment filled with amazement. Following that, we planted the second white pole into the soil.

The third pole was pretty much the same, but we went the other way, and it was tougher...a little. And so the third ian was planted in (we called the poles 'ian' because they were long, white and thin...amazing stuff!)

Then Benjamin came for quality check, and realised that we were seriously seriously off for the first pole. Ian sighed. I sighed. We knew we had to redo it. This time we were taught to use a compass. I still remember those horrible bearings (022, 112, 202, 292). I think we did a better job the second time, though all in all we had walked a total of more than 400m through the dense foilage. We finally got some rest later.

That was Ian and I. Chongwee and Bong were further outward from the ranger station, pegging in the remaining tent pegs along the bridge. I decided to pay the rest a visit - those on the bridge. When I found them, they were staring into space, horribly tired. Well, that's expected. Honestly, we had it worse...(but everyone thinks that of themselves), but admittedly they had got more sun. Either way, Chongwee was belting out the loudest, and he sounded like one of those exotic birds of paradise in the forest. Bong remained calm and silent even though he was next to the most agitated person of our gang.

Lunch was fine. Chicken rice (i still don't get the joke). Chilli (thanks for that Kenny...). We were recharged...maybe....but that was when everything turned emo...especially Kenny...

(to be continued - for time reasons....yes it is 12 midnite now)