Aduro, A New Beginning
Day 2
The Slugging

After FN we came back for a debrief. One of the longest we had ever had.

Basically most of the vitriol was directed towards the programmes which had not been ran to its full efficiency, or the sudden delays, the glitches, the mix-ups, etc.

It was quite saddening to hear your programmes being "operated on". People offered many solutions on how the camp should have been better, how this should have been done, what I should have not done.

I must admit, criticism is one of the things that is harder to accept for me. Especially when it comes in huge torrents, floods. And from your own people, the people working under you, the people working with you, the people working above you.

I think everyone knew i was pissed. I made no attempt to hide that. While the slugging took place all i could manage was to nod silently. "ya. ya. ya. ya. ok." I had no energy left to fight, to reason, to tell them why. Not that reason was much of a use either.

Some words made sense. Some words didn't, instead they fuelled the rage burning in myself.

Three things i have to say:

1) For those who said my plans / planning department were lousy: Why didn't you tell me before hand?
Why must you wait till that fateful day when everyone is slugging me and you add fuel to the fire?
Not that i didn't give you enough time and chances for open discussion. I believe that, I had asked so many times for feedback. None came. All my plans were uploaded on yahoo groups. No one read them.

2) For the poor execution: yup. it was shitty execution, even i didn't expect it. One problem could be communication - the wrongful encoding and decoding of instructions.
For that, its my fault - i am not a good communicator, i admit. Instructions were not passed down clearly. There are so many ideas in my head yet it's hard for me to get them out.

But then: no one reads my plans on yahoo groups. Isn't that why no one understands what i'm saying? I can quote examples.
Catch Me If You Can. Candlefight. Alternate Fright Night Activities. These were plans that you had to read beforehand in order to know what's going on. No one did.
Maybe the constant changes that we had of the proposals lead to different versions, so in the end, no one cares at all.
If no one reads the RO, is it the fault of the person who types the RO? No. it's the fault of the commander.

3) Manpower. People keep coming in and out, each with their varying schedules. People can tell me that they are not coming 1 week before the camp, and 3-4 days before the camp they can tell me they are coming. Even during the camp, i discovered additional manpower that i have, and manpower that i should have but somehow disappeared.

Yes i have no control over my men. I don't wanna control anything, i am not a leader, i just wanna make sure this camp is good, the people have fun.

Right from the start, everyone who signed up for this camp were volunteers. No one was "drafted" or "conscripted". Why can't then, they turn up for meetings regularly? Work. It is so hard to gather everyone for a single meeting, cos i know they don't give a shit about the plans online at all. Never mind, i will swallow that; in the end we had a meeting about 5 days before the camp. Attendance-wise and judging from the questions they fielded, it was shitty. I doubt that it fulfilled half its purpose.

To the MIA people - i am powerless over you. I don't wanna force anyone to come, to do things. We are friends after all, if not, classmates, and i don't wanna sound like a tyrant or a slavemaster.

It is tough enough planning for the items. I am not a manpower IC. And I am not fit to be a program IC when i can't even control my men.

Enough, my defence for that day is written in 3 points here in bold, and partly delivered by alvin. No use talking about it. I wrote it here in my quiet corner, a deliverance to myself, not another attack that will trigger off a war.

Lastly, i never intended for this camp to be successful, like the big camps, like union camp. Union camp was fun, everybody knows that. But if i could do better than last year, i will have fulfilled my objective. There are errors here and there, some that can be anticipated, some that never will be anticipated. And for those that can be anticipated, sometimes there is not enough manpower and resources to devote to it.

I believe no plan is perfect, and you can't please everyone. My target was that at least about 3 OGs out of 5 enjoyed it. And if they didn't, the OGLs were to step in and save the day with their minigames and backups.

Whatever.

The briefing ended at 3am, and everyone's eyes were bloodshot. Mood was sombre. And they still had sentosa briefing after that. I admire their spirit when they did not sleep.

I went to sleep. Yuantai very thankfully put me out of the sentosa games, for what reason i didn't want to know. Went to bed sticky and smelly, so popped over to chalet K and bathed there at 4am. Apparently xinyi heard some "stuff" later, so i thank my gods that nothing happened to me. lol. Maybe "they" didn't wanna antagonise a man who will point the middle finger at anything that inflames him.

Somehow, i feel, the living are more scary than the non-living people...