29 September 2013: Coastal Cleanup

Today, we did coastal clean-up. We mostly picked up cigarette buds. At the beginning my group kept picking up wood.  Jayson’s group found a dead lizard and a dead frog. The frog was bloated and was about to burst and the intestines were about to flow out.  Everyone except Dad, Ryan Jr.’s Dad, Jayson and Jeremiah said “Ew!”. My group found a lot of trash, including a lighter, found by me.  Celestine even said their back car wheel had a diaper next to it.  I also found a pizza-box holder.  Janelle brought her dog, Caramel. 

Before the walk to where we were supposed to start picking trash, I gave Celestine a pack of Mix, clip, ‘n’ Zip bracelets.  Once, when we were walking to where we were supposed to start, Celestine dropped the bracelets I gave her.  Javier saw the pack that dropped from Celestine’s bag.  Seeing that it was a new type of trash, Javier picked it up.  Everyone, except Celestine and me thought it was trash.  Wasn’t it lucky Javier picked it up?  

Javier and James kept complaining about when we could start picking up trash.  Afterwards, we went mad about trash.  Celestine found a watermelon skin and two chicken bones.  We had a lot of fun picking up trash.  Later, we sat down to eat our snacks.  We had to take off our gloves so I threw mine away.  I had Mame monster noodles, Celestine had chocolate cookies, Javier and James had bananas.  Celestine said I always have the best snacks.  Later on, we met the Scorpions.  There was a big hill-ish rock thing (the breakwater) that everyone except me climbed up.  

On the way back Auntie El was talking with me.  Isaac said that his group found a rusty oil tank full of sea water and a red plush toy snake.  My group also found ceramic tiles.  Jayson and Jeremiah found two Nerf gun bullets.  One of them was a black velcro bullet and the other was a purple suction bullet. We collected 10 bags in total, but only 5 made it back to the start point. All in all, 38 kg of rubbish collected from the beach, consisting of about 620 cigarette butts, lots and lots of bottles and cans, and well, one or two dead animals.

- Leanne Lim

4 Aug 2013: Country and Culture

At today‘s scout meeting we were sharing about the cultures and traditions of other places.

Leanne shared traditional dances from Italy, Japan, and Israel.  The Italian dance was called tarantella, the Japanese dance was Tanko Bushi, and the Israely dance was called the Hora. Leanne got everybody to try the Hora even if the boys didn’t want to!

Emily, Jeremiah and I shared a Singaporean game called five stones. Jeremiah and I used small beanbags, Emily just used pebbles!

Javier and Kayla shared about Taiwan. Javier shared about the Taiwanese scout logo, Kayla about landmarks.  They shared about Taiwan because our next activity was a meet-up with some Taiwanese Scouts at Gardens By the Bay.

Jayson and Glenn shared about an American game called Capture the flag. You need to have two teams to play this game. First, you divide your playing space in half. Then, each team hides their “flag” on their side of the playing space and decides where their “jail” is, then, you start the game. Each player tries to get the opposite teams flag. If you get tagged on the opposite side of the playing space, you go to jail. You can try to tag players from the other team that are on your side of the playing space. If someone tags someone on their team that is in jail, everyone in that jail can run away. The first team to get the other team’s flag to their side of the playing space wins.  We played this game and it was hard because it was not clear which way the field was divided.  Nobody won in the end.

Jedediah shared about a Singaporean game called Chatek.  This is a one player game.  The player has to kick the chapteh to keep it off the ground as long as he can.  I did not play it myself but I heard Kynan got 10 kicks in a row!

Kynan shared books in African language.  Kynan’s mum is from South Africa.  Kynan read the books in African and his mum (Auntie El) translated so we could understand.

We also learnt about the National flag, and our Scout flag, and participated in a flag-raising ceremony using a flag pole set up by the older cubs.  We also learnt how to fold the flag.

I enjoyed Leanne’s presentation most in this meeting.  We had fun too playing capture the flag.

- Isaac Lim