The Circle Experience

I arrived at the Federal Carpark, SMU at 0800 on Weds and was looking forward to meeting my Orientation Group Mates. The car park was packed with excited, chatty people. You would have thought that it was easy to lose yourself among the crowd, but my presence was immediately noticed by more than a dozen of old friends - School mates, BMT mates, Army Course Mates etc. Everyone is just so friendly! Small wonder, this is the first day of the camp. Everyone is nice on the first day.

Working through the crowd, i managed to find my Orientation Group. The facilitator is a petite and somewhat quiet lady; way different from the usual infectiously enthusiastic cheerleader that you'll expect. Her name is Stephanie Ng Qi Hui, and over the next three days, she is going to play the devil.

I met the guys, before proceeding to the gals. Shaking everyone's hands and introducing myself, i got so carried away that i introduced myself to the gals of another group! It then struck my mind that we don't have that many gals in the group, and when one of the gals told me that she thinks i'm not in their group, boy didn't i flush. It was so embarassing but i manage to savage the situation by telling them that it was nice meeting them nonetheless.

The guys and the girls stuck to their usual comfort zones throughout the first day though we had a dozen of activities to break the ice. It took a round of peer appraisals to finally get the team building process going. Each one of us finally let down our guard and our grasps of our self images to open up to one another by the second day. But when the engine starts running, boy didn't we perform. Steph was applying constant pressure as she set some ridiculous rules that we had to abide by at all costs. But that didn't stop us from surpassing our own expectations time after time. I like that kind of synergy among a newly formed team, it gave me a high throughout the last day, when we went treasure hunting, dragon boat rowing, raft building and water gun fighting.

But it was a brief camp, and regrettably, i didn't get to know the members of my group in depth due to the lack of quality interactions. They were good people, but they were all holding back a lot, and that i feel, was the reason why we found it so hard to click as a team at the start. But after the second and third day, the synergy surfaced and it was easy to see that we have so much potential yet to be tapped. If only we had one or two sessions of speed dating at the beginning and during the nights before we sleep, things could have been much better.

Nonetheless, i was very impressed by the detailed planning put in by the organisers. The keeping of time was immaculate and we ended a 2 good hours ahead of time. But one thing is for sure, i have now 16 more people on my contact list. Don't belittle the power of networking, alot of good will come out of it. It's always a cause for celebration to have made 16 more friends, not enemies.