NoGAPS

Done NoGAPS 2010*
(*NoGAPS: National Gathering of Pharmacy Students)
This year, at AIMST.

Honest Disclaimer: This involves only the author's personal observations and opinions. The photos are stolen from others' facebook albums

Seriously speaking i like the AIMST's campus and their apartment-style hostel, but not the insects there. Sleeping with mosquitoes, bathing with cockroaches and sharing your meal with flies. What a "green" way. (Green in the sense of the colour of the shit)
I wonder how the AIMST students can stand and stay with them under one roof for such a long time. Imagine, the morning when you wake up and stand in front of the mirror, you might be surprised that suddenly so many tahi lalats have grown all over your face overnight. Bangkai-bangkai berselerak on the floor like chocolate factory. =.= And everytime before i took my bath, i was like "the cleaner" cleaning up the dead bodies.

OK, cutting crap. Now talk about my overall impression of NoGAPS.
If I were to give a score from the range of 1 to 5, I would say..erm..3.5

My first impression started taking place during the registration.
"Hmm...why only having one counter, in fact there are many other facilitators behind the counter shaking their legs?" (I'm not critisizing here, this is a question) So my rating will be...3 stars!

In the evening, yeah..icebreaking. I was quite looking forward to this session. It's a two-hour session. I was expecting something cool. However, in the first few games, I wasn't in the mood simply because the session was way too long. Apa ohm pun dah habis. Then, what wrapped up the night was the fucking idea asking me to go for debate competition. =.= Hmm..still OK lah, as I think that this was new to me. At least it's an experience. Fine! And yeah, besides this, performances by the participants were the "usual" part of such event. I was in the Green Group and we had been assigned to do a sketch. Still, it scored 4 stars!

Day 2. Opening ceremony. Not too bad, neither too good. But one thing I must share with you honestly. They had prepared an old-fashioned gimmick to officiate the ceremony which was to ask the VIPs to cut off the thread and the bunting attached to the helium balloons was then being brought up into the mid of air revealing the words "NoGAPS 2010". I can't help to give 5 wows to this. Wow wow wow wow wow. I was like mulut ternganga in shock. Haha. It's not that I was amazed by this prehistoric stunt but you know what, as the whole thing was tied to a mobile stand, so meaning to say the staffs supposedly had to move the stand from the side to the center of the stage. And here come the funny part. Instead of placing the stand at the center of the stage, they pushed the stand right to the front of the VIPs until there's barely room for the VIPs to stand up from their seats. Haha..C'mon common sense! Too bad. Rate this 2.5 =.=

Now here's the exciting one. Pharmrace!

USM gang in NoGAPS

Frankly speaking this was the good one. It's a station game but this time the game area covered almost the whole town. Running like hell from a place to another. However an abrupt chapter happened when we came to our third station which was in a mall (central mall i think). We were chased out from the mall by the security guards due to some miscommunication with the tenant. Because suddenly the whole mall was flooded with NoGAPS participants and they were like running here and there around the mall like nobody's business, inevitably this will definitely arouse in the security guards a sense of threat. We'd spent more than an hour outside the mall waiting the matter to be settled before continuing the race.

Quest: Finish up a super duper spicy tomyam

Of course the mood would be affected a little bit but overall it was awesome! The teamwork among the members was really fostered throughout the game. 4.5 stars!

My Group. Green we are.

Day 3. Community service. We went to a rumah amal which is a school for the special children in Kulim. This was my community service. (I'd given a lot of my "first times" in this NoGAPS). When we reached, we were warmly welcomed by the teachers and students there. One of the persons-in-charge said in his welcoming speech that this rumah amal is only subsidized by the government an amount of fund which is only sufficient to run its operation for one or two month. The rest is solely depending on the public donation. And this sounds sad. I mean when there are so many feasts done by the governments of which each of every feast may cost up to 10k or even higher just to celebrate those unnecessary events, on the other side, the rumah amal is only given an approximate fund of 20k per YEAR to survive.
At the rumah amal there, we have slow learners, Down syndrome sufferers and some mentally retarded students. Nevertheless most of these special children were able to carry out their basic routine normally, just that they might need to take slightly longer time to complete a task. I couldn't understand and communicate well with some of them as they slurred the words. If I were asked to take care of these kids, would I have such perseverance and patience? Really 101% respect to the volunteers and teachers there. *Salute* When I saw them and looked back to myself, I really felt blessed at that moment. I mean I'm blessed with a normal mentality and physique.
This was damn meaningful. It triggered my thought to think more in depth the life I'm leading now. Rate 5!

At night, it's showtime! As I mentioned earlier, we were asked to prepare a sketch and now it's time to put it on stage. And you might wonder what role I was playing. Tarzan. =.= Actually this was a backfired plan. Initially during our discussion, I was trying to "aniayai" Jivan (New friend from USCI)who's not on the spot at that time to be the tarzan. "Who vote for Jivan?" Everyone looked so active participating in the voting. "Yeah, now we have our hero, Jivan!!!" After some moment when Jivan's back to our discussion, he looked helpless when he's told that he was about to act as a tarzan. Maybe because of his innocent look, now the people rebelled. "Now who wants rhuyann to be tarzan?" all rose. Shit, betrayers! All fingers were pointed to me. *Speechless* What to do? Accept the fate loh..
During the performance, I really gave all in. Tarnished my image was. Aih~ I looked so stupid crawling on the floor. Ish! But still I would give 4.0

Day 4. Shit day - debate. This was my first time to be involve in debating. (You may say I practise that alot in my daily life, but that's not called debating, that's arguing) This was also the first time my stance was determined by someone. You know how the feeling was like? Erm..it's like when you like to eat durians, you have to come out with various sound reasons to rebut the truth.
The motion was "the present education system is failing in its duties to society". Do you notice something odd here? Yeah! The government is no longer the government but the government is now the opposition. In the simpler words, the proposition team oppose their policy by supporting the motion. Are you getting confused now? Haha..That's how I felt..Another special about this debate was that we were only informed our stance 10 minutes before the show. Can you imagine how f our thinking processes were that time? Of course, if I were to think from another perspective, it's good somehow.
10 minutes before 10am, we drew lots. And yeah, we were opposition team. So we would have to defend our education system. It's "successful". This was torturing my brain as I'm not pro our edu system. And a second before I knew our stance, I still assumed that we would definitely be the proposition team and was so hardworking preparing the draft for proposition.
Now, on the stage. Basically I didn't know exactly what I was supposed to do even though my teammates had told me what a third speaker should do. They said,"you don't need to prepare anything. Just listen to what proposition team said and rebut everything." Wah, macam sangat easy...

Notice me on the stage? I was the third speaker.

After proposition first speaker, then our first speaker....second speaker, then my turn. I took up the mic and looked at my notes, which were basically full with proposition team's points. I started talking emptily. I couldn't remember what I'd said. Haha. And what's funny was that when the second speaker from proposition asked for POI, I mean she did say something but seriously I didn't know what she's trying to tell me. And I said, "What's your question again?" (This phrase became another quotations of mine after this) =.=

My teammates: Miza, Me and Kal (From left)

But surprisingly, our team won the debate. Yeah, I know. You wanna say that even if I'm not in the team, they will win too, which I think it's quite right too lah..haha..
Anyway it's an awesome experience. But no next time. Rate 4.0

After this, it's MyPSA (Malaysian Pharmacy Students' Association) AGM. Walao eh, this was so sienz...They spent more than 6 hours to complete the whole thing. At the end, there are still 3 posts left open. Pity. I'm not going to elaborate this further as most of the time, I was in half auto-pilot mode. Rate 2.5

Then, tada, grand dinner at Swiss Inn Hotel (I dunno why there's an "inn" when it's a hotel. Erm..I'm not quite sure it's an inn or a hotel) . An AIMST-feel dinner. The rest you imagine yourself. Just another social event similar to prom night. Still it's a nice one, seeing the girls painting the cat (B.Malaysia) on their faces and in their best dresses! To cut short, i would rate 4.0 (Because I'm quite lazy to write now)

USM gang again during grand dinner

So that's roughly (yeah, I know, me doubt too) how NoGAPS was. Overall, I'm glad to attend this as I'd found it quite fun too. Looking forward to the next NoGAPS in UM then.

Oh yeah, just to add the last sentence. Did we take the big group photo? Or I was left out?