Band and Drill Camp 2009

For a period of four days (18-21st December) before Christmas, the Senior Section of 3rd KL held a band and drill camp at Sekolah Seri Cahaya, Shah Alam. About 60 Boys, including 3 Juniors, participated in this camp to brush up their skills and to learn a couple of new songs. Some time was given to sharpen their footdrill as well, led by the NCOs and Staff Sergeants. The company's former band officer, Joe Wong, was also present to guide the band. Lieutenant Lawrence Tay, led the devotion sessions sharing of the obedience of Daniel.

The objective of the camp is to prepare them for the upcoming Pesta in Penang. Band Officer, Warrant Officer Jasper Low's vision for the company is to be the overall champion once again and for the band to be the 1st-runner up. However, it is still a long way to beat 1st Johor Bahru in the band competition category.

Training aside, this camp has also allowed the Boys to bond and develop a strong company spirit, which is something any company needs to excel. The company intends to have several more camps like these in hopes of not just winning the Pesta, but to impart a lesson in the Boys that effort is necessary to improve and succeed.

If you think this company is kiasu - you're quite right.

Remembering tense moments

Pesta 2006 Drill Competition. Round 1, immediately before 3rd KL's team went in.

Han Sheng: Sir, they've instructed us not to march on the right of that cone.
(A cone was placed at the entrance of the drill ground to prevent teams from using the back of the field. 3rd KL's plan was to begin sizing up from there).

Voon: What nonsense. Okay, march the team on the left side of the cone and immediate break right after you clear it.

Han Sheng: (Dumdfounded face) You sure?

Voon: Yes. Heck it.

After the Boys went in and did their thing, we found out our team got through to the next round.. and that they moved the judges table further front from the back so that we couldn't do the same thing again. Lol.

Facebook's Even Better than a Website

I was strolling through facebook recently, with a random search for BB groups. To my surprise, it is quite a treasure trove of information! Even better than search results on Google. Not only can I find companies which do not have their own websites, Facebook groups are updated more frequently (compared to company websites which take ages to update) and are easier to manage.

Among my findings are:

1st Serdang
1st Kuantan (closed, but very interesting pictures)
2nd KL - great pictures!
1st Sibu - good videos

There's probably a Facebook group for every company.. even more than one group for the same co.

Among the things that you can find are..

1st Sibu Band Practice

1st Kuantan Enrolment Day - 1982

Facebook's not seen as an official channel by the older officers. Even blogs, which have more information than a company's official website, updated up Boys which have more time to spare than their officers. Official or not, these sites are what's keeping things interesting in the BB web circle.

My First Encounter

It has been the first week of secondary school, moving from the dark blue shorts to the odd green pants, moving into an environment where everyone's taller than we were. I was on my way to the teachers staff room to sign up for scouts till the bell rang for the morning assembly. It was probably God's intervention. It was a special assembly. Some group wanted to do a presentation.

That's when I first saw the people in BB Blue. I changed my mind instantly to join them instead.

A BB-dedicated Blog

After much deliberation and reluctance to abandon my old blog site, I've decided to set up a parallel site to my Xanga.

As a big part of my life revolves around BB and most of my readers come from a BB background, I find it more practical for a purpose-made blog for Boys' Brigade related articles, which will not only save readers time scrolling through the various nonsense in my main blog, but also avoids the risk of having random people looking through personal life (which can be controversial at times).

Therefore, I'm dedicating this blog towards most of my BB articles. May God bless it's future contents.