Time and tide waits for no man. Time flies at an undeniably high speed. Looking back, this year’s English Dhamma Camp took place three weeks ago, on 21st November 2008 at Butterworth Buddhist Association. Since we Biotech students were always granted the opportunity to sit for the last paper of the finals on the last day, I had to check in late for the pre-camp. It was definitely already bad enough that we had to brave the heavy rain, what more, we found ourselves lost like a sheep in the city, and on the highway to Alor Star. Luckily, and at last, our car and its entire human contents reached BBA…Pre-camp started its pace the next day..All departments were supposed to complete any uncomplete tasks…Dhamma and Cultivation department happily worked about their souvenirs for lay speakers..Yee Ching, Surita (according to Bhante Buddhavamsa) and Silk Guan…I will definitely enjoy the precious moments we shared together…How we made those lanterns, draw bamboo shoot pictures…The rest of the days in camp were fun and educational too…Despite being an AJK and only little time to snooze with my red striking sleeping bag, we actually had more time to interact with one another…I even told my new found mama about our special bond which made her felt so touched..and of course my other faci mates, like that funny Ker Li who would partner with me in our attempt to copy the laughter of a banshee..It was all warm and touching..Simple word, it was simply bonding…The word ‘bond’ was first initialized and used just to entertain and irritate Lee Chien during the form up committee’s meeting.God knows, the word was later spread from one street to another..If it was a fair game in the share market, guess I would have topped Bill Gates by now..It wasn’t, but everyone seemed to be using the word during EDC..Thanks for giving me the opportunity guys…Words can’t describe my feelings everytime I heard the word ‘bond’…I found myself a new papa too..simply by the chance of the Kalyana Mitra game…Supposingly, I had to write to this particular ‘kaya bun’..instead, I kept writing to ‘potato bun’.. thinking back, this potato bun, which turned out to be Xin Hoong had even told me before the revealing of the game that this year’s Kalyana Mitra is weird because he has two children instead of one..Even then, I was not on the realization part, offering only a sarcastic grin to him…Mana tau it was me…The rest of it was lots of laughter from other people…Was a total joke…and a swarm of guiltiness to my beloved ‘kaya bun’ which turned out to be Lip Giat..All fun and no studying? Nope, not really though..We had Dhamma Talks by Bhante Buddhavamsa, Dhamma sharing, case study, sutta study and talks given by layspeakers…All these customized programmes were incharged by me, Yee Ching and Silk Guan…So we had the golden opportunity to kick off and made our own conclusion after every programme..It was sort of a training to do public speaking…Rachel gave me some compliments in her snail mail to me..not after bringing up the dancing thing during faci workshop camp2…Felt happy of course… I can dance…. J Anyway, I grew with confidence during our sharing..Trying not to be so cheong hei, I shared with my group members whatever I had understood, sharing with them life examples and my own feelings…It was all about sincerity during sharing..Derrick did sent me another snail mail saying that I know the right way to do sharing…Thank you very much…with both his feedback and Li Qun’s I had gain some confidence in being a future faci…Nevertheless the journey continues thus I would definitely work my way up…to pass down the light of dhamma..Whatelse can I say besides all the fun and exposure I had during EDC? Perhaps it was once in a lifetime experience and while we enjoyed ourselves during those ten days be it meeting, having lunch, bathing, sleeping or getting into groups for sharing, the rest remains a history…All beloved participants of EDC 2008/2009, I will always remember those special memories…with the 31 of you…
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