A debrief for the student leaders followed at about 1am when most of the Sec 1s have gone to bed (or rather, sleeping bags and mats and what have you). After the debrief the student leaders went back to their sleeping quarters in the classrooms on Level 1. Since the ex-students (i.e. us) had volunteered to patrol with the NCC boys, we stayed awake in the canteen. The Exco11 and Bernice went out onto the parade square where we lied down on the floor and looked at the stars singing. Kegan and Edwin seemed to have really slept when Ms Wassan then came along to remind us of what we had to do. Walking on, Wei Loong, Xin Jie and Bernice sat down outside the General Office to chat while I walked alone around the classrooms. Most of the hardworking student leaders hadn't gone to bed yet; they sat at study benches donig their homework. Later Clovis passed the news around for the student leaders to go to bed by 2.30am. And so they did.

I hung out with Jane, Xin Jie, Wei Loong and Bernice for most of the morning. After they had walked across the classrooms on Level 1, they sat down at the table in front of the General Office and chatted a bit before Bernice and Jane dozed off. (Kegan and Edwin were nowhere to be found. Shao Ming was polishing boots in the canteen outside the SJAB room.) Later we moved to the canteen to cook cup noodles and talked a bit more, sitting at the tables nearest to the basketball courts. The wind was quite strong and we felt pretty cold. I finally lied down on the bench at 4 plus with my bag as a pillow.

I woke up like 30 minutes later. Since the student leaders were supposed to wake up at 5.55am, I decided to go and freshen up. Even before 6am came music started to play to wake the Sec 1s up. Morning assembly followed a la Leadership Camp 2004, i.e. flag raisers and pledge taker were non-Uniformed Group people. I helped out in preparing for breakfast while the Sec 1s had their morning exercise.

After breakfast, station games resumed from yesterday. Since Xin Jie and Wei Loong had gone home earlier, 4 of the remaining Exco11 members around (Kegan, I don't know where he went later except that we saw him at the Captain's Ball station) went around to the stations to check them out. Shao Ming's favourite station was undoubtedly the Captain's Ball station, so we hung out mainly at the parade square and even joined in at times.

Time seemed to drag pretty slowly. After the Sec 1s' tea break Kegan and Shao Ming took naps at opposite sides of the canteen while I helped out preparing for lunch again before sitting with Kegan and closing my eyes at times. After lunch spirits did perk up a bit because it was the Mass Games.

This year's Mass Games was the second held in the new school building and this year they used the field. Even if they had not used the field it easily beat last year's Mass Games to earn the title of 'Dirtiest Mass Games of NHSS'. There was mud, detergent, warm wet starch (the same I got in the JC orientation), newspaper pulp, mud balls and a big pool of vegetable stew, consisting of lots of vegetables, eggplant, sugar cane, lots of vegetables, banana skins, apples, dragonfruit skins, lots of vegetables, rose syrup and lots of vegetables. The best thing about the vegetable stew was that most of the stuff inside came from leftovers at markets, i.e. some of them were pretty rotten.

By the end of the mass games I had lots of mud water on my shirt, mud on my left arm and starch on my right arm. It was a little better than what I got for the JC orientation. Following the mass games was of course the mass cleaning up. This year there weren't huge groups of students crowding round the water hose waiting to be sprayed. Instead, the students were given one whole hour to wash themselves up (not to bathe) before heading to the hall for the mass dance. The situation with the boys was pretty good; the boys' toilets were clear by 3.30pm. Girls were still queuing up outside the girls' toilets. I went into the boys' toilet to wash myself up and came out with 15 minutes to spare.

Up in the hall, the students were seated in the hall by 4pm and some Dance Society members then taught the Sec 1s the mass dance (song was 98 Degrees' "True To Your Heart"). It took quite some time for the Sec 1s to get used to the dance, but I personally think the Dance members need a bit more practice in teaching people, especially non-Dance members, mass dances. After the mass dance there was another round of class cheering before the prize-presentation ceremony, which had to speed up as we were past 5pm, the dismissal time on the programme.

After the classes were dismissed there was a short break before debrief for the student leaders. The debrief was followed by the distribution of leftover food from today's lunch before we headed home.

Something was missing this year.