ECA stands for Extracurricular activities. From wiki, it simply means activities performed by students that fall outside the realm of the normal curriculum of school or university education.
When I was in primary school, I was not that interested in ECAs. I wasn't even sure what is it all about. Starting from primary 4 in my school, we were required to join at least one club/society. In primary 5, I joined the badminton club. Every Saturday, I just went to school and played badminton with Ah Boon. I think that was the time when I was fittest :) In primary 6, Ah Fai asked me to join St John Ambulance. At first when I saw the name 圣约翰救伤队, I was like what the heck? This name was so long and weird!!!! Anyway, that started my involvement in St John Ambulance which continues till now. During primary 6, seniors from SMJK Pei Yuan will come down regularly to teach us first aid and foot drill. That was all the ECAs my primary school. As primary school students, we were not expected to organise events, but more to participate and learn.
After that was secondary school. I spent my Form 1 and half of Form 2 in SMJK Pei Yuan. After that, I transferred to SMK Sentosa and studied there till Form 5. In Pei Yuan, you are only required to join ECAs starting From 3. Initially, I planned to slack all the way through Form 1 & 2. So when the representative from St John Ambulance came to our classroom to recruit new members, I did not sign up. However, my mom, unlike other moms who discourage their sons/daughters to join ECA, encourage me to join St John Ambulance. I had forgotten what was her reasons. I think a few years later she regretted this decision as I become more and more involved in St John Ambulance. Anyway, I attended one of the weekly meetings of St John Ambulance and became one of the member. This started one and a half year of hell for me.
Every Saturday, we were required to reach school by 745am. After taking attendance, we will split into different years. We had only two activities, which was learning first aid and foot drill. A typical Saturday will be like this. 800-930am: Foot drill, 930-1130am: Learnig First Aid, 1130am-1200pm: Foot drill. Normally we will be dismissed around 1230pm. Those were the busiest and most tiring Saturdays I ever had in my life. It was because I still had English tuition class at 1245pm.
During the May holiday, our division will have our annual training camp. It was during that time that I was pushed to my limit. I remember one particular afternoon when we were practising foot drill. We kept on doing "Ke Belakang Pusing" while "Cepat jalan". We went back and forth for more than 100 times. My vision blurred that time and I could not see a thing. Everything was pink and red in my eyes. It recovered after a few minutes but it did scare me for a while. On the next morning, I really did not want to go back to school for the second day of camp. As the alarm clock in my parents room were spoiled(not because of me), they did not come and wake me up as usual. I was lying on my bed, hoping that they will keep on sleeping until 8am, when it will be too late for me to go to school on time. However, they woke up around 745 and quickly rushed me to wash up and drove me to school. I could not say anything but to follow and reached school just on time. I finished the camp unharmed but it was unforgettable.
When I was in Form 2, a new school had opened in my town. Ministry of Education decided to relocate all the students living near the area to the new school. Some complied, like me and others applied to go back to their original schools. As this is a new school, everything is still not established. I joined the St John Ambulance and was elected as Vice President. (At that time, the school only has Form 1, 2 and 4 students) As I was still blur blur that time, I did nothing. Luckily for our school, there were two very active girl in Red Cross, Pui Ying and Hui Min. They were also members of St John Ambulance in Pei Yuan before ths. They did everything needed to form a division in Sentosa. They went to consult seniors, they went to Headquarters, the did all the necessary admin work. In the end, a Sarjan, Weng Kit became the officer of our division. In first ever meeting between 4 of us, Pui Ying was appointed as President, Hui Min as Secretary and I was the Treasurer. I kept on holding that position until I graduated from SMK Sentosa.
The three years in Sentosa division was not easy for all of us. As it was a new division, many things needed to be established and worked out. Pui Ying and Hui Min did most of the work while I was slacking around. This became one of my greatest regret in life. I was the top student in my school. This may sound like boasting, but I really could do very well without much studying. The same thing cannot be said for both of them. Instead of putting more effort in division, I spent most of time daydreaming and fooling around. Looking back now, I really wish that I had done more at that time. And then I vowed that I shall never let my friends down. I shall always share their burden. Pui Ying was under alot of stress as president and she decided to resign. I was asked whether I wanted to be the president. As usual, I backed off from responsibility and said no. Hui Min become our president instead and this proved to be great choice. Under her lead, our division started to accomplish more things. Our teams won many prizes in Area Comp and represented Central Area to State Comp. In State Comp, our Nursing Cadet team emerged as the first runner up, narrowly missed the chance to represent Perak State in National Comp. We also organised our first Division Camp, first Cooking Competition and so on. We became one of the most active clubs/societies in the school and received a lot of support.
