BY CAMILLE MAU
When we think of any phrase involving the word “jump”, the one which immediately comes to mind is “jump for joy”. Indeed, it is fitting that the final event of CN Yang in the 2016/2017 school year is titled “JUMP, CN Yang!”. We jump to celebrate the end of exams and the end of school – in our unique CN Yang fashion. Now, anyone who knows me for five minutes knows I don’t do sports, but here in this CN Yang event, there’s plenty more than just mindless jumping.
This event takes us to Zoom Park Singapore, an indoors trampoline park, to literally jump about to our heart’s content. The park itself is constructed in a warehouse, with multiple elastic play areas to bounce, roll (without slipping, we hope), and simply to have a good time. There is also a rock wall to climb, and climb we did.
The event starts by allowing everyone a bit of free time to move around and get accustomed to the play area. Following this short period, we were then split into multiple groups and participated in multiple games, all of them with a twist. Enter dodgeball with mathematics – where everyone wears a number (on the extended real number line, no less). In each round, the game master will call out a question, ranging from simple arithmetic sums, to functional limits, to integration. The person who must dodge the ball each round wears the answer to a question called out by the game master.
A relay race with anagrams from philosophy and ethics. Literally, we had a relay race with different modes of jumping on a trampoline to bring back slips of paper, which were anagrams of different terms and names found from philosophy and ethics. Points are scored by decoding these anagrams, and some of them weren’t easy!
Captain’s ball. Shockingly, this was perhaps the most typical game, the first part being a regular game of captain’s ball – except, of course, played on trampolines instead of stationary ground. And after the game, the points scored equated to the number of physics questions we were allowed to answer. Yes, we scrambled to score points just so we could answer physics questions. Hashtag YangCyantists.
A rock-climbing race, where points are scored both based on height reached and the number of chemical equations solved. We crossed a styrofoam sea in turns to climb a rock wall, just so we could solve for the coefficients of chemical equations pasted on the wall to gain points.
And to top it all off, a scavenger hunt for Biology questions around the entire park area. Personally, it reminds me of an escape room where clues are hidden in the most unassuming of places. Some were easy to find, some were not. But I like looking for such things, so I spent a good chunk of my time looking for them.
That’s right.
We celebrated the end of exams.
With whatever comes out in exams.
How truly terrifying.
But that’s CN Yang for you. This is what gets us excited, after all. And I’ve been waiting my whole life for a group of people who celebrates the end of academics with more academics, so everything works out. To end the event, we had a pizza party! A whole delicious spread of pizzas to choose from, although I have heard that having pizzas negates the calorie losses from jumping about. But, it’s the end of exams, so who cares?
Accompanying the pizza party was a disco party! After all the games were done with, the lights went out, the colours went on, the music played, and everyone was free to break out their moves on the jump floor. By this point, I was already eating, though. 😛
Tired but contented is how I would describe us ending the event. We had our customary group photo, of course. I have heard stories that after getting back to hall, some of us just crashed, and some of us ended up aching for days after. In the end, though, I couldn’t ask for a more fitting end to the school year. Happy holidays, everyone!
