The nervous twitch

Isn’t it strange that the preparation period for any event usually lasts far longer than the actual event? That sounds ridiculous to most people when they are reading this about the selection camp. And I can understand that, because when we speak of preparation we only tend to think about the 3 weeks leading up to the camp. But we should be thinking about the +-17 years spent mentally, physically and emotionally preparing for this selection camp.

But before we get into more theoretical preparation talk lets quickly look at some of the real world preparation that has actually occurred. For one I know I have been eating a lot of chocolate firstly so that I can compare it with the Swiss chocolate and secondly so that I have a “natural” insulating layer. I have also had a meeting in a meeting room which spanned 10555km in diameter with four of the most diverse characters I have ever had the pleasure of meeting, in cyberspace.

I seem to have also developed a nervous twitch every time I hear an email coming through on my telephone. This is partly because I have never felt so special before in my life, and mostly because I have never received so many important emails per day. This might sound like a blessing but it is a disguised blessing, because as Michael aka go-to man, organisation junky, logistics king has said so many times in his emails, “You probably want to blacklist my email address”. Luckily it has not gotten to that point, yet.

I am sure that many of you are wondering where the guy who is writing this blog is coming from, well I am from South Africa, I am 18 years old and I am an outdoors fanatic cross bred with an engineer with a small dash of socialite spice. I enjoy reading, running and raving as well as swimming, studying and shopping malls.

Every year I tend to have an experience which exposes a completely different angle of who I am to me. I have been lucky this year as it is coming early, so there is no stress anymore that what I find I won’t like. Because this selection camp preparation process has time and time again shown me how I can handle pressure, how I can handle many things at once and most importantly that I am part of an ever closer global community.

I am looking forward to meeting my fellow selection candidates!