Mission [Eventually]-Possible
I would never have thought that acting as a hot action movie dude would help me learn to step out of my comfort zone. That’s exactly what escaping the zombie apocalypse with LEAP Academy taught me to do. *disclaimer* Stepping out of my comfort zone included a cringe-worthy Hollywood performance of the famous Scientology nut.
The deal was this: we were all given characters with weird habits and personal objectives to complete whilst we were completing team missions. None of our team-mates were told details about.Our characters must be acted out for the duration of the adventure, and help complete the group’s missions; whatever they may be. I had to keep my poker face on whilst I tried to convince the other teammates that Scientology was REAL and they should fly to LA and attend the church there I founded. Yep… I was Tom Cruise. It was a weird experience, acting out someone who was significantly shorter than me and was an attractive action-movie guy. One problem, though. I was also supposed to be mentally damaged after hitting my head hard on a movie set in Bali filming my next action movie. I was then ‘the guy from mission impossible’. I couldn’t stop giggling every time someone else asked me who I was. Tom Cruise was having a major identity crisis that even I struggled to understand.
Despite having a few personal confusions, all the characters in the group came together as one to find some holy water by the monkey temple. Pak Mo, our stoned group leader, liked to remind us of the fact that we were all “super cool” and the water looked “dazzling!”. Pak Jason was trying to sell our group survival materials that were “very essential” in our survival of the zombie apocalypse. I bought a rope for the price of 4 stones which I was assured would enhance my Tom Cruise style… maybe in my mind, it sounded great, but I looked like a complete idiot hauling around metres of rope for no apparent reason. We grabbed the water and headed on our way, sweating profusely as we trekked up hundreds of stairs, and beautiful waterfall displays. Saying goodbye to the monkeys, I was drifting off into space as I observed the mesmerising traditional trees in the temple, and my Tom Cruise, clumsy self ran face-first into a sharp bush. I got caught on the thorns and just played it off like it was part of my Tom Cruise action shots, where I save myself from the ever-present dangers. Yay for acting-off potential embarrassment!
Second stop was Bali’s largest Banyan tree, where we swiftly picked up our trash bags and cleaned the outskirts of a temple of plastic. Because, as Pak Noan stated, “the zombies don’t like clean places”. I decided at this point that I would let everyone know of my weird uncontrollable habit: running around in a circle 5 times whilst saying, “This is not Mission Possible, this IS MISSION IMPOSSIBLE!”. Perhaps performing it IN FRONT of the teachers would have helped me pass that mission (I got a tad shy as you can probably tell).
Now, imagine you are forced to walk into a 2-metre tall cave, it’s pitch-black, you don’t know how long it goes for. Oh! And you just got told there may or may not be pythons living within these mucky walls. Unluckily, we had to complete this mission to escape a possible zombie attack in the middle of the rice fields. Despite the rush of adrenaline once I entered the cave and had already begun to accept my death, I was lucky enough to hold on to my fellow teammate’s hand. It wasn’t very lucky for my teammate, however, my iron grip was a bit restricting on her blood flow. Sorry, Atiya!
After a slow 5 minutes walking through the eerie cave in thigh-deep water, we reached the end and realised that ‘OOPS! We can’t get our stuff from here’. My face went into shock knowing we would have to hurry all the way back to the entrance and face my darkest fears…again.
We made it eventually! As we trudged and squelched our way through green school in our dripping clothes, I thought about the fact that I felt so much more connected with my teammates, and that I was looking forward to seeing what the next few weeks would bring for us, as cunning Green School entrepreneurs. And for that, I’d like to especially thank Tom Cruise for his persona in introducing me to my action-man alter ego. He really did make the mission impossible of teamwork, possible!
