Dragonboat competition + Gabriel's birthday

Sorry for the lag.... I just wasn't in the blogging mood. Anyway, so it was all the way back in the holidays, and we had our second dragonboat competition. We arrived in school early in the morning and took a long bus ride all the way to the marina barrage. When we arrived, we were pleased to see that the marina barrage was like 100x better than kallang. It had a toilet, a place that sold ice-cream, a big empty field, weird places to explore, and MOST important of all, this really really cool water fountain thingy to play in!!! So 20-man was the first event of the day, and we started our warm-up, it was an epic fail. We just stood in a really weird shape and did our warm-ups on our own. ACS stood in rows and counted together. After we did the warm-up, we just sat down and stoned until they called our race. ACS went for a warm-up run. In conclusion, our discipline = failure, ACS discipline = super imbaness. Crap.

We went down with the sec 1's and rowed out with Ah Ray coxswaining us. HE ROCKS!!! We went to the starting line and raced. We tried our best, but we got owned :( Don't worry guys, next year we're rowing with the Sec 3's, who for some reason, are super super pro in dragonboat YAY!!! ( To any sec 1's reading this, please work on your coordination please, because its the most important thing, and from where i was sitting, the coordination really wasn't there.)

Ok 20-man gone liao, we had our 10-man left. We went down for our 10-man with Tim lim drumming ( He's really good at drumming), and Ah Ray still coxwaining us ( HE STILL ROCKS!!!) 10-man was really really scary because, our boat, GESS and HCI were neck-and-neck, and we really didn't know if we made it to the finals, but as luck ( or skill ) would have it, we got first!!!! So with our finals the first race after the lunch break, we had to get some food first. But guess what? We didn't really have much food. But we made do, and shared what we had. We took our food and sat on the floor in the middle of nowhere, and ate. We did random stuff before our race, and when Mr Teo called our race, we went down to PING for our medal.

We went down, and guess who coxwained us? AH RAY!!!! We rowed out to the start line, and PADDLE'S UP and we were off. We pushed and pushed and hard 10'end and pushed somemore, and did the "Lai ya, Ki ya" thing, and pushed our way to the finish lines. We were right next to HCI, and crossed the finish around the same time as them. Sadly we lost to them by a bit, and we only got 3rd, but hey, who cares??? WE HAVE MEDALS!!!

I'm really really proud of you guys, and I think it is safe to say that if there was anybody i could row with, it would definitely be with you guys. We may have lost to HCI and ACS, but we still PINGED, and gave them a hard fight. Don't worry, we still have next year. Mr Lim has already said that we will have more trainings next year, and we might even get proper paddles!!! So lets continue to work hard, and come back next year to kick some ass!!!

Anyway, regardless of the apparent loss, we still were SUPER SUPER happy, and we celebrated by childishly having fun in the water park place. We played, and played, and played, took some group photo's, played frisbee, and played somemore!!!! It was really one of the best days of the year ( SO FAR...)

BUT, it didn't end there, we still had the prize-giving ceremony, and we got our well-deserved medals, and guess what??? There was an extra medal, and we gave it to AH RAY!!! We even took a picture with him and all...

Our fun didn't end there, as we still had to go to Gabriel's birthday party/ BBQ. We made our way to his uncle's house in sembawang, through a combination of shuttle bus, MRT, and bus, and we were soon there!!!

First of all, we shed our sweaty SJI singlets and dived into the pool. We played freeze-and- melt, and wasted lots of time in the water. Then we dried off and started helping Gabriel's father with the food, THEN WE ATE!!!

We ate, and we ate, and we ate some more, and then we had dessert, and then we wasted time outside doing nothing in particular. Plus, there were marshmellows to roast!!! We took more photos and talked a lot. Gabriel also cut his cake, and we had cake too!!! We decided to leave at around 9+ and made our way home.

I took bus with Tim, Daryl, Brandon, and Paul, and soon we were back home!!!

Thanks, Gabriel for a wonderful night, and have a wonderful year ahead!!