Tianjin

ok where shd i start?

I know..

Turn turn turn turn turn turn turn turn....Come on let's kungfu fighting! HUR!
[insiders joke]

Lots to say, but i shall be brief. Many photos, but i'll limit to posting 10.

Our adventure to tianjin all began at the airport. No wait, it was when my whole family decided to send me off by walking me down to the bus stop where grace's dad was waiting to drive e jurong pple to the airport. Got so drama or not? Yah, whole family. dad, mum and bro.

Airport
only when we finished bubble-wrapping e 1st 12 paddles did we realise tt chee hong had prepared 2 paddle bags for us. *diaoz* 5 guys came down to send us off, quite nice of them.

Food:
Other than the 1st day's lunch, the other days it was prepared in buffet style. it sounds nice, but, hmm..the food is too salty. No enticing continental breakfast but i can live with that. If you think the food is bad, then u havent seen the toilet, obviously. Shant elaborate on that point.

We had debrief every night at room 811. Chee Hong and Sean's room. Talk abt being high tech. we watched a video clip each night to evaluate our day's performance, ie for test water and for the race day itself. Almost all debrief session, someone wld say he'll make it short but in the end it stretched to 2hrs...who huh? N then there was another someone who juz totally blabber bout smth completely opposite of wad i said initially, leaving a very constipated look on my face[according to wenya] Like seriously..

There was ample time for RnR. On the 1st day, we went to this place[i still cant remember the name] and the lao ren[geoks, bc, zhenyi, grace, jul n i] went shopping and our agenda was mainly to eat. Talk abt the craze over bing tang hu lu.. Named ourselves lao ren coz we r no longer like the younger ones whose agenda wld be to buy loads of stuff. Somehow we chanced upon an airbrush tatoo stall and decided, 'Hey let's get a tatoo!' Wad started out to be the 6 of us tatoo-ing a dragon on our necks[lefties tatoo left while righties tatoo right] turned out to be a team affair. We pulled everyone to do it. Looked damn cool with the tatoo! Ok, the not-so-cool part was having to endure the process.

Race day:
water was really cold. The wind was very strong towards our last race set, the placing event. Felt so cold when u r wearing the trg jersey. Bc n i finally understood how jack and rose can die in the show Titanic. Yah, freeze to death. Our warm up drew plenty of attention, as usual. Main thing was to focus and not get distracted.

Was a very demoralising 1st set. e 2nd set was much better, timing and coordination wise. the reason we lost out was coz according to IDBF rules, you can only sit to row. We follow the rules. However, standing stroke orginated frm china, and we were up against 2 teams, both china teams and they stood up to row. Of course, this race is organised by china, so obviously standing to row is permitted. tears shed aft the set. I stayed strong..we had no reason to be crying. 3rd set was the placing event. 'hey, we got ntg to lose. let's just be steady and row a gd set alright?' i said.

You juz know its a gd set when u hear all the beastly cries[angeline] frm the back, the front, the 'kiyah!'[yirang], 'shang!!'[boon chin],'lai..steady'[myself] the resounding '7,8,9,10..STRETCH OUT!'[whole boat] To put it in chee hong's exact words, 'its the feeling tt u snrs havent felt for quite a long time ald rite?' N yes, its the feeling that keeps you wanting to come back for more. But, it's juz the tip of the iceberg, definitely. We came in 2nd for the placing event. Came up, had a debrief for tt set. Critical success factor no. 3: guy being so touched tt he was teary eyed and saying, 'Now i understand how u girls work'

Truly, wad matters more? A gd set but dun win, or being so blinded abt e thought of winning tt u forget wad matters most.

There's always room for improvement. One must never grow too complacent to think tt this is it. Truly, there exist a thin line btwn confidence and complacency. This is only the beginning.

I leave u with 10 pictures.

Oh crap, photobucket is not cooperating. so i'd post e pics another time.

Things i learnt during the trip:
-DB guo hai
-fuzzy wuzzy bear likes..
-wad can u bring to a picnic?
-hei zi ma[wah], bai zi ma[wah wah]
-hei zi ma[hur], bai zi ma[hur hur]
-tt the team imitates the way i luff. ie 'hur hur hur'
-tt sean noticed tt i havent been smiling so much compared to b4, n den the team starts to make me smile by bursting out in 'hur hur hur'. -_-"

the list goes on.