Ripcurl Beach Volleyball Championship 2007 – The Greatest Mockery
[Saturday, 12 May, 2007]
I hurried with my work to cover up for the previous days’ lack of update. Yuqing approached me to do a survey for him. Finally I went off at 3am.
I set my alarm at 6.15am but as usual, I lazed around and only until Mingfa called me, I came to conscious. My mum was lazy to make the half boiled eggs for me and she chose to do the milo with biscuit, which caused me to empty my stomach inside the toilet like usual.
I managed to catch the bus as I dashed across the road and Junrong was inside. We met up with Jinyang soon and Kachua joined us. Mingen called me to order food even though he was driving and I had to take the bus in. while I was waiting for the carrot cake, I got to chat with Kunhan. I was surprised when Ying Ying came over to join us and I was very touched for it took a lot of courage to join me and a group of people whom she had not met before when she could actually go in with Jenrine.
We took the bus to the Beach Car Park and went down to meet up with Mingfa and Wilson. As we strolled towards Siloso beach, Jinyang went to the toilet. We got to the exact location for the competition soon and started registering.
The sleepy Wilson who simply ignored the prank on him
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Kok Chiang who slept throughout the day in his "cool" position
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It was a very sunny day and my stomach had done bad service to me by giving me a mild gastric problem while waiting very long for the first game. The court we were called for was different from the scheduled one, which showed how unorganised they were. At the beginning of the game, I blocked off an opponent’s spike and they started spiking from away the net. Soon, we were losing them many points. There was once when one of them spiked and hit Ying Ying on her face, we were furious but could not do anything. We picked up point bit by bit but they reached twenty-one earlier than us.
A sudden depression filled my mind. It could be due to the fact that we should actually win the game or because of the injury on my star player or perhaps, more than these. I was nowhere near to prove myself. The sand kept me accompanied as I sat alone at a corner.
I finally got to feel a greater pain as the gastric problem smiled at me. Instead of the food, which had not arrived, Junrong and Kachua exchanged the coupons for ice-cream, which eventually worsened my pain.
Mingfa eventually won his first game; it was a good decision to put the better players inside his team. We played the second match against Albert’s team and everyone played badly, which gave us no chance of winning. My gastric pain was at its worst and turned pale.
After the game which had confirmed our withdrawal of the tournament, I went straight to toilet. Soon, I got better but it was too late for there was no more game anymore, which was stupid that we had to pay $70 for just simply two instead of the usual three games.
Lunch was fried mee hoon with an egg and chicken wing. Nothing free was good. Under the hot sun, it was stupid to have an egg cooked with chilli; whereas the mee hoon was not fantastic and the chicken wing looked old.
Charlene and Tiffany with Tiffany's stupid dog
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Again with a better position for better lighting
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Their stupid dogs refused to take proper photo
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I got to play with Shunliang until Mingfa’s second match started, I went over to witness how they won the opponents. After waiting for very long, we started finding empty courts to play among ourselves, but we got chased off soon and finally gave up. It took hours for their next match and I joined in a boring game at one of the free courts with Mingen, Andy, Justine and others. I got to sabotage Guoxiong in front of Yali, which was obvious that I was joking.
Darkness arrived and suddenly, I was told that Mingfa had ended his fourth match, defeated by the police. It was in fact meaningless to play for it was dark and there was only a spotlight. Many teams had complained about it. I laughed at the organisation for they announced earlier on that it was the first time ever in Singapore that so many teams had participle in a beach volleyball tournament; it was a disaster. They should have sought advice from me beforehand and I would advise them, “If you don’t have a big head, don’t wear a big helmet.” They had so many available courts but so many of them were empty which caused the delay that every team had to wait hours for each game. It was a failure and a laughing stock of the year and history of Singapore’s beach volleyball competition. I should not mention about the cock eyes and unprofessional referees.
After having my bath, I sat under one of the big sheltered area with Junrong and started dozing off. By the time Mingfa waked us up, we realised Wilson had already driven Yingyi, Anqi and Fiona out and these three ladies were not going to dine with us. In the end, Mingfa, Junrong and I had to take bus out of Sentosa.
We were deciding to go to Harbourfront Centre’s foodcourt but eventually changed the location to Vivocity where Wilson met up with us for dinner. I took fish and chips as usual. We were at the foodcourt at the basement and beside Banquet. Soon I realised the cleaners there were similar to Banquet’s. Shunliang was dining there with Justine and he came over to chat with us.
I took bus 80 home and started working. I was just in time to catch “The Eyes 2”, which was a good movie.
Labels: beach, competition, dinner, photo, volleyball
... Skai (Kailun) dreams @ 2:18 AM
