Imagine, all our hard work, the biggest event for our fencing exco, and our first big project for this exco, came down to this.

3 meetings. Hours spent liasing with external organisations to get our equipment, sponsorship and participants, and for me, hours spending doing the posters and blog, and the moving of equipment and setting up and dismantling things, and the administration during the event days themselves.

The day before the event, Boxing day, we first met at SRC. Joanna had printed out 2 direction arrow signs and with Jason's help, we got them photocopied at OSA's sports department office at SRC. First, I had to make a correction on the signs for the MPSH number was wrong. I wrote the right digit on a small piece of paper, and Jo cleverly stuck it onto the big paper with blue tack, and fortunately, it wasn't obvious on the photocopies.

We then went around sticking the signs around the SRC compound. During the cleanup, I left one sign up in the open air. It's amazing to see, that despite the rain, it's still there. In the meantime, the others were setting up the tables and such in the hall, including the 4 wooden boards I had seen sitting inside the storeroom. iFence. Do you? (hahaha, now we can figure out how old those boards are.)

Then went down to Clementi Sports Hall where FS was located to collect the spools, scoreboards and pistes we were borrowing. One piste is made up of 17 of these super-heavy metal plates. It takes an average of 2 girls to carry one and 2 guys to carry two because it's so large and heavy it's not easy to balance. One guy can carry one but it's not easy. Ivan could, and I guess it's because his arms are long enough.

YL's uncle sponsored a lorry from his company that rents out all sorts of lorries. When I saw the uncle, I immediately noticed the resemblance between the two of them. It took me a while to work out exactly what features on the face were similar, and I figured that it was the small eyes and the high cheekbones. The uncle's face is a different shape though. (I have been trying to figure out and apply my theory to why people can have resemblance to each other. People just say two people look similar but don't say why. My theory is that, and I may be right, there is one or more individual components of the face that are identical: the colour of the iris, the shape/size of the eye, the nose, the mouth, the cheekbones and the face shape (round/oval/long/square, etc.) are the most obvious, and these components should be taken as a whole each cos otherwise, it is not "identical".)

Back to the story, YL asked for a small lorry and planned for 3 to 4 trips, and somehow there was a mix up or dunno what went wrong, we got a "small" lorry. It's small in terms of those used for CONSTRUCTION industry. We wanted a gardening lorry but got a SAND lorry. BIG. So all we needed was one trip. 70 metal plates took up half the floor space. I think the wall height of the container on the back of the lorry was about 155cm, I don't know, Flo was taller than the wall.

We used one heavy-load version of the hawker centre trolley type and one smallish one usually used for crates (i dunno, the kind that has very little support at the bottom, the one that must tilt back first before moving off. the kind with only two wheels), to move the metal plates, and later also added on the human factor of any 2 guys teaming up to move plates. I tried helping as much as I could but I could sense the guys were doing a lot more work, and so were Cheryl and Flo, and because I stood around at points in time, I felt I didn't do much. (As long as I stood around and wasn't panting, I qualify myself as not-done-enough.) We were done quite quickly, and it was time to go back to the school sports hall. We watched the container being hooked up by the lorry hook and slowly dragged up onto the lorry's wheelbase. I enthusiastically took the chance to ride the lorry, and Cheryl accompanied me (after she was told to do so for she didn't want to). The rest all squeezed into YL's car. Marcus had left already for somewhere else. Before that, to get to the sports hall, some of us(the girls and maybe a guy) took the car while the rest(all guys) took the bus and walked. From the lorry, I thought I saw someone looking familiar, but as with my ever-receding eyesight rendering my spectacles partially ineffective, I didn't dare jump to conclusions as to who it was. It was Charmaine :D .

Joanna, Celeste, Ivan, Jun Rong (is that his name?) and Yan Jie stayed back at the hall and set up the location while we were gone. When we came back we found them outside the hall having trolley rides. Later I found WL and 2 sports club people setting up the PA system inside the hall. We rested for a bit and watched the spectacle of the lorry unloading it's container.

Then began the moving of the plates to the hall. The plates were already messed out of order so we just sorted the plates into 3 piles: A, B and BLANK. (There were 3 types of plates: A and B had line markings, differing only where the line markings such as the start line were on the plate, and blank has no lines.) Fortunately, at Clementi, Cheryl took down the order in which the plates were to be set up. While the bunch of 5+1 who had already had lunch decided to get started with setting up the pistes, the bunch of us who went to Clementi plus one or two others who do not fit into one of these 2 categories, went to eat. We thought of going to Macs, but Cheryl and I decided to eat the engin canteen food instead. Cheryl wanted her Indonesian Panggang. I just went with my hotpot with rice. There wasn't any sliced fish, so no choice had ginseng chicken. Suddenly, I see the guys appearing to buy food and joining us to eat. They all decided they wanted Panggang too and Khai had no choice but to eat with them too unless he wanted to eat Macs alone.

After lunch I got about sticking the banner and sponsor logos on the whiteboard. Charmaine helped me with the blue tack. Then went to help with the pistes. It took me a long while to figure out what were the "male" and "female" sides. I knew they referred to the joints between the plates. After watching how they attached the plates together for a long time, I finally got it. And then I wondered, who on earth decided to use such a weird/bad way of naming it.

By that time, after setting up 4 pistes, Ivan, Jun Rong and co. had already memorised the order and didn't need the paper anymore.

At the other end of the hall away from the DT table, Charmaine, Khai, Joanna and co. were setting up the masking tape pistes as spare pistes. Someone had devised a way that Charmaine sat on the square board trolley rolling out the tape in a taut straight line while someone pulled carefully. It was the biggest tape dispenser I had ever seen.

Later when there were less things to do, Yan Jie gave Florence, Jo and Charmaine rides on the trolley. Charmaine had a lot of trolley rides that day. I also had 2 trolley rides. Once with Flo pulling Jo, Charmaine and I in the rope trolley while pushing the metal trolley in front (and later I transferred to the trolley in front) when we were going to return the trolley to OSA (only to find the office door locked with no one there despite the lights). The other time was with I-can't-remember(but I think it was Khai) and Marcus pulling and I found WL having a ride and I decided to hitch a ride too on the way back from YIH after a long walk sticking something.

On the morning of the first day, I brought the posters and proceeded to stick them around the area. Cheryl helped me with the blue tack. Yan Li brought his camera and I took up the role as photographer. I took a lot of photos. I am very sure it was a lot. I tried a bit of announcing too, but was bad at it. Flo and Jo had the right voices and were good at it. One with a low smooth voice, the other KTV queen with a clear smooth voice too but higher pitch. Aerene did a lot of admin work and calculated DT with Wei Choon. Ivan, Marcus, Celeste, Jeff(aka Jin Mao, Kimmo, Golden Monkey, Jin Hou Zi, maybe even Sun Wu Kong)(by now you should get the point), Jun Rong, Wei Choon, Reynold and Khai (and others whom I might have left out like Jeriel) went to do scorekeeping. I based myself at the DT table when there were no photos to take, providing entertainment/disturbance to us who were there. Don't know about WL, I think he did scorekeeping and was watching bouts too because he wasn't at his laptop all the time. YL did some presiding. Cheryl, Yian Ling, Maggie and Angie competed in women's foil.

Ivan's colour laser printer which he lugged to NUS in a cab was put to good use, printing some logos which I missed out as well as all the other forms and information sheets and results which we stuck on the whiteboards at the front and back of the hall.

I followed Jeriel and Jeff to buy Macs. Jeriel drove and they had quite a lot of orders to take. Fortunately, I was there too or else 2 people wouldn't have been able to carry all that food back.

After lunch, I left early to send my mum, dad and MT to Beijing.

On the second day, I skipped evening church and went to help the whole day. Alan came after church. Jo, Flo and Angie fenced women's sabre, Cheryl fenced women's epee with Ruth Ngo (a national fencer and hence you can see her name on her back) and Ferlin (who I found out later was from my primary school, for she somehow recognised me). I guessed I haven't changed much at all. YL did some presiding, Khai, YL and Jason was competing in men's foil. Anthony also was in the men's foil team, and finally we met and knew the guy on the sports club's boards of sports award winners (which we arranged neatly around the hall for decoration and deliberately put Anthony's next to the DT table). I also realised later that it was his face on the sport's club's series of photographic posters of all the sub-clubs of the NUS Sports Club.

As such there was only Aerene, Alan and I at the DT table. Alan did the announcements, though they were not as nice to hear as compared to Flo and Jo's. Wl also did some announcements the day before. While they weren't scorekeeping on both days, the boys were either playing/watching WOW on Ivan's mac or CS on WL's toshiba. I prefer my laptop to theirs cos their screen sizes are only 13 inches, so small! while mine is 14.3inch.

I took a lot more photos, and after showing YL, Khai and the others the video from RJ invites, filmed the boys fencing. Anthony had no choice but to film cos he was too fast to take a photo.

Pamela was also there, coming down after church to support her team. So through her now I've met the NTU team, and I heard their problems and clarified the rumours and other stuff. The individual competitors themselves weren't forwarded the competition rules. They also thought we had 3 coaches and lots of funding, when in fact we didn't, but their budget IS quite small, so small they wouldn't be able to plan for an event like us. I told them we had to look for sponsors and suggested they look for sponsors too in future. Just that they need a starting point to where to look.

Watching the national fencers fence was amazing. They were so fast and precise. They had very good control of themselves. I guess that's why their national fencers. And their suits had the star logo of the national team on it. SMU had a pattern printed on their suits too.

I'm proud to say our women's and men's epee got silver, men's foil, women's sabre and women's foil got bronze. Angie got most valuable fencer (a.k.a. most valuable player) for women's foil, for scoring the most number of hits for their team averaged per bout. Flo did the prize announcements and WL was the secondary prize-giver after the president of FS, after WL's long and some parts unnecessary speech. I used Celeste's cam for YL's cam ran out of battery.

After the events and the teams had left, we packed up the pistes because the very next day, they would be setting up the hall for the med year 2 student's exams (which was why Angie was studying during her breaks, and Jason and WL brought their textbooks(but they didn't read it much)). We removed the masking tapes, wound up the wires, carried the tables and chairs, table cloths folded up,(I went around with Jo removing the signs and most posters) and took all of our equipment and leftover drinks and water back to the storeroom. I saw all that we had set up come back down, the hall bare as it was before we had started, except for the leftover swiss rolls still on the table.

I'm also very thankful proud of the effort the exco and non-exco members who helped. The non-exco members didn't need to come but they loyally did, and the exco members really worked hard to get everything coordinated and kept the things running, including Aerene who ran the DT table by herself on the 2nd day. YL said this was the best ever NUS Fencing Challenge (this is the 3rd time the event has been held). Some suggestions for improvement was compulsory briefing for all competitors and presidents, somehow getting CJC to compete, making direct-E format same as normal competitions, buy only drinks as refreshments, and start planning a bit earlier. We didn't get that many competitors as expected cos of the one year gap, but if we hold it next year, we can get more competitors.

After the debriefing, we gathered our things and went off for dinner at that coffeeshop in Holland V. Khai carried some people in his car, after which he, Cheryl and Ferlin went for CJC's fencing farewell.

YL, Celeste, Jo and Aerene ordered a lot of food and I didn't know how they could finish it. Jo ate a lot, having skipped lunch, and we saw she was capable of eating A LOT. Don't waste food! The rest of us had already finished and sat there for their food came late. One table of Flo, Marcus, Ivan and Jun Rong were talking something that ended up at maths (I heard square root and xsquared). The other table of the 4 eat-a-lots plus Wei Choon and maybe Jason(who was sitting at my table closest to them) were talking about modules and fencing, and WL was sitting there silent as I did. I was bored so bought an ice-lemon tea and finished it while the 4 were still talking and eating. I silently observed WL, who was unusually rather silent. I didn't have anything to say to him, nor chat with him, I did attempt though, but left him as is.

After stoning in the chair for a long time, he got up and went over to see a bit of football on the TV, and after a short while, came back, took his chair and went over to the 4 people-who-were-still-eating's table and became more noisy, interrupting things in his usual only-he-does-that way.

I came to conclude, factually and psychologically, that he was an attention-seeker type of personality, and I think, he subconsciously behaves like that so he can get his attention. Why I say subconscious is because I don't think it's intentional, though there is a small chance it could be. It's like how children cry or get into trouble so that, though scolded by parents, get their parent's attention. The child doesn't deliberately want to do wrong so as to deliberately get attention, no they don't understand such psychology, but they do it subconsciously.

I got a lift from YL who also brought Celeste, Jun Rong, WL and I home. YL let WL drive again because WL didn't want to return the keys. On YL's instruction, I was dropped off at my home. I had to give them instructions, and apparently my way of giving instructions doesn't work very well for the driver. But the way I describe it I use landmarks that are unique to the area. I don't say "condo", I will give the condo's name, unless it's the only condo in the area. I would also give the colour of the building and the shape sometimes. But I was glad I could be dropped off right at my doorstep.

I don't want people to think that, just by looking at my house, or just by knowing that I live in landed property, that I am very wealthy or maybe even atas (Malay word for above, upstairs and also refers to upper-class (and indirectly, snobbish)). But I am not! I am not! I am very down to earth, and quite frugal too. I don't own iPod, or any MP3 player as a matter of fact, my handphone is 5 years going on 6 (I tell you, the average neighbourhood school student has a much more newer phone than I do), I dress simply and don't have expensive clothes (except for that 5 pieces). Please, don't assume I'm atas just because I live in a house. Please, view me for my character. That said, God, teach me not to play down my wealth that I have been blessed with. Teach me instead, to show that it is You who have blessed me with this that I don't have to suffer in poverty and can afford things that I want. Thank You Lord for Your blessings.