Woke up slightly late on saturday morning for training. Yuck. Managed to reach there are 8:15 and saw Pong, but to my suprise everyone started reaching after 8:30.

Let the juniors head down first before Coach patrick sent me on a racer t2 with Hongda. Hongda is slightly heavier (75kg) and slightly taller (1.85m), so he pretty much look like a giant. Yeah. Was frontman, and we made each other laugh like crazy througout the sets. Insane bugger. First we called ourselves "two giant buffoons on a small boat", because we are frickin tall and huge, and felt very unstable in the tiny t2 at first; then when we tried doing sprinting start sets and bursts and we called ourselves the "geh-kiang T2", due to the amount of stuff we wanted to try out and boats I wanted to chase on our first time together. Hahahaha. He politely agreed when I told him I wanted to race after the nus and hwachong boats.

Direction was pretty bad, so we couldn't gain very much on the nus t1s, but we actually overtook a hwachong k2 pair, although we did a starting burst set and they were finishing their distance lap. Current was insane again. Two of us kept sweeping, then sweeping again to counter our rotation. The current was so retarded at times that our boat was going in a "\" forwards instead of a "-" and I just had to yell "WTF?!!@#@#%".

Ended the training with a 250m sprint with samantha/grace k2 pair. I yelled out "Samantha, if we lose to you this set I'll give you 50 pumping!". Hahaha, so geh-kiang alright. Go geh-kiang t2 power. And low and behold, we won. By a couple of meters, says Hongda. Sha-neroh!

Patrick said that we make a very good match for a T2. Good size, and we have the power. But, technique-wise are lacking. Just need practice and time, I guess. I wouldn't mind going for a T2 race, and frankly, if there's anyone else on the team that I'd rather be on a t2 with, it would be Hongda, but having a dependancy on a teammate again for a race... would defeat the purpose of me coming to canoeing in the first place. I still want my T1 event. I want my own race.

Came up, washed boats, debriefed, then went down again in a starlum t1 for dragonboat canoeing.

It rained. Not a heavy windy rain though, which would have been fun; but a peaceful rapid precipitation. I just love it when it rains when I'm canoeing. Usually outside you'd see the rain, you'd hate to get wet in the rain, its so foreign, so cold, so annoying. But in the boat... when you see it rain and the little droplets jump up when it hits the water surface all around you. Its more humbling. The heavy drops beat against your bare arms, you can hear and feel them tapping on your lifejacket, your cap, and you can see it affecting everything around you. Its all around you, and you're rowing in it, depending on it. Almost as if its trying to tell you: "there is no where to go, I am everywhere, embrace me." Either that or "Who's yo daddy? Hahhahaha!". Probably the more peaceful first option though.

Was quite shacked from canoeing training earlier, but still managed to pull through and emerge first for all the sets we did despite atrocious directional control. I'd look down to check my stroke then look up and find myself heading straight for the wall or beach. Lovely.

Spotted more dead and rotting stuff too! Dead bloated puffed up rish at the pontoon, dead bird with all the feathers detached and hanging loosely by some hairs, dead rat in middle stages of decomposition. Seriously, the amount of dead stuff in Kallang basin is apalling, in fact, if anyone in singapore kills anyone and dumps the body anywhere, it would probably end up in the kallang basin.



Went to eat dinner with the guys and for the first time, Coach Ben came along. Jeremy, Stephen Rendy, Mei xuan, wani, jonathan, Willy and I headed to kallang market to eat. Walked along side Ben on the way, and we had a pretty long talk. Talked about canoeing, about Oliver, about races, training stuff, I had never talked to Ben for such a long time an in such a personal level before, but it was really nice. I guess its the stigma of mentors/teachers which we as students perceive them to have that makes us so... uncomfortably quiet and disciplined around him at times. Its the amount of respect we have, really, not anything to do with not liking him. I guess this rubbed off since my days with Mr Chua. All of us felt the same respect for him. During class, we had to have the utmost discipline until when it was after class and everything was informal again, and it was hard to talk to him then. I guess we as students want to make them so proud sometimes, that we want to filter out anything that would make them think any less of us at times?

Just watched the video of that rj teacher who tore up her students work recently. Woo... intense alright. I can still recall Chua tearing up our notes up to 3 times. He was that kind of insane eccentric teacher. My first day with him and I remember becoming so fraustrated that my eyes became red. But it was the 4 years with him that I worked up and saw my worth intellectually. From the bottom table in class, all the way up to the top smarties table with the RI guys. The Cat high guys were always more fun to work with, though.

I will forever remember his words: "I can teach so many gep or very smart students like michael, but to see a weak student like you last time come up and solve all these questions, that, is what makes me happy. " And to see that proud face everytime I managed to solve some retarded question from the ri GEP amaths or physics or chem papers, that same face when I did that differentiation question faster than the ri GEP student even. Heh, that was a drive alright. But the wanting to make other people proud can only take you so far if you don't want to do it for yourself. Yeap, amaths, physics, or chem wasn't as fun as marvel vs capcom 2. Damn... come to think of it... its such an old game now. And yet I was ecstatic when I got it for the ps2 on friday.