Run with the Vision

and so its overrr. the event was a success, with a few hiccups here and there, but otherwise, im pleased. haha. not exactly super happy, but suitably happy. i must be super hard to please huh. ;) not unlike chinghui, my entrance into the 25A comm was rather unusual too. basically i was just sitting in the room, listening to wes and viz talk about the raffles trail and they realised they had let me in too much on the trail and bullied me to join the comm. and so that was how i entered the comm.

the months of planning was tiring, but i enjoyed it alot. i just love creating games, puzzles and these sort of stuff. its really fun u know, imagining how the participants will respond when they play your games. i love being a games i/c so much so that i can memorise how every single game is run, dont believe you can tell me. also, tell me your station location and i can tell you which game is played there. yepp. most importantly, coming up with the points system, the introduction of certain "chance" elements into the game, all these that might possibly induce unnecessary worrying and planning amongst the participants... they all delight me. (: really, i was amazed at the wonderful plans that some groups came up with, factoring in the details i have supplied them with: points for reaching, points for completing the task and most importantly the max number of teams that can reach a certain station. some of my friends who were participating in the race were all speculating how guailan my high-pointer tasks can get. weishern said im a super good secret keeper. thats of coz. all my friends participating in the trail had not been able to get a single tip-off from me. HAH.

alright. so after going thru all the dry runs, we got the final set of logs thanx to chinghui and lizhan. we packed all the logs nicely, so that the distribution of logs will be organized, but to our horror yesterday morning, we found that the locks for josie's station had been STOLEN. yes. GONE. ZILCH. they just disappeared like that. wah. imagine the heart attack. tskk. and to make matters worse, shops in j8 dint open until 11, which is 9 minutes after the teams flagged off. which means, bryon, who was sent to j8 to buy the locks, will not beat the teams to josie's station to deliver the replacement locks. thankfully the teams are not allowed to take cab, so bryon was able to cab down and beat the teams to SMU by a bit. that was really the greatest heart attack of the day.

at ard 8, i gave my final station master's briefing, distributed the police permits, and sent the station masters off, carrying their super heavy booth. :P then went to LT6 to give the participants their final briefing, and watched them come up with brilliant plans, much to my amusement. at slightly before 11, pm lee flagged off the teams, and the teams actually ran. was running after one team going to ghimmoh market. followed them there, and had lunch there. ate the BONELESS CHICKEN which i promised myself i would eat! (: wahh. thankfully i ordered at around 11.30. approx 15 min later, the queue started building up and by the time i finished eating, the queue was as long as that which we saw during dry run. went back outside to meet yowie the station master of that station. he was rotting @ that station, very obviously, coz this was one of the most not-worth-it station to go to.

at that point, i got a call from cedric. apparently the toa payoh station masters stationed themselves wrongly, and the first few times had lots of problems finding it. that was prolly the second hiccup of the day. hehhs. im so proud of my area2-ers! they dint give me a single problem! THANK U peeeps! after ghimmoh went back to old RJC to meet jonny and velda. it was drizzling alr, and by the time i reached the station, it started raining heavily. yikes. apparently this station was quite popular. to get to old RJC, you actually bypassed the ghimmoh market. so it was quite sad for yowie coz ppl took the bus, past his station, to come to jonny's station. reason was quite simple, coz jonny's station was worth a lot more points! haha but the teams were in for a surprise - SUDOKU! it was quite amusing to see one group filling in the wrong stuff. hehhs. but really, teams just came in one after another, huddling under the small little bus stop. yeahh. and all the teams came in drenched, coz they dint want to use umbrellas. was really impressed coz the participants just ran in the rain after hearing from us that the bus takes 20-30 minutes to arrive. the teams were basically just running from one station to another, and in the rain! the powers of ipod. hehhs. i was hoping for it to stop raining ASAP lohh, and thankfully the rain really stopped! (it dint rain for more than 20 min, at least at holland V!)

aft that shah and another female pe teacher came to pick me up and we drove to NUS, where darren's station was. the station was so far away and the task was worth so little points that no teams apart from the compulsory teams bothered to go there. which was quite expected. darren was so bored that he and the first aiders were playing hopscotch with pens. :P then darren decided to make shah play his station, which was animal charades. it was so funny to see shah crawling, roaring, doing all sorts of weird actions! we laughed till our stomachs ached! :P

shah and the female pe teacher then dropped me off @ buona vista MRT, but not before going on a joyride on the car. omg. she was like speeding like mad, it felt like riding in a race car! haha. i then decided to drop by raffles place MRT, and coincidentally charles decided to call me just when i hit his station. ooh. that station had reached the maximum number of teams! dint know it was so popular! bryon and eggy came shortly after and we headed back to RJC together to watch the teams come in. along the way we talked abit about the 25 A planning process and how i was forever bugging bryon and eggy for work so much so that they were frightened of me. :P oh wells. the bugging has finally ended, hehhs. so sorry to give u all so much stress! :P

when we reached the end point, a few times had checked in alr. went to tabulate the scorecards of the teams, and then went ahead with the prize presentation. congrats to the moor tarbet team who walked away the ipod videos, chalking up over 2K points (but was reduced to 1970 or so due to their late return). saw their impressive scorecard. omgg. they reached a grand total of 8 checkpoints in a matter of 4 hrs! still rmb how participants were arguing with me that they might be able to fill up the scorecard. (oh yes, and the canoeists claim they can go to all 24 checkpoints) hah. i confidently told them that it was not possible. (:

later, met up with the checkpoint masters that returned to sch. nat's station was the hottest station, as i expected. it maxed out super quickly, and apparently it was very chaotic coz many people came to that checkpoint. in case u all dont know, nat's station is the one which gave the highest number of task points, and the task was to write lines! they were given "RAFFLES JUNIOR COLLEGE 25TH ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATIONS CUM OFFICIAL OPENING CEREMONY" in our 4 different national languages and they had to write that in each of the 4 languages a whooping 25 times! (: koo's station was rather popular too and thankfully there wasnt any explosion anymore thx to the reduction in ingredient quantities. any other station maxed out? josie's station dint max out, though i thot it wld max out too. teams had to break open a key lock and a combi lock there. :P

aft that was the final debrief and all the congratulatory messages. haha. and got a traumatising hug from guanghao coz eggy commented that i cannot be hugged or ill turn red. and bryon almost wanted to join in too! of coz i quickly siamed! walked to j8 to take bus home coz i was feeling lazy, and who shld i meet but the almost-forgotten 156 P. like why so qiao! mebbe he was in RJ the whole day, knowing that he wld get to meet lotsa RI and RJ guys. oh dearrr. and he still had that perpetual sick grin on his face, and he was standing right next to me! argh. and all the buses EXCEPT the buses that wld get me home arrived at the stop. finally my 88 came and i went home and had a nice long bath. mebbe i was just rejoicing over the success of the trail.

oh yahh. forgot to say. the campus superstar from RI was one of the raffles trail-ers, and aft prize giving, they invited him to go up stage to sing! he was so paiseh @ first lohh, so unlike what i wld expect of sum1 who readily sang in front of a panel of judges and crowds of thousands. but his voice was really good and i still support him! he sang jay's jian dan ai and zhou chuan xiong's nan ren hai yang, two of my old time faves. (:

yeahhh! and this marks the end of my last major council function! *jumps around in delight* glad that my council term ended on such a beautiful note! YIPPEE!

omg. i just typed 1670 words in one shot, right after i came back from sao mu-ing this morning and having breakfast with my relatives. hehhs. went to unpack my bag from yest (was too tired to unpack yest!) and realised i havent read the 2 thank u notes, which were supposed to be read BEFORE the event. haha. thanks to viz for her silver flower too! amanda's note had this pic which said: 1.21 gigawatts. haha. i wonder if it meant being a dian deng pao. :P

last but not least, HAPPY BDAY EST! (:

consilio et animis
4/09/2006 10:20:00 AM