last day of school.

RAINDROPS KEEP FALLING ON MY HEAD
JUST LIKE THE GUY WHOSE FEET ARE TOO BIG FOR HIS BED
NOTHING SEEMS TO FIT
OH RAINDROPS KEEP FALLIN' ON MY HEAD
KEEP ON FALLING

CAUSE I JUST DONE ME SOME TALKING TO THE SUN
AND I SAID I DIDN'T LIKE THE WAY HE GOT THINGS DONE
SLEEPING ON THE JOB
OH RAINDROPS KEEP FALLIN' ON MY HEAD
KEEP ON FALLING

BUT THERE'S ONE THING I KNOW
THE BLUES THEY SEND TO MEET ME WON'T DEFEAT ME
IT WON'T BE LONG TILL HAPPINESS COMES UP TO GREET ME
TO GREET, GREET, GREET, GREET ME

RAINDROPS KEEP FALLING ON MY HEAD
BUT THAT DOESN'T MEAN MY EYES WILL SOON BE TURNING RED
CRYING'S NOT FOR ME
'CAUSE I AIN'T GONNA STOP THE RAIN BY COMPLAINING
BECAUSE I'M FREE, NOTHIN'S BOTHERING ME

school ending soon.

How fast have the days past in recent weeks. Now my friends, old and new, from the small boys i've known since sec 1 to the not so small boys and the elegant ladies who joined in j1 & 2, school is coming to an end real soon. 3 real days left and that's it. Prelims, mass review and we're on our own till the diploma. Then what lies ahead for all of us, only time has the answer. I'm thankful for every single one of you and there's no way to express how i feel. Whatever happens, our paths will cross again and again. But till then STUDY!!!

Ok now i shall finish the rest of my story.

Thursday 26th July 07 (Sunny/warm)

Did 1 training today, things are starting to feel like it should. Had the opening ceremony, Flag march past, ICF flag raising, czech flag raising, preformances and but home to eat and rest. Big day is coming and I want a good result. My first real major international and probably my only as a junior since me and john didn't make the cut for ACC, SEA games trials back in '05.

Friday 27th July 07 (sunny/windy)

We already know the results

Saturday 28th July 07 (cloudy)

1k finals,semis. All super fast.

k1 1000- 330

K2 1000- 320

K4 1000- 256

Japan ladies made FA. SUPER fast. Iran even faster. New Zealand double 3rd in k1 M and W.

Sunday 29th July 07(sunny)

Thank god it's sunny and warm! Lost to Japan's WADA kyohei. He's good. He's a class above me. Lots of things to learn when i get back. He's the guy looking at the camera.

Watched finals, ate nice chocolate pancakes after race. amazing races.

Monday 30th July 07(heavy rain)

Went back to Prague and explored the city on foot. Walked maybe 8-10km that morning. Found a tourist site. Think it's charles bridge? Nice painting. More magnets, crowded with koreans on holiday. Met Japan team at airport. Met mexico at airport. Met argentina at airport on 3 separate occassions. Flight to Paris, rushed to board next flight back to Singapore.

Tuesday Singapore.

Freaking warm...%$#@!

Czeska

This thing in singapore airport, my mum help in the designing!

Ah, I've some time today before i start my maths. I promised to write about the Czech trip when i got my pics back and so i will now! *Note i wrote all this there just to make sure i don't ever forget. I'll just typed it all out.

Monday 23th July
Reached airport earlier to have dinner with the seniors and some juniors who weren't too busy. Chatter, ate, gave IQ questions. I gave the piss off question Chen yi asked me in class and it stumped them real long. Mum chatted with Lucas' parents, checked in the luggage and sat the uber long flight to Amsterdam. Belle gave me a teddy bear with the singapore attire and Irene gave us some matching caps! Thanks! :P


Tuesday 24th July (Rain/cold/windy)
(The timing from here on is all screwed up because Europe is 6 hrs back)
Amsterdam--->Prague
Bought Woo's magnets at Amsterdam airpot, I'm intending to buy one from every stop i reach so he'll have many many magnets but the time i get back. VAT cost me 3 bucks...TMD...too lazy to go claim. Flew to prague on a 1.5 hr cityhopper flight. French lady came and picked us up from the airport. People here are massive. The driver was a boxer and yeah it's cold and cloudy. Driver crives like a F1 racer. Lucas got scared and put on his safety belt when the car suddenly accelerated when driving through country. Reached Racice sportscentrum. Racice is a small town of less than 1000 people if i'm right. Did our registration and watched the japanese team training in pretty cold weather. South Africa arrive and me,lucas and james start swearing in chinese because they all so big. Lucas kept saying "it's unfair why everyone so big(in chinese)" Left sportcentre and took the shuttlebus to our lodging 10km away in a town called roundnice.
Left our lugguage there and travelled back to the sportscentre for training in evening. did 2km before it got too cold and the water too rough to train. I was freezing cold and my hands were feeling numb from the cold water all over + the strong gust of wind blowing hard against me.
Had dinner at cafe at the lodging which is a soccer hub. Sun set at 10pm, rose at 1am. It's damn bright and cooling.

Wednesday 25th July(Cloudy/cold/windy)
Trained twice. I'm still damn intimidated but the sheer size of people around me. K2 in the morning and K1 in the afternoon. More teams starting to arrive and starting to get used to the weather though it's freaking cold. Can't communicate with anyone for nuts. Culture shock.Food is really really nice, potatoes and meat for dinner and pasta for lunch, not to mention the pastry.
Didn't do much inbetween trainings. Spent alot of time just listening to music, watching people train or walking to the Slalom course near the "hotel" and watching the people train. Japs said hi to us, local soccer dudes training at the "hotel" thought we were jap. Can't blame them, who's ever heard of Singapore?

-----

To be continued some other time...
:D

I like the last photo most.

Look at that crowd...

IOC

Yeah!! I've finally got oral commentary over and done with! Spent the past week on 20 extracts from King Lear and poems by wole soyinka, robert frost and wilfred owen. Feels like a huge burden off my shoulders. Lucky me i drew extract 5 of Lear. Gloucester and Edmund scene, so i had a slightly easier time than others. Commenting to a radio which records your voice and an examiner sitting in front is quite scary. I feel more scared than lining at a start line of a race. Lack of practice? maybe.

Well, i tried my best for it. I think i impressed pt by telling him its extract 5 just by looking at it! HAHA! i mug too ok! Studying with woo is damn stressful. He just makes me feel like i never study enough. I just have to state a line and he will tell you what the extract is vice versa. He mug until he's practically a Lear himself. haha. Quite weird walking around school and everyone talking Shakespeare english. Lucky didnt draw background or woodpile. I'll just rip up my paper and die on the spot. It's too abstract for me. That's the bad thing on IB. Up till prelims still chionging IAs. Can't revise for nuts. Anyway it's over!

Missed 2 days of training to make sure i could revise well. Today went down again and the seniors are back. They sound like they had fun! Nice. Bill bought a lettman paddle. Think that's how it's spelt. The shapes nice. I tried the girls paddle. EXTREMELY interesting paddle. The blade is so slim but its alot longer. Looks are deceiving. It looks so thin but it catches a monster lot of water. Feels nice. But me and girl paddle brings me back to the sad fact i'm so damn weak, the top few girls there will beat me. Hai.

3 weeks to prelim, I have no choice by to slow down on training during this period. Probably only going down at most 4 times a week till my IB exams are over on the 22nd Nov. Till then in the words of coach:

" The brain works on sweets and oxygen. Tired go run 40mins, then eat sweets to fuel the brain"

hahaha. Sweets sweets mmmhmmm.

Study hard,
Train hard,
Play hard.
Stay healthy,
God bless.
---
"At the end of the day, all that really matters is love" - charles (Heroes) - i think...

N'Day.

Check this out:http://www.kanuduisburg.de/Kanuwm2007/Z_PDat/ZpWorkEg.php?datei=Erg_0034, http://kanuwm.de/index.php?option=com_wrapper&Itemid=67 & http://www.kanuduisburg.de/Kanuwm2007/Z_PDat/ZpWorkEg.php?datei=Erg_0034
I hope it links :/ duisbergWC made a profile for ryan! Nice!

Anyway happy national day! I've been sleeping the entire day now and i'm still struggling to get my brain to wake up. Did some paddling in the morning, just trying out things and going long distances. My legs are tired this time, i don't think i want to walk up bs-bridge. Maybe.

Yesterday was sister's birthday. Every year we tell her the same thing. "Why can't wait 1 more day?" Had dinner at marina south area and the pepper crab was super spicy. Food was nice. Eh! you're 16, study hard please...

k i go watch parade.
---
Till we meet again.

dbClifford - Simple Things

ok.another weird post but i don't really care. Cute piano.

Seniors have left for World Chamionships seniors. Gonna be tough with the olympics games qualifications being taken from this race. Everyone is probably at their peaks now. Hopefully they do well and have as much fun as me :)

Half day tmr, means some time of rest and slack abit after quite a rushed week trying to catch up with work.

Today was Xcountry day at turf city, even more slack. Did the mass run for fun again, can see me and peck's positions dropping by the hundreds every few minutes.hahaha. I'm lazy...

Not feeling too good too. Down with fluuuuuuuuuuuuuu. Can feel my lungs all clogged up with nonsense.

BTW david's pompom dog is SSSSUUPPPERRRR CUTE. I need to devise a plan to steal it! hahahahahahha.

lag

Been lagging for a few days since i'm back. Jet lagging, work lagging. Basically everything lagging. Everyone now looks so small :/ i wonder why hahaha. The pace of life is so crazy here. It only seems so after going over to Czech. They work from 11-3? They take forever to finish re-tiling the road(singapore 1 night finish). There's always nobody walking on the streets, here there's always jams, people horning the cars infront. It's different from here in many ways. Even the dogs there bigger than mine and MORE GENTLE. I think it's a location thing. Everything just BIG on that side of the world.

Was late for school on thursday because i couldn't wake up at 6am. Over there it's 12am and it took me 10 mins to realise i was going to be late for school. Supposed to go for festival of arts guitar today, but they sold the tickets while i was away + my lower back is killing me.

I'll write about the trip some other time. I passed my set of photos to john to take a look. Can't upload the nicer pics of the place, the races, our "hotel", the slalom white water canoe course and competitions.

Suddenly my boat feels so small also. Over there we used the Nelo ML (70-85kg...i think). Here the M is so small, should have gotten the ML instead. It feels alot better. And now people asking me what am i still training for. What am i training for? I also dunno. Just can't stop ar...it's habit already. I'll just have so much time i don't know what to do with it. Of course can fill it with work...but that's not so appealing...

I also think i'm not too far off the world standard now. Still far, but not that far. A little bit more effort and maybe i might make the average line at the world stage some time soon. Also trying out things i saw the fast buff boys do over there. Maybe one day i can be like them.

Fast.

Being a world class athlete is also quite a lonely thing to do. They train all over the world in camps, hardly get to be with their families sometimes, spend all their time training they miss out what the rest of the world is enjoying. Those that aren't sponsored have to fork out their own cash to go to such meets, just for that shot at gold, no matter how small. Alone in many ways i feel.

Ahhh i'm rambling. My priorities all wrong la + I dunno what to do now. I'll just train somemore and see what happens. No harm right?