Team Mayflower Sailing

Hi all!

Did something for the first time in my life today. Can't believe how nervous I was. I even blanked out ugh but I hope everything was.. okay?

Tomorrow. 7pm. The most crucial moment in my life thus far.

Gonna check and check and check and pray that we've made it! Went there half-hearted and not even anywhere near serious, but the moment I set the ball rolling I felt like I wanted to follow through and boy am I extremely determined to! Only when the results are satisfactory will I come here and brag about it hehehe.

And we have 300+ people auditioning for SDZ's Hip Hop side tomorrow, and I'm one of those helping out from my batch. Oh boy, it's gonna be a tiring day with training before and after the auditions.

I'm back to the Wave-period days. Felt extremely exhausted all the time.

Sha asked me about my knees today, told how he used to run marathons on top of dancing and one day his knee busted after a marathon. He ended up being hospitalized for 2 months :( I don't want to get to that stage with my knees :(:(:( I promise to stop jogging ok?

Laoma told me the only way it'll be okay again is to completely rest, then she thought about it for a while and said, "But actually as dancers we all know we will never actually get that rest la hor." to which Sha agreed.

So okay..

A little warning: This is a really long-ass post dedicated to my CCA in secondary school.

Since MFSS Sailing has closed down I decided that I should prolly write about it. As much as most of us are all hurt that the sailing team is now.. gone, I was just thinking about how much there is to be proud of.

For one, it has shaped me to be who I am now.

And I. Regret. NOTHING!

So I recently had a reunion with some of the Mayflower sailors.

T'was so good to see Mrs Sidhu again (green)!

These guys were my first bros, the first people to protect me like a little sister (my batch did, at least. Well hey we only had 2 girls), the people that taught me to cuss, the first people to actually physically fight infront of me, who mocked my soccer skills, who ran by my side during sailing PT when my fitness and health were damn shitty..

These people were my first 2nd family :')

It felt amazing seeing them all once again. As we gathered around the bar and talked (as I, in my usual unglam-ness, sat on the bar's counter by the sink like a boss), it was obvious we all missed our sec1-4 days. Especially those from my batch.

It's amazing how fast time flies by cuz the guys spent most of their time talking about the army, while the females talked girly stuff and how we all thought of signing on to the army.

I knew it. 

Sailing females are prolly some of the females in Singapore who would wanna sign on and I have no idea why. Are we that gungho??! I know we get tough from all the physical training, carrying our heavy, water-filled boats back up to shore, putting them on racks taller than ourselves and being out at sea for 5-6 hours every time.. BUT STILL.

Guys, a byte (the class of dinghy I sail) weighs roughly 45kg when it's empty.

Add on the sail, mast, daggerboard, tiller and tiller extension, ropes and oooooh let's not forget the seawater that the boat loves to collect in the hull while out at sea, it'll prolly be 51kg or so by the time we come back to shore.

So yeah we are tuff alright :)

We used to love the fact that in MFSS, it was only the sailing females would do proper pushups and not girl pushups during stuff like.. say, PE. Thanks to Mrs Sidhu who made sure that the guys and girls got equal treatment in terms of physical training. I remember how I felt when we had our first PT and she told us that sailors weren't allowed to do the female style pushups.

Look at Nic Wong and David doing pullups after coming back to school from NSC. Think this was from the 2008 June sailing camp.

The scene one would see after the bus reaches school at 7.30pm from a typical day of training out at sea would be:

1) Sailors grab bags, barang barang, sails etc. and run out of bus

2) Sailors drop bags by the pond at the foyer and sprint to the fitness corner (sailors love sprinting)

3) Guys start doing their pullups, while girls partner up to do 20 assisted pullups each and at least attempt 2-3 unassisted pullups

4) When done sailors will sit at the parade square and wait for the remaining sailors to be done with theirs

5) Teachers i/c would make us do after-sailing-PT and we would make so much noise as we all went "DOWN! ONE. DOWN! TWO. DOWN! THREE." like some uniform group.

I remember how David once tried to be funny by being weatherman while we were on the way to NSC from school and they predicted that it would rain and/or have no wind.

Ms Cheng said that if it came true he would owe her pumping, and true enough when we got to NSC the flags there weren't moving at all! Plus there was a storm while we were out at sea, so he owed her 240 pumpings hahaha.

And how we once owed the 'chers 200+ too for being late + rigging up our boats really slowly. We were supposed to launch by 2pm or so but most of us only got our boats in the water by 3 or so. When we got to school Ms Cheng made us sprint and counted, for every second we had to do 10 extra pumpings T_T

Think the last person took almost 6 seconds to reach the fitness corner ugh.

Our arms died that day, like we had to break it up into sets of 60.

(Speaking of which, I can't even do 60 in one shot now)

Okay there's too much to share so here's a quick trip down memory lane.

Anyone remembers what seems to be THE worst 'buang' case in MFSS sailing history?

This.

Goodness I remember how this would've cost him a horrifying $700 or so to repair right? It was as long as his forearm and we could see (and smell) the inside of the hull. Wonder how his boat didn't sink, and  he must've had a fun time sitting there draining his boat. We used to say stuff like, "My boat's peeing la." whenever we emptied our boat after removing the bung.

It's as if the bung doesn't help cuz in the end the hull still collects a shitload of water and makes our boats damn heavy.

And how we had to study together at night during camp as our teachers in-charge always emphasized on how we had to excel in both our studies and in sailing?

Farhana took this photo of us during camp. I'm right at the other end in blue HAHAHA. 

This was prolly 1/3 of the girls (guys always slept in the classrooms). It's no wonder they changed the recruiting system for sec ones so that we could get more females in.

And how we always took part in dragonboat regattas every year?

Majority of the girls in the photo aren't actually sailors. We didn't have enough females to send out, so Mrs Sidhu had to recruit some people from other CCAs.

Best part was that we won something almost every year so yay us!

And our Krabi trip back in 2008 or so for camp.

It was my second time overseas with the sailors and we absolutely loved Krabi.

...and this photo of me which gave everyone a good laugh.

We had to abseil down this mountain after trekking through it, bat shit and all. It was way higher than the usual abseiling wall we would do in Mayflower (see, who said sailors were just sailors? We wakeboarded, abseiled, dragonboating, windsurfing, swam.. so thankful for teachers who tried to make our journey so much more amazing), and I was panicking like hell. I almost cried!

Then they went ahead to print this photo and happily pasted it on our sailing CCA board. Very funny guys.

So many memories from the Krabi trip. First time I jumped into the sea from about 2 stories up too. It really hurt though!

And all the medals we won every year.

Man.. I think most of the medals and trophies in my cupboard are from sailing and from running for Unicorn house during Sports Day.

Oh here's a random story:

During this year's CASS FOC, I was some crazy mother/makcik during our nightwalk. Syara and I got bored so we went to find Nasir and Gab at their station.

So as I was there scaring the freshies at camp, this girl who had to do the task at their station came to get the envelope from me and I started running away from her, screaming "YOU'RE NOT MY CHILD. GET THE HELL AWAY FROM ME, YOU'RE NOT MY CHILD!!!!!"

She suddenly told me, "Please!!! PLEASE GIVE ME THE CLUE I AM FROM MAYFLOWER ALSO!!!!!!" and I just totally dropped character and stood there not knowing how to react.

Nasir had to come over to take the envelope from me to continue and he was like, "Gwen, Gwen, give me give me." I was literally standing there, mouth open and all. It was damn funny I swear.

Later I went to ask the junior how she knew me cuz I didn't recognise her at all, plus I don't know anyone from like, a batch before her onwards. And she was saying how people do mention my name plus like the sailors still talk about me.

Syara was like, "Cheh cheh someone's a popular kid ah!"

-_-

It was funny how that girl just used the whole Mayflower thing to stop me being in character, thinking I would pass her the clue. Oh well thanks Nasir for saving me and my makcik self HAHAHA

Okay here's another abrupt ending cuz I realised I've spent about 2 hours on this blog post and I have school at 8am tomorrow. Attendance hasn't been good for my FYP module tutorials ughhhh.

The one batch that made life so much so much more enjoyable. I love you brudders!

These were the people who were always there for me, whom I ate during recess with, talked nonsense with and learnt loads from. They made secondary school life so much better :)

"The race is never over 'til you've crossed the finishing line"

Better to cross than to DNF, DNC or worse.. OCS!