SAFSA day 1 (again)

2nd post for this blog! lol. after reading annalyn's guide-to-archery-competitions post, i shall endeavour to explain the situation on the other side of the field.

haha so blablabla me n dan arrived at the top secret hidden location jurong camp after making *ahem* a few wrong turns here n there. we walked into the gate just in time to see mr kapitan and neo ji kwong kwang receive their passes which would allow them to infiltrate the top secret jurong SAF base. when presented with the namelist for registration i promptly identified my name under the page with the heading -STANDARD LADIES-. fortunately the helpful SAF personnel around quickly recitified my mistake.

anyway on to the vast green expanse of grass which we call the shooting area, with the excellently marked lanes, shooting lines, waiting lines and equipment lines, and the well placed 30m target boards that actually seemed a LITTLE nearer on the 16th of December 2006. well, competition stress makes u see things.

things proceeded on time, and with the incessant hurrying of the organisers, final registration, checking of lane assignment, equipment check took place...and by this time many archers up and down the field were wondering exactly how stressed they were for this competition. fortuanately mr ken e. ang our coach decided caution was the better road to take and requested the judges check the distance.

and apparently the decisive force which most of us guys (bloody ongnardo) will be joining next year can calculate artillery shell trajectories, missile strikes and bomb drops with excllent precision...but is unable to measure a distance of 3000cm on a field. the distance which our koach and the judges measured was a grand 21.346203474947m.

n so after 30 mins of degenerative waiting, the organisers announced through the speakers which only half the field could hear that help of the archers were needed to move the target boards the remaining 8.653796525m to achieve the accurate distance of 30.00000000m that we were supposed to shoot. certain archers interpreted the request as directed to homo sapiens bearing the XY chromosome only, and thus busied themselves nonetheless with eliminating the population of flying bloodsucking insects which had peacefully inhabited the fields prior to this event.

and thus after 15 mins of minute adjustments to make sure the distance was really 30.00000m, the organisers kindly gave another 10 mins of break before the sighters began. meanwhile, MeN with the grey army shirts began to run up and down the lanes, pegging down lines and shifting the 50m boards back as well.

n so began the competition. after the sighters, the organisers announced they had come up with a fUnKy new shooting system, where detail 1 would shoot 1 end, followed by detail 2 which would shoot 2 ends, followed by detail 1 which would shoot 2 ends, n so on. this resulted in MaNly long breaks in between shooting, in which certain competitors promptly decided to fall asleep.

my time between ends was divided between sitting beside dan, jinxing hamsey with my presence from behind, talking to kangrui who seemed to have made new zhar bor frens, and watching annalyn own at the far end of the field. as annalyn mentioned, high stakes blackjack was also played, which ended up with marcus losing badly to xtopher.

the kaptain kindly offered halfway thru the first round to bring our scoreboards to the judges stand for us. however after the first round ended, i looked for that tall imposing figure without success. maybe cos the sky was getting darker. anyway, as the organisers decided to have a sudden attack of no mercy they announced the second round would get underway straight away. and thus i arrived back at my lane just as the 2 whistles were blown. n nearly slipped on the %$#^@!@%&^#$ mud.

and as mentioned above, in line with predictions made by many including our wise seniors and the koach, dark cumulonimbus clouds began to cover the blue sky, with the hapless fluffy cumulus clouds disappearing into thin air. me n dan thus began a bet on when it would start raining. in the end only dan bet bcos i forgot to cast mine after my end was over. anyway he was wrong.

blablabla and the shooting went on, with a pause after the 4th end as the droplets of water started to assault the field. the SAF was prepared, and white trash bags were handed out for us to shelter the scoreboards when we went to score. however, many competitors turned out to be more technologically advanced and employed the hi-tech device known as the umbrella.

lunch was excellent, but i lost the bet with daniel about wad it wud be =( after lunch, me n dan took off in search of the toilets. the SAF had decisively decided to put "under renovation" signs on the toilets nearest to the canteen. furthermore, me n dan had saw a sign saying "toilets, block 301". thus began our ardous trek around the camp, until we discovered the canteen was actually situated in block 301, n the signs had been taken off -.-

so we arrived back at the field, only to find out that the results were still not out yet, due to the unforeseeable lack of a printer. kangrui suggested they announce the results out, which was met with much unenthusiasm from the rest of the team. the rj men thus decided to sit under the chin up bar and continue high stakes blackjack. meanwhile, ongnardo called and decided to have a nice long chat with the standard men. hwee was passed the phone later on but seem repulsed by the jambi man's voice. thus the conversation continued on until mr neo demanded his phone back on the grounds of an exploded phone bill.

well, and of course the day wouldn't be complete without more rain. (but cant be compared to day 2 lol) we ran back to take shelter under the canvas, where higher-stakes-blackjack was played between koach ken and kaptain kaswin, with the stakes being 3 seconds of pinching. the battles were fought long and hard, and tho the kaptain put up a brave fight, he was soon subject to the torturous fingers of the evil koach. most of us watched the highly entertaining scene, while kangrui busied himself with shen diao xia lv, and dan fell aslp on his bowcase.

after the blackjack was called to a stop, a sudden realisation hit us that annalyn n hwee had gone off to check the scores and were thus probably stranded at the judge's table. the kaptain again bravely volunteered to go fetch them. however, he forgot that he cudnt possibly fit under the umbrella along with 2 girls, and so i sacrificed daniel's slippers and set out to rescue the kaptain.

to cut a long story short, the organisers decided that enough was enough and cancelled the team event, with team placings being taken by totalling the individual scores. annalyn owned with 2nd place, and the results have already been posted so i shant repeat them now.

one more time i would like to thank:

koach ken for the advice, encouragment, and entertainment
kimberly, yu qin, heidi, and mei ling for coming down specially to suppport
marcus, chris n kaswin for making the journey to the west, skipping lunch, and all the support
the Singapore Armed Forces Sports Association for the excellent venue and organisation
Mighty Minds for the street directory, the essential guide to locating the top secret base in Jurong
Angel Playing cards for blackjack equipment
Stanley Powerlock measuring tape for providing the exact 30.0000m shooting distance
n all the archery equipment manufacturers blablabla.

thus concludes SAFSA Day 1, Standard Class Category (again)

SAFSA Day 2

SAFSA Day 2

There seems to be many SAF affiliated organizations related to archery lolz. There was also another competition organized by SAFRA a few months back which was quite fun as well. That competition was held somewhere in the far east but now this one is held at the muddy plains at the western bastion of civilization. Its so **%#^@*^@ west that it is on page 78 of the street directory (Mighty Minds) near the Joo Koon MRT (planned, haven’t start construction ) MRT station 2 stations away from Boon Lay MRT. Another alternative would be to take bus 182 which has the frequency of 2 buses/ hour.

Perhaps SAF decides to have such camps in MAN far places to prevent infiltration and leak of information. However, this caused the journey we took to be a looooong one, causing the mental faculty to slacken and ultimately miss out some details. This is exemplified by Ji Kwang whose definition of “nearly there” is 7 MRT stops away and Ongnardo who happily left his bag with his Republic of Indonesia passport in the taxi as he left happily with the bowcase.

Finally after a long and ardous journey through the highways and MRT tracks of Singapore, we have finally reached the top-secret Jurong camp. There were guards carrying rifles that can own the weapons tt we were carrying anytime due to the high RPM (Rounds per minute) and firepower.

Hence we merely complied and went on to the fields which is still F far away, the true military style that demands physical endurance. After some walking we finally reached the SAF tents, made of high-grade canvas designed to repel all forms of UV and infrared radiation to prevent enemy detection ( but apparently not designed to repel water).

Yeah and since everyone here seems to carry guns, we quickly set up our bows to fit in the crowd, must make sure that everyone is armed. The skies… were sort of…black, not the usual blue and cumulonimbus clouds were covering the sky and soon all that’s left of daylight is gone.

The lane allocations were a little funny though, usually they don’t put people from the same club together but by some random permutation there are lots of similarities in terms of jerseys and this trend can be seen in many lanes (Kim Heidi, Chris AsWiN etc.) Even my lane has the TP-Krazee team with Kenny and Kenneth and some guy with G3 limbs. Seems coincidental isn’t it.

Half an hour later and after some long toilet breaks since the toilet seems to be located 280m 230degrees from the competition venue, the sighter rounds started and so does the trickling of water from the heavens above. A couple of drops of water… in the flight of the arrow… by the concepts of physics would push down the arrow due to increased friction as there is water resistance that is not negligible. Nothing much about the sighters other than the fact that most sights have to be shifted due to the difference in temperature, humidity and weather.

Two whistles was blown and the scoring round commences immediately. It seems that the organizers did not take into consideration the -80% movement speed DEGEN AURA that is somehow omnipresent throughout the shooting range and so decided that there will only be one detail and it is now a major squeeze.

Nothing much about the first round, just that the clouds seem to be in a mood swing as it brought down torrents of rain in between short pauses to keep the field moist and green. Personally the round was not that good as I shot my first M and then decrepified for the rest. Overall the team were still living up to the name of the MAN RJClass team with Mr Aswin K shooting up to 295, and Ji Kwang with 292.

The second round of the competition and the rains continued as the whistle was blown and another swathe of rain descended upon the earth, this time bringing the water level to the toenails. There are some disadvantages of shooting in the rain:
· The specs get blurred due to refraction of light as drops of water settle on the lens.
· There is increased resistance at the boards due to the increased friction as water is polar and thus exerts a force of attraction on the arrows and the arrows are now %&%*@ing hard to pull.
· Can’t see where the arrow go as well. Look at point 1
· DAMN COLD

Yeah and so the second round was held in the above conditions. Another point that was not mentioned is that rainwater seems to have the chemical property to negate all effects of super glue and its variants and it was a good thing that Annalyn was there to fletch the arrows to restore aerodynamic balance. There were others doing likewise as well and to quote BennyTan:

“The back there is like a factory”

Finally we weathered through the round and the rain. Personally was much better and as a team the scores were pretty MAN as well considering the above conditions. Not bad.

When it’s cold lunch seems to be the best thing ever, never mind that it’s the type of army food rations that siangaporeans XY chromosomes have to go through or is going through now ( Mwahahahaha ). However, perhaps this is already the souped up version of the food since there’s the story that the army usually serve zai food on the first day of NS. Let me now share a song that you all may know:

They say in the army, the food is very nice
You ask for curry chicken
They give you chao tar rice
I don’t wanna lead an army life

Haiz… Army life… Good thing that there’s still 1.1 more year for YOU all. Now we lead the slack life as we played blackjack with the bet of 1 bubble tea each hand. Ji Kwang was owning Ongnardo 4-0 but soon got re-owned to 0-0. After that its dai dee/bridge in which the hypothesis that “One who knows bridge but not dai dee sucks at bridge” was well proven. Annalyn however, was in deep thought on the time wasted by reading some book about time. There really is a lot of time and we went on to watch the OPEN MEN shooting happily.

After a long long time, the rain once again descends upon the bountiful earth and this frame in time coincides with the start of the C-class team event. As the organizers do not believe in upsets, they have decided to heck the bottom 4 teams and only 4 teams will have fun in the semi finals. RJ bee was ranked 2nd and thus would play with TP Krazee ( pronounced as krA-zee).

The first round went well for RJ…and so is TP. They were even in terms of scores. Not badz. The fengshui was merciful but not the weather and the
Ds-1m-2 (drops/second/metre sq) increased at an exponential amount to torrential levels. The second round went on well for TP… and so is RJ and once again the two teams were level. Moving on to the third round... Christopher the first shooter went on fine... quite MaN. Aswin then fires his first arrow… at this point it is seemingly impossible to tell where the arrow flies to. He then shoots his 2nd arrow and I noticed that it was a little…high….white perhaps. “I think it’s just the pin” –Heidi. Apparently, it was not the pin after all…

The team rebounded in the fourth round with a stunning 57/60 which was still 3 points short of winning TP as the team lost 193-195, a very close margin.

“Even a black can win”
-Neo Ji Kwang

Following the torrential rains, the organizers decided to switch to the sudden death mode where everyone shoots 1 arrow each within 60s and that will determine the winner. RJ bee against Potong Pasir Community Centre Bois. The rains were really bad and in the end it was 8 4 2 to 8 7 2… 4th place for RJ Class team. The SAF tents can’t seem to weather anymore of the dogs and cats that came raining down and we hastily paked up all equipment and personal effects to leave the field was water level was above ankle level. The judge came in a MAN umbrella to transport all of us to the canteen but was there was not much point as the shirts are all soaked through liaoz.

Prize Presentation was mostly a simple affair with the some major guy giving out the prizes. Yeah and they are as follows:

*Standard MAN Individual 4th – Tan Kang Rui
*Standard Ladies Individual 2nd – Ng Li-Ting Annalyn
*Standard MAN “Team Event” 4th – Daniel Seow Wei Jin, Teo Si Rui, Tan Kang Rui
*Standard Ladies “Team Event” 2nd – Ang Mann Shing, Chin Xin Yun Jasmine, Lee Hwee Juin, Ng Li-Ting Annalyn.
C Class (neither MAN nor Ladies) Team Event 4th – Han Ting Hui Christopher, Kothandaramaraju Aswin, Neo Ji Kwang, Ongnardo Wirateja Andreas.
*Means that the organizers forgot to give out

Yepp tts all the prizes. Not to mention Si Rui, Mann Shing and Ji Kwang for getting 7th place in all the categories that RJ took part in. I can’t overlook this trend. Somehow when there are 3 prizes to be won, some RJ archer would be 4th, then when there are 6 prizes to be won, some RJ archer would get 7th. This also happens in the previous competitions such as SAFRA indoor where Lynette and me was 4th for standard ladies and MAN respectively and me in that NJ comp as well and now in this competition the trend repeats again. ALWAYS liddat. Lets hope that it would not happen in future comps lolz ( doesn’t mean to slip down ^-^).

With that, we were all shivering by the end, not to mention the flawed intelligence network of Annalyn that Mann Shing was 4th and causing a confusion as Heidi calmly stood up to have a better look at the prizes. The buffet in the end was quite zai and we lubbed most of it and finally went home.

The competition would not be possible without:

Mr. Ang Cee Wei
The school establishment
Hoyt, Samick, Beiter, Easton, Shibuya, Cartel etc etc.

THE SINGAPORE ARMED FORCES, the decisive force. Wow, this competition has really shown the jambi man the pride of the Republic of Singapore – The Singapore Armed Forces. At this point I would really like to commend the SAF if I haven’t done so already. Their rigorous mental and physical training really shone out in the organization of this competition and every minute detail was taken care of.

In terms of logistics, all was carefully prepared. Just look at what they have prepared - the tough, durable and anti-UV anti-Infrared anti-bacteria tents ( not anti-water) tents, the solid hard target boards, the advanced computer systems that is able to print out the scoresheet at an amazing speed, the huge impenetrable gunny sacks ( think used to be sandbags) which they placed behind the target boards and not forgetting the infinite supply of umbrellas at the end of the competition which was initially meant for the National Day parade 07 but the decisive force decided to use for the competition as the rain came relentlessly.

At the same time, in terms of MANpower, they were real good as well with the infinitely many MEN with grey shirts bearing the word “ARMY” with great pride. Whenever some guy shooting XX lbs bow shoots through the board, they were mobilized swiftly, at least 8 of them at a time. 2 would move gunny sacks, 2 would tie them, 2 would provide entertainment and the last 2 would help using the powers of telekinesis honed after years in the Singapore Army. Medics were also present should some loser get shot and suffer mortal wounds.

Overall, they were really zai. Scores were out within 45mins, a record time ( there were some negligible errors) and even the mee goring was zai enough to feed the extremely hungry people. A true decisive force that is decisive enough to decide to have a sudden death as well. SAF is really DA BOMB.

Annalyn, for the fletching factory
Taxi Driver who returned my bag for me
J2s for coming back after their As J
And all the words of encouragement!

Photos will come once Aswin returns from the Indian subcontinent, he got my memory stick.

Safsa Day 1.

One can learn several things during competitions.

#1 - If you want to be the first to reach the venue, no need to plan arrival 1 hour before registration. 45 minutes earlier can already.

#2 - Please check venue properly first before chionging there. If not, you can be wasting a lot of petrol and further aggravate global warming.

The 2nd and 3rd to arrive at Jurong Camp were Hamtaro and Bulbasaur. While they were settling down, I went to scout for the toilets. At first glance, it looked reasonably clean. I mean with 99.9498472% of the camp using the urinals next door, I wasn't expecting anything less than decent for the Ladies. They had yellow lightings which radiated a warm ambience, enhanced by small pots of flowers by the sink... all of which were negated when I stepped into the cubicle.

[censored.]

(... kay give chance. I think they cleaned it up later.)

Back to mosquito breeding ground. I was pacing up and down impatiently as I awaited the arrival of the fletching jig Munmun. Bulbasaur was flailing her vines left and right as she attempted to swat the bloodsuckers, which she unfortunately does not eat cause she is vegetarian (which also makes her cannibalistic). At this point, I would like to promote the army insect repellent:

It is good. Use it.

Hwee reached. And soon, the fletching jig arrived. Then I started fletching (redundant statement). Then Hamtaro started fletching. And Bulbasaur continued itching.

The rest of the pre-competition events include:

The arrival of the RJ men.
The murder of Munmun's plunger.
The migration of our M16s to respective lanes.
The commencement of high stakes Blackjack.

Unable to blog about the competition itself cause my lane happened to be isolated from the rest. However, I can tell you the 3rd thing one can learn from competitions:

#3 - Don't anyhow flip back your cartel sight thinking gleefully that you've not violated any regulations and not considering it necessary to sight before the competition itself.

Many thanks to Kaptino, Nancy, Xtopher and Wilson for finding back all the arrows. The C Class competitors' presence was very edifying. Though they were all bored and zzz-ing, plus they couldn't have proper lunch, they made all the difference.

The team event was cancelled due to "bad weather" (wait till you read about the weather on Day 2). Overall the team did well, some even achieved tremendous breakthroughs.

Hamtaro was on fire, her best end with the lowest score of 8. Munmun missed her medal by 1 ranking at Individual 7th. Da niu, Kang Rui and Psyray came in Team 4th. Bulbasaur, Hwee, Munmun and I came in Team 2nd. Kang Rui clinched the Individual 4th place in recurve with 634 points even though he has been training with compound. and by Amazing Grace, I got Individual 2nd with 610 points.

We couldn't have done it without --

Mr Ang Cee Wei
Ng Yuqin Kimberly
Tan Meiling Heidi

Thank you very much for your support.

Thus concludes SAFSA Day 1, Standard Class Category.

Cast (in order of appearance):
I - Annalyn Ng Li-Ting
Hamtaro - Lim Wei Zhen
Bulbasaur - Jasmine Chin Xin Yun
Munmun - Ang Mann Shing
Hwee - Lee Hwee Juin
Kaptino - Kothandaramaraju Aswin
Nancy - Neo Ji Kwang
Xtopher - Han Ting Hui Christopher
Kang Rui - Tan Kang Rui
Da Niu - Daniel Seow Wei Jin
Psyray - Teo Si Rui

safsa!

(hehe this time i shall take over ongnardo and aaron's storytelling job)

twas a very extremely rainy two days, but a fun one nonetheless (:

















we spent the first day supporting the juniors and watching and playing blackjack (anyone who wants videos ask me hehe) and stoning while waiting for the rain to stop













sighters for 50m on the second day













and then it poured spectacularly and stopped and poured again etc. and we all got drenched and our shoes got Very Muddy and squishy.

team knockout finals was Exciting! one arrow shootout in very heavy rain!!

fast forward to prize presentation..
annalyn, our standard class runner up and official fletcher (thanks muchly dear!), eluding the camera!

daryl and koach (and henry) in 2nd place for recurve team knockout!













seniors (plus andrew) in 3rd place for compound team knockout!













and nancykaptainchris 4th for c class team knockout!













ONE! hee













the end (:

aRchery - grad nite

Kimberly you never rock with us.

aRchery gathering

I had fun. :P

Park Sung Hyun

World No. 1 Lady
1405/1440 FITA

Cheers

To every little good thing in life...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mx0fy-9NWFg

Cheers

Covenant.

I urge all of you to make this covenant, in the name of productive spending:

I, _[insert name as printed in I/C]__, pledge never to relent in any disputes with K. Aswin pertaining to the choice of movies. I will step up to all challenges, else risk flushing away $6.50.

... kidding luh. xD

Today's outing attendance was a prophesy of our GCE "A" Level results. AAAAA. The sacred covenant was finally broken when Ang Munmun returned home after flushing away $6.50. I was left as the sole victim of an imba gender ratio. The scale tipped further with the arrival of Andreas and Si Rui (not A).

Pool was at Paradigm, beside Fish & Co glasshouse. That should have sounded familiar to you, I hope. We had 2 tables.

1st table - People with names starting with "A" and ending with "N".
2nd table - People wearing $2.90 t-shirts. (: .. actually we found out can just wear school t-shirt. they don't seem to care. :/

At the 1st table, the teamings were racially disharmonious. Aaron and Annalyn won 2-1 cause they had two "A"s in their names.

(The 2nd table was too good to be given mention here.)

Dinner was DAAAAAAA BAO at Carl's Jnr x_x .. which concluded our gay day at town.

YOU SHALL NOT DIE

ehh guys the blog is dyingg! cannot ok! pls pls post...haha any emo posts after a yr of being together as a team...more suggestions for future outings...random guailan stuff...anth k!

aniwae for all those hu play dota here go to youtube n search for "dota song" lol...

heads up for long emo post from ongnardo and possible (not so long) post frm me hahaha...keep checking k! n dun juz check muz post also!

aniwae for any n all j2s...best of luck for the As! make sure tt if u use ur papers as a target board u can nvr hit x! xD n btw if ur j2 now u shld be mugging instead of blogsurfing ya x) haha jiayou!~

okok yes oh ya n guys n gals go down for personal trainings more! juz uh. keep e place nice n neat n dun gif ppl a reason to own u ya =/ uh as a few of us discovered...okok...watch (and post on) this space n happy hols to all! =D


p.s: n if u guys haf no idea hu this is...KEEP GUESSING MUAHAHAHA ok nvm -.-

Open House

I like the booth design. Well done archers.

Pics frm outing and PPCC shoot

Hi everyone, long time no post. Heres the link to the pics taken during the PPCC shoot and the outing -

http://rjcarchery.shutterfly.com/action/pictures?a=67b0de21b323566b457e

This time its complete with captions so have fun browsing!!

Potong Pasir CC Archery Championships Results

Yeah, theres this competition organized by our good friends from PPCC Archery. Ongnardo, Hwee Juin and Mingwei took part in it. It was 2 rounds 6 ends of 6 arrows from 30m with 122cm face. Heres the results:

Ongnardo - 612, 14th
Hwee Juin - 547, 14th
Mingwei - 577, 7th

Well, didnt shoot very well and it was quite a competitive shoot. The team was ranked 9th and didnt shoot for the team event. Well, we'll do better next time!

SAFRA Indoor

Morale |>>>>>|>>>>>|>>>>>|>>>
Fun |>>>>>|>>>>>|>>>>>|>>>>>
Excitement |>>>>>|>>>>>|>>>>>|>>>>>|>>>>>|>>>>>|>>>>

The Singapore Armed Forces Recreation Association or otherwise known as SAFRA has organized an indoor archery competition. Well, this should be the first indoor competition for most people, where the target face is man small even as the distance is an easy 18m. Nothing much to prepare for this day since we have been shooting at the indoor range ever since we last shot at NJC soccer field. Well, shooting in air-con comfort is always different from the radiation from the hot sun, as the increased heat and humidity would affect the properties of the limbs (tokking kok here). Indoor has always been more erm sort of exciting where there is cut-throat competition as differences between archers are only a few points which translate to a few centimeters apart. In short, indoor is the time when mental plays a really key role.

Okay, competition day itself was very pumped up. People came with really high hopes to achieve something. We arrived at the venue and noticed that some stuff are just not going our way. 1) All the RJ guys are gonna shoot the C or the D board which means the lower boards which means harder to shoot since our guys are rather tall 2) The hall lighting is DAMN SKRUED UP 3) According to Mr. Lim, our in-house fengshui master, the fengshui of the hall is not very good as it promotes fishtailing. Hmm, this is not gonna be a good day after all.

After a really long wait, we finally got to register. The goodie bag is rather man, with the NEW MAN magazine ( 2 issues), a water bottle, Centrum vitamins, some funky drink and a suntanning voucher [to make up for all the time spent training indoor when you would otherwise be in the sun] and of course, the usual NEWater, water made from reverse osmosising crap water. And the waterbottle emblazoned with the safra crest and “safra indoor archery championships 2006” no shirt again. Rawr. After another looong while, its equipment inspection where the judges check that your shorts are of the proper length, your bow can pass through some 122mm hole and whether your arrows are marked, whether your points are sharp enough, whether your arrows are too fat, whether you are too tall for shooting, whether you have cancer or not etc etc.

Well, some time later it’s the real actual event itself for the guys. WHOOOOOOOO! Yeah and we just realized that the hall is really very small and we barely have space to move around without kicking a bow. Sighters round. Yeah, the usual adrenaline rush and sudden realization that you are in an actual competition. My own sighters was horrible with the arrows hitting the entire board indiscriminately. This really does not feel anywhere like the homely and cosy Potong Pasir CC. Howver, no one can have a better sighter round than Dylan who has the privilege of the entire hall looking at him while he shoot his sighters. Apparently someone kicked his bow and caused his sight pin to break just before the sighters and it was a blessing in disguise as he got a new free sight pin.

Sighters was over and I looked around at my board-mates. There was a good mix of people such as a 老教 from Pasir Ris CC, some MAN from HomeTeam NS ( who finally told me what HomeTeam NS is), Kenneth from TP and Ongnardo from RJ. Well, at least theres someone who can tokkok in the form of Kenneth. At the same time also realized that there are many GuaiLan people in TP such as the Indian guy who complained that he “射三个black”. My board wasn’t very different, with one from precc, one from hometeam ns and terence from tp. Sadly there wasn’t a njc detail reunion.

Back to the competition, the scoring rounds has started. The first end for me was rather ok as I shot my average and evaded the FEKOS safely but the scores somehow plummeted in the proceeding ends as the scores fluctuate up and down. Haizz, was rather demoralized by this and tried to relax somehow. Looking around Aaron seems to be doing fine but everyone else really did not shoot very well that round with all of us not hitting our averages. Guess fengshui there is really not good.

The round continues and I managed to pull back some with several good ends. Was quite pleased that I did not screw up totally. The rounds this time went very fast as there was only one detail and one time to retrieve arrows which makes the ends go very fast. Nevetheless, the second round came and we shot another round. This time my round started pretty well but totally died somewhere along the middle. It somehow cancels out and both rounds were around the same. Nothing seemed to improve for the rest as we barely met our average. Something is really wrong here. Lack of mental preparations, maybe, need to really work on it to prepare for later competitions.

Some interesting observations… NJ seems to be trained to really take their time to shoot as we see them taking really long to aim and anchor. Azrin was also shooting in a manly way, I noticed. The guys round soon ended and yeah, most of us did not really meet our average…

The girls then took over with the girls standards round. aas decided that it was time to enforce the fita rules with regard to attire.

After an expensive and not-worth-it lunch we went back to watch the girls shoot. It was quite ok but some really feels the stress and jitters of an indoor competition, the tense atmosphere and the skrued up lighting. Mr. Ang was really quite busy walking up and down, encouraging and correcting. In the end they performed rather ok I guess, even with all those angst and pressure. Guess what. There were standard men shooting as well. Because there want enough space in the previous two rounds. interesting.

Another long wait ensues as we angst and angst endlessly about our shooting that day. Meanwhile, Mr. Ang our coach was shooting and we decided t watch him and compatriots Mr. Sew shoot. Very entertaining indeed. Soon after, the results were released and Tan Jian Hua Aaron was awarded the first prize. Congratulations! Team seedings for the guys were not very encouraging as well as RJ teams have to meet each other right at the first round. After some more angst, the girls’ results were also released. Much angst soon ensued with all those 4th placings and stuff, and the girls team being seeded to play with favourites.

We decided to leave soon after as there is still another day of team event to prepare for. Some of us went to Simei BK where there is totally no one and we had all the space to ourselves. Yeah, toked a lot of kok and tried to get pumped up for the follwing day. The day of angst soon ended as we made our way home in various ways and means…
lynette decided that watching me eat a double whopper was very interesting/amusing.

Day 2. Team Event. Here’s a brief introduction to the teams from RJ – Team CAO (Chris, Aaron, Ongnardo), Team MAD (Marcus, Aswin, Dylan), Team ASD (Azrin, Sirui, Daniel), Team LeMoN (Lynette, Mann Shing, Natalie) and Team PMS (Pan jinglin, Mingwei and Su Mae). (I.e. rj-a, rj-b, rj-c etc etc)
Whenever they called for team rj-c more or less all the rj archers looked up.

Seeding SUCKS. It seems that they have decided to merge the guys and girls standard team events. (we were not amused) On one side of the table we see RJ teams playing with each other all the way to the semis. This seriously does not look good at all. We quickly had a hasty breakfast with fried bee hoon and stuff and after a really long wait from 10am – 1pm, our team event finally starts. For the first time ever, there was actually sighters for team event and yeah, we made full chance to sight properly. Sighters round was actually our best end though. The first round of 1/32 finals started that pits team ASD with some PSRC team. They shot one end and the round was called off and everyone had another sighters round.


Finally they had some sense to actually split up the guys and girls teams. The girls teams shot first and it was really impressive with team PMS beating team TP which were actually higher in terms of seeding. In the semi-finals, team PMS also managed to beat team ACS who where actually the top seeds after the individual rounds and team LeMoN also beat an in-form TP team by a narrow margin. It was an all-RJ finals and of course, RJ was the winner. The girls team event seriously seems lacking in terms of volume and noise as the atmosphere was icy and all is silent. (Juz a comment, no harm intended).

I demonstrated the domino effect by accidentally tripping over one of the many bows in a (very long) row of bows. Meanwhile, mr n and company decided that some chem revision was in order and promptly drew 2,4-DNPH on a conveniently available whiteboard.


The guys team didn’t have such a fine scenario however, the first round was MAD vs ASD and TP v TP and the winner of the former will play against the MaNly Benny team and the winner of the latter will play against team CAO CAO. Eventually, team MAD went through and the TP team with the mandarin-speaking Indian went through as well.

In the quarters, team ASD managed to beat team TP with a rather dangerous margin, nt very good… On the other side however, team MAD seems to be trying to be GuaiLan by doing all sorts of funny stuff while playing against the Manly benny team.

Well, we now go on to the semis where we somehow manage to pick up and triumph against our arch-rival NJ who was the only other JC in the competition ( A div match??), also by a dangerous margin. Team event is really quite MAN as it is really the time to see whether your form can still remain there under great pressure.
The njc archers had truly captured the spirit of the shoot. They declared that the scores didn’t matter as they were just shooting for the fun of it. And they meant it. Pei fu.

Finally, it’s the finals. Manly Benny’s team against team CAO CAO. Fun! At the end of the day, it was a confrontation between the rivaling teams – RJ and TP. We gained a lead in our very first end as we shot impressively. However, we failed to keep the momentum and did not do as well in the next 2 ends and finally it boils down to the last end. There were ruptures of cheers all the time, after every shot. Yeah, this really is the atmosphere of the TEAM EVENT. The first shooter Aaron went in and slotted 2 arrows quickly, chris following up next, and I finally went in for the last 2 arrows of the day. First one, nt very good, last arrow of the day, must make it good. Yeah finally shot the final one which concludes our SAFRA campaign.

The scores were calculated and it was 189 – 176, well well, we lost to a better opponent.

and so the shoot ended. We returned to the squash court where we had set up camp and took down our bows and packed up. Then it was time for prize presentation. Then before we knew it, prize presentation was over and so was SAFRA indoor 2006. We helped clean up, pulling the tape from the floor and took photos on stage with the banner. That done, we adjourned to tampines mall’s café cartel for dinner.

Dinner was a whole new experience (for want of something better to say). At café cartel, we piled our bags in a corner and proceeded to rearrange the tables to our preference. The people inside the restaurant were not amused. They complained that we were banging the glass. Whoops. but whatever. from one end of the table, we (Ongnardo Aaron Sirui Daniel) ordered a fried platter for 5 and a Tropicana BOMB. ← as stated in the menu. The food came in this order: everyone else’s food, then the Tropicana bomb (its ice cream) then the fried platter. Fantastic. at the other table they had decided that it was a good idea to play zhong ji mi ma. To cut a long story short, the unwitting victims of jinglin’s handiwork were jinglin, chris and mingwei.
And so, when we decided that we had tormented the staff of café cartel enough, we decided that it was time to go. And we went.

As usual, we would like to thank:
Mr winston hodge (its [still] a formality)
Mr Francis Chong and Mr Wong Tze Yang, our fantastic teachers in charge
Hoyt, easton, samick, cartel, shibuya, win and win, for the equipment that we have, and the eye candy that isnt ours
our parents, for their support
SAFRA, for the chance to compete
Kaptain K, for the inspiration
Kim, Annalyn and Daryl, for coming to support us
Koach Ken, for all the time spent correcting our form and training and in other words for being our koach and putting up with all our nonsense.

and anyone else who has helped us in one way or another



--

written by Ongnardo & Aaron

Thanks Archers!

Heya, thanks for the teachers' day gift! I like both the card and the pen. I supposed the Parker pen especially the logo represents the arrow and the card is the target board. What a thoughtful idea! Maybe you can give me a bow next time. Ha....

All the best for your exams. Take good care of your health and God bless!

oh happy day (:

hellooo thank you all so much for the numerous smses and for the sweet little notes in the little notebook (: i can't stop flipping thru and reading them all again and again (: and i heart you muchly kim!

big big <3s to my dearests (anticlockwise) kim ken daryl kang sueling jiahao amelia amy -- 'twas such a fun lunch and i love all the presents!! but y'know, i love you guys even more.



"and i'm overjoyed and overloved and feeling lucky," says jason mraz, who actually wrote that to describe my current mood for me heee (:

randomness

from urbandictionary.com

1.screw the bull

Alcoholic Drink consisting of Red Bull, Vodka and Orange Juice.

o.O

Well Done Archers!

Guess it's my turn to write something emo-ish...

...not very good at it but here goes anyway.

Thanks to all the J1's for a real memorable farewell dinner and the presents (and Lynette for not keeping mine for herself haha) and notes.

All this time I've been an archer, I couldn't have asked for a more wonderful bunch of people to call teammates. To all the J2's - training, shooting and going for comps with you guys has been one awesome experience. All the laughs and the funny and weird stuff we've done...I'd live the past year and a half all over again if I could. To all the J1's - it's been great getting to know you guys and finding out exactly how you all manage to drive Ken even further up the wall than we J2's ever managed to. To Ken - just wouldn't have been the same without coach Evil (according to whom I am a 'bunch of idiots' - yea, plural). And Daryl! He's just...Daryl. That's enough said I think.

All you guys make me proud to call myself an archer.
Study hard, train hard, play hard(est)

- Kang

So loooong!

RawR... Heidi.... you koped my photos for your post, then used the pic that I didn't appear in. Hmmmmm.... You hate me. =X Haha. LOL.

Anyway, thanks J1s for the Gyro. It's quite cool to play with, shall make some little demo videos or something next time after the As. Haha. And it remains a mystery who wrote the note...

Who says I'm cocky? Hey... (I really would hope I'm not)

"It's been a great two years, with loads of funny memorable stuff. Kang, remember the Pink Mammogram bus at PPCC? Then there's Mingjie’s laughter, Daryl’s frequent encounters with cakes. Etc. All the great memories. Now if I could get down to putting that in a proper way for my CCA Comments…

All that said, it’s been a great two years in RJCArchery. At the end of the day, RJC archers would always be remembered as that crazy group of fun-loving people who leave me with stomach-aches from endless laughter.

So yeah, thank you archers for making the last two years special. I hope to see you guys around sometime after graduation hmm?"

Oh yes, I'll be emailing the link to the album of photos I took in a moment. Have fun!

us

friendship is the hardest thing in the world to explain. it's not something you learn in school. but if you haven't learned the meaning of friendship, you haven't really learned anything.
- muhammad ali

warning-- long and soppy post

helloo

wow looks like kim beat me to the first post! haha. anyways,

yknow last year around this time, i was wondering what life in school would be like without our dearest j2s (or j3s) -- and if you guys happen to read this, i still miss seeing you all around. but anyways, to be really really honest, i was a little apprehensive of becoming a senior and taking on everything that it entailed, and i wasn't sure if we'd ever be able to hang out with a junior batch like we did with seniors.

well j1s, you guys have proved to be such a fun and lovely and adorable batch (hmmm some people remind me of some people haha sounds so cryptic), exceeded all my expectations hee. really glad that i got to know you all, that so many of you are still so enthusiastic about shooting (all the best for safra shoot!) and going out together and starting an archery table (like we did last year!) and that hardly anyone has dropped out. thankyous muchly for all the cute and sweet presents, wonderful dinner, and the most delicious cake ever! thankyous for helping me up and down LOVE gosh so embarrassing. and yes please finish all the chocolates.

to aaron, danooB, lyn, nat, ongnardo, you guys have to be the funniest lot. enjoyed hanging out with you guys lots the other day, and at previous trainings and competitions and stuffs of course (:

to kaswin and his exco, great job so far! and all the best for the rest of your term (:
(yay, this is really xian1 ren2 zhong4 shu4 hou4 ren2 cheng2 liang2) right, kimkangjiahaostefjeremytim? oh wait someone explain that to kang haha)

to my fellow j2s, especially the three of you plus the evil master who trains evil apprentices, i think you all know how much i <3 you, so i don't need to elaborate (: all the best for the next few months. take much care yep? to mr daryl chia (shouldn't call diana anymore right? heh), you can go check your email soon (:

<333s to all!

taken by justin!

:) thank you~!

hey all - thank you for taking the time and effort to plan the farewell...all of us really appreciate it :)

the gifts are lovely! :D (thanks for making the earrings aaron) thank you all so much for finding out what we all have fetishes about hee.

it's been a nice time with yall...see u guys around in school and at the range once in a while...jiayou with all ur stuff and post/upload photos!!! (i really love our group shot :D)

you guys are all so sweet ^^ it's been a happy night.

<3 kim

winandwin

-taken from straits time life page3, aug 9 2006

NJC Inviational 06

The invitations to NJC invitational was received with much more favourable response as this time nearly the entire team went for it, the first time so many people from the team actually joins a competition. In the AAS shoot, some were in Bintan, while (we) some are in camp (there were too little other participants neway) and in the NUS Invitational, only several champs went for it. Yeah, so this is the first real competition where the team is pit against other educational institutions such as Polytechnics, Universities etc. (well, we’re the only JC there since NJ decided that they cannot spare the manpower to compete). Yay, after some intensive preparations the few weeks before with people going to potong pasir in between classes, some ponning classes and some OTTN (On Through The Night), the 29th of July dawns and it’s the competition itself.
The 29th July dawns and I woke up, took my stuff, walked to the bus stop, waited damn long, boarded 156, realized that 156 is too slow, switched to taxi, reached there 5mins late. Haiz, being late is never good, best is to reach there calm and cool which I obviously didn’t. The field was all neat and ready for the shoot, it seems that the NJ people has really pia-ed hard. Everyone has already set up their bows and oh craps, yea so I quickly set up my bow and checked the lane and team allocations. There was quite a chaos as people were finding all their target and lane. There were also confusions regarding which letters refer to which detail, blab la. Captains briefing settled those as the Kapitans went up to gather the details. Well, I’m in team FOA with Funky Kang and Tan Jian Hua and in lane 7F. Once an F always an F. There was further pre-competition bustle going around as some of us were rather shaken even before the competition. Well, the great number of people and the long row of target boards can be quite intimidating as we have seen none of these before. Well, for some of us, it really is the first competition and were obviously unnerved by the strong competition form other schools. Even those who have went for competitions before were not at ease as it is the first large scale outdoor competition. By encouraging each other, telling lame jokes, being gay etc. we tried to overcome these jitters and yeah focus.

Warm-up itself was quite hurried as I was rather late. Some of us quickly did some stretches on our own, to be MaN enough for the day. Our team came together, talked about some random stuff, and gave some motivation to each other as our measly equipments were being checked. Personally, I feel that there should be more time allocated to equipment check, its importance has been overlooked for the longest time and once again the equipment check was done hastily to start the competition. Seriously, the equipment HAS to be checked *grumbles*.

Everyone is happy and the whistle blew for the very first time in the tournament. The first detail moved up and with speed and precision the first blood in the competition was drawn. The target used is the (122.0000000 +/- 0.0000001) cm face placed at (30.0 +/- 0.01) m away from the shooting line. Somehow the target face looks rather big and the distance was rather short as compared to the Outdoor range. The sky was bright and there were a rather lot of participants. “Around 200” was the figure given by the NJ guy who was supposed to be the judge for my lane, he looked rather stone as he had to stone there for the whole day. The weather itself was quite hot in the morning with temperature rising by 1.787 K every hour that passes by. Of course Mr. Ang reminded us to hydrate ourselves as it will be a long and arduous competition under the hot sun. There were of course tons of people around everywhere talking crap, while waiting for their turn to shoot. Okayz, I think I have described the conditions of the competition well enough, please refer to the pictures if you want to find out more.

Back to the competition. I went to report to my lane and found out that my lane if full of MaNly people like manly Benny, some bomb NTU guy, Jerome Chan – my detail partner and of course FuNky KanG. Not bad, my lane is full of people who can talk crap. Yea its now sighters. Sighters is actually a time to warmup, to feel the heat and the conditions of the competition. At least now we can shoot any amount of arrows and so I spammed in all 12 of my new Flameseekers™. Not bad, la, at least for the sighters. At least I am quite sure that my sight is correct.

Interestingly enough my board from NUS indoor is very you yuan. Shooting in the same detail as me was the person who was shooting with me for NUS indoor. Same detail. Again. BUT I was quite amused because further down somewhere else the other detail from my NUS board was having a similar reunion as I was to find out later. -Is amused. No lagging this time though. Shoot retrieve lalala.

The first detail shot, destroyed the target paper and now the 2nd detail moved in. I realized that the other 2 detail members have actually ponned the competition, leaving only me and Jerome at that board. Yea, lots of space. A whistle was sounded and the my first scoring end starts. The usual stuff happens to me on my first end, adrenaline rush, breathlessness, heavy thumping of the heart, SLS ( Shake leg syndrome), tenseness, worrying about screwing up the shot flows into the mind like a sudden spamming. Haiz, it’s the usual FEKOS ( First End KO Syndrome). Tried to focus. Concentrate. Fire only when confident etc. etc. Well in the end the FEKOS still got to me but at least not as bad as during NUS Indoor, actually managed to shoot my average.

The first round then went on as we took turns shooting and shooting. There were 6 ends of 6 arrows but somehow each end of 3 details takes around 27mins 44s to complete. Taking score is a slow and painful process probably, and somehow all of us took rather long to write down the scores and so each end was nearly half an hour. After shooting an end, there is actually enough time to go back to the stand to talk crap, try to get moralized and pumped up before the next end. Well, at least it was really quality time spent together as we sat down and angsted about scores, off-formness etc. Lesson of the day is not to drink cold drinks while in a competition.

So much for taking score. On my board was some other man who’s fletching was white with black index on plats with white nocks. complete confusion during scoring followed. I took one of his arrows while retrieving by mistake oops.

Enter the Korean coach. She asked with bewilderment why the “Big targets” were at “30m”. complete noobification followed

The rest of the first round was rather man with many funny stuff such as Azrin’s “5 arrow an end” shoot where he shot only 5 arrows. Aaron’s “70s 6 arrows record breaking timing”, Chris “Last one to leave the shooting line award”, XinYun and the “club arrows For The Win” and Lynette beating Aaron in being the fastest shooter of the detail. [I still cant believe that]. Pity Mr. Sew isn't here today. Since the target paper is BIG, most of us did quite well in the first round and all of us were really pumped up for the 2nd round. However, due to SeveRe time constraints, Frederick decided that lunch has to be postponed and starve all of us by going straight to the 2nd end as the NJ people moved in and switched target paper to the 80cm face so fast that there were no shadows.

The 2nd round started with us not really having time to recover and stuff. The target face is now smaller and it was a personal struggle to keep the scores afloat relative to the round before. I decided to have a mini competition with Mr. Lim as I try to overcome the 5 pt deficit. The 80cm face is actually quite okay as long as the concentration is there. But it was really hard to adjust to the 80cm face mentality after having fun with the 122cm face as exemplified by the large drop in scores in nearly all of us ( other than Wang MJ who suddenly became MaN). By the way MingJie was having fun reading the Her World magazine in the goodie bag, its his world. After reading the magazine he sucked out the jam out of the small little glass container.

At least the time in between ends can be used to talk crap with my boardmates, about archery, life etc. Well I guess this is another plus point in joining competitions, getting to know all the crazy archers in Singapore. Most of the people I met was quite nice and I also met some of the old acquaintances from NUS Indoor. Herein lies the joy in entering competitions yay!. Yea, I also met Kenneth the legend™ who was also shooting that day. Hmmz, at the end of the day, we still get to make new friends and get to know people by competing, a rather heartening thing.

Alas, we have somehow or another incurred Nature’s Wrath as dark cumulonimbus could begin to form directly over us. In no time, the sky wasn’t blue anymore, it was dark grey. As I shot my 4th end, drops of H^2 O, a polar solvent started falling (machamped the shooting) the amount of drops hitting the ground increased at an exponential rate and soon it was a calamity and a full-blown tropical rain sent torrents of water down. Competition was therefore put on a hiatus and finally (it seems that they were waiting for this) they have decided to serve us lunch…

Lynette attributed the overcast sky to her good singing. Some of us thought otherwise. According to the weather forecast, a thunderstorm is expected on late morning and early afternoon anyway. Anyway lunch was a most interesting affair, being a combination of distributing food, running down to rearrange the bows and get them out of the rain and going back for lunch. In the process Daniel Sirui and Ongnardo and company got severely drenched. Escape to the canteen! And thus we camped there until lunch ended. Well, the lunch itself is actually quite ok, its actually edible and can sustain life till the end of the competition. Quite fun actually eating like maN in the cramped NJ canteen with some solo piano performance by some random NJ people. Actually I was itching to shoot in the downpour. But yeah. I drank my 4th milo.

After lunch there was a team captain’s briefing. And then there was an announcement announcing that the shoot would continue if the rain stopped. There were a few scenarios if I am not wrong 1. The rain stop within the next 20mins and the competition will proceed 2. It rains some more and the 2 ends will be cancelled. 3. It rains even more and all teams will shoot 4 ends and ranked. Haiz But the rain stopped so it doesn’t matter what would have happened if it didn’t.. We warmed up and tried to do the Kallang wave but failed miserably. Jia Hao has also been labeled the loser of the day by failing to do a 1.23m standing broad jump and falling into a puddle of water.

Anyway, back to board 5. We picked up our bows and made our way back to the boards. Once again I was staring at the 80cm target face. My bow was awfully wet. So I dried it. And in the process got a splinter in my hand. What a great start to the second half on round two. Before I could remove the darn thing the whistle sounded. So how? Shoot lor. Faster finish and return to the task of extracting the remarkably long splinter. Anw. It was removed eventually and the arrows were retrieved. The rain seriously has a degenerative effects on shooting. Many have died in the last two ends as the momentum is gone and the feelingis simply different from that of the morning. Things seem to have switched off, muscles became stuff and worst of all, the bow and arrows are wet, which would of course affect the results. Furthermore, the muddy field did not really help as our we shot with soaked shoes and a feeble foundation as the ground somehow sinks on the shooting line. Okay I think I have kao-peid a little too much. Mercy Mercy. Well, in essence, the last 2 ends were definitely not the best for most people.

And so the individual round ended. One by one the archers left the shooting and waiting line and the bows were lined up in front of the grandstand. And so began the (agonizing?) wait for the tabulation of the results and the announcement of the teams which had made it into the team events.

And so the resuts were out. Justin came and declared that Ongnardo ties 4th with someone . Ongnardo rushed to the board only to discover that he had tied with Wirateja Andreas. So much for a tie breaker. Pls refer to http://www.archerysingapore.com/ for the results. (Depends on whether they have uploaded it).

Anyway, Teams MAC ( Marcus, Aswin, Christopher), FOA (Fan Kang, Ongnardo, Aaron), RJMan (Rusydi, Justin, Mingjie), LMN( Lynette, Mann Shing, Natalie), BCX ( Brenda, Carmen, Xin Yun) andnot forgetting the IMBA KKH ( Kimberly, Kang Hao, Heidi) had entered the team round! Ok so the team round started late. Very late in fact. We all were pumped up for the team event. The dynamics was a little different as we only shoot 2 arrows per person and it is meant to test your mettle when under great time and “knoeckout” pressure.

Team FOA was shooting against TP, in the order of A,F,O. so I shot first. 2 arrows then off the shooting line. Fangkang next. Then Ongnardo. then take score. Fangkang our ambassador was sent to the opponents’ board to assist them with their scoring. While we were shooting, the noise made was overwhelming! Roars of GOOD! AND WELL DONE could be heard from everywhere on the field. A stark contrast could be heard on the girls’ side though, as they demanded complete silence for concentration’s sake. And faster than it had begun, the first round of team event was over. Well some analysis of the team event. Noise is a double edged sword that pumps people up but may distrupt concentration. Also theorized that a FAST archer should shoot first to give time for the other 2. A GOOD archer should be 2nd to demoralize the other team and remove pressure and a CALM archer have to shoot last to deal with the extreme pressure of time and expectations. Hmm, any comments?

So continued the team event and before we knew it, it was all over. Once again, results at http://www.archerysingapore.com/ (dun think they have uploaded the results though). Team event was most interesting, with the 10s shooting, Imbalanced NYP girls team ( note that its imbalanced and not imba), Malaysian archers who are extremely calm even though the last archer have 2.3463s to shoot the last 2 arrows, working to around 1.17315s per arrow. There were sad moments of course as NUS beat both the guys team in the way to the finals and emerging champions, girls team losing by a narrow margin, losing tiebreakers, missing and then losing etc. . In the end these are part and parcel of a competition… theres still many more of them to come!

Anyway. Team event ended quite quickly and we were left to our own devices for a while before the prize presentation, team FOA resorted to taking nonsense photos like the one entitled zen archery. It was just random slacking around, talking about stuff, angsting and yeah having fun.

Not too long after the sky turned dark, the prize presentation ceremony began. The guest of honour was the new AAS chairman. (apparently he’s from FAAC). There were major cheers as somehow we did some school cheers for fun as we went up to take the prize. Sometimes there was silence dunno why. Heres the list of cHaMpz:

Standard Open Male 2nd – Justin Lin
Recurve Junior Male 1st – Yu Kang Hao
Recurve Junior Female 2nd – Kimberly
Standard Open Female Team Knockout 2nd – Lynette, Mann Shing and Natalie
Standard Open Male Team Knockout 3rd – Fang Kang, Ongnardo Aaron
Recurve Junior Team Knockout 1st – Kang Hao, Kimberly, Heidi

As the prize presentation went on the sky got darker. Someone discovered target papers in the goodie bags and there were lethargic requests for goodie bags. In the place of the random sweets we got during NUSIIAC was jam. Kumquat jam. OMG what kind of funny jam is that? But whatever. Along with the jam were the usual things like some random magazine, all packed in a M1 bag. We then proceeded to leave NJ via the canteen, making a stop there to take the group photo. So ended NJCinvitational. Dinner time! We made our way to some random bukit timah place after much confusion. Ther were many places to eat there, macs macs macs and macs. Wow. Talk about variety. At macs azrin rediscovered his inner child with a pseudo happy meal, while fangkang, kangrui and Aswin engaged each other in a cold war with ice. I discovered ethyl chloride, a substance that induces instant freezing due to the low boiling point. Lynette fell off the high chair while Heidi posed with a trophy. The more sane people just laughed.

That perhaps ends this summary of NJC Invitational. In the end, we had fun, made new friends, bonded together and yeah, look forward to the next competition!

As usual we would like to thank:

Our Principal Mr. Hodge
Our Teachers in charge Mr. Wong and Mr. Chong for being the MEN in charge
Mr. Ang, our coach for the invaluable guidance and crucial tips during the competition
NJ Archery for the supreme organization
Sponsors for the good stuff
Samick, Cartel, Hoyt, Win & Win etc. for the equipment

…ourselves for being in the competition!

Written by: Ongnardo and Aaron

Photos!

these are kinda small.. so if you want the high res version let me know

Photos!

these are kinda small.. so if you want the high res version let me know

Just an Observation

Hmm, this is interesting. I don't remember hearing about our competition on saturday during the "what's up this week" announcements last week, but somehow it appeared on the wassup board. Was this written by the councillors?

Frankly I don't know what point I'm bringing across here. Perhaps someday when we're good enough, there will actually be archery related announcements during morning assembly.

this deserves an entire post to itself!

<3 to the lovely juniors who buy us drinks! (:
in fact <3 to all juniors! jiayou in your training for nj shoot!

and this is totally irrelevant but go henrybensontingyuemichaeljanie! haha

the bestest birthday in my life :D

hey guys...thank you to whoever came down before assembly yesterday...i was really surprised and happy! :D yay. it's nice to share the joy! :D

thanks heidi for organising that!!

and thank you to ken and heidi again for the fun and laughter and everything else after... <3!

hey j1s - start celebrating ur team mates' bdaes together. really! :)

bored again...

mmm so H3 classes are starting soon for the j1s...

come train on another day k, all you pple who have h3 on mondays. i hear quite a few pple are training on fridays/sats?? coolios! it'd be great if you guys could make the effort to meet up for meals before/after...get the bonding thing going. like, seriously. u all keep zaoing after training to go goodness knows where in ur separate groups...

take care, study hard and don't pon class! :D

<3 kim

hellooo

okay i'm posting this cos it's getting eerily quiet here!

hope everyone's doing okay after cts and results? (:

nj shoot's coming soon, let's train hard and beat them all! then we can end like this:

yay (:

so as you all probably can tell, im feeling rather random now,

and i feel like plugging for tristan prettyman, whose music i've recently fallen in love love love with wheeee

hmmm in other news, someone's birthday is coming soon. or actually, someone else's, to be exact (:

goddess

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIeBGcaETYw&mode=related&search=

archery goddess. 1405 for a FITA round..!!! 36 arrows @ 70/60/50/30 each. she lost39 points in 144 arrows..!!!

aim bot.

watch and note your weak points. for me..that's like everything..!!! stable, consistant, timing, relaxed.

inhuman.

Something to think about

Juz found this on the internet. Can read thru if u have time. Quite insightful.

http://www.archery-interchange.com/forum/showthread.php?t=3214

-.-

NUSIIAC - Day 1

NUSIIAC – Day 1

Okay. 9 Brave souls namely Dylan, Aaron, Ongnardo, Si Rui, Mingwei, Daniel, Hwee Juin, Christopher and Kang Rui + our beloved J2s Ming Jie, Jia Hao, Heidi and Kim participated in the manly NUS Invitational Indoor Archery Championship. Bearing in mind that this is a very competitive competition, we had some manly sessions in both the indoor and outdoor ranges. Preparations were of course without hiccups along the way. We forgot to take bows from the store and the day before we found the store locked beyond any hope of redemption. Plan A to wait for someone to come failed. Plan B to break in failed and finally we had to resort to Plan C which is to take the key and open it the next morning haiz….
-edit by aaron-
I met sirui at the range uber early in the morning with the KEY (thanks ongnardo for giving me the wrong address) and we had berakfast then cabbed down to nus. the wonderful cabbie who reminds me of mr ngan couldnt find the place so we alighted at some random bus stop and were given a lift by a passing group of FAAC archers in a van (thanks random archers!)
-/edit-
Well, the morning came and it was the very first competition for much of us since those who participates now are more of the ones who did not participate in the Punggol Angsana Shoot. Me, Chris and Kangrui paid $14.60 to the imba expensive cab from Hougang and easily found the place owing to our great navigational skills. The hall is rather large and the shooting boards are at the two sides of the hall (Please refer to the pictures). Our Koach Ken is already there with our ex-captain Kimberly and all the TP archers. Usual stuff… set up bow… Collect money which amounts to a grand total of 250bux for 10ppl. Soon after we went to do warm-up with the TP archers, they got a lot and form an outer orbital while we form the inner quantum shell (mug too much). The champ then came at around 8 15 after we all thought that he will wake up late. Ng Li-Ting Annalyn now suddenly appears out of nowhere and gave us a bag full of Hao Liao( Good stuff) for supplies. Thanks a lot Annalyn!! After that she left as suddenly as she came. At this point everyone starts to feel the heat( actually it was damn cold because of the air-con, hands are clammy, legs feel jittery etc.) Haiz, rather typical since most of us here are those who did not take part in the Punggol shoot because of a wide variety of reasons. Nevertheless we still feel quite man and yeah, JUST DO IT!!

At this point, our two great supporters have arrived – Daryl Chia and Wee Jian Ting Natalie. Hmm at least we HAVE supporters during the competition, a real privilege.

Erm, for the benefit of those who do not know: Format – 3 arrows / end 10 ends / round 2 rounds. Distance = 18m, target face = 40cm, same for all classes. Classes are 1) Standard and 2) Open. Since we are n00b n dun have the long thing yet, we of course took part in Standard.

Team captains ‘ meeting, Hwee Juin became the de facto captain and we were informed of some nitty gritty details like whistle, judge call ($100 WAD THE MAN) etc. Yeah and now for the sighting end. Somehow they decide to be stingy and only gave us one end of 3 arrows for sighting. It’s the first few arrows of the day… haven’t feel pumped up yet and so yea, the arrows were all over the place, and looking at my competitors they were rather man, especially the one who shoot the same target paper as me, quite man.

“The first end is gonna start in 5mins time… 3mins time… 1min time… FIRST DETAIL, PLEASE STEP TO THE SHOOTING LINE. Okay the competition started. There were quite a lot of people in standard class, 93 MeN and 46 woMeN and there were 24 boards each with 4 target papers. Hence there was all the way up to the3rd detail. Not bad also, a lot of time to rest and calm down in between. Finally the 3rd detail came and yeah I stepped forward to shoot the very first arrow in a REAL COMPETITION. At this point there was a sudden realization that I am actually in a blurdy competition and each and every arrow will fly and can never come back, just lyk the ancient Chinese saying. This sudden enlightenment did not do any good. First arrow – blue (quite off), 2nd – another blue (shid…) 3rd – black (nooooooo…14points total). This is definitely not the best start of any competition, cannot continue the rest like this…

Fortunately for me, I walked around, relaxed, happily met an old RI scout which somewhat inspired me and continied my 2nd end which was much better (at least more than). It was a good thing that I progressed steadily throughout the first round and managed to maintain a relatively stable score. Most of them are in the low 20s since there is always a nasty blue somehow in my shots. Haiz…

Meanwhile, while walking around, it seems that Chris is doing quite fine in the first round, hitting the yellow consistently and slowly and Aaron with his usual Stafe™ that allows him to shoot with amazing speed, finishing first every end ( in terms of timing nt score). Daniel meanwhile plays along with his Angel™ tab, at the same time working on the form. On the other side, Mingwei and Hwee Juin seems to be doing fine as they complain of a “yellow drought”. Dylan, Si Rui and KangRui like me seems to have early jitters but all went along fine after that.

End of the first round, everyone reports their scores. Okay, we seem to be averaging 150-200 which was definitely lower than our usual practice scores, rather disappointing. Best round goes to Aaron with 230/300. Haiz, better improve in the next round, after eating a muesli bar and some of the other random stuff in the goody bag, sponsored by M1.

Round 2 starts and we all feel pumped up, trying our best to improve our dismal score. For myself I still feel quite MaN at the start, hitting the usual low 20s but things started to change and started hitting quite good scores peaking with a 28 but it seems to have hit a maximum point, dy/dx=0, d^2y/dx^2 < 0. Shid, more and more screwups start to happen. Somehow the arrows start to evade the yellow. I neatly hit all 3 arrows on blue on below but on closer inspection, all linecut 7 ( heng, but was rather lucky, quite screw up as all is all over the paper). Forunately, the curve soon hit a minimum point and the last few ends were relatively good.

Chris meanwhile has improved quite a bit over the previous round and as usual, he competes in terms of endurance with another guy from NJ who holds for as long as he does. At last he has finally found his match. Aaron’s fast shooting methods seem to detoriate as the 2nd round was definitely not his best, with a very big drop in score ( attributed to a MaNly sight). Daniel, under the watchful eye of Kenneth and the Angel™’s blessing has improved his form and scored much better. As for MingJie… no comment… he’s in nirvana.

On the other side, Hwee Juin with her coolio Samick Masters ( hmm she was the only Samick Masters to join NUS Indoor) scored quite ok, a little better than the first round but Mingwei feels the heat of the competition too much and was not in her best form in this round. Dylan however performed much better, scoring 20++ each end, rather impressive. Kang Rui wasn’t relly at his best that day and was feeling quite disappointed (Relax man). Si Rui however, did better in the 2nd round and has a more consistent score.

And so the competition has ended. Taking score… I had a nice chat while plucking out arrows with my board-mate, an NP archer, talked so much kok tt the Judge scolded us lolz. Hmm it seems that we have met quite a lot of new people in this competition and it was quite an experience. Quickly, we went to the shooting area which is now empty to pack up our bows. It was quite fast and MingJie opened the bag of sweets I an explosive fashion and we had a good laugh lolz. Took some group photos and finally we set off for lunch as our J2s who are participating in the Open event came.

Lunch as usual is rather indecisive, pizza-man will be lost in the great maze of NUS so we desided to go to the famous NUS cheese prata shop. We had quite a nice lunch with all the cheesy prata and Milo™ Dinosaur. Toking kok about all sorts of stuff, from Karl Sew to Compund Bows. Spent a rather lot of time there.

We then went back to watch our dear seniors. The standard class results are already out. Wow, what happened to all the suspense, drumrolls and everything??? Err I got 12th with 449, Hwee Juin got 11th with ?420? Aaron 16th with 420. Chris ?20th? with 410. Sorry I’m not too sure about the exact figures. Please look at http://www.nusarchery.org/results.htm for more details.

Well, none of us made it to the top ten which is dominated by NUS and NTU and some people from Polytechnics and funny archery clubs. Hmm, nevertheless it was a good competition when we can really see our standards among others in Singapore.

After that we merely slacked around, watching our Coach Mr. Ang, Kim, Heidi and Jia Hao shoot. Please refer to the pictures to find out what we did during this time, all the funny stuff like spotting Mr. KS, talking crap etc, essentially having fun! Our seniors did relatively well in the end, with Kim getting 4th for women’s open class. Congrats! Our koach was in 14th position in Men’s Open Class.

In the end, the team results are announced with one of our team barely making it to the team event. The team comprises of Chris, Aaron, KangRui and MING JIE. After this we all went home and so please read the next entry to finds out more about the team event!!

NUSIIAC-day2

so began the day of team events.
mrt-bus to nus. setup. then stone till the rest of the pple came. anyway. team rjc-1 was to compete in the team knockoput today. and who were we shooting against in the first round? the top team (ntu). oh joy. so. registration. then captain's breifing. then shoot. then get eliminated in the quarter finals. right. then watch open and compound!
we concluded that bensen and henry could cheat suring the team event. lol either of them could shoot twice. but whatever. compound team event was most interesting. we observed someone who's draw is more exotic than mr ks'. (video later) then there was the pro man shooting x-10s with his compound while everyone else was using uber fat arrows. then! it was time for standard class team finals! maris stella (on fire! they were the 7th team to get in to the 8 team knockout) vs. our dearest ntu which kicked us out in the first round. ahem. quarter finals. surprise, surprise.. ntu won. but only by a little bit (apparently).
then what? watch open team event! PPCC owned all haha for first and second placing we had PPCC vs PPCC wow. and of course mr + was present to watch ppcc vs ppc. ppcc won. surprise. (and my camera ran out of batt)
and so the shooting ended. lunch time! (or so we thought)
pack up, take down bows.. visit the toilet and come back for the long awaited expected buffet lunch to be greeted by.......nothing~! wow. fantastic. now what.
stone lor. think of creative things to do. try to take a rjc team photo of 3 very sian people then admire a certain blue riser... sleep.. stone.. try to study... have AS (antisocialdevice) party... watch the other archers do random things.. sirui and I went to look for sdomething to eat (breakfast) and we ended up eating pratially frozen pau from cheers. (wow! char siew ice cream in bread!) ingjie tried to get anyone and everyone to play chapteh to the horror of the organizers.. ("please refrain from playing in the hall")so in the end we were sitting with random notes in front of us while listening to asd(s).
then lunch came. FINALLY. guess waht it was. not buffet no. not fired rice. not duck rice. it was....drumroll..... da bao fan! woww (you mean we waited so !@#$%^&* long for THAT?) ok but anyway. it wasnt that bad. (but it wasnt that good either) but whatever.
so lunch was over. waht can i say about lunch? it was most unexpected. but anyway. after lunch was the prize presentation. okay so the prizes were presented. then what?
go home lor. and thats what we did.
and thus, NUSIIAC 2006 was brought to a close.


The RJ NUS Indoor Team would like to thank the following:
Our Principal, Mr. Hodge, (its a formality)
Our coach ken, for all the time, form-correction and ManLy training sessions, encouragement etc.
Mr. Chong and Mr. Wong, for being our tutor mentors
NUS Archery for organizing the above competition
Natalie and Daryl, for being our supporters ;)
Annalyn for the Good Stuff
Our Captain, K Aswin Kenneth, for being a MaN and the inspiration
RJ Archery J1s for the support and encouragement
RJ Archery J2s for the guidance
SamickSports, HoytUSA, Cartel DooSung, Easton, InterNature and Sam Wha Archery for the wonderful equipment.
the faac archers in a van
And all those who have helped us in one way or another

on second thoughts (ps): ongnardo your post is like 3x this so whatever. anyway the competition was one heck of an experience so thanks to everyone who took part, came to support, organized the thing and whatever once again (no mr hodge this time). thank goodness it was 2rounds X 10ends X 3 arrows cause I only had 4 straight arrows lol. finally thanks nus for the collarpin (even though i wanted a shirt but nvm)

You wanna have Karl Sew, you shall have Karl Sew.
Enjoy!!

this started out as a tag

but it got a little too long haha

first, thankyoo ongnardo for uploading all daryl's photos! (: your captions are hilarious!

and jinglin, clearly you haven't heard about our uh 'encounters' with -ahemyouknowwho-. you can ask kim or me to fill you in on the juicy details the next time heh. or actually, you could ask our resident gossip king daniel too. i think he knows =P

anyways, i should really go study now.
all the very best to everyone for cts!! just a little less than a week more to freedom!
(okay not really, but it's a breather for a few days at least)

Pictures from NUS Indoor

Hi everyone,

Pictures from NUS Indoor can be found here

Have fun viewing!!!

bored...

some things i found out during nusiiac...

aaron needs to shave more often.

mach 3 turbo is a good shaver (because ongnardo uses it O.o)

ongnardo is friggin' rich - his bedroom is 1/6 the size of the nus sports hall, according to si rui. wth? (note: at this point in time you do not start raising your eyebrows and start wondering how si rui knows the size of ongnardo's bedroom in indonesia)

daryl can eat tons of prata. lots and lots and lots of it.

annalyn has become our official food provider!

natalie is super free. but it was nice having you around :)

jiahao's shooting does not depend on the presence of his parents, however much he thinks so. ;)

mingjie needs to appear less interested in discussing topics to do with *ahem* -censored-.

karl sew does shoot out of the yellow. :O

<3 kim

(apologies for some of the lines you might not understand)

Has this place died? Hmm.

Wow so quiet suddenly. I thought the blog was going to be spammed with loads of Archery Camp and NTU competition thingies.

This blog can't die... It mustn't... (=

Peeporhhh.

People, we have a slight problem.

lame jokes xD

hello i was bored. therefore hence because --

Q; Which is the favourite fast food restaurant of archers?
A; McDonalds - because it's the Golden Arche(r)s

Q; Which is the favourite holiday of archers?
A; Christmas (X'mas)

Q; Why are gifted archers considered freaks of nature?
A; Because they're the X-men.

Q; What should you name your son if you want him to be become a great archer?
A; Not Robin, not Legolas, but Christopher! (X-topher)

Q; Why do archers sometimes do badly in tests?
A; They would rather see an X than a 10.
[hopefully this won't happen in CTs!]

Archers like to say "Shoot!" because they want to get straight to the point.

okayyy... hope you guys enjoyed it and have more to add on.
if not, you can always click on the x in the corner!

<3 nat

Quote of the day

"you have nothing to do ah? wait I poke you with arrow"
-Mr +

BlackJack!

At the indoor range, Ongnardo, Daniel and I were invited to play a game of blackjack by some random compound archer. (in preparation for the opening of the IR?) at first we were like... what? Mr tang will own us for playing cards here! but as we were about to find out, this ws no ordinary game of blackjack
the game works like this:
try to acheive a score of 21 on the target, any number of arrows allowed
anything beyond 21 is considered bust
x represents ace, and can be counted as 1 or 11 points
missing the target paper is considered as bust
handicap for compound bow: the whole yellow ring is considered as 9 points (no x or 10)
LOL.
actually its quite fun
we should try sometime. at 30m/80cm wheee

Wise Words From Mr. +

By some random chance, we had this enlightening conversation with Mr. + . We shall now take this opportunity to share this with everyone.

Mr. + : In Punggol there how come you all lost to NJ liddat ah?

Aaron: They sent their J2s wad.

Mr. +: You sure or not? Their J2s is carry metal bow one u noe. I know some of their J2s

Aaron: Yah they use metal bow.

Mr. +: Oh issit? But you all how can lose one? I havent really see your scores yet. Maybe the rounds are better at the end or better at the start i dont know. Without stamina ah, its no use, you may shoot lyk 10 marks at the start but towards the end ah, cannot make it liao. Do you know, in archery one of the most important thing is stamina. When you are in a competition, skills matter only around 20%. Yes. Only 20%. MENTAL is 40% and PHYSICAL is 40%. You know, in Korea, they select their archers by looking at the feet. It is very imporant as the feet is like foundation, they say, as solid as a rock! Nowadays archers dun bother to go and run anymore. They dont know that stamina is very very very important. At serangoon there you need to run ah, at least 8 rounds up and down. Your coach confirm got make you run before but nowdays the archers like so bochap like that. Like dam buay song, sianjipua. How can like that? And when you train that time also you need to take note. If not ah, you dont know whether you improve or not. You can get a 20c "555" book from the bookshop opposite, then you take your score every time you shoot. If not ah, you can go to the 4D shop and take a stack of TOTO betting slips and tick off your score every end. I know of this archer who does that and see, he dunnid to waste money!

Aaron: Erm, the standard class rules have been changed right?

Mr. +: Yah, its changed recently. You know ah, we all need to adapt to change. If you see carefully ah, there is actually a `loophole'. The FITA book says "no carbon limbs" in standard class but nowadays there is "foam limbs". Technically ah, it is not carbon limbs one.You can say that its not carbon limbs wad. Rules have to be changed now lah. Like now got hackers last time dont have. You know ah, last week got some 16-year-old go and hack to Sweden's government website. Now the whole country cannot function at all. All the traffic ah, finance ah all haywire. You dun even need to be in the same country to hack. Can hack from other country also. The one who hacked sweden is from Germany. Last time also got another kid go and hack the CIA. Then CIA go and find him. They find him then ask him to work as hacker for them. The world nowadays ah. China always go and employ hackers to go and hack Taiwan. Then Taiwan also get hackers to go and hack China. (laughs). Nowadays you all young people like nothing better to do like that. You all got play that game called Counterstrike or not?

Ongnardo, Sirui, Aaron: Err yah...

Mr. +: I know of one archer ah, specialize in playing computer games one. He go and play and play and develop the character until very powerful then go and sell for real money ah. He say he usually sell for arounf a few hundred dollars then got people want to buy also. All these people ah, ciak pah bo kang tao. You all better dont play too much ah. I know of some archers the whole night play counterstrike and heroes III (Heroes V was released a month ago, fyi) until 4am then the next day come like half-dead like that. How to train? Even work also cannot do properly.

(forgot the time) Aaron: Oh ya , we need the receipt for the fletches

Mr. +: Okay come wif me...



LOL!

virgin post

During training, a certain someone whose name starts with "A" (not Annalyn, not Aaron, not Aswin) committed an extremely disgraceful and lowly act, almost a crime. He discovered that his 30-pound wooden bow could do more than just catapult arrows at hypnotic yellow circles.

Biding his time, he sat around waiting for potential victims to walk into his cleverly-laid trap. Hamtaro (name changed to protect identity) was unfortunate enough to become the first to be detected on his radar.

Immediately, he was up and on the prowl, with hormones surging through his veins. Creeping up to his prey, he slid his bottom bow limb under an unweary Hamtaro's skirt. Guised with a look of complete oblivion, he elevated his bow and lifted Hamtaro's skirt teasingly with it, venturing into the dangerous out-of-bounds.

ham: OEI.
a: *feigns deafness.

ham: OEI!!!!

[insert 10 minutes of angry allegations and feeble defence rebuttals]

ham: [clutches Jinglin's bottle of grape juice] ...I can't believe this!
lynette: [walks over] is it nice?

Checking back on the action, we see our resident pervert cowering against the fence.

a: I wasn't looking!!

aaron: ... he was just looking?!

aswin: I'm going to settle scores with you now, you #$&$*&%^(& !!!

[aswin and "a" scuttle to the side and started shoving each other around]

me: looks like they're gaying.

[bold exclaimation resounding from a distance....]

aswin: .. SCREW YOU LAH!!