Set your sights: August 2006

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!

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

Set your sights

Thursday, August 24, 2006

randomness

Sunday, August 20, 2006

Well Done Archers!

Sunday, August 13, 2006

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

Saturday, August 12, 2006

So loooong!

us

Friday, August 11, 2006

warning-- long and soppy post

:) thank you~!

Thursday, August 10, 2006

winandwin

Sunday, August 06, 2006

NJC Inviational 06

Thursday, August 03, 2006

Photos!

Photos!

Tuesday, August 01, 2006

Just an Observation

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