B7, I sunk your StingRay...

Today was hilarious for a reason! But I'll get to that later.

The day starts off with me going to the Prefectorial Boardroom to do the ussual 'morning duty' for Project Food For Thought. Met Michael in the room, and together we taped the collection cans with a fresh tape for extra protection, as we had already recieved comments from people that coins have been leaking out from some of the cans. While we were completing half the cans, Ben Sim marched into the Boardroom and helped us out. While on it, Ben reminded Mike and I that we were suppose to do a PowerPoint Presentation on the Project and its results, of which we're going to present to the school the first Monday after the whole Project. Another priveledge to show my animation skills to the school! Yay! Thanks, Lord!

Then after tapeing all the cans and wireing them onto the railings of the correct shops, we were dismissed for our real Morning Duties, of which I was chosen today to be sent among the croud and blend in. (You see, for Level Duty, there must ONLY be 2 Prefects present per level, while the remainder would join the other students in Assembly.) Well, a good thing too, 'cause after Assembly, the Debaters were called back for a brieffing from Mr. Tay and Mdm. Kavita. They were congradulating us for our victory yesterday, but mentioned that since both of them are not going to be free for the rest of the day as they were heavily involved backstage in the Dr. Lee Suan Yew Speaker of the Year Awards this afternoon, they can't fufil their promise of ordering KFC or MacDonald's so they'd be sponsering [Censored] per student for Recess, and we can consume it whenever we want, wherever we want! Yipee! We also met up with our next opponents, the Class of 2.8, whom we'd be fighting with in a couple of weeks' time. Till then.

Like I mentioned earlier, today's the Dr. Lee Suan Yew Speaker of the Year Awards, so the timetable's gonna be messed up from the early afternoon onwards. And since Mr. Tay's gone for preparations of the Awards, he left us with some work to do: Another one of those Notes Booklets which we were instructed to do only pages 6 and 7. Finished it by Recess. P Science was also effected today, and we only did a couple of worksheets about writing chemical fomulas, of which Mdm. Ho intentionally went through with us quickly before leaving us with another worksheet to do over the long weekends.

Then there was another hour of Language Arts B, of which was under Mr. Dave Tay, who's gone to prepare the Speaker of the Year Awards. Then there was the Recess I mentioned earlier, of which I had a quick meal, then came back up and watched Brainiac on Matt Ch'ng's PC. But once the instructed time for us to move to the New Auditorium was reached, we had to stop and move out.

This year's Speaker of the Year Awards was a lot more entertaining than last year's, and I guess it wasn't too bad a waste spectating the competition. But before it all started, during the time when we were assembling and were finding seats, my class was caught in a fuzz as our original seats had then been reserved for the guests of honour. Thus after loads of arguing between us and teachers from the Balcony Level, we found a space at the side balcony which had a god view of the whole area. But we could only stay there under a strong condition: We had to behave VERY very well during the event - not a murmer, not a figit, not an irritance - or we'd be kicked out of the level. Apparently, the teacher in charge of this level was rather angry with us as she strongly believed that there were seats at the Main Floor all along, but in a matter of seconds was proven wrong when the rest of the students flooded the area.

And of all the momments that Justin had to choose to attempt to attract attention,...

Throughout the first half of the event, Tim, Shil and I had to keep reminding him to stop figiting with the glass railing or wavinghis hand violently beside Peter's or Niranjan's face or talking to them with volume loud enough to reach the back of the class and so on. It was scary in the sense that the teacher that was angry with us might notice him and kick us all out, and at the same time it was frustrating as all it took was just seconds before Justin came up with another excuse for us to tone down our voices.

But don't mind him too far. Like I said earlier, I found this year's Speaker of the Year a whole lot more entertaining, and I've got my reasons for saying so. Like for the Guests, there were celebreties who came to witness/judge this event, like judges from The Arena of Channel 5 and also Adrian Pang, who spiced up the start fo the event by playing around in his speech and while he was presented the Token of Appreciation.

Then tehre were the Contestants, of which there were a handful of Prefects who joined, and as such I knew who they were and it was more interesting to listen to what they could say. Such people were like Nishad, Ryan, Issac and even Joshua Renee. And in the Year 5-6 Category, there was also a Filippino Girl who had a light Filippino accent, and was also talking about Accents in her own speech. Which also brings me to another area: Content.

The content of the many speeches said were rather interesting and I enjoyed listening to it, from personal-life stories like Nishad's 'emergency' experience onboard the cruise, to personal opinions like Joshua's comment that you're either 'sexy, or an RI Boy', from summary explainations like the Filippino girl's topic on the Philippine's form of diction as I mentioned earlier, to funny but true punchlines like another Year 5-6 contestant who said that "The plural for mouse is mice, but the plural for spouse is NOT spice!" in her impromptu speech on the topic 'Variety is the Spice of Life'.

And while waiting for the results to be tallyied up, the Drama Club did a short performance about freedom and every man's right to be able to think freely. Or so I think. But still, even though the performance was a little too dramatic with a fantasy plot, what captivated me was the uniform they used. You see, the skit involved an 'army officer' who was soon to order the taking-away of a new man from a speech made by 'the Leader'. And his uniform was good enough to put me in a 'oh-drama-ain't-that-bad-why-don't-i-join' kind of mood. But on second thought, the plot helped to neutralize, and I was alright once the applause went off. Rather funny on what the other sub-characters had to do to keep their lives. (I love the Leader! *clap**clap**clap*) (Democracy! *clap**clap**clap*)

So anyway, Ryan won the Year 1-2s, I think Joshua won the Year 3-4s and the Filippino girl won the Year 5-6s! Yay! Everyone's happy! Now to get back to work...

Next was Mother Tongue, and somehow the Express people, saving one of them, didn't come for CL'B'. Mdm. continued the lesson, well in a rather chatty manner, and soon after leaving us with an assignment, dismissed us, saying she trusted us well enough to bring our schoolwork back home as homework and that we'd hand it up next lesson. God bless her.

To end it all off, we had History, which we went through some notes on the Singapore Government, and as ussual the lesson was very entertaining. Impressive teachers, you never pass by them so often. Oh, and someone IN THE DARKNESS almost hadthe whole class going for remedial next week, and we were thankfully saved by Jaira as he was able to answer all the questions Mr. Ang blasted at him. Wow.

So now's the funny thing. See, today we were doing [Censored] for our programme and so at the 2nd last km, Hao Qing and I capsized with the StingRay. So Mosquito, which was just near-by, decided to rescue us and helped us back onboard StingRay. But since Mosquito was also a K, an unstable breed of boats, they coldn't help us do a 'T' rescue to empty the water in our boat. Assuming we could paddle our way to the closest shore to empty water, we told them all was fine and that they could go and complete their training programme.

So we were paddling past the 100km mark, and with the amount of water in our boat it seemed literally impossible for us to capsize again. Or so we thought. The water in the boat was heavy enough to submerge the Main Deck of the boat underwater, so the boat looked like a submarine, and the only thing holding the water out from entering our Cockpits were the curved railing rims around them. But apparently, the boat and the rim were just at the right level underwater that the motion of the boat was slicing the water into the Cockpits silently.

So I was paddling slowly toward what I thought was a safe Emergency Docking, until I was just 25 meters from the shore. By then, the weight of the boat had sunken it deep enough till water was already flowing into the cockpit by itself. When I noticed that my feet and I were blocked by a cear curtain of water, I quickly panicked and told Hao Qing to "HURRY UP!", which was a big mistake as the faster we went, the more water was being forced into the cockpit. By now, Joshua Wu and Jeremy noticed our boat - or like I said, submarine - zooming pass them. Infact, the boat was down under so far, they could only see our upper bodies gliding across the water, making whails that were a mixture of fear and laughter. Why laughter? Well, if you've seen Pirate's of the Carribean: Curse of the Black Pearl, and you've seen the scene where Jack Sparrow arrives at the docks of Port Royal with a sinking sailboat that only had it's mast protruding out of the water, then yeah. That was how it felt like.

By now, the water level in the boat was just centermeters from reaching the rim, and we still had a few more meters to cover before reaching land. I couldn't risk having StingRay sink to the bottom of MacRitchie, as who knows how deep the water can be, and I'd definitely get one of the most ferocious scoldings from Mr. See and Mr. Goh. So to save both StingRay and her crew, I quickly tilted to the left and capsized the boat. That way, the boat turns over and traps air, thus keeping it afloat for the time being. Praise the Lord! Now stranded in the water again, Hao Qing and I were going to swim back to shore with the boat upside-down.

But then Jeremy and Joshua Wu padddles to our rescue and offers to help empty our boat. They were riding a T Canoe, and were most likely stable enough to perform a 'T' Rescue, thus we agreed. While Hao Qing held all our paddles, Joshua pulled the boat aboar theirs and made the see-saw formation of the Rescue proceedure. I then swam to the protruding end of the 'see-saw' and pulled it down, so all the water from the sunken end would come over and flow out from the cockpits.

After repeating for a couple of times or so, Joshua placed the boat back onto the water, nice and empty, while they helped us to climb onboard. But due to the North-East wind, the rescue boat, along with the rescued boat, was pushed away from the capsize site by a few meters or less, and Hao Qing had to swim with our paddles in his arms to the boats. And Jeremy and Joshua couldn't stop the boat properly as they didn't have any paddles to stop it with!

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!

Something else to laugh at! So once HQ reached the boats, he distributed our paddles and we soon got back onboard Mosquito. Once ready to launch, we released from Joshua/Jeremy and paddled off to finish our programme.

Ah, good childhood memories I can tell others in the future. Oh, well. Now pardon me, I've got traded songs from Shil that I need to inspect.

Acts 1:8! God be with y'all!