The MacRitchie Monster...

Someone sighted it again. MacRitchie's closed because of that. The public eyes...

It all started this morning, when I was packing up my clothes for MacRitchie, when I found out that I recieved an SMS telling me that training was moved to school because of a situation in MacRitchie. Partially relieved that I was able to get the message on time, I told my Dad to send me to the school for training.

After my Dad dropped me off at the Spaceframe, I walked my way to the re-creational centre, and as I stolled along the carpark I met up with Mr. See, who was heading to opposite directions to return the keys for the gym to the estate office. Before I could say, "Hi, Sir.", he said something on the lines of, "Later, I'll share with you all a story. It'll have a sad ending though... Actually, I don't know if the ending is a happy one or a sad one, but only time will tell. Go do your chin-ups first." Slightly confused, but not surprised, I continued my way to the chin-up bars, only to be told to go to the gym instead.

After doing a few sets of chin-ups, we headed down to the tracks but were stopped by Mr. See and the other two coaches for a short announcement(s) at the chin-up bars. He then told us about the 'story'.

Back in the mid 1990s, there was a public sighting of a crocodile in MacRitchie, and as such every school that trained there was chased out and not permitted to come back until 'professionals' could either catch the thing or prove that the thing wasn't there at all. And while the 'professionals' took their time to do anything, all theracing canoers had to move to other places to train. And for ACS(I), it was Kallang. But thankfully, we were all invited back to MacRitchie at 2005, sparing the future generations from the traumas of Kallang.

Until now.

Yesterday, all coaches recieved an SMS saying that another crocodile was spotted by the public, and so MacRitchie is declared close until further notice. That means we have no place to train... except Kallang again.

Well, it wouldn't make much difference at the present moment, since we were all going to move to Kallang anyway. But the only scary part was that we intended to move for only a couple of months, and if MacRitchie is really going to be closed it can mean a few years!

Mr. See then started stating that we should always make the greatest use of training time, because if you keep pushing the work to 'tomorrow', you never know when 'tomorrow''s going to be there. Many people wanted to do replacement trainings tomorrow to make up for times when they didn't come for training, but now that MacRitchie's gone, there's NO Wednesday training.

After a few more statements of possible actions to be taken if the reserviour doesn't open soon enough, we went down to the tracks to do warm-ups before starting on our running programmes. By now, people who didn't know that training was moved to school and had just been informed were arriving from the bus stop.

After running, there was gym, followed by medicine balls and then debrief befroe being dismissed. (Swimming was apparently cancelled for time.) During debrief, Mr. See stated that MacRitchie had just been re-opened again, so we could still train there before our move to Kallang.

But he also reminded us about not taking this for granted, and that we must always 'invest your 3% every training. Keep pushing the limit, gentlemen. Really. We can't aford to loose out because of things like this. So please, always push yourself beyond your comfort zone every training, and keep coming regularly. We've only got exactly a month before the competitions, so if you're going to say, "I'll push harder tomorrow.", this IS the 'tomorrow' already!'

We were also given our new Canoeing singlets! There were the men's cut and the women's cut. (The difference is the width of the shoulder straps - women's cut has wider ones.) I ordered for an 'M', but found that it was a little too big for me (I always fit in 'M's...). So I traded both my singlets with Joon Kiet, who also found 'S' a little too 'S' for him afterall. So once we were dismissed, I quickly changed into my women's cut and went off to the bus stop to catch a bus home.

I boarded the bus along with Tairoun (is that how you spell it?), Brandon and Jedd, who later invited me to join them for lunch at KAP. It was breaking the embargo, but I guess I woiuldn't mind having a meal with 'em guys. Tairoun, if you've missed out, was the junior who told me I was his favourite senior, later to spread the fanship to the other juniors. Brandon's his partner, and apparently his best friend here, and Jedd's my ex-partner whom Hao Qing replaced.

At KAP, we bought our meals and had a nice laugh at the conversations we had. Something like;

Tai: Hey, are those the shaker fries?
Jedd: Yeah. (Opens seasoning and pours into shaker bag, pre-filled with fries.) Why?
Bran: Make sure you shake it up properly. We wouldn't want uneven tastes in the bag.
Jedd: Yah, yah. (Shakes bag.) There. (Pours out contents.)
Bran: It's not even. Look, theres one side more yellow, and one side more green.
Rae: Variety!
All: *laugh*
Jedd: Fine. Give me another set of fries! I'll do another one. (Repeats process) Nah!
Bran: Still not even. Theres a distinct colour contrast.
Tai: Yeah. There's green, yellow, green...
Rae: Spain!
All: *laugh*
Tai: Let's change the subject. (Looks to Bran) Do you have a girlfriend?
Bran: Erm, I don't think so.
Tai: (Looks at Rae) How 'bout you?
Rae: (Stares at watch) Now? Nope.
All: *laugh*
Tai: I really need to learn that catchphrase!
Jedd: "Now? Nope." Hahaha!
Tai: This is the reason why he's my favourite senior...

And so on and so forth.

Ah, well. Nice morals, nice meal, nice shirt. 2 Chronicles 15:7! God bless y'all!