Um, Aaron and the rest have withdrawn from elections... Which is sad. We were all pretty willing and we were pretty damn sure that we could get Aaron and our fellow freshie raggers past externals.

I mean, as long as they can get into the comm, they can still make a difference, right?

But yeah, I *do* understand where Aaron's coming from. If he gets marginalised during internals, he won't be able to contribute much anyway.

Sigh. A lot of this really does suck.

Archery training today. And the bowstring finally hit me. It was just going to happen. Especially since it hadn't happened yet.

Eh, well, grouping is getting pretty good. I'm pretty ok for a beginner, I think; at least most of the time I hit red and below.

Although I think at 30 m, I might not be able to see the yellow zone. Especially since on our targets, the yellow sections are quite hole-y and are more of less falling off. :P Which would make it more difficult, haha. :P

Back from BBQ! I loved it; that must've been the best BBQ that I ever went to, and I'm actually full after it, rather than just the usual chicken and sausages and fishballs and potatoes and whatnot.

I mean, there *was* all that stuff, but it was pretty well organised and everything, and Jasmine's uncle bought a lot of stuff for us, like the roast chicken and otak and her aunt prepared stingray for us!

Speaking of chicken, the shortage of chicken in Singapore is starting to be really telling. Seriously. We went shopping before going to the condo for the barbecue proper, and it was almost impossible to find chicken! Ridiculous. But also faintly amusing. :P

And Shaun introduced us to cheese shrimp! Or cheesy shrimp or shrimpy cheese, or whatever you wanna call it. It's shrimp wrapped in cheese, wrapped in aluminium foil, and then set on the grill to barbecue. Cheese shrimp. Oh, I know!!! it's CHRIMP! :D HA! I'm a genius! I could make a living naming different kinds of new foods. Or maybe not. Hm.

Oh, but the cheese melted and boiled over; spilled out of the aluminium foil after just a few seconds on the grill, and cheese was dripping a little; it got onto the crab sticks, and it gave Daryl an idea and he made a small batch of cheesy crab stick for me! Hahaha....

And I realised that Shaun watches cooking shows when I watched him slice tomatoes in half and stuff the halves with herbs and set them on the grill, cut side up. Coz I'd only ever seen such stuff being done in cooking shows, see. :P And I asked, and I was right. :D

Shaun would make a good cook. Actually, I think he already is. Hm. All I know is that the cucumber soup that they were cooking on "Ways of the Matriarch" last week looked really quite lovely. Although maybe not so different from the marrow soup that we usually drink.

All right, shall be off to sleep now.......

Problems today. A lot of the freshmen raggers found that they had a *big* problem running for MC coz suddenly, out of nowhere, there're two groups of seniors gunning for the positions.

A lot of them have withdrawn, apparently, with all the competition; we don't stand much of a chance against seniors, after all, who've definitely had more time and opportunity to network than we have, and well, one of the people who's running doesn't really have what it takes to be a real leader; all they have on their side is really just charisma, and that person will probably be able to win a lot of votes on that alone.

Most of the freshies don't want to have to work under that person.

Feel that it's a good thing that I had to run for archery MC after all; at least I have something to do right now. Most of the freshies are gonna wait till next year; I'll wait it out with them, tho I'm only in half a mind to run for it. I'm just in it for the exposure; I know that I don't have all that much leadership capability.

Yes, there are two kinds of people in this world, the leaders and the followers, but I think that being a leader has been over-glorified; leaders are, really, nothing without followers, after all.

It isn't a bad thing to be a follower, as long as you don't follow blindly or for the wrong reasons.

I think at the very least, I have enough insight to see what I don't want in a leader, and to know the good leaders from the bad ones. And what myself and the other freshies see is that those who really do have what it takes, are being marginalised, only because that person's charisma manages to sway others and their group is edging out competition.

For the good of the whole of the arts faculty, I seriously hope that you do not make it into a high position; it seems inevitable that you will make it past the external elections because of your networking and PR skills, but when it comes to internal elections, I hope that those who have managed to make it into the committee will have enough responsibility to give the high positions to those who deserve it more, and not to those who simply make themselves seen and heard everywhere.

Okay, Li Jiawei lost the semifinals... so she got fourth place. No medal. Disappointed, but hey, she did her best, no reason to fret.

At least Singapore knows how to show some apprectiation, unlike the US with Michael Phelps and all that crap about their disappointment that he couldn't get the 8 gold medals.

All those critics who express their disappointment so openly should think about it for a sec: I don't think they could even dream of winning a bronze medal, let alone do it in real life; they aren't in a position to put Phelps down for winning bronze.

Archery AGM today: managed to get into comm; was VERY lucky-- I almost botched it when I forgot what I wanted to say!! Damn, my brain just went blank after the short introduction that I gave; I was pretty certain that there was a lot more that I wanted to sy then, but it just wouldn't come to mind!!

Stupid brain...

Managed to get in anyway, so was very very lucky. Also means that I'll be getting my own bow, yay!

How much do bows cost, really? Are there even shops in Singapore that sell bows? I'm not sure if I've seen them, I think I might have, I think I recall seeing bows being sold somewhere, but I can't remember! Ah, that's what online shopping is for, haha..

And on a completely off-tangent slant, the official site for "The Village" is really quite entertaining. :P

Li Jiawei got through to the semis!!!!! She beat that Chinese woman!!!!! :D :D :D

Hah, and that arrogant Chinese woman thought that our players wouldn't last; even Zhang Xueling got as far as quarterfinals before she was knocked out by that North Korean communist bitch.

And now Li Jiawei beat her, so that should shut her up, HAH!!

Take that, arrogant Chinese bitch!!

HAH!

Haha... band investiture today too; feel so old-- was one of the non-uniform crowd for the first time today, and surprisingly, a lot of other people from my batch turned up too!

Soon Aik, Dawn and Wei Jian were there; out of everyone there, I hadn't seem these three for *ages*!! And Wei Jian looks rather different in his army U. Hm.

Anne's vice-president! I actually thought that she'd be able to make president, tho. Oh well.

Oh, and my neighbours havre finally moved in, so the house next door is finally inhabited, after... what, 3, 4 months?

Rag is over.

Geez, this is weird. It's like something's missing.

I said yesterday that I'd come home and sleep for 12 hours, and hey, guess what?? I did it!! Hahaha... :P

We were finishing up the float and doing touch-ups and everything for the later half of Friday, and for a while that night, time seemed to crawl; every few minutes I checked my watch, it felt like Saturday morning already, but it was still only 11 plus!

Then the dancers had a run through of the dance in front of the float about 5 times, and it looked so good; both the float and the dance-- I felt like crying right then and there!

12 am: Pushing the white tower to SRC with 4 other people: Xin Yan, Rayner, Jian Wu and another guy. Of the five of us there, I think only Jian Wu and I really knew how much time we'd put into the tower, and as we were pushing it up the slope, all the way down to SRC, I was thinking, y'know, this is it: what I'm pushing right now is one and a half months' work, and although it isn't what we originally planned, it still looked damn good. :D

And the silliest thing happened: I managed to avoid any major kinda injuries for the whole one and a half months of Rag, but at the last minute, for a simple thing like pushing the white tower, when we were turning it, the exposed metal bar scratched me on the left ankle! Hurt like all hell...

I thought it was just a scratch, but Rayner said he could actually *smell* the blood; heh, turned out he was right; it was bleeding. Although I still dunno how the hell he could've smelt the blood!

All the other side props came in as well, following behind us; the fortress walls, the back wall, the black tower, and it felt so good to see the two towers right there, out on the track, in open space, where their height finally made them *really* stand out.

Came back to LT 11 to help them touch up the main float and help with weaponry; went to bathe at Eusoff Hall at about 2 am, accompanied by Jian Wu; saw EH and TH's floats; good grief-- they looked DAMN good.

Jian Wu fell asleep at the staircase while waiting for me; I felt so bad, but he insisted that it was just his fault, said he was tired; in a way, I knew what he meant; I was pretty damn tired too.

3 am: Guard shift. Guarding the side props down at SRC; was supposed to be Xin Yan, Jian Wu and I, but Jian Wu "abandoned" us.. :P Two other people joined Xin Yan and I later, anyway; I think I forgot their names... :P So we just sat there and talked and looked at the stars and watched all the other floats come in.. Bizad's float design looked strangely recycled... Lousy uncreative morons. Haha...

5 am: Main float came in. Looked good. Realised later that they'd put in a fire extinguisher, with the nozzle just coming out under the beast's chin. Ridtz brought this big tarpauline and he and Keyou helped spread it out on the grass just behind our float; we all moved onto it; I tried to sleep, but couldn't; too cold, and it was windy too, and the people were starting to warm up and get noisy..

Damn cold. And I was already wearing two shirts too; my white O week one inside and my black Rag shirt outside; still cold!!

6 am: Dry run for dancers. They came back saying that they'd screwed up a lot of things and whatnot, but I think that they still looked very good. :D

Started helping out a bit with touch-up; we were given till 7.30 am to touch-up. Then later, wandered over to dancers' tent and helped a bit with costumes; managed to find Shaun's jacket among all the dancers' stuff and snuggled into it; one good thing about Shaun being about um... 5(??) sizes bigger than me is that if I tuck my knees up under my chin, I can wrap his jacket around all the way! Haha..!! I love things that make me feel all snuggly-buggly....

I love that word. Snuggly-buggly. It's my very own word!! Haha!!!

8.30 am: Things started to get moving... Still in the dancers' tent. Was finally starting to warm up, thank god. Still helping out here and there with costumes; improvised a bit on Mary's armband thingy: I put the rubberband through the hem of the cloth instead and made a drawstring thingy for her! Yay!! I'm a genius... :P

Checked around to see who else needed help; Dennis' armbands had some problems too, but he didn't have the rubberbands, so I had to make do with black ribbon; not nearly as good as rubberbands, but they did an all right job. Yingyi (yeah, she came back!! :D ) finished up by sewing up the rest!

11.35 am: Our presentation. Man, I was feeling so jazzed then!! It was so cool, and I mean it. I mean, the Halls may have looked really impressive, but theirs was more coz of the sheer number of dancers, I think, plus their coordination. We didn't have a lot of people, but I still think that our dance was really spirited and well... really, for lack of a better word, just cool. :)

Bizad won everything; literally, almost everything, except for about one or two categories, but heck, we didn't care... :P We even started to make fun of them, haha, calling out "Bizad!" for every category... :P

I mean, things like Bizad winning most environmentally friendly float?? HELLO, u can friggin' SEE that it's painted; they've just disguised it really well by sticking paper there and painting OVER the paper so that it looks like the paper IS that colour and it's not paint. Ours is definitely more envi-friendly than theirs!

And best float design?? You've gotta be joking; their design is REUSED!! And what's more, even Dentistry and Science's floats looked better than theirs; Science deserved to win best float design most of all! Their phoenix was beautiful; designed in about the same way that most of the Halls' floats were designed.

And least cost float; HA, *AS IF*. We all know that it's only coz their bloody alumni sponsors everything.

Which brings me to another point.. Arts could really be serious competition for Bizad, but only if we get our alumni together, man!!

Had to tear the float down later... Geez, I felt like crying.

But yeah, Jasper was right; Rag is definitely addictive.

I'm coming back next year for more. :D