wow. its been 5 months since our teams were formed and we got together. in these 5 months, we've bonded loads and achieved much as a team! the blood, tears and sweat from each and every individual is just AWESOME.

with the end of hillary challenge singapore, there are a few awesome groups of people to thank:

mr kevin ng and mr raymond chan (from ri) who encouraged us during the competition and helped us prepare right up to the actual day of the competition
RAFFLES TEAM 1 for always being there to encourage and joke with us and giving us so much inspiration and so much to work for
the instructors and road marshals who directed us during the various challenges and encouraged us when we sped past
our beloved safety officer, EZRA, who walked with us every step of the way during day 2 and 3 despite fasting- he's SO AWESOME- OUR NEW TEAM IDOL!
the other 10 competing teams who encouraged us along the way whenever we crossed paths, for being such tough competition and sporting people!

AND DEFINITELY NOT FORGETTING, RAFFLES TEAM 2 (TEAM K)!
k1- bengoh
k2- bryan
k3- francis
k4- jonsee
k5- ziqi
k6- myself
k7- claire
k8- gracia
and our unofficial k9-joel!

<---DISCLAIMER: from here onwards would be the exact events of the 3D2N comp; pictures from closing ceremony are at the bottom--->
gosh i sure hope this doesnt have some sort of a word/ character limit.

DAY 0 (the day before the competition)

the time im ever going to be taking a french paper! haha. so after the last paper, i went over to ri to collect the team shirts and other random assorted stuff for the girls while claire and gracia went home to pick up their bags. oh, and i found out that the guys went to buy BLUE ROUND-CUT FBTS. AHHHHHHHHHHHHH. went with francis, jonsee and bengoh to buy matching shoelaces for the team.

note: 'matching' here means the entire team is wearing the same shoelaces, not that both shoelaces on both shoes are the same xD

bengoh left before we bought anything, so the other 3 of us continued looking. gosh. its super hard to buy coordinated shoelaces for a group of more than 3 people. haha in the end we went to minitoons and settled on bright orange and rainbow shoelaces. in short, we had orange shoelace on one shoe, and rainbow on the other haha. it was quite cool despite the whole colour clash. oh did i mention? our team shirt is BRIGHT GREEN.

went home and had dinner while waiting for claire and gracia to reach my house. oh, and i started packing my stuff then. SUPER last minute ><

claire and gracia came over pretty late, and claire came over with a box of pizza xD not a very smart idea to eat pizza at like 11pm the day before the comp eh xD we made bagtags for the team, but couldnt find a way to attach them to the bag and yet still keep them waterproofed. ah wells.

didnt manage to get much of a pep talk in because my parents kept chasing us to sleep.


DAY 1 (the start of the competition)

dragged gracia and claire out of bed at like 0515. did final check and ate breakfast before we left for ri.

met the rest of the team at 0600 at ri. showed the rest of the team the shoelaces we bought. DANG IT. no drastic reaction from anyone ):

rehearsed our little skit sitting around in a circle coz we were all too lazy to move.

bus came and we all got on. hahaha the 19 seater suddenly became super cramped coz we had all our bags. and OMG BENGOH WAS SO SWEET. he personalised wristbands for like the entire team and gave it out! and its really pretty! he has surprisingly good taste!

made alot of noise on the bus and got to labrador park really quickly.

registered, got our COOLIOS race tags, took temperatures, got our bags checked, and assembled for briefing.

and so the comp began! 1st day comprised of station activities, 6 stations, maximum of 1 hour per station. different groups got assigned to different station.

rock climbing was our first station! thanks to jonsee's awesome belaying skills, i managed to get past the overhang and to the top where we got 8 points. did it twice blindfolded too. doubled the points! haha awesome. then the guys did great belaying on the other wall also, and i think we did really awesome for this station.

second station was high elements. OMT IT WAS SUPER HIGH. and your teammates were supposed to belay you. not that i don trust them or anything, but like i dont think they've belayed on high elements before. that was super traumatising. part one we had to transfer a bucket of water from one end to the other end. ended up like sitting on the logs and moving across. jonsee did a great job though. because one of our ropes got tangled halfway, we were barely able to get one pail of water across. the other half of this station was just a bridge and some broken steps thingo. haha we kinda just ran across the whole thing before we got stopped since its supposedly dangerous. didnt do too well for this station.

third station was cooking. we had to cook chicken rice- outdoor cooking style. hahaah. the guys were awesome at starting a fire! they used ONE match to start this huge fire that just kept burning! haha then we realised, the guys CANT COOK FOR NUTS xD start fires well, but cant cook! hahahaha. anyway, because we got our fire started so early, our rice tasted really good. think we did pretty well for the station. oh the chicken was nice tasting too.

lunch break! and somehow the conversation kept straying to the toilet. i.e. about how claire can eat in front of a piece of shit.

4th station was at west coast park. they very very very nicely chartered a bus for us there :D so we got rafting for our first station. had to make a raft and send at least 5 people to some point to collect sand and build the tallest sandcastle. hahaha we did really well for this! the guys were awesome at raft building and making the raft go fast (go into the water and start kicking) apparently the instructors think we did really well! and our sandcastle was 34cm tall! we used 8 paper plates worth of sand.

5th station was the most nerve-wrecking station for me. it was something like an obstacle course. basically we had to get a pingpong ball from one bucket to another. using tongs. had to go on random obstacles like little random stuff, flying foxes and nets. and the bucket was at the top of this jungle gym-like structure made of nets. and the guys had to climb up. BLINDFOLDED. and yes. i had to give them directions. either i totally suck at it, the guys are really clumsy, or they're really daring. maybe its all 3. bengoh has this knack for crashing into other people on the stucture at the same time and going off course, jonsee's foot keeps missing the rope and he nearly fell half a million times, francis takes sometime to respond to instructions, hence, he keeps hitting his HEAD- on ropes/poles/buckets! ARGH. and the instructors kept laughing at our team! so embarrassing! haha. but they all did a great and awesome job. because sometimes there were two of them on the structure at once, i couldnt guide them both, but they still tried their best to get up without my help. AWESOME DUDES!

6th station was cycling. the most hated part for me. managed okay. but there was this log part where nearly all of us had to dismount and push because it was near impossible to ride over! once everyone in the team had gone once, two of the guys started riding rounds to get us more points. the rest of us stayed back to try to earn bonus points by deflating and inflating a tire. hahah we got really good at it towards the end and the factory line we made was so efficient!

went back to the labrador park campsite and had dinner. washed up and the presentations began! haha after washing up all the guys changed and wore their bright blue round-cut fbts. HAHAHAHHAHAH okay it was REALLY hilarious. and since bryan is like ULTRA tall, he was showing off SO MUCH LEG i tell you, it was nearly obscene! ah well. we had fun laughing at the guys.

most teams were really good! one of the hwach-nygh teams did a wayang kulit performance thingo! it was really really really cool! our skit went okay. had to cut our skit because there wasnt enough time. and i kinda missed my cue >< argh.

oh then somewhere in one of the hwach-nygh (different from the wayang kulit team) skit there was this handsign thingo. somehow the guys found it very amusing and funny and kept going on and on and on about it (even after the entire comp). haha gracia claire and i were like 'uhhhhhhhh.... right. okay. GUY HUMOUR. totally.'

after that was the rogaine briefing for day 2, and they announced the standings. raffles team 1 was first, and we were around 50 points behind them in second place, followed by tanjong katong.

still cant believe the 5 guys crammed in one tent. the 3 of us girls did take their bags so they could have more space though. hahaha.


DAY 2 (rogaine day)

my team's forte! rogaine! haha somehow my team is just really good at it.

we were supposed to start at like 8am, but because of lightning alert, we only started at 10am. there was a light drizzle, so it was nice and cool.

rogaine planning was tough, because the route was so straightforward! everyone would just take the same route! thankfully jonsee and francis were awesome enough to calculate another route that would give us loads more points! we really pushed really hard that day. hardly stopped to rest. especially the 2 navis. they just kept running and running and making full use of the 50m radius while the rest of the team rested. i cant tell you how grateful claire, gracia and i to them. somehow, they became our motivation for pushing on.

we were the last team to end rogaine. we ended at 1615, 15min away from the 1630 cut off time. we ended somewhere at the clementi-nus area and cycled from there to bukit batok park i think. there, we had to do 4 checkpoints. because our navigators, once again, were so awesome, they found the shortest and most efficient route around the checkpoints. after clearing all the checkpoints, we just proceeded to dairy farm, where we parked our bikes and ran to bukit panjang primary school. i think our team reached back pretty early. i think we accidentally stressed another team whilst running to the school ><

that night we were all just so tired and exhausted. slept like logs. jonsee and ziqi decided to sleep outside the tent. i have no idea how they did it without freezing half to death. and it just so happened that it was really freezing that night. we could barely sleep properly. wonder how the guys did it man.


DAY 3 (multi-sport adventure racing)

the last and final day of the challenge. breakfast was good. it was fried rice xD the guys ate ALOT as usual.

the girls dumped all our stuff with the guys again, and didnt carry any bags again. we started off with the run back to the dairy farm area, where we cycled some mountain bike trail. and somehow i fell AGAIN, and there was blood on my knee again. sheesh. i get an injury where i see my own blood everyday i swear. so after the one round we cycled at dairy farm, we proceed to bike to BTNR via ANOTHER mountain bike trail. i kept dismounting and pushing. the trail was really rocky and really tough. i think many people got injured at this part. no wonder they left this for the last day.

after we dumped out bikes at BTNR, we started hiking again. hiked from BTNR to macritchie where we kayaked a short distance. from BTNR to macritchie claire was pacing. wow. we really pushed really hard. never knew claire's legs were so long. was running to keep up man. so we all kayaked just one small round in some corner of the reservoir, then we continued walking past checkpoints, all the way back to botanic gardens at the CCAB area. FIRST TEAM TO REACH :D haha.

there was a bonus station there too. managed to complete all 10 stations which was pretty tiring. it was alot of micro navigation and hunting for the little puny clues they put in weird places. ugh. luckily claire knows the area well from her SL. ohoh, and the camera was being paparazzi-ish and stalking us all the way! hahaha.

we finished the bonus station by 1615 and sat around till 1630 where we walked to CCAB stadium for the last event and closing ceremony.

ohoh! 45th SHIRIM PLAYED FOR THE CLOSING CEREMONY! THEY WERE SO AWESOME.

the telematch was quite ridiculous really. piggyback someone from one end of the field to the other end where there is a puzzle board, memorise a few pieces, then run all the way back on piggy back to piece the puzzle together on your own board at your side of the field. oh, heres the catch. the person that's piggybacking you, has to be blindfolded. right. so the person on top has to give dierections again. naturally, i got piggybacked >< and guess what. francis smashed his head into a board again. UGH I FELT SO BAD. apparently he heard me say STOP, but didnt react. oh man. it was so bad.

MICH I HOPE YOU'RE OKAY!

so that was the last challenge. they gave the whole group of competitors 20min to shower and change. and like. naturally, no time. so claire, gracia and i just changed. somehow the guys managed to bathe. okay. they just stood under the tap and turned on the water. NO TOWEL OR SOAP. right.

OH OH AND THE 2007 TEAM BOUGHT MACS FOR US! HOW AWESOME IS THAT.

naturally, we were all a whole bunch of stinky, smelly people for the closing ceremony. and the rest is history. ive got photos though.


the awesome guys!

team 2!

team 2 again!

us at the telematch

SHIRIM!

kays. thats all. its a superbly long post.

I LOVE HILLARY CHALLENGE RAFFLES TEAM 2! BENGOHBRYANFRANCISJONSEEZIQICLAIREGRACIA! <3