~JcZw

Ok... yar, for those that don't scroll down to the tagboard, I made a mistake... I meant we were one of the [relatively inexperienced] teams (the omitted words are in square brackets). Also, we were fencing an Indian team which was something like their association for fencers in the Army, sort of like our SAFSA... not neccesarily National per se...

Well, we had our tournament on home ground... it was off VICTORIA street =D haha oh well, it was still in Singapore though... opposite the Carlton, where our SDD is going to be held... heheh...

On wednesday was equipment checking... this *beep* Pasir Ris Cres kid was doing the mask check, and instead of forcing the wire grill with the strength of his arm, he used his BODY WEIGHT as if he was doing CPR!!!! Of course the grill gave way (he poked so many times!!!) and created a great hole in the mask (well, relatively great)... What the... so I had to go n borrow one from Coach and spend 1 hour trying to force my grill back... pah!!

Thursday: Men's Epee Individual, Women's Foil Individual, Men's Sabre Individual
Left home with Maurice carrying TWO masks... what a load...

Reached SMU well before time, and got my mask (whose grill i forced back) to be tested by a national fencer this time. Lo and behold, it passed the test. Was I shocked? No. Hahah...

These are the three fencing locations... Air conditioned, nice colours and such ambience.... So unlike Clementi lor!

The main hall on the third floor.

The corridor outside the hall. That's Daniel (on the left) fencing with this really really PRO guy from Taipei! Shall talk about it more later..

The... room on the sixth floor.. Also well ventilated, but enclosed. When the girl foilists screamed in excitement, I thought the world was coming to an end. That's a foilist, complete with metallic vest n all who happened to get in the way, not anyone I know...

My round robin pool.... I SHOULD have beaten Melvyn Li, with the score tied 4-4 and going to priority time... He fleched, I circular sixte-d and did a perfect close quarter hit on his backside. No light. The *beep* referee forgot to REARM the box!!! SO angry!!! And when we restarted, this time he managed to hit me instead haiyooo... hurhur sobsob... But now he'll think of me when he sees the bruise on his posterior.

Lost 5-2 to Weiwen, a Singapore national fencer, and 5-0 to the Thai feller. Managed to hold the Indonesian 4-4 before I did a highly mistimed fleche (i reckoned my stophit on Singaporean timing blah and ran right onto his blade) and lost.

Well, all the JC fencers, including me, Maurice, Daniel, and our counterparts from CJC all got eliminated from the preliminary round. Sad. Oh well...

Anyway as we all know (read the papers) Kuwait won... Hmmm we saw Koreans who can fleche with absolutely no sound, completely horizontal and really long range like 6 meters or something...

We saw the above mentioned Taipei guy who's so super fast, and we can't even see his blade (must watch video in slow mo).... Here, he's on the way to killing a Singaporean 15-9 (he's the right hander...). He's got a really funny way of fencing where he holds his arm up exposing his entire arm, but he can take attacks and parry really fast! I mean, its a totally unorthodox style of fencing, but it works!!!

Kuwait people who can double and triple flick, and even do foil flicks right across the back to the opponent's tailbone... Anyway, Singapore was outclassed completely... Except for Zixian, our fellow FM-er, who made it the furthest before being taken out by a combination of Taipei and cramp... haha well done! Oh yar, did I mention that everyone is like super tall.... Especially the Koreans...

Kuwait vs Kuwait... Hmm the sportsmanship of certain parties should not be discussed in public I guess... Mr Flicker is the one on the right... The one on the left was in Maurice's pool and eventually won the tournament...

Saturday: Men's Epee Team, Women's Foil Team, Men's Sabre Team
Team event was today....

We drew India, as mentioned... Hmm no pics of today cos I rushed back to AHS very fast... But Korea was doing well again, and Qatar and Kuwait were at it hammer and tongs... oh yes, thanks to Zhongqi our new captain for coming down to take a look...

Our match... was ok, but I guess I could have been a little less mediocre... But I think my teammates did a better job than I could have on this particular day.. Apparently Eldon hasn't lost his tyco-ness while serving in NS... We lost 35-45, which may sound not too bad, but we could have done better... Still it was a fun match...

Oh yes, one thing very worthy of mention was that the Indian fencers were really friendly, so unlike the average Singaporean.... We wished them luck for their match against Kuwait, and later they came out to talk to us after getting eliminated themselves.... So we shared some info with each other.... like how we were studying, how most of them and Eldon were in the army, how most of us, including one or two of the Indians, had been fencing for around a year (while some of the others had been fencing for 4-5 years... what!)... Well fun yar... haha...

FSI gives SO much experience

Well, I shall wrap up here for now.... SHall blog about camp too in the near future if I have time...

Studies are clawing at our heels and I really have to get down to studying!!!

England won!