GARGANTUAN steps

Monday, November 13, 2006

nottingham games

Going up to Nottingham University was quite a distressing journey. The coach hired to leave from school was at 515am, and nothing beats crossing Hyde Park at 445am in the morning, so in order not to meet with the supposed misfortunes of walking through Hyde Park in the dark, I stayed over at my friend's place the night before. (Crossing Hyde Park is dangerous in pitch blackness, cause you can't really see what's on the floor, which is essentially filled with horse dung, so it really trains your olfactory nerves. I haven't encountered the other supposed dangers of Hyde Park, but I'll elaborate on them in future entries.)

Staying over was quite fun, and a bunch of us medics (doctors-to-be) had a few rounds of Tai Tee, or Big Two, to translate. Then I went to help make my lunch for the next day (which essentially consisted of providing conversation), which I will be eternally grateful to Trysha, and also for providing a bed for the night to sleep on!

Meanwhile, we touched base at Nottingham University at 840am, and the floorball tournament was scheduled to begin at 930am. The temperature was a good two degree celsius colder than in London, and it hit home straight away. And so the floorball tournament went ahead and I can happily say that, we won! The first match was against Nottingham University and they were quite a physical side, and we came out of that match pretty much scrapped and bleeding. We were playing floorball on a concrete tennis court with fences all around, and I think many of us were bashed into the fence quite a couple of times, but I'm happy that we came out with a single goal win over them, it would have been great injustice if they shared the spoils with us.

The second match was against Manchester University and though they hardly had any skills, they were really professional about their defeat, which was quite a demoralising 8-0 thumping, and where I registered goal number one. The third match was a goal-less draw against LSE and that let us top the group table and prevented us from meeting with the second Imperial College team in the other group. Semi-finals was against University College London (UCL) and a flick into goal by me saw them use a hand to block the ball, and thus conceding a penalty, which wasn't converted by me, but that was the single goal that brought us into the finals!

Finals was a tense affair against IC Team 1, with Kailun in the team, making us the underdogs. Basically, Kailun was the former RI/RJC hockey captain, and if I'm not mistakened, the Inter-school hockey captain. Basically, he's the advantage in his team. Our team was run ragged by them, but I managed to get on the scoresheet, and the game was finished off by another goal, and in so doing, we managed to clinch the gold.

Winning is always a nice sensation, especially scoring a crucial goal, and it was an honour playing with this bunch of people! The rest of the day wasn't exactly memorable. Didn't really get to sight-see around Nottingham, but I might be back another day. Meanwhile, the planning was really terrible though, leaving us hungry and dinner-less, though meals were promised to be provided. We left Nottingham at 8pm and managed to get back by 1040pm. And I was blessed with a nice dinner of rice and grilled chicken by Fon. Thank goodness for such miracles~

Here are the pictures below of the floorball gang!

Imperial College Team 2 - (from left to right) Clement (goalkeeper extraodinaire), Matthew (Captain 2, multi-positional, mostly DMC), Ben Low (predatory striker), Han Yan (defensive mastermind), Jauhari (AMC - dribbling genius), Yvette (Striker, scored when it mattered most!), Me, Hock Boon (Captain 1, AMC, bled for the cause)

Me And Jauhari - the guy who converted the penalty

Me and my medic buddy, Zheng Yuan - the guy who destroys me with his stick during training.

Me and Han Yan - my fellow defensive buddy and likes to ji siao me, and she just lay down and laughed in the middle of a match, to the horror of horrors

Me and Mike Lui - he won the 5km Men's run (21 minutes - which is slow by his high standards), and he won the Bridge competition at the Games too, coming in 1st and 3rd (don't ask me how, he went up to get the medals)