Monday, October 29, 2007

25th Singapore River Regatta 3-4 Nov 07‏

EVENT TIME LANE TEAM31 (Yellow) Time: 11:57am
1 Royal Bank of Scotland
2 Papillon
3 MG&G
4 SIA
5 MediaCorp

Dear team,
Our last race of the year as Team Papillon, let's gear up and give our very BEST.
We can do it as a ONE!! Let's row for each other once again!!
Papillon Kiyah!!

*See ya all @ our last gym session @ kallang on Tue...

NB: Meeting time n place of race to be send out in email.
Su Li

Wednesday, October 24, 2007

23 Oct 2007 - Gym Training Summary

This evening, everyone arrived a little later than usual. The strange thing was – Coach was still nowhere to be seen! We were openly secretly happy for a while, before Coach appeared – too bad…

And thus we began with a warm-up jog, followed by 4 x 40m sprints. First-appearance Dawn shocked the socks off everyone with her speed and everyone, feeling a bit mutinous today, egged Coach to race with her. Coach upped the stakes by declaring he would relieve us of the 100 push-ups if he lost – GAME ON.

On Christy’s sexy flag-off, Dawn piew-ed off, but a “wait wait wait” was heard – wah lau, FALSE START by Coach. The 2nd time, both shot off and Dawn led the initial distance before Coach overtook and alas, we were doomed to do the 100 push-ups.

Then it was off to the gym. We did just 2 sets of the 5 weights exercises – only because Coach had something more exciting up his short sleeves – we were going to play a real-life, arcade-style rowing game. With 4 in a group, the team which logs greatest total distance on the rowing machine wins a dinner!

Line-ups:
Team A – Freddy, Christy, Jon, Jessica
Team B – Desmond, Ken, Dawn and Su Li (almost disowned by the team cos she offered to surrender – before we even started?!?)

With such an attractive proposition, Ken was all psyched up and everyone gaped in awe as he rowed like a man possessed and threatened to yank the chain off the machine while falling off the seat – a formidable backpack indeed. In other news – Jon was put to the test rowing beside Dawn as her power hamstrings propelled her to achieve good mileage.

It was an exciting game where everyone threw in all the energy they had – well done Teams! Spent and delirious, everyone collapsed with their limbs splayed all over the place. Coach whipped out his trusty handphone to tabulate the total distances (whatever happened to good old mental sums??) And the winning team was… *DRUM ROLL…* Team B!

YAY very good can go for dinner already.

As we sauntered out of the stadium, Jon was observed to be woozy and sat down to rest. Diagnosis by medic-wannabes concluded it was due to: Insufficient warm-up before plunging into the rowing game – resulting in a surge in heart-rate and breathing, causing lightheadedness and a puke-ish feeling. But not to worry, nothing a good meal can’t solve! So we ended with a trip to Coach’s family restaurant where we cleaned up a good deal of the food.

Good workout today and a great makan session after!

=Chief Editor signing off=

Monday, October 8, 2007

Training Summary 6th Oct

This morning seem different went I arrived at the Kallang Carpark, the whole place was so empty with only Uncle Reh's car.
Anyway, make my way to the training center, only a couple of people turned up......... Then I realised that a big parts of the Papillons are on vacation for various reasons:-
Ben, William, Chirsty, Dennis, Yen Nee, Jon n Desmond are enjoying themselves in Vietnam
Dawn - on national duty(Rugby World Cup....???)
Su Li - continued to skive from last week (attend Church Wedding)....hahaha
Joe - suffered from over enthusiastic rowing from last week.

Well, only 6 brave Papillons - Pierre, Jessica, Ken, Marilyn, Wee Keong and myself reluctantly dragged ourselves to the warm-up ground. Uncle Fred came over to say halo and steered clear from us to join the oldies boat.

After warm-up, we take our time to board the boat, surprising the Coach didn't scold us ...... . Ah Piow decided to sneak into the pacer sit with only Jessica complaining.... and off we go for the warm-up toward the race area. Well today we don't have the long distance row as coach decided to do race set since the nos of rowers are small. We go for a couples of race set.... 300m , 250m, 200m, 150m...... guess how many set did we do..................... closed to 10 sets, this was worse than distance row. By the time we finished the 10th set which is the pacing with Aces and Veteran.... we are already so tired and energy all spend, we are lacking behind but our coordination are still good, we didn't rushed to catch up (because we are too tired to catch-up), stay composed and finished the race with applause coming from the Aces and Veteran.

To our surprise, coach said let head back to the pontoon ( the time is 0945am), we thought coach "liang xin fa xian" for working us too hard!!!!!
Happily we rowed towards the pontoon and suddenly coach shouted "easy"..... everybody was puzzled?????

AS USUAL, since when our coach got "liang Xin"... signed..... we are make to do individual row for unlimited strokes until coach lost count of how many stroke had we rowed...... Finally, Wee Keong individually rowed us back as close as to the pontoon as he could and quickly we joined forces to row home.

Finally we are on land , warm down and time to go home.

P.S: Lesson learnt, next time we should not grant vacation leave for too many member on the same day.

Next Sat Public Holiday day - no training, but don't be too happy..... training changed to Sunday.

Best Regards
Samuel Yeo

Monday, October 1, 2007

Training Summary 29th Sept '07

At 7.45AM sharp, a crowd of keen rowers gathered. Although Capt Ong and a few familiar faces were missing (Pierre, Ben, Desmond, William, Dawn - the formidable backpacks), there was still a decent turn up of 9. Among us were new members like Wee Keong and Mighty Joe Young who were given quick guidance on the papillon style of dragonboating.

Training begins with tyre strapped to our boat and we did about 10-15mins rowed as warm up. Afterwhich speedwork of 4,3,2,1 and 3,2,1 were done to pump up our heart rate. Like a engine fully warmed and lubricated, we did abt 2 sets of 400m race simulation to glide between floating platform to sheares bridge.

At 930am, we answered the call for pacing. Aces, Lilies and Veterans were in sight and we did 2 race sets. In case you are wondering, No~,by this time we had our tyre lifted for obvious reason. However, the absence of our key backpacks were clearly felt. We could have done better considering our gym trainings. In between the sets, we found time to celebrate Ken Lim's birthday with a simple cake and mass birthday song combined with other boats.

Before I end this, Papillon, let's stay focus in the remaining weeks to Regatta. Remember all glory comes from daring to begin!~we had already begun, so March On!~

Jonathan

Wednesday, September 19, 2007

Papillon Sea training change to Sun 23Sep @ 7.45am + min summary on Tue gym

Dear folks,

As we all know or is participating the sat run, the normal sea training is
changed to Sun, same time, same place.
Anyway, my legs is aching terribly from the 50 squats @ gym yesteday.
hahaha... Hope I can still jog this sat....

We did 5 station yesterday with guys weight = 10kg, female weight = 6.5kg

Coach came with new pattern again.... we were make to stand in a row to
queue for our turn (did I say queue, it's like 2 person to 1 bar lor) and
we ended the session with ROWING machine!! As usual, coach showed us that
with optimal. speed of 31/32, he is able to achieve a far longer distance
than all of us. Same goes to Yen Nee also, she was able to go for a
furthest distance among the ladies with a min speed. So it's works not just
on Coach. ^.^

Anyway, hand aching, can't type much. LOL.... See ya on Sat & Sun!!

**Hydrate yourself before the sat run*

- Su Li

Thursday, September 6, 2007

01 Sep 2007 - Resumption of training / First training (in a long time) with tyre

(finally getting up to speed)

After a good month-long hiatus, Papillon was starting to turn mouldy. YES, it is time to resume training.

Warm-up was a tad late and lenient, so everyone was secretly happy, but who knows, this happiness was but a short-lived smokescreen. The actual water training was FWAH LAU EHHH... (We all wonder if Coach knows that tyres are actually meant for land / road use.)

The arduous journey out towards the endless bridges (arh?? which one!?) seemed awfully far with the excess baggage weighing us down. But like Coach said, although the coordination was good, our consistency could be better and we need such training to build up our endurance and power. Okay, point taken (and swallowed). *GULP*

We then beached ourselves and did the hardest 20 push-ups ever, on the sand. By the end of this, most arms were just dangling from our mortal bodies, with exception of a few superbeings.

Papillon then headed back and was greeted by a welcome party of one man - dear Freddy! A brief de-brief and Papillon whoosh then capped a most tiring but fulfilling session.

(See y'all Sat!)

=Chief Editor signing off=

29 Aug 2007 - J.I. Race celebration + 6-year anniversary dinner

Briefest summary ever:

dinner @ Safra Pioneer Spring restaurant.
celebrated all of EM's triumphs and cheered each other on.
papillon was presented with surprise award.
watched video of how the EM Dragonboat family has evolved.

Wednesday, September 5, 2007

26 Aug 2007 - Yen Nee's wedding photoshoot @ Kallang River.

dear diary.

i haven't been good in keeping up with my entries. before i grow old and forget, here's what happened -

A neat-looking dragonboat was adorned with a golden drum (plus XXL “喜喜” stickers) and a bunch of people who dared the grey skies above to not rain. It worked - the rain never came. Instead, the sun was out in its glory, illuminating the beaming faces and rippling muscles of the (c)hunks of us who were out in full force.

After putting the boat in the water, the guys decided to congregate at the back of the boat - much to the disgust of Pierre ("Why can't a lady sit beside me for a change?!") - while the girls occupied the front. Papillon started rowing towards the wall to meet Yen Nee and hubby. When nearing, everyone looked high and low for the bride (eh?? where ah?). THEN we noticed something in white striding purposefully towards us, with a spiffy groom in tow. Ah - it can only be... Yen Nee!

Bestowed with brand-new white nike caps compliments of the lovely couple, Papillon gamely circled a few rounds in order for our photographer to capture the perfect shot(s). To that end, "mountains" were also shifted, shirts were also stripped off and kawaii-act-cuteness was all the rage.

Our antics were not un-noticed by some other boats who cheered when they saw us. The icing on the cake however, came from a surprising source - an "uncle" on the bridge who shot us (with our permission of course) turned out to be a "STOMPer" and promptly posted a couple of our photos on the Singapore Straits Times website... Papillons have become accidental celebrities.

kawaii-act-cuteness overdose



picture purrrfect!

After this leg of the shoot, we bade farewell to the happy couple who moved on to other locations while Papillon rowed back to shore. The boat was returned with some difficulty after executing a highly tricky 100-point turn in order to stuff the boat back into the deepest corner of the dragonboatpark.

The eventful morning was ended with a trip to good ole Kallang Airport food centre where Papillon finally ID-ed the correct fish soup stall with some help from Samuel. (HAHAHA you mean y'all eat so many months already still don't know which is the original best-est one meh?? *!unbelievable!*)

(And, as we learnt on Monday, Papillon became the toast of the (dragonboat) town as news spread of our "newspaper" appearance ;)

=Chief Editor signing off=

Friday, August 24, 2007

=reminder= Yen Nee's photoshoot

You are wanted!

What: Dragonboat hunks and babes posing for part of dear Yen Nee's wedding photoshoot.

Date: Aug 26, Sunday

Time: 9.45am to 12pm

Venue: Kallang

Attire: 2007 competition kit (NB shorts and red singlet)

Instructions: Meet at Kallang riverside park at 9.45am looking good.

Saturday, August 11, 2007

waterless saturday

it is strange... a saturday without rowing! somehow, something feels amiss. ah well - gotta get used to it.

those aiming to conquer the marathons - go for it! train well, and safely, too.

remember:

the best inspiration is not to outdo others -
but to outdo ourselves.


as for those of us who still feel that niggling bit of heartache for J.I. - here's another quote for you:

今天的痛会比昨天的少一点,明天的痛会比今天少更多。

[today's pain will be slightly less than yesterday's; tomorrow's pain will be much lesser than today's]


haha. nah, more importantly, take this away:

a trophy carries dust; but memories last forever.


wokay?

=Chief Editor signing off=

Thursday, August 9, 2007

first post

understand that this is yet another significant milestone for papillon, and indeed it is my great honour to launch this site. knowing how drama we can be - this might well have warranted the slaughtering of a suckling pig on a carefully chosen auspicious date before i click "publish post" for this very first post to appear.

but what the heck - i can't think of a better date than today - a day that coincides with our Nation's Birthday!

Happy National Day, Papillons!

(Yes, to Pierre as well - you have makan-ed [eaten] enough local food to be at least a bit Singaporeanish.)

okay that's it for now - i'm waiting for the slew of info and photos which i can abracadabra to form a full-blown blog.

disclaimer: timeliness and quality of updates will depend on -

1. my work load,

2. the completeness of submitted articles,

3. how much i like you.

=Chief Editor signing off=