went to Ubin over the weekend. had to skip IHPT on saturday morning, so informed joshua about my pending absence, and had him agree to sign me in. somehow he forgot about it and msged me on saturday morning itself, saying he was late, and asked ME to sign HIM in. argh. luckily yangjun had the initiative to sign in for me, being the first one in that morning. joshua, on the other hand, didn’t tell anyone else he was going to be late. another absent mark for him. whoops.
set off for SAF yacht club at 7.30am on saturday, as part of the advance party. did all the usual prepping of stores etc and awaited the arrival of the main body at around 9. got jane as my canoeing partner. all was alright until we rounded the bend and passed sembawang park; it was then that she started to complain of aching arms. not completely unexpected, really… my arms were aching too.
anyhow, managed to make it to ubin… numerous raft-ups, and a brief beach-up on puggol beach for lunch.
then it started raining.
so we sat under shelter for an hour or two, waiting for the rain to stop.
soon discovered our original campsite was flooded, so conveniently broke into the ubin Community Center for a roof over our heads during the night. even had a BBQ in there too. i say, i was pretty impressed by the morale of those present. even with the ever-present threat of being prosecuted by the police for trespassing, we sang, drank and made merry around the BBQ till pretty late.
spent the night in my hammock, waking every now and then to gavin’s snoring. it made him sound like some invisible spirit was choking him in his sleep. i got one complaint about MY snoring, but then again, only one person… hmm… could’ve been the bad air.
woke early the next morning. ironically, i caught more hours of sleep while outdoors, in a hammock, being assailed by mosquitoes, and constantly jarred awake by someone’s snoring than i did on any of my past 14 nights in my room. damned project.
had breakfast at the kopitiam. lady boss was a flustered-looking middle-aged dame who had trouble keeping track of her orders. our breakfast was consequently delivered to us in installments. first 3 milos and a coffee. then 2 eggs. then a coffee. and then 2 more eggs. over the course of nearly an hour. she should’ve opted for the 20-year payment plan. maybe then i wouldn’t have hounded her so much.
canoed back to the mainland. jane chose the powerboat option, so i was re-paired with tianyun, who prompty set her paddle down and declared a state of fatigue after the first 20 strokes. i looked back. i could still count the rocks on the beach. there were still people getting into their canoes.
somehow, we managed to reach SAF yacht club in our starboard-veering craft running on nothing more than fatigued muscle power and the collective prayer of two tortured souls.
35 km in under 13 hours.
mmm. when can we do this again?
Gary :: Dec.01.2003 ::
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