I will now be reflecting on the recent competition I had in Malaysia, for St John Ambulance Brigade(:
A one day competition, may seem extremely short, in a matter of a few hours. However, the process may not be so short.
To get to this Malaysia-Singapore First Aid Competition, held once every two years, we had to be the best in Singapore, and that is not easy task.
There are three rounds for us to pass.
- Zonals (Against 4 Schools)
- Nationals (Against 10 Schools)
- Malaysia-Singapore (Against Malaysia's Best Team)
I will start off with the Zonals first. The Zonals is held in April, and to make sure we are prepared to win it, we started in the December holidays. Every weekday of the December holiday, we will come down to Hwa Chong Institution to have our training sessions, which are 4 hours each.
At the start, it was really enjoyable and interesting, especially since we were amateurs and were learning new things, such as casualty management, casualty simulation, transportation of casualty etc. However, when we became more and more good in these aspects, it became a routine for us, and hence all of us became restless and bored, despite it being only the first 2 months of training.
Furthermore, being a Uniform Group, discipline is important, and during the trainings and casualty simulation cases, when we do badly, we will get punished and shouted at by our Sirs and Seniors, and usually, we have to pump, in other words, "Knock it Down", frequently during training. The pressure that we face also became one of the factors that made us detest training more and more.
Adding on to those two factors, being the only Secondary 2 in the Secondary 3 Competition Team, I feel left out, since all their discussion topics etc were different. Furthermore, I became left out by my squad mates, and hence training really became somewhat a nightmare to me.
However, with resilience being our school's key motto, we persevered on, all the way until the Zonals. The Zonals was an easy round to pass, since we had much more training time and experience than the other teams, being the best Corps in our Zone (Zone7) for consecutively 9 years. We won with a astonishing number of points (40 points)
However, winning the Zonals means that we have to undergo 3 more months of training until the Nationals, and hence it means a larger responsibility and even more stressful and frequent training sessions. But now, the urge to win is much stronger. My team now has the motivation to train as hard as we can to make sure we win the Nationals.
As expected, training became extremely frequent, and now Saturdays were also included as one of the training days. Next, every morning before flag raising, we have to report for morning footdrill. Hence lots of sacrifice had to be made, such as waking up earlier, burning midnight oil to study, etc. Training time also dragged on up to 8pm. Hence, by the time i reach home, which is about 9pm, there would be no time to do anything, but take a bath, eat and sleep.
However, persevere we must, and so we did. Finally, the long awaited Nationals arrived. I was really nervous then, and my lips and legs kept shivering. The opponents we now meet are the best from every single zone in Singapore and furthermore, we were much younger than most of the competitors, which were usually secondary 4 or even Junior College 1.
During the competition, we did not do as expected, and performed below average standards. Despite that, we kept our morale high, unaffected, and carried on with the competition. Finally, when the results were announced, I cried tears of joy. The hard work and effort we put in has not gone down the drain!
Here is the score chart. We won by a mere margin of 1.5 marks!
So after winning the Nationals, we are crowned the best team in Singapore. Hence, we will represent Singapore to go to Malaysia and compete against their best team.
And this time, we won by only 0.5 marks!
And this time, we won by only 0.5 marks!
Here is the picture of the majestic trophies!(:
The one we won is the second from the right. It was really an honour to help Singapore gain glory, as this trophy has been won by Malaysia for the past 6 years. Furthermore, our name are going to be carved on it. It is really a once in a life time opportunity!
That is all, hope you enjoyed it!
Yours sincerely,
Mervin (:
2 comments:
Hi Mervin,
Woah, very nicely written. This particular reflection is very nice, as it exclusively includes pictures and engages the audience. You can actually reflect more, because it is a reflective piece, like, try to improvise on the implications, the emotions, the future ambitions. Overall, I pretty much liked that post; it was uniquely attractive. :D
I feel that this reflective writing is one of the best up till now. Yeah and I agree with Benedict, it looks attractive with all those pictures. What made it most pleasurable to read was that the reflection was rather indepth and not just on the surface. For example how you thought it was fun at first, slowly dropping rates of interest, not wanting to continue and finally persevering to success, achieving champions.
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