competitions……
Saturday, April 21st, 2007mmph. so its comp season coming up soon.
**start memory lane**
ever since U12, badminton competitions meant a few things : one of which is lousy living conditions if they put you to stay in hostels. Obviously the bunch of us wasn’t interested in sleeping on concrete floors (or bunks which it was rumoured that the actual students using them just got told to find their own places for the nights) so we upped and went - in teacher’s cars - to the nearest cheap hotel/motel. - 6 to a bed seemed reasonable at that time. - Once or twice tho, we had no choice but to live in school classrooms/hostels so we learnt to bathe in cold water, with hoses hanging over toilet doors or using buckets while people outside are yelling for us to hurry…
Another gripe is the (un)availability of phone service in rural areas - in which we mastered the art of finding the best places to send smses - calling was normally impossible. one tip is to find the highest places - i seem to remember a few people typing smses and waving their phones over their heads to get them sent. another favorite seemed to be "grid-walking" in which we walked up and down the field checking signal strength and noting where was the best spots…. Timing also seemed an issue - it was best to send smses when noone was calling the rest … the most reliable handset for line (at that time)? Nokia.
Food in hostels: horrible. rice (hard, extremely a lot), veg (overcooked and swimming in unidentifyable sauses), fish (one, small one, full of bones) or chicken (at least i think it was chicken) - and we sometimes washed our own plates and returned it - its not like i mind the washing up, its that i dont quite trust *others* to wash up properly. mind you, there were kids who were 10+ years olds going for U12 comps. oh. did i mention i learnt from experience that it was possible to eat maggi mee raw from one of these trips?
Oh. and Loooong bus rides. long as in >4 hours. the longest was the one alll the way across sarawak - part of the trip was by boat. the whole thing took like, 18 hours. and this was before the time of the mp3 player, some did bring walkmen but they needed to conserve batteries. this was also where i learnt to sleep in any moving vehicle (where i had a seat) on journeys of more than 20 minutes long - when u have slept thru a bus going up and down and sideways on dirt roads cuz the road was underconstruction ……. id say u can sleep thru anything.
One major perk : no school. for 3-4 or 4-5 days. cool =D
**end memory lane**
