Stayed overnite at barker on Friday once again. Since the beginning of this year, I have been to barker for a lot of times, so much that some of the security guards will say hi to me. Whatever the case was, this stay was necessary because I have to wake up at 4am on Saturday to make my way to ITE Dover for BBAQ. For those who are not in BB reading this, BBAQ means Boys’ Brigade Adventure Quest, and if you wonder why is a fat person doing there, it is because I have to be the marshal for one of the teams. Their rule is 1 marshal for each participating team. Before I went to barker, I went to a mysterious place to buy something for dearie.. haha.. it’s suppose to be a surprise… As I reached barker, they just finished their briefing and went off to bed (floor) shortly after that. As for me, I was doing my stuff in the BB room. I tried to fall asleep around 3am but was too awake to doze off. I got up around 3.45am to pack my stuff to be ready to set off.
My form of transport there was on a lorry. 8 Boys, Ivan, Othniel and myself was squeezing onto the open air lorry, felt like some construction workers at a point of time but I shall comment that Mr Lai was a good driver, didn’t felt sick after that. When we reached there, many people were queuing up to register for the teams. I was quite lost as I’m not sure who I should report to. Of course I found out later after many asking but I shall comment that the registration was quite messy, which cannot be avoided. Eventually, I had my marshals briefing at the ITE Dover canteen which I didn’t bother to listen at all, and was sent to a longkang to do my marshaling.
Initially, I though I would be wearing my kayaking gear to kayak, looking forward to it because it’s time to exercise, but the decision was to get the team marshals to be at the side of the longkang to be safety officer and rescue anyone that is drowning by throwing a “throwback”. Had all the briefing of my duties and made my way down then longkang, I was quite unlucky to be asked to do marshaling across the highway. There wasn’t a direct way and have to make a big detour later to find out that there is another small (but big enough to hinder us) longkang. So, another marshal and us has to walk along the railroad and into an estate to look for the park connector entrance.
The place I have to stand guard was a small bench near to a forested area, along a river, nearer to a jogging path. I think you still don’t know what I am describing, but I can’t do any better. I was there from around 9am to 3pm and it really sucks to be sitting there, feeding mosquito, waiting for something to happen. I waited more than an hour before a team whiz past me on bikes. The same team kayaked passed me only after another hour. Basically, I find my task quite dumb. The water was calm, the width of the river small, “professional” kayaking instructors in the river, so why the hell do you need so many people at the bank to throw rope? Later, they want us to walk back the same detour, which made me very pissed because they promised a vehicle to pick us up at the park connector.
If I can, I would really like to lodge a complaint about the poor allocation of job for marshals. That includes the duty itself, informing the marshals what to prepare (it’s a mosquito infested area) and the transporting of the marshals. Despite being a volunteer and fulfilling regulation of 1 marshal per team, we are still decent adults that have to be treated with care. Moreover, I do not think that you will need so many marshals for this competition. It’s either you put us in shifts or pair us up. At least time will pass faster with another person around.
I made my way back to the kayaking start point and took a bus back to the end point – ITE dover again. On the journey there, we have to wait on the bus as they pick up some people, including 2 teams that dropped out halfway during the race. When I reached dover, the guest of honour, Mr Teo Ser Luck had already arrived. Luckily, I manage to catch the awards presentation, which have our 12BR Open Team receiving the 1st….. runners up. I was really happy for them but felt quite wasted because the Boys team was quite badly placed. Well, they could have got better placing if the “stronger” team didn’t wait for the other team. I’m think that someone in the other did some psycho-ing to them to complete together. Well, if this is the case, I think it’s rather unfair and defeat the purpose of competing. Whatever the case, it cannot be undone and I really hope that our placing for honour roll will not be too bad, but I will really scold if I find out someone did the psycho-ing.
After the ceremony, we had a short debrief and made our way back home. I bathed immediately when I reached home and headed for my bed after that. I was so tired that I slept from 7pm to 11am the next day.
