28..

.. is not my age. sorry to disappoint you people, but im much younger than that. haha.

anyway, that's the number of hours that i was awake for from friday to saturday and it left me barely alive after that. even fell into a slight fever in the middle of the night and left me half dead when i was at training today.

night cycling on friday night was fun as of every year and we did crazy stuff to one another as usual (actually just to joanna and tim at times), how many times in a year can we act like we're fighting with each other at glutton bay and hang someone upside down over the railing of the singapore river.

this year's route was much better than last year, more straight roads, less uphills and longer eating times. really makes it relaxing that the "training" route that we had last year which made our legs feel like jelly by daybreak.

i left east coast straight after we reached the destination (east coast, duh.) and headed straight to seng kang for SMU's Ultimate competition, Grab Huck Score. this is also the event that chalked up the number of hours of me not sleeping. i had half a mind to let the competition slip because i was too tired and i pretty much had to play 95% of the points. but looking at how much effort everyone was putting in, i thought we'll just go all the way.

had to play the other NUS team in the quaters, we lost but the other NUS team went on to win the whole competition, which was still good although i didn't get to play in the finals (or rather, a good thing that i didn't play, i can't imagine the state that i'll be in if i played). i've got a very good feeling about the whole NUS Ultimate this year, people are enthu and hardworking, we've got quite a potential team this year. hopefully it'll turn out well.

Real Early Post

it's insane that i'm still awake right now, this is my 3rd night in a row that im sleeping after 4pm and it's totally not helping that i've stuff to do at night till late. someone asked if i was busy with work. well, i AM busy with work, just not school work and it's really worrying. i really have to stop playing DOTA after clearing all my hall stuff and actually do some school work. it's about time to start revising my work.

on another note, was at sentosa for a beach tourney over the weekend and it was pretty tiring, came back with a semi-swollen ankle (old injury), a graze, cut on my back and pretty pissed off. pissed off at the fact that the filippinos that we played against in the tournaments were so much faster than me. haha. i'm not pissed off at them but myself, seems like im still not as fast as i want to be, it's giving me more motivation to run more. it's always a joy to play with the filippinos in any Ultimate Frisbee tournament, they're all really fun and friendly people.

pretty glad that i played in the tournament with an "all-star" team, it's rare to play with experienced players from different clubs and countries in one team. and i really have to thank jason for showing me how it is to be playing with heart, something that i've think that i've lost over the years and perhaps to a certain amount of laziness as i become more seasoned. reminded myself of the days when i just started playing, i made up whatever i was lacking in skill with heart and just played really hard. i haven't been able to do that in recent years and it felt good to be doing it again. now to make sure that it stays that way.

will leave this post with a photo montage of the singapore flyer that i made for a part of my assignment:

check out the full assignment here if you're interested to see more:
http://www.egomy.org/triggerhappy/2008/10/assignment-4-urban-fantasy-1.html

Not Good Enough

not good enough.
just simply not good enough.

i know the weekend's and the tournament's over, no point brooding over it, but i just can't help it. there were a lot of what ifs in my mind after the last game on sunday. what if we were more calm, what if we were better drilled than we were over the weekend, what if nobody was bothered by the pressure.

i wish i could have done more, or rather, i know i could have done more, if i was as fit as i was back then, if i wasn't injury laden, if i tried pushing my body to work harder.

would there be a difference if these were more than just simply "what ifs"? i don't know and i'll probably never know since it's over now.

5 yrs into building this team and i really thought we were going to have what it takes to get a result finally, i really wanted it damn badly, but i guess things don't always go your way. that's how life is, you just have learn how to deal with it.

im trying to deal with it now, it's just that i can't swallow this harsh reality fully right now. it's a result that's unbelievable even to bystanders looking at us.

it's time to regroup, get back to peak fitness and time to push this body to new limits.

guys, a year's a long time to make a difference.
less thinking, get to work.
i know i will, what about you?

Faith

it's been a very long time since i've felt so genuinely disappointed about something and today i felt this dreaded feeling once again. it was pretty bad i guess, to the extend that i didn't really feel like going for the team dinner (sorry guys) and stayed in hall to help out with the orientation instead.

i asked myself why i was feeling so disappointed: was it the fact that i expected too much of my teammates that when they under perform, i'll feel that it's not enough? or the fact that i have too much faith in them and when we don't do well, i feel like we're selling ourselves short in the game?

came to a conclusion that it's more of the latter and when i look back, i realize how people react to my so called "faith" in them. some people think of it as a joke and smirk when i become too serious when im explaining things during training. a few think that the "faith" that i put in them is too much to take, in turn told me that they think that not good enough and want to go to the second team instead.

im sure there will people think that im being emo and all because i didn't go for the dinner, frankly, i really don't care because this is how much this team means to me, so much that it's one of the main priorities in my life and it gets frustrating for me sometimes.

maybe im just tired, maybe i should try having people telling me what to do instead then maybe they'll know what im talking about.

i just hope that something like today won't happen again because i really hate feeling like this, makes me feel like an asswipe.

Sad Fact of Life

a team, its identity and its culture are all constructed by people who are in the common group where they share the same interest and goals. they build their culture around their interests, goals and things that matter.

this is what a team is made up of.

but sadly, the very deconstruction of a team lies on same set of principles that constructs it.

in the end the ones that give their everything to the team suffers all the repercussions when the team falters. it gets even worse when the very people who, ironically, are part of the team construction contribute to the deconstruction and downfall.

as the captain of the team and someone who has contributed so much to the team, i am at a lost of words of how im feeling now. it's just bad.

The Weekend I Was Known As William

i was in bangkok for an Ultimate Frisbee tournament and the tournament was structured in such a way that everyone will be randomly placed into 1 of 10 teams for the weekend so everyone will pretty much play with people from all over asia that they don't know.

as many of you know (or don't know) the demography of the asia ultimate scene are predominantly ex-pats, mostly from states, canada and australia, so chinese names are always going to be a problem for them.

usually i would just introduce myself:

"Hi, my name is Wei - Liang."
*awkward silence from teammate*
"Just call me Liang"

but this year round my teammates took the initiative to transform my name into "William" and it really caught on with them. even so when they announced my name at the end of the tournament, they used "William". some of the guys from singapore were totally lost when some people were talking to them of a certain "William" from singapore and they couldn't stop laughing when they found out that it was me. am i gonna get hell from them when they get back from bangkok or what. haha.

anyway, bangkok was great fun, meeting people from thailand to alaska, it's a very cool mix of people who come together to play a common game. 7 games in 2 days really took a toll on my body and i'm feeling it as im typing this.

strained quads from running too much, bruised hip from a hard landing on a dive, sore thumb from a knock. rachel and eileen never fails to remind me that i always bring back injuries when i go for tournaments and i guess they're right. at least the injuries are not so bad this time round.

photos of the weekend coming soon!