Sunday, March 16, 2008
@ 1:14 AM
Wushu @ Shenzhen and Hong Kong
THE DAY BEFORE DEPARTURE
Met Ying Qing at Bukit Batok MRT. We were getting a ride from Wei Liang's father to the airport and spent the night at the airport until the next morning. Once at the airport, there was the three of us, Jun Heng and Wan Lin. Visited Terminal 3 and it was absolutely beautiful. After that, we had some light food and drinks at the Coffee Club. The night was over soon and it was about time everybody gathered at the meeting point.
DAY 1
Reached Hong Kong at about 11am+. Once there, we had a bit of trouble getting through the customs to Shenzhen. After that, we made our way to the hotel and had free time until dinner where we had our dinner at our hotel, Regency Hotel.
DAY 2
We woke up early and had our morning jog before breakfast. After breakfast, we made our way to our training place in Shenzhen Ti Gong Da Dui. It was some sort of a sports school. They had an indoor hall for Wushu and Gymnastics. Our training there was quite slack, I thought we would get to train with the people there but there wasn't many people there. The day past quickly and had lunch at some nearby food shop. Had our afternoon training after an hour or two rest. Head back to hotel at about 4-5pm+.
DAY 3 -DAY 5
Breakfast, training as usual, except on one of the days we only trained in the morning. Had a bit of shopping time during one of the few days. On the last day of training, we only managed to interact with some of the Shenzhen wushu people, mostly youngsters ranging from age 10-20. Took some photos and chatted with a few of them.
DAY 6
We had an entire day of shopping on this day. Can't really remember much on this day. We packed our luggage in the night in preparation for the moving over to Hong Kong.
DAY 7
Left our hotel at about 12pm. We made our way to the checkpoint to take the train from Shenzhen towards Hong Kong. At the checkpoint, we could see some of the other teams that would be competing in the competition. It took quite some time before we managed to get on the train towards Hong Kong. We alighted at this station called University. Once there, we board a bus towards our hotel, L' Hotel. It was a very grand hotel and our stay there was totally covered by the committee of the wushu competition.
DAY 8
Woke up early for breakfast as well as the trip to the Ma On Shan Stadium where the Hong Kong International Wushu Festival would be held. Buses were allocated different time intervals to shuttle the competitors to and from the stadium and hotel. We made it to the opening ceremony. All the guys were set to compete in the first day of competition. The events were categorize firstly by gender, age group and followed by event. It resulted in such a way that in some category, there may be only one or two people competing, which made it relevantly easy to earn the first three places. Each of the guys from the Republic Polytechnic and Wufang won at least a medal each. I won a Bronze for Sword and Silver for Spear.
DAY 9
The girls were competing on this day. Each of them won at least one medal as well. We spent the whole day in the stadium as the girls were competing at different timings.
DAY 10
The sparring event was on during this day. We didn't win a medal for this event. Eventually, we had some photo-taking and head back to the hotel. There was the closing ceremony and we got overall second, tied with some other countries for having quite a number of medals, about 25+.
DAY 11
This was a shopping day for us in Hong Kong. Bought quite a few things. Can't remember much about what happened.
DAY 12
Made our way to the airport at about 3pm+. Once there, we check-in our luggage and had about 2 hours to get some stuff before boarding our plane. Dinner was provided on the plane. Back at Singapore, some bought alcohol from the Duty Free shop and we collected our luggage. I took a cab with Ying Qing and Lister. Reached home about 2am I think.
Photos will be up in the weeks to come. I will need to get from the RP people.