i said everything's fine, still going on good. but in reality, we have broken up, days before our 15th mth. had wishes of creating a beautiful story for the both of us. but it jz didn't work out in the end.

during this time, we've been thro heaven and hell, thanks for the care, patience, and understanding from you all these while. its just kinda ironic that our roles were reversed, b4 and during the r/s. nevertheless, no matter wad, ill still be here for u, and i know u'll be here too.

===========================================
finally finished the SMRT challenge race held on last sunday. anw, thanks to alvin, chongwei and freddy, for joining me on this adventure. i have always been fascinated by such search-find-travel-challenge task-finish line, partly due to the Amazing Race. its like a dream come true.

we made pretty few blunders which teams do commit too on the Amazing Race itself. haha, to think when i was sitting in front of the telly, i was like telling myself, 'oh no, why are they so dumb, i could have done better than them'. when faced with the pressure and fatigue and excitement, thats when blunders came in.

it was raining heavily when the race was about to kick off from taka open square at 9am, and all hell broke loose, we rushed for the clue hidden in the numerous pink balloons. haha, i had a bit of fear bursting balloons, so i told alvin to smash it open. there were 8 clues that will lead us to our 8 challenge stops. in whichever order of travel we prefer.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

BLUNDER NO. 1 - we read one of the clues wrongly, it was supposed to mean DOVER MRT, but we interpreted it to be either lavender or aljunied. based on this statement in the clue, 'old wise dame'. i assumed it meant national stadium, since stadium was referred to as great old dame.

the clue was 'Built when trains were not at rest, next to an old wise dame. It actually meant, the station was built when trains are still moving. Hence, Dover! too consumed by the urgency of moving off asap and misread the clue.

but we managed to solve other clues pretty quickly. And our first stop was at the ulu pandan depot. A marvel to see the trains parked side by side. The challenge task was easy. write down the steps to activate the emergency escape ramp, which was done by me and alvin. while chongwei and fred had to count the total number of fire extinguishers in the entire train.

Bt Panjang LRT next...

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

BLUNDER NO. 2 - haha. its really a case of 'monkey see monkey do'. since i live at bt panj, i know that 963 stop directly across the road from the lrt station but not very visible, so teams who aint sure will take a big round to get to its front side. i was telling alvin secretly that, i bet teams wouldn't press the bell b4 that vital stop. And indeed, they didn't. Till i pressed the bell at the last second. the bus screeched to a stop and i told my team mates to cheong down the bus!

haha and the remaining 3 teams immediately took after us. that was a pretty smart thing to do till we got outwitted by our own cleverness. i was in such a hurry to get there fast that we ran all the way up the station platform when in fact, the challenge task was at the ground level!

all the rush for nothing. only one team followed us though. haha i think they cursed us. wasted precious time as a result. oh well, anw, the task was to do certain actions in response to his safety questions, namely push up, squats, star-jumps, situps.

Next stop.. Kranji Turf Club
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

BLUNDER NO. 3 - always check out the sponsors for any kind of race. most probably, they would require you to do something with regards to them or make a trip down to their actual place. Only at yishun bus interchange, we accidentally spotted the challenge poster and the LOGOS OF THE SPONSOR. For example, we had to go to Yishun safra, if not, the location the clue described would simply mean the station itself.

And u guessed it right, there was the SINGAPORE POLY (DOVER) logo listed right there too.

Stop after that... Novena (velocity)

Just one of us is needed to go some situp exercises with a fitness ball and list out some safety slogans. Our gym enthusiast, chongwei settled it. haha.

Next stop... New-water plant.

The walk into the plant was about 1km long. and to our stroke of luck, a tour minibus went by and freddy instinctively stuck out his thumb for hitch hike. and the driver stopped the bus! oh yeah! we were going mad already.

What happened next was simply hilarious. the bus went by the other teams and despite their frantic waving, the driver shrugged them off and complained 'no time to stop for him la'.

Finally... after all the huff and puff, we made it to 7/8 venues. Still debating whether to make it to our blunder venue, Spore Poly. A sense of incompleteness made up our minds.

Challenge was pretty direct too, jz search for the safety slogans paper slips hidden at random locations of the vicinity, and with that, we finally got that elusive stamp on the last stop.


WE HAVE COMPLETED THE SMRT CHALLENGE RACE!

Time to make our way back to the starting point and cross the finishing line.

no matter what we do, we have to start and finish together at the same spot. regardless of how we may have fared, as long as we have done to our best ability, its sufficient enough.

eventually, in our category, we came in 47th out of 130 teams. i know teams behind us most prob have given up, but im glad we stuck it out to the end.