The Dragon Boat Race

Before I begin anything, this post marks the switch over of this blog to Blogger beta.

I'm still learning to get use to some new features of this blog like labels (and the sudden crash that happened a while ago while writing this long post, so I had to redo everything. As in everything... Thanks, but no thanks Blogger and Microsoft!)

So on we go...

* * * *

The race was held in Jurong Lake, Chinese Garden.

It's my first time to participate in a dragon boat race. Actually, it's indeed my first time to row for a dragon boat team. Our office department team has some first-timers in a dragon race (like me). So it was a privilege to be invited to join the team; I've been wooed before by an officemate to be a part of the office's dragon boat team.

During the first round, I've been assigned to row at the port side of the boat (left that is). We had a good start, and soon left our competitors behind our wake. We placed first and guaranteed ourselves to the finals.

In the second round, we had to make changes to give chance to other team members to row. I was one of the chosen to be replaced, so I had the chance to take my camera with me and shoot the following pictures.

That is our boat. Number 4. The team had a struggled start during the finals round.

In this picture, it's hard to determine whether our boat (number 4) is leading or lagging to number 5. Surprisingly, we placed second. Seems to me we placed third based on this picture. I had to ran along the shoreline just to be able to catch up and have a good position in taking pictures of our dragon boat.

Placing second is still quite achievement. Compare that to last year's department's position which is second to the last. Indeed, quite an improvement. Consider that we only had two weeks of training. No, make it specifically two Sundays only of training.

Notice the only color available for life vests is pink. Pink, and more pink. Even during training days we had no choice but to don pink life vests. The favorite color of local dragon boaters here is pink. Lah.

In between breaks, I had the chance to take some pictures of other participants, such as this.

...and someone took out the dragon head from one of the boats and just laid it out on the grass...

Other pictures:

This is a Chinese gateway to...

...Koi fishes inside. And more Koi fishes.

The stone guards near the gateway. Seems the rightmost guard has asked his collegues if one of them has farted (from the expression of his face, the smell got into his system). And looks like one felt guilty (hint: stooping down).

Before I exited the park's main entrance, I chanced upon this magnificent seven storey pagoda.

Also I noticed this pigeon perched on one of the post of the red wooden bridge along the main entrance. As if the pigeon is asking me, in a quizzical manner, "what are you looking at?".

I couldn't resist taking this picture before I finally left the park's premises. I saw this interesting scene wherein some murder of crows (or conspiracy of ravens?) and siege of herons (also not sure) gather in the huge expanse of grassland surrounding the park. Reminds me so much of the Filipino saying Pagputi ng uwak, pagitim ng tagak(English translation: When the crow turns white, when the heron turns white). Isn't it?