General elections polling day

On the 7th of may, it was polling day for the general elections 2011 for Singapore. The results starting coming in at 10pm where everything was counted. It was an exciting time seeing results of opposition winning seats in the parliament. However, there were some things that were quite saddening to see, an example is like Lina Chiam losing to Sitoh Yih Pin in the potong pasir SMC, she lost by a mere 114 votes- 0.8% to Sitoh Yih Pin, I believe that she should have won as she has Chiam See Tong as her husband and he can give her advice on what to do and what to say in the parliament so it is actually okay if she takes his place in the SMC. With Chiam See Tong losing in the Bishan-Toa Payoh GRC, it was sad that we lost a political veteran in the parliament as Chiam See Tong is one of the most respected politician in Singapore's history of politics other than MM Lee. It was good to see that Mr Low Thia Khiang's double gamble paid off and that he has won the first GRC in many years, I hope that Mr Low Thia Khiang's team will carry out what they said they will do as said in the rallies and not take over the job from PAP yet do nothing. All in all, I think that this shows that the PAP will have to change themselves in order to garner votes from Singapore citizens in the next elections as Singaporeans are starting to learn that PAP is not as good as they say so and that Singaporeans are starting to think carefully about they decisions in voting.

General Elections (Nominations Day)

On the 27th of April, after my training, I straight away searched for the news for nominations day. Apparently, I was very surprised all GRCs and SMCs were contested except for the Tanjong Pagar GRC. It was the first time since independecent that almost all GRCs and all SMCs were contested in the elections. I also heard the news about George Yeo vs-ing the workers party A team where it is a strong fight and that George Yeo may lose his seat. I think from the nominations day, I think that PAP's stranglehold on Singapore is dropping as from the previous election. In the previous elections, almost half of all the GRCs were walkovers and thus the PAP kept their place as ruling government easily. Whereas, in this elections, Singapore is starting to mature up as more opposition parties are fighting with PAP with concrete plans on what to do after they win the elections, not like the previous elections where some of the opposition parties just opposed for the sake of opposing. In this elections, the ones who caught my attention were Nicole Seah and Tin Pei Ling, those were the 2 young stars of the general elections 2011. Tin Pei Ling had a negative image and Nicole Seah was well-liked by everyone. It is good to see that more young people are involved in politics as sooner or later when the older generation is gone, the younger generation would have to take over their place and that Singapore would be ruled by the younger generation in a matter of years.

National Schools Dragonboat Competition

The competition is exactly 2 weeks after the NSCC competitions and it is a one day event. There are a total of 4 events per division in this competition. 20 crew 500m, 20 crew 250m, 10 crew 500m and 10 crew 250m. Before the competition started, we were all quite nervous and scared of the SJI/ACSI winning us in the competition for both the C div and the B div. When the first race ( heats) started, the B div boys conserved their energy yet got first in the 20 crew 500m. It was a moralising start as we knew that we were capable of winning ACSi/SJI. After the heats, all boats progressed to the finals in the 500m event.. The first finals for the C division was the 10 crew 500m. Surprisingly we thrashed ACSI and SJI in the 10 crew event by over 7 seconds which was actually alot, that was our first gold medal. In the next race, the 20 men 500m event, we were quite scared to lose to other schools in that event as in the 20 crew 500m event, we had to put sec ones into the boat as we had not enough people to race. We thrashed again by over 7 seconds in the 20men 500m event which was again a surprising result to us resulting in our 2nd gold medal. The B div crew did not get so good results as they got gold for the 20men 500m and silver for the 10men 500m. Before the 250m events came, the rain came, there was lightning and thus the organisers decided to postpone the event to the 8th of July, we were quite sure that we would be able to get a clean sweep of gold medals for the C division team as we lost to the A division 20men boat in 250m by only a mere 4 seconds. Till the 8th of July, the dragonboat title is still within our reach.

NSCC

The National Schools Canoeing Championship is over. It was an exciting yet sad 4 days as we progressed through the heats, the semi-finals and lastly the finals. The whole B and C div were doing well in the heats, with all boats going into at least semi-finals, it was a good start for the first 2 days. However, in the semi-finals, things started to go bad. Some of the boats who were supposed to get into the finals were kicked out and that decreased our chances for getting the title for the B and C div. Me and my partner got into straight-finals and did not even need to go through semi-finals. On the last day, the finals, things were the worst, the boats who were supposed to get gold got 2nd/3rd/4th. In the C division team, almost everyone got silver for one event and no one got a gold medal. The C division team lost to SJI by 9 points and if the person who was supposed to get double gold got double gold, we would have won the title. It was a painful experience as we actually only lost by a little bit to SJI despite training quite hard in the past year and a half. For the B div boys, they lost by 3 points to ACSI, if one of the boats who lost to ACSI by 1sec in an event won ACSI, they would have gotten gold and thus win the title. Both divisions lost to the rivals schools by a fraction of a hair length and thus it was saddening that we lost despite training hard. However, we improved tremendously from the year before as we lost by a few points rather than losing by 30 over points. After the competition, the team just went to eat dinner together and watched the movie Rio to celebrate our improvement from the previous year.