Went mangrove expedition with the madcaps yesterday. Initally wasn't too keen about it but couldn't resist the enthusiastic invitiation from people like Lance and Wilson. Only decided to go around 1am in the morning, packed and went to sleep immediately.

Met Wilson, Zhihao and Darren in the morn to take a cab from AMK at 8.30am and we planned to go for breakfast when we reached Changi. So I didn't eat anything before leaving the house, it was a terrible mistake. Darren was disgustingly late. And by the time we reached the club, we had to prepare ourselves for launching so that we wont miss the high tide in the mangroves. Zhihao was the only clever one who had his breakfast, but he was really pissed with Darren for being late for half an hour. He's a super time conscious person and I'm already quite scared of him when I'm late for ten minutes from past experiences, so he was literally fuming when Darren finally appeared. I was so thankful that I was on time.

The next 'clever' thing that I did was to unsuspectingly follow everyone else and draw a dancer. I'm sure that I wasn't the only one who thought otherwise but Zhihao told me that it will make the whole thing more challenging. I didn't realise that what he said was more than an understatement. At the end of the whole thing, everyone told me that it was their first expedition to ubin in dancer too. But worse for me, as I didn't go through 2 star or 3 star courses, so didn't use dancer to go anywhere before. It was like a long lost friend for me, and yest was only the fourth time I sit inside the dancer for the past two years or so. Just after the first ten minutes, we crossed channel to go over ubin and I was already starting to get seasick..on an empty stomach. Horrible feeling at that point of time, but once the initial 'adventure' was over, everything just got better for me. Well, I still had my luck in one thing. Everyone else was going at a leisurely pace, then I just need to pia all the way just to keep up. My poor arms... they're very unfortunate as I didn't dare to give them any rest till it was break time. Suddenly, SIE seemed like a piece of cake, and I think I was really using double the effort I've used for SIE.

I was really happier when we reached the mangrove, as the condition of the water was much better there, and the tide would just bring us along. Finally I had the time to catch my breath, paddle at a more leisurely place and enjoy the scenery! The mangrove opening was at the end of noordin and it cuts through ubin to the jetty side. We went holland once as all the branches looked very similar and sometimes Lance (who was leading the exp) couldn't decide where to go. But the rest of the journey was successful. The only good thing about the dumb dancer was that we could drag the kayak across the landing and then go down the mud like a slide. Luckily ah teck wasn't around to see how we handled it. =P There was a bridge at the West side of ubin which we had to cross underneath, that was the really fun part. Staff Erik had to take off his buoyancy vest to prevent himself from getting stucked inside as the tide was still high and the opening was very minimum. Everyone was already complaining about their hunger when we reached that part, especially Darren. I was really cursing him over and over as my stomach was growling the whole time although I didn't have the energy left to complain. I was secretly very happy when a vicious fly chased after him in the swamp and bit him many times. Hee hee.. I think he was really my worst enemy at the club now, suddenly Tan LiangPing just seemed so much sweeter, harmless and nicer than him.

We took some time to practice our skills when we got back to club as the journey back was less than an hour. The club 'boys' were all doing their hand rolls, hee hee.. they really CMI!! So I discreetly go to one corner at the back of the sea to practice the humble eskimo. =P Really felt very achieved at the end of the day, much happier as compared to the demoralising practice on Sunday...