일요일, 3월 07, 2004
tears. toil. agony.
pride. passion.glory.

today was the 'annual' (as usual, i don't know how 'annual' is 'annual'...) singsoc 5-a-side football tournament, otherwise termed 'the tournament of nations'. and, i use the word 'tournament' in the loosest sense of the word.

the weather was on and off, alternating between rain and sunshine as we spent our allotted 3 hours on the pitch. the first four matches left us seriously under-staffed, seeing that one of the required members of our company was missing, only appearing 2 minutes -- ok, be fair, 5 minutes before the end of the first qualifying round (there were three), and almost, and i mean almost scored an own goal for us. hrm.... nice one.

anyway, moving on to better things, the eight teams played splendidly despite the bad weather. however, in future, when organising such events in future, never, ever put spain and saudi arabia together. these guys really went head to head, they were literally out for blood. in view of the fact that the singsoc is a small organisation, run by peace-loving people, and had 3 girls running around the pitch for most of the time without loudhailers, shouting their lungs out and sharing one stopwatch and one whistle between them, you see how some things were blown out of proportion due to the high tension in the air. we were thinking 'friendly match', while others were thinking 'do or die', so there was a conflict of interests.

what was really cool was the fact that so many people responded to our humble little email that we sent out. and people were really enthusiastic about it, so we had a good time, despite the erratic weather and all that. nice, and we even got to see a rainbow. *starry-eyed*

the free food at the hogshead wasn't too bad either, although the albino chickens left something to be desired. striking up random conversations with the cute french guy was a liberating experience, but the best thing was that i didn't get his name! *gasp!* oh well, that's life.

headed off to romeo's for dinner with renu, and lovely food there was there, and the nice waiter kept talking to us in between perusals of the ronald mcdonald magazine that we gave to him. (we nicked it from the mac's outlet on our way out) he really enjoyed it, i must say. that's what i call a gastronomic experience.

all in all, it was a good day. we enjoyed the day of sun, rain, and blustery winds, not to mention boys in shor-- no, i didn't say that. what i meant was, the erm, good camaraderie and good sportmanship that was displayed by the different teams. a sunday well spent indeed.