Geography Challenge 9th June 2007

I met the team at Hougang MRT station @ 7 a.m. to top up their EZlink card as well as to give to them some money for lunch. As we reached Clementi MRT quite early, I decided to give them a treat @ MacDonald. Afterall, they had made their way to the final round and deserve some credit!

We reached LT13 at 8.30 a.m. and after registeration, the team went into the LT. I expected them to come out of the LT13 earlier as we were among the first few to register. However, it seems that they have to complete a word search before they can start on the race. Once they have completed the word search, they are flag off in batch of 6. I waited impatiently and I think our team were the 3rd batch to be released, almost 20 mins after the first batch (RI, RGS...).

I think our team was quite unlucky that day. Though they could identify the 1st clue which was at Bishan quickly, they were given the wrong envelope at the first station. When they arrived at the second station, which was at Harbourfront, they were told that there was no envelope for them. At the end the team wasted more than an hour and Wasiur told me they went up and down the Dhobby Ghaut Interchange 6 times! They were also quite unlucky in that when they reached the Pasir Ris Park, the station was closed for lunch.. and they wasted more time. At the end they only completed 4 stations and were 2 mins late! Sean had to rush off to a hockey match at Tampines.

The Award Ceremony cum final round for the top 3 teams started at around 5.10 p.m. The Quiz was very challenging and caught the attentions of all the participants, as we also tried to see whether we could answer the questions. At the end, RGS emerged as the champion. As there wasn't any sponsor this year, the finalists were not awarded any prizes, unlike 2 years ago, when Zhidong and his team actually got some book vouchers for getting into the final round. In fact Prof Huang mentioned that they almost wanted to cancel the Geography Challenge this year as there was no sponsor!

I called for a MPV Cab to take in all 5 of us back to Hougang Mall. Along the way, I think Wasiur and his gang were like teasing Jauhari over the phone? It was a tiring day but I hope that the team had fun and learnt much more about Geography from the competition.