A day at sentosa

11/11/06 was the day me and another 8 of my ex-NCC friends went to sentosa for a day of beach volleyball. Well,the number of people who went could have been more if it wasn't for personal committment,duty,work and illness. But nonetheless,i was already very happy with the number of people who turned up. At least it shows that i am not such a failure at organising such outings...haha. Anyway,the meeting time was scheduled at 10am but by the time everyone had arrived,due to some unforseen circumstances that i shall no elaborate,it was around 10.50am,lol. So we made our way over to sentosa. Entrance was supposed to be free if we had taken the shuttle bus for a family day carnival which my dear friend yiqin had helped us obtain tickets for.However,we had all unanimously agreed upon taken the actual sentosa shuttle bus instead to cut short the waiting time and in the end,we had to each pay $1 instead of the usual $3,all thanks to the family day ticket again. I felt that it was well worth it given the shortened time that we were required to wait. Upon reaching our destination,we headed towards the part of the beach which was known to have volleyball courts and along the way,we encountered the family day carnival site. A stop by the food redemption booth saw us collecting our lunch. Thereafter,we went straight for an empty volleyball court which was located within the grounds of the carnival site itself.It didn't bother us that there were many people around us and that some of them may have been watching us play. Neither did it bother us that we were inexperienced players and that the volleyball was flying all over the place.All we knew is that we were all having fun. All of a sudden,the sky started to darken and storm clouds loomed in the skies not far away. We were commenting that it would definately rain soon but judging from the cloud patterns,it would not last long. Not long after,it really did started to rain. First it was just drizzle,soon the rain came down like bullets. At that moment,we heard the MC for the carnival announce that according to the weather services,it was predicted that the rain was only passing showers and soon it would stop.For a moment,we were optimistic that what he said was true but when the rain did not stop after 15minutes,we started to lose hope. The rain was pelting down as heavily as before and the skies seemed just as cloudy. There was even thunder and lightning and boy was the wind blowing strongly. But we were not concerned of the weather that had enveloped the area. We were not even bothered that visibility was bad as rainwater kept entering our eyes or that it was very cold due to the strong gusts of wind that swept through the rather naked beach. All that we had in mind was our game of volleyball. We just continued with our game when many others had took to the shelters. For a moment,we seemed as though we were the main attraction on the beach,with noone else in the open but us,shouting and laughing amongst ourselves.After about an hour or so in the rain,we finally gave up.The lightning flashes above our heads coupled with the never ending barrage of rain drops convinced us that this was not a passing shower but rather a storm that would last for quite sometime.The cold that was now rather unbearable forced us to head towards the toilet so that we could bathe and change out of our wet clothes.After our baths,we realised that were still stranded as the route to the bus stop out of the area was a good 1km walk or so in the open where it was still raining.Suddenly,we caught sight of people donning ponchos and we figured that there may be ponchos as gifts in the goodie bags which we had yet collected.True enough,after redeeming our goodie bags,amongst a handful of other gifts,we found ponchos,our life savers out of the area! We quickly donned the ponchos and headed for the bus stop where we took the family day carnival shuttle bus back to the mainland. We ended up at harbourfront centre where we stopped over at pastamania for a quick meal before taking a walk around vivocity. Thereafter,someone from amongst us suggested that we all sat down for a coffee. The starbucks outlet at vivocity was full so another suggestion came up that we proceeded down to either eastpoint or TM instead. I was reluctantat first,especially since these 2 places were out of my way when i could just take the NEL back to hougang where i lived. However in the end,after some persuasion,i figured that it would be nice for us all to sit down and chit chat over coffee. So we ended up at eastpoint where the crowd was lesser. We had a great time chatting among ourselves,reminiscing the past as well as talking about some other topics in life. It was really nice to be able to catch up with the rest and i am sure that they would agree with me. On the whole,despite the bad weather,i'd say that it was a very enjoyable day today.With such a rare chance to catch up with one another,i felt that the day was well spent and it was well worth every effort to organise this outing. Hope to have another outing real soon,this time with more people perhaps?Cheers to you guys=)