Thursday, June 13, 2013
12 June 2013.
The day that the Freshfields Dragon Boat Team, 'Ark Angels', made history.
In a fitting display of pathetic fallacy, the morning dawned with ominous grey skies and dramatic black clouds. The threat of rain was in the air, the air sizzled with electricity - a storm was brewing.
Although it never amounted to more than the occasional drizzle, that set the tone for the rest of the day: full of drama and the ever-present threat of disaster.
Our first race was at 11:09am (seriously, someone's being pedantic, 11:09?). I had some time to spare and needed fuel to get me going, so ended up (unintentionally) ordering an epic fried egg sandwich stuffed with three eggs and dripping with molten cheddar cheese and mustard.
The bread is the length of the distance from my wrist to elbow.
Yes THAT long.
In hindsight, I really needed that.
Stanley Main Beach, where the race was held, was swarming with people. The press estimated that about 300,000 people turned up. Imagine a (not very long) strip of sand with every inch occupied by a human being and more than 200 dragon boat teams taking part and more than 50 races scheduled from 8am to 6pm and competitors scrambling to get to their boats and spectators elbowing each other out of the way to take pictures and official announcers yelling over the PA system and gunshots signalling the start of the races and cheerleading squads in fancy dress and conga lines and TV crews and cameramen sticking their huge-as equipment in everyone's faces and clueless kids sitting at the most inconvenient places on the beach building sandcastles and the near-horizon ringed with corporate junks and speedboats with discos and too much alcohol and you get a vauge idea of how insane it was.
Insanely packed beach - right near the starting point at the shore.
Had to steal this picture to demonstrate what I mean by 'ringed with corporate junks'.
Ah Lau, captain of the Freshfields junk (named 'Basic Law' - and it actually is one of the less cringe-worthy names out there...Slaughter and May, I'm looking at you, 'Further Onslaught', really?) had to moor the junk 2 days in advance to secure a prime viewing spot. We basically formed a row of 'who's who' of professional firms on the right side of the race course. All the boats are linked and anchored so close together that people could literally 'hop' around from one to another (which we made the most of by jumping around to steal other people's food when our own ran out).
All fun and games - if you're not competing on the Freshfields dragon boat team, that is.
'LATE'
As the junks were moored in the middle of the sea, we had to rely on speedboats and private watertaxis to take us to the beach. With each speedboat only able to hold 6 people, it takes 3 whole trips to ferry all 18 Ark Angels to shore. Plus about 20 minutes to shove past all the people on the beach to get to the race boat.
The early angels.
No one really thought through the logistics.
By 10:40am we were frantically flapping our
By 11:00am we had managed to get to where the boat was but couldn't find one of the team members so dragged a trainee who had never rowed before in her life and shoved her into the boat promising to teach her how to row in the 9 minutes that we have left before the race starts. And as we were trying to get onto the boat, one of the associates got ambushed by a reporter from CCTV and we spent another desperate 2 minutes watching in helpless despair as he was being interviewed.
By 11:08am every one of the other 11 boats was already out at the starting line while we were still at the shore. And so everyone on the beach, the junks and the other dragon boats watched as we finally rowed out awkwardly (with a desperate trainee learning how to hold a paddle for the first time in her life) and reversed ungracefully into our lane while whispering "sorry...sorry" to our fellow competitors.
Needless to say, as the race started almost as soon as we reversed into position, no one was ready.
We got last place.
Luckily the first race was only to decide which group (i.e. the 'good group' or the 'shit group') we would compete in. I bet the other teams placed into our group were silently screaming in joy by our show of complete incompetence.
And our coach pretended not to recognise us when we ran into him on the beach.
'EARLY'
Our second race was scheduled for 1:24pm (yes, 1:24pm specifically) so 3 speedboat trips later the whole team was back on the junk to
Our caterers had set up an amazing BBQ on the boat. That, with free-flow alcohol, attracted almost all passers-by to our boat. Despite the party-like atmosphere, we were determined not to be late this time. So after a few quick bites and cans of beer, we left for the shore.
At that very moment, it suddenly started pouring. So 40 minutes later, a group of very wet and disgruntled angels with droopy halos were gathered on the beach.
We were a whole hour early for our race. But that still couldn't save us from ensuing stress and drama.
At 1:10pm, we hopped onto Boat 11 and readied ourselves for Race 38, which would start at 1:24pm. We rowed out coolly and leisurely and parked on the side waiting for Race 37 to start and finish, and even managed to squeeze in a little practice session in between.
At 1:22pm, we were in 'ready' position, paddles ready and all set to go. And THIS is when we heard a faint but frantic announcement from the announcer's stand from the shore...
"Ark Angels! You are in the WRONG race! You are in the WRONG RACE! Come back to shore NOW!!!"
And to our embarrassment a speedboat sped up beside us and repeated much of the same over a loudspeaker.
There was really no point arguing back when we were 200+ meters out at sea in a wobbly boat and the other party is in an announcement stand on shore / in a speedboat with a loudspeaker, so we had no choice but to paddle back.
When we reached shore everyone refused to get off the boat. We were convinced we were in the right race and started a yelling match with the organisers who were on the 2-storey high announcement stand ("Let us go back!!"). And of course attracted more TV crews.
After a 10-minute stand-off, they finally decided to start Race 38 without us - and crucially - without a boat 11. More yelling. ("Why couldn't we have been in that race?!" ""If we're in the wrong race, where's the team who's supposed to be Boat 11?!" "WE'RE SUPPOSED TO BE BOAT 11!!!!")
'SPECIAL RACE'
After our captains
Reluctantly, and probably to get rid of our angry captains, they scheduled a 'special race' for us 4 teams. We were told we wouldn't be competing against each other, but our race times would be compared to the teams in the heat that we were supposed to have raced in (in our case, bloody Race 38). The 3 fastest teams in a heat normally advances to the third round.
Annoyingly, they wouldn't or couldn't tell us what time this 'special race' of 4 would be. All we got is, "It will probably be after the eye-dotting ceremony," which understandably caused a great deal of consternation and amusement among the westerners on the team ("The ...eye...dotting....huh?!" "The WHAT?!")
We ended up standing for another 1.5 hours on the beach, wet (we had gotten rained on in our completely wasted attempt to be 'early'), hungry (everyone else stole our food and drink on the boat) and annoyed (we got pulled from a race for no good reason).
In the middle of the eye-dotting ceremony, bored because we couldn't see what was going on and to ensure we don't miss out on our race again, we decided to get into our designated boat (boat 7 this time) and paddle out to the starting line. The other 3 teams, anxious not to be left behind, followed suit.
And so we ended up bobbing up and down at the starting line for another 15 minutes having repeated false alarms before the race finally started.
To vent our anger make up for lost time and with our captains' stern warning ringing in our ears ("Guys, we really HAVE to do well now that we've made such a big fuss, ah whatever....JUST DON'T GET LAST PLACE OK!!!"), we rowed furiously and so, so much harder than we've ever rowed before.
And we came in second (or third - even with just 4 boats, there was some confusion about the placing), with more than a boat's length between us and last place.
Vindicated.
'DISQUALIFIED'
Giddy with 'victory', we raced back to the pier and made our way back to the junk to lots of 'OMG what happened's from our fellow colleagues and lots of beer (the only 'food' that was left).
And promptly forgot about the fact that we might have qualified into the third round.
To be fair, Freshfields has never made the third round in its entire racing history, and after our hard-fought second race, we had already decided to throw in our halos and call it a day.
Around 4pm, an associate came racing down the boat waving a blackberry, with an email saying "We qualified into the 3rd round!" (Can I pause for a moment to assure you this is typical - Blackberry is actually our main means of communication so it was especially fitting here). We barely had time to congratulate ourselves when..."Crap, apparently it's already the last call for the race."
WTF.
With almost the entire team on the junk, it took 30 frantic minutes of 'Amazing Race-like' manoeuvrings (and the aid of the Hogan Lovells speedboat who came cruising past with 2 confused Ark Angels holding a glass of champagne each - "GO BACK TO SHORE NOW!!") before we arrived back at the beach and heard a loud bang. "I hope that wasn't our race," someone joked.
It was.
We found our extremely flushed (with anger?) captains who had spent the past half hour frantically calling every single one on the team but no one - not one person out of 16 - looked at their phones. And apparently the announcers had spent the past half an hour calling for "Ark Angels" over loudspeaker, with some bemused spectators laughing and pointing at our poor captains, "There's two here!"
We - again, as luck would have it - ran into our poor, helpless coach on the beach on the way back to the junk. We not only forced him to wear a halo (to lots of cheering and wolf-whistling from his own team) but someone even had the audacity to ask "We qualified for third round! Are you proud of us?" (The reply, "Yeah...maybe, but...uhhhhhhh...but........")
Much later that day, I finally looked at my blackberry and saw an alarming number of missed calls and messages from concerned friends from other firms: 'Hey Shu, is your team the Ark Angels? They've been calling you guys for the past x minutes!".... Let me just say I'm glad we have a team name and they are not calling out for 'Freshfields' within earshot of 300,000 people.
Not sure what kind of message that would have sent to our clients.
Although the day was excruciating at times, in hindsight, I wouldn't have had it any other way. Because that's just the kind of team we are - with a keen sense of the fun and the ridiculous, vaguely disorganised, but capable of pulling off miracles if we put our mind to it (after all, we did manage to advance into the 3rd round after beating only one boat).
That's just the kind of firm we are.
To round off - an action shot taken by our caterers from Basic Law.