People often say CCA’s are a marginal part of our schooling lives. And true enough, many people often pon CCA’s or go about their daily training routines with lackluster attitudes. As much as I would like to comment on uniform groups, or musical groups, I know that it would be very unfair or me to pass judgment on events that I can only experience vicariously, through the eyes of others.

So I shall talk about Hockey.

Yeah, even though I’m fully aware I spent most of the last two and a half weeks stoning like a rock, and rocking like a stone, I still feel this strong urge to sum up my hockey experience over the last four years, and while it might seem as though I am packaging up my experiences into one nice blog post soon to be neatly archived, I must clarify that my hockey experience is most likely going to extend into JC life, and that the only reason why I’m doing this is that Im a bloody introspective idiot.
Well, to capture a visceral, transcending experience neatly within a few pages of scrawny typed words would be substantially challenging and yet almost certain fall short of any meaningful approximation of real life. But I shall try…

Ok, now back to normal tone. I purposely put that whole bunch of crappily formal language to put off anyone who’s just flippantly flipping through blogs, so for anyone who’s read all of the above, CONGRATULATIONS, you are probably one of those who will find what I’m going to say especially meaningful.

A long long time ago, a scrawny sec 1 nerd, obsessed over basketball went for basketball trials. There he met the coach, a guy with a boisterous, garrulously carefree personality threatening to burst out of his tight body, promised him an automatic place in the basketball team (in retrospect that coach probably made many other similar promises). So this arrogant nerd, when faced with a form with 8 options, wrote down “basketball” as his first choice, and for the next 7 choices, casually scrawled down anything thing that came to his mind. Never mind the constipated frowning faces of his friends, who were contemplating all the different combinations of possible CCAs they could apply for. Never mind the off chance that he wouldn’t get his first choice. This narrow-minded guy, so used to getting whatever he wanted, didn’t think much beyond the first choice, and anyway the smiling gaga boy by the name of Gifford had already convinced him that hockey WAS THE SAME as soccer, so well, he didn’t think much about his second choice.

And a few weeks later, his form teacher read out the different CCAs each guy had gotten into. “Basketball—Zi Jian, Cricket—Asim,…” HUH? A growing sense of dread starting to subsume him, until finally, he heard, “And congratulations to the two hockers!” No specific name called, and yet…the last two people left uncalled were him and the grinning Gifford guy.

So anyway, a choice, a choice that would stick with him over the next four years, was made not out of careful deliberation, but a misplaced self-confidence and a misplaced remark.