Junior Trials

Final Placing: 8th out of 14. Bleh... It wasn't too bad considering the presence of heavyweights from the Nat Team and PRC and plus I was feeling mildly feverish. And apparently, this doesn't quite give you a lot of points.
I was in a killer poule (there were only 2 actually, but mine had more goliaths ) and lost 4 bouts out of 6. By the end of whole fiasco, I half-thought I was going to be eliminated in a tragic repeat of last week's Fencing Singapore Challenge. As it turned out, I was to fence Audrey (9th placing) and got pass the hurdle. Another thing that went wrong; my electric lame actually FAILED to conduct in at least 3 patches, probably since I have never aired it since...I can't remember. The Romanian ref, after giving me a touchy-feely demo on how to solve the problem, finally poured water on it so it would have better conductivity. While other people spend their CNY money buying new clothes, I might end up spending it buying a new lame -_-.
The most frustrating issue of all was when I was to fence the first-seeded girl. I didn't think that I would make it but by the first half, I was up 8-4 thanks to relying on the beat-blade tactic. I started to think I might win but lost 13-15 X(. During the one minute rest break, the Romanian ref who coincidentally was the girl's coach, went over and commenced yelling at her ("You see this! You like the score!!?). I felt so mortified and embarassed as I was sort of the cause of her predicament. Oh well...I need to focus more and keep my cool...David said the 1st and 2nd half were like 2 different people fencing O_O. My consolation was that Ellyn, was ranked 2nd, after losing to Ann in the final. Darren, Reub, JX and Faii predictably landed themselves a spot in the top 8. Reub managed to beat JX 15-14 cus his ankle was busted. Then again, JX doesn't quite need the ranking points as much.
Need to acclimatise myself to the fact that DE begins pretty soon after poules over. When I queried "Now?" twice, Oleg responded "No, no, no, Tomorrow" and "No, no, no, go to cinema" respsectively with some exasperation. :P