http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/singaporelocalnews/view/347073/1/.html

RGS gymnasts set to compete in 2010 Youth Olympic Games
By Heather Tan, Channel NewsAsia | Posted: 12 May 2008 0145 hrs

SINGAPORE: Two 13-year old gymnasts from Raffles Girls' Secondary School are a step closer to flying the country's flag at the 2010 Youth Olympic Games.

That is because their coach feels they are of the age-group that will make a mark for Team Singapore.

Passion and commitment - that's what drive Phaan Yi Lin and Vivien Ho* from Raffles Girls to dedicate their time to gymnastics. They train for five hours, six times a week.

And these two 13-year-olds - the youngest members of the team - are all set to represent Singapore at the 2010 Youth Olympic Games.

Phaan Yi Lin, Secondary One Student, Gymnastics Team of Raffles Girls' Secondary School, said: "For this, we will work hard and train so we will not disappoint our coaches and our families." The girls are part of the school's Junior Training Squad in gymnastics.

They train with seasoned coaches from China and the UK, and have been practising various moves, including the front aerial, back flip layout, giant swing, chest rolls and reverse split jumps.

The girls not only excel in the sport, they are able to handle school work too.

Nazyra Suhairi, Secondary Four Student, Gymnastics Team of Raffles Girls' Secondary School, said: "There's always a time for everything. In school, you just focus on school, and once you come to gym, you just switch off everything else that has nothing to do with gym - you just focus mainly on training."

Joey Tam, Secondary Two Student, Gymnastics Team of Raffles Girls' Secondary School, said: "Gym has been a part of our lives since really long ago. So we just squeeze in homework anytime we get."

RGS also plans to build its own gymnasium to dedicate more time and effort into coaching the girls. **

Alina Wee, Teacher-in-Charge of Gymnastics at Raffles Girls' Secondary School, said: "We would like them to train at least six times a week. And with great parental support as well as school support in terms of studies, we have to ensure the scholastic aspect of their life in school is also taken care of while they prepare for the YOG."

Currently, the school's training sessions are held at the Education Ministry's CCA Branch at Bukit Timah. - CNA/de

*GO YILIN AND VIVIEN! Keep on pro-ing and being aweshummmmm!

**COOOOOOOOOOL!

Yup so I realised that my posts are getting kinda self-centered nowadays. (Self-centered meaning all about me only.) SO I have decided that I will do dedications for the new year!

202 08: The QUEENS! I'll miss all those sick jokes, eyebrow-raising moments, legal eating in class for practically every lesson, junk food ordering, and class partayyes! Thanks for all the good unclean fun and we ROCK :D

Rhythmic Gym 08: B'Div champs for the 8th year running! Even though I won't be with you all next year, I'll still consider you guys my wonderful batchmates, seniors, and juniors! Love you guys and I'll pop down for training when I can. <3

English Drama 08: It was really fun and fabulous getting to know all of you and becoming an ELDSer! Thanks for all the laughs, puns, funny improvs, and awesome plays! Seriously the wackiest, p(h)unniest people on earth :D

PSB 08: I don't know what sec 2 would be like if I wasn't in PSB. Thanks to all the PSLs and SPSLs for being great seniors and friends and JPSLs for being part of the coolest, littlest PSB batch ever :D I'll remember PSLTC, all our great GMs, PSL sessions, Orientation, MGMs etc. etc. and we'll still be aweshum PSB 08!

109 08: So you'll all become 209'09 next year :) You guys have been the number one reason for my sleepless nights, no kidding. But it's all worth it when I see you all at PSL sessions, even just around school and I hope you all can grow closer together as a class in sec 2!

Taiwan Immersionees 08: Thanks for all the crazy crazy moments we've had, and all the field trips, lessons, computer classes, shopping, kumquat peeling, cup noodles, getting scolded, crying, laughing etc. etc. I couldn't think of a better way to spend the holidays than learning Chinese at the NTNU with you guys! Keep the gatherings coming on and drink more chin chow!

Yeah and thanks to all those other friends out there who made my year great, even if it's just a moment or two. AND LEKO BURRITO the aweshum 4th sister I have who crashes my house every spare moment she can and eats all my food and sleeps on my sofa and shares my mommy.

And I seriously doubt my family reads my blog because I don't publicise it but they've been really great too :) My mommy who drove me home from trainings in Potong Pasir, my daddy who works like crazy, my sisters who play with me, my rabbit who just sits around and acts cute, my cat who follows me everywhere I go.

Can't wait for Orientation 2009 now :) 105 class I/Cs are really cool peeps. Nandita and Jo-Ann say they're gonna be extra-participative SPSLs! Which means that they'll do the usual job, observing us and stuff, except they won't do it silently in the corner of the classroom, they'll join in all the activities. So I guess we're gonna have 30+ sec ones and 2 sec fours to entertain!

And guess what, Min Chih is taller than all of us despite being the youngest. I feel small. Really small.

In the lift at Far East, Nandita, Jo-Ann, Min Chih, and Zerline suddenly realised that they all live ridiculously close to each other, so they started screaming and exchanging info on the exact locations of their houses. Boo not fair :( But wouldn't it be cool if we could have like a joint sleepover at all their houses? We could travel back and forth and stay an hour at each house!

105 is a RICHARDSON class! Things keep getting better and better!

YAY CCAO :D

Wish I could've gone last year, too. Tour guiding is fun hahahahaha! And surprisingly, the sec ones talked to me. A lot. Alright, maybe it was only like 1 or 2 who kept talking to me and I was sooo glad that they didn't dao me. Wasn't very hyper today because of serious lack of sleep. But still happy :) And I found out how lame Charisse, my fellow 105 I/C, is. Still, no one got close to beating Shi Wei.

Haha it was super fun going round the booths going "Heyyyy! I got a group for you all!" to random strangers or friends. The LD booth was super funny, because everyone was just munching on cookies and hanging around like a partayye. And the best part was that we were the only CCA eating in front of the new sec ones and their parents, so paiseh hahahaha!

And the show the sec 4s put up was really really really good. :D "Ways To Torture Your Teacher" was so cuuuute and me, Karishma, Min Ee, Debbie, and Deenie snuck up to where the spotlights were to get a better view of the performance.

Yays to R.GYM for THE best souvenirs, in my biased opinion. And and and I got to intro the gym booth because Rosemarie was either being nice or feeling shy. You know how much I like "public" speaking. Yay aweshumm! Oh and thanks Ting for the Blue Batch Bangles.

I separate posts by topic, not by day. So that's it for CCAO I guess.

Needs to run. Needs to long jump. Needs to rollerblade. Needs to feel blood in my blood vessels moving. Needs to stretch. Needs to try on my new Adidas.

It seems the older I get, the slower I run. Grahhhh. It's just as well I can't make it to play catching with my Taiwan Immersionees. I'd probably feel slow and unmotivated. And there goes my punctured ego. Serves me right for not having a life.

So I'm back from Penang. And my life is already being tossed around in the washing machine. Heh, I remember back in China there was this giant Whirpool washing machine ad that hung outside the shopping center-ish place I used to go for milk tea. Maybe that was a sign or something.

I wanna go rollerblading! But it seems that all of us are way to caught up in our crazy lives to live like we did after PSLE and at the start of sec 1. Sheesh. Plus, we didn't even have any Aunties outings yet. Hell-o, can we please respect tradition?

2005: Malacca. Well, I don't know if this counts 'cause we didn't know each other well enough to be excited about this trip. If you don't count knowing Leko, that is.
2005: Desaru!!!
2006: Genting!
2007: Genting. Didn't feel right the second time.
2008: Nil.

See? It's like a curve or something.

Zomgoshness the PretSeLs cast me as the bimbo. The bimbo. The bimbo.
Can't wait :D Go PretSeLs!!!!

I'm backk from Taiwan!

Although I will miss that place and living there like CRAZY, I can't say that I'm sad or anything.

I have 37 good friends, a new found interest in Chinese, and lots of souvenirs.

I'm happy. :D

It's 4 hours to meeting time, and nobody wants to get sleep.

Just got a big scolding from Mrs Poon because everyone was being sentimental and having mass hugging in the corridor. I guess she heard us, because she gave us a long talk about being considerate. My roommates have all sorts of funny plans and now Sarah is on the phone with Sam discussing the possibility of sneaking out without being caught.

I love my new hoodie hooded jacket! It's Paul Frank and I have the black while Rachel my twinnie has hot pink :D Zhiyuan went shopping with us because we lost Sarah, Grace and Sam when they went to buy crepes and disappeared. So yeah, but I didn't mind shopping with Zhiyuan and Rachel at all because they're really nice to shop with. Zohmygoodness Jasmine Liu Jia Hwei actually goes SHOPPING? Yes, she does :)

And Zhiyuan loves stuffed toys and jackets like us so we always stop randomly to look at stuff. He's now regretting not buying a Paul Frank hooded jacket to match ours. We were actually hoping laoshi would decide to let the guys use up the remaining 5,500 Taiwanese dollars worth of food coupons on biscuits so Zhiyuan would have another chance to get back to the night market and find that jacket shop. But no, so now we have $5,500 gone to waste. It's about $270 Singapore dollars worth of food coupons.

So I have officially spent almost $300 dollars on this trip. Whoa, Nelly. The LLY is gonna be so happy to know how I splurged on their gifts. And guess what, I even bought my tuition teacher a gift because she's nice and also because I had to cancel a whole holiday's worth of tuition, much to Brendan's delight.

I miss gym. I miss gym. I miss gym. I need to jump. Very badly.

There is Ryan, Terry and Joel at the door now. Probably more illegal gatherings? Sarah and Grace want RI and RGS to merge. I don't mind us being separated. We're still rather close, anyways.

I'm gonna miss this place. Loves OCAC, NTNU, Taipei :D Dedications coming soon, probably :D

Yay and I'm back!

So we had a really good lunch, with like 10 dishes per table? Of course no one could finish :( But I think the restaurant re-serves the dishes. We all suspect it, but we don't really care.

Afterwards we had 1.5 hours to go to the supermarket and explore the campus outside of our isolated little block which we're confined to most of the time. Instead, most of us just went back to our block right after the supermarket trip (where we annoyed customers by getting like one person to buy everyone's junk at one go) and we frolicked around taking pictures and giving each other piggyback rides.

So after that we went for a briefing which no one really listened to. I tried hard to but it just couldn't process in my brain for some reason. Jordan was like "Is Hong Lao Shi sleeping?" and Hong Lao Shi jerked her head around to look at him. Whoops.

THEN MAI LAO SHI BROUGHT US TO THE UNIVERSITY SPORTS AREA! I just looove Mai Lao Shi now. Actually it started out with the guys asking if they could play basketball there, then in the end 28 of us went with Mai Lao Shi. Well, we only had one basketball so I walked around with Linn, Rachel, Pearlynn and Chloe. Linn and I were looking for a trampoline, but that'd probably be indoors somewhere. There is an indoor pool that smells really really strongly of chlorine :(

And as we walked out of the pool building, that was when I noticed the LONG JUMP PIT! Linn and I were hooked onto it and we just jumped and jumped and jumped to no end. Now I have a bruise on my knee but who cares? My love for long jump has been rekindled! That was so cheesy. But seriously, I was happy for a good long while after that and I think I was the fastest girl eater at dinner. I went around announcing that I officially Love Jumping but no one really cared because I was just high from jumping.

After that, POOL! (I don't say billiards.) Joseph (Hoseph) was really weird today and he started standing on the table and whacking the cue ball with the stick like he was playing golf, which really annoyed Rachel who just wanted to beat him seriously once and for all. She won, but she says the game wasn't even serious. I CANNOT aim.

My roommates are AWESOME. We're swapping clothes for our graduation vacation and I get Sarah's favourite shirt and paikia hoodie! Grace gets my ACRES shirt, and Rachel gets my brown and red stripey sweater while I keep the green one and we're wearing them together on Friday so we can be real Twinnies.

Graduation vacation tomorrow. Returning Friday night. Apparently we're going to the last piece of untouched Taiwanese land. Sounds pretty cool, we're going to be doing a lot of hiking (even at 5.30am) and we're going to Ocean Park!

I LOVE LONG JUMP! GO RICHARD!

There's a lot more to blog about here in Taiwan than in Singapore.

Graduation today! Supposedly formal but in fact very emotional. After the goodbye video from the OCAC fu dao yuan people, everyone felt like crying and I sorta felt a bit like that too but for some reason I didn't. I started hyperventilating. It was really freaky because I forgot how to breathe so I was making weird wheezing noises and trying to breathe into my jacket (I have no idea why) while everyone was like "Don't cry!" and I was like "I'm not crying!". It took us(including me) about 5 minutes to realise I really couldn't breathe, and it wasn't just getting emotional.

So my wonderful awesome classmates all went upstairs with Ms Koh to get me some air at the rooftop garden. About 10 minutes later I could breathe properly again, but my arms were still weird from the lack of circulation. Ms Koh says the doctor says it's pretty normal when children get too excited. Eeps. THANK YOU CLASS #1 I TOTALLY OWE YOU GUYS ONE!

So after that we all played truth or dare. Claire had to go up to this woman working out on the treadmill and tell her she's pretty. The woman just smiled and it was pretty obvious we were behind this anyways. Jordan called us to the auditorium to sing songs together. We did some HSM 3 songs and some more bittersweet ones. We all went downstairs 10 minutes late on purpose, partly to see what punishment we would get. I guess the laoshis weren't in the mood to punish us.

Post getting too long. Look out for next post!

I can't believe we're going back this Saturday. Or Sunday. Whatever. Seriously stinks :( We all wish we could be like boarding school students and live like that and I guess we'll all miss all the rubbish we get to do like eat cup noodles every night and kope food from as many people as we can.

Graduation is tomorrow! And graduation trip to the countryside. Sounds cool :D

Hee today I was really impressed by the skits class #2 and class #3 put up. And I'm sure class #1 did well too! We all got prizes. Class #1 was named bravest class, class #2 recieved best presentation, class #3 was named most creative class. Then after the competition we all used the green chalk left over from class #2's horror skit to draw on each other's clothes and faces. My jacket took quite a bit of torture :D Renci's ear turned green and Jordan's face was kept green for the rest of the day for a dare or something.


Speaking of which, I can't believe I fell for this prank played after bed check, when we were all supposed to be in our rooms but people still sneak around anyways:

(Doorbell rings)
I open the door and just then Jordan appears from the stairwell with his bottle and starts filling it up.
Jordan says hi without speaking.

Jasmine: (half whispering)Hey, who rang the doorbell?
Jordan: Huh?
Jasmine: Somebody rang the doorbell
Jordan: Really?
Jasmine: Yeah, just.

Then Rachel comes over to the door and being the smarter of us two, goes

Rachel: He rang the doorbell.

So Jordan doubles over laughing silently but hysterically, what Sarah would call the chicko look, and I pretend to be mad.