Yesterday the Singapore Table Tennis team held their victory parade in Singapore. They made several stops throughout the day and one of the stops was at Khatib.
Singapore achieved their best ever result at the Olympics this year. Two bronzes both courtesy of the table tennis team. Feng Tianwei won us a women's individual bronze medal, ending a 52 year wait for an individual Olympics medal of any colour. The first since Tan How Liang's silver in weight lifting and the first individual medal since Singapore became an independent nation and an actual country. Feng then teamed up with Wang Yuegu and Li Jiawei to win us the women's team bronze medal as well.
This is the first time Singapore has won two medals at the Olympics and it's the perfect birthday present they could have presented to Singapore for her birthday on the 9th August. It was cool to see our flag fly up high. :)
My mum and I went to Khatib to support them. Jing Junhong was also present which was cool for me. Before she retired, she was one of my favourite sportswomen in Singapore. Then Li Jiawei came and took over the reins and I began to support Jiawei. It was really cool to see all their smiling faces. Reserved player Sun BeiBei was also present and so was the men's team of Gao Ning, Yang Zi and Zhang Jian who were really unlucky to meet the Chinese team in the second round.
There were a lot of people at Khatib yesterday and they were of all ages and all races. Young people from the respective players' fan clubs were also there. Some had specially come to Khatib to meet them, like we did, and some were people who happened to be there and after finding out about the event, decided to hang around to greet and congratulate them. One lady I talked to just finished her night shift and instead of going home to rest, decided to stay to join in the fun as well. It was quite crazy, like we were meeting pop idols or something. :)
After they arrived in the hippo bus, they toured the area for a bit, shaking hands, signing autographs, taking photos with the fans. I wanted to shake all their hands but ended up only managing to shake Wang Yuegu's and Lee Bee Hua's hands. I managed to get some photos on my phone and will probably edit this post later to include them. Am mobile blogging now and while posting multiple photos is possible, it's a little painful. :)
They ended the tour of Khatib at the Nee Soon South community centre where they boarded the bus and waved to the crowd from the top of the hippo bus. It was cool. The MC tried to get people to sing Queen's "we will we will rock you" but I think most of the heartland folks didn't know the song at all and only those in my age group sang a long for a bit. The MC didn't try very hard anyway because I think they were running late and they were in a hurry to leave for the next destination.
I wish I could have gone to Tampines where they played table tennis with whoever wanted to play with them and where they also signed autographs for the fans. I had a dental appointment and by the time I was done, it was too late. :( Still it was really cool to meet them in Khatib. :)
Thanks for the medals!!! Table tennis rocks!!! Thank you Team Singapore for not just awesome results from the women's table team but also for the effort put in for Singapore's sake. Thank you men's team, thank you Tao Li, Joseph Schooling, Geraldine Lee, Colin Cheng, Elizabeth Yin, Helena Wong... thank you to all the athletes, coaches and officials. May the next Olympics be a good one for our country. :)
After all these years.... I guess I am a bigger sports fan then I realised. :)
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