Malaysia Day

One of the activities that the lovely people at Workforce Check-in do is to run competitions to keep our spirits up. Last Sunday, I was declared a winner of one of them.

My prize: joining the Malaysian Paralympic athletes in their team welcoming ceremony inside the Athletes' Village.

:D :D :D *cartwheels* :D :D :D

At first I thought I was just gonna be standing on the sidelines watching them, but it soon became apparent that I was meant to stand there WITH them.

:-O

It was really awkward in the beginning to just barge in and join them, but they were in really good spirits, and they were really kind to me, considering I was there effectively to "tumpang glamer" (share their limelight).

Very sporting sportsmen!

I swear our Malaysian Paralympic athletes are coolest, funniest, most down-to-earth people I have ever seen. I loved how they "borrowed" the props for the welcoming ceremony:

Did I or did I not say they're the coolest people ever?

Five countries were being welcomed at the same time: Singapore, Niger, Korea, Laos and us, Malaysia. The team welcoming ceremony had lots of local London kids dancing and singing various songs like Queen's We Are The Champions (which I also sang out loud with the team, naturally), before each country's representative would then present their gift to the Athletes' Village management. This was then followed by playing the country's national anthem.

We Malaysians were the only team who sang our anthem out loud! Singing "Negaraku" out loud with the rest of the athletes is the BEST highlight of my Games Maker adventure by far :')

As an added bonus, after the ceremony, I was lucky to get invited for a Malaysian meal with the athletes :D

In Malaysia we call this "langkah kanan"

Afterwards, a subset of 5 of them (1 doctor, 2 coaches and 2 athletes with disabilities) asked me to bring them to a good place to buy London tat souvenirs, so I naturally took them to the tackiest cheapest place I could think of: Queensway!

I still can't believe that I dragged this motley crew of people in bright orange (and a wheelchair!) up and down the stairs of the London Underground.

You can sort of see the wheelchair on the bottom right-hand corner of this picture.

I also can't believe how disgusting Queensway was when we got there. There were mountains of trash everywhere after the Notting Hill carnage carnival. It was a bit embarrassing to show them this side of London, but I just joked around and said "Welcome to the *real* London!"

Anyway, it felt really amazing being part of this entourage. We were stopped by so many people - Malaysians and non-Malaysians - from the tube station in Stratford, to the tube carriages of the Central Line, to every 100 metres of Queensway. They were all asking for photos and wishing us well in the Paralympics. I really felt like we were celebrities for a while!

In one shop we went into, the shopkeeper kindly gave each of us a free keyring as thanks for our custom. It's now proudly hung on my Games Maker sling bag, as a proud reminder of this special day :)