When I heard about Pesta Ang Pow (PAP) by my seniors, they all said it was a grand event hosted by the chinese students of Kolej Tun Syed Nasir (KTSN), and so I was curious and interested in finding out what exactly PAP is about.

I went for the interview to participate for the event in the Special Task department (TTK). To my surprise, I got the job and was one of the exco for the department despite my lack of experience. Another friend of mine who went to the interview with me got into the department I was in as well while another got the role of actor for the event.

I am not going to lie, it was a struggle. As a first year, my knowledge of the faculty compound was very little. It was a hassle trying to find where the office for application of tools were and so on. The preparations and paper work were quite nerve wracking as I never done any past events that needed a letter of approval or letter of application but I managed to get through it and gained some experience along the way.

My department was mainly focused on heavy duty work, so when the day came to do the heavy lifting, let me tell you it was A LOT of work.My department had only 2 men including me, so it was really really tiring. We had to carry 30 stacks of chairs, tables, boards and more on to a lorry to bring to our college for the event and back. We were lucky and grateful though as many friends volunteered to help us in our manual labor.

On the day of the event, I was incharge of helping the backstage decorations as well as changing and organizing the props between the plays. Once it ended, the entire crew had a sigh of relief as the event ran smoothly. There were minor hiccups but they were not noticeable.

At the end of the event, I came to realize that cooperation is a very very important value that we all must apply in our everyday lives. Without the cooperation from my friends, fellow crew members and my head of department member as well as other departments, the event would not have been a success.

This was the first varsity level volleyball tournament I ever played. NAHSSE which stands for National Allied Health Sciences Student Sport Event was a tournament between health science faculties of UPM, USM, UKM, UiTM, UIA and UnisZA.

For the first time in my life I had a real coach coaching me and our team. Our coach would train us only 3 times a week, maybe 2 if there were rainy days. We also only had time to train for only less than a month.

Training was tougher than ever before. The drills and exercises given was tiring. There wasn’t a day where everyone was not trying to catch their breaths at each rest time. The training was usually held in the afternoon or in the evening. I had to find and fix my schedule in order to get my nutrition in before and after training. Aside of volleyball training, I also did weight training personally. It has been a routine since I was 16 years old and it has helped me in my performances dramatically.

As we reached game day, we were all fired up to go. The games were fairly easy, mostly because we had such as strong team compared to the other teams present. We only had one or two tough matches which were against UPM and USM. Overall, our team performance was great, we had great plays as well as some impressive spikes and blocks.

In the end, our team won 1st place in NAHSSE 2018/2019. It was a memorable experience as it was my first time receiving a gold medal for the game of volleyball. I learned that not only hard work was important, but dedication as well as effort is equally important. We must work hard with our top best effort as well as being dedicated with it when we strive for something. No matter how tired I was, I still went weight training to constantly improve myself and that is what helped me got this far. I will keep working hard to keep surpassing myself and strive to achieve even greater achievements.

This is the first competition I played in once entering the university of my choice Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM). This is an inter-college game hosted by the university, and by college I mean dormitory, we call our dorms college here. I am a student of Kolej Tun Syed Nasir which is a dormitory located in Kuala Lumpur.

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The team consisted of 5 first years, 1 second year and 5 third years. This team was hand-picked by the third years as they had more experience playing in SUKEM. The team was built from scratch but we had some good players on the team. Training was a must if we wanted to a decent team. Training was held from Monday to Friday but we were all free to do our own individual training. When the time came for us to compete, we were ready.

The games were fairly good with less struggles in the preliminaries, but when we reached the quarter finals, it got tough. I have insomnia, and on the night before, my excitement got the best of me and I couldn’t even sleep. With 0 sleep, my plays were draining the life out of me, I was completely exhausted. In the quarter finals, my legs started cramping when we were just a few points from winning the game. After the game, I drank lots of liquid and tried to take in as much electrolytes back into my system as possible. In the semi-finals, I was kept to rest for a while by my captain and didn’t play as a starting player, this was the worse decision possible.

The game started off real bad for our team. In just a short amount of time, the opposing team had already put a large gap between our points. Then another starting player cramped in the middle of the game and I had to sub and switch him out. He and I had different positions, so the system our team had problems. Once he was fit to switch back in, I tried to switch with the player playing my position but the referee would not allow it as it was a violation against the rules. We didn’t know about the rule at the time and we lost in the semi-finals. As rough as we played, we managed to win 3rd place in SUKEM despite being a freshly formed team. The girls team won 1st place.

From this experience, I learned that never giving up and believing in others is important no matter what anyone is doing in life. If we believed in one another’s capabilities more, we could have taken a higher spot and even though we lost, that does not mean we need to quit. We must not give up and keep training to improve ourselves for the next competition.