Tuesday, December 4, 2012

SCMS 2012 | Go to post ➜

This year, I volunteered for Standard Chartered Marathon Singapore 2012.
I left my house at 11pm and head down to Tampines.
Met up with PG and S roughly at 11.45pm.
Boarded the bus at 12am.
We reached the F1 pit at 12.35am.

Head to hall 24 to register ourselves as volunteers and collected our goody bag (2cans of 100plus, 2 bottles of ice mountain water, a hot dog bun, cheese bread , a small piece of swiss roll cake, a poncho, a granola bar- Nature Valley and lastly an apple), volunteer's purple t-shirt, and a reindeer headband.  So we changed into the purple shirt and waited one corner for our leader to contact us.We waited and waited and waited.Yet no one contacted us.

Then 3 people approached us and ask if the three of us are together. We said yes. They told us that the have to redeploy us to another area. So we asked which area and what will we be doing. There was a confusion on their side because they thought we were in their group.
And so we were left alone for now. I suggested to move away from that group since we have yet to join our group.

Shortly, out of no where, one guy asked whether PG is here. We said yes. And so, he introduced himself as our leader. Come on man ! What is the phone for ?
Finally we found our group! We joined the rest of our group members and played ice-breaking games. There were 3 cliques in our group. 1) all girls clique 2) mixed gender clique and lastly it was us. We are the eldest among them and clique 1 and 2 seems to know one another !
Good news, our group was posted to drinks station at Area A (Sentosa). Once the runners clear pass the drink station area, the group can pack up and go home !  

Boom! Here comes the bad news. There were too many people in our group. Hence they have to redeploy 3 people to another area. I knew immediately that we have to go. True enough, we were told that we have to be redeployed. Redeployment happens to one in a hundred, we were the unlucky 3. They told us to wait here (F1 pit) and someone will contact us and pick us up. Again, we asked which area and what will we be doing.

What surprised me was that they told us that they do not know which area and what will we be doing. Come on man ! It was not an acceptable answer. You people told us that we have to be redeployed but do not know where to place us ???
So we waited at the F1 pit. Time slowly passed and no one contact us. Soon, the F1 pit was empty except the logistic and volunteers' welfare teams.

From this much people

To this much people 

To no one at all ~ except litters 

Finally guy asked us whether we stand down from our duties. I told him that we were told that we were redeployed but up to now, no one contacted us.
Then, we decided to contact our ex-leader, shortly he told ask to look for a lady.
That lady told us to take a seat and relax because there is no more bus. And so we wait again.
Then the guy came back and told us that we have two choices. 1) stay here and help them, probably stand down from duties at 7 am. or 2) go to esplanade park and join the baggage group, which will be more fun but stand down from duties at a later time. I asked where is the esplanade park. He said he can direct us there. But the thing is, I have never in my life heard of esplanade park before! So we decided to stay at the F1 pit, since we were kind of drained off doing nothing but waiting!

Okay so ~ another lady (GT) gave us paper work to do. It was in a mess, and we have to sort them out by location to get the papers ready for stand down at different locations. Finally when it was all done, GT asked if we can help her some more, just for a few more hours. We just have to help out with the logistic. Something like inventory check or stock check.
And so, we were head to Stadium MRT. Man ! The worst decision we every made ! It was super boring and tiring cause there was nothing to do until the volunteers arrive. We have to clear 40 groups of volunteers but around 10 am, only 5 groups came in. Hence we contacted GT and told her that we have exams coming up and have to leave early.

In the end, we head down to Esplanade MRT and made our way to esplanade park aka padang ! omg ~ that guy should have just told me that it is Padang instead of Esplanade park ! We sign the papers and officially stand down :) ps- it was much more happening at Padang since it was the ending place for the runners.

We collected our lunch and head back home. I crashed into bed after a bath and slept till 7 pm (intended to sleep till 4 pm but didn't hear the alarm ring).
Initially I was very excited to be part of a drink station, watching runners run past, pouring them drinks. But my excitement dropped drastically, practically to the bottom of a pit when I waited for someone to contact us after being told that we have to be redeployed.

I am disappointed with the management of SCMS. It seems that volunteers are like ikan bilis (anchovy) to them and they put us to the bottom of their list. They made us wait very long. Until the sun rise then we were given something to do.

I will never every in my life join SCMS as a volunteer or as a runner.
I will not encourage any one to join SCMS as a volunteer but not as a runner.
Gold award marathon on the surface but rotten inside.
Don't they know that volunteers play an important part for the smooth running of the marathon?
Pffff !

10:52:00 PM