As part of the Taipei American School's Tigershark swim team, Matthew entered the 2008 Citi Invitational Swim meet held on 22-23 November. Nicholas who had attended this annual event since 2005 has decided to give it a pass this year, but volunteered instead as an official at the meet.
Due to the number of swimmers, over 400 representing 15 schools/clubs and four countries, the swim meet was held over one and an half day. Events ran for twelve hours on Saturday (8:15am to 8:00pm) and four on Sunday. Again, due to the large numbers of swimmers, our kids had to arrive TAS by 6:10am on Saturday and 6:30am on Sunday, for warm-up and pre-race stretching. For the second home meet in a row, Peter was assigned to run the marshaling area. As with such a large number of swimmers, we decided to divide marshaling into a main marshaling area by the pool and a pre-marshaling area in the upstairs gym area. Peter was assigned to run, along with Coach Kuhlke, the pre-marshaling area with Nick running the main marshaling area. Felicia who also attended the races on Saturday, also filled in various posts as necessary.
All in all, Matthew swam five events, the 100m IM, 100m Free, 200m Breast, 50m Free and 100m Breast, and getting a "personal best" in each of his five events. Nick worked the entire day and a half of the meet without taking a break, setting new record for holding his bladder for the longest time.
The event concluded with an award ceremony at the Grand Hotel, hosting 600 swimmers, coaches and parents, to a lunch buffet. While Matthew did not win any individual award, we had a good time participating in this event.
As an aside, a real upside from attending an "international" event is meeting up with old friends. We were surprised to see our friends, the Jettons, from Singapore then Japan were part of the visiting HK International School team. Also visiting were former TAS families, the Hsiaos and the Fangs, now representing HKIS.
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