This year’s ASEAN PARA Games (APG) 2015 held in Singapore from 3rd to 9th December 2015 will hold a special significance for Aaron.
Sometime in November, a homeschool mother announced that she was organizing an outing for homeschoolers to join an APG tour hosted by Active SG, on Monday, December 7, 2015, 2-6pm, the fifth day of competition. The children would get to enjoy the Para Games Carnival first, where they get to experience para sports first hand, and then proceed to watch the actual games.
Of all our 7 children, Aaron is the most sporty one and he loves badminton and table tennis best – at this point in time at least 🙂 So I asked him if he would like to attend it as both games were scheduled for that day. He agreed and we trooped down. I actually enjoyed myself, which was a miracle in itself since there were hoards of sweaty school children and adults everywhere queueing up to participate in the Carnival Games. On top of that I am neither a badminton or table tennis fan. Actually I am so not a sporty person despite being in the school swim team eons ago!
Besides watching the badminton and table tennis matches, we also caught the wheelchair basketball teams fighting it out at the Singapore Indoor Stadium. But the highlight of the day was when Aaron got both a photo and an autograph from Jason Chee, whose story is truly inspirational. We didn’t think we would be able to last till 9pm to watch Jason’s game as it was scheduled much later than we had planned to stay for. But somehow things worked out and we got to see him play.
Since we were totally not planning to watch him play or expect ourselves to get to see him at such a near distance (we were seated in the front row), we had nothing on us to let him autograph on. But thanks to the goody bag given to us by Active SG, I fished out a cap from the bag and a pen from my bag and got Jason to sign the cap! Aaron was beaming ear to ear after that.
I am glad I made the effort to do some thing different and I am grateful to Daphne who organised the trip. By the way, DPM Teo Chee Hean turned up for the match as well but since I didn’t want to appear like a groupie, I didn’t take any photos of him or with him. 😀