Sporting more than a little sunburn and dragging aching limbs from the day before (netball, football and badminton take a lot out of you), a number of Cempakans diligently made their way to the Cempaka Cheras campus bright and early on a Saturday morning, eagerly anticipating the prospect of the upcoming water polo, rugby and table tennis matches as well as the much-awaited 9-a-side soccer finals between Rumah Helang and Rumah Harimau.

The four events commenced at eight o'clock sharp. Spectators and supporters were left biting their fingernails as their watched the Helang-Harimau soccer finals, with both teams very closely matched in skill and ability. No goals were scored by the time half time rolled around, causing the two teams to get a little antsy. The second half proved to be a little more eventful, with three spectacular goals scored by Roy of Rumah Helang; cinching Rumah Helang's victory against Harimau with a score of 3-0. The Helang team didn't seem too chuffed, however.

"We expected to win, but didn't really play very well. It was below our expectations," said Rajiv Doshi, one of the team's main strikers.

The matches at the pool were no less exciting, with all four houses competing for victory in water polo. We were fortunate enough to bring in Joshua Chiaw and Wong Wai Loon, both stellar players in the Kuala Lumpur water polo team, to referee all of our matches. The Helang-Beruang boys' match made all of us sit up in our seats, as Rumah Helang's extremely strong team were hard put to keep up with Rumah Beruang's strong attackers and sturdy defense. 16 minutes of magnificent game play later, the two houses tied with a score of 4-4, and Rumah Helang emerged as the overall champions of the water polo matches.

The girls' matches brought out a few new talents, among them Kristyn Gan of Rumah Beruang who managed to save a lot of challenging goals. A few hours of somewhat rough competition brought us Rumah Beruang as the champions of girls' water polo, knocking Rumah Seladang off of their previous stand at the top.

Exhaustion and injuries did nothing to deter the determined football players who set out to represent their houses in rugby, which was one of the most exciting events of the day. As always, each rugby match was filled with a rather incomprehensible myriad of grunts, groans, shouting, pushing and jostling, all of which led to rather nasty bruises and scrapes on some of the players. Rumah Harimau claimed the title for rugby, followed by Rumah Helang, Rumah Beruang, Rumah Harimau and Rumah Seladang.

The table tennis matches took place in the classrooms on the top floor of the new block. An extremely wide range of players participated in this year, ranging from state team players to complete novices. As expected, however, Rumah Seladang came out on top for the girls' matches, and Rumah Harimau for the boys.

All of the events were over at around 3 o'clock p.m., and we left Cempaka Cheras exhausted and ready for a really, really long nap. It was exhilarating, exciting and, occasionally, downright frightening-but I have no doubt that each and every one of us will be coming back next year.

Sunburn and aching limbs hopefully not included.