New friends, old friends, and six degrees of freedom

I learnt my lesson after last year's London Games - 1) don't ever referee, and 2) when you disapprove of things, don't make it obvious.

It was so much smaller than last year and the year before that. Some put it down to the last minute-ness in letting all the other colleges know about pertinent details like what sports were even going to be offered - LSE, the organising society, had the biggest turn out.

It was freezing and I suffered painfully from wind burn, but there's nothing more fun than watching KCL with their telepathic sisters and UCL in all their gung-ho aggressiveness steamroll the rest of the competition. The second each dainty foot hits the court, you do not want to mess with these women.

Lester kindly offered an opinion on the way home that you had to be butch to be good at the sport. I disagree, you also need to have a good set of nails, a backside with which to covertly bump other players out of the way, and all the cunning and wile of ... of a cunning and wiley thing.

The girls did great, I love playing with ICSS because they're so much fun, and when we found ourselves hopelessly behind, we swopped positions and had an awesome time running around like headless chickens. I generally played like a wuss, relying too much on the referee to call up the slightest contact like in league games, where even touching your marker pulls you up for a foul. To be fair though, the referees this year were a marked improvement in that they actually made some calls rather than stand there with the sole aim of starting the match, stopping the match at time, and avoid getting glared at.

Then there was I. The KCL-UCL final needed referees, and although two girls (both from LSE) were perfectly willing and experienced, i.e. more than 16 minutes of refereeing under their belt, KCL had issues about two LSE referees and I was taking my time leaving the court. So I tried my hardest, making a very lame show of refereeing - regulation whistle in hand (that was never used) - for 24 agonizing minutes. I badly wanted to cheer madly for UCL who were putting up such a good fight, and every foul I saw registered two minutes too late.

I really enjoyed seeing Hsiang, who had also made his way to Bacon's College to get thrashed, and I met Pui, one of the more experienced referees who plays for LSE 5ths, and Nicola, who used to play for LSE 1sts, who also knows Becky, Diane, and possibly Fong May (although I didn't ask). What a small small world.