YOG: Memores acti

With the extinguishing of our special vortex flame, the inaugural Youth Olympic Games (YOG) in Singapore came to their inevitable end.

That, I reckon, is possibly the most nauseatingly romantic sentence I have written in a long while. But sentimentality encourages nauseatingly romantic expressions; there is nothing like my Youth Olympics experience, and truly, nothing can equal it in scale, diversity, breathlessness, internationality, depth and value.

Before I continue, a caveat: this is my Youth Olympics experience I’m about to write about, and not the Youth Olympic Games in general.

Indeed, this is just my experience I write about. Volunteering as an interpreter in the Language Services department (or “functional area”), my role was flexible and multi-faceted. Though technically based in the quiet, air-conditioned room housing the multi-lingual switchboard (MLS), I often carried out duties outside of that cloister. The sedate immobility of MLS duty was interspersed generously with hectic activity. Before the commencement of the games, I sometimes made the dash to the Welcome Centre to receive jetlagged Francophone athletes and officials, lubricating channels of communication with the oils of interpretation. I spent three twelve-hour shifts at Pulau Ubin, aiding facilitation of games and conveying safety instructions with rapid, and increasingly fluid, English-German and German-English simultaneous interpretation. Other impromptu occasions requiring my services arose (there were a myriad of these: interviews, games, directions, instructions etc.), and on my last day, an excursion with French athletes to Marina Barrage (after the twenty-odd Germans I was meant to accompany overslept didn’t show up.

I’m making everything sound so very interesting. That would be rather inaccurate. Well, not every second of my shifts was spent doing something meaningful. There were times during my shifts where I was almost supplicating for work — or any activity at all that would drag me out of the inertial switchboard room. Though frivolous, laughter-punctuated chatter and internet-surfing often filled in the gaps of time that the absence of work caused, things could sometimes get exceedingly unproductive. Volunteering as an interpreter really entailed a desire to feel and actually be useful, not redundant.

Much as this might sound bizarre, it was my contributions during moments of difficulty, even emergency, that I enjoyed the most thoroughly. Dealing with an uncooperative athlete at doping control, lending assistance to an athlete desperate to fix his failing “digital concierge” — his Samsung Omnia… I loved these episodes of mild tension and nerves, of emotional strains and stress, because I knew my contributions were not just constructive, but invaluable.

To be fair, I’m saying all this in retrospect, and that means I’ve had the benefit of hindsight. At the point of interpreting I might have shared a similar anxiety and uncomfortable uncertainty with the people that needed my assistance, but it is upon reflection that I find these moments to be extremely satisfying experiences.

The entire journey has been extremely, delightfully, perhaps even somewhat unexpectedly satisfying, fulfilling, enriching and enlightening. I am tremendously thankful for this opportunity. Being an interpreter for two languages was an interesting mix of exhausting work and energising fun but I will remember my Youth Olympics journey most fondly for stretching me physically, mentally, socially and — I say this with sincere surprise — intellectually. Interpretation, after all, does require some rigorous cerebral and linguistic exercise — if one cares enough for the languages he or she is interpreting to and from. Expect more posts from me discussing several key experiences and encounters that have shaped my Youth Olympics experience to being what it is — an utterly preciously-guarded collection of memories of an unforgettable fortnight of seeing humanity from fascinating angles.

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