What are we staff doing on campus early on a Saturday morning this long weekend?

We're competitors in a Library-organized checkpoint-to-checkpoint race, a.k.a., "Makan Mania 06." Objective: to eat our way through different kinds of food at each checkpoint. The difficulty is that while we select the food items ourselves, the last letter making up the name of the previous food item must begin the name of the next food item. A further complication is that each food item has to conform to a specific restriction set at the checkpoint.

These rules already sound quite complex. There's more. Each checkpoint puts either an individual team member or the whole team in a challenge to complete for a cumulative total of points; and there's a scavenger hunt challenge for even more points.

Perhaps it's simpler to just track our progress (or just check out our pix for a summary):

Checkpoint 2: Serangoon Central
Food item: Char kway teoW
Challenge: Bean counting game (Amy)
Restriction: Halal

Checkpoint 3: Chinatown Complex
Roadblock: Charades of food item names (June)
Food item: Water chestnut drinK (from a Halal kopi stall)
Challenge: Drink 2 bowls of sesame seed paste (June -- despite it being a team challenge)
Restriction: Crispy

Checkpoint 4: Maxwell Road Market
Food item: Kaya toasT
Challenge: a makeshift bagatelle game (Team)
Restriction: liquid and sour

Checkpoint 5: Golden Shoe Complex
Food item: Tom yum noodleS
Challenge: throw darts for points (Xmac) (Failed)
Penalty: eat 5 chili padi (arrrrghhh!)
Restriction: at least 4 colours

Checkpoint 6: Beancurd shop on Short Street
Food item: SkittleS (TM)
Challenge: finish 4 bowls of beancurd (Team)
Restriction: bitter and sweet

Checkpoint 7: Tekka Market
Food item: Schweppes bitter lemoN (TM)
Challenge: sell 8 cups of teh tarik at 50 cents each (Team)
Restriction: nil, but must bridge food item with final food item: Kaya fondue

Final checkpoint: Makansutra, Esplanade
Bridging item: Nasi LemaK
Challenge: identify mystery food item (Amy, June)
Penalty: or eat it (Xmac, HP) (blech!)
Bang gong to end race!

Our team was the first team to arrive, apparently smashing all previous records by at least 2 hours. Congrats, to us! We make a great team!