To get things going, Gabbie Sheung and Lydia Tse put on a Polar Plunge pizza and pop the week before (February 5, 1999), but as Fate would have it, there was a power failure, and the school was evacuated!

The cold snowy weather was both an impairment and a blessing for our Variety Club Show of Hearts fundraising event, depending on how you looked at it. The school closed down entirely for 2 days out of the week, giving us only half our usual fundraising time. On the other hand, on one day, classes were cancelled at 2:30 in the afternoon, producing a wave of students leaving the buildings toward the parking lot; most of these poor fish got tangled in our nets of panhandlers - er, volunteers - jingling their donation cans for some spare change.

There were prayers said throughout the week for an unfrozen Reflections Pond, but Jack Frost was unforgiving and put an inch-thick layer of ice over the (surviving) goldfish. Several volunteers spent hours the morning of the event, breaking and clearing away ice; Steve Wong had the fun of hopping into the Pond (in hipwaders!) to move the huge plates of ice to the side, while Aaron Bingham, Greg Hall, Kiyoshi Kuroiwa, Tim Norman, Cyrus Sy, Tom Weir and I fragmented the ice and piled it up by the side of the Pond.

Matt Stewart led a parade of engineers around the university - around the AQ, across Convocation Mall, into the West Mall Complex, through Highlands Pub; they even visited some classrooms in which professors didn't become physically aggressive (mostly because permission was asked beforehand!).

Then was the gathering at the Pond. Our banner hung proudly on the side of the AQ. Dr. John Jones, Director of our School of Engineering Science, was escorted to the side of the Pond and promptly thrown in before he had a chance to say a few words. One by one, the plungees were quizzed by MCs Scott Logie and Scott Kulchycki on their knowledge of the engineering student lifestyle (or lack thereof), and one by one, their answers fell on deaf and condemning ears as they were thrown in regardless. (As if we were going to let them get out of it!) Some 30-odd faculty members and students met the fish in the Pond and explored the bottom of the pool; some of us were even insane enough to go in again for a closer look. And Carmel Cinco got the whoooole thing on videotape ...

We were able to donate over $1300 to the children of BC, despite the school being closed down. Both Matt Stewart and Kiyoshi Kuroiwa dragged themselves out of bed to go to QE Theatre at 5:30am to present our cheque at the Show of Hearts Telethon (hehheh, I got to sleep in).

Thanks to the countless volunteers that helped out with the event: calling professors, organizing the pizza and pop, manning donation booths, contacting the various media, getting coffee, being thrown in and throwing people in!! The list goes on and on!

Thank you also to the faculty members that showed up and added to our Engineering spirit: John Jones, Tanya Behrisch, Jim Cavers, Andrew Rawicz, Steve Whitemore, and Glenn Chapman.

That's it. I'm definitely looking forward to next year's Polar Plunge, especially since I won't be the one organizing it =).And I'm proud to say that there is no blue stamping ink on all the doors around the Pit this time 'round. =)