INAS-FID 2005: Canberra

This week my workplace was privileged enough to host the 2005 INAS-FID 5th Athletics World Championships! INAS-FID is somehow supposed to stand for International Sports Federation for Persons with Intellectual Disability. Maybe that's in another language..? I'm not sure.

Anyway, it was a great week! It was literally impossible to notice that the vast majority of these people were actually mentally disabled. Nearly everyone (of course, there were some people in whom it was obvious) was completely normal!

They came from all over the world - Australia, Estonia, Puerto Rico, Spain, France, Great Britain, Hungary, Poland, South Africa, Japan, Hong Kong, Portugal, Sweden, and the Netherlands. I work in the dining hall of the hotel that all the athletes and their coaches stayed at, so over the week I have seen these World Champions 3 times a day.

Believe it or not, it was GREAT! I had a great time working and talking to these people. Granted, many of them could only speak broken english (and some not at all!) but it was so much fun! So many of them had such great attitudes and were just awesome!

However, some of them were real rude bastards. ESPECIALLY the POLISH team! Curse on you! Not only were they extremely rude, arrogant, dismissive of everyone else and had been caught trying to steal our food over and over again, but apparently there are suspicions in the INAS-FID organisation that they don't actually even HAVE an intellectual disability! Bastards!

The Puerto Ricans generally looked a bit shady, but many of them seemed fine. The Swedes had the classic Swedish blonde-hair/blue-eyes combo that characterises them. The South Africans (by far the most friendly) would sing traditional African songs and dance around! They gave us many little trinkets as gifts!

The French ponced around as is their wont. The Japanese were extremely shy and kept trying to organise things beyond reason. The Hungarians were fairly non-descript except for one girl with an absolute killer smile.

The Great British were fine. They didn't rub in the fact that we lost the Ashes too much. One friendly old chap there used to be an English policeman, but then retired and now works in Buckingham Palace. Interesting!

Anyway, tomorrow is the last day that they are here. Believe it or not, these people are actually the World Champions! So it is something of a privilege to have them here.

Now I'll post some pictures!


Some of the South African team, with member of staff Adrian. They had just sung us a song that ended up becoming the theme song to the entire week, with lyrics along the lines of: "For your friends are my friends and my friends are your friends; The more we are together, the happier we are!"


Andrew, Paul and Bruno setting up for the massive barbecue (made to feed over 500 mouthes!) held just before the closing ceremony.


At the closing ceremony. My damn camera phone doesn't work well in the dark :(


Me and one of the girls from the Netherlands. She was so weird but so friendly! Haha she seemed to fall in love with me straight away - this morning she literally grabbed me and pulled me outside and was just walking around with me! Haha! I don't even know her name!

Anyway, I'll see them again tomorrow. Maybe I'll be able to get more pictures.
So, until next time!

P.S. My one question is, what qualifies someone as being mentally retarded? I mean, it was obvious enough in some people but the vast majority appeared completely normal?! It is called "intellectual disability" for INAS-FID. So what's the difference between that and mental retardation?

... anyone?