Big Scare

The new Singapore Slingers are making the game so exciting, it's hard to contain yourself these days. From high flying dunks, to ground breaking falls, the game never seem to be boring and there was even 2 big scares which will be elaborated. Especially when Air 21 came back with a vengeance after falling 38 points in the last game. They started early with a 12-3 run, and Santos #29 going strong to the hoop.

Air 21 led through all the way, scaring us with an impending win. But the Slingers slowly but surely narrows the lead, at the 3rd quarter, we were closing up 38-45. Here are some hits to the floor pictures of our very own Shane #7 and Air 21's Cruz #12.



Eric Sandrin aka "Rodman", Janev and Kirkland led the team with double digit scores and we managed to even the scores into the 3rd Quarter.



This is a sight for sore eyes, an absolute waste of Box seats next to the court and wasted booze and food! Safra, next time please invite some people! Bet a lot of people will be killing to get Brewerkz beer and nice Chilean wine!


Sight for tattoo.. it's some tiger thing. Wondering if anyone knows the exact chinese words on Eric?


Though Darren started slow compared to his previous 28 points attempt, he turned deadly in the 4th Quarter!

Eric giving some defence and love to Homer Se for trying to kick him last game!


More floor spills..




2nd scare of the night is when Eric came crashing down after an attempt for a high flying dunk met with Ocampo #33!



Concerned fans looking on. Hope Eric is recovering well and staying tough!




The Slingers won 98-85 with Darren chalking up 2 late 3 pointers scoring 9 pts and Eric was the high man with 24 points, and wrapping up the series 2-0.

Actual game stats

Next game Tues 30th Sept, 740pm against another Filipino team Purefoods! Go get your tickets here, as you know with all Filipino teams, confirm got action one!

So far so great

It has been a great week so far since last Wednesday. I realised sometimes doing something crazy might actually give you something great. Call it fate, call it Serendipity.

Serendipity 奇缘 is the effect by which one accidentally discovers something fortunate, especially while looking for something else entirely.

New bad boy Sandrin - Good for Slingers?

I totally enjoyed myself at the inaugural Singapore Challenge match between our Singapore Slingers vs Air 21 which hailed from the Philippines Basketball Association (PBA). Though it was a blow out 124-86 game, it was filled with excitement throughout the match. And the reason will be Eric Sandrin #14. Let's not forget "Doctor Ng" (Darren Ng #8) - whom we heard the teammates shouting out his new Nick on the court, akin to Dr J (Julius Erving) but this one here is a real doctor, who scored a whopping 28 points. Dr Ng started slow, with misses, but the faith by his teammate showed a different side of the new Slingers roster.


For the past seasons, I now see a different cohesive side of this newly form team.





Dr Ng push forth with his shooting and started making the big shots, threes after threes he rained just as the Filipino side did from the start taking a 17-11 lead at the start of 1st quarter. The game was face paced, which is known when taking on the Filipinos, they are fast, sharp and rough. Which leads us to the Dennis Rodman of Slingers - Eric Sandrin who had a double double scoring 24 points and grabbed 11 rebounds.


This Korean American actually looks good (Eric, could you please raise your hand to identify yousrelf?) and plays a kick ass tough game. We saw him get hit, hacked, roughened by the Filipinos which many a times the Referees couldn't catch. And from our great courtside seats which Nic got us, we saw all the roughing of the match. But he never relent and gave his own sweetness.

Check out Eric's monster 2-hand Jam and watch where one of his feet lands!

With great Brewerkz beer served now, and Chilean wine as well. The game just gets better. In case you fans out there do not know, we're the only sport allowed to serve alcohol indoors!!


Later on in the fourth quarter when the lead was already horrendous, Air 21's Homer Se#16 try to make things rough and took it out on Eric, taking him on to the ground and trying to kick him!


Check out the Air 21's fans reactions.

Well I enjoyed myself so much in this game and because I lugged my DSLR over, I just did not cover the game, for more match reviews go to Slingers' official website, Jase or the best view from Darren himself..yes Dr Ng has a blog!


Game 2 against Air 21 will be played on Sunday 21st Sept at 4pm. So do come and soak up the atmosphere! And catch a glimpse of Eric before he does turn into Dennis Rodman! But Eric seems to get more girly screams of his name then Dennis!

Tickets start at $6-16. Tribute to Darren, 1st #8 comments I see here, get free tics from me at the indoor stadium before the match!

Other cute bloggers seen at the game are Precious and Daphne and a first-time-watching Sharon.

Ok to end with my great fun shot of the night, by Daniels #12 who had a Shaq like dunk! Daniels had 23 points for the night. We had 4 Slingers with double digit scores.

When life surprises you a little

Picked up a good book lately. I came to realised a few things. Never knew I didn't understood "Reading" completely, until I realised "Reading" threw all out logic and everything you thought otherwise out of the window.

An example of what I am trying to say is that , when you pick up a interesting looking book, dull crazy covers it might have, but you picked it up and read a few pages. Then you realised it's a little tattered, a bit heavy, too many pages to read, some ink writings left on the pages etc. But the first few pages catches your eye and intrigues your mind and it seems to be the last book of its kind. You can't put it down completely and you wanted to be cautious if it might be a bad read.

But as you read deeper into it, you realised it might be exactly what you were waiting for, what you wanted to read. Then you go against your logic that it has many pages, heavy, all the bad comments or reviews you are used to reading about such genre, as an excuse to drop a book down and not read it. Somehow this crazy book seems so right. You could go straight to the last page to read the ending, but you somehow know that if you read page by page even though it might take months or years to complete this thick book, it will be the most satisfying for you to read it word for word slowly, saturating all your senses and understand that it is no longer a normal crazy book but an exceptional read and you won't want to rush it. Because the ending won't be as great, and you actually pray no one let you know of the ending.

Then slowly through the chapters, this book which has a dull cover took its own form from the understanding of the words, the intent of the author and you slowly realised, the cover became the most beautiful thing you ever seen. That the dull cover did not matter but the breadth of the content blew you away and you never want to let it down and your mind slowly forms a new cover akin to beauty which is in the eye of the beholder. Going against all logic or rationality. That's a good read and that throws little surprises in your life you thought you are done seeing.

Anyway didn't have a copy of that crazy book, anyway the covers don't matter, but took some nice food pics I would love to share. Watercress soup...fried fish skins...apparently I need a diet. Been eating too much lately.

I have a prestigious job

Hmm forgot I took a snapshot of this little article on USA Today highlighting the status of engineers.Apparently in the US, I'm now perceived to have a prestigious job. So YW, no wonder we need to work for US companies. YJ and Kel are not as welcome there as Architects and Bankers as in Singapore. :P

A little observation of profiteering

Have you noticed how our petrol, fuel, gases, transport provider hardly seem to drop prices even though we have eased off from the highs of USD$147/barrel to today's USD$100/barrel? That's about 30% drop in Brent Crude oil prices.

SIA just announced cutting fuel surcharge for short range flights, while coincidentally our Airports decides to raise departure taxes.

From Jan 1, departure taxes will go up $7 from $21 now - $15 airport tax and $6 security charge - travellers leaving from Changi Airport's main terminals will pay $28. And at Budget Terminal, the tax will go up from $13 to $15. Flying out of Seletar will cost $18, up from $16 now.

Somehow it all seems so familiar like government's usual pre-election freebies with post-election tax increases. "Give and take"


Stolen from PetrolWatch website

Anyhow, the main observation here is that our pump prices which peaked at S$2.36 in July for Grade 98 (excluding all credit card discounts, etc) and right now since early Aug, we have been stuck at S$2.07. That's only a 12% reduction?!! Is there a conspiracy or oligopolists are at play? These collusive actions are not checked by our government?

We are observing record revenues for oil companies, and people have to be suffering from such explicit collusion of price fixing. From higher fuel costs, fuel surcharges, food costs from transportation costs increases, I wonder if governments are in arms with these companies as they clearly have no qualms in bringing down the prices to reflect actual crude prices and bring down inflation.

Singapore Challenge Series

A quick update on the Singapore Slingers:

The Singapore Slingers will be hosting teams from around the Pan Asia Pacific region. Starting with a tough first game against recent PBA Grand Finalist AIR 21 on the 17th of September. The ‘Challenge Series’ will run through to the end of January. The ‘Series’ replaces the games set aside for the Australian NBL and keeps the momentum building towards the Slingers goal of playing in an ASEAN professional league. The following dates have been set for the 'Starting Five':

* Tickets for the first five games are on sale from Wednesday at Sistic. The first five games are:

Game #1 Wed 17 September Air 21 ( Philippines PBA)

Game #2 Sun 21 September Air 21 ( Philippines PBA)

Game #3 Tue 30 September Purefoods ( Philippines PBA)

Game #4 Sun 5 October Sydney Spirit (Australian NBL)

Game #5 Sun 12 October Beijing Aoshen ( China )


All 5 games will be played at the home of the Slingers – The Singapore Indoor Stadium. So go book your tickets from Sistic online from the 10th of Sep '08.

I've heard about Purefoods from the PBA league long ago, they were very good. If you are wondering why they have names like Air 21 and Purefoods, basically commercial sponsorship of the teams. Singapore used to have team names like as Asia Electric back in the 60s through 80s when basketball used to rule the courts and soccer wasn't the only thing on Singapore TV and the minds of every kopi tiam uncles. We even won a SEA games bronze medal in the 1979 games, 2 years after it was introduced into SEA games. But you know Philippines will rule the sport in the region, given 90% of the Filipinos I know, play the sport.

So Filipino supporters, do come support the sport and your Filipino teams! But you might be torn between supporting them or the Singapore Slingers as we have the top amateur basketball player in the Philippines - our PBL MVP Jason Castro in the starting lineup!

Overwhelmed by the Big Apple

It was a long awaited trip which I had planned to go since my lil' sis had a job assignment to New York. I needed to get away for a long period to clear my mind as it has been a mind-boggling year for me, which over the next few weeks I will blog about my one month stay here in US as I clear my head and clear through my over 2600 photos taken! If we still live in the film age, that would be at least 72 rolls of film!

I've also brought my mom and aunt over - to do my laundry! Hahah just kidding, my mom and aunt were here to visit some friends and get some shopping done, while I utilised my sister's nearby laundromat! This trip has been an adventure waiting to happen as I slowly fill you in with pictures and stories.



As we arrived in the afternoon, we managed to take a walk to Times Square which was overwhelming. If you're done with visiting the Seven Wonders of the World, Times Square is the next stop, seriously. It is filled with the sights and bustling city sounds. Be it the song sang by the Rolling Stones or the movie starring Michael J Fox - The phrase "Bright lights, Big city" was meant for New York. There are massive posters, billboards, lighted neon signs, projection walls all over buildings. Now I know why it is regarded the best place to be on New Year's Eve.



I was destined to come here. 5th Aug '08 - The day I arrived, my sis who never won the raffles draw in her company, won 2 tickets to the Mets game. Off to the Shea Stadium! The 44-year old Shea Stadium will be demolished later this year to make way for the new stadium just next door - which you can see in the picture above.



We were seated just above the batter's box/home plate which gave us the perfect view of the game. It was the San Diego Padres vs the New York Mets.



The stadium was electrifying and the game was exciting with many milestones. One of which was Fernando Tatis's 100th career home run! He had 2 left homers for the night.



I shall not attempt to recap the game, but the match was exciting as Mets beat Padres 6-5.


Special Met's commemorative Budweiser metal beer bottle

Slowly but surely with some beer and cheese nachos and jetlag, my sis soon caught me dozing off. So we started to make our way out of the stadium. But not before a Met's fan proposed to his girlfriend through the big jumbo board as you seen it in many American movies.


How romantic, every sports fan dream.

With Shea Stadium set to be demolished after this season, fans and collectors can buy seats from the ballpark for USD$869 per pair online at Mets.com. I bet this couple will be buying one for keeps.

I guess what they say about New York is true. Women come to New York for the two L's: Labels and Love. Yes, I caught the movie Sex and the City on my flight back to Singapore, though I refused to catch such chick flicks, and I never watched a single episode of the series, I find the movie actually quite good. And my sis has indeed found a boyfriend within months of her arrival - would I find my L? Stay tuned.