Merry X'mas and a Happy New Year to all

Just before the year ends, I would like to enter my final 115th blog entry for the year compared to the 9 post I made from 2004 to 2007, I guess I made quite a progress.

This has been a tumultuous year for me, losing some good friends and going through tough experiences which only strengthened my belief that "What doesn't kill you only makes your stronger". It also marks good things such as the start of many new found friendships I made from attending a Singapore Slingers game and shooting a free throw amidst a drunkard state to win some $ to treat a bunch of bloggers.

Blogging has open many avenues of expression and I am just glad my name is briefly mentioned by my fav blogger Mr.Brown whom I have faithfully followed since my army days back in the 90s when his SNEs were downloaded on my PDA.

It was a year which I managed to travel quite a bit, start a new venture and recharged my soul and even gotten myself a great new job.

So I hope despite all the impending financial meltdowns and possible loss of the many things in such turmoil times - we could all sustain kinship and friendship. These are things which should mean something to all of us and not material wealth.

May all be blessed and stay tough in the darkest of times and may 2009 prove to be another refining fire which we would all walk away from - stronger we will emerge. I will be on leave from X'mas to New Year, so feel free to contact me for some hoops or food.

Slingers vs Darwin All Stars

This season's Slingers are doing very well. Unlike the other seasons, the current squad of Singapore Slingers are doing very well defensively, they are also consistent with their offense. They have stamina and results in a better second half team. Almost all their games at home so far for 2008 have seen them erupting offensively which resulted in convincing wins.

Likewise vs the Darwin Resort All Stars in a Christmas special, a close 1st half of 37-35, ended up with a 91-65 win with Slingers going for 22 unanswered points in the 4th quarter. The All Stars were lacklustre in the 4th quarter scoring only 9 points. I believe is the lowest quarter seen so far with Slingers scoring 31 points, mostly from Darren #8 Doc getting hot from beyond the arc. Darren scored 33 points shooting 50% from 3 point territory, draining 5 over the opponents. Darren has video clips covering the match and his signature, dribble, fake, pull up shot.


Al Vergara was doing his damage with 5 steals that night.


And here's a no look "Jason Kidd" back pass to Darren after a cut to the hoop resulted in 2 All Stars closing on him.


And Hillary who couldn't get my kiss cam debut tried to get one on her cam instead!

More pictures from me here; and Andrew's amazing sports photography here. Thanks to Nic for the courtside passes, but couldn't join us for the big win as he was overseas again.

Slingers then gave the All Stars another chance as they flew to Darwin for a return leg match. Wrapping the match by the 1st quarter, Slingers were up 17 points at half time. The match ended 106 - 77 with Eric in turn hitting the big 30 while Darren took 18. More coverage here by Darren and Slingers website.

Gaming Consoles

Pictures shamelessly stolen from here

During my childhood, my dad tried to get me exposed to all sorts of indulgence, from music to even gaming. Back in the 80s, my dad bought me a set to get me hooked onto gaming. The Atari 2600 was first released in 1977, but probably only reached the shores of Singapore in the early 80s. It is the first successful video game console to use plug-in cartridges, and I could have so many game choices to change. It was well built and survived until the Computer PC AT/XT series came about and I was playing 5 1/4 floppy disc games which were under the 360kB the Double Density (DD) disk can hold.

Next came in the early 90s, where the graphics on the PC paled comparing to dedicated gaming consoles. And I was addicted to the Nintendo Famicom System (The Nintendo Family Computer aka Famicom was first released in 1983) which I purchased from a friend as I dabble back into game consoles again. It was tough convincing my parents as the focus for me now was studies. Thus pocket money saved bought me this wonderful console.

But then PC made its debut of improving medium from FDs to CDs and now DVDs, and the slew of graphics card, sound cards made it more worthwhile and enjoyable to be able to play using the computer. You can have controllers, keyboards, wheels to play FPS, racing, strategy games. This brought me to the present time where gamers can choose between consoles or computers as game developers release titles across all platforms.
What makes it interesting is, why should the game consoles survive?

Well I have previously mentioned that game consoles these days are value for money as the makers actually lose $ for every set they produce. I made my decision based on many other factors which I will explain now.

I currently have a PS3, 2 PSPs, a DS Lite and a Wii, besides the PS3 for local warranty, the rest of the devices are bought from Japan with no supporting warranty but have not much issues so far - it's been more than a year. These Japanese gaming toys are well built and provide a lot of entertainment for myself and my family and lately Rainbow Six on the PS3 has given myself and my girlfriend a lot of collaboration time. The only mishap so far was my 1st generation PSP (Black 2004) which has the button dropped off after much aggression playing the NBA Live 2008. 4 years and just a button drop off, that shouldn't be too much to ask right? Even my battery is made in Japan and is still the same one that came with the portable.

My first semiconductor engineering job was with a Japanese company which instilled quality in my workscope. They are very stringent with reliability, quality - it is shown in their attitude towards work, design etc. I used to manufacture Non-volatile memory (NVMs) otherwise widely know as Flash, the memory cards you used in your cameras and DS Lite, PSPs etc. The NVMs I built was tested with many parameters, going through many stages which explained why they used to cost so much, but I tell you - they last. I managed to perform reliability tests on my devices which showed a memory retention of about 200 years! But that was probably on your 32mb card which is probably obsolete right now.

With the Koreans, Taiwanese and Chinese coming into the memory business and slashing costs such as test, reliability monitoring etc. It is why memory is now a commodity business which is now so cheap, it can be considered as a Harddisk option. The price you pay now, is the price you pay for less reliable things. You pay peanut, you get monkeys. Everything comes at a price.

But saying that, who now still uses a 256mb memory stick? Within a year, everyone will be clamouring over a 16gb SDHC card or double that next year. There should be no issue with losing your pictures, as the memory card would be sitting around collecting dust.

That saying, I hope Jase is happy with his PS3 as the Microsoft Xbox 360 is making headline news on its quality and reliability. Apparently, this disc scratching issue was known before Xbox 360 was launch in 2005 and could have been avoided with a USD$0.50 solution. I remembered Microsoft rushing to release the console while Sony was having delays and prefer to lose market share rather than release a bad console.

Lately from the impending economic depression, I have observed that greed over integrity is the root cause of what is happening to the world. But let's not get depressed and enjoy life in some way or another.

Do check out this game console website covers the entire history of game consoles.

Slingers vs Satria Muda Britama

The game vs Satria Muda Britama on 7 Dec at the Singapore Indoor Stadium was disappointing. I expected a lot more from Satria given they are the #1 team in Indonesia and judging from the videos found on youtube about them, I thought there would be some challenges.

Well anyway Slingers started 10-0 run with Eric scoring mostly and Slingers went on to win convincingly 75-46 with the locals doing very well especially Pathman #15 who was a starter in this game and ended up again with 6 points consistent with the previous game.


Spotted a fan of Pathman #15 who is an ang moh and seriously is more fanatic about Singapore Slingers than Singaporeans. So far many jerseys have been sold out, so do grab it as I heard from this Pathman fan, the way Pathman is going, the jersey might be worth something in 20 years time!


More of my pictures found here. Did not take much as Andrew returned for round 2 with try out of photos which produced amazing shots and Daniel also tag along to try his new Canon 5D Mk II as he heard from Andrew how exciting live basketball is.

Anyway Jase and Doc Ng has more coverage and full stats here.



I leave you with Mr. Chia's video highlight of the night with Darren throwing Eric an alley oop!



This is Andrew's amazing digitally sequenced shot of the alley oop.

Too much

I believe people should always have just enough - too much of anything is bad.
Too much KFC ice lemon tea gives me tummy aches. Too much chocolate gives me pimples. Just as if a person has too much money, he might indulge in more sins and in turn get into much more trouble like getting drunk.

Too much money drove NKF and many other Singapore charities to improper handling of finances, which eventually led to first class air travels, golden toilet bowls and the unforgettable "peanuts". I bet if their finances are just sufficient, there won't be any money to mismanage or abscond with.

I believe just as our town councils and many more government bodies who have excess cash will all start to behave like mini-funds, mini-Temaseks and mini-GICs and play the role of fund managers wanting more and more {I am sure they do not personally gain from this, but then again I bet KPIs (Key Performance Index) of their performance is part of their annual bonuses}. Would we have blamed them if they had grew the S$2 billion treasure chest instead of losing S$16 million? My only finger pointing is with S$2 billion, why am I still paying SC&C? Why are the subsidies such paltry sums? Are they really subsidies? Or like NKF, the cost of $3 medicine is sold at $4 and is subsidised based on market rates of $6?

The solution to having too much of a "good thing" is accountability and transparency.

1) Be transparent, show the cost of maintaining the Towns - do we really need S$2 billion in reserves? The recent national propaganda media has been showing US universities losing huge sums of investment and are saying it is acceptable in these times to lose lots of $, so we should accept our town councils' mistakes but the US universities have been transparent in their accounts which are published online and made available.

2) Let's be honest, if the government came clean with what they have been doing and apologized for their mistakes then perhaps it would have been easier to swallow. As we all learn from mistakes when we acknowledge them. Not just put on a defensive front and tell everyone to move on. I have been guilty of this many times as it is probably a guy thing but then again it is no excuse. But hey I am not paid millions by the people thus I am not accountable to the people.

I believe our government, town councils and many other GLCs have forgotten who pays their salaries and who gave them money to invest in the first place. I bet my grandfathers/parents and my tax/ERP/SC&C/CPF dollars have contributed some sweat into it and I should have every right to criticize any wrong doings.

Asshole

Was returning to the car after watching "Bolt" at Vivocity this evening,this totally peeved me off as I don't understand how an inconsiderate person could have just walked off after parking like this.



Has to be an asshole to learn how to park like this. I hope the TT owner open the door "forcefully" in order to get into his ride. And I've decided to be a lazy ass and not bother to black out the ass's car plate number.

Singapore Slingers vs Smart Pampanga Buddies

First of all, I would like to say, welcome back Eric. Sandrin was hot scoring 18 points and he proved he was back from the dunks he was having all night.

Here are some of my pictures of the great 2nd match of the double header last Sunday - Photobucket.

Slingers overran Smart Pampanga Buddies 100-72 in what was an exciting first half but as I remembered telling Andrew, this season's Slingers are a great 2nd half team. They have more drive, endurance and consistency. They started routing the Buddies once 2nd half started. Frank Arsego is doing a good job taking over Gordie McLeod from what I can observed, though he does take a longer time-out, often needing the referee to pop over to chase them into the game.

What was also interesting there were 3 ejections on the opposing team; and 3 of our local boys did a great job. Pathman, Desmond Oh and Tan Chin Hong combined for 11 points with fearless tenacity, stood up to the rough plays, taking charges and chasing after their men.



Check out the video highlights of the match with Sam Harris's cap of the game making it to a 100 and his first 3 pointer of the season, he does look like he has been training!

Official match report on Slingers' official website.

San Miguel vs Talk N Text

Talk N Text Tropang Texters beat favorites fellow Philippine Basketball Association (PBA) team San Miguel Beermen in the first-ever PBA regular season game held in Singapore Indoor Stadium. This was the first match of a double header in record crowd of about 8500 basketball fanatics. Talk N Text edged out San Miguel 85-80 in an exciting match between two closely fought teams.

Thanks to Nic who gave Jase, Andrew and myself courtside media passes to capture two great games.



This was Andrew's first time being introduced to live professional basketball in Singapore and being seated at courtside, is now an addict. Seriously there is no better experience than to watch a live basketball match. I got hooked from catching my first NBA game in Staples Centre watching Vince Carter lose by a point.
Anyway do try to catch this upcoming Slingers game on Sun 7th Dec vs Satria Muda Britama (Indonesia)- Don't play play, Satria Muda Britama is the champion of IBL (Indonesia Basketball League). Tickets available at Sistic.

Andrew is a great photographer who has amazing photos of nature, animals, portraits and other sporting actions, and this time he did captured some great pictures of the Slingers in action. Do check out his pictures and these are mine here(Please do not compare - I just started for a few months!).

Will upload and blog about the ensuing match between Singapore Slingers vs Smart Pampanga Buddies. In the meantime read Jase and #8 Doc Ng's entry first.