Amazing shot

In light of the recent return to skating, missed my old times of roller-hockey. This nine-year old, Oliver Wahlstrom's nifty move in the Boston Bruins's 1-on-1 competition is amazing! Watch it!!

Inline Skating

Saw this video link from a german friend on Facebook. Got me all excited and now I want to get back to skating every weekend. But need to get new blades, my old one is really dying on me as all the plastic straps have broken and I need crank straps to hold it in. Anyway for those who love inline skating here is the clip.

My weather-beaten Roces, only my second baby in my 16 years of blading!

Saw this new Skate park at East Coast couple of weeks ago. Have to try it some day! 

Local Basketball Amateur league

Having just completed our first season at Jammers League, I am so looking forward to the next season with my amateur league team - Spartans, which will begin in Nov after a month of rest. We did well to achieve our personal winning goal of 50%, in fact 55% of 11 wins and 9 losses and to finish 5th place out of 11 teams. The ride was enjoyable and so far we are limiting the team to only our friends and work colleagues as we tend to shout and scream, support and encourage each other. The need to have harmony in the team is crucial to a having a fun time since we are only here to try our best while enjoying our games.

My team Spartans have been playing together for about 5 years for now and we have played in the BBAXN league as well for a good 4 years. Quite often it was upsetting with the referees being "short-sighted" and sometimes we get "blind" ones as well. Haha but the league over there is rather competitive and hardly warm in feeling - we saw many fights and injuries over the years. Anyway we finally shut down our 1st team in that league and concentrate in the Jammers league which we found new friends and a hell lot more fun!

The Jammers League is endorsed by the Singapore Sports Council and organised by Project Hoopz. They try to bring a fun and enjoyable environment to the many basketball fanatics in Singapore. Project Hoopz organises basketball all year round, be it tournaments, leagues or scrimmages and also provide services such as customised jersey design and production. So do check out their website, if you are interested in joining a team or starting one. Hope to meet you guys on the court someday.

For some video clips of the fun we are having, please go to the jammers youtube channel.

Third World minds from Third World TV programming

This is a great post by Yawning Bread, which highlights how creativity and imagination is stemmed from a controlled local TV programming. In that blog entry, he covers the direct and indirect effects of having local TV shows mutilated by censorship.

The crisis in local television is a harbinger of the crisis that Singapore as a whole will soon face. In a nutshell, it's an inability to compete in a world of ideas. Censorship and authoritarian politics are the root causes.

True to the fact that most of the time, my family is either tuned to some Taiwanese variety show or Korean drama on local channels. Otherwise we are glued to Starhub AXN/Star/CNN/CNBC/Discovery channels catching better quality shows. Parents these days have subscribed to Nickelodeon or Disney channels for their children; whilst young adults with access to fast broadband speeds are watching everything online like on Youtube - they make up the fussiest age group with their short attention span and the fact that the internet offers them a wide variety. Why would anyone watch local TV shows anymore? I have observed over the years, more advertisements are being shown on cable channels these days - is this the result of the recession or the declining viewership on local TV channels?

So lucky for those who can afford fast broadband speeds and a slew of overseas programs on a Starhub/MIO TV subscription. They have alternatives, but what about those who can only afford the basic TV license for free-to-air channels?

A great quote from Yawning Bread's article:

Innovation needs a nurturing environment. A bright spark without that environment typically amounts to no more than a flash in a pan. Our politics have ensured that we don't have that environment. So the intellectual desert we see on free-to-air television is a vision of Singapore's future, when we are outclassed by the rest of the world in an age when ideas, knowledge and creativity matter more than ever. And gently, all the while entertained by the best from abroad via the internet, we slip into the Third World.

As we slowly progress on to international quality shows on the internet and paid cable channels, I wonder when can we stop paying TV and Radio licenses? Perhaps that can help to speed up the inevitable - kill off poorly made local productions and drive MediaCorp to really think out of the box to produce good quality content. Why waste taxpayers money to even bring back Phua Chu Kang? A sudden urge for nostalgia? I hardly think this even qualifies as a desperate attempt to help integrate the new PRs and citizens with our local Ps and Qs of Singlish.

Personally, I rather watch old re-runs of Seinfeld and Friends on Star TV.

Air Multiplier

A child friendly bladeless fan! Wind is created through inducement and amplification of air flow.