Asian Basketball League (ABL)

Managed to catch the 2nd home match of the Singapore Slingers @ Kallang Indoor Stadium today. KimHoong bought the tickets earlier in the week and by 3.45pm we were seated at our place.

Today's match: Singapore Slingers vs Philippines Patriots
as this is my first time watching the Slingers in action, KimHoong was there to provide information of the main players in the team. match started and the action was fast, which is usually what you will get when there is a Philippines team playing. there were some fancy passes around, but the defence of both teams could have been better, especially the Slingers. a couple of times, the patriots had the forward receiving a pass under the basket and there were no body on that player. in the end Slingers managed to carve out a win after a nervy ending to the match.
it is very obvious that for the Slingers, other than the point guard, no other players can handle the ball when under pressured. and if those calls at the end of the game were to went the opponent's way, Slinger might lose this match as well. it didn't happen, and Slingers won.

Next matches in November will be against Satria Muda (Indonesia Team) & KL Dragons (Malaysia Team). See you at game time then!

new 'residence' in the office

moved to my new 'residence' last Friday. and it's sure is different sitting @ toapayoh, compared to the previous faberhill. gone are the days where peace & quiet surrounds me. my new residence is right beside the 'highway' and very near a couple of 'police beat base'. hopefully can get used to it quickly.

newspapers today.. rubbish!

have you picked up a newspaper and read it from front to back lately?

i felt put off by the articles 'written' about the government. yes, i know newspaper is considered as a pro-government propaganda media. but they could at least pick up "believable" stories and put them on. printing everything the government does, making them look like they are working hard to help Malaysians survive the current worldwide economic 'crisis'. it's been known that Malaysian politicians, especially from the ruling party, are not up 'standard' to lead. some of the comments made by them are ridiculous. (there is even 2 books published, listing the 'famous' quotes from our Malaysian politicians - can be bought from MPH). some politicians can't even 'argue' without using vulgarities. is this a government? or is this a market?

the supposedly Titanic clash ....

ManUtd vs Liverpools. 14th march 2009. 1-4 to pools.
it was a unbelievable scoreline as it is. and all the pools fan rejoice at beating their nemesis. hooray! very big booster for pools, seeing that they have nothing much to celebrate nowadays. beating madrid & mu on the same week with similar scoreline is indeed an achievement. well as far as bragging rights go by, they do have something to rub it in their opponents face, baring the fact that it is the only thing they have to brag about. The league is a 38 matches long marathon, winning the sprint but losing the marathon... well depends on what is your priority then, if its just to beat the top 4 of the league, then i guess liverpools have achieved their targets.

What went wrong with MU
- for such an "important" match, the defenders look tired. 4 matches in row within 2 weeks sure drains even the strongest player mentally and physically. Vidic, MU's player of the year so far, is way below in terms of performance. when u're tired, you tend to make mistakes and thats what he did. in fact, he made 2 very big mistakes.
- midfield creativity, or rather the lack of it. Carrick is going thru a patch of bad form at the moment. 2 matches with sub-standard performance. Managed to survived the 1st (Inter) but couldn't make it for the 2nd (Pools).

What went right with Pools
- torres is the man! when he plays, the pools look dangerous. when gerrard plays too, they are definitely world class. and both of them did showed up on saturday. pools are dependent on both of them for the goals, be it scoring them or creating them. it's like there are 2 liverpool teams, the dangerous (with torres & gerrard) and the lame (without both of them).

in the end, it was one team on form, the other had an off day....
p.s. see you at the end, pools... if you don't mind being rubbed in the face with the trophy which MU will be holding up

"MOVIE" of the year goes to ....

"The day that earth stood still" ... *dead silence (during Oscars) / *applause with enthusiasm (MTV turkey awards) .. That is how it will pan out, IF the movie get nominated for any awards.

Keanu Reeves is @ his best playing the character Klaatu. At least the casting crew got that part right. Klaatu is soooooo Keanu Reeves... and the storyline is ... not catching at all, almost fell asleep halfway thru the movie. and since we are at it, can someone just kill that irritating kid!? Hhmm, at least that kid managed to irritate people, unlike Klaatu, the alien which shows no emotions and talks in 1 flat tone.

Hopefully this serves as a lesson to those producers, a 70s/80s hit movie doesn't naturally translate to a hit movie in the new century. new ideas is the way to go, not recycling old ones.

yoga is religious ....NOT

this guy sure has lot of time on his hand to compile Yoga information from the net. (click here) but i guess everybody must be wondering why on earth is yoga being banned by the islamic council of malaysia. even people from middle east practice yoga, and nobody has raised any hoohaa about it being against the teachings of islam.

*does this imply that the malaysian islamic council has attain a higher level of understanding? even higher than those religious scholars in middle east? wow, this is a first for malaysia. raise the flag, sing the anthem, bla bla bla .... *

body of lies ...

Leonardo diCaprio is one intense actor. if you don't realize, most of his characters in his current movies are intense. this is one of them. the plot of the movie is quite nice and interesting, i do find it a bit slow moving :)