k r i s a n d r o

The Singapore Slingers have a month before their next game on the 5th November against the Malaysian All-Stars and were all given a one week break. Nicholas took the chance to organize an outing with a few of the stars on the team and boy were we lucky! My favourite player, Eric Sandrin and the teams tallest player at 2.21m, Sam Harris, were free to accompany the bloggers for a night out in town!

The people in attendance apart from the basketballers were Mo, Nicholas, Hillary, Daphne, Molemole, Jason, KuKuNehNeh and if you haven’t realised by now….. myself as well.

Eric is a huge man himself who stands at 2.05m in height and already attract stares from the crowd with his presence. But when Sam arrived, he became an instant celebrity and if I get a dollar for every stare, jaw drop and photo request from strangers, I would have made quite a tidy sum from that day alone.

We decided to dine at Newton Food Centre and let them try out delicious stuff like Satay, BBQ Stingray, Kang Kong and delicious dessert like Cheng Teng, Chendol and Ice Kachang. We then drove to City Hall and took a long walk in the heat to the Esplanade and the Merlion and to Raffles MRT where they took a train back to where we started just for fun.

Eric and his girlfriend, Mo

Chopsticks that look like toothpicks in Sam Harris’ hands

Satay will be a million dollar business if he sells them!

This is how pathetic it is when a 1.77m tall Singaporean faces off with them

If you look closely, Sam cast a shadow ON THE CEILING!

Eric trying to sneak on the Merlion

MRT cabins were not built for people of their size

 

It was great fun hanging out with the basketball stars that day and they were extremely funny and friendly! I have to warn you people on the dangers of neck aches when talking to Sam Harris for extended periods. Wahahahaah!

 

Catch them in action on the 5th of November at the Indoor Stadium!

Thanks to Nicholas, Hillary and Daphne, I was invited to watch the games of the Singapore Slingers at the Singapore Indoor Stadium in the Singapore Challenge Series. Yes, I mentioned ‘Singapore’ 3 times in the last sentence. Sue me.

For the uninitiated, the Slingers is a Singapore professional basketball team which were founded in 2006 and have been playing in the Australian NBL for the past two seasons. In order to continue in their plans of playing in an ASEAN professional league, they have withdrawn from the Australian NBL in July this year and set up this interim competition held in Singapore to prepare them for the direction that they are undertaking.

I heard of the Slingers early last year through newspapers but being a football player, the news of such a local basketball club had me as interested as a lion with a plate of cabbage in front of it. After hearing about the team again through a few bloggers followed by the bugging invitation from Daphne, I decided to bring along KuKuNehNeh (KKNN) and watch the 1st two games of the Slingers against a Philippines team called Air21 which were played on 16th and 21st of September.

What can I say! After watching the two matches, I AM A CONVERT! The action on the courts were fast paced, the players were no amateurs and there were plenty of drama with many heated moments during the games. KKNN is totally attracted to a Slingers player called Eric Sandrin and during last game on the 21st, she was shouting at one point going,

“ERICCC~!!! I LOVE YOUUUU~~~!!!!!”

 

Eric Sandrin, if you are reading this, my girlfriend has never shouted ‘I Love You’ to me before. I want to strangle you if not for the fact that you are one of my favourite players from the team. Of course there are other factors like you being 2.06 metres tall and having all that strength but I shall not go into that…

 

Eric is a total joy to watch. Besides looking the part with his Korean-American heritage, he is a monster on the court with his defensive and attacking capabilities and I totally dig his aggresive style which rile up the opponents and that creates chaos on the courts when the opponents fail to keep their cool. There are many more gems in the Slingers team like the sharpshooter Darren Ng who is a doctor by the way and blogs over here. I shall stop talking about the players from here onwards before this turns into a 1000 word essay and turn you readers away.

Support the Slingers and be their 6th Man!

The thing that is apparent and very sad is that the turnout for the opposition team was much more than the people who came to support the Slingers. Do run over to Sistic’s website or Slingers website to find out how you can purchase the affordable tickets to their games. Trust me! You won’t regret it!

Or if you are a blogger, please email me using the contact form found here and I shall try to get you guys some complimentary tickets.

Next game is on the 30th of September (Tuesday) at 7.40pm! I can’t wait!!!!

[All images are from the Slingers Official Website]

Thanks to the Su Min of Text 100, I got invited to attend a Blogger event at HBO Asia office for a tour and preview of one of their latest additions to the HBO lineup, Flight of the Conchords. I am a big fan of many, many, MANY TV series and I haven’t heard of Flight of the Conchords ever. It wasn’t until Claudia posted an entry about the show that got me interested. And boy! It was hilarious and entertaining!

 

“Jemaine Clement and Bret McKenzie – a.k.a. Flight of the Conchords – may be “New Zealand’s 4th Most Popular Folk Parody Duo,” but in the USA, finding someone who knows their act is about as easy as finding a kiwi nest in Central Park! To rectify this oversight, Jemaine and Bret have moved to New York’s East Village to conquer America, one fan (literally) at a time.

In this irreverent half-hour musical comedy series new HBO series, Jemaine and Bret (playing naïve, fictionalized versions of themselves) move to downtown Manhattan, where they try to land gigs and pursue relationships with elusive women, both with marginal success. As we see, the duo’s innocent, misguided efforts rarely yield dividends, but they do spawn an abundance of plaintive Conchord tunes about life, love, and the pursuit of an elusive music video.”

-Extracted from HBO

 

I arrived with Claudia at our destination and bumped into Nadnut on the way to the HBO Asia office. We were greeted warmly by the Text 100 & HBO crew and plenty other bloggers joined us like Jerrick, Nicholas, Hillary, Rinaz, Sheylara, Musxzart & many other bloggers accompanied by their +1s.

The HBO crew took us for a short but informative tour around their superb office and we got to see the various departments and crew that are responsible for bringing life to the movies, series and trailers that you see on HBO. In the sound editing room, a volunteer was asked to do a short recording and guess what? I was ‘volunteered’.

Into the recording room I go and I was asked to grunt, “ARRRRRRGHHHHH!!!” 3 times.

Not being sure how I sound as my ears were muted from my voice, I went out to see that the sound guru was ready to incorporate my grunt into the trailer. Roars of laughter filled the room as my voice was in heard in that HBO trailer. Seeing that he could squeeze more laughter from the crowd, he played that portion of the trailer a few more times to the delight of the ‘I-can’t-believe-this-funny-shit’ crowd.

The genre of the trailer was ‘Horror’ by the way.

We ended the tour of the office at the lounge that many employees will kill for to have and stuffed our faces with the delicious food catered by Absolutely New Zealand. After having one too many of their fabulous desserts, we plonked ourselves on the comfy couches and watched 2 episodes of Flight of the Conchords. What a great way to end the event!

[Image from Claudia]

 

Some pictures of the stuffs in the goodie bag!

Flight of the Conchords OST! WOOO HOOO!!

Flight of the Conchords premieres on HBO today at 10.30pm! There is also a video contest in which you can take part to win a Mac Book Air!!