k r i s a n d r o

I was at KuKunehNeh’s (KKNN) place and was playing with her 3-year old niece called Ashlee. Ashlee has a little difficulty pronouncing my name and usually ends up calling me,

“Uncle TWISSSSSSSS!“

 

She is really cute and sometimes love to run into my crotch area, head first. Apart from these OUCH! moments and other weird things that kids like to do, one of the things she loves to do is to play with Microsoft Word on KKNN’s PC.

“Uncle TWISSSSSSSS! I want to play ABC!”

 

KKNN’s PC takes about 20 decades or so to start up and I sat on the chair and entertained Ashlee before the PC completely boots. I was wearing beach berms and much like jeans, beach berms are made of this thick material that has this unsightly fold around the crotch area especially when one is sitting down in it.

Ashlee saw the fold and she looked at me with doe eyes and asked curiously,

“What’s that?”

Before I could react, she moved swiftly and used one of her small hands to squeeze the tip of the fold.

“What’s that?” She asked with a more insistent tone and wearing a slight grin of a child who has found something interesting.

She rushed forward to squeeze the bulge again and I managed to lift her away before she decides to hammer the area with her fists or something.

“Uncle TWISSS! What’s that?”

It may be just the fold of my berms but I knew that she has probably caught on that boys have something that girls don’t have in that area and she wanted me to tell her what that ‘area’ contains.

“It’s just my shorts Ashlee. Er…. OH LOOK! The computer is on!”

 

It’s a good thing that kids at that age have short attention spans.

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 In order to continue in their plans of playing in an ASEAN professional league, they have withdrawn from the Australian NBL in July this year and set up this interim competition held in Singapore to prepare them for the direction that they are undertaking.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]

I was told by KuKuNehNeh (KKNN) that there will be a surprise for me on Saturday evening. I am not the type who would die if I do not know what it is but I still tried to irritate her by asking about it every now and then.

“So where are we going?”

“It’s a surprise lar.”

“Is it a restaurant?”

“No.”

“Are we watching a show?”

“Nooooo…”

“Are you selling me away?”

“Nooooooooooooooooo~!!!! And stop asking!”

 

So I ended up at City Hall with her trying to lead the way.

“So where are we going?”

“It’s a SURPRISE.”

“Are we going to the Esplanade?”

“No.”

“Are we going to the museum?”

“Nooooo…”

“Are you selling me away?”

“Nooooooooooooooooo~!!!! And stop asking!”

(After 10 mins of walking)

“Eh! It should be the correct way leh!” She stood in the middle of nowhere and exclaimed.

“Erm… You want me to use my GPS?”

“Er….. Okay lor.”

 

We were walking in the complete opposite direction and were once against saved by the mighty krisandro…. and his GPS equipped Nokia N95.

Seah Street was where she wanted to go and the place that we ended up at was at her friends pub called ‘Shanghai Jazz’. Purpose there? To watch the big game between Liverpool and Manchester United. To think she was acting all blur when I casually mentioned about the game after seeing a couple of guys wearing jerseys a few moments ago.

Settling down into our seats with a pint of Hoegaarden each, she kept emphasizing that she is a ‘die-hard Man U fan’. The screen showed both teams standing in the tunnel before the walk onto the field.

She looked at the teams and turned to me and asked,

“Red colour one is Man U right?”

“No lar. White one is Man U, Red one is Liverpool.”

“Where is MY Ronal….”

“Who?” (Acting blur.)

“How to pronounce his name ah? The Ronal… something one.”

“Ronaldo lar!”

“YAH YAH! Where is MY Ronaldo?”

“You dunno meh? He died.” (He is out because of an injury)

“ANYHOW LEH YOU.”

“WAHAHAHHAHAHHAA!!”

“Eh Dear…”

“Yeah?”

“Where’s Beckham?“

 

So much for being a ‘die-hard Man U fan’. WAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHHA!!! Read her account of the day over here.

With the every growing popularity of social media tools in the internet such as blogging, twittering, plurking,  facebook, friendster and WLM, it’s no wonder that people start to use less of other traditional forms of communication like landlines and handphones.

[Image from here]

I remember my first encounter with the internet was back in secondary school when I joined this ECA called ‘Media Resource Club’(MRC). The school purchased about 3 to 4 computers in the library and they are connected to the internet. I was with 2 other friends and we logged on to explore. I distinctly remembered going to Yahoo! and the very first term I search for was,

“Amy Yip”

WAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAAH!!!!!!

Younger generations won’t know who she is but let’s just say that she was pretty popular back in the days for her erm… assets.

=D

Anyway, I soon acquired my own computer and a 56K modem and I was connected! I used mIRC to make all sorts of new friends and stayed connected with them through ICQ. Papers constantly reported the dangers of the internet during those times and I understood them, but I still proceeded to meet people up. Before all this, I was this introverted geek and the internet really opened me up to chatting and meeting new people up.

Fast forward to now and I am still using the internet to meet a whole lot of people I got to know online through popular social sites and tools.

At least for me, the internet has made me more sociable and enabled me to reach out to a bigger pool of people. Whether or not these relationships can be continued and substained in the real world is still too early to tell. With the right mindset and correct approach, I strongly believe that the internet is a great tool for socializing.