Feeling A Little Sniffy

Played basketball for the first time in a long long time with a couple of colleagues yesterday evening. Was fun. But ended up bathing late and sleeping in the aircon room (because I was feeling so warm) with wet hair. Now having a 'falling sick' feeling which is kinda crappy. Later going for futsal at The Cage so hopefully that can perk me up abit.

Got bruises on my arms from the battle last night!

Japan's out as well! Lost on penalties to Paraguay. Boo....

Its been a tough quarter for everyone, but at least we all worked our asses off and came home with great-looking figures. So hopefully we get abit more money soon. I need to save up more money!

Ever Wondered Why Everyone Shits In The Morning At Work?

Maybe its a habit, or maybe breakfast in town is always too oily. It seems like this has been going on for the longest time. Each time you try to use the cubicles, they're locked till 11+am.

So kua zhang meh? Its not like we have that many people on our floor even. Haha.

And when you try going to a lower floor it is just the same. No empty cubicle for you, amigo.

Sigh.

England are out of the World Cup. South Korea's out. Left with Japan tonight otherwise I will have no more teams to support. Hope they beat Paraguay.

Round Of 16

The round of 16 is finally here at the World Cup and that's when the football action really starts. I'm definitely hoping for more than a few surprises given what we've seen in the early rounds.

In fact some of the relatively more obscure teams like USA, Paraguay and South Korea may go quite far if they get a proper run going and things go their way. Also hoping Japan might spring a surprise or two just for Asian pride.

Not many traditional powerhouses advancing this year given what a joke France and Italy (bottom of the easiest group?!) have been. Germany face England so they will cancel each other out. We're only left with Argentina, Brazil, Spain and Holland in the round as traditional powerhouses. South American teams doing really well this year probably because of the similar climate and altitude between South Africa and the lower continent. In fact all teams from this continent advanced to the next round. Wow. Go Chile, Uruguay and Paraguay!

Japan and South Korea fly the flag for Asia. I'm really happy with that given that I expected more out of Australia  and thought they'd be the only ones making it out of the group stages. Both north Asian teams have done extremely well playing good football and advancing. Was watching the 2.30am match between Japan and Denmark at Peppermint Park the night before and by golly what a good game it was for Japan. Wearing my Nakamura jersey and supporting Japan together with all my Japanese colleagues (amongst other Japanese strangers!). *clap clap clap* Nippon! The Danish colleagues and most of the other Danes left the game by halftime! So I am hoping Japan and South Korea can spring a surprise in this round and advance even further.

So far Argentina looks to be most capable of winning the World Cup given their superstars and surprising connection and collection as a team after their qualifying fiasco (they only secured qualification in WC2010 in the last match with a goal at the last minute!). Lionel Messi is really putting on a fantastic show of quality football inspite of the defensiveness of other opponents when they play against the Argentines. Speaking of which, I think I'll place some money on Argentina winning the World Cup in a moment.

Brazil, Portugal, Spain and Holland look like the ones who can cut it, but their current form isn't very fantastic. Brazil is playing more brute than beautiful, Spain is playing like Arsenal, Portugal has quality but not as much experience, Holland are the perennial number 2s.

So there you have it, a quick round up.

Should be quite an exciting weekend (as much as I'm feeling quite blah that I'm missing my company's Summer Party!. Sobz) .

MBGC

Beautiful isn't it?

Played two rounds at Marina Bay Golf Course over the last few weekends.

First time I played there I beat Eugene 107 - 116.

Second time he won 113 - 102.

That place has got really awesome views man. Too bad the 2nd time we played it poured.

Was fun nonetheless.

Very beautiful views of the CBD area.

Gym Rat

Went for BodyCombat at the gym earlier. My regular Monday class. Sweated bucket loads. Almost slipped over my own pools of sweat.

Watched A-Team. Not as good as I expected.

World Cup Fever

Suffering from World Cup fever. The world cup is from the 11th June till the 11th July this year and I've been catching most of the action so far. Games in South Africa are at 7.30pm, 10pm and 2.30am local time so it is possible to catch a few good games unlike Germany 2006.

I even bought the Panini sticker album as well. If anyone's got extras, can swap with me :)

Worst yet is the betting. I've been betting (with Singapore Pools of course) on just about every match in all sorts of combinations so far. Will announcce my P/L at the end of the world cup.

Last night's Brazil V North Korea game ended up 2-1. I was hoping for a whitewash that didn't happen. Since it was a 2.30am match, I didn't foresee myself watching it. And yet perhaps due to my constant thinking about the match since I had some huge bets on a big Brazilian win, my biological clock spontaneously woke me up at 2.40am, 3.15am, 4.30am and 5.50am. I remember these timings because each time I woke up I'd check the scores on my Blackberry. I even had a weird dream that Brazil won 7-2!


Sigh. Damn tired now.

Suffering from the World Cup fever.

White Collar Boxing

Just attended the most atas boxing event. Held at Ritz Carlton, this white collar boxing private event is so atas that its a black tie event. and 70% of attendees were ang mohs.

And I was seating at those $550 ring-side seats only because we were a main sponsor of the event.

Felt so out of place.

But at least the beer and wine models were smokin' hot! And the amateurish fights were pretty exciting too.

:)

The World Cup has started and I've put in so much money into bets! South Korea beat Greece 2-0! Whooot! Happy! This will probably go down as my heaviest betting World Cup ever!

Slower

Dunno why but my body just can't do the things it used to do anymore. Blame it on the alcohol, blame it on the age. Whatever. I'm getting slower and weaker by the day.

Gone are the days when I can dance past defenders.

Sigh.

Tokyo Pix Are Up

Finally got down to posting the pictures on the blog. But since I'm still lazy, I've selected only my top ten pix. Haha.

So here's the first one. The jap look! Considering that I only brought 3 pairs of boxers and nothing else to wear for this trip, I obviously had additional incentive to be shopping! Only the Polo Ralph jacket wasn't bought in Tokyo. Everything else is from UniQlo except for the cap which is from Gap. Don't I look local?

This is our humble apartment on the first floor of a 4-storey building. We managed to get this place for cheap and its situated in a pretty cosy and safe neighbourhood called Nakano, which happens to be one subway station away from Shinjuku. Its kinda small and cramped but that's how all Japanese living quarters are. The good thing is that they've everything you need in a normal house. Talk about compact living.

As you can see, I was born to win on the UFO machine. I played so much that wifey had to restrict the amount of money I used to play. And still I got so many little toys :) What a talent I have!

Well we can't ignore the food when in Tokyo, and we had it all. Ramen, udon, curry rice, pepper lunch, sushi, grilled chicken, pork charshu, KFC, Mcdonalds, cold soba, takopachi etc. This was our first Ramen meal in Nakano at a little joint in the shopping arcade. Really good stuff. The tamago was to-die-for. Slurp!

Downtown Tokyo taken from the World Trade Center Observatory. Its quite expensive up there and there're no gift shops or cafes at all so all you can do is view the 360 degree view of Tokyo. Quite nice, but expensive. Plus we hadn't even had our breakfast yet that day. I have an almost identical picture of this on my Blackberry and that one was taken professionally.

Dinner with staff from our Japanese office. From left, thats Yuko, Wataru and Peder (who's also visiting from CPH). This restaurant was super ulu. I don't think any tourist could've found it, but it served up one of the best meals of our trip. Very small and cosy, we had an exclusive 5 course Japanese dinner with the chatty owner entertaining us along the way. Reminds me of Tatsuya in Singapore.There was this weird uncle sitting beside wifey  who kept glancing at us till his dinner ended and then he told us what a sweet young couple we were. Awww.....

Hakone. We took a day trip there and did the recommended round trip. A nice and serene getaway on the edge of central Tokyo.As you can see it was a cloudy day, so we couldn't see Mt Fuji no matter how hard I tried to imagine. Sad :(

So we finally made it to the famous Tsukiji fish market. It was HUGE! There was the auctioning section, which was the size of one Exp hall. Then the wet market section which is the size of four soccer fields. And then the commercial section with the sushi bars and eateries. We had to wake up at 4am in the morning just to catch all this action. Last time I was here the area was a dead town by 1pm. The above is the auctioning of the large-ass Tuna fish. You can see the auction table in the upper centre of the picture. Shortly after taking this picture we were asked to leave by a security officer because we were in a no-tourist zone. Haha.

Shopping in Shibuya and Harajuku. We also went to Ginza, Shinjuku, Akihabara to shop. I used to think Singapore was crowded but Tokyo is crazy packed with people! Can't believe how crowded the city is. Something is wrong when the subway evening rush hour starts from 4.30pm till 12.30am! WTF?! Still I've gotta say that there is far more shopping variety in Tokyo than anywhere else in the world I've seen. Different things at different places all the time.

Lastly, we also went to Ueno to see the museums and parks there. Very nice and the buildings are very old and charming. Ended up shopping in Ueno as well. It is definitely one of the more touristy areas in Tokyo and most of the shop people speak a smatter of English. In contrast, the workers at the eateries in Nakano hardly spoke a word of it since there were hardly any tourists there.

And so, that was our 6 day Tokyo trip in 10 segments. All in all was really fun to the max. And we got to live like the Japanese do instead of tourists.Took 572 pictures in total on my Canon Ixus but I'm obviously not gonna post them all. I already had quite a few enquiries about the apartment we stayed in. If you wanna find out more, drop me an email :)

Too Lazy Still

Ok, so I've been busy.

Went to work yesterday not realising that I had actually applied for leave. Sigh.

Aching from soccer just now.