Well, this site was put together to keep us in touch but for the most part I think I use it just to ramble on about cycling and avoid doing any work

Anyway HP thanks for bankrolling this nonetheless…. BTW do we have a backup yet still??

Let’s hope to hear more from everyone (about ANYTHING) in the coming year…

hellow lanchius!

just arrived back in london this afternoon with taingas and phil. the crew are tanned as buggery and also broke as hell. spent the last few weeks in germany, prague, poland, budapest, venice and croatia. the highlights were croatia (awesome beaches and great people), germany (the world cup was friggin fantastic. pity about the friggin italian game but the croatian game was definitely worth it, even after getting a new hole inserted into phil and i after paying 300 euros per ticket) and the blonde chicks with massive cans all over eastern europe….amazing. somehow i think the earth’s gravitational pull is not as strong here.

all the above countries are definitely worth seeing but they are not as cheap as what people think. also the people in prgaue are out of control rude and u get slapped with 22% government tax and 19% service chareg when u dine in…ridiculous! will send some pics soon.

well done HP with the new place, phil and i are expecting pics ASAP. maybe a link to the real estate site or something. and for the bigger question, now that u have the house, surely its time for the final piece of the puzzle to lock into place!!! common HP, i know deep down inside u have it in u to get down on that dodgy knee of yours.

also, nick u look fatter on the photos. the shoulder reconstruction didnt do u any favours i reckon.

how is the bball team going guys?? jase has started some scratch matches on wed nights here aswell and as per usual, kenny leang is flopping his ar$e all over the floor. chow is shaking and baking and still going no where and jase is doin his dodgy one hand fakes and only faking himself out. and i’m still shooting shit and hitting the back of the rim only.

phil and i r heading for the sales tomorrow and also signing the contract for our new rented residence within 10 minutes walk of jason/ anh ad hays’s place. should be good but now i’m stressed about setting up the utilities. especially when the clifton hill house had nothing when i moved in…will send pics soon.

lasty, al i think i will be coming back in january and looking for some major dental work. a crown i reckon. the friggin absess reoccurred again and i dont want an aussie trench thing happening over here. in lieu of not getting an appointment, make sure there’s some room in your appointment book during that period and make sure u’re not on one of your quarterly holidays to some funky destination. thanks mate

catch

Has anyone heard of Darren Ng?

Chinese guy, final year medical student, used to play for the 36ers - hey, that’s similar to my profile, isn’t it?

Anyway, after our match on Thursday, I watched a bit of the following match that featured Darren’s brother, Ashley Ng (the similarities continue…). It was a low standard D grade match but this guy was obviously a good player. At one stage, he went on a fast break into an open court, an effortlessly DUNKED the ball! Now it’s not common to see people dunk the ball but especially a Chinese guy, around my height, playing domestic basketball!

I’m jealous …

First game for the new-look Triads last night resulted in a win by the narrowest of margins. Useful having a bit more size with Glenn and Eugene.

Anyway, it’s Thursday! We’re going to Perth! Save your comments on the trip for the previous post by Hay. Just thought I’d share a photo I took in Malaysia last year - I think it was in Penang.

There were no spectators, heck we didn’t even have a scorer. But these 5 brave men took one last stand on Court 5 (the one right down the very end) to continue the legacy for one more game.

In the end we failed, 39-27 I think it was, but I think we all gave it our best. We were out numbered from the start, with TGA having something like 8-9 players as well as a cheer squad. They weren’t that skillful of a team but their youth, height and speed wore us down in the end. We put the first points on the boards and I think it was 5-0 before they started to score. By half time, we were down by 1 at 14-13 but when second half came I think we were just all too buggered. Their offence wasn’t crash hot but they kept penetrating the key and our offence just didn’t follow through/finish either. We missed quite a few freethrows and had a few turnovers as well. We couldn’t execute our normal Phil-cheery-picks effectively cos they just got back there too damn quick most of the time. Still, it was something like 32-27 with about 3 mins to go and we kept fouling them to send them to the line (9 fouls on us) but despite their constant misses, we couldn’t convert.

Highlights for the game were:
- The fact that we all qualified to play in the finals
- Cheeks blocking one of the tall guys who scored on him earlier (#50)
- Harng taking a baseline drive and hitting the backboard
- Harng playing at all
- Harng then deciding to have a run up and down the court AFTER the game finished (’Alan Syndrome’??)
- Phil not fouling out
- Any of us not fouling out (we did have 5 on court as the other team so kindly offered to provide a scorer)
- Me whacking Harng with my bony elbow as I came down from a rebound
- The other big basketballs sitting on the side of the court

And so, the era ends…

Our final game of the regular season last night. That’s the end of the team for a while, at least until we get enough players back to start it up again. At least we managed to finish with a win. We do still have at least 1 finals game to go.

I decided to have a run since it would be our last game. It was an early game too, so plenty of chance for me to play. During warm-ups I said to Chee I just want to score 1 basket to which he said, “I’m not passing you the ball.” I made my one basket - I’ll say it was a fast break, but others might say because I was too slow getting back to the other end of the court before we got a defensive rebound and quick long pass. Lay-up was easy enough even it hurt my foot - still felt good to have a run and jump though.

We started out well with the score 19-5 at one point. Towards the end, there were some nervous moments when we let them get back to within 6 points but Alan was The Answer this time, with a couple of baskets (including a three) to seal the game.

Oooh, lost by 1 point!!

All these close games!

Details please!

My second game with Team Jock tonight….

Interesting news in the NBL: NBL heads to Singapore

The name of the new team is yet to be announced. It will be interesting to see what sort of imports they’ll have in the team because as I understand it, NBL teams are restricted to having no more than 2 imports on their roster.

You guys drew with TGA Unlimited! What are the details of that match?

My first game with the 36ers was last night (well, actually, they changed their name to “Team Jock” - don’t ask me what that means!). We play in D grade.

The medical student who got me to join the team is Vietnamese, so I expected the rest of the team to be short Asians. I was wrong! The rest of the team were Australians. A couple of them were quite solid and most of them were reasonably tall. They had a ~6′4″ centre who was skinny but was impressive. Most of them could play but there were a few hacks on the team. There was the token ball-hog on the team too!!!

The team we played against reminded me of teams like “Jaguars” - they were in their late 30s/early 40s and weren’t that good. I played forward and managed to score 6 points and had a few rebounds.

Funny thing is that our team doesn’t have uniforms. We just wear any old white singlet, any colour shorts and get numbered bibs (netball style) from the stadium. Personally, I’ll be wearing bloomers next week.

So, here starts my new basketball career in Adelaide. I may soon play college level basketball and maybe, if I train really hard, play for a mediocre NBA team like the Lakers!