Malaysian wins Grand Prix Kitakyushu

Magic: The Gathering, a trading card game, is a big thing. In other countries it's covered in the sports channels. While I consider myself retired from regular competitive play, I do follow the scene from time to time. And just like other more conventional games or sports like chess or badminton, I always feel a sense of pride when a Malaysian makes it to the top in a major tournament. Which is what happened last weekend.

Raymond Tan, Grand Prix Kitakyushu Champion

Grand Prix Kitakyushu was held in Japan in the space of two days.

Some numbers for you:

No of people: 1183
Price of entry: 4000 yen, or RM130 or so.
Prize for winning: a cool USD3,500.
Actually winning the whole damn thing: Priceless.

Kitakyushu in Japan. Emerging No. 1 out of 1,183 is a crazy achievement. And this 29 year old Engineer did it! In Japan, which has a huge community of MtG players.

Squaring off against 2012 World Magic Cup Champion Tzu-Ching Kuo

Trivia: They mistakenly reported him as Singaporean at first, but quickly realised their error!

I remember the first Malaysian who pretty much established Malaysia as a country to be taken seriously: Sim Han How. He finished in the Top 8 of the Worlds Championship, which is no mean feat. Imagine, the Top 4 players from countries all over the world playing out to finish right at the top and he finishes in the Top 8.  What made it even more memorable was that a lot of people who met him remembers him for being an all-round nice guy, making him a great ambassador for Malaysia.

I hope MtG gets the recognition it deserves in Malaysia. It is not a game just for kids, there is quite a sizeable community of players here, from students to professionals in the workforce. Some play it as a hobby, others play seriously to win tournaments.

An all-time favourite of mine!

Malaysia Boleh!

Fantasy Football Observations for Week #2

Prelude

The Barclays Premier League season has kicked off and with it, a whole host of fantasy football games! A bit of history: I've been playing fantasy football since the 2005-2006 season, and I remember one of the first players I had was a hopeless midfielder named Eric Djemba-Djemba. I joined a great forum called www.starting11.com (known as Teamtalk in the old days), where I found a great international community who shared the passion for fantasy football and football in general. In recent times I've been helping out to moderate the forum.

This time around though, I thought I'd contribute a bit more to the community as a whole and start a weekly series on my blog.

What I'd like to do in this series is to summarise observations, interesting facts, that players may have overlooked, forgotten or not considered as a factor for. I hope to highlight items, events or scenarios which I feel are important in deciding your team for the week. I can also see the series focusing more on the less popular teams.

I'm playing 3 games this season, FAPL, Fantrax and Yahoo, but I won't be focusing on any game in particular. Also, those who know me will know I'm nowhere near as good at fantasy football as others are, too often I let emotion or other irrelevant issues cloud my judgement. So there, I've tossed in a disclaimer right there.

Irregardless, I hope you guys find it a useful column to add to all those other resources you read. Those who don't follow football, feel free to ignore this :p



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Fantasy Football Observations: Week #2

Creative Sunderland?

Sunderland whacked Fulham left, right and centre last weekend, but somehow had nothing to show for. They created a lot of chances, and statistics indicate they had 20 shots to Fulham's 5. 17 of those shots were off target though, the main culprit being Altidore. Nevertheless, they've leaped in creativity, a sharp contrast to last season's headaches, and those responsible, a rejuvenated Adam Johnson and Giaccherini, should merit consideration in your teams, at least for the miscellaneous points production.

The London derby

2. Speaking of Fulham, what say you to them upsetting the apple cart at Arsenal even further? Here's a few reasons why:
    - Fulham are coming off an away win, always a boost for the typically travel-shy team.
    - Arsenal are coming back from an exhausting trip to Turkey, and play the first match on Saturday.
    - Martin Jol knows Arsenal are vulnerable right now, the timing is right for a good derby win.
    - Dimitar Berbatov
Sure they lost Stekelenburg to injury, but Stockdale will be up for it. I expect a Fulham victory, with goals on both sides, pushing Arsenal into further depths. But of course, what if Taarabt isn't in the mood....?

Chelsea's striker merry-go-round

3. While the battle for Chelsea's striker spot is going to take a while, I feel that Mourinho is actually giving everyone a chance to show what they can do. I know most of you who had Lukaku in Week #1 have dumped him, but is that the right move? Of course, Old Trafford is hardly the place to be experimenting, but neither Torres nor Ba have showered themselves in glory in the opening 2 matches. And Lukaku's the striker with the most to prove, as Rooney's transfer saga continues...

Southampton's defensive steel

4. Anyone notice Southampton's AWAY clean sheet? While part of it is due to West Brom unable to sort their attack out, Southampton's latest acquistions in central defense (Lovren) and midfield (Wanyama) established a strong presence in their respective areas, which makes their defenders very attractive picks. Having said that, Gaston Ramirez, one of Southampton's key midfielders last season might not feature as much this time as I don't see him fitting well into the current pressing game the manager wants to play.

The Toon dilemma

5. Despite the loss against Manchester City, Newcastle actually have a useful fixture list coming up. But the Cabaye issue continues to linger. Ben Arfa cannot shoulder the creativity by himself. Also, for this weekend's match, Allardyce seems to know what makes the Toons tick and West Ham ended both matches last season against them with clean sheets. Probably best to avoid until the transfer window ends.

Good luck for this week, next week should be even more interesting as the transfer window gets closer!

Liverpool Season 2013/2014 : A quick look on the transfer window activity

Premier League season has just kicked off, and Liverpool have been in the news for quite a bit, mostly for the wrong reasons. While I certainly expected Suarez to make a fuss about leaving, I didn't expect the mess it has turned into. But, anyone who's known Suarez for a while, it shouldn't really be unexpected for Suarez to act the way he has. The good news is that as of today Suarez looks like staying! (with some Gerrard involvement it seems). I won't be counting my chickens just yet, but if he's still around 13 days down the road, I'll be a happy camper.

I do take comfort in the fact that there are other clubs in worse condition. Imagine being an Arsenal fan right about now...

Liverpool started the season with a win, but it could so easily have been different. Again, we had the chances but not the finishing, and we were almost undone by a late penalty. If Suarez is staying, we need to keep winning until he's back, convince him that we CAN make it to the Champions League.

Anyway, back to the topic: Here's where Liverpool are (transfer-wise):

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Significant transfers:

IN:

Kolo Toure (Man City, free)

Luis Alberto (Sevilla, £6.8m)

Iago Aspas (Celta Vigo, £7.2m)

Simon Mignolet (Sunderland, £9m).

OUT:

Danny Wilson (Hearts, free)

Jamie Carragher (retired)

Andy Carroll (West Ham, £15.5m)

Jonjo Shelvey (Swansea, £6m)

Suso (Almeria, loan).

Stewart Downing (West Ham, £5m)

Pepe Reina (Napoli, loan)

Jay Spearing (Bolton), undisclosed.

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Let's be realistic, we were never going to get a profit from the sale of Carroll and Downing, since we overpaid in the first place. But it was important to get them permanently off the books. The good thing is overall our trade has been relatively balanced this time around, at least financial-wise.

I'm glad Suso wasn't sold, I definitely see potential in the lad but needs a bit more development. Spearing and Shelvey had run their course, I'm sure they'll be successful elsewhere. Our change in keeper was not unexpected for me, I know some fellow fans found it disappointing, I'm looking forward to seeing Mignolet more in goal, especially after his penalty save heroics. And while Kolo Toure's a useful stopgap, I would like to see Skrtel reclaim his spot in the first team. Whatever his misunderstanding with Rodgers, I'm sure it can be healed.

We're still sourcing for a left-back to 'back up Enrique', according to Rodgers, but it sounds iffy to me. Wasn't this the same tune he was singing about Reina when he brought in Mignolet? I don't mind Enrique being replaced but whoever he is better be good!

Of the new recruits, I really like Aspas' work so far. I can see him being a very important player for us.

My season prediction: Still early days of course, but I expect good things from Liverpool this season, regardless of how the Suarez saga ends. Rodgers will be expected to deliver, he's had enough time to bed in. Liverpool to end up in a Champions League spot come the end of the season. I kid you not.

YOU'LL NEVER WALK ALONE.

EDIT: Shortly after I posted this entry, I found out that Aly Cissokho has signed for Liverpool in a season-long loan. Time for Enrique to turn up the juice!

Getting ready for the second child

It's been a while since my last post! Since then, we've had a whole fasting month followed by Hari Raya, but now I'm back!

Baby Brother Incoming!

We finally started cleaning up this week to prepare for the coming of our second child. The calculated date is 16th September which is one month from now, and will probably be earlier, and boy have we got lots to do! I think I may have fallen into a complacency trap, i.e. we got through the first one okay, we'll be fine this time. Fortunately, Raudha has a bit more foresight on this and mobilised faster.

I'm starting to think at this point, Zharif (our first) is more prepared for the baby than we are! He appears to demonstrate a lot of affection for the babies in my extended family every time he sees them. It used to worry me heaps about Zharif's reaction when our next baby arrives, but when I see something like this (pictures courtesy of baby's mummy Zaza) :

I feel so much better.

During Raya, in Batu Pahat, he would zikir, sing songs and pat baby Sofea gently and softly with such tender care there was once I might have shed a tear just watching. And when she visited in KL, he did the same too.

Of course, one can't be 100% sure, especially when Zharif sees the amount of attention Mummy will be giving his baby brother, but I have a really good feeling right now. And you can bet we'll be getting Zharif to help out as well.

Anyway, one thing I'm hoping to do is that as soon as both mum and our newborn are ready and able, I want to travel. It'll be neat to take a short trip somewhere with our latest addition to the family. But where shall we go? I've got a few ideas, let's see how we go...

First thing's first though!

Competition Junkie?

When I was a kid, the first time I remember actually entering a competition voluntarily was way back when I was 9 years old in Standard Three. I remember it very well, it was a storytelling competition. At the time I didn't know anything about using gestures and intonations, so what I did was bring the book in to show the pictures. This was the book:

Not sure if I have it anymore, but I came in second. I doubt there was any quality in my storytelling, heck I didn't even finish telling it, but I guess maybe there weren't that many English storytellling participants at the time.

Fast forward to today, where I take part in different competitions on and off, some just to get movie tickets, others to try to win hotel stays, trips, cash, etc. There's many mechanisms, from the simple "Be the 9th caller, call now!" style often used in radio, to the more complicated ones like Sudoku, or the old The Star's crossword puzzles where we have to collect the pieces every weekday and submit them once completed. It also meant I ended up with a lot of otherwise useless general knowledge :p.  For instance, a male giraffe is called a bull. Now go look up what a female giraffe is. Go on. You'd be surprised.

I must admit to being a bit of a lazy bum with the complicated ones, there were times where I would collect the crossword puzzle pieces but fail to submit it in time.

It made me wonder, was it the storytelling competition that kick-started me into my competition fever. As I grew older in school I moved on to public speaking and inevitably debating, which I also did in Uni. But looking back, those activities were for two reasons really: 1. It gave me an opportunity to socialise and get to know a lot more people  2. I got to travel! and 3. It would look good in resumes.

I think the real catalyst was a radio competition in Melbourne in 1999. It was really simple: The DJs would play the Top Ten songs of the day, and people were asked to call in once the No. 1 song was played, and tell the DJ what the Top Ten songs are. The ninth caller would get through, and if he got it correct he would win.

I got 3 full CDs, and 4 singles, one of which was Blur's Song 2.

(That CD ONLY had that song, so just 2 minutes worth of listening lol). From there I was hooked, I felt that it was actually possible to win such competitions.

Some of the mechanisms have changed over the years especially with the Internet. Treasure hunts are fun, but quite exhausting, I still do radio a lot, and I even appeared on TV once: The Money Drop Malaysian edition, to disastrous results. Yes, all my money dropped ha ha...

I wouldn't call myself a competition junkie though. I do have a friend who fits the definition, and he's a true psycho. Seems like almost every week he's off watching preview screenings of movies. Pretty much every year he goes on a trip. Yeap, most from competitions. It's good to have a friend into these things though, especially when doing competitions like hunting the hitz.fm Fugitive.

One of the highlights throughout the years was a walking treasure hunt in conjunction with the first Star Trek remake. It was the first time I participated in a competition with Raudha, and we finished first, while our friends Suresh and Sue finished second (we helped each other out of course!) It was also good fun! The Star's article is still around in the archives, check it out:

http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2009/5/2/nation/3820743&sec=nation

Raudha loved the fact that they mentioned her name first! We did get mildly annoyed at not having our faces published, I guess we didn't look like real Trekkers (which we admittedly weren't, not really).

Don't get me wrong though. I do get frustrated when I don't win sometimes. A couple of days ago I found out that I didn't win a trip to Taiwan. I get dejected, demoralised and end up staying away for a while. But just like in life, I try not to let it get me down. I'll just try again.

Now if I can only win a car... My cousin's done it before, so why not!

Off the cuff writer's advice

Having writer's block? I had a bit of it, and being sick for a while didn't seem to help much either.

Then along comes this gem of an article offering writing advice by Matt Haig. the British novelist/journalist.

Read his blog posting here:

Warning, profanity involved.

When I read it, I had to laugh. But it also gave me a boost.

And I'm writing again! See you tomorrow peeps!

Weekend Bites: Of The Apprentice Asia, Cricket plus Beauty and the Geek!

Last week, was an extremely busy week, I just couldn't find any time to blog. I'm back now :)

Tony Fernandes, Asia's Donald Trump?

I'm actually involved in updating The Apprentice Asia unofficial Facebook page, so if you follow the show, do drop by for a visit.

https://www.facebook.com/TheApprenticeAsia

Inevitably, comparisons will be drawn between the Asia show and the US or UK show, quite often unfair. It's easy to criticise the quality of some of the contestants but let's face facts: Anyone who auditions will always attempt to make themselves look better than they are. The audition is actually more like a job interview than the show itself, which tends to show what makes good viewing on TV. It's a TV show after all. Even in the International shows, contestants have been found to be just plain bad, not to mention with questionable morals to the point of attempting to cheat to win.

Personally for me, the only real frustrations I've had with the show were the refusal of the Project Manager to identify the weak members of his team in week 1, and the withdrawal in week 3. Again, these occurences are something the producers really have no control over, if anything, I'm annoyed at the participants really. Otherwise, it's been pretty good viewing!

Regardless, feel free to tune in on AXN 701 Wednesday 9pm for the Malaysian viewers!

Cricket: Champions Trophy

IPL has come and gone, and here comes the Champions Trophy. Only 4 matches in and it has already served up a nail-biter! Yesterday, I was able to catch more than half of the match between New Zealand and Sri Lanka. It was a crazy match, advantage shifted from one side to another, but in the end New Zealand pulled through. These are the matches that have kept me as a cricket fan.

Here's a blinder from Brendan McCullum:




If anyone wants to actually understand how cricket actually works, let me know, I'll fill you in!

What's a reality show, really...

During the cricket innings break, as well as the early lunch break, I flipped between channels and found this.

If you're having trouble feeling good about yourself, watch this. The silliness can be downright hilarious. Otherwise, probably best to stay away, your brain cells might suffer. I did get a bit worried by the fact that I could relate to some of the guys though...

I'm also trying to understand what exactly constitutes a reality show? For example, why is American Idol a reality show, but Miss USA isn't?

Having said that, there's definitely a solid viewership out there for Beauty and the Geek as this is apparently season 3!

Now wondering if there are reality shows out there that will never be shown here in Malaysia...

The Second One is Coming!

My colleague's second child arrived today
Samantha is her name
And though I'm glad
It made me scared

Cause I'll go through the same.

My second child is coming soon
September it will be
It's getting near
Of course I fear
It'll be no cup of tea.

At first I felt it's all okay
I've gone through it before
But the more I think
It makes me shrink
It's actually even more.

From just one kid there'll now be two
The diapers is just a start
To guide and play
Through bright and gray
To love with all my heart

Zharif my first he already knows
His brother's on the way
He kisses the tummy
of his lovely mummy
Almost every day!

Speaking of which, my dearest wife

For her it'll be no breeze

I must help her out

Erase all doubt

And put her thoughts at ease

And all the support that I have now

I can't thank them enough

The family's there

They really care

They're there if things get rough.

With all of that it'll be okay
I'm positive it will
I'll be ready
And also steady
I just really need to chill.

And in the end there's something else
An entirely different game
There'll be a fight
Arguing who's right
When deciding on his name!

Being color blind

I've been working on a book in the past couple of months and amongst my responsibilities is selecting a cover and deciding on the general look of my book. Being artistically challenged, it's not exactly one of my favourite processes but I have to deal with it anyway.

This morning, my boss came up to me and told me: "We've decided on the color of your book!"

Now, normally I'm no happy camper when someone takes such decisions off my hands. Not in this case. When you're colour blind, it's not so much of a big deal!

Quite a while back, when people realised I had colour issues, I would claim I wasn't colour blind, but had Colour Identification Deficiency Syndrome, or CIDS for short. I made it up because there's a lot of misconceptions about color blindness, the most common is that anyone who's colour blind sees the world in black and white (maybe with shades of gray).

Now while this can definitely happen (it's called Achromatopsia) but it's not the case for a majority of colour blind. For most of us it's a case of colour differentiation. I can see colours, it's just not as clear-cut as it is to others. I've always thought that the term colour blind was too much of a generalisation simply because I wasn't blind per se when it comes to colours. But when it comes to the following kind of test, well....

Apparently you can find either a dog, balloon, boat or an honest-to-goodness car in there!

As result, i don't do such terms as 'Navy blue' or 'Magenta'. Just the basics will do nicely thank you. And I don't give directions referencing building colour either. Where my career was concerned, I was forced to rule out early in my life such options as pilots and numerous types of cool scientific work. As of to date, there's no real cure for colour blindness.

Incidentally, all this while until recently I thought that women could never have these colour issues. Now I know it's possible, except that it's a lot rarer than men. Plus I always find it funny when people who aren't colour blind people have a dispute with regards to what colour something is.

My wife, Raudha continues to ask me questions like whether her scarf matches the rest of her outfit. I continue to answer. The answer is typically met with a "Yeah right" style of response. But she continues to ask me....

Weekend Bites: Week ending 26 May 2013

Hair Cut

So I finally had my hair cut on Saturday, which in theory could help me in my Fun Run on Sunday (more on that shortly). I didn't go bald this time, I wanted to remain on speaking terms with my wife ha ha...

The best reaction came from my kid of course. Upon seeing me at Metrojaya, he said "Daddy, what happened? Big hair.. gone!"

So that's how he's seen it all this time.

Running Weekend

As mentioned in my previous post, I signed up for the Standard Chartered Fun Run which took place yesterday, Sunday 26 May 2013. I car-pooled with my colleague Sherry (being the gentleman I am, she drove) and parked at the park and ride which was in Precinct 7, and took the bus from there. I must say I really appreciate the shuttle bus service , hopefully they have something similar for the KL run in June.

We met a few other friends at the event site. While waiting, I took a bite out of a power bar. Throat got itchy so I drank some water, which of course ended up in me having to take a trip to one of the portable toilets. The queue took a while, and at one point I thought the race would take off without me!

It started about 15 minutes later than scheduled, something to do with waiting for some VIPs... duh... Naturally the runners started getting anxious. Anyway flag off was around 7:15am. And away we went!

All in all, the run was quite okay. My main objective was to get to 6 km and maintain a running stance, and then figure it out from there. Scenery was a bit dull, and the sun was blazing about halfway in. Fortunately I achieved my target, and

On a side note, since it was a fun-run, some came in fancy dress (not that many really) and one even ran bare-footed in pyjamas!

Had to cover the silver dude to be safe :p

I clocked at 8:39am which meant I'd ran for about one and a half hours. The cool bit was at the final stretch where music was blasting. As I approached the final stretch, GNR's Sweet Child of Mine came on. It was a sign for me to sprint to the finishing line, which I did with gusto!

The finishing line. Yay!

I celebrated by downing complimentary cups and cups of 100 Plus.

My current target is to get to 90 minutes for the Standard Chartered Kuala Lumpur. That's a month away, so I need to keep up with regular exercise.

Amy's Baking Company

On a totally unrelated note... Ok, so I'm late to the party with this one, but I thought I'd share this video anyway:

I don't run a business (yet) so what do I know? But seriously, I believe if you can't trust any of your staff to do the work they could and should be doing, either you find new staff or you shouldn't run a business involving other people.

Of course I'm sure there's some embellishment, it's a TV show after all, but there's only so much you can enhance. And for once, even Gordon Ramsey was defeated!

Ultimately, hope people can learn from these mistakes. I've shared it here for educational purposes instead of just pure entertainment.