ASEAN Games: Badminton (22 Jul 06)

Not sure about the other asean diplomatic communities in other countries, but the one here in Pretoria is pretty active in Pretoria. Basically, what the embassies have done is to have each embassy take charge of organising one sports event for the ASEAN community through the year.

So far, there has been Bowling (Malaysia), Darts (Myanmar), Traditional Games - (Philippines) and Table-Tennis (Indonesia). Its a pretty much an opportunity for the ASEAN diplomats to kick back and relax together and spend some quality time together.... So far, I have attended a couple of them (i.e. bowling and traditional games)..... sucked big time at bowling... hehe... as usual... was literally throwing money down the drain....

As for the traditional games organised by the Philippines, they played "congklak" and bingo. For those who dont know what congklak is.... essentially, the game is played with 2 players, with seven seashells placed in the 7 "cups" at your end of the board (look at pic of board here). The objective of the game is to pick up one "cup" of seashells on your side, drop one shell as you go past each cup, and drop one at your "home cup" (i.e. the bigger sized cup at the end of the board). Then, continue dropping one shell at each of your opponent's cups on his/her side of the board (except his home cup). As you run out of shells at a cup that still contains shells, you pick up those shells and repeat the process till you land in an empty cup. You then lose your turn and the opponent starts his/her turn. Both players continue this till all the shells are placed in the "home cups". The player with the most shells at his/her home cup wins...... Its a pretty simple game...but it actually takes a lot of mental calculation to select with "cup" to begin taking shells from as the game goes by..... Anyway, i know I suck at explaining the game.... anyone who wants a more detailed explanation... here is a better explanation of the game: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congklak

Anyway, back to the main purpose of the post today.... Our Mission was tasked with organising Badminton for the ASEAN Dip Comm..... it was like the hardest event to organise as there were so many players registered and we needed to get all the events (Men's Singles, Women's Singles, Men's Doubles, Women's Doubles, and Mixed Doubles) completed in one day.... My colleague Kow Joon, to his credit, organised the players into a 'knock'out' schedule before the games started.... but as you know, players did not show up at the scheduled times... so there was a some confusion at the beginning, but nothing that could not be solved.... Anyway, in the end, the games went out quite well... we managed to complete all the games in time, and everyone went home happy....

But stupid me (though knowing full well that I have a weak wrist) decided to play a bit of badminton, and am now nursing a slightly sprained wrist... stupid stupid me..... so, today, went to buy a wrist guard to try to keep the wrist from moving too much...

anyway, here are some pics taken at the badminton game.. enjoy....

DCM Ram and SS Yap discussing how to administer the games...
my friend Dimas (Indonesian Embassy) and Jee (Thai Embassy) having their hand at the Men's Doubles....
they won this game.....
Royston of our High Commission looking intently at his opportunity to kill off the game...
Roy with his Indonesian partner.. killing off the game...

SS Yap, Narbus (Jamie's bf), Jamie, Leonora, Kogi (with Sutharrsen on her lap) and Charanya
at the registration table
roy pretending to work while jamie and leonora do the actual work... hehe.... just kidding....
Roy was involved in refereeing...
me... pretending to work... hehe... but seriously.. I was working hard ok...

caution... next photo is meant to be a candid one... but people who just had breakfast/lunch/dinner... please avoid looking at the next shot of me.....



me.... at my most digusting.... just fooling around with my colleagues when I was having lunch......
after a hard day's work....