A Fairy Tale story

A Report brought to you by Alanz's Times.

One bright and sunny Sunday afternoon, four tough and strong individuals gathered at the world renowned Bethesda Bukit Arang Church Basketball Court in Singapore. These four were all highly skilled basketball players, coming from the 4 countries in the world most well known for basketball : Countries Ba, Ket, Sal and Bl.
These four individuals were Alan McGrady, Gabriel Bryant, Aaron Iverson and Clara James.

When they first arrived, they stared at each other murderously in the eyes. They were fierce, competitive players, and all of them were not used to losing basketball matches due to their tremendous skill. One would have thought they were there for a Boxing Match, given the intensity in their faces.

Then came Joshua Parker, the umpire of the day. He was the organiser that pulled together these 4 players for this basketball match.

Due to the expected competitiveness of this match, there was Live TV Coverage, broadcasted to the billions of people in the world who have TV and are watching at the moment. The cameraman set up his camera on the tripod, adjusting it to capture the entire halfcourt where the 2 on 2 match would be played.

Since all were skilful players, the most fair way to decide teams would be to shoot Free Throws, known as 'jing gen jing' in Singapore. (Directly translated as score and score, which means those who scores will be on the same team)
Gabriel Bryant was first up to shoot.. and he missed! What a terrible miss too! The ball merely bounced on the left of the rim and flew clear out. Didn't even touch the rim twice.
Alan McGrady stepped up for his shot.. and he went swoosh through the net. He confidently stepped away and took a sip of his favourite energy drink, EnergizeJuice.
Aaron Iverson tried his luck - but his shot just bounced off the back of the rim. He shrugs his shoulders and stepped away.
Clara James walked to the free throw line, put both hands on the ball, and tossed it cleanly up.. and it went right through the hoop without touching the rim at all!

So the teams were set - it was Alan McGrady and Clara James VS Gabriel Bryant and Aaron Iverson.

Alan shot a dubious glance at Clara. After all, she was the only female player on the court. She saw his glance and as if reading his mind, said, "Don't worry! I can qie past that flabby Gabriel easily! Aaron doesn't seem serious he is always smiling! I will shoot over them like chicken feed!"
Alan nodded in acknowledgement. Was this confidence or cockiness? Alan shrugged his shoulders. It didn't matter to him, he knew he had a game plan - which was to play his best and score what he could and assist what he could.


If you have absolutely no interest in basketball, skip this blue section and proceed to the next black section. The game started with Gabriel's team's possession, it was a race to 7 points.
The play was fast and furious, all players moved around like lightning and their ball control was superb. Alan's team managed to force a turnover, and he held the ball at the corner. He fired a quick pass to Clara and ran in for a pass. Instead of passing, Clara took a shot from the 3-point line.
Alan slapped his forehead. What stupidity was this? Shooting when a clear pass to someone closer to the ring would be the better option? Shooting a 3pointer no less? He quickly ran to the ring to catch the rebound.
To his surprise, the ball went swoosh through the net. Clara walked nonchalantly to the starting point to receive the ball to start again. Alan was stunned for a second, but nodded contemplatively. 'This girl is good' he thought.

After several minutes, the score was 3-0 in Alan's team's favour, but they fumbled and the possession was with Gabriel's team. Gabriel's team made some good passes and pickandrolls, and the ball ended up with Gabriel underneath the ring... and he shot.. AND MISSED.
Aaron closed his eyes and his almostforevertheresmile disappeared for a second. 'What a noob' he thought.
Alan's team turned over the ball again, and Gabriel managed to qie past the other team with skill, and was again left with the open rim. He leapt up high with great agility, rolled the ball upwards -- and MISSED again! Aaron sighed loudly to voice his resentment.

Alan and Clara then exchanged some quality passes which confused the opposition, and on one possession, Clara took the ball and dashed down the side past Gabriel. With her quick speed, she leant forward and rolled the ball upwards. Gabriel jumped , full-stretched ... but his fingers just missed the ball. The ball rolled off the board and went in! "What a basket!" Alan exclaimed, running over to hi-five Clara.

4-0

At this point, Aaron was frustrated, and announced loudly : "Ok i'm going to step up my D! " (Translation : i'm going to defend Alan tighter!)
With that, he stuck both hands out wide and marked Alan very very tightly. Feeling the challenge, Alan made a quick cut to the side and dashed down with Aaron still on him. He made a leaning fadeaway shot suddenly from 3 metres and the shot went in.
The ball restarted with Alan, and again he dashed down the side with Aaron tightly on him. From the baseline, Alan leapt up and tossed the ball into the air after receiving a small bodycheck my Aaron when Alan tried to qie past him. To his surprise, the ball hit the board and went in!
6-0.

Alan checked the ball to Aaron to start the game, and then quickly fired a 3pointer shot over Aaron. SWOOSH.

7-0

The game was all over.

Alan and Clara jumped up with exclamations of joy and ran around the court in celebration. A live band at the side played some joyous music as Alan and Clara celebrated. A throng of people had gathered to watch the match and they applauded loudly as Gabriel and Aaron tried to hide their faces.

After the game, Alanz's Times reporter caught up with all 4 players for their comments about the game.


Reporter: So alan and clara, what do you think led to your demolition of the other team?

Clara: "Hmm, i don't know? Perhaps it was our good teamplay and defence. Alan scored most of the points, so he deserves the credit!"
Reporter thinks 'wa she so humble ah'
Alan: "Haha nah, it was Clara's quickness and defence that contributed to our victory. If she hadn't pulled Gabriel away, i would have to get past 2 players to score instead of just one."

As seen from the picture, both players were extremely happy, and they were full of praise for each other. The reporter was surprised - usually extremely good players were slightly cocky or arrogant. These two were the exception.

The reporter then looked for the losing team. It was quite hard to locate them, apparently, they were hiding from the paparazzi and the angry supporters who supported them. The reporter finds Aaron in a secluded area with a bench.

Reporter: "So Aaron, how does it feel to lose such a big match in front of a world-wide and live audience, AND lose it by such a big margin?!"

Aaron: "I'm okay with it. It was a good and competitive game, and i gave my best! It's a good learning experience, maybe i can brush up more on my jumpshot!"

As you can see, his almostforevertheresmile is still there, even after losing by such a big margin.

.
.
.

After much hunting, the Reporter finally found Gabriel Bryant - he was in a deserted room.

Reporter : You must be dejected after losing by such a big margin! To a team with a girl no-less! How do you feel?

Gabriel: -ignores the Reporter and doesn't look at the camera-
.
.


Reporter: Come on Gabriel! Don't be so sad! Just one picture with you looking at the camera please!
.
.
.
.
.


Gabriel: Ok ok. -_-


Frightened from Gabriel's fierce glare, the Reporter runs off to HQ to post all his pictures and write his report.

THE END

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Not all parts of this story was true. The picture captions are fictional la ok =) gabs is a nice guyyy. haha. But some of the dialogue in the story was real. like aaron's 'i'm gonna step up my D' =)
And, me and clara DID thrash gabriel and aaron 7-0 in one game. =) The basketball part (blue part) was actual fact, as in, how i scored and how clara scored etc. And how gabriel missed the open layups. =)


So shack. haven't played bball in so long and we played so many matches and 2v2 somemore so MUST run one.

OH yeah, raylia was super cute today! haha. She wore some scarve thing on her head for church then when she came for bball later on she tied into a ponytail. i grabbed her for a picture

Dont look at me i look damn weird in this picture. i blurred out my teeth and photoshopped abit otherwise it'll look weirder. but raylia super cute! ^_^ ha

alright.. this post super long. good bye hope i entertained you for 10-15 minutes =D

Happy Feet.

Went to VIVOCITY to watch Happy Feet with a bunch of church peeps. Too many people to name so i won't. Jesslyn sat beside me and kept scratching me.

Anyway. I have no idea how to do a movie review but i'll try my best.

Happy Feet is about a young penguin who can't sing, when all penguins are supposed to be able to sing. It's their 'heart-song', as the show calls it. However, he's pretty good at dancing. Like tap-dancing or something. However, this is a 'disgrace' to the penguin community, so he gets ostracized.

One would expect this would be like the typical box office cartoon - main character gets cast away, meets some new friends, go through some adventures, and go back for a happy ending.

Not this one.

The director/scriptwriter subtlely sneaks (redundant word?) in the message of overfishing, almost seamlessly. I won't spoil you on how, but well, it was good. I never saw it coming, and was expecting a normal cartoon.

The artwork was pretty good too. Good attention for detail, you'll understand when you watch the show.

Ok i know this isn't much of a review but i didn't want to spoil the show much. Must go and watch!

100

Woot this is post number 100. I was planning to change the banner and make a really funky post but----- too lazy la. haha.

Last night was pretty funn. Went to Cineleisure and had dinner with pammy john and elias. TEEhao was supposed to come but he made some stupid excuse of having to eat leftovers with his mom.

Then after eating, we went to becky's workplace! Maestro Bistro. Quite classy one lehh. Though it's like.. outdoors. Like Gelare kind. Bah, wanted to spam pictures but then the lighting there was daaaamn bad. like dim dim. maybe they want to make it romantic. but really damn bad lighting for pictures.

Chocolate Cosmopolitan @ $9.90
If you have a sweet tooth, this will surely satisfy you. It's a large scoop of Chocolate ice cream in the middle, and 2 deliciously sweet brownies next to it, each with half a strawberry on top. There's some nice chocolate (one white/one black) on either side.
Nuts and some chocolate syrup decorate the plate.
I must say their presentation is damn good. Looked so nice couldn't bear to eat. haha. i bought this. Super shiok la eat until super full.

John and pammy ordered ice cream scoops. 5 scoops was called 'Famous Five'. lol. The scoops damn big. And got some whipped cream with chocolate rice and stuff on them. And 3 wafers stuck into it artistically.
It's damn alot la, all of us tried to finish it but cannot. left like maybe 1/4 scoop of 2-3 flavours = 1 entire scoop wasted.



John and pamela posing with their ice creaaaam.




Elias bought some chocolate latte thing i think.



Act cute ^_^


ha we had fun talking nonsense and stuff. Then right pam was using her phone smsing her juniors about some band thing the next day.. then sms from when we ate dinner till we were eating icecream. Then me and john picked up our phones to sms.. then SHE complain : 'wa what is this sms outing ah'.
Then kena jak by us. wahaha.

Ok i don't know what to say leee. buaiz.

fishermen of fish and co

Here's a simple exercise for lazy people who has been sitting at their computer the whole day. (Even if you haven't just do it!)

1) Raise both hands out , straight in front of you. Your arms should form a horizontal right angle with your chest.
2) Clench your hands into fists, and stick out your index finger
2a) If you are around my size, take that distance between the two fingers to be the length
2b) If you are around joel's size, take that distance X 0.4 to be the length
2c) If you are around lois's size, take that distance x 1.2 to be the length
2d) If you are around nobody of the above's size, just estimate la.

Now, the length that you have just found out is the size of the fish that Fish and Co. served today when my Sunday School Class went for class lunch. SUPER HUGE!!

sO if you like expensive meals and want good portions-- go to Fish and Co. Super filling portions.

I actually wanted to blog more but other things are pulling me away so sorry =)

cam whores

lydia is damn cool. was talking to her yesterday.
"I think WoW is quite fun lor!"
SHE SAID THIS!! Really!! She watches her brother play and she thinks the game is quite fun. wahahha. See even a girl likes the game, that shows how great the game is. lalalala. ^_^


Went to school today for the final submission of Group Project File for PW... END OF PW WOO!! No more PW for the rest of my life! WOO!

After the class left, i stayed behind for a while to teach becky guitar.. and pam was around.. and we started taking pictures. ^^



Ok first we tried to take a normal picture, with me in the middle of them two. However, their hair like cannot control one then keep tickling my face la!! super ticklish. hence:

.
.
.
.
.

^_^





Guess what we're trying to say.




Ok this next picture had becky in a laughing fit at herself.
.
.
.
.



Hello.
We are aliens from Mars coming to invade you.

Totem pole.



And the masterpiece.

DISCLAIMER: I was held at gunshot for each of these pictures in the collage. What you are about to see may be very disturbing. Be forewarned.

I spent over an hour collaging the photos.. takes damn long to arrange and choose a font and decide how i want it to look. grr. hope it looks nice.

It's too big to put here, so click the thumbnail. (it's quite big, so it takes awhile to load. be patient, it's worth it :p )



.
.
.
.



Alright that's all. Hope you enjoyed yourself laughing at us =)

Yea i know my hair is damn messy. and stupid pamela is trying to act cute.
YES TRYING TO ACT. not naturally. hahaha. she keep on saying she naturally cute.


OK, bye ;)

How fast can you sms?

Extract from Straits Times, Monday, November 13 2006, Front page.

"Student Ang Chuan Yang, 16, puts his thumbs to the test, beating the world record for writing an SMS message, with a time of 41.52 seconds.
The Raffles Institution studen, who sends 1000 text messages a month to friends and family, was one of over 300 to take part in the SingTel SMS Shootout 2006.
He beat the record of 42.22 seconds set by American Ben Cook in July.
Now, Chuang Yang must wait to see if his feat is accepted by the Guinness Book of World Records.
The message he had to type - as set by Guinness - was:
"The razor-toothed piranhas of the genera Serrasalmus and Pygocentrus are the most ferocious freshwater fish in the world. In reality, they seldom attack a human."
In 2004, Singtel Shootout champion Kimberly Yeo put Singapore in the record books with a time of 43.24 seconds for the same 160-character, 26-word message."


!!!!!!!!!!!!
That's damn bloody fast. I tried it myself and took 1minute25seconds. Made 1-2 errors, wasn't very familiar with this mode of SMS-ing anyway.
Go try it! And tell me how fast you can do it. Remember, it's dictionary mode OFF. Means the phone doesnt 'guess' the world for you, every alphabet is manual.

haha

haha raylia is so funny. Well remember i said she said she got 3 presents, then the cd was just one. Today she gave me part 2, which was a small stress-ball-like-but-slightly-bigger basketball. It was wrapped with wrapping paper and an icecream stick poked through it. Guess what was written on the stick?


.
.
.
.
.

"Happy Birday Alan!"

=D haha thanks raylia anyway =)


O's are ending this week! i'm feeling excited for them =) I remember the last week is always the most eager week. everyone is planning what to do after last paper, thinking of burning books/notes, thinking of what to do during hols. Feeling... FREE. It's a nice feeling.
and i'm thinking of how to tell this lovely lady i like her so much.


lalala. new sms month. wa chris not around i like noone to sms lidat.my tv junkieee! randomly spamming people now. wonder where's she, she said she'd come online/blog but has done neither. -uses mental telepathy to contact christabel-.


hookay. i'm bored. good luck all lit students for tmr's paper hope you read your twelvth nights. gg.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY CHERYL!! and timo!

timo's bday was yday, 8th, and cheryl's bday today , 9th.
Sorry ah timo cheryl get more airtime cos she my jie. haha.




Ok i know this doesn't look very nice or anything but HEY
1) i'm very sleepy i stayed up to do this
2) i haven't touched photoshop in several months
3) I was never pro in the first place
4) It's the thought that counts right!!


Haha. happy birthday jie hope you like =)
miss the fun times we had last time, now like spend so little time with you and interact so little. bahhx. never invite me to NTU!! haha.
ok happy birthday once again =)




p.s.
ok i basically pixellised the picture first then made the thing black/white looking. but not totally blackwhite, retained some colour. I don't really know what type of look i wanted, just played then tired then stopped.
And i realised this was the only picture i have with cheryl!! cheryl!! come take picture with me now!


--alan @ 1.00AM

spam pictures

ok as promised, i'm gonna spam you with pictures now. Am waiting for daniel to faster finish eating dinner and joel to come back from whatever he's doing and whoever else to come so we can play something. Hence got time to uploaddd. They're terribly random , i'm just getting them off my phone. =)



Aiya becky spoiler. She cover her face. She was pretty high that morning so i tried to snap a picture of her.

This was in the MRT station. =) Yes i'm sleeping on the floor. And i took that picture. haha. skill.

Presenting to you.. the sleeping beauties of SAJC!!

.
.
.
.
.


Aiya weiling spoiler la. Her eyes were close for quite long then when i take the picture she suddenly open. sixth sense :S




Ok this one really sleeping. nicole pow.

see. =D


Ok the next one not sleeping beauty it's sleeping monster.

.
.
.

TEEHOWWwWW SLEEPING DURING MY GROUP'S OP HOW DARE YOU. CAUGHT.

~~~~~~~~

During 'The Prestige' outing. Pamela was actually posing with the 10 TV sets showing the one eye monster then she moved when i whipped out my phone to snap a pic. damn.



Ok the rest are screenshots from WoW

There's a guy with a pet GORILLA la!!!! Walao so cool man! i WANT.
Ok the stupid gorilla ain't sitting down for the picture. SIT BOY!



Good gorilla. =)



Bat invasion!! =)


ok no more. good bye

The pledge, the turn,

yo.

Just took my A Level chinese today.. and it was alot easier than i thought. I could actually understand all the passages! The last one was abit funny was about how letter-writing is better than the telephone, cos the telephone very noisy, demand you to answer it immediately, needs you to think straight away, etc.
That doesn't mean i'll do very well though. Understanding the passages and answering the questions correctly are two different things =) And it's crazy la, one MCQ question 4 marks leh wth!!

I'm still coughing btw.

Went to watch The Prestige on Tuesday, with John Chloe Pamela Nicole. The first 2 watched already but watch again to pei us SO NICE. Never pangseh.
The show is about 2 magicians who are like fighting each other.. trying to steal each other's limelight and tricks and stuff. Pretty complex and twisting storyline, the typical movie where everyone is asking each other to explain certain parts of the show after the show, and you here 'OOOOOH ' and 'OH YA!!' and 'OHHH THAT'S WHAT HE MEANT' all over the place when you're walking out =)
I like!
I can spoil the story for you with just one sentence. haha. But being the nice guy that i am unlike SOME people, i wont. lalala.

It's a really good show, with good actors (hugh jackman and christian bale[batman] ) and shocking twists to keep your eyes glued to the screen from start to finish.

Ok the following will be enclosed in spoiler tags so that those who have not watched the show can skip pass it. Highlight the space to read.

[Spoiler]
Wa but quite freaky la, the electricity thing cloned hugh jackman every performance. If you didn't understand it, hugh (i forgot his movie name so i use his real name) is cloned every show and his clone appears behind the audience, while the on-stage him falls into the water tank below and drowns and dies. So he does this every show.. but obviously can't keep on doing that's why it was a 100-show thing if you noticed the sign.
The ending is like :S freaky.
[/End of Spoiler]

Sigh, hope my cough gets better VERY SOON. Cos next wednesday is Oral Presentation for project work.. ahh. need a good throat and can't be coughing every minute.
I've some random pictures of my classmates sleeping and acting stupid but i'm lazy to upload them.. another time alright! Going to watch Lost now =) ciaoz~