We had games

Food obviously, and the food was surprisingly good that night, with spring rolls, prawn, sausages, mushroom, chicken, and beef skewers, chicken wings, drumsticks, fish, so many I didn’t even try all of them.

As in any event, you need someone to hold the mic

to do some awards presentation

And lots more.

But one thing for sure, everyone enjoyed the night. Let’s hope that would kick off a good year ahead ^.^

During lunch time, we went downstairs and took this group photo just below our building.

Back to office, we took another picture in the pantry. In the middle, you can see a print-out of the photo we took earlier above, signed with comments like "Finally …." and "I’m in tears that you’re leaving, tears of joy, hehe….", and …. you get the idea

Some more group shots.

What??!!! What did I do wrong?

It’s always fun to have such a …. fun boss …. (no pun intended).

After that, you walk up to vegetables bar and put all kinds of vegetables into the big bowl. Next up is a meat bar where you’ll see chicken, fish, prawns, squids, crab meat, mussels, clams, beef, lambs, you get the idea.

The last bar was the challenging one. They have no less than 20 kinds of sauces, grouped into sweet & sour, mild spicy, spicy, and very spicy sauces. You’ll see well-heard teriyaki, bulgogi, satay sauce, to Mongolian, The Tent house specialty sauces, lemon water, and hosts of other weird sauces on their bar. They have chicken floss, sesames, chili powder, peanuts, wasabi, etc. as the final top-up to your sauces, to be put inside the small bowl.

You pass the chef your choices and they’ll cook it Teppanyaki-style before delivering it to your table. As it’s my first time there, I mixed anything and everything I thought I could put inside my mouth, and here’s the result.

Somehow it turns out to looks like char kway teow. Can you spot noodle, tofu, fish cake, prawns, beef, fish slices, mussels, clams, peanuts, carrots, eggs, crab meats, and tomatoes in my dinner? Surprisingly, what I made up turned out to taste pretty nice.

For drinks, as most of the places in Clarke Quay, they serve all kinds from juices to liquor to beer to expensive white and red wines.

As for the place, they have a very cozy place, very nice ambience, and soft-enough music in the background not to disturb your meal.

All were well until the time to pay the bill !!! It turned out to S$63 per person, the most expensive char kway teow I ever eaten.

The score were:

vs BHL Marine
1st doubles: loss 1-6 (where I played)
2nd doubles: loss 0-6
Single: loss 0-6

vs Chevron
1st doubles: loss 2-6 (where I played)
2nd doubles: won 6-4 !!!
Single: loss 3-6

As we lost to both companies, we were out at first round. BHL Marine and Chevron will fight it out to determine the winner. It seems like BHL Marine is going to win again. We only managed a mere ONE game, so sad.

It has been a weekend full of tennis. I woke up 7.15AM on Saturday, then headed to Paya Lebar for practice, finished about 12 PM, reached back home at Jurong East about 1.30PM, had a lunch, then went out for 3PM meeting at church. It was soon followed by young adults fellowship, and dinner at Ev. Maria’s house at Eunos. I reached home over midnight. I slept almost 2AM in the morning.

Five hours later, I woke up for the tournament, I reached SPE Bukit Timah at 8AM. The game started proper close to 9AM, and I was finished (literally) by 12.30 PM. Reached home about 1PM, had lunch at 2PM, did laundry, took a nap from 3-4PM, then went to church at 5PM.

Now, I’m just waiting for Wimbledon’s men singles finals, just to learn how I should have played this morning :p

All in all, good fun, great game (although I lost). I have one year to practice for next year’s tournament. Looking back at my game, there are few aspects I need to improve A LOT. Serve is key in tournament, especially when you’re playing doubles, and I haven’t got one. I don’t have powerful first serve, nor do I have safe second serve. Patience and consistencies are key too. Those older folks tend to be very patient in playing, while us, the younger ones, tend to try to hit winners, and with that come more unforced errors.

The draw is out, I will be in a group containing teams from BHL Marine and Chevron Oronite.

As for working UK hour, it’s a welcomed change. Woke up 10 AM in the morning, then went out for lunch before going to office. Reached office around 2PM and went back home 10+PM. The positive side? Between 7-10PM, as the office was dead quiet, I could concentrate much better, and more work was done. I’ll try again tomorrow morning, see if I can get more work done at night

After a great performance last week, it all fell apart as we tried to rely on individual skill instead of effort – unfortunately we don’t have much.

A stupid early own goal from Kevin put everyone on a downward slide and the ref starting the game bang on according to his watch which seemed a bit early to everyone else, meant that the six players were up against it from very early on. There was a lot of movement from the Matador players and tired old legs from BarCap just couldn’t keep up.

Lessons learnt from this and let’s hope that the one week break can settle us back down to burst back on with some more players returning from injury and some new faces.

Great play from Matador and hope to have some fresher legs next time we face you!

Man of the match to late opponent as no-one really stood out and it was our only real chance! Special commendation to Ian but I think we’ll get bored of awarding him MOTM soon!

Full match report, as usual, in ESPZen site.

In our third outing together, the team looks much better. There were visibly better understanding around the team (though multiple times my passes went astray, not knowing where my team mate were). I also opened my account by scoring one of the three scored tonight, yeehaaa !!! My manager scored the other two, noticeably better goals than mine.

No match report yet, but soon it will be up in ESPZen site.

hey hey hey, mine mine mine …

kevin, dean, me (the dwarf among the giants), mike, and ian