yeah, we know we can’t make it. We thought 12-0 drubbing was bad enough, this time we let in 17, yeah, that’s seventeen goals !!! To console ourselves, at least we scored two. I scored one on the 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!
My blog is starting to resemble Soccernet with an update of my soccer game every week. This week, we were scheduled to play against BNP Paribas Futsal Club. With more people playing this week (which means more substitutes), we were able to finish the game with a more respectable scoreline. After a twelve goals thrashing two weeks ago, and seven goals deficit last week, this week, we reduced that to only two goals. In a way, we improved by five goals each week. If that is not improvement, I don’t know what is. We hope that will continue to become positive three next week.
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.
(At last) After having conceded 12 goals last week, there were improvements in that department that we *only* shipped 9 goals yesterday. However, it’s in attack where we made infinite improvement (hey!! 0 to 2 is infinite improvement, right?) Before I bore you out, let me put up the match report here.
With a new member but only 5 players starting, we were up against it from the beginning. Mike and Ian lined up in defence and proved to be a formidable force initially with Dean in goal nicely swooping anything up which slipped through.
The first half didn’t have huge numbers of opportunities but Kevin and Hendrik ran around up front trying to get in some opportunities and Mike and Ian broke
through well to try and get some shots in. Unfortunately, with no subs, we soon tired and some good movement from Draeger let to us being 3 down at half-time.
Remo arriving just after half-time gave us the chance to rest occasionally but it seems as if the rotation let us down and there’s was a burst of about 5 goals in 5 minutes that made the score worse than we felt we’d played.
The two goals coming from the two defenders says a lot about our attacking efforts but the second goal was very well worked and neatly finished by Ian. There
were some great chances made by Hendrik and Remo that just didn’t quite trickle in but with a bit more experience over the rest of the season, we should be scaring the back of the net a bit more.
Thanks to Draeger for a great game and fair game and thanks to Scruffy’s for the Heineken and Erdinger (just never go in a flight simulator that Remo has been in )
On Saturday 29 March, my company, Barclays Capital, arranged an Amazing-Race-style race called the 3R Race, focusing on three internal key “R” messages. It was hold in East Coast Park from 9AM to 1PM, where almost 500 people attended. There are a total of two wings, wing A and wing B, of seven stations each, a total of 32 teams, 10 people each, making a total 320 participants. My team called The Humpty’s Dumpty’s started off to a great start, trying to complete each challenges in record time.
A beautiful sunny morning in East Coast park
We started with “Einstein” puzzle, you know, the one, where they gave you some clues, you need to know which nationality lives in which house, drinks what beverage, and own which kind of pet. Next up was to test our body flexibility, we were given ropes that can barely pass our body head to toe, and we need to move the rope from one person to another holding hand. This is one challenge where a lot of people realise how much fat they need to shed, haha… !! The next station proves to be even more challenging, with our team needed to match a list of 16 countries against languages, flag, and population !! Languages and flag matching are already very challenging, having to guess how many people lives in each of those countries makes live much more difficult.
We managed to pass the next challenge thanks in no small part to Google search. The were 10 pictures, and some description of “iconic” buildings in Singapore and we were supposed to guess what they are. Mind you, “iconic” doesn’t mean Esplanade or Singapore Flyer, but it’s more like the Cathedral of Good Shepherd, the Buddha Tooth Relic Temple, Sri Mariamman Temple, or Yusof bin Ishak for the face in S$10,000 bill. As we were allowed to use any kind of help, human or electronic, some people went around East Coast park to get some answers. Most of us whipped out our phones and Blackberrys, busy hitting Google search. We managed to get 9/10 right within the stipulated 10 minutes, a very good effort indeed from the team.
Some games we didn’t do well were like Chinese whispers. The message “Foster open communication and active listening” from the first person has became distorted to “First, active communication, then active listening” by the time it reached the tenth person. We only managed a pathetic two points in that game.
Chinese whispers game
Right at the end, our AP COO even managed to perform a pantomime, performing the song “Watch the Lamb” from Ray Boltz, depicting a third-person view of Jesus walk from Jerusalem to Golgotha to be crucified for mankind sins.
For some reason, Youtube doesn’t allow embedding of this video.You need to click on Youtube logo to watch.
The final part of the event was of course the announcement of the winner. Guess what, out of 32 teams participating, The Humpty’s Dumpty’s WON!!! Our team collected a total 74 points, eight points clear of the runner up, Barang Barang, who collected 66 points. No one million dollars prize as in Amazing Race, so a gold medal was at least what we deserved for winning a race.
The Humpty’s Dumpty’s, the 3R Race champion !!!
Overall, everyone had great fun, and many of us posed for photos afterwards.
After being thrashed in soccer on Wednesday evening, at least I played a game I’m much better at in tennis on Thursday evening. Both nights I reached home beyond midnight, waited for my washing machine to finish, ended up I slept beyond 2 AM for the past two nights. There’s another Master class from Rev. Dr. Stephen Tong tonight, but I didn’t go, as I will need to wake up very early again tomorrow morning (it’s Saturday tomorrow !!). I will be participating in an Amazing Race-style race in East Coast Park at 9 AM. It’s a company event and there’ll be at least 500 participants expected tomorrow morning, so if you happen to be at East Coast Park tomorrow, do drop by and say hello. You won’t miss 500 people wearing the same shirts tomorrow, really.
After the race, I hope I can go back home to change and shower before I go to our young adults fellowship. Sunday morning, as usual, it’ll be playing tennis again (this time with much better opponents), go back home, shower, visit my sister and her babies, then Sunday Service at church.
The fight to buy ABN Amro last year between Barclays Group and Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) has been long finalised where RBS won the deal.
When it’s down to soccer match between the two, the result was no different tonight.
Final score: BarCap 0 – 12 RBS
Hey, at least it’s our first time playing a team who has been playing for 18 months now. Not too bad for a start, was it? I’m sure it won’t be that bad the next time we meet them again, right?
“Well, it could have been worse!
This was unfortunately the first chance we’d had to play together and I think that showed. However, overall, there was a good performance hiding in there and some glints of great talent ready to burst through.
Ian had a great game and settled into a solid role from the back that helped settle the team, especially in the second half when we had an awful start.
Irving and Remo had some close shots and let’s hope that we can start to get some more forward action next week.
More importantly, some great post match disection of the game in Scruffy’s afterwards!“
For discount when signing up for a Smugmug account, you can use my referral code when you sign up: C26cqbAfqMjWs. I'll earn $10 for my next year's subscription, and you'll earn $5 yourself, paying $35 instead of $40.
My manager scored the other two, noticeably better goals than mine. 
Before I bore you out, let me put up the match report here.
)
We managed to pass the next challenge thanks in no small part to Google search. The were 10 pictures, and some description of “iconic” buildings in Singapore and we were supposed to guess what they are. Mind you, “iconic” doesn’t mean Esplanade or Singapore Flyer, but it’s more like the 
