Exactly three weeks after the incident where I nearly broke my ankle (exagerated for effect), I returned to the Ultimate field at Tanjung Aru yesterday.  Without my ankle guard, which I mysteriously lost.

I started my birthday-month with a bang on the first of March.  Actually, it was more of a crack, because that’s the noise my ankle made as I twisted it after successfully skying Joel.  Never has victory been this painful.

Julia rushed to pile ice on it, Bryan recommended sleeping with it elevated (which I did), and I cleverly bandaged it up tight for two weeks afterwards.  These action, according to the experts on the Internet, minimised the impact of the ankle injury and cut down my recovery time considerably.

Ever since the pain subsided and I regained painless movement of the ankle, I’ve been doing light rolls and other exercises to keep the ankle nimble and strengthen it again.  I couldn’t walk on it for about 10 days after the accident.  After two weeks I felt confident enough to not wrap it up any more and I tested it as I took it easy going up the steps to see how tough it was.  It held up just fine.

On Friday I had an easy-going Ultimate game on the beach, but played only a short while before I called it quits, not wanting to tire out the ankle.  I was wearing the ankle guard that Julia got me, so my foot felt well supported, but I was playing it safe.  After the game I swear I put the guard in the bag, but looking for it on Sunday it was nowhere to be found. Disappointment all around.

Before the Sunday game I did a few hops, skips and jumps and had no feelings of pain in or around my ankle and decided to brave a full on game of Ultimate with cleats.  Taking it easy still, letting my right foot do all the breaking and accelerating, I managed a whole game injury free.  My ankle also hasn’t felt pain or discomfort since and I think I’m well on the way to a full recovery.

My throwing arm and legs, however, wasn’t so fortunate, because they certainly feel like I haven’t used them in the 3 weeks since my last Ultimate game.

Thank goodness for healed ankles, because now I can get my exercise regime back on track.  My previously dissolved love handles have been clawing their way back again and we can’t have that, now can we?

Wow, it’s 2009.  Where’d 2008 go, did anybody see?  I was just starting to settle into 2008, and now it’s 2009. And where’s those flying cars already?

Anyway, as I reflect on the year gone by I realise I became very jaded in 2008.

In 2008 I had to deal with certain people who sucked the life out of me and made my environment black and foul smelling. They smeared my personality with their hateful, excremental thoughts and numbed my optimism with their urine-odored actions.

But I closed 2008 off by wipping my arse of them with acceptance, flushing their fecal memories with hope and washing my hands of their ugly, piss-stianed actions with concentrated optimism that the one who matters will benefit from it all.

Now I want to find myself. The me who laughs in the face of adversity, the me who sees not a problem, but a challenge and the me who finds adventure in everyone and every place. The me I am underneath all this crud.

So here’s to 2009: Find Myself.

But to look to the future, you must study the past.  So here are the (mostly positive) highlights of 2008. Here, take my hand…

January 2008

At the start of 2008 I was needlessly in court fighting about something that needn’t have been fought over. My troubles were nothing compared to Chua Soi Lek, Malaysian Minister who started his year off with the most sensational sex scandal in Malaysia to date.

In Kota Kinabalu, I got a sneak peak at 1Borneo (which would open later in the year, way behind schedule and far from complete).  It had its share of controversies, floods and tenant woes, but 2009 might just be a good year for it.  Or not.

AirAsia.com brought their first Airbus to Kota Kinabalu and has since phased out all Boeings and now flies an all Airbus fleet.  They’ve added loads of destinations this year and I took advantage of a few of those.

February 2008

February we had some wicked celebration outings and parties.  I launched Sabahbah.com to showcase the tourism offerings of Kota Kinabalu and Sabah. It’s still getting over 5000 unique views per month and plans for it are in the works.

I bravely leap into the world of open source software and install a flavour of Linux,  Ubuntu 7.04.  My life suddenly becomes much richer, and easier as worries about viruses and Trojan horses all but disappear.

March 2008

I turn 31. The world remains the same.

Arthur C. Clarke passes away.  I read all of his books that I own as a tribute.

Issuu.com – the YouTube of the publishing world – hits the web. I quickly apply it for Sutera Harbour and  I introduce it to Breeze magazine who promptly adopts it too, and my blog post about it now ranks in the top 3 for ‘pdf page tunrning software’, turning tens of people per week onto the service.

The Loft is the only establishment in KK to observe Earth Hour, making a gesture that will possibly be echoed far and wide in 2009 when it comes around again.

April 2008

Our gaggle of Sabah Ultimate players, the Borneo Bristleheads, go to our first tournament, The Malaysia Ultimate Open in Kuala Lumpur.  We get our asses beaten, severely, but our love of the game of Ultimate is solidified and we start down the path of becoming Ultimate geeks. We now play much better.

Loving Ubuntu I upgrade to Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron and discover something new every day.  Why doesn’t everbody use Ubuntu?

May 2008

Highlight of the month is my trip to Bali with Julia, joined by John and Pip. We scored some cheap flights on AirAsia, unfortunetally booked so far in advance that we didn’t even know they were to start flying direct.  John and Pip gets on the direct flight while we go via KL.  Excellent trip.

June 2008

Maxis sheds some customers with a mammoth coverage failure. The total black-out lasts for almost 2 days, and the aftermath of dropped calls, jammed networks and undelivered text messages lasts nearly a week. They compound the service failure by failing, for most of the first day, to communicate with their customers.

I get involved in exposing a blog-link scam, Maybank dupes anxious Malaysians with an over-hyped, function deprived bankcard, Firefox 3 sets a download record, and it rains the most of 2008 in KK, cause floods and hideous traffic jams.  I also work my last days at Sutera Harbour before bidding my employer of 2 years farewell (as I publish this, their official website is still the one I designed – check the code – and it ranks superiorly in Google).

July 2008

A bit of a dull month was July 2008 (or perhaps I was just busy).  I upgraded to WordPress 2.6 (not without error, mind you) and South Africa starts their journey towards getting beaten in the Tri-Nations rugby tournement.

August 2008

I become very aware of Repetitive Strain Injury (result of sitting infront of my PC for increased hours) and I make a significant contribution to the environment (if I don’t toot my own horn, who will?) as I switch to Watershops’ 20c per litre water with my own container in lieu of a carton box with 12 plastic bottles per week.

September 2008

Busy month and emotionally the most taxing.  I do lots of posts, but most of them private. Beyond myself I pitch in and help with a Project Aware as we remove substantial amounts of rubbish from the national marine park.  A shadow of the Borneo Bristlheads also attend the Singapore Ultimate Open as part of team Satu Lagi.  We win nothing, but gain much knowledge.

October 2008

Turmoil of September spills into October, not much to blog about in public.

November 2008

Aside from a really rotten start to the month, Julia and I spend an epic holiday adventure in Thailand visiting Phuket, Phi Phi and Bangkok – we unwittingly escape exactly 1 day before the polical situation erupts and Bangkok airports are closed down, stranding thousands of tourists.

December 2008

The month starts off with World AIDS Day and the year closes with a feastive season that makes up for an otherwise reasonably sedate year with several parties of note. Using up the last of 2008′s leave, I geek it up a little when I use other people’s genius to get Windows XP to fully run inside Ubuntu.  I might never have to reboot into Windows again.

We’re Ultimate players and Ultimate players never travel without an Ultimate disc. When you’re traveling, it’s not just a disc, it’s a friend-making tool – friends of the disc.

Having said that, Ultimate players never travel without cleats either, but here we are in KL and neither Julia nor myself have cleats. Perhaps we’re not such hardcore Ultimate players yet. Or perhaps we’ve foregone the 2kg in cleats because Tour D’ Tom Yum is supposed to feature lost and lost of beach sand.

Our compromise was bringing trainers for the two Ultimate sessions we planned – the first one is here in KL and the second we’re aiming for is Soidawgs in Bangkok. Our Sabah Ultimate Guru, Ken Kassim, is now based here in KL, so he invited us out for a game over at KBU. The 3rd taxi we flagged agreed to use the meter and we set off.

We saw the discs flying long before we knew where we where, so it was an easy find. We proceeded to reacquaint ourselves with Ultimate players we previously met at the Malaysian Ultimate Open and also to meet new ones. Of course, their level of play is beyond anything we have in Sabah, so we really appreciated the opportunity.

Ken quickly dismissed Julia’s sneakers as unsuitable to play in and when I took mine out of the bag the gaping soles dismissed mine too. So barefoot we played, which turned out detrimental to Julia, as in one of the first point she managed to stub her foot against the heal of a cleated player, instantly rendering 3 of her toes swollen and red. She would hobble for the rest of the game.

Other than that incident it was a great game in very hot weather and we worked up a suitable appetite, which is just as well, because Ken then carted us off to his usually post-ultimate grazing grounds – banana leaf at Kana Curry House.

Where is Kana Curry House? I have no idea – the road there winded left and right and I don’t know KL that well, so I might well never find the place again. Section 14, says Julia, but what do I know.

Anyway, the size of the banana leaf they placed in front of me was a prelude to how much food was to come. And come it did. For the next 20 minutes people came past with all sorts of food items and if you do anything that looks like a nod you get a portion on your leaf. I appeared to be nodding quite a bit, so before I knew it my banana leaf was stacked. So ate. And ate and ate and ate until I could no more – then I ate some more to clear my leaf, because it’s rude to leave food on your leaf.

Kana Curry House became the second place on Tour D’ Tom Yum where I would pick up weight. This banana leaf was also hands the most expensive banana leaf I will ever have, but I believe it was the large, nearly-half-a-chicken piece that I had that pushed up the price. But good stuff. Burp!

Take me away to Out of Africa

Luckily this was very early on in the day and we had been quite active, because we had Out Of Africa, that fabulous South African restaurant in Petaling Jaya, lined up for dinner. And Ian and Eve were joining, so we knew lots of food and fun was to be had.

The rest of the day passed in a blur. I think Julia went shopping, I can’t remember what I did – I might have been nursing my bloated stomach. Near the evening we met up with I and E and set off to Out of Africa. We repeated a class act similar to our previous time there (except less Vodka).

We started off with biltong and chicken liver pate – it would be rude not to. We followed it up with with pap-en-wors, venison pie and Ian had the ox-tail potjie – trust him to have something of an animal other than meat. For desert we shared a portion each of Cape Brandy pudding and Lemon Meringue pie between the four of us. As usual, everything was outstanding.

We were in time to catch the LRT home and because Ian wanted to take us for one of his action packed activities – which supposedly started quite early – for convenience sake we stayed over at theirs. Again there was some walking involved to get home, but it was all for the greater good as we were stuffed yet again.

Tour D’ Tom Yum is certainly looking like it’s going to leave a few fat people in its wake.

I just scrubbed my Ultimate shirt, which necessarily had to go into my backpack muddy, sweaty and unwashed.  Two days after the event all I could do is make it a lighter shade of mud-brown, but it’s not clean by any stretch of the imagination.

The Singapore Ultimate Open (SUO) was this weekend past.  22 teams from across the region gathered on the green expanse that is Ferrer Park, to pit their Ultimate skills against each other.

The Borneo Bristleheads were there too, albeit in a diluted form.  4 of the team (myself, Julia, Richie, Angela) that went to the Malaysian Ultimate Open (MUO) about 6 months ago, joined the cream of Satu Lagi, whilst 2 Bristleheads (Ken & Brian) joined from KL – 1 because he lives there, and 1 because he moved there.  The rest were Satu Lagi team players, one of the teams that kicked our butts at the MUO.

Discover Singapore – A world of unique contrasts

On Friday we arrived in Singapore to realise what everyone already knew: Singapore is expensive.  Perhaps you won’t notice so much with US, Australian, European or British currency, but believe you me, you do when you travel with Malaysian Ringgit.  Our double hostel room, for which we paid SGD$50 per night for was, to be kind, spartan.  Just a bed, a coat hanger and a mirror.

The fact that it had air-con was negated by the fact that the walls were paper thin and you could hear every little fart from the toilet 3m down the hallway, nevermind the stomping and talking and god knows what else that was going on in the hallway.

But, it served the purpose and is walking distance away from Ferrer Park, so I guess this time we’ll let it slide.  Next time we won’t pay much more, we’ll just expect a lot less.

Singapore Ultimate Open

Saturday morning we arrived at Ferrer Park at about 8am games were already going. Our game was, thankfully, scheduled for a little later in the morning.  We did some warm-ups with more purpose than we did at the MUO, but we were clearly still amateurs.

The Singapore Ultimate Open would turn out not to the be the first tournament where we win a game.  We lost all our games and a particularly fast team from the Philippines actually white-washed us.  I believe it was in under 30 minutes.  We never knew what hit us.

We played a team from Singapore, Chukkies, twice.  Great team spirit and the most unserious Singaporeans we’ve ever seen.  I’ll lose to them any day – they made the games seriously fun.  We also played a team from Vietnam called R.M.I.T.  We did a little skit for them, because in Sabah there’s a saying, which is the equivalent of cheers and is pronounced ‘ari mi ti‘.  We thought it was clever.

Our team worked well together, I thought, and especially the guys from Sabah were nowhere near as knackered as we were after the MUO.  After Day 1 we could all still actually walk – and run – which was good for game play.

Beer on the Field

Ken has previously relayed legends of having beer on the field.  We did, of course, not believe this.  One of the big sponsors of all sorts of sports here in Singapore is Brewerkz, a micro-brewery slash restaurant that brews their own beer.  And good beer too.  And because they sponsored this event, Thomas, a rep, was on the field (well, next to) handing out FREE beer.  I kid you not.

Richie and I took advantage of this and had way more beer than what we should have, considering we still had a few games to play.  But it was all good and the beer was extremely drinkable.  I love Brewerkz.

Saturday’s Party

For the Saturday evening’s party we missed the South Africa vs. Australia rugby game, which the best game of the Tri-Nations as the Bokke won for a change.  We missed it in lieu of yet another not-so-great Ultimate party. All the players crammed into the small, 3-level Majestic bar hat was too overcrowded and necesarily had the players over 3 levels.

We left early with fears of being crushed to death.

Sunday Play

We were up early and I wasn’t a happy bunny.  The previous day’s chaffing did me in and the walking around at night didn’t help either.  I liberally slapped on the Vaseline, but it didn’t work.  Eventually I took off the underwear, which worked a charm.  It was a little obscene, but comfortable and that’s, in the end, what counts.

We had our second came against the Chukkies. They beat us, but not by as much as the day before.  We had our hopes up against team Voodoo.  We drew first blood, then scored 4 points in a row… and then they trashed us.  During the game I did a brilliant layout – brilliant save for the fact that I didn’t catch the disc.

But I slid through the mud for a good 15m and filled my clothes and mouth with muddy water.  It didn’t nothing for the chaffing.

We scored 2 more points in that game and Ken almost got physical during a misunderstanding which, thankfully was cleared up quickly.

After the game Julia was still pretty clean, but only until Miquel pushed her during a photo and she belly-flopped in the mud.  She wasn’t a happy bunny.  We rushed back to the backpackers to check-out as we thought they were full – but turns out they had more space so we stayed another night (only after we stripped our linen and had to redo it all again).

We headed back for more beer and the finals.

Superior Class Ultimate

The Singapore Open Finals featured a team from China and a team from the Philippines.  Hands down it was the best Ultimate I’ve ever seen – ya ok fine, I haven’t seen that many games yet, but still.  It was awesome.  Serious strategy, serious running and players literally flying through the air after the disc.

It was poetery. It was art.  It was Ultimate at its best.

Rest of Singapore

We toured the city a bit until it was time for dinner.  We met the guys at Brewerkz for dinner.  We were a bit late and we had a ‘snack’ earlier in Little India, so we’re not hungy.

A guy, visibly already drunk, shows up and he turns out to be an Ultimate player.  I accidentally invite him to sit down and he proceeds to dominate the conversation around the 12-strong table.  He buys beer and not to be rude, I share.  Lots of it and proceeds to bore the people around him. He was supposed to meet up with his friends – they never show.

We eventually retire and head back for some well decent sleep.

The Singapore Ultimate Open was a great experience, and once again, even though we didn’t win a single game, we learned alot.  We return to Kota Kinabalu with even more enthausiasm than we had before and our love for the game of Ultimate is now deep set.

We vow to turn the players in Sabah into a winning team.  We can dream, can’t we?

Well, the weekend before last the Bristleheads went to KL to attend the Malaysian Ultimate Open. And I’m still tired.

Anyway, on Thursday I typed a press release which Julia proofed for me, faxed it off to all the newspapers and it got picked up by 5 newspapers. Three of the English papers and two Chinese features the Borneo Bristleheads going to KL for the MUO. I’m not sure how many people actually noticed it, because I didn’t receive any emails. Clearly we’ll need to do much more marketing for the sport.

As expected, we got our butts kicked at the MUO, but we had some exceptional experiences and met some great people. My only complaint was that it wasn’t as social as we’ve hoped, but now that we know the lay of the land we’ll do better next time.

As a team from Sabah we were well keen to win the party, as Sabahans (and by extension, those who live here) are known to party. However, on Saturday night our entire team was wiped out and tired, and most of us went to bed by around midnight. Only one of our team partied till dawn; Chris. Kadazan. Hardcore partier.

Saturday just took it out of us. Our very first game was up against Freak Show, and damn those guys are serious. Kudos to them for taking their game seriously serious, and they are considered one of the best teams in Asia, but wow, stern man. Anyway, we had loads of fun when we scored 1, and only 1, point against them.

Our second game on Saturday was against Wild Cats, a team we thought we had a better change against, because they weren’t testosterone charged. Nevertheless, our inexperience and clear lack of skill saw us only score two points against them.

By our third game we were seriously ready for action. One of our games got cancelled due to an electric storm, so we had some time to rest. Game three was up against Shiok, another serious Singaporean team who knew we were green and had the attitude to remind us of it. We dug deep and scored four points against them, which grinded them no end. We were chuffed.

On Sunday morning, much earlier than any of us wanted to be awake, we played against a team of mostly expats called Satu Lagi. They were top contenders, but a lot more fun to play against, because although they were serious they still had some time for silly buggers. We lost against them too, but we enjoy it.

Our next game was up against Dengue Fever, featuring the CEO of Air Asia X, and intense man who takes his Ultimate ultimately serious (he would not have stood out in the Singaporean teams). We scored a triumph of sorts, because even though we still lost against them, we managed to cap them, or prevent them from scoring the maximum of 13. The end score was 11-5, so a good result for us.

Our last game was really a friendly, the two bottom teams pitted against each other. Pirates was as near to our level as they had at the MUO and if we weren’t such soft asses who where all injured and tired, we might have been able to give them a run for their money. Instead, we lost 13-4.

Pirates had an uptight-kilt-wearing-finger-waving-rule-mongering captain who made the game memorable for his being pedantic and rubbing our noses in a fundamentalist interpretation of the rules, but as a game of Ultimate it was ok.

The fields were basically grass floating on mud. On the one hand this led to lots of injuries; sprained ankles, twisted knees, it was ugly. On the other hand it encouraged laying out, which meant lots of action as people flew across the field and after the disc. It was tiring though.

Not to mention dirty. I had to scrub my socks and shirts to get the mud out. Some of my clothing will never be the same again. But it’s all in good spirit.

In the end the Borneo Bristleheads, that’s us, won the Spirit Award. I guess when you play as poorly as we do, the only thing you can do is have fun. And we did. And the other teams noticed, so they decided we should win the Spirit Award. Thanks guys.

So now that we know the level of competition that we’re up against, we’ll prepare wholeheartedly for Singapore. There’s a tournament there in August, I think, and this time the Bristleheads will go to win one.