We started off early this morning. Well, relatively early anyway. Ian got us going by whipping up some great French toast and mushrooms that he produced from seemingly thin air. We devoured our breakfast, because apparently eating a lot makes you want to eat more.

Also, he told us we’re going rock climbing at 1 Utama’s Camp 5 this morning, so we had to stock-up on energy as it’s pretty much climb-as-long-as-you-like. And Ian likes to climb very long.

Camp 5 in 1 Utama - Where the mountain come to Mohamed

Anyway, Camp 5 is located at 1 Utama, a huge shopping centre in Kuala Lumpur. It’s a climbing gym; a place where you go to climb on stuff. Walls, boulders, shapes, the roof, you name it. It tones, shapes and makes you strong for one day when, like in Mission: Impossible 2, you’re stuck on a sheer rock face and have to hoist yourself from a thin ledge using only your fingers.

It’s quite a large area and the walls consist of pre-fab slabs of rough-textured squares into which hand and footholds have been bolted. They’re multi-coloured, each colour representing a route that you can take from the floor to the top, graded in difficulty. Ian spends a lot of time here, because when he’s in Scotland he spends a lot of time against real life mountains.

The 4 of was was keen to play, but Julia’s red toes, acquired from the frisbee the day before, had turned nearly black, so she was in no shape to climb. Ian showed her how to belay though and I was the guinea pig. It all went well, but at one point both of them was focused on Julia’s technique, I got pinned to the wall and got myself a nasty little rope burn across the love-handle to show for it.

After that Ian, myself and Eve took turns to climb and after my first climb, which was very exhilarating, Ian showed me the ropes (chuckle) and taught me how to belay a climber, which I then did on his subsequent climb and for Eve later on. Ian continued some teaching with Julia, who then went on to gain her second injury on this Tour D’ Tom Yum when she belayed at 15kg sand bag and pulled a muscle or something.

We were at Camp 5 for a good 4 hours and when on my 4th climb I was unable to got further than 2m off the ground, I suddenly realised how long we had been at it. My arms and legs refused to co-operate in sending me scurrying up the walls any longer, so after the other two finished their last climbs, we packed it up and headed for a very late lunch.

The rest of the day was spent sleeping – partly because of our early start, but mostly because of our arduous day spent against the treacherous cliffs of the Camp 5 climbing walls.

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After a wait, which, in my opinion, was way too long, the Tri Nation Rugby finally goes to Cape Town, South Africa this weekend as South Africa takes on New Zealand this Saturday, on green turf!

“I’m getting slightly moist”, said my friend as he quipped in a needlessly graphic way about his excitement for this game.  I can’t tell if he means he’s going to wet himself or whether he’s referring to something more sexual.

Nevertheless (shaking-vivid-image-from-mind), at 1305 GMT this Saturday, 14 Aug, the Springboks come up again their nemesis, the All Blacks, on the green-green grass of the Newlands Stadium.

What? A little history?

Yeah, the history of the Newlands Stadium is interesting, if not colourful.  The actual grounds of the stadium was bought way back in 1888 (which must make it hugely auspicious for the Chinese) and saw the first game played in 1890 in front of a meager 2,400 people.

Today Newlands stadium can seat over 51,000 people in a relatively modern, recently’ish renovated concrete stadium.  It’s still one of South Africa’s most beautiful stadiums, set among the greenery and the slopes of the wet side of Table Mountain.

The stadium is accessible by all modes of transport, but the trains will bring you closest.  Going by car is what many people do though, in spite of the fact that you have to park blocks away and walk your way in.

The walk is often part of the game, as along the way loads of people will be throwing a braai (BBQ) and having a tipple before moving on to the stadium for some serious rugby.

Future of Newlands Stadium

Now is the time to enjoy the rugby games, especially the international ones, that are being hosted in the historic stadium of Newlands, because soon it might not be used so often anymore.

Currently in progress, and hopefully completed before the 2010 soccer world cup in South Africa, is the Greenpoint Stadium.

Until recently, possibly one of the most neglected stadiums around, the Greenpoint Stadium actually occupied some prime property in Cape Town and, to be fair, hosted some epic concerts and sporting events.

It was an obvious venue for the high-profile football matches scheduled for the 2010 world cup, but the stadium was ill equipped for the hordes of people expected and, besides, was in serious disrepair.

Somebody somewhere made the decision that it would in fact be easier to virtually rebuild the stadium instead of the substantial upgrades it would require.  The future Greenpoint Stadium is slated to be able to house 68,000 people.

Not living in Cape Town I’m not up to date with the latest goss of its progress, but I would love to know if it will be done in time for 2010 and what will be done regarding parking, access and traffic in general, as it’s literally pushed into a corner of Cape Town which isn’t traffic friendly at all.

Back to the Rugby

But I digress.  Back in Rugby land not only do the Springboks have their work cut out for them this weekend as they meet the All Blacks on their home turf, but the poor Springbok coach Pieter De Villiers does too.

There is forever an issue with colour balance in the Springbok team and I read, nearly chocking on my coffee, that black and coloured people of Cape Town traditionally support the All Blacks!  Race, I tell you, is one of those nasty dividers equaled only by religion.

Why can’t we all just see each other as human and practice a unifying religion like, say, rugby?

What I would like to see is the entire crowd at Newlands Stadium dressed in green, the way the staunch All Black supporters at the Dunedin Stadium were dressed in black when they met the Bokke there.

And no boo’ing or hissing when the All Blacks do something good or bad, just nothing but a deafening silence.  Or not, as the Bokke did break a nearly 100 year old record that day at Dunedin, but still, an all green crowd would be amazing.

The Springboks doesn’t have an easy ride either way.  They played 3 games so far and lost 2 of those, so they’re a little behind in the standings.  Check out the standings table for the dire picture.

But Bokke to the end! If it can be done, they can do it.  Go Bokke, I don’t mind what colour my Bok is, as long as he’s green!

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Rugby is one of those games that you can like even if you’ve never seen it before and you don’t understand the rules.  Currently the Tri Nations Rugby are in full swing and this afternoon South Africa vs. Australia.

The reason I say anyone can like it is simple. It’s action packed, fast paced and brutal.  Everyone likes this, male and female alike.  The players are in top shape. They’re fit, they’re large and they’re often good looking with ridiculously cool hair (except the front row, why are they often bald?).  Men and woman alike find this attractive, sometimes, but not always, for different reasons.

Anyway, last weekend the Springboks (how the South Africans are known) narrowly beat the All Blacks (aka New Zealand).  The victory was in fact much bigger than the mere 2 points difference in the score, because up until last weekend the All Blacks had prevented the Springboks from winning on the grounds they played at for the last 85 years. For 85 years the Springboks couldn’t win on this ground.

LIttle surprise really, because the crowd was entirely dressed in black.  The Springboks scored a try and you could hear a pin drop, when they kicked for goal the boo’s must have made the ball and posts vibrate.  It was so anti-Springbok that I’m sure Percy Montgomery’s hair lost volume when he ran onto the field.

But, in spite of these it-looks-like-the-boks-can-never-win circumstances, a rugby game the likes of which I haven’t seen in decades ensued, and the Sprinboks triumphed by two points.  Two huge, in-your-face-sit-on-this-all-blacks points. Ha.

Of course, we lost in the ugliest game I’ve ever seen the weekend before, but we won’t talk about that.

Swiftly moving on: in a few hours, 5 to be exact, the Springboks will play against the Wallabies (Australia).  It will be a tough game, because prior to the All Blacks showing the Springboks that they’re not unbeatable two weekends ago, the strong contenders were thought to be South Africa and Australia.

I’m watching the game, but I’m a place where almost everybody is Australian.  During the two previous games, which I watched with friends, I was fairly excitable and vocal, so I’m going to have to contain myself if I watch this game in a public place.

Anyway, if you’re in to rugby and even if you’re not, make sure you find yourself a spot where you can watch South Africa play against Australia this afternoon in the third game of Tri Nations Rugby Tournament.  The game takes place at 10am GMT.  They’re actually playing in Perth, but that’s a handy reference for you.

Updates, beaten(up) or not, will follow after.  Perhaps not immediately after, but soon after.

Update 080720 - I don’t want to talk about it. The Bokke lost, ok?

Fine, I’m talking about it. Never mind the fact that all the places around here said that the game was on at 8pm and I ended up missing half of it, but wow - half of Perth is South African and the Boks couldn’t win.  Last weekend, in a literally all black crowd with not one cheer for the Boks, they won. Yesterday, they didn’t.

I looked for a place where to watch the game and all the boards said 8pm.  I double checked with the staff from the one restaurant and they said yeah, the Aussie League Games will be showing at 6pm, so they’re showing SA vs. AU at 8pm. Fine.

I strolled a long way down the beach and had myself a sunset beer, only to discover the game on a big-screen in a restaurant neer the beach.  Mother…  But having missed half the game already I thought it better to go back and watch the re-broadcast.

As I got back and walked past those restaurant though, they had all changed their boards to 6pm.  Mother…

So I watch the last 30 minutes of the game, but what a disaster.  It reminded me of the first game against the All Blacks. As if they were playing this team (and rugby) for the first time. Fumbles, bad passes, omg.  The only saving grace is the Boks’ defence, which is so great because their attack is so poor - they get lots of opportunity to practise their defense.

Anyway, the Tri Nations Scoreboard looks like this: Springsboks played 3 lost 2. New Zealand played 2 lost 1. Australia played 1 won 1.

I think I see a loser emerging.

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This next activity is a sensitive issue for Flabby Gut, but only because it’s exercise, which reduces his standing in society and he really doesn’t like that.

Frisbee has been a regular Sunday afternoon activity of a steadily growing group of Frisbee lovers for the last two months now. You might either remember Frisbee, or have heard of it, as that pre-war time child’s game that evolved into a sport somewhere in the 70’s, involving grandma’s pie tin that gets thrown about, but what has hit Kota Kinabalu, Sabah ain’t your grandma’s sport.

Ultimate Frisbee landed on the jungle bed of Sabah, Borneo when one fine day not too many moons ago, Ken Kassim sent out an email to a friend saying he wanted to get some Ultimate Frisbee going in Kota Kinabalu and Sabah. The times that we live in being what it is, viral marketing took it from there and that very first Sunday about 15 eager potential Frisbee fans showed up for Ken’s first demo.

The water-soaked and muddy field at the rugby slash football field in Tanjung Aru near Terminal Two of the KK International Airport was, and has been ever since, the venue for the Kota Kinabalu chapter of Ultimate Frisbee. Since that very first day we were hooked and bar the odd totally rained-out Sunday, Ultimate Frisbee has been played pretty much every Sunday since.

Yesterday was no exception, in fact, a beautiful Sunday afternoon with an unexpectedly dry field, considering the rainy week we had, saw the biggest turnout of Kota Kinabalu’s Ultimate Frisbee fans yet - we had near on 40 people, including families with little kids who came out to enjoy the great weather and opportunity to run around.

The premise of Ultimate Frisbee is fairly straight forward. Two teams, 7 aside, a field of roughly 70m long and 35m wide with two end-zones either side 20 meter deep. The game starts off with both teams in their respective end-zones. Team 1 throws the Frisbee to team 2 who then has to run it into their opposing end-zone. If you have the Frisee, you can’t move. You are allowed to pivot on one foot and have to throw to your team member within a count to ten. If your team reaches the end-zone, you score a point. If you drop the Frisbee, or if the other team intercepts it, if it’s slapped to the ground or if you don’t pass the Frisbee within the 10-count, it’s turn-over and the other team takes possession of the Frisbee.

The number one rule of Ultimate Frisbee, as Ken keeps on reminding us, is the Spirit of the Game. The main objective is to have fun and Ultimate Frisbee is self regulated. Even in tournaments there are no referees and it is up to players to call a foul, often on themselves. The second most important thing about Ultimate Frisbee is beer - but I’m usually way too wiped out after the games to join in for beer.

On average we play for at least two solid hours - not because we have to, but because we can’t help ourselves - the first bit of the afternoon is a warm-up before we get down to the loosely structured Frisbee games. Ken runs quick clinics every now and again, spending 10 minutes to teach us something about the more technical aspects of the game, be it strategy or technique - both of which we, as Frisbee novices, still struggle with a bit. It’s all in good fun though. During the game, whenever you tire, you simply swap with somebody ready and willing, standing on the sidelines waiting for their turn - but it’s often with reluctance that people come off the field.

Kota Kinabalu’s Ultimate Frisbee welcomes anyone of any gender. In fact, in Ultimate Frisbee Tournaments teams are usually made of 4 men and 3 women as a guide, but should at least consist of both male and female members. In our Sunday games the girls rule and often equal or outnumber the guys.

So, if you’re keen on playing Ultimate Frisbee with the rest of the Kota Kinabalu Frisbee fans, then do join us on the rugby field in Tanjung Aru near KK International Airport’s Terminal Two. We play ever Sunday from 4pm onwards - and we’ll be there, rain or no rain.

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Last night’s post that got destroyed… or so I thought, and then like Hiro Nakamura just appeared from nowhere. Yatta!

I seriously don’t trust my host anymore - weird things have been happening to my account, and in the wee hours of the morning, the bastards, so they think I don’t notice - and I know it’s them, because this blog falls down and then another one I host with them on a separate account also falls down and the whole thing is just too suspicious. Add to that the fact that they don’t reply to support emails and you know the fish has been out of the freezer too long.

I thought it had something to do with the fact that I’ve ignored the brightly coloured bar in my WordPress admin area that keeps on reminding me “your version is out of date, and upgrade is available“. I could get into the blog and admin area intermittently and finally, when I did manage to upload everything, but before I implemented the upgrade, it came back online - so my shitty hosts have obviously been using the o.o1% downtime they claim to have.

When I get my new credit card, for which I was recently approved, I’m moving!

I’m using a HostGator reseller account for the collection of domains and websites that I host at work and it’s sweet, even thought I don’t actually resell anything on that account. The cheapest reseller option, the Aluminium package, gives you 24Gb space with 250Gb bandwidth and that you can then chop up and divide as you fancy through packages that you create and assign. I use to create different accounts for every different domain at work, but you could sell it off if you like. It costs just under $300, or around RM1,000, A YEAR, which is a steel.

They give you WHM (Web Host Manager) which allows you to automatically configure the mail servers and DNS and other technical rubbish that I know nothing about, and each account gets Cpanel access, allowing whoever owns the account to do their own email accounts, SQL databases and everything that has to do with the domain. WHM also does billing tracking and reminders and stuff so you could run it as a business - you can even brand the entire thing and sell it off as if it’s your great work and as opposed to that of HostGator’s magic.

The best thing is Fantastico - it’s an auto-installation script that comes with a shitload of software that you can automatically install - and of course, WordPress is one of about 6 blog programmes on the list. There’s also shopping carts, mailing lists, bulletin boards, live help-type applications and loads more.

The other thing you get with your HostGator reseller account is an Enom reseller account, which enables you to register domain names at $8.95 a pop - so it’s an all-in-one solution if you’re thinking of setting up a business, or just want to cut out several middlemen in your quest to host your own sites.

As for reliability, HostGator runs something akin to the Googleplex in Huston with Amazon rivers of bandwidth, redundancies, power generators and whatever else you need to be assured that your website will never go down and will always be secure and available.

My own shitty hosts started out with HostGator, which is how I got on to the Gators in the first place, but now, it seems, greed got hold of them and they moved to some cheep-o unreliable provider that makes my blog fall down at least once every two days (that I know of).

So a HostGator reseller account will be my first ever piece of credit card debt.

Why all this excitement over a credit card? Yeah, big deal right? You don’t understand. I’m an Expat in Malaysia not earning an Expat salary - things are difficult. My bank only gave me a car loan after I begged and pleaded and basically got a local friend to say that should anything happen she would pay for it - so they finally relented - poor friend, what a burden. And after according me that large heap of debt, they couldn’t fathom giving me a credit card, so I have been begging and pleading for that for a good year already - not that I need the credit, but being online without a credit card is like being in a candy store without teeth. So flexibility is around the corner, phew!

Anyway, earlier on I took Flabby Gut for a run. It’s been a good two weeks since I’ve done anything mildly exerting and Flabby Gut loves it. I aimed for a very doable 5km’s and the first two actually went ok - halfway around the first lap I latched on to two other blokes doing the circuit at an only slightly faster pace so I thought I could cope. After the end of the second lap I was finished, literally, so I walked the remaining 3kms. Hey, it’s still exercise - I walked fast and clenched my core, so at least I was building stomach muscles - there’s a six pack in there somewhere, I just need to find it so I can release it - at the moment, I can identify more with this kind of six pack.

Present time: After I spent a good hour assembling the above, I posted and what had happened? My host went down and I couldn’t post it. I was devastated. At work earlier this afternoon I posted a snippet of what had happened and then the draft appeared out of nowhere - didn’t realise it had auto-backed up because I couldn’t see it.

Good old WordPress.

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