Pacquiao Gobbled De la Hoya

Pacquiao did prove me wrong with my predictions that he will lose his fight to the more experienced and bigger Oscar. That's good. That is very good. I lost confidence with him for quite some time now after his character turned for the worse throughout the years (the noted gambling stories, controversies with women, his penchant to run in politics like it's the only thing he can do good for the public people, his current government affinity and tendency to say and do "yes" to all kinds of filthy and corrupt politicians out there).

Oh, I saw this internet poster from this Nike site for Manny Pacquiao (we all know he won already).

It was a different story yesterday afternoon. I was able to watch online a live streaming video of the fight with my laptop. I knew I was going to be late with my meeting with friends that afternoon but I decided I better stick in and watch the entire match for it will be very difficult to catch replays online. All my notions of Manny have gone into smoke from the time he stepped into the ring beaming with a smile to his people to the 9th round when Oscar called it quits and slowly went up to Manny to embrace him. What a fight! But as some of my flatmates and friends mentioned, it could have been a better and more exciting fight if De la Hoya displayed more aggressiveness like what Manny did. He looked more like a punching bag or sparring partner to Manny (his handsome features reduced to a heavily sored and pinkish mess). As one ESPN announcer had mentioned -- a beating of an old De la Hoya.

The running joke is that Manny has more beatings with his post interviews such as this.

Congratulations, Manny, for winning the fight!

Pacman Gobbled His Opponent

"It only took Manny Pacquiao three rounds to prove himself the stronger, faster fighter..." - this came from the article featured in HBO and all I could say is amen to that. Pacman has already proven himself in terms of skill and prowess, knocking down previous opponents like a raging pit bull. This afternoon, I had received two text (SMS in Singaporean lingo) messages from relatives abroad breaking the news of Manny winning his fight over Morales within 3 rounds only. Ah, the news made me smile all right, oblivious of the quizzical looks from the people around me while we were inside the MRT train.

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Meanwhile...

I was checking with other online news here, such as Channel NewsAsia, if they've picked up the news of Manny's winning the boxing match. Apparently the site did not mention anything about it. I even checked on their (apparently) latest news tab for (supposedly) recent events that happened in Asia (ehem, isn't the site named Channel NewsAsia?). I checked out their Sport section for any news about the fight, but alas, even this section did not anything about it. I've even used the site's search option and - tadah - as expected no Manny Pacquiao fights mentioned. The only Philippine related news to be cited is that of Imelda Marcos launching her (infamous) fashion collection to her "fellow Filipino". It's not interesting news at all, if you ask me. Who cares about her jewelries and stuffs (non-Filipinos I assume, or those who still have affinity with Madam Imelda Marcos). What the Philippines wants is justice and reparation for the damages done during the Marcos regime.

Bear with me here. I still flip out when other foreigners still know little of the Philippines (which they sometimes they fondly call as "Manila" as if it is a registered name for a country). Or that we once ruled by a dictator they knew only as "Marcos". Or that we had a movie actor for a president. Or... whatever...

The Dragon Boat Race

Before I begin anything, this post marks the switch over of this blog to Blogger beta.

I'm still learning to get use to some new features of this blog like labels (and the sudden crash that happened a while ago while writing this long post, so I had to redo everything. As in everything... Thanks, but no thanks Blogger and Microsoft!)

So on we go...

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The race was held in Jurong Lake, Chinese Garden.

It's my first time to participate in a dragon boat race. Actually, it's indeed my first time to row for a dragon boat team. Our office department team has some first-timers in a dragon race (like me). So it was a privilege to be invited to join the team; I've been wooed before by an officemate to be a part of the office's dragon boat team.

During the first round, I've been assigned to row at the port side of the boat (left that is). We had a good start, and soon left our competitors behind our wake. We placed first and guaranteed ourselves to the finals.

In the second round, we had to make changes to give chance to other team members to row. I was one of the chosen to be replaced, so I had the chance to take my camera with me and shoot the following pictures.

That is our boat. Number 4. The team had a struggled start during the finals round.

In this picture, it's hard to determine whether our boat (number 4) is leading or lagging to number 5. Surprisingly, we placed second. Seems to me we placed third based on this picture. I had to ran along the shoreline just to be able to catch up and have a good position in taking pictures of our dragon boat.

Placing second is still quite achievement. Compare that to last year's department's position which is second to the last. Indeed, quite an improvement. Consider that we only had two weeks of training. No, make it specifically two Sundays only of training.

Notice the only color available for life vests is pink. Pink, and more pink. Even during training days we had no choice but to don pink life vests. The favorite color of local dragon boaters here is pink. Lah.

In between breaks, I had the chance to take some pictures of other participants, such as this.

...and someone took out the dragon head from one of the boats and just laid it out on the grass...

Other pictures:

This is a Chinese gateway to...

...Koi fishes inside. And more Koi fishes.

The stone guards near the gateway. Seems the rightmost guard has asked his collegues if one of them has farted (from the expression of his face, the smell got into his system). And looks like one felt guilty (hint: stooping down).

Before I exited the park's main entrance, I chanced upon this magnificent seven storey pagoda.

Also I noticed this pigeon perched on one of the post of the red wooden bridge along the main entrance. As if the pigeon is asking me, in a quizzical manner, "what are you looking at?".

I couldn't resist taking this picture before I finally left the park's premises. I saw this interesting scene wherein some murder of crows (or conspiracy of ravens?) and siege of herons (also not sure) gather in the huge expanse of grassland surrounding the park. Reminds me so much of the Filipino saying Pagputi ng uwak, pagitim ng tagak(English translation: When the crow turns white, when the heron turns white). Isn't it?