After finding out that Illinois has been selected to play in the Rose Bowl, I’ve been wanting to attend the game as I’m a big sports fan, familiar with the exquisite history that Rose Bowl is known for—being the oldest college bowl game, big rivalry between PAC-10 and Big Ten conferences, my home state is in it this year and I haven’t visited SoCal yet except for one time when I attended an award banquet hosted by Nestle Co.

I asked around to see who wanted to go and two of my friends expressed interests but as the date approached closer, they couldn’t make it. Frankly, I was disappointed and wondered if I should just go there by myself.

It wasn’t till my mom told me that one of her friends had mentioned to her that the last time Illinois played in the Rose Bowl, it was in 1984, which they lost to UCLA. That’s 23 years ago, the same year I came to the United States when I got adopted. So, that pretty much does it for me. I knew I had to go. Luckily, I have a friend who lives in North Hollywood and asked him if I could crash at his place. He said sure. The game’s on.

Dec. 31st, Monday

12:57 pm: lying on a new couch bought from IKEA, staring at the ceiling.

1:00 pm: made up my mind to go to the Rose Bowl, sent a page to my friend.

1:05 pm: got a reply! he said sure, I can crash at his place.

1:10 pm: logged onto ichat to start video conferencing with my friend to make plans.

1:20 pm: plans made, logged into southwest.com, purchased with my new credit card from Southwest, double reward points!

1:25 pm: sent a page to my other friend to see if he can drop me off at the SJC airport. he said sure.

1:30 pm: pack my clothes last minute, couldn’t find my black gym bag (must have left at the Google gym), used a christmas shopping bag instead.

2:00 pm: my friend picks me up

2:30 pm: dropped off at the airport

3:15 pm: plane takes off

4:30 pm: my friend picks me up

5:00 pm: got to his place. nice place. met his bro who’s deaf too.

6:30 pm: went to eat at a taco shop. great tacos.

8:30 pm: driving to riverside for a NYE party. damn, LA traffic!

9:30 pm: met my friend’s friend and his wife. cool dude who’s a writer (has written scripts for cable shows like the Discovery channel) and his wife works in DA office. nice couple.

10:00 pm: got to the NYE party, introduced myself to the host and thank him for welcoming me.

11:59 pm: last minute of 2007 before 2008 begins! hugs time and celebration. great party.

Jan. 1st, Tuesday.

3:00 am: time to leave, helped my friend’s friend’s wife with directions back to the house, using Google Maps on my blackberry and hers too.

4:30 am: had a good chat with my friend, catching up old times, then went to sleep.

10:00 am: my friend’s friend made breakfast. met his parents who are deaf too. chatted.

12:00 pm: left house *note to myself, write a note to them for letting me stay at their place. they have a beautiful, gorgeous Italian-style house. nice family.

1:30 pm: friend dropped me off at the Rose Bowl stadium

1:45 pm: got to the front gate, searched for Illinois fans with extra tickets

1:50 pm: found a ticket! $50 dollars. face value was $150. 10 rows from the field in the corner!

2:00 pm: jet fighters flown by.

2:10 pm: game kicks off!

I’m gonna play for a team called the Gold Rush. The tournament is this weekend, starting with 4v4 on Friday and 8v8 on Saturday. Hope we all play well. I’m gonna be like Deion Branch. We’re same height, run sharp patterns, swifty and have good hands.

And Bobby Knight said this, “The key is not the “will to win” . . . everybody has that. It is the will to prepare to win that is important.”

Which is why I'm gonna do drills and run 3 miles everyday till to the tournament, so I'll have enough gas in my tanks to wave my hand at opponents in the 4th quarter, championship game.

Tags: football, sports |

That’s the final score of the game at the Verizon Center I got back from. It’s my first time watching Chicago Bulls play against the Wizards. Ofc, I was disappointed to see the Bulls lose but it was cool to watch them play in front of my eyes instead of a tube. It was pretty amazing to see how reliable they can knock down baskets during warm-ups, even Ben Wallace too. The best shooter has to be Gilbert Arenas of the Wizards. It’s unbelievable how he can get off a shot and he has a feather-like touch to the ball that gets him nothing but the net. He just brings up the ball and snap his wrist and it’s gonna be in. Ben Gordon was also awesome but it’s too bad that he is pretty short at like 6′1”. He’d be much more lethal if he was taller like Dwayne Wade.

My friend, William Tai, was the one who got tickets for me. He got them pretty cheap because they were employee discount tickets and we sat in the section 219, not too bad, better than the upper section. It was a college night on Wednesday so there were lots of kids sitting in the upper level with a few visible empty seats. He said he loves going to the Verizon center so that’s cool. Now I know who to tag with.

It was cool to see Ben Wallace too. His body is made of irons and he looks more like a football tight end than he is a basketball player. He has quick hands, anticipate rebounds well and can move like a guard. I got a laugh from watching poor Mike Sweetney, number 50. He has the widest body on the floor and he does possess some post moves and I feel if he really works hard to lose some fat, maintain his weight, and become more mobile, he’d make a terrific player that would give a post presence to his team. There’s a reason why he is a professional in the first place.

After watching them play on the floor, it’s a little hard to imagine that they’re earning millions of dollars to play the sport and have us as fans to come watch them play. In the purest sense, they are just like us who enjoy playing basketball and they just so happen to be bigger, taller and faster. They look like everyone else and it’s the media that makes them look larger than life. I think the best part about going to games is not to witness them in person but to hang out with your friends, have some beers, eat juicy burgers, and do some yelling/booing to support your favorite team. That’s truly it’s all about.

-354 days to go.

Now that the NBA season is back in a full swing, finally there’s something to watch during late nights. If you ever watched a bit of sportscenter, there was an outcry among the league about the new rule this year: players have to dress up in a suit. Quite naturally and expectedly, Allen Iverson was the first to protest. Even one player complained he will need stipends to help cover the suit costs, despite his minimum contract is $250,000 a year. The commissioner, David Stern, said the reason for this is to make the NBA look sharp and professional. Well, look at those pics and tell me what you see.

I think it’s working, don’t you say?

Ok, the sports media is all over the controversial play that happened during the game two of ALCS between the Chicago White Sox and the Anaheim Angels. Having seen the replay a dozen times, I’ve come to a conclusion that the ball never hit the dirt and the reason why it was so damn confusing was because the catcher’s mitt was on the ground and the ball just went into the mitt, even though the mitt was on the ground—still doesn’t mean the ball did hit the dirt. However, that wasn’t even the point because the home plate umpire couldn’t even see the ball anyway. He was, in fact, unsure if the ball had touched the ground so he kinda left the play wide open but the catcher never did anything to seal the play. He just assumed that the umpire made the out call due to the handsign, which was for a strike call. So, the hitter, a catcher himself, knew there was a benefit of doubt, decided to run to the first base (he said he never heard the verbal cue from the umpire so he ran but I think it had to do with the benefit of doubt and his catcher instincts). The Angels catcher never made the tag, the hitter taking the shot to run to the first base and that’s the whole play. We could argue all night whether if we should have an instant replay like other sports or that the umpire made a confusing strike/out call by his handsign. But in my opinion, this could be all avoided, had the catcher tagged the hitter especially when the stakes are high and when there is a doubt involved.

It’s been refreshing to see NHL highlights after their one year lockout and there’s a new rule in overtime: shootouts. Paul Kariya is really a master at the shootout. He’s 2 for 2 thus far. The key success? never give a daylight of a time to the goalie to see what is your shot going to be or ur next move. I really like the shootouts ‘cuz it puts more emphasis on your skills, help save costs on operation (you would think all those alcohol beverages would help offset the operation costs but it doesn’t), more anticipation on the outcome because that will be determined in a matter of few minutes, not twenty minutes or double overtimes.

I can’t wait for NBA to start. Go Manu Ginobili! and am really curious to see how the miami team is gonna play this year with the almost competely new roster except for Shaq and Wade. The same goes for Kobe and Lebron—how big are they gonna be this season.

Michelle Wie, who just turned pro, is so fucking lucky. I really envy her and I find myself looking at her tan legs—she does have nice legs.

Damn, look at this perfect-picture posture! they should use her posture for their official LPGA logo.

Something happened to me that’s never been happened before. I made a hole in one! That is every golfer’s dream—to make a hole in one, especially from a par 3—in our lifetime. Today after work, I decided to go out to the University of Maryland golf course (I wish I was a student there, so I’d become a member and get discounted fees). My friend, Luke, had a meeting at 4:30 pm so he couldn’t meet me there on time. He’d meet me later at the 10th hole, since I had enough time to do 18 holes. So I went ahead and played by myself.

This happened on the 3th hole, par 3, 187 yards marker, but the white tee was moved back about 3 yards behind the marker, so that made it 190 yards long. I was deciding whether to go with an iron 3 or 4, but since it was a little downhill and virtually no wind, I chose iron 4. I did some warm-up swings, trying to get some rhythm and feeling confident with my swing. Then I stood behind the ball, visualizing my shot and which direction I’m gonna aim and shoot at. I usually pick a tree or some easy spots where I could see from the corner of my left eye. (it helps when my left eye is dominant over my right eye, thus I shoot a gun left-eye, not from my right eye and don’t worry, I don’t own a gun myself). I set my shoe spikes into the grass underneath me, grip my Cleveland TA7 iron, wiggle my wrists a bit to keep loose, and I looked up at my target (a tree, rather than straight at the flagstick) for one more time, took my break for the last time, started my backswing and just let it all go. I felt the ball struck solidly, flew high through the air, I could see the ball a little left of the flagstick, about 3 feet, and was going exactly where I was aiming at. Then, the ball went down and hit hard onto the green, rolled till I couldn’t see it anymore because the slope was curvy downhill.

I walked up to the green, expecting to see my ball on the green but it wasn’t there. Could it have rolled off the green and into the rough? So I looked around the rough; nothing there. Ahh, not again! I didn’t wanna lose my damn ball again, which had happened countless times, but I had an idea that I’d look for the divot instead where the ball had landed onto the green and try to figure out where the ball might have gone. I looked at the divot, and formed an imaginary line where it rolls off. It was pointing at the flagstick. Then it suddenly registered to me that the ball could have gone into the cup…. A possible hole-in-one!? it cann’t be… I walked to the hole and looked down. The ball was there; I had made not only my first hole-in-one but my first eagle too!

Man, I can’t even begin to describe the feeling when I started to realize that the ball had indeed gone down into the cup. I’m sure it’s different for others but to me, I feel like it’s an acknowledgment that my golf skill has become good enough that it’s capable of making a hole-in-one. What is a greater satisfaction is that I can proudly say I’ve made a hole in one in my lifetime, although there was no one to witness it. I don’t care as I know for a fact that I made it. It tells me that after all those hundreds, no, make it thousands, of swings, countless hours of practice, that it has paid off and that it wasn’t a waste of time. It is as if God has rewarded me.

It flashed me back to the days when I was about 12 years old and my dad had a really old golf clubs (he bought them in the 70s after seeing Jack Nicklaus won more than 10 majors and 8 more majors after that) but only used them a few times. My dad is not big of an athlete, so I practically blew the dust off the clubs and went to the backyard and tried to swing at the ball like I’d see them do on the TV. Since we weren’t very affluent nor a member of a country club, I never actually played at a real golf course till I was about 16 years old. I’d save up enough money to buy my own golf club set, bought them for only 100 dollars at Target, with a driver (it was really a wood 3 with graphite shaft, wood 5, wood 7 and iron 3 through pitch wedge). To compare how cheap that was, my current putter alone costs $90 dollars.

Since I turned 16 years old and able to drive alone, I drove to a public golf course and started playing golf. I believe it was at Nicholas Park Golf Course in Jacksonvile, IL. They had a pond between two holes and I hit, like, 4 straight balls into the water before finally hitting it long enough to get over the pond. Since then, I’ve played more often but to the limits of my budget and didn’t really play much during college since I was almost always broke and my eyes constantly in front of computers while chowing down junk foods. Now I’m receiving steady paychecks from my employer and able to afford green fees, before was I able to take up golf more seriously. Let there be more hole-in-ones to come!

Pics taken from my Sidekick companion: