Singapore Slingers

This evening I went to see the Singapore Slingers play the Indonesia Satra Mudra Britama. It's South East Asian League Basketball baby!!

S$19 (US$13.50), and you can basically have courtside, half court seats. The Singapore Indoor Stadium was unimpressively unfull, but the crowd was totally into it. Unfortunately, somehow we got stuck in the Indonesia section, but it was fun anyways. A guy next to us won a tv. He made a three point shot, and he literally won a tv. He had to take it back to his seat, but it was really big and heavy. I don't know the logistics of this stuff in the US, but I'm guessing they don't take it back to their seats with them. That was a bit strange, but hell - he won a tv!!

Each team had two Americans on it. One of the Indonesia team's Americans had half their points. All in all, Americans had 43% of the total points. It was a proud day to be American in Singapore.

It seemed a bit like division 7 college basketball, but it was a super fun way to spend the afternoon/evening.

In other news, the monsoon season is finally here, so the weather is bearable. That makes me happy on a daily basis. I hate getting wet, but I love rain.

Further news...I read torah at a UHC service yesterday. The service was really nice, but the Torah was so small - it looked like one of those fake stuffed kid's torahs, and the table was so low, that I literally could barely see it. I had to take off my high heels and read barefoot. Is that bad for my relationship with God? Hopefully not, because I think it's the only pro-God thing I have done in a while. I don't want to negate that goodness.

Even further news...my groupmate from P1 and P2 at INSEAD is fancy. She wears fancy clothes, make-up, shoes, the whole bit. Her feedback to me was that I need to dress nicer (i.e. no more cargo pants), and she wouldn't mind a bit of make-up. Well, I have literally run my black shoes into the ground, and I don't own a nice bag (my Limmud NY 2006 bag TOTALLY does the job on a daily basis...for almost four years). Yesterday she helped me out at the mall - emotional support - and I got two pairs of shoes (at Nine West - the only store that has my size) and a bag. I also asked her to take me into all the fancy bag shops, just to see what all the fuss is about. We checked out Kate Spade, Coach, Bally, and whole bunch of other brands. I didn't like any of the bags except for the Kate Spade bags (mostly because they were colorful), and I don't get how people pay so much. I had never been in these shops...or even looked in them...so it was interesting. I appreciated the support. She was great.

One more story. Since I always kvell about my market - this morning I went to get two spices that I need for my anticipated Indian cooking trial tomorrow night (if you want to come eat some, let me know). I needed turmeric and garam masala. I went to the spice guys that I mentioned a few weeks ago, and they only had these HUGE bags. I don't need a huge amount (yet - obviously once I perfect my Indian cooking I WILL need it...), but I bought the smallest ones they had, which were still HUGE. Total bill? US$1.70.