Chiang Mai Open 2009

Was played in 2010. For the loss.

Haha so it was my fourth time there, and this time its with the NUS team. It was fun! Like, really really fun. Maybe its because its the first time I'm on an overseas trip without any 'adult supervision'. It kinda makes a difference to the mood you know, whether you're living in fear of doing something wrong or not! Come on, look at how restricted the Raffles team were! It was one of those times that I really felt free for a period as long as a week. Plus, we won the tournament! How cool is that. Haha. Even though the opponents were not so much of a challenge.

Anyway, I brought my camera but I didn't really take pictures, which was kinda wasteful, but I really immersed myself in the experience, which was awesomely awesome. Haha. I got the videos of the fireworks though! Will post those up on facebook soon. Lessons have started now and I really feel like Chiang Mai was nothing more than a dream, but apparently it wasn't because I can clearly remember whatever happened there, along with the pictures to back them up! Hurrah we should like go again this year and have fun again!

It all started kinda weirdly terrible though because the dumb airplane was delayed by 2 hours! Because there was something wrong with the wing apparently, so in the end everyone was stuffed onto the same plane from Bangkok to Chiang Mai! BUT it wouldn't have made a difference anyway because I was stuffed at the back of the plane with some thai guy even though I was the first batch to be on that plane! Grr! Discrimination! Anyway every single flight I took on this trip I sat alone, except for the first flight I sat with kiam, and we watched House season 6 episode 1. It was nice! Maybe I should watch the other seasons too.

We stayed at Holiday Garden Hotel, which was actually REALLY crowded. Now, that's not too good because there were really a lot of people at breakfasts, but it was also good because the HK team was also staying at the same hotel!! Awesome. Haha.

They're like all really tall, and almost all of them have the same body type (lanky blabla) so they're naturally going to be good at softball I guess. Which is why their pitching style works for them! They can afford to hold their weight back because they have the circumference enough to attack fast enough. Which is why their method would probably not work, unless I have a full instructional under Mr. Johnny for at least 2 months. So for now, the ideas are stored, but the possibility of changing style is definitely a zero.

And so it was, that we busted through every single one of our matches hitting like crazy. It really is funny how NUS guys can only hit well in real games, but I'm not complaining. The bitter truth, however, is that we will be completely wiped out once we meet a team with a good pitcher. Our only scoring tool in the whole Chiang Mai Open was hit-dependent, and that will be terribly difficult to reproduce once we face a good pitcher. Oh well. Anyway we were champions! Hurrah. We should get more subsidy this year!

Enough of the softball serious-y stuff! One of the most interesting things I did through the whole tournament was to hang on the back almost every single trip! It was awesome awesome. I can only recall the awesome feeling as we tumbled downhill, round and round, through the mountain roads. The wind was SO refreshing and so surreal now that I look back. Ah. I miss that a lot. What with Singapore weather the way it is right now. Another interesting thing that I did would be all the night training sessions with Eric. Well even though he forgot most of the stuff he learnt then, it was still a good practise for me in teaching the details of batting. Or maybe it helped that he's an engineering student. At any rate, it was the case that I could teach him quite nicely, but I couldn't practise much of what I preached because I know I was too preoccupied with trying too hard that i forgot just what batting was all about. Well, too bad I guess. There's always next year. I'll be all relaxed and ready to kick butt.

And there was the temple. Actually it was quite a nice place but all I could be bothered with was the food there. HAHA. So awesome. There was the corn, the 100% orange juice, the waffle, the nice view of chiang mai, and the nice coconut. Oh and the rainbow ice creams! There's proof of that :D Tumble, tumble, tumble, and we would all go to Thai Kitchen for the next serving of pad thai and pork knuckles (which I got terribly sick of) before whatever's next on the schedule. The good life. $4 meals to fill even a hungry bear's stomach.

Oh and Eric got whacked in the face and fractured a bit of his nose (don't forget his super speedy recovery from the hit, and the literally bloody "I'm okay, I'm okay"), and managed to get a 200 baht x-ray? Oh GOSH I would love to have a good x-ray check, given that it costed only $8. Bummer. Waffles. HAHA almost every night we would go for waffles! 7-eleven, too. Retail therapy session with roommate Eric! We spend like 450 baht on a single receipt which was like 53804923 metres long when it got printed out. Plus we got like 52431423 promotional stickers! Woohoo. I kinda understand the whole theory behind retail therapy now I think. It felt SO good. Of course, the night market at walking street was so much nicer an experience (even though I didn't buy much). That was the first time I walked around with aunty sanny! It was quite fun, and really funny too. In the end we opted to stay in the market longer because we couldn't get enough of it! Hawhaw. Walking street was great :D and I won't forget the popsicles, coconut ice cream, mango with sticky rice (thanks jiaqian! :D), and the amazing race feeling as we raced down the street at the rate which stalls were closing down and trying to do some shopping before they really closed. Now I look back at it and boy were we lucky the stalls didn't close earlier!

On New Year's day we played FIREWORKS hurrah! I want to play again! It was just really awesome, especially when we saw the myriads of lanterns being let go from another venue. It really lined the sky so nicely. Tried to take a picture of it, and got some pretty decent ones. One thing's for sure though, nothing will ever match seeing the real thing with your own eyes! Lanterns and fireworks were everywhere in the sky. How awesome!

We played paintball too! It was the first time I ever played paintball. I had 2 kills! I don't know who (no one owned up) but it was really fun. Maybe we'll get to play again soon. Next trip we should just dump the guy with the most strikeouts on the bungee and we can all have a good laugh :D

Oh gosh I can't quite remember what else we did over in Chiang Mai. There were really just too many things o.O maybe I'll even write another post if I have the time.

Unlikely. HAHA. I'll update again soon! Its week 4 of school ohmygosh.