I have a sneaking suspicion that my relative disinterest in the Olympic Judo and Tae Kwon Do bouts is directly proportional to the number of kung-fu movies I’ve seen.
Martial arts
25 08 2008Comments : No Comments »
Categories : movie, sport
Prediction
19 08 2008
In exactly 4 years time, there will be a greater number of people than usual stumbling across the seedier underbelly of the web. Google searches will be partly to blame.
The reason?
Comments : 1 Comment »
Categories : sport, web
Un-Australian
14 08 2008
Swimming has got to be one of the most boring sports ever. As Australians, we’ve picked a dud for our national treasure.
The Chinese have got something right though - Gymnastics rocks. When the Chinese men won the team event at the Olympics, the stadium was packed to the gills with fans cheering on their countrymen. The commentators likened it to the swimmers in Sydney, or to Cathy Freeman’s 400m. Watching the event, though, is far superior. You can see the thrills & spills, the effort on their faces - with swimming you get the reaction at the end as they see their time.
1500m is a long race to sit through with that as the end-point.
Â
(A side note: with those sedition laws passed a while ago, does my patriotism now qualify me as a terrorist?)
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Categories : culture, sport
Prime time
25 05 2008On the final day of ultimate nationals, Channel 9 came and did some filming for their ‘weird sport’ segment.
If you watch closely, you can see
- the point where Matt tore/spasmed his quad/hip-flexor
- where we actually won
- me for a brief second, sitting next to the trophy
[Courtesy Channel 9's Wide World of Sports]
Comments : 1 Comment »
Categories : frisbee, sport
Finally Fakulti
3 05 2008
My ultimate frisbee club, Fakulti, has finally won nationals.
Over the Anzac Day long weekend each year the Australian Ultimate Frisbee Championships are held, in both Open and Women’s divisions. This year was up in Coffs Harbour, which treated us to weather of all kinds over the 4 days.
Our club has a history of making finals - I think 5 out of the last 6 years one team from the club has made it through to the last day. This year, instead of splitting the club into two even teams (for development of younger and more inexperienced players), we took an A and B squad.Â
I made the A team… just. (There are lots of very good players in Fakulti.)
We stormed through the opening games pretty much unchallenged, with the closest games being 15-9. The final against Fyshwick United (Canberra) was much closer, with points trading until about 10 all. We eventually won 15-12 in a bit of a nail-biter, which the crowd appreciated. There’s nothing worse than turning up to a final only to see one team absolutely dominate (last year’s AFL final, anyone?).
So, finally, we’re national champions. I missed the awards ceremony as we made the trip back to Sydney a little earlier, leaving halfway through the Women’s final. So I only got my gold medal today. Here ’tis.
2008 Champions. Yay for us.
Comments : 3 Comments »
Categories : frisbee, sport
Fetch
20 04 2007Since I’m off to Melbourne tomorrow for the National Ultimate Championships with my team Fakulti, I thought I’d post this shot. With a bunch of people from college, we were down on the Shoalhaven River for a weekend away. The shot, taken by Mike Allen (I think), captured my attempt at a game of jump-off-the-pier-and-try-to-catch-the-frisbee. It’s the sport of 2007. You heard it here first.
P.S. I’m pretty sure I dropped it.
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Categories : sport
Life is good
18 04 2007I’m having a great couple of days.
Today, I met people for coffee not once but twice. Firstly I got together with my boss and fellow student minister, so we could hammer out what we are each doing for our upcoming series through Mark’s gospels. I’m doing two talks, the first on Mark 2-3, entitled “Bigger than Jesus?”. The other is Jesus’ strange-but-true coronation at the cross. Later in the afternoon I caught up with an old friend, whom I’ve known since primary school. He’s finishing up a PhD in the area of ubiquitous computing, and is about to go over to the states for an internship with Google. Sounds like a lot of fun.
Tonight I cooked up a beautiful (if I do say so myself) African lamb stew/casserole type thing, with tomatoes and chickpeas. Had it with a glass of red wine. Yum.
Tomorrow, it’s two of my favourite things: Hebrew, and snorkelling. Both with good friends.
And to cap it off, I leave on Saturday evening to go to Melbourne, where I’ll be playing with my Ultimate Frisbee team Fakulti in the Australian National Championships.
Did I mention I’m also on holidays?
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Categories : church, old testament, snorkeling, sport, travel
The Fish Whisperer
24 01 2007I think I’m like a pied piper for fish.
Kristy bought me a snorkelling set for my birthday at the end of last year, which has been great fun. I went snorkelling yesterday with Mike Allen, down at Clovelly. It was an overcast day, just spitting with rain. We had been planning to go for a couple of days, as my final exam for first year college was that morning. We expected to jump in, swim around for perhaps 20 minutes, then get out absolutely freezing… and find something else to do.
However, it was great. Plenty of visibility, warm water, and no-one else there at all.
And fish.
I’d noticed a little last time I went, but particularly this time, that fish seem to follow me around. We think we worked out what was going on. My flippers are my old bodyboarding fins, some really bright green-and-yellow-swirl Hydro Fins. It turns out that fish think that I’m a really big fish because of my flippers, and follow after me, presumably hoping to pick up scraps of food (a little like wrasse following a groper).
So I think I’m the fish whisperer, or some sort of pied fish piper.
Cool, huh?
Comments : 2 Comments »
Categories : snorkeling, sport
