The Road to 40 Day 183/365: Back At It Again

It’s the weekend, which means I could play basketball while Che and Vino sleep in early in the morning.

My basketball group usually have games during weekdays, but I usually don’t get to play because I pick up Vino from school and prepare dinner. However, since both Che and Vino are not morning people, I take Saturday morning games as my chance to play with the guys.

I purposely don’t set an alarm, but if I wake up in time to join in on the 7 or 7:30am games, I would go. On this day, I got up around 6:45am, so I got ready and went to the court.

The basketball group was my first own community in Singapore. Back in 2015, I had Che and our friends here, but I didn’t have a job, so I didn’t meet people outside our circles. One day, the boys of our house decided to play basketball and got to play with some Filipino guys.

They told us to come by the court on Thursdays to play with the other Pinoys. I did, and I had a lucky stroke that game, hitting maybe five of eight shots from three. They invited me to play regularly and that circle has eventually grown to what it is now.

A lot of the guys from my original team had already left – either out of Singapore or to a different community – but I’ve made enough friends to keep playing with a group of familiar guys.

We’ve moved four times already, and no matter where we moved, I made it a point to just come back to the same group of guys. Basketball, at this level, I feel is more about camaraderie than anything. There are some guys who would take things too seriously and could seriously cause harm to other players.

At my age and conditioning, I’m not in the business of hurting or getting hurt. I just want to play and have fun. The guys that I’ve been playing with are known variables to me. I know who the hot-headed ones are, who runs, who jumps, and who would maybe give an elbow here and there.

When you know who could potentially hurt you, you can just laugh about it if and when it actually happens versus getting hurt by someone you have no rapport with.

My guys are a mix of older players who are over 45 and younger guys who are kids of some of the older guys. We’ve played with a couple of kids who could barely make the ball reach the rim when they shoot to now when they could zip past us for a quick drive.

It’s always inspiring to see the older guys run up and down the court, because it helps me aspire to be like them when I’m at their age. For the kids, it’s just nice to see them improve and help them get even better by giving them tough competition.

For this morning, there were maybe 17 of us, so we were only able to play three games. I had one and a half game, after playing a full one and a guy asking me to sub in midway through the third and last game.

I went back home to get ready for lunch. We planned on going to a restaurant that Che visited before.

So there was a time that she made a reservation for an Osteria thinking it’s the same as the one they went to a few nights before. Apparently, it wasn’t. However, the food was still good at the place we went to.

This time around, she got the right Osteria. Food was nice, but the service could use a lot of improvement.

We walked around for a bit after lunch before proceeding to Tiong Bharu for Che’s appointment at a clinic.

We could have gone home, but I told Vino we could go on a quick date. He said he was a bit hungry and was in the mood for some 4Fingers, so we started off from there.

For someone who said he was “really full” in the restaurant earlier, he didn’t look like it as he devoured his whole order of boneless chicken and rice.

We decided to walk around for a bit in the mall. KKV was a shop that sold random cute things, so we went there with no intention of buying anything and just treated it like a day in the museum.

Afterwards, we walked inside Challenger, a tech store, just to look at gadgets. It’s one of the things I always enjoy when I walk around alone. I don’t need to buy anything, I just want to see what the latest innovations are.

We walked around enough to wait for Che to finish her appointment. We met up at Don Don Donki, Singapore’s version of Japan’s Don Quixote store, for some Jap goodies.

We had a lazy night to finish up the day, with Vino and I playing 99 Nights in the Forest and Brawl Stars and just watching random shows on TV.

It’s another typical weekend night, with just us being around each other. We’ll meet friends tomorrow, so we had a bit of an early night, sleeping before midnight.