The Road to 40 Day 355/365: Gametime Wednesday

We have game 2 of our league today, but I had to do a couple of quick errands first.

My basketball shoes have given up. It was my first pair of Under Armour shoes, and since they’ve lasted just barely a year, I’m guessing it’s going to be my last. I’m pretty sure I’m not playing harder now, closing in at 40 compared to when I was 26, so I’m guessing it’s probably just not that well-built.

I looked for shoes at Queensway, but it’s more football and running shoes. I wanted to check out a few recommendations from friends, so I decided to check out Foot Locker in Vivo.

And what do you know, that branch mainly had running and lifestyle shoes. There’s literally one row for basketball shoes, none of which were on the list of recommendations.

I couldn’t find DON 7 and the new AE shoes, but the older AE felt a bit heavy. I went to check out Anta’s Shockwave 7, which was suggested by a friend who also had the same shoes. The color schemes were pretty loud, and while there was a black one and a gray variant, I thought I’d just go for the purple pair.

Che hates some of my shoe choices because I sometimes tend to go with weird colors. However, since it’s something I’d wear to play on the court, it doesn’t bother her as much because it’s not for daily usage – which means she doesn’t have to see me wear them unless she watches me play.

I looked for a place to eat and tried the Korean BBQ place because I saw they offered Dwaeji Gukbap. I took my time to check out the menu to see if I wanted anything else, but decided on the gukbap. Unfortunately, I was told that it’s out of stock. Instead, I got the chicken sotbap.

Basically, it’s rice cooked in a pot in such a way that there are some scorched parts at the bottom. It’s topped with barbecue chicken and sliced radish kimchi. It was served with soup on the side, a couple of pieces of a side dish, and fresh kimchi. They also gave me a small pot with broth.

Sotbap apparently gets served with this pot so that after you have eaten, you will pour it on the pot to make some kind of porridge with the scorched parts.

After eating, I picked up Vino and went home to cook dinner that I prepped a bit. I cooked chicken teriyaki that Che could heat up when she’s ready to eat. After cooking, I prepared our stuff for Vino’s game and my game later on.

Che couldn’t pick Vino up and my game was at 7:30pm. We decided to pull out Vino earlier than usual so that I could catch my game. It rained hard, but luckily, it stopped just in time for Vino’s training to start.

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He at least got to train for an hour and I pulled him out before they started to play a game. We got home and I asked him to head straight up to the house while I took my bike to head to the venue.

I got to the court just as the second quarter was starting. Thankfully, we had a lot of our players present, so they weren’t going to need me as much as they did last game. We were trailing when I got there, but we soon got the lead.

We had a nice third quarter run to pad our lead and we looked poised to win our second game. Despite repeated reminders to milk the clock, our guys made errors pushing the pace.

The other team’s shots started falling, and suddenly, we were only up three with still about 30 seconds left. Luckily, we were able to hang on to the lead, as we took a 55-51 win.

Following the game, the guys got together at the hawker center for some post-game drinks. I don’t usually get to join these things because I usually go home early or I play early games, so I dropped by for a bit.

The “bit” ended up longer than expected, as we enjoyed the drinks and the company. I was with one of my teammates, but most of the guys who stayed on were part of the committe, as well as both referees. It was cool to learn more about some of those guys. I didn’t even know that one of them was a dentist.

We adjourned around 11pm, as I took my bike and went home. I showered and wanted to write the blog, but I was writing nonsense, so I decided to just sleep it off and write tomorrow.