Back From Penang

I told Dennis that MPOC3 Penang would be THE tournament of the MPOC legs to attend. It's the "Monaco" round of the MPOC. The stadium venue and playing conditions is one of the best I've played in. The hospitality and being in the stadium with the scoreboard plus having good weather and good food around Penang.

The guys from Specter took good care of us- picked us up from the airport and took us out to eat. And I had a great time crew-ing for them in their Xball-lite games. It was the fastest and most intense 10 minutes of my life.

For the Red Sevens- we didn't do as well as we hoped. But with a roster of 5 and one guest player in Lydia Mari we did just enough to make it into the second round. We did keep our little track record of managing to get through to every 2nd round in all our MPOC participation.

We had a lot of bad luck with markers, loaders and anything you could possibly think of- went wrong. I'm glad that I didn't have much problems with my gear- even the batts of my hopper held out 13 games and lasted 2 tournaments.

We really missed the regular guys in the team and having a crew. We had to drag ourselves up the stadium seats and clean up and reload our pods after every game. Heat was a problem in the morning in the stands where there wasn't any shade from the sun until noon. Anyway lesson leart- that we need to have a roster of 6-7 and at least one person to crew.

Penang was my first fly away tournament- last year I drove up and down the Peninsula. Having to pack and pay excess baggage was new. But at least I got to experience the traveling and flying to play a tournament. We may get a chance to do it in the near future as there are a couple of international tournaments which we have been invited to play in.

On Monday Dennis and Gary took us out with the Goober Guys (from Indonesia) for fish head curry at "Curry House" which is like a 3 story building restaurant. After that we went for a bit of "shopping" at KCHL- I finally got my hand on a JT Ninja Googles - at a good price too and a limited edition BlackStar Strap (#75/100) which is really cool as it has 4 colour print on the strap- which was made by KM Straps.