Basketball and Delifrance

On Saturday, together with the same people that I went to Vietnam with, I went to watch the final game of the 2008 Brunei Cup, a basketball tournament participated by six teams from Australia, Singapore, Republic of Korea, the Kingdom of Jordan and the Republic of Philippines. The third place play-off match was held just before the final match. In this match, the Darwin Airport Resort All-Stars easily beat the Jordan All-Stars with a 88-45 scoreline. In the final match, the defending champions, LG Sakers from the Republic of Korea played against the Singapore Slingers. LG Sakers came in into the final game with an unbeaten record; the one team with such distinction. Singapore Slingers lost once and that was to the Korean team. I expected the final game to be finely balanced between the two teams, but in the first two quarters, the Singapore Slingers dominated the game. They scored at every scoring opportunity and even their three-pointers worked. By the half-way point, the Singapore Slingers lead by as much as the points that the LG Sakers scored at that point. In the third quarter, the Koreans came back much stronger and in the forth quarter, they were rallying to close the gap on the Singaporeans. Alas, the time was up and Singapore Slingers won the Championship game 86-75.

The Republic of Philippines sent two teams this year, but none of them qualified to the knock-out stages. It was pretty strange to see the stadium half-empty on the final day as most, if not all, of the Filipinos stayed away from the stadium.

On Sunday morning, a friend and I went to Delifrance at the Brunei International Airport for breakfast. Delifrance made a comeback after pulling the plug three years ago. It came back looking better and much closer to its Singaporean cousins. There were much more choices to choose from and the pastries looked fresher than what it used to be before. Perhaps it was new and training had to be done, but I was really impressed by the way one of the girls (she did not look local) was teaching the other staff on serving customers. My friend reckoned she worked in Swensen before, but I could not remember. Go and try the newer edition of Delifrance; you may want to come back again and I know I would!