totally not in the mood for work... football rant + ngong ping 360 trial run
ok australia lost to brazil...0-2... but their performance wasn't really bad so i'm not complaining too much... but one thing for sure, they definitely need to improve on their striking/goal kicking... we were attacking quite a bit, especially in the 1st half, and we had opportunities, only if we had manage to put the ball into the back of the net *sigh*... but i especially liked our defense (neill), hope we could keep it up with croatia in the next match... another strong point of our team is that we never showed any sign of nerves playing against brazil, in fact i think we were applying the pressure on them most of the time... and our boys were always looking alert and ready to equalise (kewell), right up to the 2nd goal by brazil at 90th min... so yeah, i think our position right now is not too bad even though we lost to brazil, we just need keep our spirits high to beat croatia...
as for brazil, ronaldo is still not up to 'standard'... we were watching it in some bar in some hotel, and there were a roar of laughter with that 'air ball' displayed by ronaldo... even though he did pass the ball to adriano that led to the first goal, but somehow i think the images of that 'air ball' probably got stuck in some ppl's mind more LOL... but on the other hand, since they are such a solid team, they don't need everyone to perform at their peak in such early stages of the tournament, in fact i think it would be better this way, and let the likes of ronaldo & ronaldhino impress us with their skill later when it comes to the crucial rounds... but to be fair i think they deserve to win in the end, none of their goals were easy, we had made them work for it... so yeah, it was a good match ^^
also watched: esp v ukr 4:0, ecu v crc 3:0, arg v scg 6:0, por v irn 2:0, cro v jpn 0:0
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we went on the trial run of the ngong ping 360 skyrail on saturday because we were a supplier for a few of the light fittings...
for anyone who's in HK and had saw the news in the last couple of days would know that there were a major technical problem which held up the skyrails for over 2 hours on saturday... all i could say is, lucky we were not trapped in those skyrail tram thingies, hanging in mid air during that time... we were just lining up on the ground at ngong ping...
even if we disregard the technical problem itself, we could not ignore the poorly organised announcements for the problem and the subsequent backup procedures... there were no announcement of any kind during the 1st half an hour of waiting in an unmoving line, they just let us stood in the heat.. and even when they did finally made an announcement, there were no real explanation of what's going on... the announcement was just an 'apologise for the inconvienience caused' without saying how long the 'delay' will last and no clear instruction on what we should do in the mean time... later after about 20 minutes since the first announcement, a couple of options become available: 1/ keep waiting in line (if we took this option we would've stood there at least 3 hours before we could go back down via bus), or 2/ wait in another line for buses to come and pick us up (which we did, lucky we got there quickly, we were near the beginning of the line, so we only waited for an hour), or 3/ go and line up for the so called attractions again ... which brings us to the real problem: the actual ngong ping attractions were not that attractive at all...
there were 2 main "attractions", the 'monkey theatre' & 'walking with buddha'... both involves a short animated film, with minimal special effects... if you discount the time spent waiting in line, the time it takes to finish seeing both would be just a little over half an hour... you would find the 'monkey theatre' inspiring if you're under 5 years old, funny if you are 12, boring if you are 16, WTF if you are 18 or over... luckily the 'walking with buddha' is slightly better, er in the beginning... but by the end, if you are any normal adults capable of discerning the difference between a real religious/spiritual experience and a tacky ploy to suck money out of tourist, then you would have only 2 kinds of reaction: WTF? and/or what a waste time...
okay, to be fair, i do like the scenary, especially looking down from the tram thingies... it is so much better than the good old ocean park ones... but one couldn't really say the tram ride alone is worth the ticket price, which is a hefty $145 (return plus admission to the 2 attractions once)... since it was only a trial run, so we don't need to pay but getting to tung chung alone costed us $40, so the unfortunate incident with the trams forcing us to waste a whole afternoon standing in line in the heat with nothing to do and the poor management, plus the fact that there's really nothing to do up there... our final verdict for ngong ping 360 was: that's probably the last time we will go up there...