(musical notes) Do you know...what today is... ?? (musical notes)

- Toni tony Tone

Maxwell Graham Bellew

A beautiful nephew is born into the world...

Maxwell Graham Bellew

IBF Badminton World Championships (long post..)

Me, Betty, and a few friends of ours went down to Anaheim, CA to watch the WBC last weekend. We bought tickets for the final day of the WBC, obviously to watch the best matches. We had no idea which countries would be represented in these finals matches beforehand.

Almost all of the teams that made it to the finals came from either Indonesia or China. Mixed Doubles featured China versus Indonesia (Indonesia won). Women's Singles featured China versus China (obviously China won...LoL). Women's Doubles featured China versus China (China again..). Men's Singles featured Indonesia versus China (Indonesia in a kill!). The only spot represented by a country other than China was the Men's Doubles; the most coveted match of the night and in the whole tournament.

What a treat it was to find out that the 13th seeded US Men's Doubles team of Tony Gunanwan and Howard Bach (SF local) made it to the finals versus a seasoned and experienced Indonesian team!!! They weren't even predicted to make the semi-finals. The US team beat the #1 ranked team in the world from Denmark (Jens Eriksen & MArtin Lundgaard Hansen) en route to the finals. To say that we were shocked and surprised was an understatement!

The crowd went crazy when the US team took the first game of the match. They ended up losing the second game, and then falling behind in the third game 9-11 (takes 15 points to win the game). At this point Howard Bach, from the US team, played to the emotions of the crowd and elicited cheers and noise for the US team to rally and take the final game in dramatic fashion in front of the home crowd. Tony Gunawan was all over the court! That fool can play! The fans at the Anaheim Arrowhead Pond went crazy with US flags and cheers...

Arguably the most awesome sight I have seen in a long time!

One funny thing that happened during the tournament was the competitive crowd =]. Obviously, since there were a number of Chinese teams in the finals...there was gonna be a ton of Chinese people cheering them on.. There were about 10-15 Chinese people who were sitting directly in front of our seats (stadium style seating so the seats are angled downward) that were being really loud, chanting in Chinese along with all of the other Chinese fans in the arena, and smacking together their "thunder sticks" (air filled sticks used to create annoyingly loud noise). This went on particularly often and loudly when the Chinese team for Mixed Doubles was winning their match (which they ended up losing in the end ahhaha). Since everyone seemed to be rooting for the Chinese team, we decided to root for the underdog Indonesian team. Needless to say...it became real competetive in terms of cheering, and it actually got somewhat heated between us and the 10-15 people directly in front of us! ahhahaha

Since the seats were angled downward, my thundersticks were actually above the head of the Chinese guy in front of me. I would smack my thundersticks extremely loud together, and the Chinese guy in front of me started getting irritated. He did not show it at first...but when the Chinese Mixed Doubles team and the Chinese Men's Singles players were losing he would counter my smacks with his own smacks above his head (near the front of my face since I am behind/above him). I would counter right away and smack one above his head....and he would do the same back to me... He then said in a Chinese fobby-ish voice, "What your poblem man??!!" ahhahahaha I just laughed at him and continued to smack the daylights out of my thundersticks above his head... and told him to keep it comin'. LoL I loved annoying him =) I even got the last laugh as his Chinese team lost...ahhahaha

We ended up driving them out of the area because we were so fanatic about supporting the Indonesian teams... =)

Ironically, we acutally parked RIGHT next to the Chinese team in the parking lot! The Chinese girl who won the Women's Singles Final (Xie, Xingfang) and the Chinese guy who lost the Men's Singles Final (Lin, Dan) gave us their autographs on our T Shirts!! AWESOME!!!! LoL

I only had my 20mm & 50mm lens with me, and although we were able to see the tournament just fine from where we are sitting...it was still a bit far for the 50mm to reach. So bear with me on the WBC photos...

IBF World Badminton Championships

Carmel

Some photos to share from Carmel, CA a few weeks back..

** Photos best viewed in a minimum resolution of 1280x1024 **

Van's Baby Shower

....Some photos to share from my sister's baby shower...

My newphew, Max, is due in like 3.5 weeks!!! I'm excited!! Woohoo!!

Max's Baby Shower 7.29.05

July 4th 2005

Hope everyone had a fun 4th of July!!

July 4th fireworks