Bought 2GB of RAM today to juice up my PC. So far i dun feel any big improvements yet cos my com's already pretty blazing, even tho it's close to 7 yrs old. Tho now i can run more VSTi simultaneously via Cubase, which means more different sounds and probably can try some ambient shit.

Nowadays, i dun really play much guitar, cos i've pretty much focused my energy back onto basketball. Which is good, cos basketball is my first love, and guitar is something tt i did while i was in limbo. Not too worried abt losing my guitar "skills", cos expressing yourself is all you need when u play the guitar. They say BB King can only play 5 notes, and he's one of the greatest blues player of all time.

Have u spent more effort in expressing yourself thru your instrument?

I really feel tt i've up-ed my basketball game lately. Now i play more of a team-oriented style: If i have a really good scorer in my team like LCS, i'll pass the ball more to him, set up screens, draw my defender away from the basket to open up the defence.

If my team doesnt have a good scorer, i'll try to take more shots, get the defence all on me so tt my team mates can be open for a easy pass. More movement off the ball to get the defender busy and to create open space for myself.

Defense-wise usually i'll try to take the toughest guy in the team and try to shut him down. Deny passes to him, front him, box out. If the guy's tall, then i'll box more and jump less, front more and go for more steals. Fatter guys, i'll rely more on speed and reflexes. If marking a short guy, i'll keep a bigger distance to prevent him from cutting, and use my hands to cover his passing lanes.

Sometimes, i can't do it all. If the guy scores, he scores. We'll have to move on and try again the next possession. People just get too caught up with the fact tt they are blocked, or got stolen, or got outrebounded. It's like a form of humiliation for them. But to me, things like tt happen all the time, and it doesnt matter. As long as my team wins eventually, it doesnt matter if i got blocked 10 times or not.

It's all back to the basics. Young people nowadays have all the talent. But zero basics. They can jump real high, run real fast, have a great body. But they can't play as good as they could be. And their lack of basics clearly shows when i play with them.

When i was in sec sch, no one taught me basics, cos i wasnt in the basketball team. When i was my JC captain, there's no time to teach basics, as the competition period was way too short. And in NUS, i was already supposed to know my basics. So i was quite handicapped as far as my basketball life goes. But at least now, i made some effort to work on them, and there's been some good results.

Somehow we've just gotta put whatever we do down for a while, forget all the things u've learnt before, and try to work on the little bits that you used to think was boring and unimportant. You'll be surprised how much improvement u'll gain.

Basics basics basics.