Learn from the pros...paintball clinic, are they good?

2 years ago when Seburo, Elle and I attended the Hybrid Paintball Clinic in KL, we had the most wonderful time. Firstly, we get to see how the professional players play on the field, these guys also share with us an insight to their game plans and you will get a chance to speak to them and find out how much time they have devoted their life to the sport. But more importantly, they open up the door to more paintball drills, drills and drills. So are these drills any good? Or should I say are these clinics effective?

Trust me, any paintball clinics by any professional players out there are one of the best things that any paintballer should attend. Regardless of how good you already are, you will surely learn some new things from these paintball clinics. Surely, if you have already been playing for a while, you might not learn as much as a beginner. Which is why... if I can suggest, I would like to call out to all new players to attend any paintball clinics that are out there. Not only will you learn some of the common terms used in paintball such as snapshooting, break out, etc. You can also make use of this opportunity to know players from other teams and who knows, you can eventually earn a spot in the team. There is no better time to break into the community by attending a paintball clinic.

Sometimes, to get the best, you have to pay for the best... so some of these clinics (especially those conducted by the professionals) do come at a cost. For example, I have to pay RM700 to attend the clinic by Nicky Cuba, Todd Martinez, Gary Shows, Nick Shows and Chris Corcino. Of course, some might say its a rip off... yes, I do agree but hey... I learnt a lot. I must say that clinic helped me to break into the community and also made some long lasting friends. About 1 year ago, I flew to Taiwan to attend Ollie Lang's clinic and came back with some of the best snapshooting paintball drills. Thats where I learnt how to dive too... and yeah we made some very good friends too, which eventually kept me going back to Taiwan almost every year. I cannot remember how much I paid for that clinic... but it is surely worth that money.

I am putting this in my blog because I feel that there is a need for all to understand the importance of attending a paintball clinic and the many things that can follow suite. This November 2009, Malaysia team Dark Angels will be inviting the most profilic player from the famous Joy Division, Maximus Lundqvist to Kuala Lumpur to conduct a paintball clinic. I would like to urge all paintballers who can afford the trip to head up for this clinic and you will be amazed at the results!

Paintball Proshop in Singapore - Paintballers World

Paintballers World is located at Shaw Towers, 100 Beach Road, #02-21.

Paintballers World is an authorized dealer for most of the major paintball brands. You should find all if not most required paintball accessories to get you started in the sport of paintball. We cater to individual players, recreational players and tournament teams (with tournament packages! Just ask any of our friendly staff). We also carry paintball lifestyle clothings to bring out your paintball personality off the field. Look good on the field and fantabulous off the field!

We aim to be a one-stop paintball store that caters to the growing community and offers paintball consultation and supplies (even an all-in-one field package) to regional paintball startups. Our forte in planning and coordinating paintball events and tournaments in Singapore is highly regarded by our industry partners. We are always on a lookout for partners to promote and to develop this game in Singapore, if you are keen to be a partner or dealer with Paintballer’s World, get in touch with us!

“Gett’in Poisoned Without Realising” is the tagline for our shop. So, if you are poisoned, you know where to find us.

24 hours to another first...

New stuff for Singapore paintball in 24 hours...

A Big THANK YOU!

As the MPOC 2009 season has come to a close. I would like to take this opportunity to thank the following people and organization who has helped us in many, many ways:

Our sponsors - DYE ASIA, KCHL PAINTBALL, FURIOUS PAINTBALL. You make us look good on the field.

Daniel "Junior" - For giving the team the needed support and pointers the whole entire MPOC season. Not forgetting that you also help the team with our logistic issues and becoming our default "tech" manager. Congratulations on the winning the overall series Division 2 Champion with Lemon Ruskies.

Sani "Gong Gong" - For being so motivational every time we see you. Your words of support surely brighten our day.

KCHL Paintball - For sponsoring the team with paintball equipment and making this game affordable for us. Thanks for the trust that you have given to us and allowing us to play with higher division and experience players in the league on many occasions.

Malaysia Marshals - For taking all the unneccessary hits when marshalling. There will be times when we get a little hot headed when on the field. But trust me, you have our respect. We understand that there can be good calls and bad calls at times. Thanks Ulitmate Ref, Mr. Junaidi for always ready to discuss with us about game regulations and rules.

MPOC committee and vendors support - Paul, Allan, KCHL, NAPSHOT, PROPAINTBALL, SKIRMISH PAINTBALL ASIA for supporting the league that we all love. Without vendors support, there will be no paintball games.

Team Damnation on podium finish

Team Damnation (second from left - Marcus, Alan, Chak, Brian and Grant)

Team Damnation from Singapore won the 1st runners up placing in the MPOC 3rd Division!!! Congratulations to Team Damnation for finishing on the podium. The team led by Grant (Houdini) with Chak, Marcus (Nabelrock), Alan (Blade), Brian (RocketReed) and Abdullah (from Dark Militia) started Day 1 of the competition with an excellent run by finishing in the 4th position with an impressive result of 7 wins out of 10 qualifying games. They took Day 2 with a fantastic results by beating another Singapore based team, Red Sevens to qualify for the Semi Finals. They were so "hot" that they also beat the MPOC Division 3 Overall Series Champion Oscar Legio X in the Semi Finals only losing to eventual winner Eastsiderz.

Congratulations to Team Damnation!

A recent poll about paintball in Singapore...

There is a recent poll set by a Singaporean player, Joran, you can visit his blog at joranatplay.blogspot.com.

The poll entitled "If you play speedball and staying in Singapore, why arent you playing locally" has a list of options for people to choose their reasons of why they are not playing speedball even though they are residing in Singapore. Well, I guess this poll is targeted at only a small group of people. I am pretty sure I would have already knew if there are any Singaporeans who are actively playing speedball in overseas but not locally. Come to think of it... maybe a handful of them, perhaps nothing more than 10 players. But of course, if this poll is targeted at Singaporeans not playing paintball (speedball + woodsball), I guess there might be a bigger pool out there.

If it was me who is setting up the poll, I will have options like:

- Lack of support from local authorities

- Insufficient speedball infrastructure

- Lack of resources/information to get me started

- Hard to form a team and get people interested

but instead there are options such as:

- Bad memories

- Markers poorly maintained

- Dont like the management

- Someone call me a noob when I was a newbie

- Expensive, etc, etc

Surely, everyone can have their own opinions of how things should be done. Some might be right, some might be wrong, thats why the term subjective. The next person who is trying promote speedball in Singapore (if you are reading this), please make sure that you must first have a good managment, restrict the use of the word "Noob" in your field, ensure all markers are working fine, leave good memories for every participants, hire staff that are well liked by people, make sure they encourage only people of good skill level to go to your field, use cheap paintballs and so on and so on.

Happy polling.

Chee Lang!

A new term for Singapore paintball... "Chee Lang".

The term "Chee Lang" refers to a common paintball stance adopted by paintballers who try to maintain minimum profile (without the "chicken wings" (arm) sticking out) while resting the gas tank on top of their shoulder with the trigger hand resembling a swan or a snake.

Jackie showing the Chee Lang hand

Best teambuilding game ever!

Ask someone who has played paintball before and you will gather 2 schools of thought:

Firstly, you have a group of people who often see the negative side of things, so they will tend to relate paintball to pain, tiring, expensive, hard to organize as some of the descriptions. In some ways, they are not wrong... it is indeed painful when being shot by a paintball hit but everyone has a different threshold of pain, so what is painful to you, might just feel like a mosquito bite for me. As a shooting game where participants run and dodge, I am pretty sure even the fittest will complain about muscle cramps but hey... I get tired even walking up the stairs to my house. So its managable. Is it expensive? That all depends on the depth of your wallet but if the company is footing the bill, why do I care? Is it hard to organize? Hmmm...fix a date and show up. How difficult can that be?

I will now focus on the positive side of paintball... IT'S A GAME FOR EVERYONE! I have seen uncles and aunties (referring to people who are in their late 40's or 50's) who enjoyed themselves. I have seen kids as young as 14 years old shooting the hell out of their daddy who boost about his army experience. I have seen ladies who are demure in nature goes onto the field to become the most fearless player. Again... IT's A GAME FOR EVERYONE. Okay, now that everyone can be part of this game, I will focus on the fun side of this game. Imagine this, you "throw" someone into the field, armed him with 100 paintballs (ammunition), you bestow him with great authority by passing him a paintball marker (gun) and VIOLA! you have created a soldier or an animal. Why animal? When the animal is hungry, it looks for food, when the animal is under threat by bigger animals, it puts up its defenses. Likewise, in the game of paintball, we create this adrenaline hunger in everyone.

Oh... did I also mention that it brings out ones confidence, decision making skills and teambuilding among people you never knew existed in your company. The game of paintball has got many misconceptions since its intervention, we have heard stories about people getting injured during a game of paintball, people trying to promote terrorism using paintball, people who played paintball once and never to return again... but above all that is said, there is no denial that paintball is just a fun game.

Farid CYRUS - The unsung paintballer...

In my last post, I did a feature of JUDAS, the most medalled player in Singapore. And I thought maybe I will go one step further to do another feature on another Singapore whom I call as "The Unsung Paintballer". Ladies and gentlemen, may I introduce to you: Farid "Cyrus".

Farid maybe a little less well known in Singapore but he is a big name in Malaysia. Having played for teams such as KL Lockdown, Johor Pirates, Dark Angels and Singapore based team, Team Damnation, Farid is a familar face in the North. Many will misunderstood him as a Malaysian but in fact, Farid is a true born Singaporean. His job as a Regional Database Adminstrator requires him to travel often and therefore, finding paintball as a regular sport while he travels explain why he is so popular in Malaysia. Farid started playing paintball during his short stint with local paintball center TAG and he has not looked back since.

Farid displayed his support to the local game and participated in SPNS 2009 Leg 2 with Wargh!Cooks and did his fair share of becoming one of the most fearless snake player. We catch up with him as just as he was prepared to travel to Bangkok again... yes, you are right for paintball and this time with Demonz Red.

Cyrus making his runs down the tape during SPNS

1) Having played in SPNS, what do you think of the standards for mechical marker division in Singapore?

"The mech division in singapore is steadily growing but the number of people playing regularly are limited and this will cause the skillset to be stagnant after some time. Also with it being a league only for Singaporeans, it somewhat limits level of competition."

2) What is the "thing" that a paintballer must have to keep the fire buring?

"Lots and lots of friends whom you want to shoot . I think the fire will never die out if you have wonderful friends who will assist you and also mock you. Also a girlfriend who always wants to shoot you helps too."

Singapore most medalled player - JUDAS!

I have previously blogged about the "Singapore Most Medalled Player". Well... the record has been broken again. And this time by our Singapore old timer paintballer. I am using the word old timer because Bryan otherwise known as Judas in the paintball community is one of the earliest batch of paintballers who is still enjoying the game of paintball. Judas who was formerly from Team Redlords won the first Champion medal of the Singapore Paintball Novice Series in 2008. His desire to experience a competitive platform has seen him becoming one of the Singaporeans to players to play in Malaysia. With his recent Champions medal in the MY-NPL Leg 4, Judas is now one of the most medalled player in Singapore. We catch up with him and viola!

SPNS 2008 Leg 1 Champion Redlords

MY-NPL 2009 Leg 2 JB 2nd Runner up

ISSC 2009 Div 3 1st Runner up

MY-NPL 2009 Leg 3 Kuantan Div 4 2nd Runner up

MY-NPL 2009 Leg 4 Melaka Div 4 Champions

Judas with his team Shootin Rage (extreme right with head sticking out)

1) Having played and compete in Division 4 tournaments in Malaysia, what is the main difference between Singapore and Malaysia paintball?

"I believe that there are pros and cos for playing in singapore and malaysia, you exchange cost for travel time. Both countries you get to train with experienced players. No matter where you train, just make the best of it...we're are all learning, we're all striving to get better in our game."

2) What word of advice would you give Singapore teams who want to compete in Malaysia?

"It will be an eye opening experience, it will serve as a test to gauge your progress in the sport of paintball."

3) Any other comments?

"When people ask me about going to malaysia to play paintball, they always give excuses like my team doesnt want to go, or cannot la no time, I say to these people, it doesnt matter, these are all excuses, your team doesnt want to go, go yourself. if you dont have time, make time. You are actually helping your team to bring back some experience having played in Malaysia."

Oh yes, Judas made an indication that he might be moving to Division 3 next year. Well done to another Singaporean!

Congratulations to TEAM KARMA!

Team Karma from Singapore won the My-NPL Div 4, 1st Runners Up position.

More details soon...

Hmmmm... Part 2 - Using PBL in paintball...

Assumptions, assumptions and assumptions... this is what we call the prior knowledge, a learning padegogy commencing with a problem and using assumptions to find a solution to the problem. This method of learning is used in some of the elite schools in Singapore where students do not learn from the convention learning of a "one way learning", where the teacher teach and students dont question.

Commonly known as the Problem Based Learning (PBL), this method of learining is adopted by a polytechnic in Singapore. The primary consideration for this form of learning starts with the student asking 3 questions: 1) What do I know? 2) What do I need to know? 3) What do I need to find out? Only by getting all these 3 questions right, then you might be able to arrive at a solution in which you think can best solved the problem.

Surely, this method of learning is highly based on the prior knowledge of the students... and therefore there will be many cases of assumptions and guesses which could be wrong. The next level would require one to think about the things they need to know. At this point, the student will have many hanging question marks. Many doubts and queries. In the last stage, individual needs to examine what he needs to find out? and therefore, finding a solution from the various means which can include the internet, answers from a friend, from books and journals, etc.

With this thinking process, one will be able to find out the answers to the problem and arrive at a conclusion on how things should be handle. So how is this related to Singapore paintball?

There are too many assumptions, guesses going around but not a single piece of fact to back things up. Facts are of course back by form of statistics, such as date, time, price, cost, numbers, etc. Without numbers, there will be no facts. To think of a problem at only at stage 1, many answers are backed by prior knowledge, assumptions, guesses which is often regarded as personal views.