Say what?

BOSTON – On a new parquet floor below aging championship banners, the Boston Celtics won their 17th NBA title and a first one, at last, for Paul Pierce, Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen : their Big Three for a new generation. After 22 long years, the NBA has gone green.

With the outcome assured, Boston fans sang into the night as if they were in a pub on nearby Canal Street. They serenaded the newest champs in this city of champs, and taunted Kobe Bryant and his Lakers, who drowned in a green-and-white wave for 48 minutes.

Garnett scored 26 points with 14 rebounds, Allen scored 26 and Pierce, the finals MVP, added 17 as the Celtics, a 24-win team a year ago, wrapped up their first crown since 1986.

This was total domination. The Celtics obliterated the Lakers, who were trying to become the first team to overcome a 3-1 deficit in the finals.

No way. No how. No chance.

Boston’s 39-point win surpassed the NBA record for the biggest margin of victory in a championship clincher; the Celtics beat the Lakers 129-96 in Game 5 of the 1965 NBA finals.

Pierce doused Celtics coach Doc Rivers with red Gatorade. Owner Wyc Grousbeck, who named his group Banner 17 to leave no doubt about his goal, put an unlit cigar in his mouth _ a tribute to Red Auerbach, the patriarch who had a hand in the franchise’s first 16 titles.

Garnett dropped to the parquet and kissed the leprechaun at center court, then found Hall of Famer Bill Russell for a long embrace.

“I got my own. I got my own,” Garnett said. “I hope we made you proud.”

“You sure did,” Russell said.

Rivers pulled Pierce, Garnett and Allen with 4:01 left and they shared a group hug with their coach, who was nearly run out of town last season. In the final minute, Rivers, who lost his father at the beginning of this remarkable season, was soaked by Pierce, the Celtics’ captain who decided to stay when things were bad and was rewarded for his loyalty

It’s was Boston’s first title since the passing of Auerbach, whose signature victory cigar was the only thing missing on this night. Even Auerbach, who died in 2006, got some satisfaction. Led by Rivers, his beloved team denied Lakers coach Phil Jackson from overtaking him with a 10th championship.

A perfect ending: a 17th title on the 17th of June.

The Boston-Los Angeles rivalry, nothing more than black-and-white footage from the 60s and TV highlights of players wearing short shorts in the 80s to young hoops fans, remains titled toward the Atlantic Ocean. The Celtics are 9-2 against the Lakers in the finals.

They missed their first crack at closing out the series in Game 5, but didn’t miss on their second swing, running the Lakers out of their gym.

Bryant, the regular season MVP, finished with 22 points.

Garnett and Allen were All-Stars in other cities, stuck in Minnesota and Seattle, respectively, on teams going nowhere. But brought together in trades last summer by Celtics general manager Danny Ainge, a member of the ‘86 Celtics champions, they joined Pierce and formed an breakable bond, a trio as tight as the club’s lucky shamrock logo.

With Garnett scoring 17 points and Pierce adding 10, Boston built a 23-point halftime lead, and unlike Game 2 when they let the Lakers trim a 24-point lead to two in the fourth quarter before recoveirng, the Celtics kept coming in waves.

They pushed their lead to 31 in the third quarter, and with Boston still up by 29 after three quarters, plastic sheets started going up in the Celtics’ locker room in preparation for a champagne celebration.

Bryant started 4-of-5 from the field, but he missed seven shots in a row and finished 7-of-22. Everywhere he went, L.A.’s No. 24 ran smack into a wall of Boston defense as high as the Green Monster a few miles away at Fenway Park.

“Defense,” Rivers said before the game. “Is what we do.”

In the second half, Celtics fans chanted “You’re not (Michael) Jordan” at Bryant, who will have to wait for his fourth title and first without former teammate Shaquille O’Neal. The Lakers, who stole Pau Gasol away from Memphis in a mid-season trade to help Bryant, will have the all summer to think about what went wrong.

No team had to work harder for a championship than these Celtics, who were playing in their record 26th postseason game. They were pushed to seven games in the first round by Atlanta, another seven by Cleveland and then took care of Detroit in six to win the Eastern Conference title.

They entered Game 6 of the finals slowed by injuries as Pierce, Kendrick Perkins (shoulder) and Rajon Rondo (ankle) were less than 100 percent. There was also uncertainty surrounding Allen, who stayed behind in Los Angeles following Game 5 after his youngest son became ill.

But just as they had while winning 66 games during the regular season, the Celtics got plenty of help from their bench as P.J. Brown, James Posey, Leon Powe and rookie Glen “Big Baby” Davis came in and contributed.

It was a group effort by this gang in green, which bonded behind Rivers, who borrowed an African word ubuntu (pronounced Ooh-BOON-too) and roughly means “I am, because we are” in English, as the Celtics’ unifying team motto.

The Celtics gave the Lakers a 12-minute crash course of ubuntu in the second quarter.

Boston outscored Los Angeles 34-19, getting 11 field goals on 11 assists while holding Bryant to three points, all on free throws. The Celtics toyed with the Lakers, outworking the Western Conference’s best inside and out and showing the same kind of heart that made Boston the center of pro basketbal’s universe in the ’60s.

House and Posey made 3-pointers to put the Celtics ahead by 12 points and baskets by Pierce, Garnett and Rondo put Boston ahead by 18.

In the final minute, Garnett floated in the lane, banked in a one-handed runner and was fouled. His free throw made it 56-35, and after Perkins scored, the Celtics ran to the locker room leading by 23.

On his way off the floor, Garnett screamed, “That’s that.”

And so it was.

Notes:@ Since the finals began in 1947, 16 have gone seven games, the most recent in 2005 when San Antonio had to go the distance to beat Detroit. … With little to say, Jackson answered three questions during his pregame news conference before saying, “It’s been nice, thank you.” … It wasn’t as starry as L.A.’s crowd, but Game 6 brought out celebrities including Aerosmith frontman Steven Tyler, actor Leonardo DiCaprio, Patriots coach Bill Belichick, who got a huge ovation when he was shown on the scoreboard, and Miami Heat star Dwyane Wade.

*This brilliantly typed article was taken from Yahoo news.

For those of you who did not know, I am Roman Catholic by religion. Yesterday, I received the Sacrament of Confirmation. A good 13-14 years after Catholics normally get confirmed.

What is confirmation? Based on Wikipedia’s entry, Confirmation is a rite of initiation in many Christian Churches, normally in the form of laying on of hands and/or anointing for the purpose of bestowing the Gifts of the Holy Spirit upon them. In some denominations, confirmation bestows full membership in the church upon the recipient. In others, such as the Roman Catholic Church, confirmation “renders the bond with the Church more perfect”,^[1] but a baptized person is already a full member.^[2]

Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox Churches, and Anglicans, view Confirmation as a sacrament. In the East is conferred on infants immediately after baptism, but in the West is usually administered later at the age of reason or in early adolescence.

In Protestant Churches, the rite tends to be seen rather as a mature statement of faith by an already baptised person. However, it is required by most protestant denominations for membership in the respective church, in particular for traditional protestant faiths. In traditional protestant faiths (Presbyterian, Methodist, etc.) it is recognized by a coming of age ceremony.

Several secular, mainly Humanist, organizations direct “civil confirmations” for older children, as a statement of their life stance, an equivalent alternative to traditional religious ceremonies for children of that age.

Some secular regimes have as a matter of policy fostered the replacement of Christian rituals such as confirmation with non-religious ones (see Miltant atheism). In the historically Protestant German Democratic Republic (East Germany), for example, “the Jugendweihe (youth dedication) gradually supplanted the Christian practice of Confirmation.”^[3] A concept that first appeared in 1852, the Jugendweihe is described as “a solemn initiation marking the transition from youth to adulthood that was developed in opposition to Protestant and Catholic Churches’ Confirmation.”^[

Anyways, for those of you who are not bothered by that (I believe most are), I must say that I thoroughly felt ‘more with HIM’. After so many years as a lost sheep, I think I’m finally finding my ground.

I chose Brian to be my confirmation name. Why Brian? Well, there was a Jesuit Priest by the name of Alexander Briant. His name means ‘Strong’. he is said to have felt no pain. So, being a person who is almost always in pain, it was a no-brainer to choose him as my patron saint. Below is a brief biography of St. Alexander Briant.

Born : 1556
Died : Dec 1, 1581
Beatified : Dec 9, 1886
Canonised : Oct 25, 1970

Alexander Briant was born in Somerset, England. He studied at Hart Hall, Oxford, where one of his teachers was Robert Persons who later became a Jesuit. As Alexander did not find the new religion of Elizabeth I to his liking, he crossed the Channel in August 1577 to study at the English College in Douai where he was reconciled to the Catholic Church. He studied theology and was ordained a Diocesan priest in 1578.

He returned to England in 1579 and took up his ministry in his native homeland but his apostolate lasted for less than two years before he was arrested by priest-hunters by accident when he was visiting Fr Robert Persons who the priest-hunters were tracking down. The two priests had great esteem for each other and Fr Briant also succeeded in bringing Fr Persons’ father back into the Church.

As Fr Briant refused to divulge any information on Fr Persons, he was transferred to the Tower for interrogation and severe torture on the rack but he did not break under torture. Fr Briant wrote to the English Jesuits about his torture saying that he kept his mind so firmly set on Christ’s Passion that he felt no pain during the torture, only after it was over. He was also determined to enter the Jesuits if he were released from prison but as he doubted that he would be released, he asked to be accepted into the Society which the Jesuits did upon receipt of his letter.

On Nov 21, 1581, the day after Fr Edmund Campion had been tried, Fr Briant and six other priests were tried at Westminster Hall. He entered the Hall holding a small wooden cross that he had made and kept looking at it during the trial. When a Protestant minister standing next to him snatched it from his hands, Fr Briant said: “You can tear it from my hands, but you cannot tear it from my heart. I shall die for him, who first died for me.” He was charged with having taken an oath against the queen’s life while at Rome and at Rheims, though he had never been in Rome or in Rheims when the alleged oath was supposed to have taken place. Nevetheless, he was found guilty of the charge and condemned to die as a traitor.

Fr Briant was dragged through the muddy streets of London to Tyburn together with Fr Campion, SJ and Fr Ralph Sherwin, a diocesan priest. When his turn came, Fr Briant courageously mounted the cart beneath the gallows, made a public profession of his Catholic faith, and expressed joy that God had chosen him to die in the company of the other two martyrs. He was hanged but was cut down while still alive so that he could also suffer disembowelment. He was then beheaded and his body quartered. Fr Briant was only twenty-five years old when he suffered martyrdom for his religion. He was the third Jesuit martyr to die at Tyburn on Dec 1, 1581.

For the joke in this… from here on out, I can sign my name of in the initials ABC!  

I can’t remember where I saw this, but check this website out.

http://freerice.com/index.php

What happens when you click on the website is; first and foremost, you’ll get to boost your vocabulary. Great if you want to impress the masses. Secondly, for every word that you get right, the sponsors of the website actually donate 20 grains of rice to the needy. Yes, it’s that simple!

So, what are you waiting for?

My dad had quintuple heart bypass surgery on Thursday, a surgery procedure that took slightly over 5 hours. A really taxing moment in our lives. For those of you who aren’t too familar with this term, well, it’s a medical procedure that involves removing an artery from either the chest area, the arm, or the leg, to create a bypass to and fro the heart, as the original vessels have been blocked, or are diseased. The norm (thus far) that I’ve heard of is a triple heart bypass, followed by quadruple, followed by quintuple.

As for my dad, it turned out that he had 7 blockages. 2 were diseased, so the surgeon, Dr. Lim S L couldn’t do anything about it. The blockages were about 90%. So, no ballooning could be done. Thankfully, the surgery went smoothly.

It was kinda heart-wrenching to see my dad struggle because of all the pain that he had to go through. What was equally heart-wrenching was to see another uncle who had the same procedure done that same day, have his heart collapse on him. He passed away. The sight of his family, some of whom had waited in the waiting room with us for so many hours, crying, made me feel like crying as well. Sensitive? I don’t know. I think that it’s human nature.

Today’s the 4th day already. Dad’s still in the High dependancy ward. The lady diagonally opposite his bed had to be resuscitated before heading back to ICU.

Dad himself is feeling tired all the time. Breathlessness is a frequent thing. All I can do, is pray for a quick and complete recovery for him.

Pray for him, if you can spare the time.

Thanks.