Asia Pacific Yoyo Championships 2008

I've been procrastinating to post about this, it's passed one week and I finally got the pictures up on my facebook account and decided to talk a little about the event.

It's been 2 years since we had our last AP, and about 4 years since I went for it, since last year's AP was canceled due to time constraints and the other two years were done in Genting when I was busy stuck in the military. =(
Colin (dude in the middle) was the man-to-go-to with regards to the event and since there were a lot of judges this year, I got to do filming instead, which gave me the opportunity to run around the place, meet other players and interact a little.
I think the best part about being the guy running around with the video camera was that I got the chance to mess with my wide angle lens and reversed it to get a sorta funky fish-eye effect. It prolly doesnt come out really well on actual video, but previous attempts with it (During the SGDrifters UP Challenge) made me realize that zooming into the footage through editing could solve a bit of the problem =)
Janrius, in my opinion, is an effin-bad ass Godfather Colin is lucky to have, he mended the DJ area, as well as the floor staff of the iShop which celebrated their 3rd anni over at Taka.
I think the turn out was damn good, and the competition caught the most attention of the general public.

There were other side shows with Bboys and (supposedly) hot female dancers, but I thought they looked a little tranny-ish....and the picture I took failed to impress.
Cool right? Kungfu Stance in the middle of a song, I don't even know how she ended up in that position
Roy, the chief judge for the event, as usual has been damn busy at the judging table tabulating the scores and keeping track of the results. He and Colin probably had the least fun since he didn't get to interact much with the other players at the competition.
Kudos too to our two DJs who spent most of their time at the console for the two days, DJ Frey and DJ Nad-Trix.

Freya's an iShop part timer who recently got into DJ-ing and now handles the console, Nad-Trix, on the other hand, has been in the biz for a long time, and is good friends with quite a number of local and underground DJs. This guy is amazing and extremely fluid with his freestyles!
Anyway a thing to highlight though, although yoyos in generals are regarded as toys, they can also be a hobby, and when taken seriously, become a competitive sport, and where's there competition sport, there're injuries, such is seen in these two cases...

Ok well the one with the lips was more like he fell down after the competition was over the first day for no particular reason =\ but still...I had my fair share of lip-busting blood gushing moments as well.
Anyway as usual, Aik Hwee took home the top prize for the Offstring category, he always seem so -_- in pictures, I dunno whether he's happy he has won or he's sick and tired of winning =\

If you guys wanan check out more photos, you can view them in the following links

Asia Pacific Yoyo Championships Day 1
Asia Pacific Yoyo Championships Day 2

I'm gonna grab a small bite and get ready to leave for the shop.

Cheers People!

Andrew
=)