ramblings~
Yijin + girls! '05
Xiz, Ms Wang + guys! '04
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SENTIO
Sorry to spam u all again! haha, me and my team will perform at this charity concert, for those who saw the danceworks item, half of it will b newly choreographed, so it's not the same thing. So yah,, pls support support! :)
suhan lived on 5:19 PM
- 03S78 forever -
Happy Mother's Day
Adapted from Mitch Albom's "One more day"
Times I did not stand up for my mother
She found my cigarettes. They are in my sock drawer. I am fourteen years old.
“Its my room!” I yell.
“Charley! We talked about this! I told you not to smoke! It’s the worst thing you can do! What’s the matter with you?”
“You’re a hypocrite!”
She stops. Her neck stiffens. “Don’t you use that word.”
“You smoke! You’re a hypocrite!”
“Don’t you use that word!”
“Why not, Mom? You always want me to use big words in a sentence. There’s a sentence. You smoke. I can’t. My mother is a hypocrite!’
I am moving as I yell this, and the moving seems to give me strength, confidence, as if she can’t hit me. This is after she has taken a job at the beauty parlour, and instead of her nursing whites, she wears fashionable clothes to work – like the pedal pushers and turquoise blouse she is wearing now. These clothes show off her figure. I hate them.
“I am taking these away,” she yells, grabbing the cigarettes. “And you’re not going out, mister!”
“I don’t care!” I glare at her. “And why do you have to dress like that? You make me sick!”
“I what?” Now she is on me, slapping my face. “I WHAT? I make you” –slap-“sick? I make”-slap!-“you SICK?”-slap!-“Is that what you think of me?”
“No! No!” I yell. “Stop it!”
I cover my head and duck away. I run down the stairs and out the garage. I stay away until well past dark. When I finally come home, her bedroom door is closed and I think I hear her crying. I go to my room. The cigarettes are still there. I light one up and start crying myself.
Letter from Mother to Charley
Charley-
How do you like my typing! I’ve been practicing at work on Henrietta’s typewriter. Pretty snazzy!
… I know you think these notes are silly. I have watched you scrunch your face over the years when I give them to you. But understand that sometimes I want to tell you something and I want to get it just right. Putting it down on paper helps me do that. I wish I had gone to college and maybe my vocabulary would have improved… So many times I feel I am using the same words over and over, like a woman wearing the same dress everyday. So boring!
…I am so proud of you, Charley. You are the first person to go to university! Be nice to the people there… and be nice to the girls you go out with. I know you don’t want love life advice from me, but even if girls find you handsome, that is not a license to be mean. Be nice.
And also get your sleep. Josie, who comes into the beauty parlour, says her son at college keeps falling asleep during his classes. Don’t insult your teachers that way. Don’t fall asleep. It’s such a lucky thing you have, to be taught and to be learning and not have to be working in a shop somewhere.
I love you every day.
And now I will miss you every day.
Love,
Mom
ryaniq lived on 11:37 PM
- 03S78 forever -
if yours is man u, mine is..
is arsenal. but 12 years ago, it was blackburn rovers, believe it or not =)
haha why blackburn rovers? i have to confess i randomly chose a club to support simply to rival that chosen by my brother, which was man u. both of us read newspapers fairly frequently then, and we just decided it'd be fun to see whose club turned out tops at the end of the year. that made us check the sports pages rather religiously, gloating when my club won (and when his club lost), and groaning when mine lost. i remember blackburn having a fantastic run that year, having power signings alan shearer and tim flowers, so much so that they even beat the powerhouse at that time, man u.
however, things didn't look great after '95 - they had a bad start to the season, and soon slipped out of the top 4 of the table. being innately competitive, i then "chose" to support arsenal instead. my brother accused me of cheating, but hey, in the end man u still won that year's premier league. but the tables were turned in '97 (i think), when arsenal won. haha.
after both of us went to study in singapore, we didn't have access to newspaper nor the internet as readily as before, so both of us stopped competing this way.. but even until now, whenever i hear arsenal winning something, especially over arch-rivals man u, i do still feel a tinge of pride. =P
i guess everyone has a reason to support his/her club of choice, and on hindsight mine was particularly childish. but hey, my age was still single-digit back then..
whine abt english weather: was 20+ degs on saturday, but after that temps tumbled to abt 4 degs, and somemore it rained on me when i was cycling to lects on tues morn. english weather is super capricious haih.
Yi Jin lived on 11:34 PM
- 03S78 forever -
If your's is solskjaer, mine is...
Sounds funny blogging about this when I can just talk to patrick about it when I see him, but since xiz shared her story I shall share also lah huh. Sounds like a primary sch essay, why I support XXX club.
Okay then… I think I only heard of the EPL in 1998, when there was a lot of news abt Man U being on course for the treble though in all honesty, I really couldn’t care less back then. BUT I played my first soccer game that year around that time and I must have found it quite exciting even though I was the goalie. Exciting enough for me to decide to go watch a soccer game and see how it really should be played.
No surprises that it turned out to be a Man U match – the FA cup semi-final replay against Arsenal. I just remember, being as juvenile as I was, I decided to support Man U after seeing that there was a player who shared my namesake. It turned out Giggs scored a wonder goal in extra-time dribbling from the half-way line past 4 defenders and smashing one past a hapless Seaman from a tight angle. It was to prove inspirational as well as misleading in shaping my perception of how I should play football for the next few years, most of which was spent kicking a paper ball wherever I walked at home. Young boys are impressionable I guess.
But in retrospect, I think its was pretty much the exposure that the bigger clubs get and the fact that they have the more talented players playing the more attractive football that people watch them week after week. This is on top of all the media attention they get. So I guess familiarity gives the platform to breed support.
Which team you end up supporting is everyone’s own story I think. But I agree with xiz about the charisma part. I think watching a team which never gives up and who can turn the game around when they are down is why sports can be such a huge inspiration to watch, probably because its not so easy in real life. In that sense, maybe that’s why people elsewhere support clubs who can give them that more consistently. Make them happy. This coupled with the unpredictability of the game and the fact that it has such a huge following worldwide gives football even more selling power. There’s really no fun and excitement being a neutral.
ryaniq lived on 8:08 PM
- 03S78 forever -
my take on sports..
interesting post down there by ningky which prompted me to respond after a long period of absence.
the thing abt sports is true. i agree that we don't support any team due to any geographical loyalty. people in germany are much like those in england (as i imagine), my flatmate is from stuttgart and he supports vfb stuttgart (currently 2nd in the german league, so he's in a gd mood :)) and my other flatmate is from cologne and he supports cologne (they're not in the top league so he stopped watching the top league for this season). as to how we singaporeans "choose" our clubs i can't speak for everyone, i can only speak for myself and make a guess for the other people.
i think many clubs have a special aura or charisma. a few years ago, arsenal was known as the brazil of england (sth like that :P) and alot of football-viewers were seduced by their attractive brand of football. passing the ball on the ground, one-touch football, no long balls. liverpool is known for its like, unity. they have their anthem "you'll never walk alone" and liverpool fans are not just fans but die-hard fans. that kinda thing. of course to start supporting a team without any special traits would be difficult to explain but basically i think teams that have a special x-factor tend to get more support.
anyway personally i started supporting man utd in 1997 when they finished 2nd place to arsenal. i think it was that i noticed that man utd had this striker who was relatively unknown but started scoring many impt goals for them, and even finished top scorer. that even when eric cantona retired it didn't all fall apart then cos they had unearthed this talent. it was solskjaer anyway :P baby-faced assasin! woohooo :D
eh so what was i talking abt. ah yes, so 1997 they didn't win but they enjoyed many ups (treble!) and downs (eh not winning for 3 seasons, getting kicked out of champs league in first round) since then and.. i'm still following. maybe its easy for me since they're still winning relatively alot, not down in the dumps.. but i am pretty sure i'll carry on rooting for them since i've been doing so for so long and i know all abt what has happened in the past 10 yrs or so. :)
other fans, comments? :)
as a sidenote, i've started sch, all's going well, summer came briefly (temps of 25-30 deg C) and now it's starting to feel like spring again. and i'm good. :) hehh all of u take care!!!
xiz lived on 3:25 AM
- 03S78 forever -
On Sports
I am not a die hard fan of any clubs in the world of sports, nor do I watch any sports matches regularly. Hence what I say here merely represents a personal view so please do not hit me if you disagree.
The other day I read in the ST an interesting article in the Sports section. It said that with the results of the first round of the play-offs of NBA, the NBA runs the risk of losing its popularity. This is because the Miami Heats, the defending champions, has been kicked out, while last year's runner-ups, the Dallas Mavericks, were one game away from being kicked out too (now kicked out liao). The logic of the article was simple: in all leagues and cups aspiring to become popular, there should be one or two long reigning winning teams. This is because everybody loves a winning team.
To support this logic, the author used the example of the EPL, where in the 90s, Man U was undoubtedly the kings. The NBA, in the 1980s and 90s, had the Bulls and Lakers as hot favourites. This contributed to the rise in popularity of NBA.
Initially I felt a bit cynical about the whole article and its logic. But I thought about my friends around me and it got me pondering. Why is it that so many of my friends are Man U fans? Some Liverpool, Arsenal, Real Madrid.... Why not Watford, or Reading, or Everton? Is it simply because the first few are the winning teams?
So yea... I know many of you (at least in 78) are Man U fans... But why? What 'loyalty' do you guys hold to the club? I mean... When I look at England, at least it makes some sense to me... (most) of the people would probably support the club which hails from where they live... But for us living in far away Singapore, where's the logic? This is something which has been puzzling me for very long.
If the reason for supporting a particular club is that they play well, then what happens when they start losing? No club can remain at the top forever. What if they not only start losing, but lose until darn jialat, as in undergo relegation? Would its fans switch loyalty instead to the best-playing team at that point in time then? Then whats the whole point of supporting any clubs in the first place?
So the basic question is: how did you guys 'choose' the club you support? Was it a rational choice, or just gut feeling?
Ok better get back to work... tmr is surgery posting for weix shea and me... got this reputedly very fierce tutor who scolds med students in front of patients... haven't met him but will prob do so tmr, so need to make sure at least got some bamboo in chest....
ningky lived on 8:28 PM
- 03S78 forever -
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