I wish I could have written something after Wednesday. I wish I could be moaning about trying to find a Carling Cup final ticket against Liverpool. I wish I could be moaning about the Portsmouth game having to be postponed because of the Carling Cup final. But it wasn't to be. I had my voiced taken away from me by a Damien Duff free kick.
It was the return of the "point and look at each other" defending once again. *Sigh*
I really like Tim Howard. He really impressed me last season with his brilliant reflexes. Which makes his form all the more perplexing this season. Right from the off in the league against Chelsea, he had never really reached the heights of last season. Everytime he comes for the ball my heart would skip a beat. Perhaps my theory about the importance of getting off to a good start for a goalkeeper is true. But sad to say, I can't see there being too many chances for Tim Howard to reclaim the no. 1 jersey. I would be very surprised if a new goalkeeper isn't signed in the summer.
And so I came back from Manchester on Thursday morning a heart broken boy. Don't listen to anyone who says this is a worthless Cup. It isn't. Fergie lost his proud semi final unbeaten record. Both teams played full strength teams. Fantastic atmosphere in the ground. You could have been forgiven for thinking it was the Champions League semi final. Defeat definitely hurts. And mind you I thought United played really well. But I had images in me of an aging world boxing champion throwing punches at his young rival upstart. Though the old man huffed and puffed, he just couldn't deliver a knockout blow to his young, nimble and confident opponent. And when the old man showed signs of fatigue, the young upstart delivered a crunching blow. The old man tried to recover, but couldn't make it....
I hate to think that this is the end of an era. But it is hard to be optimistic when you see blue shirts celebrating in front of their fans on OUR pitch. There is no doubt there is still plenty of strengthening to do in the summer. In my opinion, a quality goalkeeper, a world class defensive midfielder and a new left winger is needed. But it is more important to sign players who really want to play for United. To see what I mean, read the article below about Liverpool:
The ball was methodically played forward, it was the first 30 seconds of the game, the ball breaks from one legend to another and with a sweet strike, that many fans had become accustomed to, the ball swerved from left to right into the corner of the net. Not even a minute gone and Dalglish had put Liverpool one-nil up against nearest rivals Everton.
The players all came together, screaming in celebration. It meant as much to them as it did to us, they knew they were privileged to play professional football, and to do it at a club like Liverpool FC where there was so much passion, pride and unity made it all the more sweeter.
If you were ever lucky enough to meet any of these great players, they would smile and look you in the eye. Most happy to sign what ever you put in front of them, happy to know that 2 seconds of their time would last a lifetime for the fan on the receiving end. Knowing that the fella who's eyes were lit up to see his kid get a pat on the head from a player at the club where they spent their hard earned wage just to see them each week, was worth more than any money he could earn or want.
This is the start of my era of football, and so I naturally begin here. Obviously my dad and people older than me have similar memories and feelings for the players in their day. It was something that seemed to just happen naturally through the ages. After all, "they are just people like you and me just with a God given gift. Nothing else".
In those early years of my football education, I made it my duty to learn as much about the players as I did about the club. The players made the club, but they all knew that none of them was bigger than the people who 'employed' them. Wooltonian graphically demonstrated this in a previous article on RAWK about his experiences of a brief meeting with Phil Neal that he cherishes forever:
http://www.redandwhitekop.com/forum/index.php/topic,5624.0.html
I rattled on about all the games I'd watched, all the countries I'd travelled to, what I thought about the team, where we would be celebrating the obvious TITLE that would be coming our way in May. By this time we had come out of the toilet and were walking through the airport, and I was still blabbering on about all sorts, when Ronnie Moran came over and said something to Phil, and then it happened .....
"Hang on Ron, I'm just talking to a fan"
"HANG ON RON, I'M JUST TALKING TO A FAN"
That's what it meant to the players. They were proud to play for the club, and understood how much it meant to fans.
I appreciate that things move on in life, and although certain areas of the game have improved for the fans benefit – I think the majority of things haven't.
We now have great pitches [usually] to enable the players to perform to their best, and produce wonderful football. They are trained so thoroughly that tiredness seems to no longer be an issue in the game, and diet and sports science has helped benefit the fans with a full 90 minutes of "all out" football.
But then we have the problems of money and over exposure. These have bred players who want to be front page stars rather than back page heroes. They want to reach the millions around the globe rather than the people closer to home in their city. This has bred arrogance.
Money is the root to many modern day problems, of which I don't need to bore you with repetitive reminders. The control has shifted from manager and club, to player and agent. The fans in the ground matter less than the fans watching on the TV [or so it seems], and those who dedicate time, effort and money week in week out, matter less than those who come less frequently and spend big bucks in the stores that are rigged out from top to bottom with mostly useless merchandise that clutters your house and makes you look like some sort of American "sports nut" who shouts "Go team Go".
Now days, I don't support the players, I support the team. The players on the pitch mean nothing to me personally. I have no connection with them whatsoever. The only players who have come close in the last decade are Fowler, Gerrard [pre the **** last summer] and Carragher.
I am sick of feeling empty and annoyed when they run off the pitch after a defeat to get into their Porsche and get home to the blond darlin' and a slap up meal with 'friends' in some s****y bistro, and then onto a contemporary club to sip Don Perignon '63. They can't even be bothered to face the fans who have spent a vast majority of their weekly wage to see them play in that Red shirt.
I am fed up with the players not being proud to be 'one of us', and look the fans in the eye and give honest answers without the need to consult Ted McMoney the newest agent in town who can get yer an extra £10k a week "if you just say this and do that".
I want my players to feel like we do. I wanna hear just one person say "I,d ****in' die to win the league here" or "Money? Why should I be arsed. I love this club and I'm on £60k a week anyway, when most people would 'ave to work 4 or 5 years to earn that". I wanna see them almost in tears when they are celebrating a goal that means so much to the club and its fans [a la Aldridge and McMahon in the derby years ago going mad almost punching each other with pride and delight] I wanna see players just touch the "This is Anfield" sign, even if they are told by powers above that they 'have to', but better still if they choose to, and know why they do it.
I want to feel like the players deserve that shirt and the history and heritage that pulling on that jersey means. I want players to know why we have the Shankly Gates, the Hillsborough Memorial and the Liverbird. All the things that players in times gone by would have taken as 'part of your job to know and do'.
If some of the things that have happened in our past – both good and bad – have happened these days I doubt very much the link and bonding between fans and players would have be created now, that was formed back then.
The gap between "us and them" is bigger now than it's ever been. You'd think I was talking about Man United or Arsenal saying that previously....but I'm talking about us and the players we pay so much to watch.
I'm disillusioned with it all. It's got **** all to do with the last weeks events – I'm used to this sort of **** now as a Red. I can take defeat on the chin. It's the build up over the last few years of feeling like I'm putting all the effort in, and getting nothing back. I may spend 20-30 hours making a flag for a player; only to take it to the game, shout their name to show them how much it means to us and see them look at the flag directly and look away. No wave, no smile, no nod, no shout, no thanks. Nothing. Why ****in' bother?
I may spend hours searching for transport and hotels on the net, spend vast amounts of money to get there. Take time of work to do it. Spend money while I'm away – whilst loosing money whilst being just being there – and then view 11 players who don't care about the people on the terraces, and most that don't care about the club. For those days, it becomes my life, and yet the players are just picking up another £60k, going through the motions and running off the pitch back to the luxury lifestyles and sheltered lives. Why bother?
The bull **** story on the back of the Mirror today about Bellamy brought all these feelings back to mind. Like I say, it's not just a recent thing. I've felt this way for a while, but seeing us linked with that horrible **** who epitomises everything that is wrong, and bad about modern day football, just made me feel sick to the pit of my stomach. I know it's probably all bull****, but it still made me think.
I really don't know how much more I can justify. I love the game, I love my club, I love the pride of being a Red....but match days are slowly becoming more about the pre and post match bevvy than the game itself.
And that's not right is it?
Why should we sit quietly and accept it?
A disgruntled ....© Roper 2005
I think this article perfectly sums up what I really fear. All it takes is a couple more of low quality/half hearted players to sign and it would spark a downhill slide. I had been too pampered with supporting a trophy laden team. I believe I could handle trophyless seasons. But perhaps what I won't be able to handle is to see the team filled with spirit-less mercenaries. I hope one day I do not have to find myself asking the question:
Why fucking bother?
In the meantime, please wish me luck for the game tomorrow (yes its up to Manchester again :S). The last three games I watched were 0-0, 0-0 and 1-2. I am starting to think I am a jinx.
Saturday, January 29, 2005
Tuesday, January 25, 2005
World Cup fever?
A lesson for the Premier League to learn from Serie A:
Digitale Italia
As of now, the Premier League is slowly approaching a water shed. Attendances are starting to fall and more and more matches are televised. Any future TV deals should be carefully analysed to make sure that the league doesn't become another Serie A.
Finally found 2 reasons to apply for Masters:
World Cup tickets
Well yeah what else could it be? Euro 2004 has left me thirsting for more of such tournaments, but the uncertainty of whether I will get Masters or not is not very conducive for planning :S
As for the second reason, it will remain a secret.
Digitale Italia
As of now, the Premier League is slowly approaching a water shed. Attendances are starting to fall and more and more matches are televised. Any future TV deals should be carefully analysed to make sure that the league doesn't become another Serie A.
Finally found 2 reasons to apply for Masters:
World Cup tickets
Well yeah what else could it be? Euro 2004 has left me thirsting for more of such tournaments, but the uncertainty of whether I will get Masters or not is not very conducive for planning :S
As for the second reason, it will remain a secret.
Monday, January 24, 2005
Corporate Governance
Did my reading on this topic back in the holidays, so not sure if the stuff that I am typing below is 100% correct. So don't blame me if you decide to act smart and repeat to others and they correct you :P
But yeah corporate governance is about the "government" of companies, be they big or small. A major problem occurs when the owners of a firm are different from those who actually manage the firm, which typically is the situation in the vast majority of companies nowadays. The CEO who is the overall in charge of the running of the company typically does not own the company, at least not the whole of it. This means that the objectives of the manager might be in conflict with the objectives of the shareholders. Shareholders typically want the company to maximise its profits. However, managers' objectives might not be to maximise profits per se. Of course if the company is doing well, they might get some enjoyment from it too. But they may pursue other activities which do not maximise profits for the company. For example, they may want a big and posh office with plasma TVs, expensive art paintings, a big company car or even just pursuing an expansion strategy which is not profit maximising so that they can be the manager of a big business empire. This problem is known as the principal-agent problem. The shareholders are the principal and the managers are the agents.
One way to solve this problem is to offer an incentivised contract to the managers of the firm. This means that the renumeration of the managers can be set up in such a way so as to align it with the objectives of the shareholders. Thus, for example, a contract could be set up such that the more profits a company earns, the more the managers earn. Or the higher the share price of the company, the more the managers earn. The managers can also be offered shares in the company such that he owns part of it and thus benefits directly if the company is doing well. These measures would help (though not totally) to make the managers channel more effort into realising the objectives of the shareholders.
However, one problem is that the managers do not get all the benefits. For example, assume the managers only own 1% of the shares. If they channel their efforts into maximising value for shareholders, in the end they only get 1% of the benefits while the rest of the shareholders get the rest of the benefits. The managers might thus decide it is not worth their while to channel ALL their effort into running the business. They would put in suboptimal amounts of effort.
The second equally important problem (which is the main topic of my post) is that effort is not observed. The profits or share price is not 100% under the control of the managers, outside exogenous factors also matter in determining whether the company is doing well or not. For example, if the stock market is not doing well in general, the managers might already be doing very well in keeping the stock price unchanged. However, shareholders might only look at the constant share price and decide that the managers are not doing well and thus the pay they get might not be high enough to reflect the efforts they had put in.
The fact that effort is not observed is pervasive in every area of life. And sometimes it is absolutely heart breaking. For example, lecturers do not observe how hard you have studied for an exam. You might have worked on the subject for 2 weeks, but if you suffer a burn out and flop the paper, you get marks that showed you flopped, and not reflecting the amount of work you had put in. You might be very fat at 200kg but decided to exercise to reduce your weight. You might be able to reduce your weight by half to 100kg but others will still look at your 100kg and think you are a fat and lazy cunt. The problem is they do not see the amount of sweat that you had put in the gym. When you are baking a cake and had spent 2 days trying to figure it out, buy the ingredients, trialing a few times, if the final product that you have is burnt, the person who is eating the cake will still have a negative impression. They will look at the burnt cake and not the amount of effort put in. At least their impression of the effort you have put in is just a fraction of what you had actually put in because your end product is a flop.
In Singapore, this situation is perhaps especially jia lat because of our education system, though there had been efforts to start changing it. People only see the results and conclude you had not studied; nobody actually really rewards the losers who had also worked hard. In a way, this cannot be blamed, because effort is such an intangible thing. The most objective assesssment of all is the result slip. But it still doesn't change the fact that it feels sucky when your efforts do not translate into tangible results and thus others do not know about it. And you fail to get the reward you deserve.
So perhaps whatever you do, don't be scared to be thick skinned, trumpet what you are doing and make god damn sure even if it flops, you package it such that it passes off as the best that it can be.
As Tong Leng so aptly put it (or close enough..), there is no consolation prize in life.
But yeah corporate governance is about the "government" of companies, be they big or small. A major problem occurs when the owners of a firm are different from those who actually manage the firm, which typically is the situation in the vast majority of companies nowadays. The CEO who is the overall in charge of the running of the company typically does not own the company, at least not the whole of it. This means that the objectives of the manager might be in conflict with the objectives of the shareholders. Shareholders typically want the company to maximise its profits. However, managers' objectives might not be to maximise profits per se. Of course if the company is doing well, they might get some enjoyment from it too. But they may pursue other activities which do not maximise profits for the company. For example, they may want a big and posh office with plasma TVs, expensive art paintings, a big company car or even just pursuing an expansion strategy which is not profit maximising so that they can be the manager of a big business empire. This problem is known as the principal-agent problem. The shareholders are the principal and the managers are the agents.
One way to solve this problem is to offer an incentivised contract to the managers of the firm. This means that the renumeration of the managers can be set up in such a way so as to align it with the objectives of the shareholders. Thus, for example, a contract could be set up such that the more profits a company earns, the more the managers earn. Or the higher the share price of the company, the more the managers earn. The managers can also be offered shares in the company such that he owns part of it and thus benefits directly if the company is doing well. These measures would help (though not totally) to make the managers channel more effort into realising the objectives of the shareholders.
However, one problem is that the managers do not get all the benefits. For example, assume the managers only own 1% of the shares. If they channel their efforts into maximising value for shareholders, in the end they only get 1% of the benefits while the rest of the shareholders get the rest of the benefits. The managers might thus decide it is not worth their while to channel ALL their effort into running the business. They would put in suboptimal amounts of effort.
The second equally important problem (which is the main topic of my post) is that effort is not observed. The profits or share price is not 100% under the control of the managers, outside exogenous factors also matter in determining whether the company is doing well or not. For example, if the stock market is not doing well in general, the managers might already be doing very well in keeping the stock price unchanged. However, shareholders might only look at the constant share price and decide that the managers are not doing well and thus the pay they get might not be high enough to reflect the efforts they had put in.
The fact that effort is not observed is pervasive in every area of life. And sometimes it is absolutely heart breaking. For example, lecturers do not observe how hard you have studied for an exam. You might have worked on the subject for 2 weeks, but if you suffer a burn out and flop the paper, you get marks that showed you flopped, and not reflecting the amount of work you had put in. You might be very fat at 200kg but decided to exercise to reduce your weight. You might be able to reduce your weight by half to 100kg but others will still look at your 100kg and think you are a fat and lazy cunt. The problem is they do not see the amount of sweat that you had put in the gym. When you are baking a cake and had spent 2 days trying to figure it out, buy the ingredients, trialing a few times, if the final product that you have is burnt, the person who is eating the cake will still have a negative impression. They will look at the burnt cake and not the amount of effort put in. At least their impression of the effort you have put in is just a fraction of what you had actually put in because your end product is a flop.
In Singapore, this situation is perhaps especially jia lat because of our education system, though there had been efforts to start changing it. People only see the results and conclude you had not studied; nobody actually really rewards the losers who had also worked hard. In a way, this cannot be blamed, because effort is such an intangible thing. The most objective assesssment of all is the result slip. But it still doesn't change the fact that it feels sucky when your efforts do not translate into tangible results and thus others do not know about it. And you fail to get the reward you deserve.
So perhaps whatever you do, don't be scared to be thick skinned, trumpet what you are doing and make god damn sure even if it flops, you package it such that it passes off as the best that it can be.
As Tong Leng so aptly put it (or close enough..), there is no consolation prize in life.
Friday, January 21, 2005
Quote of the Day
I must be mad, still being awake at this time. My biological clock is utterly screwed after the holidays. It's gonna be one hell of a battle to turn it back.
Anyway was flipping through my Economic Growth textbook when I came across the following quote:
All theory depends on assumptions which are not quite true. That is what makes it theory. The art of successful theorizing is to make the inevitable simplifying assumptions in such a way that the final results are not very sensitive. (Robert Solow 1956, p. 65)
At first glance, it seems like a rather pathetic way to justify the existence of economic theories. A lot of major economic theories were only formulated after major events and when they fail, new theories spring up and manage to explain until yet another strange phenomena spring up. But when you think more deeply, there really is nothing more that theory can do except for what Solow had said. In the real world, there are too many variables. We will never get down to analysing or learning anything if we get lost in the sea of details and fail to get the big picture. Theory makes simplifying assumptions and help us to predict and look at the big picture. It is not always foolproof but at least it is better than grappling in the dark or lamenting the LPPL situations. I really do like the subject of economic growth, hopefully it can restore my confidence in the subject of economics.
Then I went shopping for birthday cards with a few people when I came across the following quote on one of the cards:
Love at first sight is understandable; it is only when 2 people are looking at each other their whole lives that it becomes a miracle.
So simple, but yet so thought provoking. Love at first sight is indeed very easy to happen. Perhaps not love, but just a liking. As long as the other person is quite all right looking, it is possible. But what is the probability of finding someone whom you can talk to for your whole life without feeling bored? And then what is the probability of finding someone who can also talk to you for your whole life without feeling bored? I don't know, seems very low to me. So to find one is indeed a miracle which is much more wonderful than "love at first sight".
Anyway I got deducted 28.84 pounds and 25.75 pounds by Man United in the past week for tickets. I have 3 applications in currently, for Milan, Portsmouth, Middlesbrough. Can all those reading these please help me pray that I get the Milan ticket? Prayers very much appreciated.
Final thought:
Have you ever had a situation when you finally have something which you had very much wanted previously and then thought that actually that is not what you had really wanted after all? Is it that priorities and wishes change? Or is it a case of limitless desires?
Anyway was flipping through my Economic Growth textbook when I came across the following quote:
All theory depends on assumptions which are not quite true. That is what makes it theory. The art of successful theorizing is to make the inevitable simplifying assumptions in such a way that the final results are not very sensitive. (Robert Solow 1956, p. 65)
At first glance, it seems like a rather pathetic way to justify the existence of economic theories. A lot of major economic theories were only formulated after major events and when they fail, new theories spring up and manage to explain until yet another strange phenomena spring up. But when you think more deeply, there really is nothing more that theory can do except for what Solow had said. In the real world, there are too many variables. We will never get down to analysing or learning anything if we get lost in the sea of details and fail to get the big picture. Theory makes simplifying assumptions and help us to predict and look at the big picture. It is not always foolproof but at least it is better than grappling in the dark or lamenting the LPPL situations. I really do like the subject of economic growth, hopefully it can restore my confidence in the subject of economics.
Then I went shopping for birthday cards with a few people when I came across the following quote on one of the cards:
Love at first sight is understandable; it is only when 2 people are looking at each other their whole lives that it becomes a miracle.
So simple, but yet so thought provoking. Love at first sight is indeed very easy to happen. Perhaps not love, but just a liking. As long as the other person is quite all right looking, it is possible. But what is the probability of finding someone whom you can talk to for your whole life without feeling bored? And then what is the probability of finding someone who can also talk to you for your whole life without feeling bored? I don't know, seems very low to me. So to find one is indeed a miracle which is much more wonderful than "love at first sight".
Anyway I got deducted 28.84 pounds and 25.75 pounds by Man United in the past week for tickets. I have 3 applications in currently, for Milan, Portsmouth, Middlesbrough. Can all those reading these please help me pray that I get the Milan ticket? Prayers very much appreciated.
Final thought:
Have you ever had a situation when you finally have something which you had very much wanted previously and then thought that actually that is not what you had really wanted after all? Is it that priorities and wishes change? Or is it a case of limitless desires?
Wednesday, January 19, 2005
Utility
Just what is money to me? Why does money sometimes seem to be so important to me yet at other times I can just spend it like nobody's business? Why can I spend 100 pounds on clothes, 50 pounds on a stupid Carling Cup ticket but yet refuse to spend 70p on a bus ride, preferring to cycle instead? Are my priorities wrong? Will I be a pauper in future and regret my spendthrift ways in London for the past 3 years? Will the memories of numerous matches and trips to Europe stay with me or will I succumb to the horror of having no money to pay off the ever increasing number of bills?
Have I really aged that quickly to have to worry about all these already?
Have I really aged that quickly to have to worry about all these already?
Monday, January 17, 2005
Straits Times articles galore
Series of interesting articles...
From The Straits Times:
Jan 16, 2005
The problem with charity
To give is divine but what if the intention behind the giving is less than charitable?
Sumiko Tan
I'VE always been wary of the word 'charity'.
For one, I pray I never have to be in a position where I have to beg for anyone's charity.
This, I suppose, is a result of growing up in a society that eschews handouts and emphasises self-made success.
Another reason is that the word 'charity' smacks of condescension - to me, at least.
It conjures up the image of a rich personage standing in his gilded balcony bestowing his largesse on a quivering, grateful mass of the unwashed below.
I am, of course, being uncharitable (and dramatic), putting it like this.
Don't get me wrong. I've no doubt that the milk of human kindness runs deep in the human species, and it is what has nourished us and kept us going as a race.
What I mean is that the word 'charity', for all its noble origins and intentions, has taken on a I'm-better-than-thou association.
Words like 'compassion', 'mercy' and 'kindness' depict better the values that 'charity' stands for.
But I'm quibbling over semantics.
This column is about how recent events have proven that the world is not short on charity/compassion/mercy/kindness, call it what you will.
Witness the outpouring of help, both monetary and in kind, for victims of the tsunami.
Still, I wonder, what is charity, really?
To give is, of course, divine. But what if the intention behind the giving is a bit more fuzzy? Does the act of charity still stand up to scrutiny, then?
For example, a person who goes out of his way to help a stranger is undoubtedly charitable and should be praised.
But what if this same person turns a blind eye to the needs of his immediate family and neighbours? (And I do know people like that.) Would he still be considered charitable?
If you are willing to take a week's leave from work to fly off to Banda Aceh to help the victims of the tsunami, that is truly laudable and I applaud you.
But how many would take leave to offer their services to, say, the Ren Ci Hospital in Jalan Tan Tock Seng? Or the leprosy home in Lorong Buangkok? Or is that sort of altruistic work less rewarding?
I don't mean to question or devalue the goodness of well-intentioned volunteers. I'm sure the majority offered their services with a pure and compassionate heart. And charity is charity, whether you do it at home or in Trincomalee.
Besides, I who have been sitting on my butt these few weeks and who have done nothing significant to help, should be the last person to criticise anyone.
But the cynic in me does wonder: Could there be slivers of selfishness buried in this great outpouring of help?
How much of it has to do with the 'glamour' of the tsunami tragedy and wanting to be in the thick of 'action'? With wanting to acquire the bragging rights and war wounds of having been involved in modern history's worst natural disaster?
Some of you would tell me to get real: Nobody's perfect. What's wrong with little specks of personal selfishness if actions result in overall good, if help is indeed rendered and lives improved?
I don't know.
Then there is the question of quantifying charity.
Is a person who donates $50 less charitable than one who gives $500? Or should one's charity quotient be pegged to a percentage of his income?
Is Bill Gates, who donated US$3 million to tsunami relief, less charitable than Michael Schumacher, who gave US$10 million? Correspondingly, is Schumacher a 'better' person? And Gates more 'stingy'? Then again, if you announce your charitable deed - presumably to show how generous you are - is that embracing the true spirit of altruism?
If you donate clothes and shoes you no longer have use for, is that charity? Or is the true test giving away something you treasure?
Then there is 'conditional' charity.
Spend $10 and $1 will go to charity, say some shops. Charity? Or cashing in on the situation?
THE problem with charity is fatigue.
As the German playwright Bertolt Brecht once wrote: 'A man who sees another man on the street corner with only a stump for an arm will be so shocked the first time, he'll give him sixpence.
'But the second time it'll only be a threepenny bit. And if he sees him a third time, he'll cold-bloodedly have him handed over to the police.'
The demands of charity today are non-stop and overwhelming.
You get pleas in the mail. Letters are addressed personally to you in pretty cursive font, imploring you to write a cheque to improve the life of a disfigured child whose story is related in the most heart-rending way possible.
You get appeals in the newspaper asking you to sponsor the meals of disadvantaged students.
You get donation tins thrust in your face as you walk down Orchard Road. You get people asking you to buy tissue paper. You get fund-raising shows on TV urging you to phone in a donation.
To be a 'successful' charity today, it's all about branding and marketing.
It's all about creating a three-hour show or a three-page pamphlet cleverly packaged to tug, not only at the heartstrings, but also purse strings.
Society is becoming so desensitised to suffering that charities have to trot out more and more dramatic images of suffering - real and manufactured.
TV charity shows are an example, juxtaposing sad images of sick people with beautiful actresses sweating with fear as they attempt dangerous stunts.
It also explains why the tsunami got such an overwhelming response. The images of extreme suffering, packaged and shown non-stop on global TV, moved people to action.
The true test of how compassionate one really is will be six months down the road, when Banda Aceh no longer merits a headline.
Will there still be hundreds of volunteers queueing up to help rebuild the lives there?
Call me cynical, but I fear not.
And that, I think, will be another tragedy.
The paragraphs in bold really caught my eye. I do know of someone like that. Exactly the same thing. He acted as though he wanted to go, but he always screws his friends. I will never respect this kind of people. Even if I may seem like a scrooge, but for me, I would rather treat my families and friends well first before I do it for other people. After all, my family and friends are the ones who are important to me.
From The Straits Times :
Jan 15, 2005
FOREIGN MATTERS
Who is deadlier: Man or Mother Nature?
Janadas Devan
MANY articles have appeared, both in these pages and elsewhere, suggesting that the Indian Ocean tsunamis show that terrorism, compared to the devastation nature can inflict, is an exaggerated threat.
The suggestion is misleading.
Natural disasters can indeed be horrendous, but most of them are one-off events and their effects can be contained, although with considerable difficulty.
Social, economic and political upheavals, on the other hand, are often impossible to contain, and their ramifications can last decades, if not centuries. Thus the former Chinese premier Zhou Enlai's famous reply when he was asked about the effects of the 1789 French Revolution. 'Too early to tell,' he said.
Also, it is nonsensical to compare the number of people who have died at the hands of terrorists in recent years to the number who died in the Indian Ocean tsunamis. September 11 took the lives of far fewer people than the tsunamis, certainly, but that is no reason why one should take the threat posed by terrorists less seriously.
If terrorist organisations get hold of a nuclear bomb or some other weapon of mass destruction, they can kill millions. It is not only the harm that we know organisations like Al-Qaeda are capable of inflicting, and have, that should concern us, but the far greater harm that they can potentially inflict.
Finally, the suggestion that non-security-related or natural disasters are more destructive than security-related or man-made disasters is not borne out by the numbers.
The religious wars in 17th century Europe were extraordinarily savage. In 1618, for instance, at the beginning of the Thirty Years' War, Germans numbered about 22 million. Thirty years later, they numbered only 12 million.
The Taiping Rebellion in mid-19th century China was similarly bloody. Led by one Hung Xiu-quan, a variety of Christian with startling notions of establishing a kingdom of God on earth, the rebellion caused the deaths of about 20 million people.
The political wars of the 20th century were as savage as the religious wars of the previous centuries. The civil war following the Russian Revolution of 1917 killed about 15 million. Josef Stalin's purges, labour concentration camps and forced farm collectivisations added another 20 to 40 million to Russia's killing fields.
World War II resulted in 55 million military and civilian casualties, almost half of them in the former Soviet Union, which lost 27 million. These figures do not include the 15 to 21 million who expired in Adolf Hitler's genocidal schemes, including the six million Jews he exterminated.
Mao Zedong snuffed out the lives of between 20 and 60 million people in the course of his many grandiose campaigns to remake China - from the Hundred Flowers' Bloom and the Great Leap Forward of the 1950s, to the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s. Western experts tend to cite the higher figure, while Chinese authorities cite the lower. But even the lower figure is nothing to sneeze at. It is five times Singapore's current population.
Barring a meteorite smashing into Earth, Man's capacity for destruction certainly seems greater than almost anything nature can inflict. The 1876-79 famines in Asia and South America, resulting from droughts caused by El Nino, are about the only natural disasters in recent history that came close to inflicting as many deaths as man did in the 20th century. Those famines killed an estimated 50 million.
We would have to go back further in history, to the 'Black Death' plagues of the 14th century in Europe and China, to glimpse more horrifying 'natural' possibilities. The plague eliminated a third of Europe's population between 1347 and 1351, and between half and two-thirds of China's in 1353. Some scholars trace China's decline as a great power from this point.
Even today, diseases of all kinds - from the preventable and curable, like malaria, to the preventable but incurable, like HIV/Aids - kill many more people than do either wars or earthquakes. Insofar as bugs and viruses are 'natural', pandemics may be considered 'natural disasters', but humanity is no longer as helpless before them as it was in the 14th century. The vast majority of the deaths from infectious diseases in the developing world today are wholly preventable.
The same, of course, cannot be said of the deaths due to calamities like the Indian Ocean tsunamis. Still, within a year from now, life would probably have acquired some semblance of near-normalcy in Aceh and Sri Lanka; and within five years, reconstruction would be more or less complete in the devastated areas. And if it isn't, it would not be because of nature, but because of long-standing man-made conflicts in these areas interfering with the reconstruction.
Is it possible to predict a similar end to the threat posed by terrorism in the foreseeable future? In all likelihood, the world will continue to wrestle with Islamic extremism for another generation at least, perhaps longer. It is a phenomenon which has its roots, according to some historians, in the collapse of the Ottoman empire in 1918, four generations ago, and in the view of others, perhaps earlier still, in Western expansionism going back all the way to the Crusades, 700 to 1,000 years ago. That's how long the rippling effects of human upheavals can last.
The suddenness of the tsunamis, the devastation they caused, reminded humanity of its helplessness before nature. In the wake of that reminder, it was possible to feel man-made disasters paled by comparison with natural ones. Theoretically at least, they can be averted, so why should one think of them as overwhelming?
But that is a deceptive sense born of a sudden shock. Nature, despite the harm it can cause, is capable of a blessed amnesia. Earthquakes and tsunamis are not daily occurrences. History, on the other hand, never sleeps. Its waking nightmares, consequently, can lay waste to life for far longer periods.
I think what this writer said is very true. Though the probability of dying from terrorist activities is very low, much lower than say dying from heart disease etc, it doesn't mean we can afford to ignore it altogether. The loss of lives from such activities is entirely preventable and if the ideological battle is not won, might just end in WW3. Scary...
From The Straits Times:
Jan 16, 2005
Cheers to old school ties
By Catherine Lim Suat Hong
FOR THE SUNDAY TIMES
IN TWO back-to-back evenings in the first week of 2005, I attended, by default, class reunions of almost all my alma maters.
The first was an invitation to a panel discussion on international affairs which I realised upon my attendance was part of an Internet-driven programme for mid-career students. For the group of 38 students spanning the globe from Kenya to Russia, the one-year course included a few weeks of residency at the graduate school in the United States and a study trip to Europe and Asia. Singapore was the venue of the Asia trip.
The first familiar face I encountered was my professor who, despite the fact that the last time we met was something like a decade ago, had no problems recalling who I was. We exchanged warm greetings. The course I took under him was conducted as a seminar where interaction was close-knit. It is in the nature of this man who describes himself as a 'humanist'.
He is in his 70s now. Five years ago, he embarked on teaching a totally new field of study: the oceans and their influences on the movement of peoples and cultures. He has moved from his country home where as students we had been on the receiving end of log fire hospitality, to a new home by the sea so that he could, in his own words, be totally 'immersed in this new course of study'. He remarked it was an exciting new venture to undertake at his age.
I reintroduced myself to another professor whose lectures on war I battled blistering winter winds once a week at 8am to attend. It covered the definitive wars of the modern century, from the civil war of America to the Vietnam war and the two world wars. I was introduced to the major 'war strategists' from Sun Zi to Clausewitz, grappled with the concept of St Augustine's 'just war' on one end and on the other, Machiavelli's total decimation in the pursuit of victory.
This war course has since morphed into 'The Role Of Force'. I gently suggested that there should also be a course on 'The Role Of Peace'. I suspect I too may be a humanist, closeted.
My Professor of War, I suspect, has also become more human. His voice swelled with pride when he told me of his nine-year-old son who has accompanied his parents to more countries than his age. I wanted to tell him something a mother of three sons told me: that children take you to places you never expected to go and force you to become the person you want to be.
The next evening, I attended a wedding of two former classmates from the two schools where I scraped through my O and A levels. The schools are what we called brother and sister schools - a misnomer if ever there was one as some relationships then and now might be viewed as incestuous.
The couple came together after more than 20 years with virtually no contact in between. The catalyst was so horrifying that it makes their love story all the more poignant. She was a survivor of the Marriott Hotel bomb blast in Jakarta in August 2002. I was not in contact with her for many years. But we met on the eve of the anniversary of the blast last year. She is today still undergoing therapy for the burns she sustained.
Before the incident, she was reputed to be a workaholic, difficult to work with but diligent. I listened in horror when told she held handover meetings in her hospital bed. With the support of her family and friends, she has pulled through a very difficult time and emerged a changed person. It is as if the skin grafts she received healed her inside out.
It was from reading news of the bomb blast in the papers that led the classmate, who is now her husband, to contact her. He was not successful in his initial attempts to reach her. She was not ready and protective friends shielded her. Then came the day when he lost a parent. The rest as they say is history. Of her I know she's had her share of serious relationships; of him, I don't know. But I can only conclude he has always held a torch for this classmate of ours.
At the 50th anniversary of his uniformed group last year, he had put together a montage of photographs from his school days. One photo was of him with six girls. The girl on his left is now his wife and she was the only girl in the photo with him in the montage. The rest of us had been unceremoniously and conveniently cropped out.
At the wedding dinner he jested that he had remained a bachelor for as long as he could until she came into his life again. It spoke volumes when the wedding couple chose to sup at their buffet-style dinner with the one couple who were at a table all on their own. I know the bride and her groom would like it to be known that they live in the grace of God and are guided by him.
There were familiar and not so familiar faces at this wedding, where two of my alma maters came together. Some names were instant recall and some a bit more challenging.
At the beginning of a new year, as a whole new cohort of Primary One students embark on their first steps on a long and seemingly endless journey, these are the first steps to lessons in life outside the family, where friendships are forged, mentors found, and where you could very well discover the love of your life. And even if you do not, you will find, as I have, a support group who is there to nurture and nourish you should you need it.
Wonder if I will attend any weddings between my ex-classmates and schoolmates. That would be rather sweet eh?
From The Straits Times:
Jan 16, 2005
S'pore wins Tiger Cup, beats Indonesia 2-1
SINGAPORE -- The Lions beat the Indonesian team 2-1 at the Tiger Cup final at a sold-out NationalStadium on Sunday, making this victory Singapore's first major international title won on home soil.
Indra Sahdan Daud and Agu Casmir both scored on Sunday to give Singapore victory over Indonesia and the Tiger Cup championship.
Playing before 55,000 fans at a sold-out National Stadium, Singapore goton the board earlyand never looked back.
Singapore had defeated Indonesia 3-1 in the first leg of the final on Jan 8 in Jakarta, giving the team a two-goal lead going into Sunday'smatch.
The victory marks the second time Singapore has won the tournament, grouping ten teamsfrom the member states of the Asean.
Indra put Singapore ahead in the sixth minute, collecting a long ball from goalkeeper Lionel Lewis and striking a blazing low drive from 20 metres past Indonesian goalkeeper Hendro Kartiko.
Nigerian-born Casmir doubled Singapore's lead by converting a penalty in the 41st minute after Indonesian defender Aris Indarto brought down Indra inside the area.
Indonesia came out strongly after the break, but were clearly hampered by the absence of star midfielder Boas Salossa, a major force in the tournament's earliermatches who sprained his ankle in the first leg of the final.
Eli Aiboy saved pride for Indonesia with a goal in the 79th minute, setting off brief celebrations among the tiny crowd of Indonesia supporters surrounded by a sea of Singaporefans dressed in their team's trademark red.
Singapore captain Aide Iskandar was sent off in the 88th minute for a second yellow card, but by then the win was sealed.
The loss leaves Indonesia runner up for the third straight time in the biennial tournament.
In Saturday's third place playoff, Malaysia edged Myanmar 2-1. -- AP
Well what else can I say? Well done. By the way have you all heard of 2 damn funny rumours? One was that Indonesia lost because Singapore threaten to withdraw the tsunami relief aid. The second one is Indonesia deliberately lost to express their gratitude. I find it damn funny but I don't believe it. But it shows the deeper scourge of kelong in football in SEA. No matter what competition, there's always the nagging feeling that bookies had arranged the results. Even if Singapore makes it to the World Cup, tongues will still wag. This is bad. I really hope one day we will be able to see a 5-0 scoreline and accept the team who won were better, not because of the dark invisible hand.
From The Straits Times:
Jan 16, 2005
The problem with charity
To give is divine but what if the intention behind the giving is less than charitable?
Sumiko Tan
I'VE always been wary of the word 'charity'.
For one, I pray I never have to be in a position where I have to beg for anyone's charity.
This, I suppose, is a result of growing up in a society that eschews handouts and emphasises self-made success.
Another reason is that the word 'charity' smacks of condescension - to me, at least.
It conjures up the image of a rich personage standing in his gilded balcony bestowing his largesse on a quivering, grateful mass of the unwashed below.
I am, of course, being uncharitable (and dramatic), putting it like this.
Don't get me wrong. I've no doubt that the milk of human kindness runs deep in the human species, and it is what has nourished us and kept us going as a race.
What I mean is that the word 'charity', for all its noble origins and intentions, has taken on a I'm-better-than-thou association.
Words like 'compassion', 'mercy' and 'kindness' depict better the values that 'charity' stands for.
But I'm quibbling over semantics.
This column is about how recent events have proven that the world is not short on charity/compassion/mercy/kindness, call it what you will.
Witness the outpouring of help, both monetary and in kind, for victims of the tsunami.
Still, I wonder, what is charity, really?
To give is, of course, divine. But what if the intention behind the giving is a bit more fuzzy? Does the act of charity still stand up to scrutiny, then?
For example, a person who goes out of his way to help a stranger is undoubtedly charitable and should be praised.
But what if this same person turns a blind eye to the needs of his immediate family and neighbours? (And I do know people like that.) Would he still be considered charitable?
If you are willing to take a week's leave from work to fly off to Banda Aceh to help the victims of the tsunami, that is truly laudable and I applaud you.
But how many would take leave to offer their services to, say, the Ren Ci Hospital in Jalan Tan Tock Seng? Or the leprosy home in Lorong Buangkok? Or is that sort of altruistic work less rewarding?
I don't mean to question or devalue the goodness of well-intentioned volunteers. I'm sure the majority offered their services with a pure and compassionate heart. And charity is charity, whether you do it at home or in Trincomalee.
Besides, I who have been sitting on my butt these few weeks and who have done nothing significant to help, should be the last person to criticise anyone.
But the cynic in me does wonder: Could there be slivers of selfishness buried in this great outpouring of help?
How much of it has to do with the 'glamour' of the tsunami tragedy and wanting to be in the thick of 'action'? With wanting to acquire the bragging rights and war wounds of having been involved in modern history's worst natural disaster?
Some of you would tell me to get real: Nobody's perfect. What's wrong with little specks of personal selfishness if actions result in overall good, if help is indeed rendered and lives improved?
I don't know.
Then there is the question of quantifying charity.
Is a person who donates $50 less charitable than one who gives $500? Or should one's charity quotient be pegged to a percentage of his income?
Is Bill Gates, who donated US$3 million to tsunami relief, less charitable than Michael Schumacher, who gave US$10 million? Correspondingly, is Schumacher a 'better' person? And Gates more 'stingy'? Then again, if you announce your charitable deed - presumably to show how generous you are - is that embracing the true spirit of altruism?
If you donate clothes and shoes you no longer have use for, is that charity? Or is the true test giving away something you treasure?
Then there is 'conditional' charity.
Spend $10 and $1 will go to charity, say some shops. Charity? Or cashing in on the situation?
THE problem with charity is fatigue.
As the German playwright Bertolt Brecht once wrote: 'A man who sees another man on the street corner with only a stump for an arm will be so shocked the first time, he'll give him sixpence.
'But the second time it'll only be a threepenny bit. And if he sees him a third time, he'll cold-bloodedly have him handed over to the police.'
The demands of charity today are non-stop and overwhelming.
You get pleas in the mail. Letters are addressed personally to you in pretty cursive font, imploring you to write a cheque to improve the life of a disfigured child whose story is related in the most heart-rending way possible.
You get appeals in the newspaper asking you to sponsor the meals of disadvantaged students.
You get donation tins thrust in your face as you walk down Orchard Road. You get people asking you to buy tissue paper. You get fund-raising shows on TV urging you to phone in a donation.
To be a 'successful' charity today, it's all about branding and marketing.
It's all about creating a three-hour show or a three-page pamphlet cleverly packaged to tug, not only at the heartstrings, but also purse strings.
Society is becoming so desensitised to suffering that charities have to trot out more and more dramatic images of suffering - real and manufactured.
TV charity shows are an example, juxtaposing sad images of sick people with beautiful actresses sweating with fear as they attempt dangerous stunts.
It also explains why the tsunami got such an overwhelming response. The images of extreme suffering, packaged and shown non-stop on global TV, moved people to action.
The true test of how compassionate one really is will be six months down the road, when Banda Aceh no longer merits a headline.
Will there still be hundreds of volunteers queueing up to help rebuild the lives there?
Call me cynical, but I fear not.
And that, I think, will be another tragedy.
The paragraphs in bold really caught my eye. I do know of someone like that. Exactly the same thing. He acted as though he wanted to go, but he always screws his friends. I will never respect this kind of people. Even if I may seem like a scrooge, but for me, I would rather treat my families and friends well first before I do it for other people. After all, my family and friends are the ones who are important to me.
From The Straits Times :
Jan 15, 2005
FOREIGN MATTERS
Who is deadlier: Man or Mother Nature?
Janadas Devan
MANY articles have appeared, both in these pages and elsewhere, suggesting that the Indian Ocean tsunamis show that terrorism, compared to the devastation nature can inflict, is an exaggerated threat.
The suggestion is misleading.
Natural disasters can indeed be horrendous, but most of them are one-off events and their effects can be contained, although with considerable difficulty.
Social, economic and political upheavals, on the other hand, are often impossible to contain, and their ramifications can last decades, if not centuries. Thus the former Chinese premier Zhou Enlai's famous reply when he was asked about the effects of the 1789 French Revolution. 'Too early to tell,' he said.
Also, it is nonsensical to compare the number of people who have died at the hands of terrorists in recent years to the number who died in the Indian Ocean tsunamis. September 11 took the lives of far fewer people than the tsunamis, certainly, but that is no reason why one should take the threat posed by terrorists less seriously.
If terrorist organisations get hold of a nuclear bomb or some other weapon of mass destruction, they can kill millions. It is not only the harm that we know organisations like Al-Qaeda are capable of inflicting, and have, that should concern us, but the far greater harm that they can potentially inflict.
Finally, the suggestion that non-security-related or natural disasters are more destructive than security-related or man-made disasters is not borne out by the numbers.
The religious wars in 17th century Europe were extraordinarily savage. In 1618, for instance, at the beginning of the Thirty Years' War, Germans numbered about 22 million. Thirty years later, they numbered only 12 million.
The Taiping Rebellion in mid-19th century China was similarly bloody. Led by one Hung Xiu-quan, a variety of Christian with startling notions of establishing a kingdom of God on earth, the rebellion caused the deaths of about 20 million people.
The political wars of the 20th century were as savage as the religious wars of the previous centuries. The civil war following the Russian Revolution of 1917 killed about 15 million. Josef Stalin's purges, labour concentration camps and forced farm collectivisations added another 20 to 40 million to Russia's killing fields.
World War II resulted in 55 million military and civilian casualties, almost half of them in the former Soviet Union, which lost 27 million. These figures do not include the 15 to 21 million who expired in Adolf Hitler's genocidal schemes, including the six million Jews he exterminated.
Mao Zedong snuffed out the lives of between 20 and 60 million people in the course of his many grandiose campaigns to remake China - from the Hundred Flowers' Bloom and the Great Leap Forward of the 1950s, to the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s. Western experts tend to cite the higher figure, while Chinese authorities cite the lower. But even the lower figure is nothing to sneeze at. It is five times Singapore's current population.
Barring a meteorite smashing into Earth, Man's capacity for destruction certainly seems greater than almost anything nature can inflict. The 1876-79 famines in Asia and South America, resulting from droughts caused by El Nino, are about the only natural disasters in recent history that came close to inflicting as many deaths as man did in the 20th century. Those famines killed an estimated 50 million.
We would have to go back further in history, to the 'Black Death' plagues of the 14th century in Europe and China, to glimpse more horrifying 'natural' possibilities. The plague eliminated a third of Europe's population between 1347 and 1351, and between half and two-thirds of China's in 1353. Some scholars trace China's decline as a great power from this point.
Even today, diseases of all kinds - from the preventable and curable, like malaria, to the preventable but incurable, like HIV/Aids - kill many more people than do either wars or earthquakes. Insofar as bugs and viruses are 'natural', pandemics may be considered 'natural disasters', but humanity is no longer as helpless before them as it was in the 14th century. The vast majority of the deaths from infectious diseases in the developing world today are wholly preventable.
The same, of course, cannot be said of the deaths due to calamities like the Indian Ocean tsunamis. Still, within a year from now, life would probably have acquired some semblance of near-normalcy in Aceh and Sri Lanka; and within five years, reconstruction would be more or less complete in the devastated areas. And if it isn't, it would not be because of nature, but because of long-standing man-made conflicts in these areas interfering with the reconstruction.
Is it possible to predict a similar end to the threat posed by terrorism in the foreseeable future? In all likelihood, the world will continue to wrestle with Islamic extremism for another generation at least, perhaps longer. It is a phenomenon which has its roots, according to some historians, in the collapse of the Ottoman empire in 1918, four generations ago, and in the view of others, perhaps earlier still, in Western expansionism going back all the way to the Crusades, 700 to 1,000 years ago. That's how long the rippling effects of human upheavals can last.
The suddenness of the tsunamis, the devastation they caused, reminded humanity of its helplessness before nature. In the wake of that reminder, it was possible to feel man-made disasters paled by comparison with natural ones. Theoretically at least, they can be averted, so why should one think of them as overwhelming?
But that is a deceptive sense born of a sudden shock. Nature, despite the harm it can cause, is capable of a blessed amnesia. Earthquakes and tsunamis are not daily occurrences. History, on the other hand, never sleeps. Its waking nightmares, consequently, can lay waste to life for far longer periods.
I think what this writer said is very true. Though the probability of dying from terrorist activities is very low, much lower than say dying from heart disease etc, it doesn't mean we can afford to ignore it altogether. The loss of lives from such activities is entirely preventable and if the ideological battle is not won, might just end in WW3. Scary...
From The Straits Times:
Jan 16, 2005
Cheers to old school ties
By Catherine Lim Suat Hong
FOR THE SUNDAY TIMES
IN TWO back-to-back evenings in the first week of 2005, I attended, by default, class reunions of almost all my alma maters.
The first was an invitation to a panel discussion on international affairs which I realised upon my attendance was part of an Internet-driven programme for mid-career students. For the group of 38 students spanning the globe from Kenya to Russia, the one-year course included a few weeks of residency at the graduate school in the United States and a study trip to Europe and Asia. Singapore was the venue of the Asia trip.
The first familiar face I encountered was my professor who, despite the fact that the last time we met was something like a decade ago, had no problems recalling who I was. We exchanged warm greetings. The course I took under him was conducted as a seminar where interaction was close-knit. It is in the nature of this man who describes himself as a 'humanist'.
He is in his 70s now. Five years ago, he embarked on teaching a totally new field of study: the oceans and their influences on the movement of peoples and cultures. He has moved from his country home where as students we had been on the receiving end of log fire hospitality, to a new home by the sea so that he could, in his own words, be totally 'immersed in this new course of study'. He remarked it was an exciting new venture to undertake at his age.
I reintroduced myself to another professor whose lectures on war I battled blistering winter winds once a week at 8am to attend. It covered the definitive wars of the modern century, from the civil war of America to the Vietnam war and the two world wars. I was introduced to the major 'war strategists' from Sun Zi to Clausewitz, grappled with the concept of St Augustine's 'just war' on one end and on the other, Machiavelli's total decimation in the pursuit of victory.
This war course has since morphed into 'The Role Of Force'. I gently suggested that there should also be a course on 'The Role Of Peace'. I suspect I too may be a humanist, closeted.
My Professor of War, I suspect, has also become more human. His voice swelled with pride when he told me of his nine-year-old son who has accompanied his parents to more countries than his age. I wanted to tell him something a mother of three sons told me: that children take you to places you never expected to go and force you to become the person you want to be.
The next evening, I attended a wedding of two former classmates from the two schools where I scraped through my O and A levels. The schools are what we called brother and sister schools - a misnomer if ever there was one as some relationships then and now might be viewed as incestuous.
The couple came together after more than 20 years with virtually no contact in between. The catalyst was so horrifying that it makes their love story all the more poignant. She was a survivor of the Marriott Hotel bomb blast in Jakarta in August 2002. I was not in contact with her for many years. But we met on the eve of the anniversary of the blast last year. She is today still undergoing therapy for the burns she sustained.
Before the incident, she was reputed to be a workaholic, difficult to work with but diligent. I listened in horror when told she held handover meetings in her hospital bed. With the support of her family and friends, she has pulled through a very difficult time and emerged a changed person. It is as if the skin grafts she received healed her inside out.
It was from reading news of the bomb blast in the papers that led the classmate, who is now her husband, to contact her. He was not successful in his initial attempts to reach her. She was not ready and protective friends shielded her. Then came the day when he lost a parent. The rest as they say is history. Of her I know she's had her share of serious relationships; of him, I don't know. But I can only conclude he has always held a torch for this classmate of ours.
At the 50th anniversary of his uniformed group last year, he had put together a montage of photographs from his school days. One photo was of him with six girls. The girl on his left is now his wife and she was the only girl in the photo with him in the montage. The rest of us had been unceremoniously and conveniently cropped out.
At the wedding dinner he jested that he had remained a bachelor for as long as he could until she came into his life again. It spoke volumes when the wedding couple chose to sup at their buffet-style dinner with the one couple who were at a table all on their own. I know the bride and her groom would like it to be known that they live in the grace of God and are guided by him.
There were familiar and not so familiar faces at this wedding, where two of my alma maters came together. Some names were instant recall and some a bit more challenging.
At the beginning of a new year, as a whole new cohort of Primary One students embark on their first steps on a long and seemingly endless journey, these are the first steps to lessons in life outside the family, where friendships are forged, mentors found, and where you could very well discover the love of your life. And even if you do not, you will find, as I have, a support group who is there to nurture and nourish you should you need it.
Wonder if I will attend any weddings between my ex-classmates and schoolmates. That would be rather sweet eh?
From The Straits Times:
Jan 16, 2005
S'pore wins Tiger Cup, beats Indonesia 2-1
SINGAPORE -- The Lions beat the Indonesian team 2-1 at the Tiger Cup final at a sold-out NationalStadium on Sunday, making this victory Singapore's first major international title won on home soil.
Indra Sahdan Daud and Agu Casmir both scored on Sunday to give Singapore victory over Indonesia and the Tiger Cup championship.
Playing before 55,000 fans at a sold-out National Stadium, Singapore goton the board earlyand never looked back.
Singapore had defeated Indonesia 3-1 in the first leg of the final on Jan 8 in Jakarta, giving the team a two-goal lead going into Sunday'smatch.
The victory marks the second time Singapore has won the tournament, grouping ten teamsfrom the member states of the Asean.
Indra put Singapore ahead in the sixth minute, collecting a long ball from goalkeeper Lionel Lewis and striking a blazing low drive from 20 metres past Indonesian goalkeeper Hendro Kartiko.
Nigerian-born Casmir doubled Singapore's lead by converting a penalty in the 41st minute after Indonesian defender Aris Indarto brought down Indra inside the area.
Indonesia came out strongly after the break, but were clearly hampered by the absence of star midfielder Boas Salossa, a major force in the tournament's earliermatches who sprained his ankle in the first leg of the final.
Eli Aiboy saved pride for Indonesia with a goal in the 79th minute, setting off brief celebrations among the tiny crowd of Indonesia supporters surrounded by a sea of Singaporefans dressed in their team's trademark red.
Singapore captain Aide Iskandar was sent off in the 88th minute for a second yellow card, but by then the win was sealed.
The loss leaves Indonesia runner up for the third straight time in the biennial tournament.
In Saturday's third place playoff, Malaysia edged Myanmar 2-1. -- AP
Well what else can I say? Well done. By the way have you all heard of 2 damn funny rumours? One was that Indonesia lost because Singapore threaten to withdraw the tsunami relief aid. The second one is Indonesia deliberately lost to express their gratitude. I find it damn funny but I don't believe it. But it shows the deeper scourge of kelong in football in SEA. No matter what competition, there's always the nagging feeling that bookies had arranged the results. Even if Singapore makes it to the World Cup, tongues will still wag. This is bad. I really hope one day we will be able to see a 5-0 scoreline and accept the team who won were better, not because of the dark invisible hand.
Sunday, January 16, 2005
My 5 seconds of fame...
See the guy in a white jacket beside the steward in the bright yellow fluorescent jacket? Yup that's me all right...
Ok cheap thrill I know...but still :)
Saturday, January 15, 2005
Shocked
Yet another photo based entry...
Yupz I went to Stamford Bridge on Wednesday for the Carling Cup semi first leg. No I didnt have psychic powers before hand to know that it would be a good match or Mourinho would play practically his first team. I guess its just my reward. It was just like a normal league match, very worth it.
Some other photos:
The infamous Chelsea Village, a Ken Bates legacy
Me on enemy territory
The Chelsea megastore, complete with idiot security guard inside who told me I can't take photo of a Zola cutboard figure. WTF?
Me getting closer to enemy soil. My spiked hair looks like cock head instead. KNN.
Carlo Cudicini in warm up
Petr Cech in warm up
Before kickoff
The boy wonder cum (pun intended) prostitute visitor taking a corner
Daft Duff taking a corner. He would really so much better in the red of Man United
Yeah anyway as you can see my seat was quite near the corner, behind the goal in the first row. I was at the end where United were attacking in the first half. Wonder if anybody saw me during the match on TV? I was right behind Quinton Fortune when he got rammed by the ball in the head and banged into the advertising boards. Did anybody see me?????? I guess that's about as close to being on TV as I can.
And yeah the Saha penalty incident was right in front of me, it was very clear cut. It was a penalty as neither Chelsea players got anywhere near the ball. Mourinho is an idiot.
Quality cheers during the game:
Then the second link goes on to discuss the existence of hooliganism in English football. And this really got me shocked. It was a serious problem back in the 80s but I am still surprised to read that some people actually do not think that fighting etc is wrong! Apparently each team still had perhaps groups of 15-30 people in the away support who go round to pubs and dark alleys before games looking for people to fight. I guess I had been very naive about my views about the state of hooliganism in UK previously, but surely it is senseless and wrong to fight for the sake of fighting? I am a very violent person myself but I don't see the point of gang fights. If you want to fight so much, join the army! You can even kill with machine guns! Isn't that more cool? I don't know, perhaps it can never go away, but I just hate the idea of my favourite sport being tainted with such an image. My ideal world consist of banter on the pitch during the games, and plenty of goodwill off it after the game. Very very disturbing, I better watch my arse in future when I go for matches...
And finally, I also must add...
GO LIONS!!!!!
Yupz I went to Stamford Bridge on Wednesday for the Carling Cup semi first leg. No I didnt have psychic powers before hand to know that it would be a good match or Mourinho would play practically his first team. I guess its just my reward. It was just like a normal league match, very worth it.
Some other photos:
The infamous Chelsea Village, a Ken Bates legacy
Me on enemy territory
The Chelsea megastore, complete with idiot security guard inside who told me I can't take photo of a Zola cutboard figure. WTF?
Me getting closer to enemy soil. My spiked hair looks like cock head instead. KNN.
Carlo Cudicini in warm up
Petr Cech in warm up
Before kickoff
The boy wonder cum (pun intended) prostitute visitor taking a corner
Daft Duff taking a corner. He would really so much better in the red of Man United
Yeah anyway as you can see my seat was quite near the corner, behind the goal in the first row. I was at the end where United were attacking in the first half. Wonder if anybody saw me during the match on TV? I was right behind Quinton Fortune when he got rammed by the ball in the head and banged into the advertising boards. Did anybody see me?????? I guess that's about as close to being on TV as I can.
And yeah the Saha penalty incident was right in front of me, it was very clear cut. It was a penalty as neither Chelsea players got anywhere near the ball. Mourinho is an idiot.
Quality cheers during the game:
- You sold your hearts to a Russian, sold your hearts to a Russian, sold your hearts to a Ruuuuuuussian.
- You are not Chelsea anymore, you are not Chelsea, you are not Chelsea, you're not Chelsea anymore!
- Peter Kenyon, you're a wanker
But the main topic of my post isn't the match itself, it was what happened after the match. For a brief idea of what happened, click on the following 2 links:
What happened after the game
Discussion on hooliganism
Then the second link goes on to discuss the existence of hooliganism in English football. And this really got me shocked. It was a serious problem back in the 80s but I am still surprised to read that some people actually do not think that fighting etc is wrong! Apparently each team still had perhaps groups of 15-30 people in the away support who go round to pubs and dark alleys before games looking for people to fight. I guess I had been very naive about my views about the state of hooliganism in UK previously, but surely it is senseless and wrong to fight for the sake of fighting? I am a very violent person myself but I don't see the point of gang fights. If you want to fight so much, join the army! You can even kill with machine guns! Isn't that more cool? I don't know, perhaps it can never go away, but I just hate the idea of my favourite sport being tainted with such an image. My ideal world consist of banter on the pitch during the games, and plenty of goodwill off it after the game. Very very disturbing, I better watch my arse in future when I go for matches...
And finally, I also must add...
GO LIONS!!!!!
Song song!!!
Haha got this extremely hilarious song from Irving. Listen to the lyrics, it is extremely true!! For those of you in Singapore, the underground = MRT in London. It is extremely dirty, smelly and inefficient. AND most importantly they are perpetually on/threatening to go on strike. Makes you kind of appreciate LKY's insistence on outlawing strikes. In fact he got the idea to make it illegal after experiencing strikes in his undergrad days in UK too! Go read his memoirs!!
Anyway for those of you who find this song annoying, scroll to the bottom of the column on the left hand side and you can find the media player and press stop.
Anyway for those of you who find this song annoying, scroll to the bottom of the column on the left hand side and you can find the media player and press stop.
Friday, January 14, 2005
On top of a hill...
Ok final post about Austria. So on the last day, after going to Schonbrunn Palace and checking out. I took the train back to Salzburg to take a plane back to London. I arrived in Salzburg at about 2pm and had about 5 hours to kill before I need to go to the airport. Seeing that the weather was nice, I decided to go up to the hill near the fortress to take photos again.
But before that I passed through the town centre again.
See the difference that nice weather makes to your photos?
Salzach river
Salzburg Dom
And the photos that I took at the viewing point called Richterhohe:
The fortress from the Richterhohe side
I like this photo very much...
The lovely snow capped mountains. See the difference that weather makes again??
Sunset...
Sunset again...
Take-photo-of-myself-with-timer time!
Somebody took this for me. Wearing a FCUK long sleeve t-shirt which costs just 3.75 pounds!! Cheap cheap!!
Anyway as I was waiting for sunset, I decided to take a few spy cam shots of people at the viewing point. Trying to be a bit artistic. Think some of them turned out quite well...
A couple enjoying a quiet moment
2 old men enjoying the sunlight. Don't be mistaken, it was freezing coz of the wind!
Now got people talking to the old man in black. After the people left, the old man started to leave but before that he talked to me and guess what? He spoke CHINESE!!! I was pleasantly surprised. And he told me that he was in Singapore 15 or 20 years ago. It's a small world. Some of the sentences he knew: tian kong you bai yun (the sky has white clouds), yu zai shui li you (fish swimming in water), damn power lah.
Anyway just a thought: wonder where I will be in 40 years time. Would I even live that long? I probably would died of being too pissed off at 40 years old...
Anyway more spy cam photos...
This not bad looking woman was fiddling with her phone the whole time. Wonder if she had come to the hilltop for a rendezvous (did I spell it correctly?) with her lover but her lover "fly her aeroplane"? She left pretty quickly though.
I really really like this photo a lot. Think it is the best of all the spy cam photos. I think it shows the scenery nicely and conveys a certain tranquility about the whole situation. Do you all think so? Do give comments ok? I wish I had people with me to help me take such photos also...but guess my ugly face will destroy the photo also lah hor?
This couple probably came up to have a nice time but found a Chinese idiot sitting there so they couldn't get up to any hanky panky. Hahahaha. This photo would have been nicer if they had come earlier and there was a bit more sunlight.
Yeah so I stayed there until just after sunset. Was deliberating about whether to stay until nightfall to see the night scene but I was extremely afraid about getting mugged since I still had to walk through a bit of woods to get back to the town centre. In the end decided not to. Guess I am extremely humji after all.
Anyway took 2 sets of panoramic shots at Richterhohe. Those of you who have Canon cameras, do make sure of the panoramic function in the cameras and then use photo stitch to combine them together! It's really simple to use and very nicely done too. The wonders of technology nowadays...
For clearer view, click here
For clearer view, click here
Anyway guess that's all for Austria. Next up: Amsterdam!
But before that I passed through the town centre again.
See the difference that nice weather makes to your photos?
Salzach river
Salzburg Dom
And the photos that I took at the viewing point called Richterhohe:
The fortress from the Richterhohe side
I like this photo very much...
The lovely snow capped mountains. See the difference that weather makes again??
Sunset...
Sunset again...
Take-photo-of-myself-with-timer time!
Somebody took this for me. Wearing a FCUK long sleeve t-shirt which costs just 3.75 pounds!! Cheap cheap!!
Anyway as I was waiting for sunset, I decided to take a few spy cam shots of people at the viewing point. Trying to be a bit artistic. Think some of them turned out quite well...
A couple enjoying a quiet moment
2 old men enjoying the sunlight. Don't be mistaken, it was freezing coz of the wind!
Now got people talking to the old man in black. After the people left, the old man started to leave but before that he talked to me and guess what? He spoke CHINESE!!! I was pleasantly surprised. And he told me that he was in Singapore 15 or 20 years ago. It's a small world. Some of the sentences he knew: tian kong you bai yun (the sky has white clouds), yu zai shui li you (fish swimming in water), damn power lah.
Anyway just a thought: wonder where I will be in 40 years time. Would I even live that long? I probably would died of being too pissed off at 40 years old...
Anyway more spy cam photos...
This not bad looking woman was fiddling with her phone the whole time. Wonder if she had come to the hilltop for a rendezvous (did I spell it correctly?) with her lover but her lover "fly her aeroplane"? She left pretty quickly though.
I really really like this photo a lot. Think it is the best of all the spy cam photos. I think it shows the scenery nicely and conveys a certain tranquility about the whole situation. Do you all think so? Do give comments ok? I wish I had people with me to help me take such photos also...but guess my ugly face will destroy the photo also lah hor?
This couple probably came up to have a nice time but found a Chinese idiot sitting there so they couldn't get up to any hanky panky. Hahahaha. This photo would have been nicer if they had come earlier and there was a bit more sunlight.
Yeah so I stayed there until just after sunset. Was deliberating about whether to stay until nightfall to see the night scene but I was extremely afraid about getting mugged since I still had to walk through a bit of woods to get back to the town centre. In the end decided not to. Guess I am extremely humji after all.
Anyway took 2 sets of panoramic shots at Richterhohe. Those of you who have Canon cameras, do make sure of the panoramic function in the cameras and then use photo stitch to combine them together! It's really simple to use and very nicely done too. The wonders of technology nowadays...
For clearer view, click here
For clearer view, click here
Anyway guess that's all for Austria. Next up: Amsterdam!
Performers and concerts in Austria
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart...
He's here...
He's there...
He's everywhere!!!!
Even on the streets?!?!
Yeah that's right, the whole of Austria seems to be a shrine for Mozart. You cannot escape from his images. But seriously, Austria does really feel like a land of music like everyone is talking about. There are street performers everywhere. And they are not the half fucked kind. They are very very good. Especially this guy:
I think the picture is too dark but I just had to post it. He performs near the Hofburg and his music was really VERY VERY moving, at least to my untrained ears. I found myself just wanting to stand there and listen to him perform all the way. I wonder if I am looking at the future of some of the MOE music scholars..haha.
Ok another performer who impressed me was this guy with a puppet near the St Stephans Dom:
He is wearing different clothes coz I took the photos on different days. Basically he had a fake piano for the puppet and had a music player inside. And he was able to control the puppet such that it looked like it was playing the piano and singing along. He was really very good, the puppet looked like it had a life of its own under his control. Whenever somebody gave him some money, he would immediately change the music. For example, if it was an old lady the music suddenly changed to some "oh Mama..." tune. If it was a chio bu, the music changed to "Sex bomb", which was really funny (cool way of flirting too!). He also had a tune which went "Oh money, oh money money" and he would make the puppet look at the hat in front and shake his head in sadness at the lack of money, which again is really funny.
However the best has to be if a dog comes around. He even had a track which is a dog's bark and he would play it whenever somebody's dog came around. That would attract the attention of the dog. He would then make the puppet stick out his eyes and his tongue and completely freak the dog out. The white puppy in the second photo was a victim. It was damn hilarious.
Anyway on the second night when I was in Vienna, I watched a concert. Ok I know some of you are sniggering away at reading that. Shihua trying to be arty farty and watching concert?!?!?
YES I DID.
After all I didn't have anything to do at night and I was in Vienna after all. Some pictures:
The Kursalon, where the concert was held.
There were various kinds of performances in the concert. There were performances of Johann Strauss' and Mozart's music pieces, ballet and opera items. I can't say I didn't enjoy it, but throw a football match my way anytime.
Anyway made some interesting observations during the concert. Ang mohs are as fucked up as Asians when it comes to manners and all. See the second photo? It is blur. Why? Because I did not use flash. The steward already said loudly to someone just before the concert started that you can't use flash to take photos. Everybody at my side can hear it. But throughout the concert people were still taking photos with flash and it was extremely annoying. Can't be so many of them don't understand English or don't know how to turn off flash right? So ang mohs don't necessarily have good manners.
Anyway there was a group of 4 rather old Italians who attended the concert. The tickets for the concert was divided into 3 categories and they bought category B tickets. When the steward showed them to their seats, one of the old men asked why they can't sit in the empty seats further in front. DUH! Coz you bought cheaper tickets lah! The steward also answered them rather sarcastically. Anyway they came pretty late so was in the last row of category B. When the concert started, some of the category A seats were not filled. So guess what? The same Italian man went to sit down in the category A seats and his other 3 friends also joined him after the interval. Hmmmm....seems like not only Singaporeans are kiasu right.
Anyway my point is this: Ang moh fart is not fragrant! Some of them are just as fucked up as Singaporeans, perhaps even more so.
Like smooching your way through a concert like the couple in front of me. I wonder if they are there to observe each other's ugly faces under the chandelier lighting or to listen to the concert. Throughout the whole night they were looking at each other, kissing or whispering. AND THE GUY'S HEAD BLOCKED ME COMPLETELY. God damn it. But lucky I liked the music more than the dancing actually.
Anyway during the concert my crappy mind got to work again and thought of a way to propose to a girl, Viennese style.
First of all, note that there are a lot of horse carriages around Vienna:
This is just one of the stations outside Hofburg.
Then you would have to hire a street performer to play nice soothing music in St Stephans Dom platz at night:
Now make sure that when it is 12 midnight, your horse carriage driver brings you to the place with the music. Then when the church bells go off, tell your girl this:
Dear, when the clock struck 12 midnight, Cinderella's pumpkin carriage disappeared and she changed back to her original status and she had to be separated from her Prince. However, I don't want to be separated with you ever, do you agree to be mine forever?
(ok I know the words are extremely lousy but you get the idea....horse carriage, nice church, nice music...)
OR you can just bring her to a concert which both of you are not paying attention to and kiss each other and slip a ring on her finger and annoy the person sitting directly behind you.
But yeah you get the idea, Vienna is a really nice place for couples and in my opinion much better than Paris which is over rated really.
So who wants me to be their travel agent for their honey moons?
He's here...
He's there...
He's everywhere!!!!
Even on the streets?!?!
Yeah that's right, the whole of Austria seems to be a shrine for Mozart. You cannot escape from his images. But seriously, Austria does really feel like a land of music like everyone is talking about. There are street performers everywhere. And they are not the half fucked kind. They are very very good. Especially this guy:
I think the picture is too dark but I just had to post it. He performs near the Hofburg and his music was really VERY VERY moving, at least to my untrained ears. I found myself just wanting to stand there and listen to him perform all the way. I wonder if I am looking at the future of some of the MOE music scholars..haha.
Ok another performer who impressed me was this guy with a puppet near the St Stephans Dom:
He is wearing different clothes coz I took the photos on different days. Basically he had a fake piano for the puppet and had a music player inside. And he was able to control the puppet such that it looked like it was playing the piano and singing along. He was really very good, the puppet looked like it had a life of its own under his control. Whenever somebody gave him some money, he would immediately change the music. For example, if it was an old lady the music suddenly changed to some "oh Mama..." tune. If it was a chio bu, the music changed to "Sex bomb", which was really funny (cool way of flirting too!). He also had a tune which went "Oh money, oh money money" and he would make the puppet look at the hat in front and shake his head in sadness at the lack of money, which again is really funny.
However the best has to be if a dog comes around. He even had a track which is a dog's bark and he would play it whenever somebody's dog came around. That would attract the attention of the dog. He would then make the puppet stick out his eyes and his tongue and completely freak the dog out. The white puppy in the second photo was a victim. It was damn hilarious.
Anyway on the second night when I was in Vienna, I watched a concert. Ok I know some of you are sniggering away at reading that. Shihua trying to be arty farty and watching concert?!?!?
YES I DID.
After all I didn't have anything to do at night and I was in Vienna after all. Some pictures:
The Kursalon, where the concert was held.
There were various kinds of performances in the concert. There were performances of Johann Strauss' and Mozart's music pieces, ballet and opera items. I can't say I didn't enjoy it, but throw a football match my way anytime.
Anyway made some interesting observations during the concert. Ang mohs are as fucked up as Asians when it comes to manners and all. See the second photo? It is blur. Why? Because I did not use flash. The steward already said loudly to someone just before the concert started that you can't use flash to take photos. Everybody at my side can hear it. But throughout the concert people were still taking photos with flash and it was extremely annoying. Can't be so many of them don't understand English or don't know how to turn off flash right? So ang mohs don't necessarily have good manners.
Anyway there was a group of 4 rather old Italians who attended the concert. The tickets for the concert was divided into 3 categories and they bought category B tickets. When the steward showed them to their seats, one of the old men asked why they can't sit in the empty seats further in front. DUH! Coz you bought cheaper tickets lah! The steward also answered them rather sarcastically. Anyway they came pretty late so was in the last row of category B. When the concert started, some of the category A seats were not filled. So guess what? The same Italian man went to sit down in the category A seats and his other 3 friends also joined him after the interval. Hmmmm....seems like not only Singaporeans are kiasu right.
Anyway my point is this: Ang moh fart is not fragrant! Some of them are just as fucked up as Singaporeans, perhaps even more so.
Like smooching your way through a concert like the couple in front of me. I wonder if they are there to observe each other's ugly faces under the chandelier lighting or to listen to the concert. Throughout the whole night they were looking at each other, kissing or whispering. AND THE GUY'S HEAD BLOCKED ME COMPLETELY. God damn it. But lucky I liked the music more than the dancing actually.
Anyway during the concert my crappy mind got to work again and thought of a way to propose to a girl, Viennese style.
First of all, note that there are a lot of horse carriages around Vienna:
This is just one of the stations outside Hofburg.
Then you would have to hire a street performer to play nice soothing music in St Stephans Dom platz at night:
Now make sure that when it is 12 midnight, your horse carriage driver brings you to the place with the music. Then when the church bells go off, tell your girl this:
Dear, when the clock struck 12 midnight, Cinderella's pumpkin carriage disappeared and she changed back to her original status and she had to be separated from her Prince. However, I don't want to be separated with you ever, do you agree to be mine forever?
(ok I know the words are extremely lousy but you get the idea....horse carriage, nice church, nice music...)
OR you can just bring her to a concert which both of you are not paying attention to and kiss each other and slip a ring on her finger and annoy the person sitting directly behind you.
But yeah you get the idea, Vienna is a really nice place for couples and in my opinion much better than Paris which is over rated really.
So who wants me to be their travel agent for their honey moons?
Vienna sights
This is St Stephans Dom which is a well known landmark right in the heart of Vienna. If you can go anywhere high up you are bound to be able to see it. Too bad it had to undergo renovation while I am there. Still went inside to take a look though.
What really struck me was that the church was surrounded by endless shopping streets. The above street was one near the church. The sin of materialism right at the doorstep of the church. Hmm...
I like this photo a lot too. Got a bit of the Taj Mahal seh right? Anyway this church is called Karlskirche. Also quite famous landmark of Vienna I think
This is the Vienna Staatsoper, the place to come for performances and stuff.
Burgtheater. It looks much nicer than my photo taking skills would allow me to show you.
This is the Hofburg Palace. It is damn big with over 1440 rooms if I didn't rmemeber wrongly. The open space called Heldenplatz in front of it is really very nice to take a stroll in or just to sit on the benches (with your girlfriend, please don't be like me sitting there shivering in the cold).
View of Rathaus (Town Hall) from Heldenplatz
Heldenplatz
Michaelerplatz, the other entrance to Heldenplatz
This is the Belvedere. I think the word stands for Presidential palace, not very sure also. But the garden is very nice:
Facing the back of the Belvedere is the Belvederegarten. You can see the St Stephans Dom in the background from here (see what I mean about climbing hills?)
Belvederegarten. The Europeans just have a way with statues and gardens.
Ok last attraction now, the Schonbrunn Palace:
Pardon the very wooden pose as I only had like 5 seconds before the timer went off. Sadly this photo is one of the better ones of myself already :( I think this palace has the nicest garden of all which you shall see below:
The garden of the Schonbrunn Palace. Don't be mistaken by the small size of the structure in the background. It is actually quite big but I am very far away.
And so I climbed the hill to get to the structure which is called the Gloriette. I nearly died while walking up, I must eat less bacon and omelette :S
The Gloriette. Reflection in the water somemore leh, nice???
And if you turn 180 degrees, you see this:
The Schonbrunn Palace from the top.
Time to show off my take-photo-of-myself-with-timer skills again:
Notice my new pair of jeans from Top Man? Haha. Bought during Boxing Day Sales but it wasn't on sale. But had been eyeing it for damn long so could not resist buying it.
Ok that's all for tourist attractions and sights for the tour. Now on to some of the stuff I did and nonsensical thoughts during the trip.
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