World Cup is boring

Waiting for the World Cup final to start. Not too sure whether I should go sleep first then wake up or just stay awake all the way. Hence writing this entry to pass time. Not really very keen on this World Cup. Certainly not as keen as I was in 1998. Perhaps once again it's due to the fact that I find international games boring. The only way that I can enjoy such international tournaments is to be there in person to enjoy it. Not to sit in front of a flickering TV screen (all thanks to Starhub's pay per view policy...but more about that later...). I enjoy the carnival atmosphere which comes with such tournaments, and there is no way that I can feel the same thing in front of a TV screen, even with lots of people in front of a big screen.

But even with the carnival atmosphere, I am also consciously aware of the fact that a large part of it is fabricated. It's false, it's not the real deal. And that is why I cringe whenever I happen to watch the Chinese soccer programs on CCTV. Topics covered range from choosing the best looking 11 players (there was even a competition for people to guess which 3 players had been chosen as the bestl ooking forwards!) to having French and Portuguese "die-hard" fans debating with each other. FOR FUCKS SAKE YOU ARE CHINESE SUPPORT YOUR GOD DAMN CHINESE NATIONAL TEAM CAN?

Certainly there are some who feel deeply about their national team, but there are even more who are there for the ride, just to be IN. Hey I am cool, I watch the World Cup. Is that passion? Hardly I think. Passion is when you still pay 30 quid, in the cold wintry conditions of January, and travel God knows how many hundred miles to Teeside to watch your crap team draw 0-0 with Middlesbrough. To me, the success that comes after an entire season, 10 months worth of joy and pain, is so much sweeter than that which merely comes after 7 matches. Give me the Premier League and Champions League any day.

And there is the Singaporean in me too. I just can't find a team that I can hands on heart say that I support. In the beginning I had predicted Portugal to go all the way, and so I sorta supported them. But hey, I liked Holland too, and so I was quite LPPL when the two teams met. Even worse was to come when I supproted Portugal before Rooney got sent off and England after that. All this is too LPPL for me. You should only support one team! That's the way it is. And that one team can only ever be Singapore...

And no thanks to Starhub too. In 98 it was free to air, in 02 you had to subscribe to Starhub. All that is fine, but now you have to pay additional even though you are an existing customer. I say screw you Starhub. Pay per view is an evil that should never be allowed to enter Singapore shores. Even though going to other places to watch, buying antenna to receive Indonesia channel ultimately cost more than your 15 bucks price, I much rather do it than to give that 15 bucks to you. FUCK YOU for introducing pay per view. To other football fans, I say: beware of this evil phenomenon.

On another note...

You TosH are charged that you on XX June 2006 at about 4.27pm along XXXXXX Ave S'pore did drive a motor vehicle no. SFS XXXXX at a speed of 95kmph, such speed bring in excess of the imposed speed limit of 70kmph of the road and you have thereby committed an offence under section 63(4) and punishable under section 131(2) of the Road Traffic Act, Chapter 276.

Crap, and that means 6 points left and $150 gone.... Sigh. Gotta walk on a tight rope for the next 9 months. And it happened coz I was eager to go back TO CAMP to finish my work. So much for being enthu about work. So if you happen to sit in my car, please pardon me for being niao and asking you to buckle your seat belt (you need it when I am driving...serious..). If not don't blame me for scolding the shit out of you.

Next week marks the start of the xiong course that I have to go for. Somehow I am just not eager to learn. at least back in school I could understand all the shit even if i wasn't aprticularly interested...Physics for example. But this SAF shit is really not my cup of tea. I can't understand, nor am I arsed enough to make an effort to understand them. I just don't wanna have anything to do with operations... period. Sigh, it's gonna be a long 6 weeks. May post- ATEC period come soon.

If you had read until this point, you would have noticed that my Ingerlish have negatively improved to perhaps pre school level. Alas, what happened to me in NS? Sigh.

But all is not negative though. The course has actually introduced me to this really cool program CMAP. Go to

http://cmap.ihmc.us/

to download it. It's FREE! It's kind of like a mind mapping program but it gives you the additional tool of putting in linking phrases between the different concepts so that others can understand your mind map. And they thus call this a concept map instead of a mind map. Doesn't matter to me, all that I know is that this program is fucking cool lah. I never liked mind maps, not because I don't like the concept per se, but that making mind maps by hand is a pain in the ass. You need to have a basic idea of how it's going to look like in the beginning, even when you are organising your thoughts, if not it's gonna be damn messy. How many times have you started out on mind maps before realising you had run out of space in one corner of the paper while the rest of the paper is empty?

But now with CMAP, fret not! You can shift everything around and fit everything nicely after you have typed out everything. Seriously, if I had this program like erm since JC, I would have learnt so much better. And to all you MOE people out there, this thing is being introduced to trainees in NIE, so don't say I never tell you! haha. I am going to learn to be so expert at this program and go and xian the xiao mei mei in NIE next time. Sounds like a plan eh? =)