Champions League.

To be honest, seeing South China participating in the AFC Champions League, even at the preliminary rounds, is still giving me goosebumps.

So I was in Singapore for the past couple of days for Chinese New Year, and to be able to catch South China in Singapore was something quite memorable as well.  The match between Tampines Rovers was never going to be easy because we are playing away on a plastic pitch, so I guess the lads had it the hard way.  On the terrace, there were probably about 20 South China fans (though most of them I have never seen before in my life), and we were up against about 1000 others locals.  Surprisingly, the Tampines side was so quiet that apparently my voice was the really outstanding one  in the stadium.  In a way, I guess the few of us turned this into our home ground!  Admittedly, without my usual comrades on the terraces (there were 2 who were there, so that made it 3), it was a bit hard.  There was no drum beats to follow, and since there were only those few of us who are used to singing and chanting during the match, when we got tired, we really were and there wasn’t anyone who could take over from us.  So I guess it’s very important to form a big team of supporters who would sing and chant, not just to increase the volume, but also to cover for one another!  It felt good that the few of us who made the trip to Singapore did make a little difference for the lads.

As far as the match was concerned, I think it was a fair result, though I did think the referee was a bit too much on the strict side as shown by those two red cards which I thought were not really necessary.  Having said that, I thought the South China lads played well enough, though they probably might want to practice more on their shooting because if some of those shots have turned into goals, we probably wouldn’t have to endure such a nervy time!  Having said that, I was confident that the lads would pull through.  I was certain that our lads are better than the lot from Tampines and given that we are in mid-season, our form should be better than them.  Some of those “fans” might not be happy with winning “just” 2-1, but for me, a win is a win and I’m not going to complain too much about it.  You don’t get upset or angry with your team winning matches.

As most of you would have known, South China won the game, and would be heading to Thailand to take on Chonburi in the second qualifying match.  I won’t be going to Thailand for the game, but if the lads could overcome the odds and beat Chonburi, the next stop would be Beijing, where Beijing Guo’an awaits.  If the lads do make it to Beijing, I’m gonna be there too!

 

Trip.

Some of you may already know, I’ll be heading back to Singapore for the Lunar New Year.  It’s going to be a rather short trip – literally just for the Lunar New Year – so it’s going to be quite packed.  My itinerary is looking like this at this point of time:

30 January 2014 (Thursday)

• Fly in from Hong Kong on SQ863, estimated to arrive in Singapore at 5:30 p.m.
• Go home for reunion dinner

31 January 2014 (Friday)

• Probably have to go visit relatives

1 February 2014 (Saturday)

• Nothing on yet, hopefully there’s no relatives to visit

2 February 2014 (Sunday)

• Church in the morning (haven’t decide which one to go)
• University friends house gathering (wow, this is the 12th year we know one another)
• AFC Champions League: Tampines Rovers vs South China at Jalan Besar Stadium

3 February 2014 (Monday)

• Fly out of Singapore at 8:30 a.m. on flight SQ860, scheduled to arrive in Hong Kong at 12:15 p.m.
• Maybe, just maybe, I’d go for the Lunar New Year Cup Fina at the Hong Kong Stadium in the afternoonl?

Let me know if you guys are keen for a meet up?  I do believe I would have the whole of Saturday free to meet people.

Singapore.

OK I’m not in Singapore yet, but I will be next week.  Would be having a week of holidays and it would be nice to be home to see my parents and friends. The last time I was in Singapore I could only spend a couple of hours to have a meal with my family, and didn’t manage to see any of my friends. Hopefully this one week is going to make up for that. Initially my stay in Singapore this time round was supposed to be somewhat different, but plans get changed and now I have more time to myself.

This September was in a way quite special because it’s the first time that I’m heading home to Singapore instead of doing a trip somewhere else. Since returning to Hong Kong, I always have a habit of travelling around in September (except 2007 when I was starting my last job). If I could recap…

2008: Tokyo
2009: Taipei and Seoul
2010: Shanghai and Seoul
2011: Taipei
2012: Seoul and Busan

As you can see, it seems like I have always been travelling around East Asia in September, so this September is kinda special! And the good thing about my job is that I tend to be more free from the second week of September. This year is a slight exception because of some changes at my job, but since I’ve applied for my leave before that happened, so I guess I’m still good.

By the way, I’ll be in Singapore from 18th to 24th September, arriving around evening time on 18th and flying off in the morning of 24th. To be honest, I can’t wait to fly off next Wednesday!

Home.

For someone who’s born in Hong Kong, raised in Singapore and then making a living in Hong Kong, it can be quite difficult to get him to answer where his home is. But for me, I guess it’s simple for me – both are my homes. Hong Kong is where my life started, but without those 15 years in Singapore, the me right now would not have happened. So matters concerning both Hong Kong and Singapore are my business no matter what. But today I want to talk about Singapore, partly because of this event.

I think the problem in Singapore is quite simple. It’s the incumbent PAP government that is not making sense. I mean, I would be the first to stand up and admit that I’m an immigrant, but does that mean that I’m for the government to receive more and more foreigners into the country? My answer is a straight-forward “no”. Some may say “Of course, you have gotten yourself a Singapore passport now so you can happily reject those people who come in” – let’s not even go there. I’m always happy if there are people who genuinely want to choose Singapore as their home, settle and build their families there. But there is always so much that the tiny island of Singapore can hold. When you have MRT breaking down, once-every-50-years floods happening once every couple of months, and all the other problems that come along with it, surely a government should be smart enough to realize something is wrong? Surely a government, with all its prided scholars at the helm, should realize that the country has not been equipped to support so many people?

Of course they may argue that things will improve, they will strengthen things and increase their loads. But these things take time, and why are they telling us things that will happen in the future when they can’t even solve the problems now? I understand that there is always a process in solving problems, and I can forgive them for not being to solve all problems immediately. But when you are not even trying to admit there are problems, that in my opinion is the biggest problem.

To me, all these years watching the PAP trying to run the country is almost becoming a joke. They invented the GRC so that people are forced to vote 5 or 6 people into the parliament at one go, and then after so many years thinking that this was an unbreakable fortress, Workers Party came in with 5 credible and impressive candidates and won a GRC – slapping PAP in the face. Then we had 2 by-elections, one in Hougang and one in Punggol East (which I can never understand why they don’t just call it Sengkang instead). PAP couldn’t win back in one, and then lost another one. Surely some smart people up there would have realized that the sentiments on the ground are leaning towards the Workers Party? Surely they should understand that people’s hearts have changed and they would not take the crap that the PAP is dishing at them? To put up such a white paper so shortly after an election loss proves that this PAP government just doesn’t learn. It simply has no idea what’s happening on the ground, and they just do not know what the people are thinking.

How can Singaporeans trust a government when it does not even understand what a “Singaporean” mean? I saw someone unfolding a placard labelled “Waiting for 2016” – PAP would do well to take that seriously, and no, the people don’t mean voting PAP back in the government again in 2016.

The 1998 Series (Part One).

After “Reply 1997”, it seems that those old memories would keep rushing back, and I find myself stopping to think about those days, and I think it might be interesting for me (and hopefully for you too) to write a little about those days. As I have always said, my happiest studying days were that 2 years in junior college, and also that 4 and a half years in university. For my years in university, you can always refer back to the entries from 2002 to 2006. But I don’t think I’ve recorded my days in junior college, or pre-university / senior high, whatever you call it.

Those days in Singapore the system was kind of weird. You actually go through two rounds of exams – one from your own junior high, and one national exams. The junior high exams would determine if you get into a junior college (JC) for the first three months of the next academic year as the national exams results are not out until March. Luckily I did decent enough for both exams and was able to spend my two years of JC in the same college. Anyway that’s not the point. Who’s interested in education systems anyway?

In that first three months, we go to school wearing our own junior high school uniforms. My JC was one which was popular among many students, so there could easily be uniforms from 40 or 50 schools during that period. That was fine, what wasn’t was that because traditionally my junior high school had shorts as the uniform, so it was quite weird for us to still be wearing shorts even though we were senior high students. And for that reason, we often got mocked by those schools who sported trousers. I didn’t quite bother with the mockery because since Singapore was a hot place anyway, wearing shorts suited me fine – I guessed I never had any fashion sense then, and that hasn’t changed!

Anyway for that first three months, technology advancement meant that the school has lifted the ban on pagers – we could actually bring them to school (just like what you saw on Reply 1997). Practically everybody had one, and the most popular pager back then was this Motorola Memo Jazz:

(Picture source: http://cockenaden.multiply.com/journal/item/12)

It was an alphanumeric pager, which meant that alpha texts could be displayed on the pager. But I didn’t have this. Instead I had another Motorola pager which I couldn’t remember the model – though I am quite sure that it was just a numeric pager. In those days, carrying an alphanumeric pager was so much an “in” thing that you don’t want people to know that you “only” had a numeric pager.

Anyway during that period, I still vaguely remember an incident about the pager. There was actually this relief teacher,  a recent graduate from the same college, who was taking my class during one of the lab lessons (I think it was Physics) and my pager beeped. She turned and asked who had that pager, before telling us that “pagers were not allowed in the college”. Some brave soul suddenly popped up and said “but teacher, the school has recently announced that we can bring pagers to school”. Apparently the teacher didn’t know the rule, and I think it must have been embarrassing for her.

During that first three months, I was in the Science stream (which almost was like a default for most), and I was taking Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry and German. I took German in my junior high, so since my college offered German at senior high level, I thought it would make perfect sense to continue taking. That turned out to be a wrong decision because the teacher wasn’t exactly a good one (there was a period that I thought he actually faked his qualifications to get the job at my college), and I was actually losing interest in the language. So I stopped doing German after that three months. As for Chemistry, I didn’t know why I chose that because it had never been my favourite subject – I guess it must have been a case where there was a cute girl in my orientation group that was doing the same combination which attracted me to do Chemistry. Again, after three months I regretted the decision and decided to do something else. So after that three months, I changed my subject combination (and class as well) to Mathematics, Physics, Computing and Economics. Some people called it suicide to change two subjects – I called it challenge.

Anyway during that first three months I had an interesting bunch of classmates – I think I was one of the only 5 guys in the class! We had a very strict class tutor who which was also a catalyst for me to change class. I really thought that I could get away from this strict teacher after switching class after those three months – turned out that she became my English teacher instead for the remaining of the year. Tough luck.

There were still a lot to write about 1998, I’ll keep them for later – I think I’m going to enjoy writing this series!