Thank you, Lion Cubs

I must have been one of the biggest skep­tics of the inau­gural Games, but over the last 12 days, I’ve been treated to some of the best things it has brought to our shores.

I’m just hop­ing we’ll for­get try­ing to show the world how we can do this and do that — it may take sev­eral more decades before we break the stu­pid infe­ri­or­ity com­plex that makes us call our­selves ‘the lit­tle red dot’ — but instead savor and remem­ber the enthu­si­asm and joy some of these kids have shown the older cyn­ics like me.

If you’ve been hid­ing under­neath a rock, let me tell you now, that Boys’ Own stuff was demon­strated in the bronze medal foot­ball match by our own Lion Cubs even with their cap­tain Jef­frey Light­foot hav­ing been taken off early in the game for a nasty gash that required stitches.

Our boys went and, accord­ing to their coach, over­played their hand, dis­obeyed coach­ing instruc­tions, and smacked four goals past the boys from Montenegro.

It’s been a long, long time since a local foot­ball team’s photo graced the front pages of our news broad­sheets, and just as long since one packed a sta­dium. I’d have bet that if the National Sta­dium had hosted the Cubs for the Games, the Kallang Roar would’ve made a come­back and scared the crap out of peo­ple rid­ing in the Sin­ga­pore Flyer.

Thank you, our home-grown boys.

Day 5 Football (19 Aug 2010)


Ah… Capella

My wife is nuts. She knows I’m under the gun with dead­lines loom­ing, and what does she do? She goes and books a villa at Capella Sin­ga­pore, so that I’ll have nice, tran­quil sur­rounds to do work in while we cel­e­brate our 4th wed­ding anniver­sary. How to be all angsty and writer-like, like that? Work beck­ons.


Banker!

We’ve been very lucky to have a baby boy who’s so easy to look after. He eats well, is able to play by him­self, and sleeps mostly to a sched­ule, and when we’re eat­ing out, he’s able to sit at the table for up to an hour — enough for us to fin­ish our meal


More than half of toys tested unsafe

The Con­sumers Asso­ci­a­tion of Sin­ga­pore (CASE) tested a bas­ket of 50 toys sold in Sin­ga­pore, and more than half were found to be unsafe. Naomi and I are not sur­prised. But what I’d like to know is, what kind of crap toy is this? The pic­to­r­ial list of toys is here, and I kinda agree


Gold for Singapore football?

OK chope. I’ve only just dis­cov­ered that there are only 6 teams com­pet­ing in the Youth Olympic Games foot­ball com­pe­ti­tion. So it’s not exactly a world stage for our boys due to a rul­ing that each coun­try can be rep­re­sented in only two team sports at the Games. That means the chances of a gold medal


Very full now, just ate my words

I watched snip­pets of the YOG open­ing cer­e­mony, and spent another hour on the Youth Olympic News Chan­nel on Starhub TV watch­ing inter­views and re-runs and won­dered why they didn’t have that on ear­lier. I learned many things about the Games and the ath­letes par­tic­i­pat­ing which should have been in the local media but wasn’t.


My National Day Parade

I remem­ber National Day Parade 1990 the most because it’s the NDP I was involved in. It was held at the Padang, and it fea­tured the most impres­sive mobile col­umn dis­play since inde­pen­dence, involv­ing all the mil­i­tary hard­ware and sol­diers (like us) of the day. At the begin­ning of that year, my bat­tal­ion mates and I


Support YOG, wear this t-shirt

Tired of peo­ple say­ing you should be inter­ested in the inau­gural Youth Olympic Games? Then wear this t-shirt and sup­port our organ­is­ers! Buy this and other apparel and acces­sories at my cafe­press shop made spe­cially for the occa­sion. Pro­ceeds will be donated to a char­ity which I haven’t decided on. What are you wait­ing for?


At La Petite Cuisine with le petite canard

Four years have passed since Naomi and I first dined at La Cui­sine — when she was still my fiance — and I had a chuckle read­ing that blog post about it. Nei­ther of us smoke any more, the maitre’d has since mel­lowed, and the restau­rant itself has since trans­formed itself into a much more


Is the YOG really a shambles?

For a world’s first ever event, the PR efforts are really really poor. I had to ask around sev­eral times where the open­ing cer­e­mony was (because I have a nephew vis­it­ing from Canada, and he’s really into his sport), and no-one knew. Some said the Padang, some said the National Sta­dium Oh Wait They Took