Tuesday, February 18, 2014

love for football

someone once mentioned that if you love something or someone, you give in your all. today it is something. football.. or, as the Americans called it, "soccer".

i have loved the game for at least 9 years now. i am an Arsenal fan for 8 years, a Real Madrid fan for 2 years, a fan of Spain's national football team for 7 years now. there are many crazy things i do for football, be it playing in real life or watching the beautiful game.

for watching, i can list numerous crazy shit i done. staying up all night to watch the Champions League final numerous years and going to school at 6am thereafter. waking up at 3am to catch Spain winning Euro Cup in 2007 and World Cup in 2009. of course, many more.

my point? i would do really anything for the sake of the love for football. tonight will not be an exception. big clash big match between Man City and Barcelona. tomorrow night.. Arsenal and Bayern Munich. both a 3:45am here. that's how i roll.

lastly, let me be super cliché and end off this post with a quote from a legendary footballer.




Sunday, February 16, 2014

ice and water

remember those times in primary school where during breaks. guys and girls would play and run about the the field or playground during weekends? you play common games of catching, declaring someone being the catcher and instantly disperse. well those games seem pretty lame now and i have to agree to that. however, of all catching games, i realise that the game "Ice & Water" actually indirectly taught us quite a bit about real life.

okay, before i move on, i have to consider those who did not have as great childhood as me and explain how that catching game is played. well, in "Ice & Water" the catcher will chase the other players and attempt to catch them. upon tapping them, the victim will be frozen and has to stay rooted until other survivors come and tap him/her, enabling the victim to run again. the catcher can choose to guard the frozen one and attempt to freeze those survivors who attempt rescue or go ahead and run off to freeze the others. the catcher wins when all are frozen.



well, so yeah, this game sound simple and indeed it can be fun for young kids in a group to play in the playground or open field. surprisingly, this kid game teaches kids some things they will understand and see in later stages of life.




from a catcher's perspective, "Ice & Water" teaches us to tackler he weaker ones before moving on to the tougher ones. the catcher will definitely go for the slowest runner first and so on. similar to you daily routines, one should always take step by step. start with basics or easy ones before moving up. you can't learn to run before you learn to walk.

from a runner's perspective, "Ice & Water" teaches us that if you don't improve or push yourself you will bound to die. if you are slow or lagging behind in speed, you will get caught first. you always have to seek ways to improve yourself and to push yourself beyond your limits in some time or other. basic survival requirement. somehow, this sounds like the Biology term of survival of the fittest.

from a catcher's perspective, "Ice & Water" also teaches us that whatever we earn can be taken away and thus we have to safeguard those we hold dear. the catcher will at times safeguard the frozen victims to prevent them being risk taken away or rescued. same situation, we have to safeguard whatever we earned especially when you have to run quite a bit to attain them.

ahh.. one of those moments when one reminisce childhood playtime.