Laos Finishes Ahead of Malaysia - Shameful...

Laos won the pre-SEA Games football tournament and yes, they used their U-23 squad while Malaysia who used their U-19, finished second behind them but for all intents and purpose, can we measure our national squad's performance with Laos?

I say yes because Laos is an amatuer nation in football and impoverished, economically compared to us. Apparently, Laos has been using Hoang Anh Gia Lai, Vietnam's V-League club as their base. Two points to note on this club, one, their name appears on the A-Boards during EPL matches and number two, Kiatisak Senamuang used to play there - I think he is at Chonburi club now.

Malaysia was quite awful judging by their inability to take on the Laotian in defence. Watching the match, the Laotian strikeforce just forced their way through and surprise, surprise, they looked more skillful than us - who have a professional league!

If this is our future team, then I guess we will continue to rot in the abyss of football dump. You always hear those PR Mat Salleh football experts from overseas, who when visiting here will say Malaysian footballers are skillful - well its a load of crap. Yesterday night's match just confirmed it.

Even though we sent an U-19 team, finishing behind Laos is not an excuse. Of course when they come back, words like "good exposure", "experience", "players showed good commitment but did not play to instructions", " good future ahead" will be spouted out from various FAM officials. You have been warned! :)

Teachers, Please Help SPI To Become A Sports Icon Again

Today's Star Metro carried a story titled "Bringing back glory to SPI"

Read the story by copying the link at

http://thestar.com.my/metro/story.asp?file=/2009/10/7/central/4824202&sec=central

Being an Old Paulian myself, of course I would read this story first because when you go to a school like St Paul's Instituition (SPI), the spirit remains with you forever, even way after you leave school.

Coming back to this story, the days when SPI was famous for hockey has long gone - now it's school in Tampin and Gemencheh that hogs the limelight in Negeri Sembilan (NS). Why and whatever happened?

I think at the end of the day, its down to dedicated teachers. Yes, the late Ashvin Patel (remembered he taught me Sejarah back in the days) was the inspiration behind the glory hockey days in SPI. Well, for the life of me, I am no hockey player and I hated hockey but when I went to The Sun in the sports desk, Menon, my then Boss and Sports Editor, made hockey as one of my beat when he heard I hated hockey in my interview.

I think I started liking hockey after that - a) because easy to get stories from that beat b) easy to cover the matches even though the national junior league and even the senior league matches was a big yawn, because all the sports writers covering the match will share information on how the goal was scored even though most of us will be chit chatting about matters not related to hockey!

Ok, enough of digressing. To put the short and the long together, teachers play an important role in nurturing our future stars. Today, I think there is not enough of them out there. I don't hear SPI's name anymore excelling in sports. Is it because teachers are more interested to conduct tuition after school? Or pupils are not interested in sports?

It is like the chicken and egg conundrum - blame the teacher or the student?

I think its more the teachers than the students as they are 'supposed' to nurture and impress good values onto the students be it in studies or sports.

So teachers, you better get ya butts moving and put SPI back at where it belongs - the peak of sporting excellence. No excuses, because it is not to say that SPI is producing straight As students who appears on the front pages of the local media come announcement of exam results time!

Help Not One, Help All

Mother Nature is on a rampage now - well it is to be accepted since we are nicely raping our Earth from its resources.

Well, certain people will benefit from this raping (we know who you are) but then, let us spare a thought for those less fortunate, those who are and will not make money from exploiting the Earth. The poor souls in Indonesia, Phillipines and Samoa.

What irritates me is the the way we Malaysians help people - always double standards. Why are we going all out to help the Indons but we turn a blind eye towards the poor Phillipinos and Samoa? Is it because they are far away and they don't worship a common God?

When helping, we should look at everyone as God's creation, not just because we are of the same religion. This one-sided attitude is a human weakness, not the religion. I am sure all religions' preach Godliness, goodness and kindness to fellow humans. The only sad thing is, nobody wants to do it!