Tuesday Trudge

I’ve been feeling under the weather for days now and have to muster all my strength to go to work. Admittedly nursing flu and cough while juggling work give me a headache at times and yet... I have to be brave and strong about it.

Just like van Persie (eh, why am I comparing myself to him?). The latest news is that he’ll now be seeking placenta treatment from a doctor in Serbia (not a desperate housewife!) who earlier helped PSV Eindhoven’s Danko Lazovic. RvP is not blaming Chiellini for his injury, stating it was a fair tackle (just like Cesc didn’t blame Alonso for his injury last year). So it’s hard for me to hate Chiellini either; though I still think some international matches are totally unnecessary.

Yet more irritating noise from Barcelona, apparently offering cash plus players for Captain Cesc, and Puyol parroting Xavi. Why don’t you just let him be? He’s happy at Arsenal, he’s Captain – heck the youngest Captain in the Premier League, and he’s still the same old Cesc. Do us a favour and stop distracting him and team from chasing a record.

I do wonder who will replace RvP as striker as we continue to fly without him. Maybe some reserve players? On another unrelated news, another Arsenal striker apparently has scored with Caroline Fleming, a Danish baroness 13 years his senior and ex-wife of Rory Fleming, heir to the James Bond’s Ian Fleming fortune. Hopefully he’ll start scoring goals again soon too.

Flying Without Wings

Sorry for all you non-footie enthusiasts but today’s entry will be mainly on that.

Dammit, I probably shouldn’t have titled my last entry that because now we’re really in pain. Robin’s wings have been temporarily clipped, or rather, he has ankle injury. With Nick out, we could potentially face striker problems. This shortly after Robin insisting he’s not a natural striker like Torres or Dogbark.

I’m refusing to panic. We are not a two-man team and we have always been facing injury issues anyway. We had to make do before without Dudú for 18 months, Rosický for more than a season, Cesc for almost four months... and this time, it’s no different. We simply have to make do. I have confidence that the rest of the team would step up their efforts especially with difficult games ahead and prove that we can fly without wings, or rather without Robin. Ramsey, for instance, has shown why Wenger chose to sign him; he was man of the match in the Wales-Scotland match over the weekend with two assists and one goal. I’m praying Captain Marvel will not be injured when playing for his country and Xavi, can you please stop sounding like a broken record already? Perhaps next time you would want to listen to other people’s too like Reyes.

Whoops-a-daisy, the pictures of those Arsenal stars giving us the warm and fuzzies apparently shouldn’t be shown until 18 November 2009 for legal reasons. Please don’t sue me.. will offer football commentary for free. You can apparently view the videos here and here (I can’t because of the firewall). In other news, go here for a chat with Nick Hornby, the Gooner author of Fever Pitch.

November Pain

International weeks are such a pain

Met my new neighbour who just moved in last Saturday and he didn’t seem particularly friendly. Oh well, I guess some people would say the same of me. It’s a family of I-don’t-know-how-many-children. I have heard their voices but they are always back from their daily ferrying of items from wherever they were staying before late at night and once they were even moving things after 10 pm and in the rain too. I don’t care for their eccentricities (which include opening and closing and locking and relocking of doors at 1.50 am) but I do care a great deal when I’m denied my beauty sleep. They were hammering away at close to 11 pm, 11.30 pm and 11.40 pm on Tuesday evening. What’s The Frequency, Kenneth? My response was to knock back the wall with a cane, a faint response if any I’m sure.

How to deal with such neighbours?

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Met up an old buddy on Tuesday together with Lin. Too short a time to catch up on too much. A good time was had nevertheless.

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This is my horoscope for today: ‘It’s natural to compare yourself to other people, but there really is no comparison. You have your own, unique personality. So what if you’re not every person’s cup of tea? All that matters is that the people who get you are the people you want to be around. So please, stop wasting your energy trying to impress someone who just isn’t worth it. Watch out for others who want to change you!’ I don’t believe in horoscope readings but I agree with the statement. Why compromise your personality to suit someone else’s idea of how you should be? Change if you want to but not because someone else wants you to.

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I’m spending longer and longer hours at work. A 12-hour workday is sadly becoming the norm. Normal life should resume in less than a fortnight, can’t wait!

Oh to be able to live a celebrity life and wear costumes for fun. For your info, these Gunners dressed up to make a fundraising film for the Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH), Arsenal’s charity for this season. According to my source, the fundraising film will be shown at half-time during the match against Chelsea, on 29 November 2009.

Someone’s not a happy bunny here
If Shava thought England was strange before... heh

Update: apparently, Shava chose the shark suit. The other lads had to make good with what they were given.

There’s also an online auction for captain armbands (Cesc, Gerrard, Terryble) starting today to raise money for the Willow Foundation and the Steve Bernard Foundation.

Curious

I have some questions to ask you readers.

First, have you ever dreamt of something so intense (for lack of a better word) that you woke up crying/sobbing? I’ve had a few of those dreams, the most recent being on Friday evening. I woke on Saturday morning crying and, for some reason, continued sobbing even though I was already awake. I can remember bits and pieces of the dream and while I was feeling hurt in the dream, it wasn’t as if I dreamt of death or dying. And like I said, this was not the first time.

Second, have you ever felt like interrupting people just because you want to help them out? Like when people are debating about routes, or where to get something, how to get somewhere etc, and you are dying to share what you know, to help them save time, cut down on journey time, or even save money? I’m no maven and I sure don’t know a lot of things but there are times when I want badly to share what I do know especially when I hear conversations like that around me. Would I be interpreted as a busybody? I’m aware that not everyone appreciates being informed of things (in fact there’s a person to whom I sometimes suggest certain work shortcuts – nothing illegal, you understand - to improve work but who still prefers doing things her own way and I take it she’s just not interested). What about you? What would you do? Would you just keep quiet and hope they will ask you for advice, would you try to offer advice, or would you just walk away and hope they’d figure it out themselves?

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Watched The Ugly Truth on DVD some weekends ago; it’s one of those just-okay rom-coms and I’m glad I didn’t fork out money to catch it at the theatre (why Gerard Butler?). It’s about Abby, the accomplished but romantically incompetent producer who enlisted the help of Mike, the host of the titular TV show, to help her land a neighbour she fancies. Mike has an emotional maturity of an adolescent and believes that the ugly truth is that men are sex-crazed beings and it’s the woman’s job to accommodate this. Abby finds Mike disgusting (as did I) while he in turn finds she is a control freak.

One line caught my attention towards the end, i.e. when Abby told Colin (the doctor who fell for her carefully-crafted image) this: ‘I couldn’t show you any of that. Because who would love somebody like that? No one.’ And it got me thinking how far true this statement is. With me, what you see is what you get. I don’t believe in pretending to be someone I’m not: after all the true colours of a person will show up sooner or later anyway. Yes, the ugly truth about me is that I’m flawed, have OCD, sensitive, emotional, have a short fuse, just to name a few but better you know it now than later. Better you know my true colours than me feeling guilty for letting you think otherwise.

Yes, it’s hard to love someone like me but I like to think that someone can still love me regardless, and love me for who, how and what I am, not what they wish I am or think I should be. Because then it’ll be conditional love, right?

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What do you do after you lost a match (or made an error in the context of everyday life)? Do you do a post-mortem or an analysis of what went wrong? Or do you blame everyone else - the referee, the opponents, even another manager altogether – but yourself? Like gaffer, like player. You’re a wretched excuse of a player, Fletcher. Moan United!

Definitely, Maybe

The weekend started bright (as if to make up for the evening showers of the past week) and overall was one hot scorching weekend but for the heavy rain on Saturday evening, which you’d expect anyway after such a heat-wave. It was so hot on Saturday that I felt close to melting and I was even reminded of my experience in Myanmar. And yet some states are under water.

I was supposed to go for a facial Saturday morning but because I forgot the voucher, I had to reschedule my appointment. I’m sorry to say I lost my temper a bit on Saturday morning on two occasions but I reminded myself to keep my cool and the day progressed better after that. Did a spot of shopping and later went to pick my clothes at the tailor’s – only to realise I left them on the bench where I waited for Abah to pick me up. Yes, ditsy is my middle name.

Met up with a distant cousin yesterday morning with Akak and the kids. It has been decades, yes, decades, since we last met.

Anyway. Arsenal travelled to the West Midlands Saturday evening (the kick-off would have to be at 1730 GMT) and I actually got up after a light nap – of which I kept having recurring dreams of football (you know you’re in too deep when you keep dreaming of football) – to watch the action. I was a bit nervous for I knew the Wolves had drawn in their last three matches, and they won over Fulham. And in the first 20 minutes, they did try their best to thwart us and Arsenal were also struggling a bit to settle in. I must say Diaby’s injury was actually a silver lining for he made way for Song; this released Ramsey to partner more freely with Cesc. Unfortunately the hosts shot themselves in the foot by gifting us two own goals (though I’m inclined to think that Dudú did score the second one; he was decent enough not to celebrate the first goal. Oh well, maybe it’s because Dudú’s not English). Captain Fabulous then added a third after a beautiful pass and set-up (he’s so classy, he immediately deflected the attention to van Persie), and Shava tested the keeper with a shot before rifling in a goal punched away by the keeper from the resultant corner. At the 87th minute I was thinking that maybe we’d keep a clean sheet after all but no, we had to concede a goal, didn’t we. For full report, go here.

I don’t think we played all that badly although this article seems to suggest that we didn’t play wonderfully either (even our opponent said we were better than Germany!). In any case, we’re on course to a century of goals (and we are doing much better than Man Sh*ty thus far. No way is Cesc going to join that club, ever). Cesc could have scored another brace following the mid-week heroics but hey, it looks like he’s only human after all. The skipper has said that it will only feel special if we do win something at the end of the season so as the gaffer remarked, let’s keep our humility and continue playing our game. After last night’s match between Chelsh*t and ManUre, maybe, just maybe, we’ll be able to win some silverware this season (the title, please, Captain Marvel?). OK, at the moment, it’s definitely a maybe; the gaffer hates November and rightly so after our bad results this time just last year but hopefully we’ll ride it out. I don’t want to compare but can’t help noticing that Liverpool look like they are doing a repeat of our poor start to last season this time around (on this note, I’d noticed it even in the pre-season when they lost friendly matches. Yes, of course they scored five against Singapore but anyone would win over Singapore).

And hopefully, when we do win something, the gaffer would do a repeat of this, like he did last weekend.

Totally unrelated I know, but today is the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall. I have been lucky to have been able to visit the city twice since that historic day and also other ex-Communist countries and cities.

Flying Start

There are two sites that I rely heavily on when searching for lodging. However, even these two links are not enough as I discovered when trying to book lodging for a coming trip. In the end, I visited ratestogo.com and hotels.com, even Firefly Holidays and AirAsia Go Holiday before trying out a local site. Let me just share these: rates on ratestogo.com change every day (suffice to say I will not be trying it out again!) and that all five sites yielded totally different rates for what seemed to be similar rooms. Strange, eh?

In terms of cost (the priciest first) for this particular destination, they rank as follows: Firefly Holidays, Hotels.com, AirAsia Go Holiday, ratestogo.com and the local link (the local link not only costs the least, its rate is also inclusive of breakfast).

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Arsenal made a flying start to November when they strolled (I think ‘flew’ would be a more appropriate word) through the Emirates against AZ Alkmaar. I’m telling you, it looked sooo easy at times to raise the bar. Classy skipper Cesc bagged a brace (he looked as surprise as anyone with his first goal) and Nasri made a wonderful return with the Arsenal’s second goal and even Diaby (!!) managed to get a goal. Three assists from Shava, pity he didn’t score. Let’s hope his goal-scoring days will return soon. Still, I guess Koeman was right about us having weakness for we let them leave with a consolation goal. For the match report, go here.

One match down and four more to go. Let’s give them some kisses and thumbs up, shall we.

Smashing Pumpkins

It was Halloween’s Day on Saturday and I headed back to Ampang for the weekend, walking quite a bit (and with my backpack; that ought to have burnt some serious calories) along the way. Darn, forgot my pedometer again but I reckon I walked more than two km that day. First stop was at the dentist’s before trying out the massage centre just two doors away. I wanted to do cupping but the lady – fresh off from the boat from mainland China – gestured and signalled that it’d be better if I went for a massage first before the cupping so I decided to give it a try.

This time, I had 16 cups placed on me symmetrically (the KK one placed them haphazardly on my back). And this time, it didn’t hurt as much although yes, my skin was stretched here and there. I have a good mind to go for my third cupping before the year-end.

It was also a North London derby on Saturday with Kop flop Spuds Captain Keane making bold claims just before the match that his side is better than Arsenal (yup, shortly after losing at home to Stoke City). Surely you are kidding us, Robbie.

But as it turned out, it was Arsenal who were trick-and-treating at the Emirates, with Captain Fabulous unceasingly knocking on our neighbour’s door. The first forty minutes were even and a bit flat (not as flat as the Fulham-Liverpool first half but still flat) until van Persie took advantage of the defensive shutdown by the Spuds and smashed in a goal. Then eleven seconds after replay, well, 10.8 seconds actually (enough to rival Usain Bolt), Captain Cesc stole the ball and dribbled boldly forward. His individual genius overcame collective idiocy and he waltzed in a second goal for the Arsenal. And that should be enough to send Arsenal to second position (well, before ManUre took on Blackburn shortly after) but (hopefully) having learnt the lessons of the past week, the lads didn’t slow down in the second half. Captain Cesc had earlier stated that we would not change the way we play and that we must kill the Spuds to maintain our challenge for the top spot and van Persie did just that by slotting in a third (again, thanks to Sagna) to earn three points for the home side, the 1000th Premier League point for Wenger and leave the visitors in disarray. It proved to be a fantastic week for the gaffer though he remained agitated on the sideline (you would have thought we’d let in three goals instead) – upset as he couldn’t communicate with his players, yes, such was the noise at the Emirates. For more match report and pictures, go here and here.

In other footie-related news, we’ll travel north to meet the Sh*tty team again for the Carling Cup quarter-final. You-know-whore had stated recently that he had actually apologised to van Persie for the stamping although the latter said otherwise. Despite saying the case is closed, the Dutchman seemed eager to pay another visit to Sh*tty.




So, is there still any question or doubt who the top dogs were? I think not. It’s matches like these that really confirm that footie, for all the frustration and anger it brings us at times, is really the best thing in the world and it makes us feel that everything is beautiful and right with the world. I’ll leave you with pictures from Saturday because they really tell a thousand more words.