Dear Alan,

It was in the National Stadium on a sweaty night in July 1996, amidst a crowd of 40,000 that I saw you in the Black and White for the first time. In the 10 years that have passed, much has transpired. I have grown from a boy to a young man, and you have gone from a striker having to shoulder the burden of being the most expensive footballer in the world at that time to a goal-poacher whose legacy would reign on Tyneside far longer than those ten years.

I have since realised football is a cruel game not because it can bring grown men to tears (or extreme acts of violence), but in its almost painfully accurate allegory of life. You forced yourself to swallow the bitter pill of reality: that many lesser players have achieved bulging medal cabinets simply because they played for the right team at the right time.

Your reticence when asked about your career in hindsight masks the sad truth that what we have achieved, two FA cup and one Premiership runners-up medals, are plainly incommensurate to the effort you have shown each time you put on the jersey with unparalleled pride. One can only imagine what could have been had you not suffered those two career-threatening cruciate ligament injuries. . .

Days after your career came to its undignified end, you claimed you had lived the dream and never had regrets joining your hometown club. But I have got one regret Alan: I never got the chance to watch you play in person. And unlike the Geordie son of a sheet metal worker who harboured dreams to play for his hometown club, I will never have the chance to fulfil my dream.

Thank you Alan, for the goals, for the force wearing the armband, and more significantly, for the memories you have enriched every supporter with during the past ten turbulent years. You have, without a doubt, left behind a legacy that a 12-year-old could scarcely have imagined that humid July night.

fuck it. my exams are over, and that's what matters. i'll worry about my results when it comes knocking on my door. but as for now, i just want to put it behind me.

yes, don't ask me about it
no, i do not wish to be engaged further on the exams

as far as i'm concerned, its over. so there you go, fuck it.

(akan datang: a tribute to alan shearer)

to my dearest friends doing USE2304, thank you for reading my blog and helping me figure out why my stats counter has registered a phenonmenal rise these past few days. . . i would have liked to think that i was getting more popular, but alas. . .

"life (and stat counters) can only be lived (or turned) forwards, but can only be understood backwards. . . "

i finally found out how to upload photos to blogger, so here's a picture. good stuff comes to those who read my blog:


you have to conclude you're lazy if even the IVLE thinks so too. . .

forgetfulness: leaving 3 files of notes and readings for "making of a nation" and "sport and history" in my PGP room.

laziness: not wanting to make the trip down to collect them back.

plain, utter <insert more adjectives of similar meaning here> stupidity: doing the above actions. . . on the last weekend before your exams.

optimism: isn't that all i can fall back on now?

my bungee cord's fraying after a "tara-ble" EL2101 paper yesterday. i cannot die so soon, i still have 4 more papers awaiting to murder me, i feel obliged to give them a chance too.

procrastination is like masturbation. you do until you climax sibei song, and then it dawns on you in that moment of tragic anagnorisis. . . KNN why am i fucking myself? But by the time you realise, you've become a housefly trapped in the web of khee cong's pet spider. its too late.

what do you think i'm referring to? go figure. i assure you, you won't have to procrastinate on that.

i was having an almost perfect day, nice lazy weather, all my papers/presentations finally complete, and then this just had to piss me off:

i went out grocery-shopping with my mom at 8pm, and when we returned at 8.30pm, the little plant that we adopted outside our house had its leaves all plucked off and thrown on the floor, its one and only budding small fruit disappeared. wah seriously, i was (and still am damn upset) at this senseless act of vandalism to a plant. the following paragraphs are dedicated specially to the mystery vandal:

what the fuck the plant do to you? it got whisper to your mahjong kakis say your spouse look like lau bulldog meh? (its probably true lah, you got ever hear plants lie before?) somemore its not as though i go put a fucking rotting durian tree outside your door and then maggot from the fruit crawl into your asshole when you pak chiu cheng until wanna climax already, that one you cannot orgasm dulan i understand, i will also dulan one. KNN the tree is put at the common corridor, nearer my house somemore. i never see maggot before. you got what business go and disturb? cheebye kia.

you like if i tie you up and go pull your pubic hair off one at a time? don't like right? then you go do that to my plant for fuck? you better bloody go and thank your god today good friday you tonight fucking lucky i never see you. if you these type of lan jiao people cannot mind your lan jiao business then i jolly well bo bian have to mind for you lor, but if i fucking pull your pubic hair out you chum siong reasonable abit lah don't go and fucking scream macham you see hantu tek tek. you torture plant it never scream what, so why should you?

what piss me off more is that you go and take the small baby fruit that was just growing out, you know ah, everytime i book out from PGP go home i see the fruit until very shuang leh, then you go and take, how you expect me to feel? fucking overjoyed right?

motherfucking bastard you ruined my day. i curse your pet goldfish kena AIDS, i curse you never strike 4D until you turn 88 yrs old, i curse you next time progress package gahmen forget give you money, i curse you drive through changi village tyre pun-chek then all the sibei cannot make it bapok come up wave hello and show you their F-cup neh neh pok. but of course all these curse is i curse for fun. you wait till i catch you in the act one more time then give you one times jialat jialat.

i'm warning you, you bastard. you better watch out.

happy: i got 6/10 for the last EL quiz when i was expecting something like 3-4/10

not-so-happy: i still failed my EL2101 CA

salt-on-the wounds: i got 14/30

lesson learnt: fuck i shouldn't have bitched about it

don't you just feel like slapping people who say things like these. . .?

"I would like to talk about the longest verb construction possible in English. . . is 5 the maximum possible auxilary extension of a verb? hooray! I got 6 verbs in a row!"

"And not incidentally, the internet gave me a few more ideas of how to add verbs to the '5 verb complex'. . . So I have 7 verbs in a row! A new record. . ."

"But just mins later I saw another possibility. . . 8 verbs in a row....if I spent another hour thinking I might get to 10. . . lol"

Its plain idiotic. i hope some bonobo grabs hold and goes down on him or something. . .

when i first started this blog months ago, a number of you asked me about the quotations i've used. . . this is where the quote on the left side of my blog is taken from, one of all-time my favourite Metallica songs. . . what the song really means i'll leave it to your own interpretation


Unforgiven II, by Metallica (1997)

Lay beside me, tell me what they've done
Speak the words I wanna hear, to make my demons run
The door is locked now, but it's open if you're true
If you can understand the me, then I can understand the you

Lay beside me, under wicked sky
Through black of days, dark of night, we share these pair of lives
The door cracks open, but there's no sun shining through
Black heart scarring, darker still
No, there's no sun shining through
No, there's no sun shining through
No, there's no sun shining

What I've felt, What I've known
Turn the pages, turn the stone
Behind the door
Should I open it for you

What I've felt, what I've known
Sick and tired, I stand alone
Could you be there, 'cause I'm the one who waits for you
Or are you unforgiven too?

Come lay beside me, this won't hurt I swear
She loves me not, she loves me still, but she'll never love again
she lay beside me, but she'll be there when I'm gone
Black heart scarring, darker still
Yes, she'll be there when I'm gone
Yes, she'll be there when I'm gone
Dead sure she'll be there

What I've felt, What I've known
Turn the pages, turn the stone
Behind the door
Should I open it for you

What I've felt, what I've known
Sick and tired, I stand alone
Could you be there, 'cause I'm the one who waits for you

. . . Or are you unforgiven too? (emphasis mine)