Life is But A Journey.. Enjoy The Ride!!

Come on REF
Sunday, February 12, 2006

Remember when you were young, you were brought to the swimming pool for the very 1st time. Your oversized swimming coach threw you straight into the deep end of the pool. You felt frightened, you then feel lost, what are you doing here? in such a unfamiliar setting. The natural need for survival soon kick in, you begin to grab on to anything you can get your hands on. You slowly begin to get comfortable with this new environment, you released your grip on the wall. You kicked once, then you kicked twice, after sometime you learnt to keep yourself alive in the water. That's what i felt when i was given my assessment as a referee today.

Was damn excited today, this is the one and only practical test given to me, if i screw up, my career(which never started btw) as a ref will be over. Was at the marina bay mrt station more than half and hour before the agreed meeting time between my collegue and my close friend during the course Shah. Made our way to the marina south open fields and got changed. Shortly after the senior Ref(there to guide us and take over in case we screw up) and the assessor( the gudge, jury and excecusioner). Met up with both the teams, most of the player's age were larger than the combined age of me and shah. Started off as the assistant referee2 in the 1st half. Had a wrong offside decision where i raised the flag for the person being in an offside position despite him being not interferring with play. For all the football newbies out there, law 12 of the law book states that it is an offence if the player is in an offside position and he must be 1)interferring with play. 2) interferring with an opponent. 3) gaining an advantage by being in that position. Besides that wrong decision, the 1st half went on quite well for me other than the constant argueing by the players on my decisions. Was given an assurance later by the assessor that my offside decisions(or no offside btw) are accurate and good.

Took over the whistle from Shah at half time. Was advised to be strict and confident with my decisions by Ravi( the senior ref). I followed his advice and tried to be as firm as possible, in other words i put my game face on. Was abit loss at the start but gradually i got into the game. Was strict to the players, instructing them to play to my whistle when a decision does not go their way, gave the yellow cards when its needed(3 of them in fact). I looked at my watch, it says 43mins++ so i thought to myself, i'll be safe from this game. Just then i saw a tackle from behind in the penalty area and rightfully gave a penalty. The players felt frustrated that the penalty was given to their opponents in the last min of the game when the score is still dead-locked at 1-1. They also felt that the decision was unjustified. I recalled from the course that we were told to back away from the spot once we give the decision. Just then i saw this guy in a roma jersey charging at me and punched me in my chest. My 1st reaction was to reach for my red card in the right pocket, however on 2nd thoughts, i took my hands out of the pocket. If i were to show the card to him at that moment, i would create a bigger mess and the game will turn out to become a footbrawl. It is also a friendly game so its not that good if i gave him a red card. Blew the final whistle with a score of 3-1. Had a long debrief with my assessor after the game. He told us about our good points and our bad points. The good point for me is that i was brave in giving out my decisions and i was very vocal in the game, in terms of shouting play on etc. The major fault in my game is my positioning, the Ref, ball, assistant Ref formation was constantly missing. The signalling requires a little fine tuning. Overall both of us did well in this difficult game, made worse by the over enthusiam by the players. And we passed, we'll be getting our badges soon after all of the trainies had completed their practical tests

Posted at 2/12/2006 09:21:00 PM

VJC4-TPJC0
Saturday, January 28, 2006

Had a bad game yesterday. Let an easy ball go under my body into the net. VJC were not as great as they were reputed to be. They did not win the game, we lost it. 2 persons, wee pin and i must we held totally responsible for the defeat. We made 4 uncharacteristic mistakes which cost us the game. Got to pull up our socks...

Posted at 1/28/2006 07:33:00 PM

YO
Friday, January 20, 2006

Went to visit Zhen Hui with Liew Siew. Liew Siew might not be an excellent teacher, but he's definetly a caring one lah. Saw Zhen Hui lying there with his usual gay frens. There are more people visiting him from yong peng's class than our class lah. Recalled how funny it was when he broke his arm. So here's the story of zhen hui's broken arm. He has just got into a soccer game for barely 3 seconds, this was when the ball came to him over his head. He then attempted to do a bycicle kick when he landed on his hand. For your information, the ball was inches from entering the goal. He laid on the group for a split second. He then stood up showing his extremly out shape hand and said in a overly calm manner" EH, I think i just broken my arm." He then waited outside the office to wait for the admin guy Mr chu to send him to the hospital. In the mean while, he kept himself busy by taking photos of himself and his broken hand. Yong peng then accopanied him to the hospital. He had a reconstruction surgery last night and he looked pretty alive today when we went to visit him.

Photo of his arm

Damn tired now, body felt like i had just wanked 10 times in a row. Just completed a 6km run in the run just now. My speed was slower than an auntie chasing after a bus.

Posted at 1/20/2006 09:06:00 PM

Trip up caldecott hill
Sunday, January 15, 2006

Woke up early this morning to meet the rest of the soccer guys at Eunos mrt. We were given tickets by lovely Amanda(Noordin's friend???) to watch the recording of ESPN kickoff, a new football trivia show debuting on ESPN soon. A hour later, we reached caldecott hill, the home of the stars in Singapore.

Made all the way up hill to the reception area. Aparently we were too excited and reached there too early, before the hosts and the guests of the show even arrived. So we decided to leave our prints in caldecott hill in an once in a life time expericence for us. Captain SYED wrote"TPJC soccer was here" on the pillar downstairs. Took some pictures to kill time..

Dict and I posing with Stefenie Sun(how come i could not see

anything below???)

Idol wannabes...

Finally we were ushered into the studio.

Studio 4

This is how it looked inside the studio

Basically, our jobs is to be a good audience behind the contestants. We have to follow these simple rules:

1:Clap and cheer when instructed to do so

2:Smile when instructed

3:Look nervous when instructed

4:Keep quiet unless someone asks you to make noise.

We were basically free actors. Got to do some "shots" of us clapping, looking nervous etc. after the game has ended so that it can be edited into the show.

Took some pics with Andy Penders the host and Sir Les Ferdinand after the 2nd show has ended...

This with Andy Penders(he's a nice and funny guy on and off the show)

(Taken with Les Ferdinand.Damn big guy by the way)

(Another pic of him signing autographs)

Made our way downhill after that...

This trip was really an eye opener for me. Firstly, i get to meet 2 great footballers in Les Ferdinand and Lee Sharpe whom alot of us idolise on the tv since we were young. 2ndly, i was able to see how an actual recording of a show works, from the stage crew to the asistant producers and producers and even "the crowd warmer" someone who actually gets the audience "high" b4 the recording starts. Notice that i was in different tops b4 and after the recording-we were told to bring as xtra top as we are recording 2 seperate episodes of the show. It will be funny if the same person in the crowd appeared on 2 weeks in the same top.

Posted at 1/15/2006 08:24:00 PM

44 reading logs in 3 hrs
Saturday, January 14, 2006

Woke up at 8 this morning. Turned the storeroom inside out to take out the newspapers for the past 2 months. Finished 44 reading logs in all b4 noon.

Going to cadecolt hill tomorrow, home of mediacorp. Attending some espn recording, hope that it'll be an interesting experience

Posted at 1/14/2006 08:15:00 PM

Rain rain go away....
Monday, January 09, 2006

Been raining alomst non-stop for the past 3 days. The rain has turned the soccer field in the school resembling more like a padi field than a soccer field. Ended up getting my entire body coated in mud during soccer training today. Some idoit stepped on my knee in one of those challenges during training. It's now damn swollen, this means limited mobility for the next 2 days.

1st day of tutorial lessons, new teachers and stuff and lots of hw to catch up. Like what the chinese teacher kept repeating for the whole lesson today--NO LIFE for the months ahead....

Posted at 1/09/2006 09:06:00 PM

97329772
Saturday, January 07, 2006

Yes i had my phone no. printed on the back of my class jersey. Its not for girls to look at it to call me. The real reason is...actually i did not even know the reason i had my phone no. printed on the back of my shirt. Heard some cheebye gal commenting it as disgusting, come on lah i'm sure that you have better things to do right. Other than speaking bad of someone at the back so loudly that even a deaf guy living in the top floor can hear that. I might feel that i need a gal sometime but that does not mean that i'm desperate. If i'm so desperate i'll go everywhere asking for the phone no of all the female species in the planet. The things that i do sometimes are meant just to be a joke and not to be taken seriously. I cannot control how others view me, some might think that i'm damn weird or i'm just simply a big pink piece of cheebye. I just want some pple out there to know that i might not be wat i seemed to be to them.

Orientation night's over. Was quite dissapointed with my performance as an ogl as a whole. Firstly, i was not present for alot of things. I had to leave early in 4 out of the 6 days of orientation including the ogl camp. I was not close to being enthu in participating in the various activities such as the dances and the games. I did not bother to remember the names of all my ogm. I was away from my family for most of the time, prefering to spend my time sitting at the back of the hall or slacking in the canteen. I did not bond with any of my ogm or my fellow ogls. I teach the juniors to skip lessons and all. The list goes on.....

Will be recieving the bursary tomorrow. The government decided to give vouchers than cash, did not know when did this practice started since i did not qualify for this award for a very long time but i do not like that

Posted at 1/07/2006 12:02:00 AM