Laurentia Tan for Sportsperson of Year 2012 !

Laurentia has made many Singaporeans proud of her dedication and tenacity

          Tonight, 2 momentous events will take place.One is for sporting excellence for the last year, the Sportsperson of the Year 2012 will be decided. The other is the Punggol East by-election.

           First the Punggol East by-election, will the groundswell of support for the strongest Opposition party,Workers' Party translate into winning votes or will the ruling People's Action Party still hold dominant ? Personally I like both candidates, as they have a very willing heart to serve, Dr. Koh or Lee Li Lian are both worthy candidates to be MP. Its up to the voters to decide. 

        For the Sportsperson of the year, I am rooting for the equestrian rider, Ms. Laurentia Tan. Born with cerebral palsy and deaf, she communicates by sign language and words she learnt through early childhood special teachers.Since she was 3 years old when the family moved to UK based on her father's work posting, she has managed to develop into a fine athlete and a world class equestian rider. 

        Laurentia has a degree in Hospitality Management from Oxford Brookes University and has also swum for Singapore at the national level at other Para meets. She is living proof that anyone with the will and vision can and will achieve the highest aspirations in life. Coupled with the wonderful support she must have had from her family to meet both her financial and training needs, which would run into the millions, she has overcome tremendous obstacles to be where she is today.

       For someone who has overcome her congenital difficulties and become a national athlete is already very impressive, for her to win multiple Para Olympic medals (silver and bronze) is really outstanding. She and her family must have made tremendous sacrifices as well as gathered around her, a multitude of opportunities and financial and moral support for her talent to flourish.She has lived in England for close to 20 years, and has made many Singaporeans, including this blogger, proud to be a citizen of this Little Red Dot. (Cue from the World Map, Singapore is so small, it only shows up as a little red dot).

       I am doubtful that in Singapore such an educational,physical and supportive, ecosystem could have made her what she is today. There is still alot of ground to cover for us to really 'level up' all sections of our society.

      For the other Sportsmen and women, well, they have had tremendous assistance from the various Sports Association (NSA) as well as funding, structured training and financial support, so I think, in essence, the comparison is not a fair one. Laurentia did the impossible all on her own, in a counrty far away from all our NSAs, so her achievement of 1 silver, 1 bronze in London's ParaOlympics 2012, and 1 bronze in 2008 is really incredible.

      Laurentia is my choice for the Sportsperson of the Year 2012.

      

        

    

Ski 101

I'm no ski expert, but this was taken at Tomamu Resort in 2011. I have some way to go before I can attempt the Black Diamond or Expert level ski pistes, but as my interest is very great, who knows ?  

Green tea can protect and even cure Parkinson's disease

Beautiful Hokkaido or Northern Island

Coming down Mt. Isola with visibiity perhaps 3 meters at most.

Every year for the last 3 years, my family have taken a ski holiday for over 1 week each time. In 2010, it was Daemyung ski resort in Korea, in 2011 it was Tomamu in Hokkaido, Japan and last year 2012, it was in Rusutsu, Hokkaido. Hokkaido or Northern Island is the northernmost island, sparesly populated and subject to extreme cold weather as early as October. It is also home to 16 international, world class ski resorts and is famous for its 'powder snow'.  

My 2 sons, Noel and Andrew, with their snowboards 

2012 winter snowfall was extremely early and heavy, and by early December, much of the resort we were in was in meters deep of snow. How lucky we were ! Anyway, the Rusutsu resort is known for its many intermediate slopes as well as advanced slopes, and my wife and I were treated to an adventure of sorts (we are experienced beginner and intermediate respectively) when we mistakenly went up the highest mountain on the first day of skiing and had to ski down at least 5km of slope, which took us easily 1 and a half hours ! 

Stark and Beautiful Scenery in Winter

My teenage sons are keen snowboarders and they too, enjoyed the powder snow. The softness and compactness of the snow makes it very enjoyable to ski plus the fact that the snow is so soft and powdery gives one a sense of daring, so we tried the intermediate slopes which, in Korea would rank as advanced or black piste level. 4 days of skiing is equivalent to burning off calories  while running one full marathon of 42km, let me assure you. Additionally, one uses the arms to coodrinate and push through rough terrain as well as move forward on flat ground. It gives me a full body workout.  

Chirashi or Rice Bowl complete with Miso Soup and Sapporo Beer 

At the end of each day, we invariably eat Japanese or Hokkaido special dishes such as Chirashi (or rice bowl) with seaurchin eggs, salmon roe, steamed prawn, Japanese cucumber, chawamushi or steamed egg,miso soup and topped with the best dry Sapporo beer.

        Oishi !   Delicious as I would say. I still have very fond memories of the ski holiday.  

Singapore - AFF Champions for a record 4th time. Bravo !!

                                         AFF Suzuki Cup 2012 Champions - Singapore 

           The pundits predicted that Singapore's National Football (Soccer) team, headed by Raddy Abrahamovic would not make it past the Qualifying Stages, well, the so-called experts were so wrong again. All of us who had put down the Singapore Lions as being old has - beens relying on foreign born players to win games for us have to eat humble pie and shut up. The Singapore Lions won the 2012 Asean Football Federation Cup for a record 4th time. Congratulations to the team !! 

          Coach and Manager : Ratko (Raddy) Avramovic
  
         Goalkeeper : Mohammad Izwan bin Mahmud
  
         Defenders   : Daniel Mark Bennett
                                 Baihakki Kaizan
                                 Jumaat bin Jantan
                                 Moh'd Shaiful Esah
                                 Moh'd Safuwan Baharudin

         Midfielders  : Hariss Harun
                                 Mustafaric Fahruddin
                                 Shahdan bin Sulaiman
                                 Shahril Ishak (Captain)

         Strikers       :   Alexander Duric
                                  Fazrul Nawaz
                                 Moh'd Khairul Amri

Shahril Ishak winning Most Valuable Player of the 2012  AFF Suzuki tournament 

         I am an armchair critic, and supporter, so I have my share of eating humble pie. But as a Singaporean, I am proud that once again,the team defied all odds and beat the higher ranked ASEAN teams in the following manner : Singapore is ranked a lowly 154 out of 195 teams worldwide, below that of Vietnam,Thailand and the Philippines.

    Round Robin Stage
   ------------------------------
a) Malaysia (the Old Enemy)  : 3 - 0   away.    What a great start to humiliate the Tigers at their Home Turf.   Sharil Ishak, Captain Fantastic hit a brace (2) and Alex Duric the other.
Alexander Duric, I must add is an amazingly fit and skillfull 42 years of age ! 






b) Indonesia : 0 - 1 away. Everyone came down to earth. So we lost, the last game wamaybe just a fluke ?

c) Laos :  4 - 3. What a thriller, after going down 2 - 0, the boys had the guts and talent to score 4 goals on the trot, and hang on to win 4 -3.

    Sharil Ishak (2), Khairul Amri and Hariss Harun were the heroes. 


    SemiFinals  vs Phillipines
    -------------------------------------

a)  Philippines   ; Away 0 - 0.   Home 1 - 0.   Scorer of critical goals Khairul Amri scored a cracker. What a crucial goal !

    Finals vs Thailand
    --------------------------
a) Thailand : Home 3 - 1 Scorers Mustafaric (penalty), Khairul Amri's world class goal and Baikkaki Kaizan's 90th minute were the gems of the day.



                        
    Thailand   Away  0 - 1

   Singapore prevailed in the pressure cooker last game against Thailand to win the Cup 3 - 2 on aggregate.  In my opinion, the entire team were excellent playing as a team,strong defensively, as well as controlling play with their passing with flashes of individual brilliance when needed by their country. This is the hallmark of a Champion team. I am righfully proud of our South East Asian Kampung (village)  champions !!  

   AFF Champions 2012 !!  Lets work towards greater things Singapore Lions !! 

2013 - We survived the 'End of the World'

        
                                                      Santa for US President 2016 !
            
        Well first and foremost, everyone, Happy belated 2013 !! 

       Its been over one month since I put finger to keyboard, (used to be pen to notepad) but this the new means of communication, like it or not.There was some big 'brouhaha' last year when millions of people all across the globe started fretting about the end of the world as the ancient Mayan Calandar had finished its last predicted date, and as there were no more entries to the calendar, people started fretting that that was it, finito. People started beating their chests,looking at another famous astrologer,Nostradamus and finding all kinds of predictions,and trying to relate it to the date 23-12-12. 

        One funny analogy is that the Mayans couldn't predict the end of their own civilization, their entire city disappeared, leaving not a single Mayan citizen, but so many people had so much faith in the end of the world based on their calendar. This is truly astounding and pathetic.

        There are probably lots of people who believe in Santa Claus living in the North Pole as there were people in the days of old (in the 1400s ) who had no clue what lay at the end of the visible horizon, so assumed that at the end when the means of transportation of the day, the sailboat, reached the end, they would fall off into a bottomless cliff and die. 

       So since we survived the End of the World, shouldn't we be celebrating the Beginning of the New World ???   Lets get the world back on track and do some good.

My 5 suggestions to Restart the New World  (hey, since people are dumb enough to consider the End of the World, why not consider this small blogger's crazy ideas ?)

1. Change the Reserve Currency from the US dollar to the Chinese RMB. 

2. Change the Monetary system as we know it. Link all currencies bank to the Gold Standard 

3. USA to outlaw the NRA and consider amending the 2nd amendment, putting the vote to a National Referendum.    

4. USA to stop the QE Infinity nonsense and attempt to really bring down the budget deficit

5.  Make Santa Claus the US President. Since no human can solve the US's and World problems, an imaginary immortal giving out peace and presents for being good can't do  any worse !

    Happy 2013 !!     

No. 7

        The Standard Chartered Marathon on 2nd December was my 7th in total. I was not in the best of shape and had only minimal training. Added to that I had just turned 50, I had decided to run it, firstly to fulfill a resolution  at the start of the year and secondly to provide a decent finish to an erstwhile quite unsuccessful year where we had lost some key European product and the S E Asian economies were heading downwards due to the European and US crises.

        We had taken the right steps with new products as well as offering services for the local customers, but with the manufacturing sector in Singapore, Malaysia slowing this past 6 months, it has been tough on many small business owners including me.

        Back to the marathon, I started slowly, about 7minutes per km for the first 30km and maintained  it throughout. However, after the first 32 km, my will evaporated and the body started give me tell tale signs, although I had no muscle cramps, which was a blessing.

        So after 32km, it was a series of run and walk, for the last 10km, that effectively slowed me down. I had hoped for a sub 6 hour finish, but in the end, I told myself, health first, time secondary.

        My best time so far in the marathon (7 editions) is 3 times of 4 hours and 45 minutes.Will I able to do those times again ? I am confident that if I have the time and the training, I can and will achieve it.

        The oldest runner was a Mr. Faujah Singh, who is 101 years old. He started marathoning at 93 (!) so many a times, if a person takes care of his body and mind, he can and will achieve tremendous things with the proper diet, training and mental discipline.