Gooners goon

Michael and Wayne celebrating the stupidity of the Gooners

Man Utd vs Arsenal matches in the past 3 seasons or so have been awfully quiet and free from incidents ever since the Battle of the Buffet and Tunnel Scuffle in the past. This season's first encounter however promises to return back the glorious antics that characterises the meeting of both titanic teams. Fergie employs 4-3-3 for this match, with Nani and Valencia supporting Rooney and Giggs, Fletcher and Carrick at midfield. With the absence of van der Sar, there would of course be some worry to the capabilities of the goalie and the defence in coping up with the Gooner's free-flowing attack.

Passing from both sides were sloppy at the beginning since the game was interrupted constantly by the ball going out of play. Arshavin was close to scoring in the first half but he was closed down by Fletcher just in time. But in the 40th minute, Arshavin stunned the Old Trafford crowd with a piledriver shot from outside the box. You gotta say that was a superb goal, even from a United fan. At the second half, the Gooners had several chances to go another one up but they were most unfortunate in one van Persie free kick which hit the crossbar. United had the fortune of the Gooners bungling when Almunia spread himself to bring Rooney down. Referee pointed at the spot and that was a relief for the United players who had been trying hard to get the equalizing goal. Rooney took the shot and sent the keeper diving to the wrong direction. It was still all to play for at 1-1. Then at the 64th minute, man of the match Diaby beautifully heads in a free kick cross from Giggs into the net. It was such a marvelous header that Almunia just had to stand there to watch. I bet his teammates ain't gonna talk to poor klutzy Diaby in the dressing room..haha. From then on, it kinda swung to United's favour and Man Utd could easily kill the game off with two very good late chances. But Nani and Berbatov just had to squander it.

The amount of yellow cards shown in this match is tremendous. The Gooners theatrics were funny. Sagna wanted to have a go at Nani but his gay air punch was seen disapprovingly by the refereee who wasted no time in giving him yellow. Manager of the year candidate Wenger was the best. The Professor was cheering like he's just won a World Cup when van Persie's apparent equaliazing goal was ruled offside. He was just ecstatic one moment and astounded on the next, That blew him up but the referee is having none of his French nonsense by sending him off. The United fans around him sarcastically applaud him as he made his way back to his place (which he shouldn't do since he's sent off)..haha. Classic Arsene comedy. It seems that Wenger's rantings did not stop at the match. He went on to claim that Man Utd were playing "anti-football" by sending in Fletcher to do all the dirty tacklings eventhough statistics showed that the Gooners were making more fouls. Wenger should just stop sulking and suck it up.

The Gooners have no one to blame but themselves for their embarrassing turnaround. However, Man Utd have little to be proud of because they were rather sloppy too in many departments. Berbatov and Nani could seriously do better in their finishing at the last few minutes. Midfield was just not commanding enough to pass some good killer balls into the final third. Overall United posession was kinda bad because I thought that the Gooners were passing around more frequently than chasing it. Oh well, a win is still a win and it's a good bubble to pop by Man Utd. =D Let's hope that they'll do the same against another 100% high-flyer, Spurs for the next match.

Committee Retreat Seremban

After the camp on Friday, Reuben, Jon and me drove down to Johor. We dropped off Jon at Ayer Hitam for his parents to pick him up and then the remaining two of us continued on to JB. I went down at the checkpoint to head to visit Mama in Singapore while Reubs drove my car to his house for safekeeping. Around one week later, at the 27th, I went to meet Reuben at JB and we both drove to Lynne's house in Seremban. Reuben helped me to change some new wheels and tweaked the accelerator, so my car now doesn't shake even at 130km or 140km. Haha..our returning journey was filled with lol laughs particularly at one section. I was slowing down from high speed at one bend and switched lanes to the left because I saw an approaching car. To my surprise, we bumped onto a police car that was moving along the left lane as I slowed down. The BMW that was behind me was already bursting in speed and when moved to the left, it overtook me. The polis in front was trying to wave his hands in attempt to stop the BMW for speeding but I don't think that really works..haha. The polis gave chase afterthat but I'm not sure if the Proton Waja/Perdana can catch up with BMW! =p

We reached Lynne's house in the evening in the rain and we proceeded on to have steamboat buffet outside! My stomach was not feeling that well at that time, so I was not eating at full capacity as I should. Reubs definitely made the shop suffer a loss given the amount he was eating..lol. There was suppose to be a discussion session after dinner but we were too sleepy and tired by the time we went back. My first night sleeping at the hall was filled with merciless mosquito bites since I forgot to put a blanket over myself.

On the next morning, there was devotion time followed by breakfast and then our discussion time. Time flies as we discussed all the way till 3pm before making a move to go out to makan lunch. We wanted to have a second helping of the infamous Seremban pork burger (codenamed Porky Explode) but unfortunately, it was closed! We settled by eating at one of the kopitiams and then we ate waffles at A&W too..haha. Another session commences after that and dinner was a lil special than usual since we are having homecooked "Soh Mee" which according to mummy Lynne was a Xinghua Hokkien delicacy. The noodles were awesome with all the ingredients like red mushroom and freshly fried ikan bilis. We had one more short session before deciding to call it a day. The rest of the night was spent watching really lame and funny youtube videos, like the Japanese English class! haha..

The funny lame videos session continued from day 2 after our final discussions in the morning discussions on day 3. We had a second shot to get porky explode for lunch on day 3 and we managed to! I think all of us can die as happy people now..haha.

It was altogether a wonderful time of bonding for the committee members and we do learn many new things about each other. Great times and great laughter..haha. We pray that we will be able to continue to uplift and glorify His name and bring CF to greater heights.

Five Blitz

Michael is delighted to open his competitive goal account for Man Utd

Three games into the Premier League season, it's always hard to ascertain and draw a conclusion of the state of the teams that are playing. The press and common folks were quick to draw conclusions, one moment they were saying that Arsenal were finished even before the season starts and now they are taken as serious contenders. Liverpool were looked upon unfavourably after losing to Spurs but regained back confidence from the crowd when they won their midweek match with a convincing 4-goal score. Similarly, Man Utd looked shaky after their first two games. A 1-0 victory over Birmingham followed by a shocking loss to Burnley raised the confirmation of some critics that United had lost their magic after the departure of the Portuguese wizard.

Man Utd had a 100% win record against Wigan so far and for this match, it seems that Fergie is reverting to the formula that worked against Birmingham. Fletcher got his place back in the center while Vidic was ushered straight back into first although he is not fully fit yet. United looked to be taking the lead in the early part of the game when Fletcher was had close shot on target but it was parried well by Kirkland. United were frustrated countless of times in the first half with the Wigan defence denying them. Wigan had one or two threatening shots too and Foster did well to deal with them. The first looked to be dominated well by United with Fletcher and Scholes bossing the center and distributing the ball well. Nevertheless, the absence of the lethal shot to produce the first goal continues to mount pressure on the players as each minute passes by.

For the second half, United needed to wait until the 56th minute before they could make a breakthrough. New boy Valencia was booed almost every time he got the ball since he’s a former Wigan player. However, he did well in assisting Rooney in that breakthrough goal. A visionary cross by Valencia after his sprint was met by a jumping Rooney who rose above the defenders to knock the ball in past Kirkland. That was Rooney’s 100th goal for Man Utd btw. A century of goals and the fans will definitely look forward for another century of it from Wayne. Wigan nearly threatened to equalize quickly but they failed to do it. That would have been a different game if that had gone in. Not long afterthat, Berbatov was at the center of attention when he lobbed the ball over Kirkland and finished it lethally behind the net as Kirland is left stranded at no man’s land. Rooney added to his goal tally with his superb shot that squeezed through the defence line, to Kirkland’s surprise. Owen was called out of substitutes bench to give Rooney some rest and he too had finally achieved the aim that he is waiting for, to score his first goal in that number 7 shirt. I think it’s a well-taken goal with evidence that he may still have that poaching instinct although the speed is not as fast as he used to be. Nani glided the ball to Owen who then smartly shoots it diagonally to sneak the ball past the reaches of Kirkland. Nani had the final last laugh of the game with the 5th goal with from a beautiful curling free-kick. At that moment, it looked like we don’t really need Ronaldo huh..haha =p

The 5-0 away win against Wigan will definitely be morale boosting but all eyes are on this weekend’s massive titanic clash where United will meet the VERY high-flying Gooners. This is the real test for both teams to see how well they respond to their title chasing credentials. I certainly do hope United will be there to burst Wenger’s bubble.

Why Love? Camp

Lots of traveling on the previous few days and I finally have the time to sit down to blog about the marvelous camp that I had last week. In waiting in anticipation for this camp, I stayed over at campus after my last class on Tuesday. It was an interesting period since I had no exams while most of my friends were preparing for finals. In any case, I did manage to find myself some things to occupy myself until the 18th. =p

On the 18th morning, I made a last ditch to complete as much magazine material as possible and send it to the publisher before packing for the camp. We waited for Jason to come to fetch us and we headed off to Seremban for a pork burger lunch session which Reuben has been craving for a long time already. After we had our fill, we continued on our journey to Golden Sands at Port Dickson. ICF Nilai also once had a camp at Golden Sands in 2008 at a time before Stan was there.

We were quite clueless at first when we reached there because most of them were already there first before us. Anyways, one of the first stuff that we did was to check into our bunks. There were clearly more boys as we occupied two dorms while the ladies occupied one. The sleeping dorms do look like the military bunk style with its wooden double bed. Afterthat, we gathered back at the hall and break into our different groups for ice-breaking and group name-planning. Since we are the yellow team, we decided to come up with a name that suits the colour and after much deliberation, we settled for - SPONGY BANANA! haha..

The speaker for the camp was our beloved Pastor Vic. I think he was a little surprised to see some familiar regular faces there..haha. He spoke on various stuff but the main highlights that many campers were eagerly listening to was the relationships part. Most of the stuff that he had spoken on were already heard by me since he brought it up at his sermons in church. The most moving part of the sermons was the prayer session and God really used Pastor Vic to speak to the inner hearts of many of the campers.

We had team-building games on day 2, relay and competitive. They have quite an interesting array of games such as matching baby photos with committee members, acting out song names, mannequins, hoops passing and the most physically demanding was hand crawling plus tongue twisters. After relay, we had inter-competitive games like blindfold walk, human knots and human tic-tac-toe. Spongy Banana had a confusing time doing human knots..lol.

Day 3 was the most action-packed day especially after Pastor Vic's sermon. We had hydrowar and many of us were already making pre-emptive strikes at one another with our water guns even before the game had started. Some of us tested our weaponry and those that brought the Super Soakers were the peeps with the scariest arsenals since the guns were not doing light spraying but pressurised water pump. When the war started, it was madness as everyone tries to "kill" the lifepack of the opposite team. A person is considered "killed" if there's a tear at the paper lifepack. It proved harder than expected since after many rounds, no one actually got killed eventhough their lifepacks were wet. Alliances were formed and sometimes, friendly fire were accidentally made. Halfway through the game, I had the chance to get a feel of being a war photographer as I traverse through the watery mayhem at the field..lol. Our hydrowar was sadly cut short since there was a drizzling of rain. The drizzle stopped after 15 minutes and we proceeded on for the beach telematch. The balloon catching relay was kinda funny because I had a water balloon exploding in my face when I caught it with my hands. Free fun time on the beach followed after the telematches with many of us waddling around at the sea. At night after dinner, we had Amazing Race and I would say one of the games that made us sweat the most was building a perfect pyramid with a stack of cards. This was because everytime we made it to the third level, the whole second level would just collapse to our frustration. Anyways, we managed to complete the whole leg and we're pretty pleased with that. The night's events ended with campfire, limbo and 60 seconds to fame. Haha..Spongy Banana managed to score 1st with our performance at the campfire! :) Since the last night has no lights out limit, we stayed all the way till 3am to play Mafia and an upgraded version of it known as Werewolves. That was a fantastic time of fellowship together :)

I'm really glad to be given this opportunity to attend this camp! The food was awesome and meal times almost felt like restaurant time. I made lots of new friends and got to know a lot of people from a region where I'm originally supposed to stay until the hand of destiny picked me and sent me southwards. Btw, Inti Subang girls are ganas!..lol. We have a female drummer (Christine) and female bassist (Brit) there. Not only that, the whole lot of them can go psycho with screamos too..haha. Anyways, the 4 days were a great time of fellowshiping together. I felt that our group bonded well together and credit must be given to Sarah, our leader for her bubbly and cheerful style of leading us. We had fun and an enjoyable time together. To all the other Spongy Bananas (Sarah, Lionel, Nigel, Brit, Denesh and Eden), it's a privilege for me to be in the same group with you guys! :) It's always good to know that there are other young people running the same race as us too and though we are in different universities and colleges, we are still one in Christ. I really do hope all of us will meet again either in combined meetings or major events in the future :D

ICSJ CF camp!

Stan will be away on camp from 18th to 21st August. Till then, will update stories later after camp =D

Infestation

I was happily editing my magazine content yesterday night when I spotted a few ants running around on the top of my table. I've seen these pesky pests running about for quite some time and I thought that they originated from some hole. I usually won't bother them since they may just be passing through. For the past 3 weeks or so, I've noticed that there have been more frequencies and a steady stream of them too but I can't seem to pinpoint where they were going with their load until yesterday.

At one split second, I saw an ant creeping into my "Band of Brothers" DVD box set. It's the linear opening at the spine of the DVD container to be precise. After that, a few more ants followed their comrade into the opening. At that point of time, it dawned upon me that that could be their base of operations all the while! To be really sure, I grab that whole box of DVD collection (3 of them) and took them outside to my door and prepared myself to "blast" open the disc box. With tissues equipped, I pried open and to my revulsion and disgust, I was right and there was literally an ant colony in my DVD box! There were eggs everywhere, on the case itself and for that matter, even on the discs! It looked like some darn Zerg colony. The whole case was infested with worker ants and I saw about 3 Queen Ants probably getting ready to lay even more eggs. That was sickening. I never knew a DVD case box could be classified as a viable habitat for ants too..lol.

First things first is to rescue the two discs from the box. I yanked out the discs, cleared the surface of all the crawling ants and then proceeded on in wiping the discs clean of any egg remnants that might be there. As I wipe the disc, I noticed that there were lots of stains and it was not that easy to wipe them clean. I gather that those stains were the squashed remnants of ant acid, larvae and egg sacs together. I will definitely be annoyed if my discs were spoiled because some ant decided to spray its acid or eggs all over the place. After clearing my discs, I took the container box to the toilet, opened the floodgates from the tap and drowned the entire colony with water while scrubbing it clean. On that day, all the death cries were mixed together as the little lives were snuffed out with the splashing sound of water. However, those ants are real survival because even after rinsing them in water, some of them are still clinging on to the box. At the end of the drowning sequence, the small carcasses of those six-legged creatures, eggs and larva were floating in a derelict mess. They'll never know that their hidden base was annihilated totally because one of their ants made a mistake and gave away their secret position. =p

I checked the other two DVD containers and also the other discs and thankfully, none of them were affected with ant migration. Anyways, all those purging wasted a lot of my time and I could have finished quite a portion of my magazine content if not for this untimely interruption and pirate cry to raid and pillage a colony.

Blue Community

Solomon Kalou fires off the winning shot for Chelsea

The football season is back and Stan is here to whine again about football..haha. Yup, season 2009/2010 of the English Premier League kicks off with the Community Shield match between Man Utd and Chelsea. United have won it twice in a row on penalties. The question is, will they be third time fortunate to win it again? The squad is certainly a different one without Tevez and Ronaldo while Chelsea's squad has little difference since there are no major transfers happening there.

Within 10 minutes of the game, Nani opened the bank with a fierce long range diagonal shot beyong the reach of Cech. I have to say Nani had been superb in this game with the passes and the runs timely placed. It's a pity that he had to be taken off halfway at the second half for injury. If Nani can continue to keep up displays like this, that would be great since last season was not a really good one for him. It's time to step up to cover part of the void that was left behind. Anyways, Man Utd looked like the sharper side at the first half. Attacks were well coordinated and there were a couple of times they could have easily gone ahead further with a few more goals.

The second half was a different story though. Ivanovic was clearly struggling against the United attackers and so Ancleotti replaced him with Bosingwa. That was a good change of tactics from the new boss. Well, the Blues look more threatening in the second half, and I guess it must be that half-time talk. Chelski punished United for their sloppy defending in the 52nd minute. Both Foster and Drogba collided with each other while going for the ball and Carvalho was just at the right position to connect the spilled ball with a diving header. It's a small fortune for Chelsea for that open goal but I thought that Foster should have performed better in such situations by plucking the ball in the air commandingly. There are a couple of times where Foster dealt with his saves and command of area poorly. There was one time where it was reminiscent of the Malaysia match where Foster nearly screwed up from a defender backpass. At other times, he looked like gifting a free goal to the Chelski poachers for dwelling too much on the ball. Foster's lack of exposure to first team duties and major clashes could be the reasons for his failure to impress. Nevertheless, it seems that Fergie is gonna keep faith in him for an extended run with our beloved van der Sar injured for 8 weeks straight. Hopefully, Foster could withstand that period of time and show perhaps that he deserves to be United's next keeper in line after vds.

Chelski's second goal was more of a dubious and controversial kind. The dirty rat Ballack had a couple of tricks up his sleeves when he "obstructed" Evra, leaving the left back stranded behind on the ground when Chelsea pumped a long ball ahead for a counter-attack. The result was 3 Chelsea attackers vs. 2 United defenders scrambling back and Lampard being the free man slots it in without trouble to give Chelsea the lead. The United players protested but the goal stands. I was already resigned to having Chelski winning the game 2-1 but out of nowhere, Rooney bulldozed through to beat the defensive line and scored at the death to at least provide United another chance to win the game. This is a preview of what to be expected if you allow Rooney to run rampant in his central forward position..haha

So, it has to go into the the penalties but I had this awful feeling that Man Utd will lose the shootout firstly because vds was not there and secondly, I had a pre-emptive prediction that some weird blokes will be chosen to take the penalty shots. Giggs was the first to take for Man Utd and I was right to say that he would miss this since it's kinda predictable where his left foot will strike. Usually, for left-footed kickers like Giggs, the only thing that would beat experienced keepers like Cech will be speed and power of the shot. I was annoyed to see Carrick as the next penalty taker but he did well in putting the ball into the net eventhough Cech guessed his direction properly. And the last penalty taker for Man Utd was a shocker. It was Patrice and experience tells you that defenders are one of the worst people to take shots. Lo and behold, Patrice's gay shot was so bad that even John O Shea could save that kind of kick with his eyes closed. Kalou finishes off the final kick and looks like Man Utd don't get to be third time fortunate.

I find Man Utd's attacking department doing well for the match but the quality of the defence is questionable. Perhaps the absence of Vidic is one of the contributing factors. With him out for a month and vds for eight weeks, maybe it could be time for Fergie to press the emergency button to open the bank again. Oh well, Man Utd need to get this out of their system and prepare for their first league game next week. Foster has to warm his gloves better if he wants to continue on in between the post.

No exams but occupied

I can't believe I'm locked out of youtube and blogger for the past two days at my campus. But since it's back online, time to write something which was supposed to be up a few days ago..haha. Last Friday, went to lepak at Mid-Valley with Jason, Reuben and Samuel. Carl's Junior is not too be missed of course since its ages since I had one. Ahhhh..the taste of those freshly cut fries is still in my mind now..yum yum. One of the main purposes of going there is actually to spend my RM50 MPH book vouchers which I had won at the Perdana Leadership Foundation essay competition. As a result of the jam outside Bangsar and makan time, I only had like around 30 minutes to make a choice and it's not easy to decide what to spend on. On the previous year, I spent my RM50 vouchers on the 50th anniversary Malaysian event archives.

At first, I thought of spending it on those law shortcut books for slackers like me. However, couldn't find any year 2 subjects there. Then, I thought of any worthy graphic novel but all those that were selling there were marvel and DC stuff, not like those done by Alan Moore. Marvel and DC are technically classified more as comics rather than graphic novels. I love those Marvel and DC comics too but I wanna get something that is standalone. I moved on to my third choice, which is my beloved History section. I thought of getting another historical account book but I hesitated because there are still tons that I had not read finished yet. And right at that moment, I remembered the type of books that are definitely worth the buy - hardcover, pictorial and photographic books either on the Cold War or World War II! Yes..these books are currently lacking in my collection - photographic archives of modern world history. I browsed through quickly and finally found one nice treasure - A photographic book on World War II, both civilian and military shots by the war photographers of the Daily Mail newspaper in the UK. I came at the right to get it because there was a storewide 10% discount at MPH for the weekend..hehe. Overall, I'm pretty pleased with my purchase..wheeee :)

Anyways, Semester 4 is coming to an end. The honeymoon semester is coming to an end soon but this does not mean that I won't have anything to do. Magazine, presentation, drafting and Moral MPW are stuff that are occupying me busy for this last week even though I'm not sitting for any final exams. Tomorrow's a killer assesment day with GP presentation and drafting assessment. After tomorrow, I really have to get down in studying for my moral exams because I've not touched a single thing there at all. I passed already with the coursework marks but I aim to score to higher for that exam since I have nothing on for this semester. Uhhh..the thought of cramming one whole book into my brains within 2 days is just staggering even for last-minute peeps like me. Immediately after exams on Saturday, there is no res because I'll have to go for practice at church since I have to serve this Sunday. I hope I don't explode at the end of the week because I still have a magazine to publish on the next week. [Rantings and Complaints mode done]

On a brigher note, it's a good semester break and holidays to look forward to - time to catch up on my games and movies. There's also the Inti Subang ICF camp at Port Dickson too. Looking forward to have fellowship and meet new people there. =p Hmmm..I think I'll stay at campus until the camp starts. Well, it's good to make some plans on what to do during that period of time soon.