Deutschland rampages to quarters

Thomas Mueller celebrates his brace with the Mannschaft after putting in the 4th torpedo

Despite both camps trying to downplay the hype that is surrounding the match, it turns out to be living up to its name. The sequence of events unfolded in the most dramatic fashion ever with controversies and exciting football combined together in one lump sum. In one of the most exciting match-ups in this World Cup, a lot emphasis has been placed on the historical meetings between both sides. Both coaches have stressed that there has to be dissassociation from political and military rivalry and focus more on the football. Deutschland v England is more than just a knock-out match as it involves bragging rights and a revelation of the current state of the national teams for both sides, particularly England.

Deutschland stormed off to draw first blood with Klose beating the English defenders in a run-up and slid in the ball into the goal before Calamity James had a chance to get to it. Another break in the 32nd minute allowed Podolski to smash in his 2nd goal of the tournament. Two nil up and the game is as good as over for England. However, one can never rule out the English determination in attacking to regain back lost ground. The Germans had a concentration lapse while defending a corner which resulted in Matthew Upson clawing one back for England. The German lapse continued and minutes later, Lampard smashed a ball in but it ricochet in and out of the goal mouth. The referee refused to allowed a goal, prompting a furious barrage of appeals from the English. It's a repeat of the Caroll incident. Videos replayed had showed that the ball had went past the goal line and the English were indeed unfairly denied. The score remained 2-1 in half-time and I do agree that England should have gotten the goal. However, I did hope that in the second half, Deutschland would at least score one more or keep the goal margin above 2 goals to nullify the effect of the controversy and to emphasise the fact that the Germans do deserve to go through based on the football they were playing.

My wishes were answered in the 2nd half as the Germans went on to score two more via Thomas Mueller, the man who incidentally scored one of the Bayern goals to boot Man Utd out of the champions league..lol. The 2 goals in the 2nd half were the result of a counter-attack move by the Germans after the English had pushed up too deep into German territory in desperation to get the equaliser. In fact, the first two goals in the 1st half were also products of a counter-attack break. The pace that the Germans were running were terrifying, and their accuracy on goal was ruthless. I can't believe I'm saying this, but the Germans are teaching the Brazillians and the Dutch on how to play counterattacking football in this tournament! The speed of the Germans in approaching the English defence ripped whatever gameplans Terry and Co may have in mind. Truly awesome football from the Germans.

The English may argue that that their team may stand some chance in winning the game in that they won't push so deep recklessly for the equaliser if they had been given earlier. But that's an absurd argument because it's an equalizing goal..it wasn't a winning goal. The score may just stay 2-2 and in the end, they may end up on the penalty shoot-out platter with the Germans winning over all the same. Much has to be said about the state of the English players in the tournament. Wayne Rooney ended the World Cup campaign with zero goals to his name, a far cry from the young wonderkid that announced his arrival in the 2006 World Cup. Emile Heskey was almost non-existent in the match itself, it's a big wonder why he is still in the team-sheet. The English defenders were not fit at all and were half the time chasing and struggling to keep up with younger German legs. The midfield is rigid, clumsy and running out of ideas to break the opposition defence and attacking play (note Barry especially). Perhaps to some extent, they missed having an effective anchorman to help out with the defence where in 2006, they had Owen Hargreaves.

Compare this to the Germans who did some renovation of their team from 2006 and took some risk in including internationally unproven young players in the Bundesliga. Gone were the more established names like Ballack (from injury), Metzelder, Frings, Schneider and Borowski and in comes the German kids like Thomas Mueller, Mesut Ozil, Sami Khedira, Badstuber and Jerome Boateng. Ozil and Mueller in particularly had impressed in the tournament and were clearly the creative lifeforce of the rejunevated German team and they played as if they had came from Brazil. With experience coming from Schweinsteiger, Lahm and Klose, Deutschland had a good balanced mix in the team. Honestly, the Germans do not boast the individual star power that is present in England. None in the German team I would say is regarded as worldwide superstars like Lampard, Gerrard or Rooney. Their most publicised team-member is probably Ballack and he's not even in the team. But the most admirable features of the German team are that they play as a cohesive unit and seem to operate with communication and understanding with each other. This makes them as a more formidable force in short-term cup tournaments because these competitions are won with the effort of 11 men working together and not solely on individual flair. I would say, Deutschland deserved this victory thoroughly even in the face of the controversial goal being denied simply because they were the better side at the end with the better footy work.

On a side note, I noticed that 2 footy adverts were strangely accurate about the turn of events. The first being Adidas' Jose+10 World Cup 2006 ad where Lampard was chosen to mimick a parody of the 1966 Final 3rd Goal with Oliver Kahn and here he was 4 years later debating such a goal in South Africa. And remember Nike's Write the Future? It turns out to be a reality and Rooney can become the bearded man in the trailer eating canned food, much to the delight of Fabregas and co..haha xD

Next stop - A rematch from 2006 World Cup - The Argentinians are next and hopefully, there are no post-match melee encounter afterthat involving Heinze..lol

Knockout starts

Hero Ozil is mobbed by the Mannshaft after his super strike

The group stages have ended and the final 16 teams are up for battle in the first round of knockouts. As expected, France ended their campaign miserably in similar fashion to the one they had in 2002. The team unrest naturally spells disaster for the French and host South Africa had managed to exit the tournament in a much dignified manner with the win. The English team morale was on the verge of collapse too, especially with news of a coup by Terry over a few mugs of beer. Nevertheless, they succeeded in salvaging a one goal win to progress through and so did the US who topped the group thanks to hero Donovan. With the Germans going through after Ozil's super strike and England failing to clinch first spot, it's Operation Sealion this Sunday as the traditional rivals meet once again. Beckenbauer will surely be rubbing his hands in glee to launch a few mortar strikes at the English camp. I must say this time, I'll be siding with the Luftwaffe against the RAF.

Things were not so rosy for the Italians as they follow suit with the French in being one of the biggest flops of the World Cup. The defending champions finished bottom of the group and failed to register a single win for the 2010 campaign, a remniscent of the French team in 2002 who were the defending champions during that year too. It was a dramatic match against Slovakia especially in the last minutes but the Eastern Europeans managed to run away with a 3-2 win with an equalising goal from Italians being denied.

The Brazil vs. Portugal match turns out to be a stalemate with both sides cancelling each other out but it's good enough for both to progress to the next round. Since Spain topped the group, they'll set up an interesting derby against neighbouring Portugal. David Villa scored in the crucial match against Chile to ensure that he's at 3 goals alongside with Gonzalo Higuain. Anyways, it's great to see two Asian nations South Korea and Japan advancing to the next stage and I hope they'll go far too for Asian pride sake..lol.

Given the manner in which the teams are arranged, I have calculated that at least one semi-final berth will be awarded to an underdog team, and the 4 of them in contention of this exclusive place are Ghana, America, South Korea and Uruguay. If England had topped the group, they would have taken America's place and by all means, have an easier route to the semis. This would also mean that if either Brazil or Holland do their job well at least till the quarterfinals, they would have an easy ticket to the final. On the other side, there are congested giant spots with Germany, England and Argentina all squeezing to compete for 1 semi-final spot while the other spot hinges on the outcome of the Spain vs. Portugal match. It is early, but the winner of the Spain vs. Portugal match will most probably make it to the semi-finals. As one can see, there's alot at stake for the giants even in the round of 16.

Oh well, I'll be hoping that Deutschland will improve on its erratic performance in the last 2 matches and hopefully, the English are still confused and distracted by the little coup by John..lol.

Lacklustre Giants

The World Cup torunament has so far been rather unconventional, filled with upsets and doesn't seem to follow any sort of plot. If there's one tournament which follows the twists and turns of a Lost episode before you can say "Ahhh!", this is it. From the start, it was filled with some unfamiliar faces such as New Zealand, Slovenia, Slovakia, Honduras, Algeria and North Korea. They are not really the typical bunch of nations which many expect to be playing regularly in world tournaments. But they are there and some of them are not allowing the giants to roll over them that easily.

It seems that this year's World Cup is filled with lethargic legs, especially those from the major footballing nations. It's not only 1 or 2 giants that are underperforming, the plague of lethargicness can be seen spreading all across to the other camps. The French were outrageously bad, where they had a goalless draw with Uruguay and this was followed by a defeat to Mexico. To compound to their problems, the team spirit was already horrible from the beginning and the dismissal of Le Sulk Anelka from the camp drew a revolt from the rest of his teammates. Words like shameful and disgrace were rained down on the French team and even if they were to get to the next round, they will pose little threat to others considering that their morale has been shattered thoroughly. Perhaps Irish retribution had indeed struck the French in the hand..haha

Argentina had been modest with their 1-0 win on their opening match and seemed to pick up further pace with a 4-1 rout over South Korea. They along with Holland, are the only favourite giants to have picked the full 6 points. Even for the Dutch, they are playing effective football in grinding out wins instead of the attractive Total Football that they used to play. I would say based on current form, only the Dutch and the Argentinians seemed to have any good chance to progress beyond the 16.

The Germans looked exceptionally solid in their opening match. They were the best performers in the first round of matches with a 4-0 win and many thought that they would do the same against the Serbians. But alas, the dismissal of Klose seemed to have dislodged the Germans psychlogically and Podolski even missed the penalty which could have redeemed them. An absolute dissapointment in the Serbian loss and I only hope that they could bounce back against Ghana, which will not be easy.

The Italians and the English can easily ranked alongside with the French to compete for the titles of the worst performers. It's the same old story for England where they are bound to dissapoint in tournaments in the silliest of manner. Robert Green had a nooby slip of a ball which allowed the Americans to equalise while the second match against Algeria ended in a goalless fashion. In both matches, the fingers were pointed at Wayne Rooney for his inability to bang in the goals. Perhaps Nike's Commercial on "Write the Future" was true for the first instance, Rooney did Roo-In. The Italians had a draw against Paraguay and instead of mopping up the Kiwis in the 2nd match, they were also held to a draw, with the Kiwis taking the shocking lead first. Imagine that! Of all beings, New Zealand had held the defending champions to a draw!

Three more giants have yet to play their 2nd match. Brazil will play shortly in a few hours time and although they had won 2-1, it was said that their performance was nothing to be proud of considering that the North Koreans had put one into te net and they were expected to bang in more than 2. Well, one could argue that Kim Jong Il's men had spent 6 months in a training camp doing military style exercises but it cannot be disputed that the Brazillian midfield is lacking in creativity following the underperformance of Kaka. The Portugese with Christiano Ronaldo were unable to garner a win against Ivory Coast and it remains to be seen if they are gonna rip the North Koreans apart. The last group probably contained the biggest earth-trembling shock of all times with the Swiss running away with a 1-0 win over heavy favourites Spain. This is no Rafael Nadal vs Roger Federer match but it makes no logical sense how a Spanish team with tens of shots could not put one behind the net when the Swiss only had a small miserly amount of chances. Xavi and co would have to make their chances count if they don't want to exit the tournament in the most ridiculous fashion.

Oh well, there's still plenty of time for more shocks to come. If the giants continue their lacklustre performance, we might as well get a Slovenia vs New Zealand World Cup final...haha.

Psalmist Generation Worship Conference 2010

I chanced upon the advert for this conference by chance actually. Psalmist Generation came to be the main band at our ICF rally and I'm really interested to get to know more about them. So, what better way than to check out their home base in Ipoh, which happens to be Lerdie's church too. I've signed up for sound operator training also, to get some knowledge on how to operate the sound machines. I had the opportunity to have a good night's sleep and had a fresh morning on the next day. My first taste of Ipoh food came at one of the kopitiams just outside the place I am staying and I had a hearty lunch of a Duck Drumstick Herbal Soup Noodle over there that leaves me craving for more..lol.

The conference's registration period was until 2pm but it starts only at 4pm. So, to kill time in between, we went to the nearest shopping center for the air-con and also Lerdie's old house and waited there till it was time to go. It was fantastic to see an old friend from ICF, Nic Soon at church too..haha. Anyways, the conference is divided into two types, one being the combined session and the other is workshop training. I find the sound training rather interesting although it was quite technical. I did discover the mysteries on what kind of sounds does the subwoofer produces and why music sounds better with the bass emphasis from the subwoofer. Not only that, an original non-mp3 music clip that is plugged into an audio machine could be divided into its different instruments. I also had an opportunity to check out the photo workshop at the last session.

Overall in the conference, I picked up a few important pointers and summary from the speakers. Firstly, a new song does not neccessarily mean renewal if it is not sung with a renewed heart. With that being said, an old hymn from the past will still be relevant in today's world when it is sung with the right heart. This is because the underlying foundation of all Christian songs is God's love, and no matter what musical style it is in, the message is still there. The other thing is that God never cease to amaze us during worship and surprises us in many little ways.

We had around 5 combined sessions and the most significant session for me was on session 4, which was Saturday night because it was there that I felt that God had touched me personally. Since Camp Cameron, I'm quite impacted and impressed by Barnabas, who is also known as the Son of Encouragement because it speaks alot about my life. In many ways, he had quietly supported Paul in building and supporting him up although alot of them has been behind the scenes given the little amount of mention of Barnabas in the Scriptures. It was also Barnabas who introduced Paul to the other Apostles and was able to see his potential although the rest were suspicious of him. Without Barnabas, Paul would not have been the great theologian he was and he was even willing to submit to Paul's leadership although he was the teacher and the person who made him.

As I said before, I've always find myself working in organisations in such a way that I work behind the scenes providing vital support to the main person leading and overseeing the whole organisation to ensure that things run well. I find myself often as the second person supporting the leader - the Merlin behind King Arthur, the Gandalf, the Obi-Wan, the Tun Dr Ismail, the Ryan Giggs and of course Barnabas. I will step up when there is a need, but never at the forefront. There are times when I do aspire to be at the forefront leading instead and I did ask God where do I stand in His ministry with me doing much of the behind the scenes work. For some reason or so, the name Barnabas sort of ran through my mind throughout Saturday night and I asked God whether it was His will or His calling that I'll be the Barnabas of my generation. I needed answers and confirmation. And the most amazing thing was that within 5 minutes, the Pastor suddenly spoke about Barnabas! There were so many examples he can be using but he had to use Barnabas! It felt like a train that went "Wham!" in my face on the speed of God's answer. Truly, God never fails to amaze me in many ways..haha. I thank God for the answer he has given me on Saturday night and I'll continue to strive my best to be the son of encouragement to those around me.

It's a wonderful conference and when I look back on the past few days, I can only say that God had provided the way for me to come and even provided for my needs after the conference. Ipoh has fantastic food, and I did get to taste the taugeh white chicken rice. Since Lerdie and her family needed to leave Ipoh on Sunday, I went to stay one night with my godmother before fetching mama from the bus-station on Monday morning. The next 1 week or so will spent on holidays with my family :)

World Kickoff in Africa

The 4 years cycle since Germany has ended and now the biggest competition in football descends upon the southern tip of the African continent. By far, this seems to be the most controversial venue for the World Cup in recent years with issues of security, crime, terrorism, safety and management issues coming to the forefront. A few major stars will be missing through injury, most notably peeps like Ferdinand, Ballack and Essien. Others are major dropouts such as Ronaldinho.

As usual, I'll be rooting for my favourite national teams Nederland and Deutschland but I don't think they stand a very good tournament though, especially for Deutschland. They'll probably make it to the quarters or even semis, but I think they'll fall short to go to the final. If there's no upset going on, I'll predict that Brazil and Spain will most probably make it to the final. The other team which I think may have a good chance is Argentina with their arrays of good attackers but given the nature of the draw, it's either Spain or Argentina that's gonna make it to the final since both will also most probably meet at the semis.

In Malaysia, the mamak and tomyam stalls shall be flooded with patrons unless of course, you have Astro in the comfort of your own home. But nothing beats the atmosphere of a few bunch of people coming together screaming and shouting for their teams..haha. Since I'll be in conference this weekend, I may need to miss the first few group matches. It's gonna be a football mania month with late nights at 2.30am in the morning..haha

Anyways, Cut the talk. Bring on the football =D

Direction Instincts

I'm currently at Ipoh and frankly, I'm quite surprised that I could find my way in the area around despite some mishaps with Google Map. For starters, I was supposed to meet up with Lerdie at her aunty's place since there's no one at her old place. Her aunty's address and taman did not come up at the Google Map search at all and she herself was not very sure of the route too. I asked Grace's mother but she too could only give me some small bits of hints and there. So, the clues I had to work with was Jalan Tasek, industrial area and Jalan Kuala Kangsar. It looks like its gonna be a long search with lots of hit and runs in between. No GPS for me because I don't own such sophiscated device in my arsenal of electronics..lol. Of course, there's always the option of asking around but this time I wanna see how much my instinct can measure up.

I started my journey pretty late, around 1pm from KL and along the way, I stopped by at Tapah to have food. This is my first time entering Ipoh town and probably my second time travelling long distance without anyone accompanying me. Hmmmmm..travelling alone on the highway seems to be quite adventurous and the notion seems to be even more adventurous with me going into unchartered territories with the possibility of ending up really lost in some unknown area. Of course, my top 3 guidelines when venturing into unknown territories are 1. know how to trace ur steps back, 2. take note of destination names and 3. determine your destination's border markers and limits so as to confine your search area

As I entered into Ipoh, I breathed heavily, hoping that everything will go alright. It's beginning to feel like a suicide mission because I have no clear directions at all. I checked out the signboard, hopefully that I can have something easy to start off with. The first few km was good until I was accidentally forced to make a turn into a wrong place. I made a u-turn and proceeded on with instinct that I would reach somewhere near soon when I followed the direction to Tasek. True enough, I reached the town area but the challenging thing is, which housing estate and road and it could be anyplace. That, I fear, was the most daunting task. After determining the border limits of Tasek, I turned back and started to penetrate randomly a few housing estates to see if I'm in the correct road. I took note of the postcode, and that proved useful in determining the housing estate roads. Finally, by God's grace, I guessed correctly within the 2nd try of another housing estate. I was excited when I spotted the correct road but wrong street number. Ahhh..just a little more and within 5 minutes, I reached my destination and spotted Hamster. Rawr! Mission accomplished. Man instinct over GPS :)

After this experience, Stan feels like he's a taxi driver..lol. Perhaps he should write a book too on the Hitchhiker's Guide to Malaysian Towns. xD

Travelling here and there

Just an update on what I have been doing for the past week or so after camp. On the weekend after camp, we had a really long overdue CG outing. It’s our dear Charles’ CG..haha. Back then when I was still a junior in CF with me, Lerdie and Karen in his CG. Since quite a number like Kelvin, Alvin and Jessica are abroad, the rest who were present other than the 3 of us were Timothy and Meng Suan. We were rather clueless on what to do but in the end we settled for eating at Farmhouse and lepak-ing around Sunway Pyramid.

Then on last Wednesday, I made a trip back to Nilai to have a look at the CF’s first official opening. To some extent, I’m curious to see how many of the newcomers would be there. The items for dinner were bigger than our time – they had Dominos Pizza in addition to the fried rice and noodles! It’s great to see a couple of the newcomers during our time had taken the initiative to help out on that day itself in terms of registration and ushering. When it was time to introduce the newcomers, it was then only did everyone realised that the amount of newcomers overpowered the old ones. Another interesting thing is that the new tenant taking over my hostel room came for the opening meeting too. Lol, I never thought that I would have the opportunity to meet him. Overall, it was well done and yups, I wish Justin and the new committee all the best for their upcoming events.

Friday was supposed to be Bible Study with DNA but pastor couldn’t come last minute because of an emergency. So the ones who were present like me, Lerdie, Grace, Mike, Jon and Isaac went for Haagen Daaz at Mount Kiara after our dinner. We had a lame joke conversation over the table too..haha. Sunday was church outing day at Cyberjaya Park. I did a couple of activities down there such as playing futsal and had a pool game. The futsal court is laid with carpet grass and I had a great time running around it barefooted and sliding for the ball has never been so fun.

Hmmmm..today I went to subscribe DIgi Internet since there’ll be no more Streamyx in Grace’s house. There is no contract length for it, so this means that I can cut it off anytime I want without incurring any penalty. I figured out that mobile broadband would be good for me during this period of time too since I’m moving around alot like a nomad and it would enable me to have some form of internet access even if I were to be at Taiping to settle some banking stuff with Mama. My next stop would be the Psalmist Generation Worship Conference at Ipoh from 11th to the 13th.

Awesome 3 weeks Camp Cameron 2010!

Three weeks of my life. Three weeks of life-fulfilling lessons. Three weeks of fellowships forged. Three weeks of listening to God. Three weeks of reflecting 21 years of existence.

I was kinda anticpating eagerly for this 3 weeks Camp Cameron because I just had a feeling that it'll be one major milestones in my life. At the same time, I'm kinda nervy because I was picked to be the group leader and it would mean that I would have extra responsibilities in the camp. Hmmmm..but as I mentioned later, it turns out to be a good experience. I won't be going to narrate day by day on what happens since the photos at my facebook will explain..lol. So, I'm gonna give an overall account of my experience after going it through it.

The place were staying at was at Habu, Lutheran Lakeview Chalets. My chalet was a little different in the sense that we were separated from the main campsite since the main campsite could not accomodate all 81 people together. So, for every session or activity, we either have to walk 10 minutes down to the main campsite or take a car ride if it's too late or dark at night. We are however compensated with our own kitchen, eating utensils, fridge, a large hall and dining table for ourselves. Foodwise, we had lots of vegetables for each meal and meat do not always appear in every meal. So, we had quite a healthy diet there except that our grandparents and uncle tend to 'spoil' us by buying us goodies like maggi mee, ice-cream and even KFC! Lights out is at 12am and we get up early at 6.30am every morning.

The camp had various main segments to it, the first being Lectio Divina, then Chronicles of God and His Kingdom (CGK), Wordylicious Investigators (WI) and Redeeming Relationships. Lectio Divina was something new that I encountered in camp which requires me to be really silent and let the Word speak to me instead as it is being read out. I love CGK session in the morning although it is quite taxing for some of them becaus it reminded me of all the Bible stories that I learn in Sunday School only that this time, I am mature enough to dwell deeper into the meanings of the passages. WI was something which we already did at ICF during CG time, and I get to witness first hand on how it should be conducted to its full potential. Of course, it requires the participants to take initiative in the first place to ask questions and be curious about the passage they are investigating. In between the time to night sessions, we have rotation of things such as leisure, games and outing day on Wednesdays. The first Wednesday was Boh Tea Plantation while the second one is going to Tanah Rata. The third one is up to each and every chalet to plan and mine decided to stay back and cook up a feast instead..lol.

The night sessions were called Redeeming Relationships and it involves 3 stages. 1st week was with God, next with the people around us like friends and family and finally was with the world. Basically the idea is that we learn how to get our relationship right with God first and then patch up any broken relationships that we may have with those surrounding us. The most emotional one was on family because many of us came from challenging situations. Grandma Annette did a fantastic job in presenting us the second week of redeeming relationships session where we get to confront critical issues such as gender differences and courtship. I love the last session too with Sivin Kit who reminded us that our role as Christians should translate to the community where we should operate as agents of change to make our country and community a better place to live in. The main focus of all these sessions point back to the fact that God is our Yahweh Elohim, which means our personal God who will travel with us in our personal odyssey.

I made lots of good friends over there and Malaysia seems to be quite small out a sudden when I got to know that a few of them there knew some of my campus friends..haha. The moments of Yeaaaaaahhh! and BKB were really memorable and the fellowship I had with my D'Villa family is fantastic. I think we are craziest and loudest chalet lots especially with Richard and Enoch running around. We are blessed indeed to have both Grandma Wan Ling and Annette with us. Annette herself has already attended 22 years worth of Camp Cameron and this would be her last one since she would be going international. We are priviledged to be her last grandchildren and to have the opportunity to have a share of her wealth of experience..haha.

For me personally, when we go up Cameron Highlands, it reminded me of Moses' journey up to Mount Sinai to speak with God. Many of us left the familiar things that we know and away from distractions to have this very rare opportunity to focus fully on God and reallign ourselves to Him. The question next is then what will we be doing with the message once we return back to the people below. There's alot of time for self-examination up in Camp Cameron and I get to organise my thoughts on my life properly and to have an even clearer direction on what to do with my life down the road. It's a period of rededication of my life to God, make firm decisions and also to renew my committment vows with God. God keeps His covenant with His people afterall :)

Next year, there won't be a Camp Cameron since the FES is taking a break. I really recommend for any young undergraduate who wants to get serious with God to at least take the opportunity to attend Camp Cameron when the opportunity comes. There's alot of things that God will speak within that 3 weeks. I am honoured to have the chance to listen :)