At this time of last year...

Let's do a flashback on what Stan was doing way back in 2007 at this time of the year. Yes, he's frantically preparing for his A' Levels exams and he could still remember that his first paper on Knowledge and Inquiry is on 1st November. All the note typings and reading, the guidebooks and textbooks. Other than doing well, there are a couple of other aims too : The desire to prove to "some people" wrong in that their teaching methods are really horrible. To prove that intelligence, understanding and creativity is way better than mugging blindly. To expose those fake sycophants that always get good results in JC exams when in fact they are of crappy quality. It was time to show what I was made of.

At that time, I already had in mind on the "twist" of my future plans. It was a radical plan and it lessens the pressure in a way. And at the same time, I just had butterflies in my stomach for my results in March this year in that I may get terribly disappointed in not achieving the aspired grades that I hope to get even though I only need to do the bare minimum to be successful in my radical plan. I would say to some extent "image/face-consciousness" did drive me to push my limits to the maximum and not compromise on the minimum. Not only that, the uncertainness of the future and that I may be proven wrong in my future plans are just intoxicating during that period. But nevertheless, I kept faith that God will make everything turn out the best as long as I do my best and commit the rest to Him.

Flashback to this year March, and the A' Level results were out. Pure joy that I had gotten double 'As' for my two favourite subjects, History and English Literature and a 'C' for Economics, a subject that I failed in every major test for the past 2 years. It was blessings from God, because I managed to achieved that for Econs without resorting to the expensive A' Levels tuition. To get the double 'As' for my two favourite subjects just doubly confirms of my gifting in writing. I'm really thankful to God for my achievements. It was more than sufficient to embark on the journey of my radical plan. And I'm contented to know that my results would have easily gotten me entrance into the National University of Singapore. But I chose not to do so. I felt that it was not my calling to be there. I just felt that my potential would be realised better in returning back to my homeland and the place where I grew up in Malaysia. (although some may say ironically..haha)

Right now at this moment, Stan is also frantically preparing for another exam, but it's a minor one..haha. It's the mid-sessionals exams for my law degree. Lol, so Stan would like to announce to his loyal readers (whoever that may be) that he will be taking a break for these few days from blogging while he frantically implants statutes and cases into his mind. =p Tonight's Premier League matches and the weekend matches reports and analysis will have to be pushed to Nov 3, which is the last day for my exams..haha. Meanwhile, while waiting, feel free to browse through my old stories and archives :)

May the good Lord bless me on these few days too :)

Stamford Bridge record collapses

"Cashley" Cole and "Le Sulk" Anelka had a horrible day at the office

86 matches unbeaten at home that stood for 4 years 8 months. The last team to beat Chelsea at Stamford Bridge were the Gooners way back in February 2004. The run started from the last half of Ranieri's era at the club, looked impossible to beat during Jose Mourinho's era, threatened to be dislodged during Avram Grant's time and now the axe had to fall on one of the famous faces of football management, Scolari.

It's a clash of the top two of the table and in the past 4 years or so, the Chelsea vs. Liverpool encounter has chalked up to about an astounding amount of 20 meetings or so considering Champions League matches and cup ties. Chelsea were tipped to be slight favourites for this considering the form and manner they were in for the previous matches. Chelsea hardly broke a sweat in winning their matches while Liverpool were limping, struggling and some would say it's by luck that they managed to secure some of the wins where defeats actually looked imminent for them.

On Friday, Xabi Alonso said that he is out to end Chelsea's record and that prophecy was eerily fulfilled yesterday when he DID in fact ended Chelsea's record with the only goal from him. The Blues failed to deal with a throw-in properly and when the ball fell onto Alonso outside the edge of the box, he blasted it towards the goal. The shot took a deflection, causing Cech to be slighly of course and Liverpool were 1-0 up. In fact, it could have been two from him since the second attempt was a beautiful free kick which by some divine intervention, hit the post and bounced out. Liverpool maintained their defensive lines well in the 2nd half while trying to build a couple of decent attacks. Lots of chances taken by Chelsea in the 2nd half, but they were plain wasteful and the players looked to pressurized to break the deadlock. The Bridge supporters were stung into silence as the final whistle was blown while the Scousers supporters were chanting "you'll never walk alone".

I think for the first time in many years, Liverpool showed some real deal title credentials and they are currently heading the top of the table with 3 points clear. Two encounters with their rivals had resulted in a win. Personally, if there is an outcome where both of these *toot* teams obtain 0 points at the same time, I would root for that...haha. Nevertheless, I prefer Liverpool winning this one simply because this is the only time where Chelsea can lose. Lol..Liverpool is not a threat at all and somewhere in the future, they have a high probability in screwing up at somewhere else..like in Aston Villa or even Hull City. Nice to see Chelsea getting some losses and it makes Man Utd's draw at Everton less irritating.

Looking at the other side of London, Spurs finally heralded their first win of the campaign after sacking Ramos and appointing "saviour" manager Harry Redknapp. Well, at least they now can stop all the nonsense at the bottom and start moving up. Or maybe, this could be just a facade since Bolton is quite a crappy team anyways. Either way, it's interesting to see how that develops. If they start a chain of good results, the Geordies might find themselves at the bottom instead. A terrible loss at Sunderland has also plunged them into abyssimal mode too. Well, when will Alan Shearer be moving into his new managerial office? haha...

Whooooops

Yesterday we had a short worship workshop organised in church where there's some try-outs session for the new people in the team. Of course, the team is divided accordingly to the instruments they want to specialise in. After the short get-together or so, there will be a mix and match session where people will try out in playing Planetshakers' "Majesty". Oohhhh..for that song, the drums has to have a constant base beat. As I'm accustomed to the two branches of beats, I've got a mental block out of a sudden on playing a constant base beat. It happens also when I first tried out the calypso/latino beat which is taught by George. Aiiikkss...it's pretty embarrassing and memalukan for old time buddies like me when some of those aspiring kiddies managed to get the thing right while I'm still confused with my beats. Well, then again they begun on a clean slate. The funny thing about drums is that if I am accustomed in playing in one way, it's not that easy to change it to another way unless I managed to get the "sensation" on how my limbs are automated to move.

That's why for any drummers who are still learning, it's important to continue practicing and mastering the basics until its 100% perfectly executed (not 85% or even 95%) because any bad habits that are developed will carry on to the next beat that they are learning. Btw, while practicing on my leg, I accidentally smashed my kneecap resulting in a couple of blue black marks..lol..I didn't expect drumsticks to produce such a powerful effect. Just imagine what the snare drum has to endure every week..haha. When it was my turn to try out, I just hentam only using my usual beats but the timing was on track, only that it didn't sound as good as the original mp3. Anyways, I did managed to get the constant base right after some experimentation though.

This week is gonna be a crazy week of inputting stuff into my brain. I'm drowning..drowning..drowning in the loads of materials and topics that are needed to be covered. Next week I'm supposed to serve and it's gonna be really tight with the contract law exam on Monday. May the good Lord bless me..lol :)

Goodison Park stumble

The Portuguese wizard was one of the principal offenders for the crime of wasting chances

Man Utd entered the match on a high after a 3-0 win over Celtic in the Champions League group matches. The goals may have looked suspiciously offside but nevertheless Berbatov got his name recorded on the scoresheet for two goals. Rooney scored another yet again to round up a continuing superb run of form. Given that context, both Berba and Rooney were expected to rip Everton to shreds. Everton has never kept a clean sheet at all this season and their defence had been leaking unnecessary goals even though they are scoring upfront. Interestingly, Louis Saha is lined up against his former club and it remains to be seen if he would haunt Ferguson back or proved that Fergie was indeed right to sell him away.

When Darren Fletcher opened the scoring at the 22nd minute, there was hardly any surprise. Everton's defence were all over the place and a couple of good saves by Howard kept them in the game. What was impressive was that the Scotsman had shown an appetite for goals this season and he's now the joint top scorer with Rooney at 3 League goals. Depending on how you look at it, having Fletcher as Man Utd's premier league joint top scorer so far is of not exactly something the fans would boast about around. It meant that the lads that are supposed to be getting the goals aren't trying hard enough. Afterthat, Man Utd were just plain wasteful with their chances that they get. One of the main criminals were Ronaldo who squandered a handful of chances. By his high standards, he should be knocking them in especially at instances where he had at least 5 seconds to aim and shoot. Berbatov was effectively shut off by and he had little chance on the ball.

At the second half, Everton changed their approach to be more physical and apparently the rough style had unsettled the Man Utd players. The Toffees did not hesitate to go full plunge into challenges whenever United had the ball. Everton's approach was effective in getting the United players distracted and broke their usual chain of attack. Even Ferdinand got pissed off and worked up with Gary's bro and his former teammate, Phil Neville. Everton's tactic worked well and on the 63rd minute, Fellaini (a.k.a. Afro guy/Phua Chu Kang hairstyle) climbed above both super centerbacks Vidic and Ferdinand to head the ball in for the equaliser. Ferguson is left fuming wondering how in the world could England's best center defensive partnership were both beaten at the same time by a newcomer in Everton. It was horror time for United as Ferdinand's once again moment of "absent-mindedness" came at the wrong and worst possible time. A minute after the equaliser, Ferdinand (apparently half-dazed smoking weed+marijuana the night before) lost the ball to Yakubu and allowed him to smash a ball across van der Sar. The Dutchman was clearly beaten but alas, perhaps divine intervention had a part to play when the ball bobbled to hit the post, much to United's relief.

All the physical approach threatened to reach boiling point when Wayne Rooney was booked on a late tackle on Arteta. It's a seasonal tradition that Wayne gets booed whenever he returns to Goodison Park. However, he decided to show his PDA (Public Display of Affection) to the folks at his original stomping ground. As they jeered him, Rooney kissed the badge on his shirt and that incited even more outrage from the Goodison crowd. The referee saw his behaviour and warned him on that. Lol, apparently Rooney wants to imitate the Gary's PDA a couple of seasons back in front of the Liverpool fans. Fergie did not want to risk his ace striker in getting red carded at such a hostile environment, so he brought him out and that prevented Rooney from scoring his 100th career league goal at Goodison Park. United huffed and puffed, and even the introduction of Tevez could not inspire a last minute fightback. They missed the chance to keep tabs with both Liverpool and Chelsea and have to be contented with the 1-1 draw. For Everton, I think it's as good as a win for them. It's more of a two points loss to United.

Hull City are on a rampant mode! They ruthlessly whipped fellow newboys West Brom 3-0 right at their doorstep and the Tigers are now TIED 20 points with Liverpool and Chelsea for FIRST place.(that is until tonight's match between the top two). Hull City for Premier League CHAMPIONS please...lol!! I bet the bookies probably improved their chances to be higher than Spurs or the Toon Army..hahahaha. That's really admirable stuff from a team who has never competed before in a top division competition for the whole of their history. Hmmmm..however, I foresee their fairytale run coming to an end soon as they meet both Chelsea and Man Utd consecutively next. I'll be VERY impressed indeed even if they managed to secure a draw in either of them. All hell will break loose if they somehow managed to win one of the games..haha.

Last Class for Semester 2

Today's the last class for semester 2 and on next week, there will be the mid-sessionals exams starting from Thursday 30th October. For starters, there's a tremendous amount of revision to do for the four core exam-based subjects. Since I'm half-listening in some of the lectures, I really need to brush up on those topics. For the past two days or so, I've started doing the revision but doing law revision is ain't easy at all unlike my A' Levels days with my History and English Literature exams (where it's quite fun sometimes to read and digest the concepts there). Law essays are not as fun to write as History or English Lit..haha. Darn, even loathsome Economics could not match up to the amount of complications and stuff to memorise PLUS understand in Law. AS/AD, Externalities, Keynes or C+I+G+(X-M) are much easier to remember eventhough I disliked them very much. For Law, you need to know the exact words of some statutes, case names and distinguish and attribute the words said by judges such as Lord Diplock, Lord Hailsham, Lord Bridge plus concepts put out by legal writers such as Ivor Jennings, the infamous Dicey and William Wade. It's a whole new set of names plus quotations to remember and they are SO many of them that I dunnoe which one of them actually gets inputed into my brain. They are very interesting concepts but you need to read countless amount of time before they can leave a mark in your brain. Even for seasoned veteran memory machines like me need to put in some effort like never before..hahahaha =p

The reading of judgments in the cases, as in the specific wordings of the judge himself is quite eye-opening. It's English but gosh, if I don't double focus my brain on what is being written, it sure sounds like German instead..haha. Among all the judges, I find the words by the famous Lord Denning to be the most comprehensible out of all the others because he tends to be quite poetic and eccentric at times..lol.

Anyways, the exam format is the same as all of my A' Levels Arts subjects, in that 4 essay questions are to be completed in 3 hrs. I'm definitely accustomed to the sensation of writing for 3hrs straight. However, this will be the first time I'll be writing something on law in an exam..haha. Hopefully I can cover my bases for all the subjects by the time next Thursday comes. =p

Client Conferencing

After handing up my contract law thesis, another stuff that I need to deal with is the client conferencing assessment that happened this morning. It's a quite interesting component in our legal skills module. For the assessment, everyone will have to pair up and we would be given a court case to examine. We have to think about the questions to ask the client so as to gain the vital information that is required to represent the client in court. Of course, financial + family circumstances of the client, police statements and witnesses account all have to be considered. Basically, it's like a mini version of what happens when a lawyer meets his client for an interview. We also gotta ensure that the client doesn't drift off with unnecessary chatter and ensures that he understands on what is being advised. Some clients would be difficult and it would be up to the students to think of creative ways to get him in check. Then on the day of the client conferencing itself, somebody outside our class (usually the older semester students) will role play as the client.

The attire for CC is very formal, just like mooting. It's full dress professional office work attire for the guys (black pants, white formal shirt, black blazer and tie). It was quite nervy anticipating who our client would be coz some of the previous groups obtained seniors who purposely act as really badass clients. We tried to eliminate and guess who it could possibly be but we were hoping hard not to get the notorious ones..hahaha. At 10 am, it was moment of revelation and I felt relieved when I saw that it was Calvin (semester 6 senior and going off to UK soon?) accompanying my lecturer.

The whole conferencing stuff went well except for some minor hiccups. Half of my preparation was gone because Calvin put out a very different and unexpected situation for me to handle. Nevertheless, I kept my wits about and did some spontaneous questioning on the spot. Uggghhhh..the minor hiccup that I did was that I got the surname for one of the witnesses wrongly! Lol...I hope my lecturer won't penalise me that much because he asked me again about the surname and I STILL tell him the wrong one (because I didn't realise about it yet). Haha..the horror on my face was evident when I found out about it.. =p I'm still wondering how in the world I could end up writing the surname wrongly in my script! Anyways, overall I'm pretty pleased with the conferencing stuff and I felt glad that I handled the situation well. I hope I get a good grade for it! :)

Rampant Rooney

A scoring Wayne is the Wayne we all love

Wayne Rooney has been on a blistering form. 7 goals from the last 5 games and 5 goals from his last 3 internationals, which included 2 goals each at the last two internationals. It has been a slow start for him this season, with him being criticised for being at the wrong part of the field with the defence instead of going upfront and scoring. Nevertheless, Rooney had struck a sensational rich vein of form and has consistently scored a goal each for United at every game since opening his account in the Bolton game.

With United playing at home at Old Trafford, it's almost a guarantee that they will get the victory but the question is how much would the win margin be? No prizes for guessing who will be the one to grab the first goal for United given Rooney's superb form. At the 24th minute or so, he manages to put the ball past the goalkeeper but the referee refused to award the goal citing that Rooney was adjudged to have unfairly shoved one of the defenders on the way to goal. The United players were frustrated and a series of chances that came afterwards were near misses. At half-time, it was surprisingly 0-0 although United dominated the game well.

At the 56th minute, Rooney is at an excellent position again, and with a slight twist and turn to beat the defender, puts United up at 1-0. That makes it 4 goals out of 4 games for Man United! Rooney jubilantly does his sliding celebration, reminiscing the old days when the 16 year old teenager with the blue Everton shirt scored against Arsenal and the 18 year old who scored the hat trick on his debut in the 6-2 win against Fenerbahce. Rooney is at the forefront of United's attack again when he released a ball forward in which Ronaldo floated out of nowhere with his raw pace and nips the ball past the keeper. Man Utd's 3rd goal was a quickfire. 2 minutes after Ronaldo's goal, Nani tried to cross the ball into the box. It was not a great cross but the West Brom defenders were slow to deal with it. O Shea missed the ball but Berbatov made sure that he punished West Brom with a brilliant flick into the net. Berba must have been delighted to score his first goal in the league for Man Utd. At the 90th minute, to finish off in style, Rooney unselfishly passed the ball to Nani for a simple finish. Lol, Nani wanna do his trademark somersault celebration but this time he did only half of it. Anyways, this is fantastic stuff from Rooney as highlighted by his goal and two assists. A brilliant team player all around who contributes well and West Brom couldn't contain him at all!

Looking at the other results, Boro were raped 0-5 by Chelsea at the Riverside stadium. This is madness, because Chelsea, even with playing away and with half of their squad injured, still manages to chalk up a massive result. Liverpool once again, manages to escape with a 3-2 win despite Wigan looking set to win it at 2-1. Kuyt was the unsung hero once again and from the last two games, not only did he saved Liverpool from defeat, he provided them with the 3 points! How fortunate can you get seriously! Liverpool are now on level points with Chelsea at the top of the table. Another individual worth noting in the game is Wigan's Amr Zaki. That lad is now the top scorer in the league ahead of any of the other established strikers. One of the goals he scored against Liverpool was a beautiful bicycle kick. When he was being compared to Alan Shearer by the Wigan chairman earlier this year, many were laughing and chuckling at such a comparison. Hehe, looks like Amr Zaki did proofed to be superb signing and it won't be surprising to see one of the big clubs knocking at the door for him soon.

Ohhh..and it's another impressive result from Hull City! A 1-0 win over West Ham has propelled them to THIRD place right behind Liverpool and Chelsea with a 3-point difference. This was not a freak placing a couple of years ago when Wigan was second in the league for a while. Hull had overcame clubs which are touted to be way better than them, notably the Arsenal gooners. The plucky Tigers were not drawing or even losing..they were winning. They are definitely not one of the candidates for relegation this season even if they don't win in their next 10 games. In my opinion, I think Hull are the real heroes of the League because they had managed to achieve such wonderful results without splashing the cash like the top four. It goes down to basic ethics of determination and hard work.

On the other hand, Tottenham had went from Hell to the ABYSS after losing 1-2 to their fellow relegation buddies, Stoke City and had two of their players sent off. Goshhhh, they were becoming a laughing stock in the whole of England and they were raising hell more than when Martin Jol was in charge. Here's another lol Spurs joke : Last week, Tottenham equaled the record of their worst start in the league since 1912, the year when the Titanic sank. And after yesterday's result's, they were sinking even more than the Titanic! At least in 1912, they got 3 points in their opening 8 matches. In 2008, they can't even get to 3 points for crying out loud!! All the new boys from Division 1 has gotten at least 1 win but Spurs STILL has ZERO. This is a shocking horror for a big club like Spurs. To make it worst than the abyss, Spurs lost Michael Dawson and Gareth Bale to red cards plus Corluka has a serious injury. In short, their whole defence line is nearly wiped out with Ledley King still out. Every week, the opposition crowd would chant to Ramos "You're gonna get sacked this morning!". Hehe, but the losers won't be Ramos because he'll be getting a compensation even if he does get sacked. Btw, past history of Premier League showed that fellas who strayed far away at the bottom of the table at this time of the year rarely escapes relegation. Tonight, Spur's good buddy Newcastle will be taking on Man City. Both of them will have a nice time at the table bottom if Man City grabs the victory.