The Singapore Malaysia Cup Overconnect Syndrome

I was reading this on Facebook and it stirred me enough to get me out of my blanket and onto a proper table so I could compose a decent reply. In summary, Hazrul Azhar Jamari addresses what he calls the “Singapore Malaysia Cup Disconnect Syndrome”: the criticism that this experimental return to Malaysian competitions is seen as a regressive step and the uncertainty among the critics whether this four-year experiment should succeed or fail, whilst calling for a focus on the S.League instead of returning to Malaysia.

I am one of those critics. Not having watched Malaysian football recently, I can hardly comment justifiably on the quality of the teams in the competition, but I sincerely doubt the supporters of this experiment, Hazrul himself of course included, have watched enough Malaysian football to know it is worth our time to compete there. I think, on the other hand, we are suffering from “the Singapore Malaysia Cup Overconnect Syndrome”. Let me explain.

I am also Singaporean, and I have lived through the tail end of the Malaysia Cup days. I want to see my team succeed, of course, by which I mean any Singaporeans competing anywhere, but I object to this entire experiment because of the mind-blowing amount of effort put into publicity which was sorely missing from Singapore football in the past 15 years or so. It’s a tacit admission that Singapore football is only at home when it is competing against Malaysian club sides. Continue reading

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Give LATW a chance lah…

LionsXII is going to kick off soon against Kelantan, but the thread on Kallangroar.com’s Facebook page about tickets selling out was kind of distracted by some comments about the LATW crew, which I first noticed from a tweet from @kallangfortis asking if past efforts had gone down the drain because the LATW crew’s focus on the National Team rather than on this LionsXII side was turning off some Singapore football supporters. My response: which effort down what drain?

Here’s my response on that thread, which through some late night e-diarrhoea became a full blog post’s worth of content… Continue reading

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Contact Singapore not following “Singaporeans first”?

‘Contact Singapore’ or ‘Contact Foreign Talents’? is an interesting post on the revived Temasek Review calling out Contact Singapore as one of the “Govt agencies” which does not reflect a “Singaporeans first” policy that the PAP government has been touting.

Why is it interesting? As part of the Singapore Students Association in Germany (SSAG), an organisation which very much puts Singaporeans first, I have had first-hand contact with the representatives of Contact Singapore (Europe) and I have to say that without their continued support over the past few years we would not have been able to conduct our activities at the scale which we are accustomed to. Continue reading

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LionsXII to play in the Malaysian Super League

This isn’t news, really: it’s about half a year ago that the football associations of Singapore (FAS) and Malaysia (FAM) signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) that they would send teams for the other’s domestic competitions. Some updates to it: here’s the FAM expressing their approval and support for the venture, as covered by Shamir Osman of Today, and here is the official lineup of the Singapore team LionsXII provided by Liga Singapura.

Below is the reproduction of my Facebook comment in reply to the article. Continue reading

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Automatic Freenode Authentication (SASL) on irssi

So after having to log in to #debian on freenode IRC several times while trying to fix a little udevd problem I had (thanks nsadmin and someone else I can’t find in the logs anymore… though I solved the problem by brute force, uninstalling and reinstalling udev thanks to this post) I finally decided to go through the one-time hassle of setting up authentication to avoid having to enter my password in plain text every time I log.

I’m using Debian Squeeze (6.0) with irssi 0.8.15.

Continue reading

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Halfway through Group A

Three matches left in this stage of World Cup Qualifying, and Singapore need tonnes of self-belief to convince their own home fans that football is once again worth supporting.

Currently, Singapore sits at the bottom of the table with 1 goal scored and 7 conceded. Their next opponents, Jordan, are at the other end with a 100% record, having scored 7 and conceded only 1.

Although Singapore opened their third stage campaign with a 2-1 defeat in Kunming against China, the Lions had all to play for. Buoyed by the anger at poor refereeing decisions and the goal notched in a hostile atmosphere, Singapore should have capitalised on strong home support to pick up points in Jalan Besar.

Perhaps tellingly, local sports website Redsports’ reports on the matches had only one comment. It was as if the Singaporean fans had been trained to take defeat for granted, an attitude that at least the players on the pitch did not reflect with their gritty displays at home.

The story of the second match, though, was similar: Singapore starting promisingly but conceding goals due to lapses in concentration. There was even controversy over penalty calls, just as it had been in China. The artificial pitch, which Iraq coach Zico had complained about, helped Iraq to their second goal.

A 2-0 friendly win at home against the Philippines between fixtures did little to boost confidence, especially when the vocal minority of Pinoy fans took over the Jalan Besar Stadium and Singapore effectively lost some of its home advantage.

At least the return of Hariss Harun from national service (another topic for another time) to bolster the midfield and the defensive strength of Safuwan Baharudin, who almost single-handedly kept the scoreline respectable against Iraq (thanks Yizhe from Redsports), gave the Lions something to look forward to.

Iraq coach Zico pointed out that Singapore should not afford their opponents too much space in midfield, advice which the Lions took to heart, but while the Lions took the game to their visitors, their finishing was again just not up to par, and giving the Jordanians too much space at the crucial moments allowed them to fly home with a flattering 3-0 win. (Sure, Shahril Ishak was unjustly denied a consolation goal on 77 minutes, but blaming the officials should not become the national sport.)

Singapore reversing the result on Thursday to beat Jordan 3-0 would be too much to hope for. More realistic would be a narrow hard-fought victory to bring the glimmer of hope back into the Singaporean fans’ and footballers’ eyes, especially since the Lions have been all but written off at this stage.

If Iraq take three points against China they will almost certainly have qualified, but will also keep the door open for a Singapore miracle.

However, the onus is on the Lions to play their hearts out for a result in Amman. They should do better without the crushing masses of apathy at home, something which the LATWcrew are working very hard to change.

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Another vote, another post, just thinking aloud

This is reproduced from a comment I posted on an article found at theonlinecitizen.com:

One of the points I can discern from both your contributions (@iVOTEahMENG, @Steven Kho) to this thread is that presidential pay helps to maintain the president’s dignity. I disagree. Is S$4M a year really necessary to provide the President of a sovereign state with ‘dignity’?

If you look at it from a basic human point of view, I believe one should only talk of maintaining or preserving dignity when one is not paid enough to afford decent clothing to wear, to nourish oneself properly and has no proper home to live in.

The S$4 million sum is for the President’s personal use. Everything else, including “entertainment expenses”, Istana maintenance and salaries of the Presidential support staff are covered in the Civil List and detailed in this Statute.

So @Steven Kho’s comparison of salaries with sports/business figures above is not a consideration of dignity.

Perhaps you are talking of a salary befitting his status and responsibilities as a head of state. Yes, I agree, as a head of state he should be paid more than the ministers in parliament. Surely, then, S$4 million is a reasonable amount, considering that the Prime Minister’s salary is S$3 million. Other ministers are paid S$1.5 million a year. Is this justified? The Government certainly thought so in 1994 when they released their White Paper linking competence and honesty with higher pay, and they have certainly stuck to this stand over the years.

But for me, I think this is legalising corruption rather than preventing it. I have personal experience that excuses are easy to make when one has privileged access to a public good (in my case, Internet access in the student residence where I am part of the volunteer admin team. I try to use my privileges for the benefit of others but mostly it’s for my own purposes that I take advantage of this. Whether this is corruption or not, I don’t know, but my point here is that keeping to principles is hard, and we should encourage people to/who do so.) and I think that for our public servants we should look for people with principles who are ready to perform their public duty with or without such perks.

With regards to political independence, @iVOTEahMENG is of course correct that each candidate will be backed by a political party. But this will happen whether or not the candidate solicits this/these parties for support, because the parties will want to throw their support behind particular candidates.

Dr. Tan Cheng Bock in his rally has raised a valid point that his fellow candidate Mr. Tan Jee Say while discrediting the other three Tans for being past PAP members and therefore less than completely independent, Mr. Tan Jee Say himself is a former SDP member and also not completely independent.

This is absolutely true. However, the point I believe Mr. Tan Jee Say has been trying to make is that as he has never been publicly affiliated with the PAP, he
can provide the necessary checks and balances on the majority-PAP government.

He is aware that his campaign also serves to raise the profile of “non-PAP forces” in preparation for the next election, which admittedly is not non-partisan as Mr. Tan Kin Lian claims to be and could therefore represent a conflict of interest.

But would paving the way for a more representative democracy really be a problem for Singapore?

Furthermore, I would like to point out that representatives from several parties have come out in support of Mr. Tan Jee Say, and this to me is much more of a unifying, representative effect than having more people support a person.

I know two candidates who are willing to use their personal pay for the public good, and neither of them is a Doctor. I don’t know who you will be voting for – it is your decision – but I am very sure now who I will want to see as the President.

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China vs Singapore…

So we are in Group A of the World Cup 2014 AFC Qualifying Tournament Third Round, together with China, Jordan and Iraq.

We have met all these teams before, and because of our past results, some are already bubbling with excitement. @LigaSingapura is positive we can make it through, while @Ledgeddie is considering the possibilities, but has a nervous eye on some past events. @SazaliAbdulAziz is somewhat unsure, but thinks the draw looks good. I myself would love to see Singapore progress from this round, but as always I prefer to take things one step at a time. Continue reading

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6 – 4 = 3

Singapore progressed to the third round of the 2014 World Cup Qualifiers (AFC) with a well-deserved 1-1 draw in Malaysia, before a massive crowd of 80,000 at the Bukit Jalil Stadium. The 6-4 aggregate win means we join Indonesia and Thailand as ASEAN representatives in the next Asian round.

In about 7 hours, the preliminary draw will take place in Rio de Janeiro to decide who our opponents will be in the group stage which begins in September 2011 and lasts till February 2012. All of the top 20 Asian teams in this round were also in the top 20 for the 2010 qualifiers, with the exception of Indonesia who replaced Turkmenistan by knocking them out 5-4 on aggregate. Also to be decided at the draw Continue reading

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Neighbourly Rivalry Revisited. Again.

This time, there’s no more signing of agreements. It’s crunch time. Singapore take on Malaysia in the first leg of the World Cup 2014 Asian Qualifying Tournament 2nd round, at Jalan Besar Stadium. Sure, it only has a capacity of 6,000. But all the tickets are sold out and live telecast on Channel 5 means everyone – AND THE ROCK MEANS EVERYONE! –  can tune in. And those of you who can, please do: this match might bring back the much-desired Malaysia Cup feeling, but make no mistake. This one is all about the future.

Despite some questionable actions by the FAS, there can be no question about the buzz generated for the match. With the likes of Kunalan Subramaniam, Safee Sali and Muslim Ahmad in the Tigers squad, the reigning champions of ASEAN football will want a decent result for the second leg back at Bukit Jalil on July 28th.

But Singapore, three-time champions of the region in their own right, will not lie down and let the Tigers roll over them. It’s going to be a catfight of epic proportions!

GO LIONS GO!

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