So I got bored after way too many Japanese particles invaded my brain and I had to resort to doing some of these:







 

Whoops I missed out his jersey number, but this one should be obvious anyway. I mean, who else would be wearing the armband and playing video games? XD

 

Also, I couldn't make this one do the sign that Miro always does :/

Heh, I don't think I did them justice though. It was hard to choose the right hairdos and to make them look distinctively like who they are especially with the other random details (camera, iPod etc.) :D And of course, here's the two originals I found that gave me the 'inspiration' for this XD Love the Manu one :D

So many things have been going on in my life lately and I'm trying to focus on picking up the many loose ends of my Japanese revision before my portfolio's due in about two weeks. But I think I'll just take a break from language and get this off my chest.

I used to be incredibly politically apathetic. Even in my chosen major/career pathway, I've always said that I'd love it if I never had to report on politics. Where I come from, it is insanely difficult, in my opinion, to report on politics independently, successfully and truthfully without having been controlled (in some form) by the ruling party. Print media in my country is incredibly state-controlled, if you could put it that way, and it's pretty frustrating actually, because many people who only read print news and have no access to the internet are just being swayed into staying with the status quo.

Despite not being back home, and even though I'm underage and can't vote (but I will definitely do so next election provided my area stops having these incredibly stupid walkovers), I went online to watch one rally speech that was made by one of the opposition candidates contesting my district. She may be young, only five years my senior, but I see her as incredibly more qualified to give us a voice in parliament more so than the other young candidate from the ruling party, also contesting in my district. What I fear, though, is the sheer apathy of the voters and their instinct on voting day - to just go with the flow, especially with the whole argument of, "The ruling party has brought us through more than 40 years of good, strong governance. The original leaders have sacrificed much to lead us where they are today." This has also been parroted by the ruling party's leader when he encouraged the voters to vote for his party.

As a kid, I've read his memoirs, thought a great deal of him, and even wondered why people would bother voting for the opposition parties. But as I got older, I began to see why. True, the original leaders of the 1950s and 60s did sacrifice a lot to bring our country up to the level it is today, and I'm sure many Singaporeans respect them for that. The ruling party's leader even stated their names when he talked about them, but the first thing that struck me was: these names (including the leader himself) are all leaders from the first generation of the party. They had to fight hard to get their voices heard in parliament and to build our government. However, we're presently in the ruling party's third generation, and many new candidates, whose names I do not even know and have never heard of, are just waltzing into parliament mostly through walkovers in the multi-candidate districts, where they have one or two really strong candidates from the ruling party and the rest generally coat-tail riders.

The young lady from the ruling party who's contesting in my district is one example of this. I've certainly never heard of her before this election, never seen her around, never seen her doing anything of good repute before, and all of a sudden, she's here in my district and wants my parents' votes. This lady cites her biggest regret as not bringing her parents to a certain theme park in my country, and when she doesn't know what to say, she stamps her foot. When asked about education, she says the cost of education is low. When asked about what policies she thinks need to be changed, she says that none of them need to be changed. Without any political experience whatsoever, I can safely say that I can think of at least five things that are in dire need of changing.

- Education policies for special needs children - my sister is one of them and she is not benefitting from it.
- High property taxes.
- The whole idea of having political representation in teams rather than in single-member contests.
- The continually increasing price of travelling into the central business district.
- Rising costs of education and the difficulty of getting a place in a local university.

And the ruling party wants this kind of narrow-minded and shallow people to be voted in to serve the people, and expects that taxpayers are supposed to pay them one of the highest salaries in the world (for politicians, at least)?

My mum told me that she was thinking of not voting for the opposition in our area because she thinks that young candidate of theirs is too young and insufficiently experienced. But I told her to go and watch this candidate's rally speech that was delivered last night. It was nowhere near perfect, but it was full of conviction, and she did bring up pertinent issues: the problems faced by the middle class, accoutability regarding ministerial salaries, the overwhelming influx and over-reliance on foreigners (so much so that our people have been neglected). I told my mum to have a look and I hope she's actually re-considering her vote.

It would an absolute travesty if that feet-stomping, Kate Spade bag carrying, my-biggest-regret-is-not-taking-my-parents-to-that-theme-park woman got voted in and became the representative for my area. Also, I hope that area near mine that has an A-team opposition party contesting it registers a win by the opposition. It's (in my opinion) the most credible opposition team that's been fielded in years, and it would be a shame for them to lose. One can tell that the opposition are really passionate about making changes and helping the middle class people who need helping, and that they're not just focused on GDP and their own salaries, etc.

Second thing: politics aside, there's the issue of racism that's popped up today, particularly from the recent Clasico (looking at you, Busquets) and supposedly from the French NT. One good thing that came out of it was reading the French articles though - my French is still quite passable if I can actually understand that and translate it haphazardly without using Google Translate. But I digress; it's a sad, sad thing when the game descends into racism and this much drama (by this, I refer to the Clasico drama, racist-Busquets aside).

I know I'm sounding very biased when I say this, but I don't like Barca, never have, and I have never understood the hype surrounding their style of football (and Messi, especially). I hate it when people dive in football, and I find it impossible to really like players who do that no matter how awesome they can be in other areas (Robben's one of them). I hate the play-acting, the referee-hounding, the simulation and the demands that the referee card the opposing team.

After all the drama, watching video clips of parts of the match, Busquets' terrible racist insult at Marcelo, and all the diving crap, I have no idea how people can still defend Barca (and Busquets). I'm not saying that Real isn't at fault too, but well, that Pepe challenge wasn't deserving of referee-hounding and a red card, for sure. I don't even like Man United, but I'm actually hoping they win the CL, given that Schalke don't have much hope of advancing considering that it's like Man United vs. Manu actually. No way do Barca deserve to win, and I hope their team's depleted of people for the final because of accumulated bookings or whatever. At least Man United played with class.

I just feel that there is this whole hype surrounding Barca, as though they can do no wrong, get away scot-free for diving and such, while players from other clubs get booked for the same things. It's the same problem I had with Spain at the WC (fair play award, my feet), especially after the Villa-and-the-Honduras-player incident - the whole double standards thing, where Villa gets off scot-free and in a similar incident in 2006, Frings gets suspended from the semifinal.

Sometimes it makes me wonder why the footballing authorities are banning things like snoods and shirt removal but are doing nothing about racism, fair play, double standards and that need for goal-line technology.

The whole racism thing, though, just reminded me of why I got so majorly worked up last week after my schoolmate was the victim of racist remarks by her classmate, and when some of my classmates made subtly racist remarks towards me previously. I know better than to sink to that level, but it does affect us sometimes.

But for the record, it doesn't mean that we speak bad English just because our presentation skills/public speaking skills aren't as good as yours. Not speaking up in class doesn't mean that we don't have an opinion or that we can't be bothered to. We're not like some of you, who speak before you think, make essentialist sweeping statements about diffferent groups of people and end up offending other people.

Sometimes, I wonder what the world's coming to. It's a sad, sad time to be living in.

So today I was watching the Chinese GP qualifying session and Vettel took his third pole position, making it a hat-trick :D I'm so excited about his domination of the season so far, and even though it doesn't make for very exciting racing, I'll be glad to see him win another WDC. That way, he'll be well on the way to becoming the next Schumi. Anyway, while watching the third part of the session today I remembered what someone I met at a dinner party said to me (a guy, by the way). He was insinuating that girls like me only watch F1 because the drivers are hot (he tried to say that I found Vettel hot, which is totally not the case). In my opinion, Vettel isn't that hot/good-looking, but he's cute in a way, and objectively speaking, there are way more drivers who're better-looking than him, whom I don't like/have not much opinion on/can't stand, i.e. Hamilton, Button, Alguersuari.

It also had me remembering another funny incident at our family's Chap Goh Meh dinner this year, where me and Gabs were getting into a heated debate about whether Germany or England was better at football, with Glen listening in. I was saying that Germany was better, especially in the light of last year's 4-1 (or rather, 4-2) win.

Gabs: "England is much better! They have Wayne Rooney and Cristiano Ronaldo!"
Glen/Me: "But Cristiano Ronaldo is from PORTUGAL!"
Gabs: *sheepishly* "Oh yeah, forgot."
Us: HAHAHAHAHAHA.

Which proves my point that guys sometimes don't even know what they're talking about when it comes to football :P

Oh and yay for Schalke! :D Boys did great to hold on to their huge lead over Inter, and they posted a comfortable win over their opponents. The best part of the whole thing was being able to gloat to my dad later because he was so insistent that Inter would destroy Schalke before the first leg. His first reaction was, "As soon as I saw the score I was thinking, oh no, you're going to be giggling and laughing at me for supporting the losers."

As I told my dad, I certainly don't expect Schalke to win against Man United in two weeks time, but I'm still supporting them and hoping they can troll everyone and make the impossible possible. Hopefully the final will be Real Madrid vs. Schalke, DNW Barca, ever!