Today was a fun day, basically. it started off with some jazz jamming on 'all that jazz' on the piano and working the chords before doing our 'playmakers' song, 'holiday', and it was cool coz all the councillors were there and they are like one big family, and we were just rocking to hong ming's 'qing tian' (by jay chou).haha . right...

adjourned for soccer....im so thankful to God that the asthma didn't really come back, had to take a few puffs though. played not bad, i think....dribbling was spot on, i could just get past pple with effortless ease (oh well at the end it wasnt good coz i was so tired anyway)... the great move was on the right, seeing a gap and squeezing it through 2, then cutting inside gabriel (sorry man) and releasing it to daryl who passed it to guan zheng but he missed, oh well...did another crossfield run from the right to the left but ended up firing way over the bar, oh wells.....my shooting sucks, i could have scored more, i guess. daryl scored a really nice one. went back home to mug for sats, how sad is that.

the thing about dribbling is, its not so much the skill that allows you to get past players, but the timing. harry has fabulous skill, he can turn around in a jiffy and is just so quick on the turn, as in, controlling the ball and turning at the same time, while i need to take some time. but thats' the thing, in some cases, when its really tight, taking your time actually helps. it's about knowing when to dribble, when to do the bursting. it's about seeing a gap, and quickly moving into the gap before someone else comes across, to have a visual perspective of the field and see where the gaps are. its not just about, oh, i've got the ball, let's sprint 200 m and well, what, score a try. if one does that, one is surely going to be tackled. when you get the ball, for example, if you quickly burst, the defender, anticipating it, will surely get you. so its about how to trick the defender. getting the ball, you have to do your trick when the defender least expects it, when he's abit slow in recovering, when he assumes that you arent' going to dribble, you're going to pass, because you didn't make the initial move to run with it, but you look around, and just when you lure him into a false sense of complacency, boom and off you go. there's a rhythm to it, you just watch good players (like well, eh, pires, rivaldo) and see.

like, one of the skills is, how do you squeeze past two? well, the answer is, the only way u can is to go between them. you try to isolate them, make sure there is a large enough gap between the first and the second just for you and the ball to go through, and then you just shuffle through the first, isolating him, before going through the second. the first person would think the second person would stop it, and the second person would think likewise. pires did it against another team, he waited, waited until there was just enough gap, that angle to do the run, and he did it, ghosting past one and the other. it's all about space.

the bad thing was, i didn't eat a single thing (not a thing) till 7 at night. wow.

you know, last time back in primary school days i was probably more happy, confident of myself, bubbly and all that, and it's sad to see people lose all of that childlike joy for this pensive, moody, the world-is-a-mess persona. last time, i just talked all the time, making jokes and laughing and all that, being friends, being with people, and now it seems as though all of that is gone. it's probably due to the trauma of having bad experiences, people laughing at you, people sniping bad comments about you, and you feel betrayed, you feel afraid of showing yourself, 'maybe i'm just afraid to show myself how weak i really am', and all that, because you fear people laughing at you again. it happens everywhere. such things can really wreck your development. esp in gep, and being laughed at by others, and all that, such a stigmatising experience. it castigates you. so you build shells, and you aren't so eager to do it anymore.

perhaps it's just singapore. in US there's probably alot more sniping, but pple develop confidence abt themselves because it's their nature to encourage confidence, to encourage openness, glasnost if u like. here, if you talk so much, they tell you, oh just shuddup. if you do some funky hip hop moves, instead of going, yah thats so cool, and join in the fun, they're like, what the hell, what's this idiot doing, does he think he's p diddy or something? its absoutely ridiculous, they aren't willing to accept diversity and all that and accept that there are people different from them and they don't have to impose their views on them, or, more frankly speaking, ME. it's probably due to the whole system we live in that values so much conformity, and it just stifles me because i don't belong to that matrix. (haha) the result are people that look like each other, speak like each other, talk like each other. ridiculous.

and the last factor of the change is probably the fact that being bubbly and happy is very tiring after a while. and after a while , being the fickle old me, i get tired and sick of being happy, so i want to be sad for a while, so that when i'm next happy it'll be more enjoyable, being happy. it's my theory of cycles, how pple have mood swings in order to maximise their sadness, or their happiness, since being bland and boring is the worst thing of all. and its just plain tiring, i must be getting old.