Bao
07-31-2007, 07:06 AM
I took a lift from Park as usual. And as usual, we sat side by side in his modest 4-wheeler, just revelling in the company of someone else with whom we might possibly just happen to share a ghost of a whisper of cultural heritage with.
It was comforting that. There weren’t many Asians plying their trade in Europe, even less on the football field. It was comforting having Park around, realising how much the lads took him in as one of their own, realising that they’d accept me in the very same way.
I stared out the window with the sounds of Freddie Mercury straining from the car stereo. It was one of mine that CD. I always liked Queen. And it didn’t take me long to convince Park to play their songs on the pretence of using music to help his English. I smiled wryly at the thought of mild mannered Park wailing his head off while telling the world just what a champion he was, or even just ‘head-nodding’ to the bass beat of ‘Under Pressure’. Who knows eh? A few more trips like this and I’d make a fan out of him too!
As for me, the songs took me back. Back to when I was just a kid. Back to when the dream was not yet even a dream, never imagining it could have been a reality.
I was born 18 years ago. 1989. In a tiny country that barely registered as a dot in any map of the world. I heard some years back about how countries that drew maps lied about the size of their nation as a sort of psychological phallic enlarger. If Singapore tried that, we might just about be able to inflate ourselves to the size of greater London. And that’d be some lie as it is by the way…
Life in Singapore was…well…let’s just say that all those rumours about how studious Asian students are might well have sprung from meeting Singaporean students. Academic results were a BIG deal over there. Almost everything else was secondary. If even that.
I was born into a small middle class family. And my goal in life, as decided by everyone else around me, was to get into university. Of course, no one seemed to think to ask my opinion on the matter. I reckon I just wanted to play really. I was an active kid, running around all over the place, and it didn’t take me long to get caught up in the fabulous world of footy.
Like every other kid out there, I wanted to be a striker! Scoring goals for fun. Running rings around defenders. Of course my friends would have none of that. I was rather fat as a kid to tell the truth (my grandma cooked like the devil and was likely responsible for gluttony being counted as one of the seven sins…), and quite naturally, I lacked the pace and stamina that so many thought integral to a glamorous striker.
So they stuffed me in defence. A position I played in for most of my childhood years. I got fairly decent at it to be honest. I wasn’t tall and would never be a real threat in the air, but I learned the importance of positioning to make up for my lack of height, and developed strength to stop others pushing me off once I planted my feet.
A group of us played as a team for almost a year. Then our results dropped and all around us, the adults would tell us how “there wasn’t very much time to be caught up in ‘all this childishness’.” Results were what mattered in Singapore, and soon, the pressures of society pushed us all away from the fields and back into the classrooms. While I still found time to kick a ball around occasionally, I never knew, then, if I’d ever play a proper game again.
On the flip side, my results improved by leaps and bounds. As the dust cleared from 12 years of schooling all the way to the dreaded ‘A’ levels, I found that, by luck or destiny, I’d done very well indeed. So well, in fact, my teachers said, that I might well want to consider applying for scholarships to study overseas. America perhaps? Or England?
England! The land of footy! It didn’t take me long to make up my mind. The scholarship board was agreeable, though they insisted I go to Oxford. No doubt as a reminder that I was there for scholastic rather than soccer-lastic reasons…
I would have preferred Liverpool, Manchester, or Newcastle even, but at least it was in the same country. I still remember the excitement and anticipation as the plane prepared to taxi down the runway to Heathrow, readying myself for what was to come…
It was comforting that. There weren’t many Asians plying their trade in Europe, even less on the football field. It was comforting having Park around, realising how much the lads took him in as one of their own, realising that they’d accept me in the very same way.
I stared out the window with the sounds of Freddie Mercury straining from the car stereo. It was one of mine that CD. I always liked Queen. And it didn’t take me long to convince Park to play their songs on the pretence of using music to help his English. I smiled wryly at the thought of mild mannered Park wailing his head off while telling the world just what a champion he was, or even just ‘head-nodding’ to the bass beat of ‘Under Pressure’. Who knows eh? A few more trips like this and I’d make a fan out of him too!
As for me, the songs took me back. Back to when I was just a kid. Back to when the dream was not yet even a dream, never imagining it could have been a reality.
I was born 18 years ago. 1989. In a tiny country that barely registered as a dot in any map of the world. I heard some years back about how countries that drew maps lied about the size of their nation as a sort of psychological phallic enlarger. If Singapore tried that, we might just about be able to inflate ourselves to the size of greater London. And that’d be some lie as it is by the way…
Life in Singapore was…well…let’s just say that all those rumours about how studious Asian students are might well have sprung from meeting Singaporean students. Academic results were a BIG deal over there. Almost everything else was secondary. If even that.
I was born into a small middle class family. And my goal in life, as decided by everyone else around me, was to get into university. Of course, no one seemed to think to ask my opinion on the matter. I reckon I just wanted to play really. I was an active kid, running around all over the place, and it didn’t take me long to get caught up in the fabulous world of footy.
Like every other kid out there, I wanted to be a striker! Scoring goals for fun. Running rings around defenders. Of course my friends would have none of that. I was rather fat as a kid to tell the truth (my grandma cooked like the devil and was likely responsible for gluttony being counted as one of the seven sins…), and quite naturally, I lacked the pace and stamina that so many thought integral to a glamorous striker.
So they stuffed me in defence. A position I played in for most of my childhood years. I got fairly decent at it to be honest. I wasn’t tall and would never be a real threat in the air, but I learned the importance of positioning to make up for my lack of height, and developed strength to stop others pushing me off once I planted my feet.
A group of us played as a team for almost a year. Then our results dropped and all around us, the adults would tell us how “there wasn’t very much time to be caught up in ‘all this childishness’.” Results were what mattered in Singapore, and soon, the pressures of society pushed us all away from the fields and back into the classrooms. While I still found time to kick a ball around occasionally, I never knew, then, if I’d ever play a proper game again.
On the flip side, my results improved by leaps and bounds. As the dust cleared from 12 years of schooling all the way to the dreaded ‘A’ levels, I found that, by luck or destiny, I’d done very well indeed. So well, in fact, my teachers said, that I might well want to consider applying for scholarships to study overseas. America perhaps? Or England?
England! The land of footy! It didn’t take me long to make up my mind. The scholarship board was agreeable, though they insisted I go to Oxford. No doubt as a reminder that I was there for scholastic rather than soccer-lastic reasons…
I would have preferred Liverpool, Manchester, or Newcastle even, but at least it was in the same country. I still remember the excitement and anticipation as the plane prepared to taxi down the runway to Heathrow, readying myself for what was to come…