summer vacation

was doing ny compre and that line stuck to me. the age of james dean, the ford mustang and making out will seem, in retrospect, like what it was: a summer vacation from larger human history.

and i went to watch the mv of summer vacation by smtown. realise i could recognise fly to the sky inside. smtown is like the record company lar, but dunno if ftts is still inside. and i got the canon olympus ad "my digital story" wif jeon ji hyun inside. finally! it was from last year i tink, but i still tink its the best ad i ever seen, cos of the feeling it evokes. like a vacation.

and yes we are quite screwed now. drawing wif spurs and seeing it as a victory. 3rd consecutive draw in holland. valencia is faring slightly better, though the 2-0 defeat to sevilla is quite disappointing considering sevilla onli had 1 shot on target( own goal by ayala, can u believe it???). and that came on the back of the 2-1 win at santiago bernabeu. la liga is very close at the moment. after real lost to depor, we rose to 4th, though we haven play yet. after we lost, we dropped to 7 or something and now we drop again to 9, though we haven play yet. and so we are looking to find our footing again. gone were the days, like that summer vacation.

B'z still rock. they were from teh days of that summer vacation. went to play the cd wif their songs again. love phantom, fushidara 100%, calling, ultra soul, gold, konya tsuki no mieru oka ni, thinking of you...

was reading the papers, in particular tis article abt the ipod, or rather mp3 players in general. they have a profound social impact: dividing people. imagine two people sitting side by side in a train, listening to teh same song, but they will never noe, cos they are "plugged in". how true. it happens, i guess. and sometimes when you are wif pple on the train or bus, a hint that u dun wnat to tok is when u take out ur player. gone are the days when u blast music from a radio and share wif pple, whether or not they want it. i tink the private space is being more defined nowadays. we would frown upon such behaviour so rampant in the 60s and 70s for being inconsiderate etc etc. interesting..that something i really hold dear for keeping me company on lonely bus rides is a potential bane to democracy. technology is really a double-edged sword.
and did i mention that the writer kept referring to "that summer, this summer, summer song etc" ?

summer is a fave season i guess. lazing around. playing. and theres the summer vacation too. shu3 jia4. and i guess when pple look back on their youth, they will always tink of that summer vacation. ok, at least for pple living in countries wif the 4 seasons.

and if someone has the full version of junyang's guardian angel, please send to me. actually i onli like the starting part and the starting line. 是否记得...

apparently, i am in the mood for a lot of reminiscience and reflection.

dramatic football, japanese style

and so, we won at the bernabeu. when everyone said we had no chance. hey, one season was all it took for people to forget about the mighty Valencia from the Mestella. how sad. thanks to ranieri. and benitez said himself tt he didnt want to leave valencia at all. the board forced him out. i mean, it has been widely speculated back then; hearing him say so himself, is very heartbreaking. cos it confirms the sheer stupidity of the board. they saw ranieri as a son. i rather they disowned such a lousy son. anyway its history. we have flores now.

and ajax lost 1-0 at psv. hiddink said there was no penalty. hes the psv coach. we were robbed. as simple as that.

there are quite a few new jap dramas that i tink are worth a watch. by new, i mean after 2000. haven really seen alot of dramas after 2000.
here goes:

winter 2004
ace o nerae
AYA UETO!!!! wad more can i ask for? sooo cute! and stylish! she plays tennis here..

spring 2004
orange days
supposedly, the story line is good. its a feel-good drama abt young pple. like searching for polestar tt kind. 2 hunks (tsumabuki satoshi and eita) and kou shibasaki..its abt young pple in a college setting and kou shibasaki is a deaf musician.

summer 2004
sekai no chuusin de, ai o sakebu
the book was hot, the movie was hot, the drama is hot. yamada takayuki is supposed to be one of the coolest new actors in japan but i tink he fades in comparison to tsumabuki and eita. its hard to bungle the drama up, when u have such success wif the novel and movie, which i haven and desperately wanted to watch. but i feel tt the movie wuld be better, cos the cast is more goodlooking(and includes kou shibasaki) and the song is after all ken hirais hitomi wo tojite. but tt aside, the story is a winner.

fall 2004
last christmas
cant resist christmas and snow. reminds me of japan when i went in december 03. and i do like the song last christmas by wham! which is sort of the song of tis drama.

winter 2005
h2 kimi to ita hibi
baseball drama. though i dun like baseball, i tink it wuld be quite interesting. yamada acts in here too. i tink theres a lot of cool factor here. oh and yui ichikawa is inside too, but i tink she plays a bit role. so stylish

summer 2005
densha otaku
misaki itou!!!!!!!!!!!!! hahah anyway the guy quite cool oso itou atsushi. haha its a comedy. its abt tis geek falling in love wif an innocent princess. haha for once, the loser wins! no wonder it appeals to me. anyway theres a movie and a book too..
umizaru
i love the movie. it was a manga. now theres a drama. and the song is b'z's ocean, which is absolutely nice! anyway they say too much money was spent on tis. its abt a naval diver, the hunky hideaki ito and the girl he likes, ai kato! haha its the sequel to the movie. i tink tt alone makes it must watch

btw its fall 2005 now. winter is teh first season, fall the last. when u go by years.
shall wait for the review of kiken na aneki, starring itou misaki. tink it wuld be damn funny.

valencia at real madrid, ajax at psv.

tonight, two of the toughest games. real madrid is always tough to play, especially nowadays they are strengthened by their new signings. at least ajax got back to winning ways against thun. psv, surprisingly is doing ok wifout so many of their players involved in last season's fairy tale run. doing better than us in fact. may god be with us tonight.

and hamburg will struggle without van der vaart tonight. he scored the winner on thu(again). banned for 3 bundesliga games.

and i think lille can play much better football than chelsea.
was down with food poisoning. but recovered in time to watch the match. man utd v lille.
lille can play neat passing football. it's a pity they didnt play liddat in the 2nd half. they were certainly capable of entertaining. and its nice to see them daring to attack away. if only they played like how they played in the first half. slick passing. but they didnt. nevertheless, they are still more entertaining than chelsea. hey, at least their passes are in the middle and attacking thirds. AND you wonder how chelsea was shown to have made only 30% long balls. simple: they played many many many short passes between their defence. so the absolute number is very big. yeah, u get the point.

whoever said chelsea is infallible must be the biggest blind clown on this earth. open your eyes and watch chelsea play. their play is so flawed. and i am not talking about how defensive they are. i am referring to their tactical flaws. overshifting, a longball tactic that can be stopped by some good positional play and keeper coming out to act as a sweeper, as liverpool had shown. even their defence is not as good as u think. and when a team only sits back and defend and hit you on the counter, you know its for you to win. seriously, i am still unfazed by bolton and liverpools 4-1 defeats. unless chelsea dominates opponents, there is no reason to fear them. they are just converting the few chances they have, thats all.

only teams that totally dominate you, deserve your fear and respect.

and so you were wrong.
dead wrong.
wise up, will you?
you just have no right to play.
so that's why guts is irrelevant.

in pride, haru said:
if there were a god,
he must have hated me.
somehow that line stayed
etched in your memory.

defeated, deflated.
what else could there be?
sink no further?
you were proven wrong
just today.

so just let it go.
faith.
it's a big word.
you have no right to have it
either.

and so it must be,
the will of god,
that you are
in this pathetic state
that you are in.

rightful place.
he didnt make a mistake.
he double-checked too,
just to be sure.
that was how serious he was.

you are just the main character
in your own melodrama

how bad could it get?

so arsenal lost 2-1 at west brom; hamburg lost 1-0 at home to wolfsburg; ajax drew 0-0 with heracles. valencia plays malaga tonight.

i am still adamant that wenger was right to have let vieira go. now henry might leave. he can leave. seriously i hate to say it: he's important, hes a very brilliant player, but how brilliant is he, actually? look at how he plays for france. he does nothing much, except the occasional flashes of magic. i must say that the last few matches i watched of arsenal, with henry playing, henry doesnt play like henry. maybe out of form. but i have this nagging thought that maybe, henry has become too inconsistent a player for us to bank EVERYTHING on. he is different from the player he was during that unbeaten season. maybe he used up all his brilliance then. i mean baraja and albelda dun look quite the same as they did during that magical valencia season anymore. yes. magic can come back, look at rafael van der vaart. but henry..i dunno about him anymore. if he's heart isnt here, he can leave. sad isnt it? the moment you have trouble, people want to leave. like ashley cole. all good teams will break up in the end. heard of the busby babes? they were gone on that night in munich, plane crash. ajax has seen so many changes in 7 years. in 1995, we won the champions league and the team broke up after that. after success. the team of 2002/2003 broke up too. chivu, zlatan, o'brien, van der vaart, pasanen. maxwell is out wif injury, he might leave too, trabelsi is 90 percent leaving on a free after this season. pienaar maybe leaving too. the changes at arsenal are nothing, compared to what happens at AmsterdamArena. great teams can rise again. at first i was thinking, this season is rebuilding, renewal. maybe next season will be too. maybe the season after that too. the point is, i don't believe in this life, i can never watch arsenal win again. i don't believe ajax can never win the champions league again, nor valencia the la liga. and holland the euro and world cup. but i would very much love to see this generation win of course. they have been a very big part of my life. i have the faith we can win again.

unless of course, the world ends tomorrow.

much as i like to tell you to face your problems, i don't really do as i preach, not all the time, at least. monday is farewell assembly. i am hoping, praying even that it doesn't come. like maybe 40 hours more? i don't know, i am not prepared for what comes after it. It's the end, as kwan puts it. people won't be the same anymore. It will really be the last time you get to talk to people under a normaler setting. i mean during exams, people won't sit and chat; they will be talking about mugging. at prom, people will be rushing around taking photos all that. maybe monday will be like this too. memories from the past two years flash by. time has caught up with me at last.

yesterday, when i was walking out from nj at around 9 at night, i was wondering: how long has it been since i last left the school so late? ok not as long, considering i stayed back sometimes before prelims to do work in the library. but it was not really about work; that was just an excuse, because somewhere else in the school, someone's doing coursework. which i was supposed to look at yesterday, which i came down from home just to see. but i din.

in any case, i do miss the times, when we come to school at like 620 for morning trg, den we leave school at 830 or even 9, depending on ms ho, after afternoon training. the moon was our companion, fateful to the end. someone once remarked that we would see the moon again later on our way out. tiring and very cold on the bus ride to school, but i missed it alot.

ja so i was walking out and nostalgia overwhelms me. today is open day. so fast, a year has passed. i thot i wanted to go back today, but i din. was at tp wif cf and edwin.

when you say its hard to talk to me, i dunno. i was tinking its so hard to talk to u. that he was around changed the whole equation. like reyes coming on during spain v belgium.

i waited till they were going to close the place. so i thot i should get going. and you were nowhere to be seen.

hey
what if one day,
i cease to wait
and leave for good,
will you forgive me?

maybe you don't need me
as much as i thought.
maybe you still need him.

hey
if one day
he does come back to you
i'll be happy for you.

at least you would be happy.

don't you see i am breaking down

We have to wake up

Do you want to win the World Cup?
i know the main objective is the Euro in 2008. Reasonable too, considering we are rebuilding our team. But have you realised that we are actually equipped to win the World Cup too? You can't deny that we have the quality. in terms of points, the best qualifier from europe. by the way, fifa, you should put us as one of the top seeds. this might not happen if you use your system. and frankly speaking, i think it's an insult that england could be seeded ahead of us under your system. In any case, yes we do have the quality to win.

The problem is, we need to want to win. We have talent. For God's sake, use it! We can't draw at home with Macedonia. That makes us winless against them in this campaign. Unacceptable. Come on. Win.

and i watched France hammer Cyprus 4-0. Giuly's goal was a beauty, a team goal, brilliantly crafted. and zidane's cut the ball back for Giuly was very very nice and unselfish. i thought he could have gone for goal, but he saw giuly coming, and laid it into giuly's path. dhorasoo's goal was oso exquisite, right outstep flickin the ball beyond the keeper after being put through. so is france back? too early to say; its cyprus after all.

but maybe no team so far has shown themselves to be perfect. even holland hasnt played well in a few games and dropped points; brazil, argentina and mexico are guilty of that. but still, i would say that the teams that look in best shape at the moment are holland, brazil and argentina.

and i watched germany play quite a terrible first half against china. after frings' penalty, i just switched off. i was wondering if klinnsmann had gone too far by putting schweinsteiger at leftback. why why why? the only point i see is that he wants to accomodate schneider and a two-man strike force. if so, schneider can play as leftback. i think it would be more stable. unless he wants schweinsteiger to learn to defend. or to hone his attacking skills by understanding a defender's psyche. maybe. but deisler is showing glimpses of his brilliance. nevertheless, what i have seen was disappointing. though the first few minutes of the 2nd half which i watched was a vast improvement, all i can say is that i have seen better. surely ballack is not that indispensible. and what of borowski? you have got class, show it please.

We are through, we are through! We are going to Germany at last!

Yes, Holland has qualified for Germany 2006 with an away 2-0 win over Czech. Finally, we are through. We weren't the first European team outside Germany to qualify; Ukraine had the honours. But if you look at the record, we are definitely the best team in the qualifiers so far.

Discounting the two games against the bottom-placed teams so as to achieve parity between groups of different sizes, we have 25 points from 9 games, 8 wins and a draw. The only team that came close to us was Poland, with 24 points. Even Ukraine didn't come close. You might ask, why then did we take so long? It's because of the Czech Republic. They matched our results till their defeat against Romania.

Having said that, i must really salute the Czechs; they have been the worthiest of opponents in this qualifying campaign. Now, they face the possibility of elimination, should they fail to win on Wednesday. The Czech Republic isn't my favourite team, but i would say they deserve to go through. Even though we had minnows like Andorra, Macedonia and Armenia in our group, it was still the toughest, considering that at the end of the day, qualifying from this group will not count on the results against these teams, but results between the top 3, Romania, Holland and Czech, and to a certain extent, Finland. Just look at Holland: so many points more than Ukraine, but Ukraine qualified first, because its group cannot put up a real fight to catch it. If you look at France's group, they do have one of the easiest groups on paper: Israel, Switzerland, Ireland, Cyprus and Faroe Islands. But the group is still undecided, mainly because these teams somehow are deadlocked in terms of results, just as the situation was, in Holland's Group. So you see, your group is not easy because of the minnows in it; it depends on who are your competitors for the top spot. That leads to the next implication: you don't need a lot of points; you just need your closest rivals to have fewer than you such that they can't catch you.

My point is, Holland rocks, and though many people will say that's because the group is so called easy, it isn't. the Czechs are tougher opponents than Poland, England and Belarus( i can't help it but take a jibe at those who were gushing at Italy's 4-1 win over Belarus and saying they can win the World Cup.)

So, Germany, Ukraine, Holland, Portugal, Italy, England and Poland are through. I checked, either Poland or England WILL end up as one of the two best-placed runners-up to qualify automatically, regardless of their last match against each other.

The other qualifiers are: Tunisia, Togo, Ivory Coast, Ghana and Angola from Africa. Nigeria, 5-1 winners over Zimbabwe, did not qualify because Angola won. Imagine that heartbreak. From South America, Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Ecuador are through. Japan, Iran, South Korea and Saudi Arabia are representing Asia. 12 places are left.

btw, van der vaart scored again for Holland. i was watching the news just now and saw his goal. perfectly swept into the bottom right corner from inside the left edge of the box. deserving of the number 10 jersey.

Every little thing actually counts for very little.
I have realised that all i stood for, counted for very little.
That is the harsh reality of this world.
Maybe i took a long time to realise.
But in the end, i still did.
Don't think too much; some things actually meant nothing.
Nothing at all.

Cynicism, pragmatism. The real rulers of this world.
I have learnt.

From Final Fantasy: Advent Children

Tifa: "It's all right if i die" That's what you are thinking, aren't you? As i thought.
Cloud: There's no cure.
Tifa: But Denzel was trying his best, wasn't he? Why don't you fight it with us instead of run away? We could all help each other and try our best. Can't do it since we are not a real family, huh?
Cloud: I can't...i can't save anyone..i don't think.. Neither family nor friends..No one..
Tifa: Drifting drifting..drifting drifting..
Reno: How long are you going to drag like that?

Aerith: So, you showed up. Even though you are falling apart. I am sure this will be a good thing. Question! Why exactly did you come here?
Cloud: I...wish to be forgiven. Yes, i want to be forgiven.
Aerith: By who?

Tifa to Cloud
Don't run away, i know you are. Even if you find the children, you might not be able to do anything. they might be somewhere that we can't get them back. you are scared of that, arent you? but you have to react to now, to more of this. A burden? Well, there's no helping that, it's a heavy burden. Unless you want to live all alone, you have to deal with that. You don't want to be alone, do you? Even though you never answer, you always have your phone with you.

Tifa: Have we lost to our memories?
Cloud: But...we just let her die..
Tifa: Always drifting...Hey, why don't you forgive yourself?

Cloud: Can sin be forgiven?
Vincent: i have never tried it.
Cloud: try...i will try it. and i will let you know how it turns out.

Sephiroth: What is most important to you? Would you give me the happiness of stealing it from you?
Cloud: i pity you who understand nothing. There is nothing that isn't important.

Cloud: Stay there for me, trapped in memories.
Sephiroth: i won't become a memory.

Cloud: ..Mother?
Aerith: Again? How many times is it that you called me 'Mother'?
Cloud: Isn't it nice to be yearned for?
Aerith:I don't need a kid as big as this one!

Aerith: you are all right now, arent you? [Mou daijoubu, da ne?]
Cloud: Yeah...i...i am not alone.. [Ore wa...hitori jyanai.]

advent children is really damn cool. the action scenes are superb. but what really stands out for me is Cloud's story.

Sometimes, something appeals to us more because we can identify with it. Like why i like Pride so much. Same concept. Cloud and Haru are similar in some ways.

This is a new beginning.

Cloud: it feels a little lighter.
Tifa: Huh?
Cloud: Maybe i wore it down by dragging it along so much.