Champs, dopes and who knows what else

I did something unprecedented last weekend. I watched the Shanghai Formula One race. Like any other kaypoh, I'm intrigued by scandals of all types. The whole year I've been seeing news

about Alonso and Hamilton so since I happened to turn the TV on sometime during the live telecast of the race, I decided to see if Hamilton would indeed turn out to be world champion. As it turned out, that was about the time Hamilton and his car ended up in the gravel. So... there's the next race next weekend somewhere in Brazil. Don't know if I'll watch it. Watching Formula One is potentially heart attack-inducing. And anyway, watching fast cars going round 56 laps isn't really my kind of thing.

Arguably, though, the biggest news in sports recently must be the Marion Jones business. What can I say? Basically, I'm suspicious of anybody and everybody, athlete or official.

Also this week, Andy Murray is the latest guy who talks about tennis match-fixing, plus, a Chinese champion triathlete is found to have been taking stuff. Again, what can I say?

Sorry, blur picture. The sign says 'Doping Station'.

Sad and cynical as this may sound, if some news comes out tomorrow that half the tennis matches I've watched were fixed, half of a certain female soccer team is actually male, half of a certain rugby world championship team are actually bears in disguise or the whole of a certain synchro swimming team is actually a bunch of mermaids, well, what will there be to say?

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A lesson in love

I am a little pencil in the hand of a writing God who is sending a love letter to the world. -Mother Teresa Most of the time my eyes just glaze over when I see article upon article of football news. One caught my glazing eye over the weekend, though - 'De la Cruz - Mother Theresa in boots' , because of the familiar name. Mother Teresa, that is. It was the first time I’d ever heard of this de la Cruz guy, an EPL player who hails from Ecuador (GNI per capita US$2,630; as a comparison, Singapore’s is US$27, 490 – source: BBC country profiles ). His is a great story to illustrate that famous Chinese saying about not forgetting your roots. According to the article, ‘Each month a proportion of that salary (about S$150,000) Reading pay him - be it 10 per cent in January or 20 per cent in February - goes direct to the village’ (where he grew up). (Picture and profile from here ) Here's what he has been credited for: 1. 'The 2002 World Cup,' de la Cruz reflects, 'finan

True train school

‘Having eyes, but not seeing beauty; having ears, but not hearing music; having minds, but not perceiving truth; having hearts that are never moved and therefore never set on fire. These are the things to fear, said the headmaster.’ How would you like to have such a headmaster? I finally re-read (read it first as a teenager) Totto-chan, The Little Girl at the Window , a ‘school story’ by Tetsuko Kuroyanagi, translated by Dorothy Britton. Totto-chan is the name Tesuko Kuroyanagi called herself, and the book is about her life during her school days at Tomoe Gakuen. Totto-chan was expelled from her first elementary school because of her ‘disruptive’ behaviour, which included constantly opening and closing her desk top (because she was so thrilled by it), ‘vandalising’ her desk (because there wasn’t enough space on the piece of paper to draw) and standing by the classroom window waiting for street musicians to pass by or talking to swallows. Her mother, although probably alarmed about the

No wonder

According to a poll of about 300 people, reported in yesterday's Sunday Times, (how come nobody ever asks me these things?) , the Seven Wonders of Singapore are (in order of merit): 1. The Esplanade (a whopping 82 votes) 2. Changi Airport (53 votes) 3. Sentosa 4. The Merlion 5. The Singapore River 6. Food 7. Mount Faber and LKY (tie - 10 votes each) Some 'offbeat choices' which didn't make it to the top 7: aunties selling tissue paper at coffee shops, Singlish, kiasuism, 4D-Toto outlets and Newater (said someone of Newater: 'We are probably the only country with branded recycled sewage.' Well said, ha ha.). Maybe it's a personal bias but I feel that a 'Wonder' must also have strong historical and cultural/social value (so I'm rather miffed that Angkor Wat didn't make it to the 7 Wonders of the World; in fact it was never in the running for the top 7). Therefore, these choices are a little too modern for me. The Esplanade, for example, is a

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