kallang roar

what a great saturday. my bro and i spent the evening at the national stadium watching the asean cup semi-finals between singapore and malaysia.

my brother's more of a football fan than i am, but i figured it'd be great to show some love for our home team, since a loss would mean singapore would be out of the title race (yes i am patriotic, even if i don't seem it). also i thought it would be nice to soak in the atmosphere at the national stadium before it's gone. so i went down to jalan besar stadium yesterday and got us 2 child tickets (valid for up to poly students).

upon arriving at the national stadium today, i promptly approached the most innocent-looking guy who looked like some volunteer so he wouldn't be agressive about me showing my student pass. he didn't ask. i realised that the staff were quite lax in checking anyway, be it tickets or bags. later on my brother would muse that any terrorist could have brought in a bomb, which i can't help but agree.

anyway the place was quite packed and we couldn't get seats from where we entered (we were about half an hour early). had to migrate over to another corner where the view was okay but not fantastic:













it had been drizzling the entire day but thankfully the rain stopped before the match started. the first half was relatively boring, since there were no goals and singapore wasn't playing so well. but the second half was nail-biting. malaysia scored first and you could see everyone was stunned. then the cheers were deafening when singapore equalised.

with the score standing even at the end of extra time, everyone was not looking forward to the penalty shootout. but lionel lewis caught the last critical ball to win 5-4 during the shootout. you can only imagine how electrifying the atmosphere was then.














it started to rain right after the match ended. talk about divine intervention.

another highlight was that the people who sat behind me were some kaopeh kias, who alternated between shouting some really funny shit: "butoh", "balik kampung", "kayu", "give (red) card lah", "quick, stretcher..no need, you should just roll out" (when a malaysian player got injured),"we need female, so that can motivate the team" (referring to a female medic).

i think even if singapore had lost the match, we would have done so with pride because the turnout was so good. surprisingly there were quite a number of ang mohs rooting for team singapore as well. the malaysian population was really small in the stadium and we filled up all of the rest (and it's not even the finals). it was definitely a night to remember.