Chasing LFC in Singapore - 2 years on Part 2

...'continued from previous post

We took quite a while to get a cab outside Bishan Stadium. We eventually got onto a cab which I had used my new iPhone app to book (stupid app required us to put in the address in a particular format, much to my irritation) about 5 minutes after we saw the team bus left.

The moment I got into the cab with Kenneth and the other two girls, I blurted out, breathlessly:

"Why are we doing this?"

Honami and Eileen laughed, apparently they had been asking themselves the same question.

I couldn't believe I was really doing this. I briefly recalled my SMS conversation with Honami the other day. She talked about how 2 years ago, she was 15 and very young and crazy. I told her how 2 years ago I was 23 but felt like 15, now 2 years later, I was 25 and felt like, well, 25.

But there I was, in a cab chasing some stars to their hotel, not what your typical 25-year-old teacher would do, right?

While we were in the cab, I looked through my iPhone Twitter feed. Insua and Charlie Adam were apparently tweeting while in the bus. I still don't really tweet, but I couldn't resist sending them a few tweets this time. Especially when Charlie Adam mentioned about how he had just finished the "training session in Malaysia". Dear me, he was either too tired or he really has no geographical sense at all. He must have been flooded with tweets on his mistake though, because shortly after he tweeted to apologise for his mistake.

When we reached MBS, the other three clearly knew their way around and we dashed through the building and headed straight for the bus bay. There was no one in sight for a while, and when I saw the bus approaching, I immediately waved them over. But all of a sudden, about 10 other fans appeared out of nowhere. While the first bus containing the staff stopped right in front of us, the second bus containing the players didn't. Honami waved her board at Dan Agger again (he did see us from the bus) but the bus parked at one corner which was cordoned off.

So despite us managing to reach the hotel before them, we didn't quite get to them after all. However, that wasn't the end. A few people came and talked to us, one of whom Kenneth said was the team's tour guide or something. Some dude who would bring them wherever they wanted to go I think. He recognised the others as having been there since morning so he gave us some LFC badges. Lol. Nice chap, really. Then we were told that they would be heading to the convention centre for their dinner at 8.30pm and would board the bus for the airport at 10pm.

We walked around MBS for a while, and at one point Christian Poulsen was seen walking out of a watch shop. By the time I tried to look though, he was already gone. While roaming around, we also ran into Farrah Nair, this really famous LFC fan. Haha, she's a more famous female fan than me! But here's ego-boosting moment number 2. Kenneth also knew her, and when I realised that she was Farrah, I was like, "You're my Facebook friend!" and of course, I told her how famous she was. To my surprise, she replied that she knew who I was too. So I guess that made me famous as well. Haha.

We went to the food court to buy our dinner, chicken rice takeaway. Bloody chicken rice was expensive - $6.80!!! And mind you, I thought my regular $2.50 chicken rice from downstairs tasted better.

We didn't quite know what to do/where to go, so we sat outside the convention hall area to have our dinner. After that, we continued lingering outside the expensive-watch-shops-area again. There, I thought of a few things, and I suppose I have this habit of spacing out and thinking of some funny things and I'll then start smiling/laughing to myself. Haha, I think they found it a little creepy, 'cause I'd be staring into space and then suddenly start smiling to myself. So anyway, I shared with Honami what I had been thinking of:

"I was telling myself, I will fall in love with the first LFC player I run into."

Yeah, so much was my desperation for to "run into" an LFC player. I didn't want to go all the way to MBS for nothing, man! But when Honami asked me what if it was a really awful fella, I pointed out that there weren't many awful fellas left in LFC anymore, probably except for Poulsen? And in any case, my favourite players usually left LFC, so... yeah.

Later, we found ourselves roaming near the bus bay area again. We saw a few LFC fans and when we went nearer, these MBS staff suddenly told us to "hurry and go over" if we wanted to see the LFC players before they left. We were ushered to the area where the team bus had previously parked (and was cordoned off). The staff had established a makeshift barrier instead to separate us from the players when they came out to board the bus. We couldn't quite believe this new turn of events, and I must really thank the MBS staff for this.

We were all hoping that the players would come out soon before more fans started to appear. If there weren't many fans around, there should be a high chance of us getting autographs/photographs. My digital camera's battery was flat, but Kenneth agreed to take the photos with me.

Upon seeing our Dan Agger boards, this female fan asked if she could stand with us because she wanted to hand Agger a letter. To be honest, I found her a little weird, but I let her stand on my left, while to my right were Kenneth and Honami and Eileen. Yup, we were sure that if Dan Agger saw the boards (again), he would definitely come over to us (actually Honami in particular). He would really have to be completely heartless not to give her an autograph/photograph after seeing how she had been chasing him the whole day!

Which reminds me, prior to that, Honami gave this memorable speech. She was saying how after 2 years of chasing Agger, she still had no memento to remind him by. She did not have his autograph, or a photograph with him. Her reason was:

"I don't expect anything from him. I just want to give him things and make him happy. He doesn't have to give me anything. As long as he's happy, I'm happy."

I simply couldn't believe it when she said that. I almost wanted to throttle her as I reminded her about how he was paid tens of thousands of pounds a week, and it wouldn't really hurt him to just sign an autograph for her. Silly girl, although yeah, if that speech was applied to a spouse or some other lucky bloke, it would have seemed been romantic.

So anyway, we really seemed to have waited for the players to come out for forever. The longer we waited, the more nervous I got. In the meantime, more fans joined us, but I think the crowd size probably only hit twenty or so.

The first two players who came out were Charlie Adam and Jonjo Shelvey. They immediately headed towards the fans and started signing every single thing thrusted at them. I managed to get them to sign my shirt (same shirt Garfield got signed 2 years ago) and when Kenneth asked them for photos, I just positioned myself in between them and smiled for the camera too. Later I realised the photos looked really weird, haha. I looked like the "extra" fella in all these photos, and yeah, sometimes I really was, because I don't think the players were even aware I was supposed to be in the photo as well... lol.

The marker that Kenneth lent me had a tip which was too fine, though. After seeing Brad Jones really struggle to sign on my shirt with that marker (it kept getting stuck in the small holes in the shirt, but bless him, he was really patient and tried his best to sign), I gave up asking the players for autographs. In any case I realised I had a few autographed jerseys at home which I had just stuffed in a paper bag and hardly took out (the prized one was the Kewell 7 jersey).

I just concentrated on getting the photos with Kenneth and there were two other interesting moments with Insua and Dan Agger. After Insua had taken photos with us, I suddenly called out after him, "I follow you on Twitter!" I think he was taken aback for a while and Kenneth continued, "Nice dinner you had!" Haha, you see, Insua had tweeted a picture of their dinner earlier. I think Insua was quite amused by that. Honami had her moment too. She asked Insua if he remembered her present (an eyebrow stud) from two years ago, and he said he did (from his expression, he looked like he remembered as well).

The encounter with Dan Agger was probably the one Honami would cherish the most though. After Agger took his pic with us, I pointed over to Honami on my right, and told him to go over "there" as she was "his biggest fan". As Agger was signing on her book (note to self, autographs look better on books than on shirts), she asked him if he remembered the cookies she gave him two years ago. She was speaking quite softly and rapidly, and I knew he didn't quite hear her. I thought he would still just nod and walk away, but instead he looked up apologetically, "Sorry?" When she repeated her question and he still didn't catch it, he leaned closer. Eventually, he smiled and said that he did remember her.

Haha, the entire conversation was caught on video and later they kept re-enacting the whole "'Sorry?' and lean closer" moment. Honami was totally on a high after that. I felt genuinely happy and excited for her, as I knew she would never forget that day.

Well, I don't think I'll forget my few hours of madness either. Kenneth, Honami and Eileen may not be my best friends and we may have met only after two years (and haven't met again since that day), but I think we'd shared an amazing experience together here. Sometimes I'm also surprised as to why I could get along so easily with them, especially yeah, considering our age gap and personality differences. But I guess our common love for LFC, or at least, our "craziness" when it comes to chasing LFC was the main factor.

I'm not sure when/if I'll do anything crazy like that again, but I know that if LFC do come down to Singapore soon again, I'll definitely find this bunch of friends again! Haha

kenneth, me, honami and eileen - 2 years ago

kenneth, me, honami and eileen - 2 years later

On a sidenote, the season starts today... let's hope it'll be a good one this time

ps. A picture of Honami (screaming her head off) and Eileen with the Dan Agger boards appeared in ST the next day.

pps. For the record, I realised the first player I saw at MBS (after declaring I'd fall in love with the first player I ran into) was... Alberto Aquilani. He left in a private car with his Chanel bags and all way before the other players even came out.

Chasing LFC in Singapore - 2 years on.

So, it's more than a year since my last post on this blog.

I intended to post this much earlier, while memories were still fresh in my mind, but I just never quite got around to doing it. Laziness, as usual, took over any great plans I had.

I was reading some of my posts on chasing LFC in Singapore 2 years ago though (see July 2009 archive), and I thought that I must finally post this while I still remember most of the events. While reading the posts, I realised that I'll most probably not forget memories like this, but having it written down somewhere serves the purpose of refreshing my mind later.

While reading the posts, I also realised that what I've experienced since then could never compare to the experiences I had 2 years ago. 2 years ago, I was younger, crazier... and Torres and Xabi were still at LFC.

When I first read that LFC were coming to Singapore again for a day in July, I didn't quite know what to react. I wasn't that excited, and truth to be told, I still didn't quite feel anything up till a week before their arrival. Over the past year, despite still watching their matches, I've somewhat felt distanced from the LFC team, and I've also distanced myself from the LFC "community" in Sg. So I was a little confused about this whole Asia tour thing.

In my MSN chat with Kenneth (whom I haven't quite talked to for almost 2 years), I realised he was feeling pretty much the same as me. He was having a break from his studies over in Aus, and we decided to see if we could get passes to the LFC training session in SG.

All the means to get the passes proved to be quite difficult. From my "analysis" I realised that the contest with the highest probability to win the passes was the Adidas one, where one had to spend $100+ to stand a chance of winning the passes. One week before the training session, one day before the deadline of the contest, just on the spur of the moment, I decided to go down to the Adidas outlet at The Cathay with my mum and got myself a $99 LFC away jersey and a $46 pair of shorts for my brother.

A few days later, Jingxian, a LFC fan "FB friend" (whom I've never met before) contacted me and told me that he could get me a pass to the training session. I was pleasantly surprised, but there you go, I knew I was going to the session after all. The next day, I received an email from Adidas saying I'd won the passes, and to my pleasant surprise, it was a PAIR of passes, so I told Jingxian I didn't need the tix anymore but thank you, and told Kenneth we were going to the session.

And so, it was then I started getting excited about this whole thing.

Day before the session, Jingxian smsed me again and asked if I knew of any female fans who wanted to go to the session (ya, I know it makes him sound like a perv, but there's a reason behind that which I'm lazy to explain now). Initially I said no, I didn't have any girl friends who wanted to go, but I suddenly thought of Honami, the Dan Agger fan/ Katong Convent girl whom Kenneth and I met 2 years ago. I asked Kenneth, asked Honami, and then it was agreed that Jingxian would give the tix to Honami. I had thought that I had distanced myself from the LFC community, but I should have known that there wouldn't be any shortage of LFC fans around me.

In my brief SMS conversation with Honami, she asked me if I was planning to make any banners and stuff. My answer was no, I was feeling quite old now. 2 years ago, I wasn't a teacher yet. 2 years ago, I was crazier. 2 years ago, I felt more "in love" with LFC. Now, my only plans were just to go to the training session, watch it, and that was it. I initially wanted to pass Pepe some stuff, i.e. the photos from the boat cruise Alan took 2 years back (which I sent to LFC but got returned), but I later realised Pepe wasn't coming either. Pepe wasn't coming, Stevie wasn't coming, Suarez wasn't, Glen Johnson wasn't, even King Kenny wasn't coming. My lack of excitement was really attributed to many factors.

Honami is a really lovely girl though. She actually told me that she remembered how I told her 2 years ago that where there's a will, there's a way, and that she still held those words very closely to her heart. Ok, that was mushy and I think she probably over-exaggerated it a bit. I remembered encouraging her about getting the present to Dan when she was looking all disappointed and forlorn on that 1st night, but truly, I don't think I was that inspirational! And when I boasted to my friend later about how I said those inspiring words to a young girl 2 years ago, my friend was like, really, I inspired a young girl to not give up... chasing a football star... yes yes, I know I should be inspiring our young to do more constructive things with their lives, but heck, sometimes we just have to be young eh? In 20 years' time, do you think she's gonna remember what she learnt in Physics class or how she felt when Daniel Agger was 1 metre away from her?

Anyway, on the day of the training session....

At 4+pm, I left home for Bishan Stadium. Apparently, Honami and Kenneth decided to relive 2 years ago and were out at MBS chasing the team so I headed to the stadium alone. I was also to chope seats for Jingxian and friend so when I arrived at the stadium, I sat on the outside of a long empty row. When I was about to sit, the fella behind me suddenly asked, "Chun Lian?"

Ok, I can never get used to feeling famous. 2 years ago, it was random people coming up to me and recognising me as Lady Lala. Now again, this random dude whom I couldn't recognise actually knew me. Haha. I looked at him, blinked, asked him who he was, he said a name I didn't recognise, I blinked again, felt very bad that I really didn't know him at all, and then he suddenly said his maple ign. Apparently he was one of my maple buddies whom I had added on FB. Ok, even though that makes him less random, fact is, he must have stared at my photos quite a few times to recognise me. I didn't recognise him, after all! So yah, that was the first ego-boosting moment of the day.

It was difficult to reserve so many seats and I really felt very bad everytime I had to tell people that the seats were taken. I really felt kinda relieved when Jingxian and friend finally turned up.

The players arrived way earlier than the stated 6pm, and Kenneth/Honami arrived soon after the players did (they had followed them from the hotel). I went out of the stadium to pass them the tix, but we had no extra tix for Eileen (Honami's friend who was also with her chasing LFC 2 years ago despite not being really a LFC fan). While we were outside the stadium discussing how to sneak her in, this random guy suddenly asked us if we needed an extra tix and passed us one tix! The girls were visibly stunned but excited and started saying how it was exactly like how it was 2 years ago, when they had no training passes then too but got them from random strangers outside the stadium. It's the LFC spirit man - although I suppose being good-looking girls helped too. Haha.

The girls had brought along two big red boards with the words "Agger you may be no. #5, but to me you are number 1" and the boards got a lot of attention everywhere they went. They had been chasing the team since morning, and Agger must have seen them countless times. Even though we hadn't seen one another for 2 years, we picked up where we had left off very quickly. Immediately they started talking about how they were in the car alongside the team bus and Agger had waved at them, etc. Haha. No, I didn't feel the least bit jealous at all.

Ok, fast forward through the training session. It wasn't THAT exciting really. Earlier on I had met my students at the stadium, one of them a Man Utd fan who always talks shit about LFC but was wearing a Gerrard LFC shirt at the stadium. (Go figure.) It was great seeing Claire again, and again, like 2 years ago, she was a crowd favourite with calls of "Claire, will you marry me?" coming from different corners of the stadium again. For the record, she has just recently gotten married. Aww.

The pitch looked shitty and hideous, much to my embarrassment. A few of the guys behind were joking about how it was the pitch's fault everytime a wayward pass or shot was made by the players. Without Torres, the girls' favourite was obviously Agger, and there were other boards/banners for Agger seen around at the stadium, much to the irritation of Honami. We saw one board being held up, where the back was "Xabi, please stay!" Not sure what was written on the front, but it's amusing how people actually recycled their boards from 2 years ago. My boards are still somewhere in the house too.

A few people also called out to Rushie to join the training session as well, and to play for "one more season", much to his and our amusement. It was good to hear a few laughs and witty remarks being thrown around, but other than that, I don't think the training session was that fantastic. Honami kept snapping her camera away at Agger though, think she must have had taken more than a hundred shots of Agger in various poses. Lol.

Once the training session was over, Kenneth and the girls looked over to me and signalled for me to get out of the stadium quick. Yes, they were going to get a cab and head down to MBS again, and this was when the fun started...

Insua at Infinity Pool on top of Marina Bay Sands hotel -- taken off Twitter

- to be continued

Ryan's Tweet-rific Stories

I'm not really big on Twitter. I'm definitely more of a Facebook than Twitter person. But I did sign up for Twitter to "follow" some of the celebs and so-called celebs, just purely for my entertainment gossip. I don't tweet though, so please don't bother to "follow" me, I'm really just there to "follow" others only.

Who's on my "following" list? Well, there's Justin Bieber, the Backstreet Boys, Kris Allen, Sean Kingston, LFCTV, kickette, Iain Macintosh... footballers themselves are a boring lot, but I still have got Forlan, Sergio Aguero, Kaka... they hardly tweet and when they do, it's usually in a foreign language, but I'm still following them for the fun of it...

The most active celeb on Twitter has to be Justin Bieber... initially I was really impressed how he does this whole Twitter-PR thing, he begins the day with a "morning girls..." and ends the night with a "nite girls..." and in between he just keeps tweeting about how he loves his fans, and re-tweeting all the "@justinbieber RT this if you love your fans" tweets from his fans... I'm still not totally familiar with the whole Twitter-language, but I've just about realised that getting RT/re-tweeted by a celeb must be a big deal.

So anyway, after a while I got kinda sick of Bieber. I'm still following him, but I'm starting to lean towards the idea that he doesn't do all his tweets/retweets himself, that some PR-agent is doing it for him. How can he stand singing the same tune over and over again?

But it's true, I think Twitter is an amazing tool for these celebs to get close to their fans. Now if Torres ever RT me, through PR-dude or not, I'd probably start sounding like one of those silly Beliebers...

Ok, let's move away from Bieber. Cos I've just found one guy who's wayyyyyyy more interesting than him on Twitter. This dude I'm talking about - HH wonders if it's really him, or just a crazy dude pretending to be him (but it's a verified account) - he tells some real amazing stories. His language is a little hard to understand, as his English is more broken than the average Singaporean and full of slang (Dutch + hip-hop language?) but I think if you read some of his stories, you'll still get the joke.

http://community.livejournal.com/ontd_football/2531526.html#cutid1
http://community.livejournal.com/ontd_football/2565269.html#cutid1
http://community.livejournal.com/ontd_football/2571556.html

So go follow him if you haven't already done so!!

Oh yeah, and he just tweeted another story today. I really do hope he makes it at LFC, cos he IS FUNNY, although it's kinda in a silly manner...