samsamsam

was watching olympics yesterday. table tennis ladies team: singapore vs china finals. and on another channel was badminton singles male: malaysia vs china.
malaysia got trashed, singapore got less trashed.
yeah, so they got home ground advantage, so they got world no. 1's.
so what?

the singapore team was a group of prc's who changed citizenship to singaporean under some big government sports plan. to increase the sporting level of the country, they import players and give them citizenship.
so it was china vs. ex-china

the malaysian is a chinese, probably his grandfather came from china, or at the most, his great grandfather. whatever it is, its in his DNA.
so its china vs. ex-ex-ex-china.

last night there was a commentator on tv. and he said something like:
so singapore is in the finals and up against china, looks like they are guaranteed a silver.
my acute friend pointed out that is should sound:
so singapore is in the finals and up against china, looks like they are guaranteed AT LEAST A silver.

the former line just tells you how dejected everyone feels when they are up against the giant china. maybe in 50 years time it would be Olympics with china vs. rest of the world.

like out of nowhere china springs up. the communist, backward, overcrowded, uncouth group suddenly becomes world leaders in almost everything, from economical gains, olympic golds, nuclear power, to pollution level, and human rights blacklists.

there are three kinds of people in the world. the first make things happen. world leaders, progressive countries, cutting edge technology.
the second group of people watch things happen. the journalists, the critic, the naysayers.
the third group of people wonder what happen. who cant be bothered about whats out there, and whats happening.

i think the world has been asleep. while the no. 1 players make their mark, like Lin Dan in the men's badminton finals, and the fastest man on the planet at 9.72seconds in the 100m, Usain Bolt. i ask myself, i have the same time as these people out there competing. they have 24 hours, i have 24 hours. in these last few years, they came from nowhere to become a world champion.

where am i?
am i anywhere near their progress in my own field?
or am i so contended to sit on the bench that my but never left the wood and my boots never touched the field.

to succeed in life, one has to find what he likes to do (passion) and what he is good at (aptitude),. and mix these two components together in a rough 1:1 composition in a large bowl.

but these athletes have trained night and day. from nowhere they have reached the epitome of their career. at such a young age. thats one great thing about high achievers, they achieve greatness out of apparent nothingness but alot of hard work. just like the story.

the people of ________ (insert country of choice) dug and dug and dug. and they found a copper wire enclosed in a rubber sheath. the age of cable was discovered. telephone lines, tv channels, internet access, electricity and information could be carried for miles on end.
not to be outdone, the people of _______ (insert second country of choice) dug and dug and dug too. they found nothing.

they discovered wireless technology.