A long break from the realms of bloggieland, but I’m finally back! Sorry for the long absence, but I totally had no motivation to type anything the past 3 weeks, not because I’m busy or tired (well I WAS pretty tired come to think of it), but simply because there just isn’t anything to type about! So monotonous is the life here the same routine goes on and on each day it becomes tiring even though work itself isn’t much of a challenge. Most of the lessons have been learnt at work, and now it just becomes a situation of gaining experience (and waiting for things to go wrong so I get to see something different!).
Weekends aren’t much better. Laundry, groceries shopping, cleaning the house, cooking and eating dominate domestic affairs. The only joy comes in the form of watching football on the internet each weekend since we haven’t been going out on trips during weekends.
Yesterday was one big deviation from my usual weekend routine though. I had been building up towards and looking forward to it for quite some time... because I was finally going to a English Premier League game, ‘live’ in the stadium, with the floodlights, the chanting, the atmosphere, the rowdy English fans, the wet December evening air and everything that comes with it. To make things extra special, I was going to watch my beloved Liverpool in action! Albeit not at the “Mecca” on Anfield Road, but Reading is as close as it can get, and Liverpool was still Liverpool!
The day didn’t really start off too well. The rain started pelting down early in the morning. I didn’t get enough sleep the previous night, and woke up with my usual aching back aching abit more than usual. Waited in the rain for the bus, and when it came, it had to be a new driver at the wheel who didn’t know what I was talking about when I asked for a group day ticket. After more than 5minutes debating with him and him trying different buttons on his ticket panel, he finally gave in and told us to just hop on and get the ticket on the next bus we boarded. At least the driver was kind enough in the end. When we reached Slough Central, I went to HSBC to look for Yingyi and Jieli, but only to find them not there! I tried to get the bank staff to tell me if they’d been inside there at all, but AS USUAL the HSBC people were hostile as ever, scared that I was some terrorist after their customers’ lives and refused to tell me if they’ve seen any Chinese walk in or out of the bank the whole morning. So I ended up sitting in HSBC, panicking as the timing of the Reading bus drew closer and closer. After messaging both YY and JL, I finally found out they’d gone off to Tesco without telling us! So we hurried over to the bus station, located the Reading bus and boarded it before it scooted off without us. That bus was supposed to bring us all the way to Reading, but instead it dumped us halfway there. Later we found out that the route had just changed just one week back! So we changed to another bus, and almost 2 hours after we left Slough, arrived in Reading.
Reading is totally from what Slough is! I was expecting it to be a larger version of Slough, but it turned out to be a smaller version of London! Quite a pretty little city, and with a lot of young people, what with the Thames Valley University in the city, and other Unis of Bath and Oxford just nearby. 2 large shopping malls and a lot of small shops along the riverside and their main shopping street dominate proceedings in the shopping scene, and Yingyi and Carine were evidently happie, while Jieli and I followed around, like little boys from little Slough pretty lost in reading Reading. My mind was more on how to get to the stadium, all the bus routes and maps becoming a blurry whirl in my thoughts. In the end my worries were unfounded as I bumped into Jack’s group, who’d rented a car, and kindly gave a lift to the stadium!
The rain had just about stopped as we found our seats in the stadium, and as I marvelled at the magnificent view of the whole stadium from our seats, I thought it was gonna be one hellava match! The Reading mascot was especially friendly, not knowing that I was actually a Liverpool fan in disguise. Gave me a hug as I posed for a picture with it, and handed me a lollipop too! It was quite exciting watching the buildup to the match and the atmosphere. We were seated between the goalposts and the corner flag, so quite a few balls actually flew our direction when the Liverpool players were having their shooting practice during warmup. I was secretly hoping one from Torres or Gerrard would strike me!! Then I’ll just keep my shirt unwashed.. can showoff say that’s where Torres kicked me! But of course it didn’t happen lah.
The stadium gradually filled up, and the atmosphere built up. The match kicked off, and everything went well.. till... Reading were awarded a penalty!!! From my seat I thought it was inside the box, and apparently the referee and linesman were as blind as I was too, cos video replays later showed that the foul was outside the box! Reading took the lead, and the crowd went wild. Credit to the Liverpool fans sitting at the other end of my stand, they didn’t stop singing one minute. In fact, I thought that for long periods during the first half, the 2000+ of them singing contingent well and properly drowned out the 20000 Reading fans! Each word and each tune came out loud and clear, and (surprisingly, considering they were hollering at the top of their voices) not out-of-tune! How I wished I could join them, but I knew better than to do that and get beaten up by the Reading supporters around me! But apparently the Liverpool players did hear the singing, started attacking, and equalised before long! I was so happie I nearly jumped up, just managing to restrain myself at the last second! The make-shift Kop was louder than ever now, singing the Steve-Gerrard-Gerrards and Mascheranos-Sissokos.. and I thought I even heard them sing some Christmas carols (with footy lyrics of course!)
In the end, however, a wonderful experience at a wonderful stadium and a wonderful match came undone with a less than wonderful result. Despite fighting with every last breath and ounce of energy, the Reds went down 3-1, no thanks to the bad penalty decision and a credible claim by the Liverpool players being waved off. Luck was not on our side too, as shots struck the post and crossbar and the keeper and the defenders but never the net! Reading did play well above their normal standards too, so in the end it was a combination of bad refereeing, bad luck and a strong opponent which condemned Liverpool to their first defeat of the season. Of all matches, it had to be the one which I went to watch, so I was particularly upset after the match, and the whole night, and in fact I still am pretty upset now. I’m just hoping they bounce back with some strong performances and better luck next week in the upcoming crucial matches! Well at least I got to experience a 5% dose of the Anfield atmosphere. And it really makes me more than ever wanna go there to catch a match one day, to get blown away by 40000 Liverpool fans in-sync behind the team!
After the match, the last bus had already gone, so in the end, we went to Reading West station and managed to hop onto a train back to Slough. The rain was starting to fall again, and it didn’t help my mood get any better. Well I’m feeling much better now, because Arsenal and Man City did slip on a couple of banana skins themselves and slump to defeats against lesser opposition too! In the end it was still quite a good outing to Reading. This coming week will be quite exciting for me too, with another Liverpool match on Tuesday (this time on tv lah) and the Lonza Christmas party on Wed! Yups, so till then, hang around and hope u guys enjoy the Dec warmth in S’pore! I know it’s been raining quite a bit back home right? It isn’t any better here, as the fair weather has given way to the December rain clouds which I so used to associate to England before I came over!
Alrite.. back to the cooking-cleaning house-eating-laundry regime now.. take care!
