Another Citi Moment of Success? Not quite...

After all my years of being an obsessed cricket tragic, I finally got to witness my first game of Twenty20 cricket. I left the ground disappointed.

Not because I am one of those sour pessimists that reckons Twenty20 will be the death of cricket. Ney, I do enjoy the shortest format of the game quite a lot, and I think it is indeed healthy for the game of cricket. But with all the hype, all the build up, I thought the whole experience would be an excitement juggernaught from start to finish. I was wrong.

Maybe I had too high expectations, watching so many games of IPL on TV, and hearing Channel 9's commentators drone on about how it's the "rock and roll" format of the game. I was expecting gorgeous, American Football cheerleaders dancing in skimpy outfits, and a dunking machine on the boundary, and a live DJ pumping the latest hip tunes. But alas! Sure, there were fireworks, and a miscellaneous skate park on the grass bank to provide some form of lunchtime entertainment (not that you had any time to look away). But it was little consolation. There were no cheerleaders, there was no dunking machine or DJ. Just the old WACA soundtrack all the way from the eighties.

It probably didn't help that the cricket was average. There were no big hundreds or sensational hatricks. No swashbuckling Shaun Marsh innings or epic Dwayne Bravo spells. There were barely any sixes hit throughout the night (although I couldn't help myself screaming " that's a DLF maximum!" after each one). Lee Furlong wasn't even down on the boundary doing interviews for Fox Sports. What a shame!

Also not adding much excitement was the crowd, who were reasonably quiet all night. The mexican wave somehow made it around the ground a few times (how it got through the members, I don't know). There was one beer snake down on the eastern side, which was quicky, to everyone's dismay, broken up by the security (or serpent wranglers). One beach ball got thrown around breifly, before it fell off the edge of the Inverarity Stand (too many boos), and one guy got escorted out of the ground by no less than 6 security guards and 2 police officers for sneaking in a bottle of vodka. That was it. I've seen rowdier at a Sheffield Shield game!

Oh well, at least there was plenty of time to relive our favourite KFC filler ads. HEY PUN-NA, WE'RE GETTING KAY-EFF-SEEEY!

A Fork in the River

It's a strange feeling, saying goodbye to someone you know you will, in all likely-hood, never see again. You are both drifting down a river, when suddenly yet inevitably, you reach a fork... your journey takes a swift left, and theirs, a right. 

You don't realise at the time the significance of that moment, in both of your lives. It isn't until long afterwards when for some reason, your mind brushes off the dusty cobwebs of some distant memory, that you think about them. Where has the river taken them since you parted ways? Has it flowed rapidly, thundering at great pace to an unknown destination? Or has it meandered along slowly, not even sure of it's own direction? Have they struggled against the current upstream? Has someone thrown a boulder in and completely changed it's course? Have they fallen off a waterfall? 

I guess you'll never know. 

But maybe I will see her again. Maybe both our rivers will flow into the same ocean, where we will meet, adrift, again. 

For Jen ~

Invictus

Everywhere I go I hear cheerless voices embellishing their trivial issues. About life, about this beautiful world we live in. I'm sick of it. Nelson Mandella had this poem writen on a piece of paper during his 27 year incaseration. Invictus by William Ernest Henley:

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

For those who don't appreciate life as they should ~