Yet another netball topic

I had a chance to meet and chat with a male netball player from South Africa last night when my friends and I went to Sekolah Sukan Bukit Jalil (SSBJ) to watch a friendly match between those SSBJ girls and this team from South Africa. His name is Brian and according to kak Mazlah (she was the referee that night and often joins us in our training), he’s the coach for the South African team. Cool! :)

At my urging (hehehehehe..) kak Mazlah introduced us and we had a little chat together with the team manager, I think. He informed us that there are quite a number of men’s netball teams in South Africa. They even have national tournaments soon. Isn’t that great? Quite unlike here in Malaysia. But then, men’s netball is still considered new here. Not to mention there’s that old crone in the Malaysia’s Netball Association who adamantly refuses to acknowledge men's netball. Hmmm… I wonder when will somebody replaces her. About time, I think.

Incidentally, if there is a national tournament for men, which state am I to play for if I was chosen to play with a state team? I’m from Sabah but I now reside in KL. So do I play for Sabah or KL? But then, I’ve probably retired from playing by the time they have national tournaments for men. Hahahaha…

Hey, you guys.. what do you think? Should there be a national tournament for us? Comments please…

It’s Ramadhan again

Have you noticed that, when Ramadhan starts, a few things started to happen which do not happen in any other month of the year? Some of them are good, some odd, and some quite funny as well.

Here’s a list. If you have something I missed, feel free to inform me (use the Comment link) and I’ll add it to the list.

1. Ramadhan bazaars cropped up everywhere like mushrooms.


2. People started to have cravings for ikan bakar.


3. Prices of food skyrocketed like crazy.


4. Mosques were filled up to overflowing during Friday prayers. You don’t see this during normal months.


5. The air quality improved tremendously since the number of smokers reduced by 90% (I think). Made me feel healthy again.


6. Traffic got worse, especially after office hours. Everybody rushed home to prepare or buy food for buka puasa.


7. Everybody was extra sleepy in the office.


8. Non-Muslims who looked like Malays started to have hard times. They practically had to have their ICs in hand to prove to the enforcement officers that they are non-Muslims.


9. Tickets for hari raya holidays were sold out in record time.


10. Impromptu entrepreneurs emerged everywhere.. selling cookies, rendang, clothes etc.


11. Time has become an integral part of everybody’s life.


12. People eat more than they normally would.


13. [From Ijan] Prices of Ramadhan buffet at hotels were so ridiculous that no sane man or woman would want to eat there. It goes without saying that if you do eat at the hotels, you're not sane. Hehehehe..


14. [From Ijan] Chicken went into hiding. All of a sudden, the number of chicken in the marketplace dwindled, which caused the prices to increase.

What else have I missed?

Pesta Bola Jaring USM ke-17, Pulau Pinang

An open letter to the tournament organisers.

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Dear Sir/Madam,

I wish to express my personal opinions and also highlighted to you the comments I have heard from the participants of the netball tournament you organised on 8-9 September 2007.

There are a couple of things I would like to comment during the briefing.

First, the remark from En. Muhamad saying that netball is a sport unique for women. Dear sir, 5 years ago I would agree with you 100% but now, I just found your ignorance in this matter particularly insulting. Men’s netball has been around for years, especially overseas (Australia is a good example) and it is just picking up popularity here in Malaysia for the past 3 or 4 years. The 37 men’s netball teams participating in your tournament this year should have been a good indicator, unless you are too dense to pick that up.

I also found your other remark on the role of men’s netball in the tournament quite condescending. Yes, we participated because we support netball. But we also participated because we want to win. We have trained hard and learned all the rules. We want to show that, like every other sport which used to be gender-specific, netball is also for men. And that we are at par with our female counterpart. Netball, nowadays, is not for women only.

I do hope that you will be more tactful in the future with your statements. People might find them offensive, even though they are well meant. I also hope that you, considering your particular position in this tournament’s organisation, would be more aware of and up-to-date with what is currently happening with the sport.

Second, the head of referees made a statement that, for group matches, the referees will judge accordingly and that for semi-final onwards, they will be more strict and will follow the international rules of netball.

What does that show? To me, it shows that the referees do not have a standard. And since all of them are under the Penang Netball Association, it implies that the association itself is lacking in standard. Isn’t it better if the referees follow the rules to the letter right from the beginning? At the very least, it will save them face. Being called “a stupid referee” repeatedly in front of everybody is definitely something you want to avoid.

I would assume that, after 17 times organising the same tournament, the organisers would already know and understand the weaknesses and take the proper actions to fix them. I guess they did learn something from the way the tournament was run. A big hand for the organisers for a job well done.

But.. the one weakness you did not bother to correct is the referees.

You might say that the referees are beyond your jurisdiction since they are under the Penang Netball Association. And also that there were several netball tournaments running at the same time, so there was a shortage of quality referees. Fine.. but the very least you could have done was ensure that the referees engaged for the tournament are of a certain minimum grade (if they do have grades), or with lots of experience. I’m sure that with high quality referees, you will get high quality games, with no complaints whatsoever.

A couple of times during the tournaments I saw the insensitivity of the referees. Each time, a player was injured and required medical attention but instead of giving injury time-off, the referees just continued the game without any regard to the players. Technically, injury time-off will be given when the players request for it, but when one of them was cradling her wrist in obvious pain (probably broken) and the other one was writhing in the mud, surely you can forego the technicality and just call off the time. Have you no sympathy at all?

We do not begrudge our loss in the semi-final. It is the nature of tournaments.. some win, some lose. No big deal. But when a major contributor to the loss was the low quality of the referees, it did leave a bitter taste in our mouths. One is tempted to say that the referees were deliberately biased to the other team.

We did not turn up for the prize-giving ceremony. In a way, it was our message to the organisers that the tournament sucks. Or to be more precise, the referees suck. Funnily enough, our team was given the Fair Play Award. Personally, I don’t know whether I should be pleased or insulted. The whole team had a good laugh at that. I think I will dedicate the award to the referees, insult intended.

It’s really sad when these things happened in a big tournament like this. When you had participants from countries like Sri Lanka and Australia, one would assume that the quality of the whole tournament is put at number 1. Not just for the sake of getting as many teams participating as possible. If I’m not mistaken, you managed to get into the Malaysia’s Book of Records for the highest number of teams participating in any netball tournament. Good on ya!

Have you considered, though, that you might also be recorded in the same book as the tournament with the WORST referees ever? Definitely something not to be proud of, don’t you agree?

In conclusion, there are two things that I would like to request from the tournament organisers:

1. Please do not look down on men’s netball. We are as good as or even better than most women’s players.



2. Please do something about the quality of the referees for future tournaments. It is insulting that the men’s matches were judged by substandard referees.

Thank you.

RM2 for unlimited talk and SMS

Actually, I’m not sure whether that’s “unlimited talk AND sms” or “unlimited talk OR sms”. Whatever it is, I guess it’s an improvement to their previous offer. There’s a catch, naturally: the validity period is cut short from 17 hours to 12 hours (12 midnight to 12 noon of the day of purchase). And it’s still Maxis to Maxis.

Personally, I still don’t see much value to the offer. I’m using Maxis postpaid, so call me biased if you want to. The thing is.. if you want value, why not make the validity period from 6 am to 6 pm? That’s solid waking hours for almost everybody. Now that’s value for you.

Also why not make it available between other mobile operators? That’s definitely more value for money, don’t you agree?

Keep on improving, Maxis. Maybe you’ll hit it right one day.

RM2 for 400 sms

That’s ½ sen per sms! Wow, a great bargain!

Then next line says “Maxis to Maxis only. Sms valid from 1am to 7pm of day purchased”.

Huh?

Okay.. I can understand the Maxis to Maxis only. It’s really a great bonus for Maxis subscribers. But only valid from 1am to 7pm on the day of purchase? That’s highway robbery! I mean, how many people send 400 sms in 17 hours? How many sms can YOU send in 17 hours? Oh, you’d probably say more than 400. I have no doubt you can do that, but how many people do you think will reply? And, if they do reply, how many till they stop?

Let’s say, on average, each of your friend replies 10 sms. That means, to fully utilise your 400 sms, you need to send them to 40 people. Question is.. do you really have that many people you really want to get in touch with? Via sms? I don’t. Oh, I have more than 40 friends. But sms-ing 40 of them in a day? Hah! I even ignored some sms I received from them.

I honestly admit that I sms a lot. Every month my sms charges are higher than my call charges. Sometimes by half. Sometimes by two third. But then, that’s over a month. Totally acceptable from my point of view.

My flatmate actually bought the package, and he said that, by the end of the validity period, he couldn’t finish all the 400 sms he had. And the balance was gone just like that. No carry forward or anything.

Okay.. to be fair, I agree that the offer is not for everybody. If one is an avid sms-er, then this is definitely a good package for him/her. It would’ve been much better if the validity period is extended to, let’s say, 3 days or more. That would definitely add more value to the package. My suggestion is.. think of something that will benefit the users more. I’m sure your profit would increase.