National pride

Because the remote con­trol was too far away, Naomi and I found our­selves watch­ing the semi-final of the women’s table-tennis com­pe­ti­tion at the Asian Games on Chan­nel 5, played between Sin­ga­pore and North Korea.

It made for pretty good view­ing, and we became mind­lessly engrossed in the first match until Naomi asked me, ‘who’s that yelling, and what’s she yelling?’.

I said I didn’t know what the player was yelling, and because I didn’t know what the yelling was, it had to be the North Korean player that was yelling.

Turned out it was the Sin­ga­porean player that was yelling some­thing at every point she won, and I hadn’t recog­nised what she was yelling prob­a­bly because the Sin­ga­porean player, Sun Beibei, like almost every team­mate of hers, hails from the People’s Repub­lic of China, and was prob­a­bly yelling some­thing that People’s Repub­lic Chi­nese yell when they play table-tennis.

The Sin­ga­pore­ans defeated the North Kore­ans, who, with their dowdy hair­cuts, were the defend­ing cham­pi­ons of this com­pe­ti­tion. The semi-final was excit­ing enough for us to tune in to tonight’s gold medal match against the People’s Repub­lic of China. A match, which I’m sure more than a few have quipped to be ‘China A ver­sus China B’.

China B lost, of course.

(OK, I have just been scolded for reveal­ing the scores when Naomi’s still watch­ing the match on tv).

iTunes is play­ing an ille­gal copy of China from the album “Lit­tle Earth­quakes” by Tori Amos of which I have the orig­i­nal CD.

Tech­no­rati Tags: Asian Games, China, table ten­nis, Sin­ga­pore