Just a note about Liverpool this season.

I’ve been trying my best to ignore the dismal reality of my team’s performance. I’ve continued to remain hopeful for good things to happen to the club, but somewhere in February or March of 2010, I just knew I had to get out of my state of denial. It’s not something I’m proud of, but at that point of time, I started growing nonchalant, and started setting low expectations. A draw would be enough, I’d tell myself, especially if they’re playing a “bigger” club. I’d only get myself up in arms if my boys came away defeated at a match that they should’ve otherwise easily won. After all, on paper, playing against one of the “smaller” clubs was supposed to be a walk in the park, not to sound complacent. But, on paper, there’s simply no reason for the team to perform so poorly.

Many have attributed this debacle to the sale of Alonso. As much as I love that man, and was admittedly very, very crushed to see him leave, I never believed his departure to be the cause of such a massive impact. After all, isn’t football a team sport? How is it possible for one absent player to cause so much damage? Instead, my finger was pointing at the manager and the club’s owners. I believed that it was a combination of a major lack of player development, team cohesion and financial support that was doing us in. And after reading this article that triggered this rant, I’m even more convinced now that Benitez has to go. Because quite frankly, I see him as one of the proverbial rotten apples who has contaminated the entire basket of apples.

I will not dismiss his successes with the club, and I’m grateful for the silverware he’s helped to bring home. But I do believe that Benitez is not a good fit. We must acknowledge his strengths and the fact that he has brought in a good number of valuable players, however I do not believe that his yin has necessarily meshed well with Liverpool’s yang. I also do not blame him entirely because he made it very open about the constraints he had in managing the club. As for Liverpool’s two public enemies, I think of it as two Americans who made an investment that didn’t pan out as ideally as they’d hope and unfortunately, we are now at the brunt of it. Thankfully, their departure is imminent. Although it will undoubtedly leave behind a big cloud of ash.

I’ll admit that Liverpool’s future does appear somewhat bleak and unless a superhero of a billionaire appears (such as Tony Stark, according to a friend), it may take more than a few years for the club to fully recover to its former glory. I also understand that I’ll continue to get frustrated with decisions/directions that I won’t ever comprehend, and I’m only putting myself through more disappointment and heartache. Nonetheless, I’m more than willing (especially now, more than ever) to stay true to my club’s motto and continue supporting them through this tumultuous ordeal. Yes, no matter how long it takes.

And yes, I’m passionate about Liverpool like that.

Allow me to set the scenario: every day you get to work, you exchange the usual good mornings with your colleagues, ask each other about the day’s schedule, then nestle yourself at your desk. Then for most of us, it’s about an hour of checking our personal emails first and surfing the Internet, before we get any real work done. Sometimes we take a detour to the pantry and get our morning coffee/tea/whatever. Now comes the situation: you cross paths with a colleague that you’ve already greeted when you got to the office earlier that morning, and it’s not someone you’re close to. What do you do? Do you:

A. Give a sheepish smile
B. Just walk past the person without any acknowledgement
C. Raise an eyebrow/wink
D. Groan “I’m tired”
E. Say a quick “Hey” or “Hello”
F. Something else

I don’t know about you, but this moment never fails to seem awkward to me. See, if it was someone you’re real chummy with, you could always whine/gossip, but I really don’t know how to react to people whom I only speak to in passing. And if you pass by this same person more than once, are you just gonna keep saying “Hey”? Am I the only person who’s bugged by this?

So I was about to retreat to my room and put on some Maxwell to accompany me through the night, when I saw this wretched creature in the corner of my eye; this brown crusty shell parked nonchalantly on the wall, right beside my collection of CDs. With bated breath, I calmly walked out of my room and called for reinforcements. Mum promptly redirected me to our domestic helper, cos she too, was afraid of cockroaches and refused to be anywhere near it. Alas, my helper was in the shower, so I went to the next best person – my grandma.

Grandma, in her full gung-ho spirit took out the fly swatter, commanded me to take out that can of Raid and marched straight into my room. Of course, by now, the roach wasn’t there in the same spot, so grandma decided to spray Raid all along the side of the wall so she could lure it out. Two minutes later, this vile thing walked right into her trap and she did all she could to squash the roach with the swatter. Unfortunately, it was smart enough to perch itself onto uneven surfaces, so grandma wasn’t able to annihilate it immediately. This was a lucky break for the roach as it managed to limp its way into the tiny gap behind my table.

By now, our helper was already out of the shower and standing at my door, bemused by the commotion. She has always found it rather baffling that I have this fear of roaches and lizards, and constantly teases me about it whenever I engage her help in killing them. She then took over the deathly duties because grandma didn’t know how to get the roach out of the gap. We knew the roach had little chance of survival as it was already suffocating from all that Raid, but we wanted to make sure. Some “tools” were brought in, and after about 10 minutes of fussing over a tiny little pest, she finally managed to ensure its destruction by poking at it repeatedly with a little pole. Everyone then left my room feeling victorious, and left me feeling completely inadequate.

I’ll probably never get over my fear of cockroaches and lizards, haven’t been “attacked” by them when I was much younger. So, Dia & Nessa – I’m officially going to entrust these pest-killing duties to you girls if we really do end up living together. Cos now you know I’m just gonna run away and hide.