Singapore's paddlers are Champions, are you proud of it?

An exhilarating psychological state of pride and optimism is all around the Singapore table tennis camp. And they have good reason to be so; the women's team representing Singapore has just clinched the much coveted LIEBHERR 2010 World Team Table Tennis Championships in Moscow. One most interesting thing to note is that the players in the final are all Chinese, past and present.

Feng Tianwei scored the opening point as well as sealing the title with her hard-fought final point for the Singapore team. We can read about the detailed score in mainstream media tomorrow so I am not going to touch on that here. Singapore's victory effectively ended the China Women's team dream of holding the title for the 8th consecutive time.

I am sure many true born and bred Singaporeans have this lingering thought in their mind; should we or should we not feel proud about this achievement? Personally I am not, not a single bit. However, I am happy for the individual players for seeing their effort turned into fruition. I am certain all of them put in their 100% to participate in tournaments like this one. And I congratulate them for their performance.

Ex-PM and the current SM Goh Chok Tong boasted in one of the NDP Rally that Singapore will play in the final of football World Cup 2010. Well, he punted on the wrong horse. The Singapore football team cannot even smell the air in the second round, let alone playing in the finals. Of course, his prophecy for the football team is a tremendous task. Let's be fair, it is not easy to BUY a full football team, coaches and players. Therefore very little people will place the blame on him for giving the Football Association of Singapore this Mount Everest task.

The smart people took the idea and implemented in the STTA. Unlike football, it is so much easier to BUY a small team, in table tennis. Well, it pays. And we got ourselves a Silver medal in Beijing 2008 and now this 'superb' achievement in Moscow.

I guess we also have to congratulate the president of STTA, Miss Lee Bee Wah, for having the wisdom of not appearing in the picture above. It would have marred the celebration of Singaporeans who felt a sense of pride in this happy moment.

I wish to borrow the famous line of Shakespeare's Hamlet, "To feel or not to feel, that is the question".