“Zakaria Zarie Binti” was the caption under a photo of a Malaysian weightlifter in the papers this morning. Zarie must be upset. It is bad enough that the photo showed her sitting on the floor, with the bar and weights still in hand, having just failed in a lift. Even her name didn’t stand up correctly. These silly Aussies who are not only Down Under geographically but have this uncanny ability to also get Asian names down under. It wasn’t however, all bad news. Malaysia is sitting pretty after day one of the XVIII Commonwealth Games in Melbourne – one gold and one bronze, both from weightlifting.
Australia may be top of the table but the haul was expected to be bigger. Scotland “stole” 2 gold medals from them in the pool, Ian Thorpe’s replacement (Craig Stevens) torpedoed in a different way, and the world record holder South African relay team put them firmly in their place (second place). They all seem however, to be enjoying themselves, except poor Craig. He was the one who voluntarily gave up his place in Athens 2004 so that the otherwise disqualified Thorpie could swim. This time, Thorpie was sick but poor Craig couldn’t quite step into his (Thorpie’s) the very large shoes.
Kiddo enjoyed watching it all on tv last night, and was the last one to go to bed. It was alright with us, since it is school holidays time. She did however, leave the lounge lights on and I only switched it off at 5 this morning. 10 more days to go for these games…hopefully she wont insist on staying up every night and I wont be switching off the lounge lights every time she stays up and be the last one to go to bed.
Ante 