Skip to main content

July 2014

Obviously, it’s the World Cup fever all around us. But I’ve decide to skip talking about World Cup in this article because I’m pretty sure you are tired of reading anything regarding the World Cup after the enormous amount of facebook statuses, comments and articles regarding the World Cup. It’s better that we shall move on to other stuffs.


Motorsports
Let’s start with motorsports. There’s only one word to describe it for now - dominance. In Formula 1, the Mercedes team is in total control, winning 8 out of the 9 races of this year’s Formula 1 season. Their drivers - Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg have totally dominated the rest of the field. While last year’s dominant team - Red Bull, which won 13 out of the 19 races is struggling to cope with the pace of these Mercedes cars. I’m not really a motorsports fan, but I do follow motorsports closely. It’s the lack of competition in these events that drives people like me away from watching the sport.

If you think there are not enough competition in Formula 1, look at this year’s MotoGP. There’s only one winner till now - Marc Marquez of the Honda Team who has won all 8 races since the start of the season. That’s just total dominance. Surely, you must thinking: “Where are the rest of the guys out there, are they even racing?”


Commonwealth Games
The Commonwealth Games is happening at the end of this month. This time the games will be held in Glasgow, Scotland from 23 July to 3 August. For those who don’t know what Commonwealth Games is, it’s a multi-sport event among former British territories. It’s one of the largest sporting event in the world with 70 countries expected to take part in. For Malaysia, it’s certainly an event that captured a lot of attention. For a country that is not a strong sporting nation, it’s a bright opportunity for our athletics to show their talent to win medals.

There’s isn’t an official announcement regarding the overall gold medal target for this year’s game, but the morale around the Malaysian camp doesn’t look good. Badminton, traditionally a sport dominated by Malaysians shuttlers in the games, just set themselves a two gold medal target at this year’s games considering Malaysia had won four gold medals each in the 2006 and 2010 games. One interesting fact about the games is that sports like Lawn bowls and Netball are played only in the Commonwealth Games. This means that you basically can’t find these sports being played in other major multi-sport events. 
 

Summer Movie Season Review
A week ago, I went to the cinema to watch the latest instalment of the Transformers franchise, Age of Extinction. Everybody watches movie regularly knows what you will get when you watch a Michael Bay movie. You are not going to get incredible storyline or plot, but what you will get are special effects of visual and sound. One word to describe the movie - awful. I mean it’s so bad that you feel so relieved when the movie ended. Bear in mind, it’s 165 minutes long! The action scenes inside the movie were intense, but it seems like the producers doesn’t know when to stop it and the actions scenes just keep rolling and rolling to a degree when you feel so annoyed. The plot of the movie was just horrible and absolutely destroys the movie franchise. I just wonder what are the plans for the future as a fifth and sixth Transformers film have already been confirmed.

That’s all for July!



By,
Zhe Xu
7th July 2014

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

[Euro 16] Reflection: The 24-Team Format

It wasn’t a tournament that creates many excitement. A final result that nobody would have predicted - Portugal won. For a team that finished the tournament with three draws, third-placed in the group, and with a single win in 90 minutes but ended up lifting the trophy, this was ultimately the biggest embarrassment of the new 24-team format UEFA had introduced in this year’s tournament. Much like other sport organizations like FIFA and NFL, it doesn’t come as a surprise that the biggest reason for this 24-team format - Money. While sponsors and UEFA are happily collecting the massive revenues generated from this tournament, many must be wondering: Is this 24-team format a great thing for this championships? For start, this format creates more opportunities for 8 more teams to play in this tournament. Teams like Albania, Wales, and Northern Ireland are benefits of this new format. There are all making their debuts at this year’s tournament. But with more teams playing in Euro 1...

Talent or Money?

*It has been a long time since I posted on this blog. Since this is my very first post of 2013, I wish everybody having a great year ahead in 2013! (By the way, screwed those Mayans who say that the world will end) The judging panel and host of the singing talent show The Voice (Top) and The X Factor(Below). (Top): Adam Levine, Cee Lo Green, Christina Aguilera, Blake Sheldon and Carson Daly. (Below): L.A. Reid, Demi Lovato, Britney Spears and Simon Cowell.  Whether you are a fan of any talent show, here comes a big question for the producers. Are you guys really interested in searching a new talent or interested in making your pocket richer? On TV, I could say all of them will say the former one, but backstage I’m sure many will pick the later answer. Whether you are a fan of The Voice, American Idol, The X Factor, Got Talent or even Dancing with the Stars, there’s one fact you can't deny, that is the more frequent you turn on your TV to watch these shows, the more mon...

Federer's Quest for Another Major

Roger Federer, arguably one of the best that has ever played the sport. But on Friday, Federer was shockingly knocked out by Andreas Seppi of Italy in the third round of the Australian Open. An opponent whom Federer has never lost in the previous 10 meetings. A player who has only manage to win only one single set out of the 10 matches they played together made this defeat even more miserable for Federer. Perhaps this defeat was even shocking the fact that he started off the year brightly by beating Milos Raonic, a top 10 ranked player in the world to win the Brisbane title. Despite not winning any majors in 2013, he ended the year with a great note by winning the Davis Cup, ATP titles wins in Basel and Shanghai and reaching the finals of the ATP Tour Finals. Everything seems to look great for Federer leading up to the Australian Open until the lost. The four majors are always the platform where top players bring their A game to the courts. But believe or not, losing in the...