I know it’s never funny to make fun of physically disabled people, so that leaves me with no choice but to make fun of our country’s first medal-winning team in forty-eight years.

Don’t believe the media when they say that we’ve never won an Olympiad medal in a long time. We do, every bloody year.

Forty-eight years. Holy crap. That’s more than half the age of Lee Kuan Yew, which puts Americans to shame when they think having a 72 year-old Republican nominee involved in politics is a big deal. I’m entirely unhappy about the fact that our government didn’t declare any public holidays in view of our country’s success at the Beijing Olympics.

Definition of Old

Amidst all the media hype over a Silver medal and a whopping multi-million dollar award handed out to China-born Chinese (that’s like saying, Original KFC Chicken as opposed to the crispy version that we are), we overlook things.

Natalia Partyka is this non-Chinese table tennis player from Poland. It’s something like having a white guy in the track events. And if that isn’t special enough for you, here’s something more:

Now you’re probably like ‘Oh my god’, but the proper attitude here is ‘Oh my god, she has a ring on her ring-finger’.

Partyka was born 19 years ago with her right forearm missing. Yet her disability did not prevent her from chasing table tennis success after falling in love with the sport as a 7 year-old. And if my logic doesn’t fail me, that also means that she married Table Tennis.

Another athlete to note is Natalie du Toit, a South African swimmer who… swims. Partly because she has an easier time in the water than on land.

She swims in the 10 kilometres open water event which is going to start in… about an hour’s time. And 10 kilometres is quite long.

Back to Partyka. I still can’t imagine how she plays table tennis, especially for serves, but she does it. I only know this much: To serve, she uses the stump of her right arm to toss the ball in the air before spinning it across the net with a ferocious flick of her left wrist.

It’s pretty much like how Green Goblin attacks Spiderman, except that she does it without an awesome-flying-hovering-madness platform thing, arms and a costume that makes you look stupider than a guy who wears red-blue skin-tight suit.

What’s more, and this is probably the most important part, so listen up: The Gdansk native shot to prominence in January when she defeated world No. 8 Li Jia Wei of Singapore at the World Championships in China.

Now you’re probably like ‘Oh my god’, but the proper attitude here is ‘Oh my god, she’s 19 years-old and she’s married?!’.

But really now. I didn’t see that coming. The Straits Times has kindly reminded us that our Golden Girls have won their Chinese (as in, the ones who stayed on in China) counterparts at the World Championships, which left the question hanging… if they defeated the best in the world, who could have stood in their way? Why didn’t we go on to clinch the top position at the World Championships then?

Looks like we have our answer now.

Sometimes I wonder why Phelps can eat 12,000 calories a day (six times the normal intake of an average adult) and produce 8 Golds, while people like me try and end up looking like Jabba the Hut.

Other times, I wonder why on the other hand, Usain Bolt ate a few pieces of chicken nuggets before making a 100m sprint look like a joke.

But I guess we’ll never know about Liu Xiang. Because he’s like my Prelims results. If you get my drift.

I don’t usually get snail mails… if you don’t count the illegal shipments from overseas that comes in every other week. But nevermind about that.

My point is, y’know, I don’t usually get postal, paper mails.

Other than the Ministry of Defence, another fan of mine who keeps mailing me is the TIME magazine.

Now, since the start of this year, or possibly even from late last year, they have been mailing in countless of reminders every month. It’s a simple, nonsensical repetitive message:

HAI. UR SUBSCRIPTION GUNNA EXPIRE SOON. LIKE REALLY SOON. WANNA RENEW? Y/Y? WE’LL THROW IN DISCOUNTS THAT CAN MAKE US GO BANKRUPT HUH.

Funny thing is, each time, they never mentioned how many months of subscription I have left with them.

So, I ignored their promotion-of-my-lifetime offers because in another life, maybe I’m some rich kid who subscribes to every single magazine (except NSmen, hopefully) including Playboy and Sports Illustrated in twenty-three different languages.

In the following weeks, the magazines keep coming in and I was naive enough to think each time, “Ooh! My last copy of the TIME magazine!”

And of course, the reminders to renew do come in as well.

That process, went on for months, many months.

Today marks the day where I finally… no, shit, have another ONE MONTH left on my subscription.

At least they’re courteous enough to tell me just how long I have left with the subscription.

At least they declared the contents of the mail to be spam to SingPost, by labeling SERVICE INTERRUPTION ALERT in big, friendly, bold, capitalised letters on the envelope itself.

At least they made a good attempt to convince me that something really terrible gonna happen if I don’t renew my subscription. I mean, seriously, what the hell is ACT NOW AND YOU WILL AVOID SERVICE INTERRUPTION. In big, friendly, bold, capitalised Arial letters.

Dear Mr Low,

It truly is time to act. Only very few… blah blah blah…

…blah blah blah…

Don’t let this happen to you.

…blah blah blah…

Regards,
Nigerian Spam Kingsome woman from TIME

TIME magazine is like the kind of mother in your life who was never really your mother, but sounds like anyway because it nags at you as if you’re doing something devastatingly wrong. And if real world mothers spoke like how the characters in MMORPGs do, TIME magazine will have its words in Arial Black, and if that’s not enough, bolded.

So I guess I’m missing out on a ‘valuable free gift’ (Global Warming book) and a 66% discount (why does it seem to be increasing each time I refuse to renew?).

Perhaps one of the points that draws people to renew their subscription is the fact that they offer ‘improved service for automatic renewal subscribers’. Number two of it states that, ‘No more mailbox clutter: We’ll notify you in advance with just one letter near the end of your term. That’s good for you - and for the environment’.

Well… so that’s that, but I’m not gonna just let them off like that.

I remember there was this article I read online, about a guy in the United States, who got so sick of receiving ads like this until he decided to return a reply to the company one day.

These companies offer free postage back, and they will cover the cost of the postage entirely through their permit with the Post Office. Ironically, the guy was working for such a company, and decided to try out with his own company first. He put in brick (yes, a brick) into a shoe box, sealed it, pasted the reply mail envelope on it and sent it in for delivery. A few days later, it appeared at his office.

Since then, replying to businesses has become one of his hobbies.

I’m not sure how that works out in Singapore, but I’m going for this.