COYS!!

I am not sure how many of you ladies are into sports or enjoy watching the sports channel with your husband. The Mrs will only occasionally sit down beside me and watch while surfing the Internet. I will have to give her background details to raise her interest to achieve that.

As for me, I am an armchair athlete because the only sport I do is to follow the English Football and Tennis (only the Grand Slams). So you will find me usually glued to the TV on Saturday and Sunday nights between Augusts to May each year watching football. Oh, not to forget the hours I spent sweating on the football pitch and tennis court taking on the likes of France, Brazil and Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic on my Xbox 360.

In reality I am a Spurs fan, no it’s not Antonio Spurs (NBA team for those of you who do not know) but a certain London football club called Tottenham Hotspur. I have been following them since I was in secondary school many moons ago and yesterday was a very happy day for us fans because we won the League Cup. We have not won anything since 1999.

Now what has this got to do with this blog you ask. Well, Everything!! because this is A Husband’s Voice with me being the husband and this is my voice!

Well, the Mrs has always said it herself many times that she jinxes my Spurs whenever we play. The truth is whenever I tell her that Spurs is on live and I am watching it then chances are they will not win. I will not go as far as to say that they will surely lose but I observed that more often than not they will fail to win.

This has gone on for a while so I had the brilliant idea of bringing her to White Hart Lane (Spurs home ground) to “exorcise” her. We were touring in Europe back in December 2006 and London was one of our stopovers so naturally I have to go to White Hart Lane right? I was hoping to bring her to watch Spurs play live and maybe just maybe the combine effort of 30,000 chanting spurs fan will be able to “exorcise” and convert her!

As I have always said God has a wicked sense of humour. Weeks leading up to our departure the tickets for that match were not released for sale yet and by the time I got to London the tickets were all out. Apparently almost all the tickets were for season ticket holders with only a tiny handful up from grasps. Needless to say what chance had I, a fan traveling from over thousands of miles, got?! So that idea was done the drain.

Then I thought maybe by stepping on “Holy” ground alone will do the trick but we couldn't even get in because the day tours were all fully booked also. Sigh…….

So the whole of 2007 I had to see my beloved Spurs endure the curse of the Mrs. The only way around this is NOT to let her know whenever they were playing live. However this was often hard to achieve because we were usually having a round of healthy mahjong during weekends. Okay it’s more like 3 rounds. So whenever I was playing I would have the TV on as well so I could keep up with my game. Don’t forget I need my exercise too being an armchair athlete and all. I will normally not mention to the Mrs the teams that are playing but sometimes she will notice then she will give me this wicked smile where her eyes are thinned to one side while her lips and closed and curled up to one side as well. Sometimes she will nod her head ever so slightly and at that instance I know, it’s finished!

However I believe all that has changed with the arrival of a new Spurs fan in Isaac Tan Tiang Tze.

I challenged the Mrs’s “power” once again when I told her that I will be staying up on Sunday night because my Spurs was taking on Chelsea at the new Wembley stadium for the Carling Cup. She must be wondering why I told her and gave me the “huh” and the “smile” before brushing it off and went to sleep.

I have to admit that when Chelsea scored first and by the player (Drogba) that held the record of not losing whenever he scored first, I thought the curse lives on! I guess I should not have underestimated Isaac’s ability to convert because at the end of the day, we came out winning 2 – 1. This score has more meaning than just the outcome of the 2007 – 2008 Carling Cup final. It is also the outcome of the battle within the Tan family. In the end it is also 2 – 1 with Isaac and I teaming up and winning the Mrs!!

I look upon this as the beginning of many more beautiful results for Spurs as well as Team ID (Isaac & Dylan).

Disclaimer: The above covers only one tiny fun segment of our household. It has no bearing when we talk about love in the family and it definitely does not remotely reflect the love that we have for the Mrs because even though she is not a Spurs fan and had jinxed them before, we love her wholeheartedly none the less.

COME ON YOU SPURS!!