The Steffiverse

I've never experienced the phenomenon known as Runner's High before. Ever. So today is definitely a milestone in my quest to now flab out before I turn 50.

See I spent most of the day at work. Was on campus by 8:30 a.m. for class, then it was work, class, work until 7:30 p.m.

By the time I left the office I was so drained and braindead that I felt like collapsing. But I went for a run. My goal was 20 minutes without stopping. I hit that and kept going. It seemed easy for once, my legs pounding the pavement almost mechanically. It was almost effortless. I drowned myself in my music and pushed off.

In the end, I did a 40 minute run that consisted of two small loops round the athletic fields, then a big loop, then two small loops, followed by another big loop and a final small one. I have no idea how much that is in distance. I'm guessing about 3 miles. But for once, distance ceased to matter. What mattered was that for a full 45 minutes I was free from the pressing constraints of work and my course load.

Still, don't take this to mean that I hate life. I don't. There are worse things to do than write all day about stuff that I love and be paid to do it.

And I have some measure of creative license.

Such as the column I wrote for tomorrow's paper. I was striving to match the lofty standards I had set myself with my last column. I think I suceeded. The column that I produced, and that I got my co-workers at the WC to edit in the morning, was beautiful. If I may say so myself.

The Column
It’s funny how serendipity often strikes when you least expect it.

I grew up wondering why everyone around me constantly insisted on making a big fuss about soccer.

Which makes a whole lot more sense when you consider that I grew up in Singapore, a small, bustling metropolis of about four million people, with no real sports infrastructure at any level.

Where I grew up, we didn’t have an NFL. There was no MLB, and no NBA either. And with just three universities, it’s kinda hard to produce an NCAA.

So to compensate for this dire lack of a sporting environment, people turned their heads once again, to the British — who, given our colonial background, always seemed to have the answer to most of our problems anyway.

Everyone adopted the English Premier League as their own. And soccer — it’s called football to everyone else, by the way — became the de facto national sport.

To everyone but me.

See I turned my own head to the other side of the world. Instead of waking up at odd hours of the night to watch live broadcasts of Manchester United versus Arsenal, or Liverpool versus Chelsea, I watched the exploits of Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls.

To a nine-year-old girl, basketball is way more fun to watch than soccer. It’s fast paced, and the action/lull ratio is much more favorable to the spectator— you don’t have to sit there for 90 minutes only to be disappointed and bored when the game ends in a goalless draw.

Over the next few years, I taught myself to understand ice hockey, baseball and football (yes, the American kind) solely through the powers of observation. This was most challenging with football.

And believe me, football confused the heck out of me for the longest time. But I viewed it as a challenge. An enigma. I wanted to just figure it out. So I continued to watch Sunday Night Football at 6 a.m. on Monday mornings, and Monday Night Football on Tuesdays. Eventually, the pieces all started coming together.

And a new Colts fan was born — the first NFL game I ever watched was Peyton Manning’s first game under center. So I ran with it and have watched him ever since.

In fact, most of the sports loyalties that I hold to this day are a direct product of the limited resources that I had to work with while growing up.

The local media would only broadcast big games from big teams. Hence my Yankee loyalties. They’re pretty much the only baseball team I really got to watch till I moved here. Which international cable channel is going to broadcast Kansas City Royals games?

I decided I liked the Kings when they picked up a fast, flashy and incredibly entertaining rookie named Jason Williams in 1999, and the kid just took my breath away with every behind-the-back, no-look pass that he made.

I became a Ducks fan because I was obsessed with the Mighty Ducks movies while growing up. That soft spot for the Mighty Ducks is part of the reason why I ended up coming to Oregon. Yes. As ridiculous as it sounds, when I was deciding whether to go to college in Indiana or to come here, our mascot was the deciding factor.

Serendipity. Everything happens for a reason.

Now I’m a full-fledged Duck, but guess which sport I’ve been assigned to cover for the Emerald this term?

Soccer.

And guess which sport I’m taking for P.E. this term?

Soccer.

And guess which sport the people I surround myself with this term are obsessed with?

Soccer.

This sudden proliferation of soccer in my life started last year, when a friend of mine asked me to join her IM soccer team because they needed some extra bodies. I played for the first time in my life, and had a blast.

Then I met my friend Angie. She’s a soccer player. We watched some of the World Cup together. And made it more fun by creating a World Cup pool at the office. Just as I’d done in the 2002 World Cup, I retained my loyalty to Germany.

I lost.

Then I spent most of my summer watching little kids play soccer for a couple of newspapers that I was interning at.

Then I met my new roommate Chris, who’s as obsessed with soccer (he calls it football, just like the English do) as anyone I’d ever known back home.

Then I started hanging out with a friend at work who used to play Division I soccer. The girl’s obsessed. To the extent that we spent a couple of hours last Saturday shopping for the perfect pair of soccer cleats.

It all adds up. And now, to the amusement of my ‘football’-mad friends back home, I’m finally a soccer convert. The game that I avoided for years has finally enveloped me.

See how serendipity always gets you in the end?