BlackMan Time

Archive for 2004

When someone uses the phrase “professional foul” usually they are talking about a sportsman who deliberately does something contrary to the rules of their sport knowing full well they may well be published for it but they do it any way because it is expedient or necessary for them to do it. It is halfway between cheating to get an unfair advantage and clever strategy.

In the case of the traditional English game of soccer, a professional foul is (usually) when a player commits an illegal tackle on another to stop him from scoring or running into a favourable position.

When the phrase “professional foul” is spoken, phonetically it sounds like you are talking about a totally different kind ballgame or animal! For instance “professional fowl” does sound like you are referring to a poultry bird whose sole purpose in life is to sit in a cage and either lay eggs or await the inevitable day when it is chopped up and processed before becoming a dinner table item with your Sunday rice and peas!

What has motivated this explanation? Actually, the current brouhaha over England captain, David Beckham’s admission of deliberately fouling a Welsh player in order to get around a technicality that would have seen him banned should he get another yellow card.

I make the comparison because Beckham, a player who really deserve much greater respect than some sections of the British media gives him, commits a professional foul, admits he did so deliberately a few days later and now the press and sundry is getting all ruffled. To me it seems so hypocritical. I don’t know which is worse: committing the offence, admitting it, both or being the England captain and committing the offence, then admitting it!

If they really want their rules not to be circumnavigated by clever thinking players then they should make better rules. They shouldn’t try to make the player feel like a criminal because he has found a loophole in the system. In fact, maybe they should pay Beckham for discovering a loophole they should have dealt with already!

The short-sighted among the Football Association (sweet FA to you and me!) are muttering things like “not in the spirit of the game” and “it’s just not cricket” once again seem like old fuddy duddies who react (and even over react) when public opinion forces them to.

In the world of professional sport where large sums of money depends on the outcome of a game, it is clear that some sportsmen are more interested in winning than in participation. This is actually a business and when sport transcends being a past time or just another leisure activity, then things like “professional fouls” become part and parcel of the game. That is the reality.

As far as I see it David Beckham’s only real “crime” was actually admitting to deliberately fouling a player and then making it public.

Had Becks kept his mouth shut no one would’ve been any wiser and he would still be seen as a great captain and terrific player. Now, doesn’t that sound like hypocrisy to you? The fact that ignorance is bliss. That’s the real professional fowl…

Hooray, the West Indies cricket team for beating England by two wickets and seven balls to spare, in the ICC Trophy at the Oval yesterday!

It was a most dramatic win with the much improved England team on course to clinch the trophy, until they bucked upon strong West Indian resistence and resolve.

The star Windies players were Courtney Browne and Ian Bradshaw whose record ninth wicket partnership of 71 helped snatch the win from under England's noses.

West Indies were dead and buried at 147 for 8 before Browne and Bradshaw joined each other at the crease, but slowly they edged towards England's total of 217, and sealed a stunning win with two fours in the penultimate over of the game. Understandably, jubiliations is all around!

One of the best aspects of this win is the fact that all the players have decided to give the proceeds of their salary towards the victims of Hurricane Jeanne which devastated the Caribbean and has killed over 1,000 people in Haiti, beforing moving onto the Bahamas and Florida. It was a touching gesture.

There was a time when the West Indies team were regular match winners: feared, revered and exciting to watch. Great names like Sir Clive Lloyd, Sir Vivian Richards, Michael Holding, Andy Roberts, Vanburn Holder and more, in the team ensured that anything was possible. To see Michael Holding’s bowling action, with his almost one mile long run-up, spread out on several tabloid pages in its actuality, made every West Indian filled with pride. These days that does not seem to happen and England, which was then a mere minnow as world cricketers, has very much taken some of the West Indies fire.

Their 4-0 series “whitewash” over the West Indies this summer has revealed a Windies team very much in crisis and troubled. Outbursts by Sir Vivian Richards against the leadership of Brian Lara further threw kereosene oil on the fire and Lara, holder of several world batting records, has indicated that this current tour may be his last in England. We hope not, but only Brian Lara knows what’s going on in his mind.

What we do know is that for today the ICC Trophy represents a big development and a jubilation all lovers of West Indian cricket should laud and applaud for many days to come. We hope it spurn the team back onto winning ways and rekindle some of what could be called “the glory days.”

Selah.

It was almost predictable. That, of course, is the nature of the British tabloid press beast!

Obviously I’m talking about their reaction to England’s 2-2 draw with Austria after being 2-0 up with 30 minutes to go. They didn’t need to look too far for a fall guy or two as goalkeeper David James’ off-night labelled him the most suitable candidate!

His two missed-ball fumble made him look like a right plank and did nothing to enhance his cool image.

You should see the press hacks calling for his blood! How quickly they forget the many times that James, whom they hitherto dub “King James,” has saved England’s backside! You can go many games being the saviour of the national side with your heroric antics in goals, but just have off night and suddenly you turn from hero to villain in two seconds flat! Suddenly, adjective phrases like “erratic performance” gets thrown at you when really who they would like to murder is none other than the team coach Sven Goran Eriksson!

What a bummer!

The doomsayers among them are predicting that James, usually a very capable keeper, and Sven will be out if England don’t beat Poland in their World Cup qualifying match on Wednesday, September 8.

I have no doubt that James will be an absolute star: he will England’s saviour, again. The team have usually shown when the (fish and) chips are down they are capable of pulling a rabbit or two out of the bag. They’ll need to pull a giant sized one to repair damage and win the public’s heart. That’s the only thing that will satisfy the press, then everything will be back to normal.

For now…

I’ve never liked the smell of bacon in the morning. I’ve never liked smell of bacon in the evening either! To be honest, I’ve never liked bacon. Actually, I don’t even like the animal from which bacon is produced! The pig to me is like the equivalent of an animal garbage disposal unit or a land scavenger.

Obviously, other people disagree so they see the pig as an item of food.

I can remember as a youth growing up in Jamaica being fed fried pork with my morning meal. The only way I could hold down this strange ‘meat’ down was by eating a sweat known locally as a ‘Bustamante’

A computer user switches on his pc as normal, in the way he has done umpteenth times before. It powers up, goes through the usual start up routine then tries to connect to his broadband connection account with Tiscali.

“Connecting Internet ADSL…”

Normally, this is a 20 seconds operation. But on this particular occasion after around a minute it was still trying to connect.

“Connecting Internet ADSL…”

After a while up pops an error box with the message.

“Error Connecting to Internet ADSL

Error 721: The remote computer is not responding…”

The customer has been trying this from the start of the business day at 09:00 and over two hours had passed with no luck connecting. Finally, exasperated, the user dials Tiscali broadband technical support’s 0870 national rate telephone number.

“Hello. Welcome to Tiscali broadband,” the female Asian voice greets. “My name is Anita. How can I help?”

“I can’t connect to my broadband account…” the customer begins, a sigh escaping from his mouth.

“Can I have your name and connection telephone number,” Anita asks.

After going through a whole list of “procedures” of account verification and outlining of the problem, the customer waits listening to some inane music, while Anita returns with a solution. Her voice on the line cracks the customer back to reality…

“Mr. Bee, it seems we have been having some work done in your location and you will have to try back in another couple of hours before you can get connected.”

“Really?” asks Mr. Bee. “I was not informed of this.”

“I’m really sorry, but this is the situation and there’s nothing I can do,” Anita said.

“You want me to wait another two hours before I can connect to use an internet service which I am paying for and have been trying to connect to for the past two hours? This is not good enough! ”

“Yes. I am sorry. But there’s nothing I can do.”

“I deserve some compensation for this because Tiscali did not inform me of this inconvenience and I am unable to use the service I am paying for. Does that sound reasonable to you?”

“I…understand what you are saying Mr. Bee. But you’ll have to try back in two hours…”

“Well, that’s not good enough! Give me the address of the customer services department”

“They don’t have an address. Just redial and press option 6.”

“Let me speak to someone senior then”

“Sorry. We don’t have anyone senior for you to speak to”

“What?! A company as huge as Tiscali and you’re telling me there’s no one I can I speak to about a service I am paying for and not getting? What kind of Mickey Mouse operation are you guys running anyway?”

The above is typical of many of the Internet Service Providers I have ever dealt with. They spend lots of money enticing you to use their services but their customer services is poor and/or the staff they have dealing with your problems are inadequately informed or trained.

This is only a small irritation, but it is the company’s assumption that customers can or will somehow absorb the inconvenience of not being able to use a product or service that they have paid or paying for. That’s taking the customers for granted or for a ride.

Who protects the customer’s right in a situation like this? What recourse does a customer have?

Usually, broadband internet accounts are a binding 12 month contract and if you decide to break that contract by leaving the company supplying you with service on month 7th say, then you have to pay for the remainding five months of the term left. This is patently not right, particularly if you are dissatisfied with the service. There should be a law against this kind of “handcuff” approach to contract making and customer service.

What do you think?

Today I made the decision to stop using Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. It wasn’t an emotional thing. It was a business decision after examining the facts in the cold light of day thing. So I did not grieve.

I’ll tell you why I’ve switched in a moment…

I grew up with Internet Explorer, from the days when it was a trial software that you had to pay for. Back in those days, the 90s, Netscape Navigator (http://www.netscape.com) was the king of browsers. It was fast and unlike Internet Explorer, it was free. Hackers were not as prominent in those days of course or if they were their antics did not make the headlines as often.

They did not take a set on IE because Microsoft did not consider the internet important enough to bother with. That came later after the realisation that if they didn’t enter the internet race they would lose massive market share in later years.

Could this decision to apprently rush into the market force the people to overlook certain important things like security and bug checking and is this why IE and Microsoft technologies seem to attract so many hackers today? Whatever it is I have reached the point where I am literally sick of living apprehensively while I surf, fending off hackers and attackers attempts to gain access to my pc.

I have always been careful about what sites I visit and what links I click on when I surf, not to mention what firewall and anti-virus software I use. But, no matter what the odd virus and anomaly still crop up on my pc.

Until I decided to switch to another browser that is.

That soldier is Opera browser (http://www.opera.com). It makes IE looks like an amateur when it comes to features. And the best feature of all is that it does not attract hackers! At the end of the day the safety of browsing the internet should not depend on the browser you choose to use, but in my reality this is what I was finding.

This is why I decided to switch browsers. If anyone from Microsoft would like to win back my custom they need to improve the quality of their browser. Promises are no good any longer. Time to deliver a bug-free, hack-proof, usable, reliable graphical interface that won’t leave you open to exploitation from others online.

Is that too much to ask?

I am in mourning. I am grieving the loss of Serena Williams in the women’s finals of the Wimbledon tennis championship, yesterday.

Serena was playing to win the title for the third consecutive year and was battling against the tall, blonde and beautiful 17 year old media babe Maria Sharapova. But it seems that whatever bed Serena got out of in the morning, she must not have had a good night’s sleep. She lost in straight sets in one of the most disappointing and unsatisfying matches I have ever seen her play.

Full credit, I suppose, has to go to Maria who looked like she was hardly trying but on whose face determination was etched for every point.

It seemed that not even the memory of the death of her sister last year, nor the fact that previous to this match she had only dropped one set, was sufficient motivation for Serena to go out there and give it her all and play as if her life depended on it. But then, why should she? It’s only a tennis game, right? And after all she’d just come through injury and an 8-month long lay off.

Nevertheless everyone expected Serena to win and her loss made it all the more remarkable for her opponent whose victory is now being heralded as “amazing” and “incomprehensible”.

Maybe there were sufficient cobwebs still on Serena enough to subdue her. Either way we can’t wait to see her back on winning form. When she and her sister Venus dominate the women’s tennis game, it is good. It is a source of immense pride (not to mention pleasure) when Black women are on top. Trust me when I say that!

Besides, I really can’t stand this mourning business for too long…