The Pursuit of Progress
Opinions revolving aroundthe problems, grievances, and solutions to life in Indonesia.

Monday, February 06, 2006

Go Steelers

Steelers won the superbowl.. GO STEELERS

It was against Seattle, a pretty good team. Personally I didn't think it was that good of a game. Too many mistakes. Not enough dominance. No sacks by the usually blitzing steelers. I guess that was because both sides matched evenly.

One of the things I hate about the game. Too many disputable penalty calls ( I would say 3) against the Seattle Seahawks. In a way that was regretable because there will always be that doubt about the legality of the Steeler's win.

But the Steelers won. Yeah. They did it in style too. Throwing a couple of trick plays, including one that ended in a touchdown. A trick play in football is like a slam dunk in basketball, it's fun, and it gets the emotions up.

Enough about the steelers, let's talk about the Seahawks. They were graceful losers. Even though some calls didn't go that way, they didn't say they were cheated. They did not blame the referees. They blamed themselves for not rising up to the challenge, for not beating adversity, for making mistakes. They also praised the Steelers.

Of course, the fact that commenting on refereeing carries a big fine probably encourages them to keep their mouth shut.

Nevertheless, this is one missing element in many Indonesian people lives. When they lose or something bad happens, they blame something else. They blame the referee, they blame the government, they blame the westerners, and of course they blame the zionism conspiracy.

Indonesians are not capable of self blame. That it's my fault, and I should've tried harder.

To teach this, I think we should start with sports league in children. Teach children to shake hands with the opponent after every game, win or lose. Start teaching sportivity, respect for authority figure, respect for the opponent, and hard work. More importantly, fine those coaches that blames referee and starts fights.