found this while working...

Love me, dear,and love my football too
By Siva Choy
June 05, 2006

WORLD Cup soccer puts even the strongest marriages to the ultimate test and those who survive it usually live happily ever after.

This is the season where, once every four years, the nicest and most docile husbands turn up late for work or fall asleep at the desk, squander their wages on hopeless bets and then squander some more to recover their losses, chain-smoke, guzzle beer, behave disgracefully in pubs and bore Americans to death, while their wives mentally wear black veils and become soccer widows.

RIGHT GIFT, WRONG REASONS

Take my soccer-kaki David. His wife had begged him to give her a new TV for the last three years. All he had given her were excuses.

Then last week he suddenly bought this huge plasma screen TV as a birthday gift for her. She nearly collapsed in surprise, because the only birthday gifts she had received from him the last seven years had been a non-stick frying pan, a steam iron, an electronic alarm clock, a cordless phone, a sandwich maker, a vacuum cleaner and a bigger non-stick pan.

(By coincidence, all these valuable gifts had helped her to make his breakfast more quickly, iron his clothes more neatly, wake him up for work more reliably, allowed her to talk to Mum on the cordless telephone in the bedroom so she wouldn't interrupt his TV, make his sambal sardine sandwiches during the FA cup, and clean up the crumbs on the carpet before cockroaches got to them.)

Then a poke-fire neighbour reminded her that the World Cup was about to begin. The same poke-fire neighbour reminded her that the last time David had bought a new TV was about eight years ago... just before the last World Cup.

'He told me he bought it so that I could enjoy Desperate Housewives,' the equally desperate wife said.

'Are you telling me that some men actually spend big money buying new TVs just to watch World Cup matches?'

'Please lah, Maria, have you forgotten?' the cynical Mrs Pokefire had said.

'When did Singapore television introduce colour TV? In time for the World Cup, right?

'Who do you think made that decision? Women? No dear - men!'

'No dear - boys!' David's wife said angrily.

'If he thinks he can call his friends over and expect me to make coffee and sandwiches, he can think again!'

David did think again.

'Okay. I'll just go over to Eng's,' he said.'His wife just provides curry puffs from the hawker centre and they are not as delicious as your sambal sandwiches and are probably bad for my heart. She also joins us to watch, not like you, though she is not clever like you and she makes stupid comments like which player is handsome and who is not, but what to do...'

PUT YOUR FOOT DOWN, BUT...

David's wife's heart melted and she said she preferred that he watched the Cup at home, and did his friends really like her sambal sandwiches and yes, Eng wife's was a bit seow, and thanks for the TV because it is so clear I can even see the housewives' pimples, and can I get you coffee or Black Label?

So guess where I'll be when the first ball rolls?

Except I don't feel comfortable about imposing myself on David's poor wife. Maybe I will talk to the other guys and we can all pool together and get her a token of appreciation or something like that.

Not all soccer fanatics are hooligans - deep down, my bunch are quite sensitive and New Age (They wouldn't be my friends if they weren't).

We shouldn't offer flowers or chocolate (she's somebody else's wife for heaven's sake!). Certainly not a Brazilian soccer jersey or a tea-towel with Ronaldinho's stone-age face on it.

Maybe we'll get some nice beer mugs, a cocktail mixer or one of those crystal dishes for serving peanuts and snacks during the game...