Manchester United FC’s pre-season tour was supposed to include Indonesia. In the runup to their visit to Jakarta, there was a TV advertisement showing – surprise, surprise – Wayne Rooney, Edwin van der Sar, Ryan Giggs, Rio Ferdinand, Park Ji-sung and Michael Carrick attending a Bahasa Indonesia language class.
Enter the pretty teacher. She said, “All right boys, let’s begin. Repeat after me” and then proceeded to say:
“Ini Budi. Budi bermain bola”. Translated this means in English: “This is Budi. Budi is playing soccer”.
Now these 6 students were trying very hard to be serious. They repeated the words dutifully. They tried to suppress their laughter. But in the end, it was Rio Ferdinand who burst out laughing into his desk.
That was good publicity, but in the end, Manchester United did not turn up in Jakarta. The suicide bombing of their hotel led to Manchester United cancelling their trip to Jakarta.
In neighbouring Singapore, arch rival Liverpool FC was also visiting. They did a radio blitz, featuring prominently its captain, Steven Gerrad. But he didn’t make it to Singapore, because of a court appearance back in the UK.
These examples show us that the best laid plans can, and do, go astray. It is Murphy’s Law in action – if it can go wrong, it will. We all have experienced Murphy’s Law in our lives. Think about it. In this upside down world, wouldn’t it be nice if we can have absolute certainties? Wouldn’t it be nice if we can say with absolute confidence that “I’ll be there” without worrying that we may not be there for whatever reasons? Wouldn’t it be nice if we can accept the words of another as absolute truth? If this is so, wouldn’t we gladly acknowledge, “Your word is truth”? The bomb that scared off Manchester United shows that we live in a very uncertain world indeed.
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