World Cup - busy time for the Big Man upstairs

"Hi, this is God. Thank you for calling the World-Cup-prayer-hot-line. If you want me to ensure Spain win, please press '1', for Portugal please press '2', for Brazil please press '3', for Argentina please press '4', for Japan please convert immediately and try again in four years."

I've always wondered why out of the 18 World Cup finals ever staged, all have been won by predominently Christian countries. Of those, 14 have been won by predominantly Catholic countries. What can we deduce from this? Well - clearly God exists, and what's more he strongly favours Catholisism but sometimes makes allowances for protestants so as to keep them from going completely off the rails and converting to Islam or Buddhism. Brazil have won it an astonishing 5 times. Is it any coincidence that they possess more practicing Catholics than any of the other countries involved? I think not. They even built a ridiculously enormous statue of Jesus overlooking Rio. Therefore the World Cup is a complete sham - imagine the time and effort put in by coaches, players, television executives, fans - all completely wasted. The fact is the World Cup is no different from American Idol / X-Factor, only that instead of phone votes, God just sits upstairs tallying up the prayer votes.

Growing up in a Catholic community and going to Catholic school I knew a number of priests who were very friendly, down-to-earth, thoroughly genuine, altruistic individuals who more importantly loved their football. From their pulpit they would always (in a light-hearted manner) urge the congregation to remember the England / Ireland team (depending on the priest) in their prayers. As a young God-fearing child obssessed by football I would always screw my eyes shut tightly at night with hands clasped, begging God for England World Cup glory - not realising I was hopelessly out-numbered by hordes of Brazilian kids doing exactly the same back in Sao Paulo.

My point is: isn't asking God for your team to be better than the other team sort of cheating in a way? It's one thing to use performance enhancing drugs but it's a whole different ball-game when you try to enlist the help of an omnipotant being. How can that be a level playing field? Until FIFA looks into this and finds some way to prevent true believers from gaining favour for their teams then Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist and secular countries will never stand a chance, especially if it ever came down to penalties, after all - JESUS SAVES.

Everybody Hurts

Monotonous grey drizzle, unbearable humidity, thumping headache, nausea, clawing thirst and a sense of impending doom. It could describe one of a number of Monday morning hangovers I've suffered in Hong Kong but this one was worse... much worse.

Instead of the creeping horror I usually experience as my brain pieces together the indiscretions of the night before, this time I saw a ball. A ball that was clearly over the line. Then I saw waves of attacking Germans, each one breaching a flimsy defence resulting in yet more humiliation. We weren't just out of the World Cup, we had been pummeled. It had hurt so much the night before, and now it was all flooding back. All the months of excitement, all those idle moments spent day-dreaming of Rooney hat-tricks gone in 90 minutes.

And yet as the day wore on and the hangover subsided I realised this was different somehow. It was nowhere near the misery I remember feeling after watching the hand-ball in '86, or Gazza's tears after the yellow card and penalties in '90. Although I've actively resisted maturing it's an inevitable result of growing older. My only concern is that now I've learned how to rationalise defeat and put things in true perspective, perhaps the ecstasy of victory will now also be tempered. I hope not. I suppose I'll find out in four years time.

Starting with the big questions...

Does God exist? No, of course he doesn't - you're just being silly. Does fortune-telling work? Again, don't be an utter gifford. It is interesting however to be immersed in a culture such as Hong Kong's where so much emphasis is placed on such bum-fluff.

Is it simply a way of filling the void usually occupied by deeply entrenched, organised religion as it is in the west? It provides many advocates with the illusionary sensation that they somehow possess some control over what is a very random and seemingly pointless existence. I admire the way that superstition in Hong Kong differs from the usual tedious battle for the moral high ground that occurs in most formalised religions though. I suppose karma comes into it to a certain extent but not so much as to exclude some very naughty people who simply want some luck on a Wednesday night down at Happy Valley.





Is superstition in Hong Kong harmless fun or something more sinister? Whilst the majority of people in Hong Kong treat the subject with mild reverence (a case of 'just in case'), some do make life-changing decisions based on the utterances of either deluded but genuine 'fortune tellers' or some complete charlatan fraudster. Occasionally however you are faced with a situation in life (such as talking at dinner with your Cantonese girlfriend's extended family, who really do believe in this stuff) where you have to express your opinion in a rather diplomatic fashion.


When discussing the issue with 'believers' I tend to hear a variation of the following argument:

"Well a very good friend of one of my best friend's went to see a fortune teller. They gave the fortune teller no information whatsoever but he was still able to predict marriage / pregnancy / spouse / death / employer / family information (just choose one) with absolutely 100% accuracy. Explain That!"


To which my reply is always a seemingly feeble: "Er, sorry, I can't." But let's take a closer look at the original statement that I've been asked on the spot to explain using only my cold, ruthless, cynical, non-believing, soulless, spiritually-bankrupt rationale.


1) These accounts are nearly always from a good friend of a good friend. Despite our best intentions exaggerations will always creep into any anecdotal tale we tell in order to support our case. I do it, you do it, everybody does it. It can even be subconscious and although we truly believe that these minute alterations do not affect the substance of our position, when multiplied along a chain of communication these can lead to drastically different versions of real events.

2) "They gave the fortune teller no information whatsoever". Really? We emit subtle pieces of information in everything we do - how we dress, how we talk, how we carry ourselves, through our facial expressions and reactions, through what car we drive, through the very questions we ask. A skilled "fortune-teller" can piece together all these snippets to form a surprisingly accurate profile. It is what is known as 'cold-reading'.


3) What percentage of the fortune-teller's advice / prophecy / knowledge was accurate? The whole weird and whacky world of fortune-telling and advocates for it are very vocal in their insistence of its accuracy but surprisingly reluctant to subject it to any statistical analysis. Does filling in columns in Excel somehow mess up the Ch'i perhaps? Or, like in most global religions, does it come down to just needing to have blind "faith"? When a believer goes to see a "fortune teller" they only remember the fragments of what is said that may be accurate. The rest is either too vague to really pin down, or perhaps predictions for the future that are soon forgotten (if they turn out to be false), or just put down to an acceptable level of inaccuracy - after all we normal super-power-less individuals can't begin to fathom how complicated this jiggery-pokery really is.


4) The gospel according to the Word of Mouth. Sometimes, a "fortune-teller" may say something that is 100% bang-on, bulls-eye, bullet-proof, jaw droppingly, pant-wettingly accurate. Even if we can't account for this by using point 2) this is still hardly surprising. The laws of chance dictate that sometimes they will get things right. When this happens the privileged individual who has received this information then immediately tells their friends and family...and co-workers...and dry-cleaner...and bus driver...and random man in the street who looks lost. These people in turn tell their friends and family...etc. Conversely, who has ever received the following message: "OMG OMG OMG...I've just been to see a fortune-teller and I didn't give him any information whatsoever and he spoke for like an hour and guess what?! He was absolutely bollocks. He got just about everything wrong and was really vague." Furthermore if you did receive that message would you really bother telling anyone else? No.



The rare instances that "fortune-tellers" do get things right are exaggerated, distorted, often based upon unconscious communication from the client and then disseminated at a monumentally disproportionate rate to the 99.99% male cow faeces that they usually talk. You've probably correctly ascertained that I've not really a fence-sitter on this issue. You could accuse me of trying to hide behind fact and reason. But I am open minded - and if anyone can convince me through repetitive demonstrable evidence that there is any truth in this whole field of belief then I will happily eat all the humble pies in the world. I would then spend a lot more time at the race-track and trading stocks at home - it's weird how Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley haven't thought of this already? Idiots.