Lord of the Five Rings: Big Father is Watching

In a quiet library in Singapore's far west, wild cheers erupted along with an entire nation's.

Singapore had just won the bid to host the 2010 Youth Olympic Games.

A group of eight NTU communications students were watching the live telecast of the International Olympics Commitee's highly-anticipated announcement from Switzerland.

But much like their cacophony ill-fitting an abode of solemnitude, the scenes at City Hall, where 5000 had gathered to witness the video-simulcast, were somewhat disconcordant.

Before the wondrous words "...city of Singapore" blared across this famous field, its leaders seemed rather affected by all the tension.

The mini-shorts-of-choice of Mr Teo Ser Luck, the Parliamentary Secretary for the MCYS, were some 2 feet too... short. Good-looking as he is, girls were bound to comment on this strange hairless-legs-revealing number - and did: "Did he forget to bring more decent bottoms?"

Mr Ng Ser Miang, the country’s sole IOC representative, was reported by Today newspaper as looking as if he was the loneliest man in the world, and Singapore's Olympics legend Ng Howe Liang looked distinctly austere.

Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, usually wholly smilingly confident -- even when he makes such faux pas as mee siam mai hum -- was nervously waving his mini-Singapore flag at chest-level, twitching fingers belying his attempt at his famous winsome grin.

Maybe Big Father was watching, and their usual styles were cramped by hopes of lucrative promotions hinging on His sombre nod of approval.

Everyone should have been elated then, after Singapore's 53-44 victory over Russia. But if that reads like a low-scoring basketball-match, it was reflective of cagey game tactics hoping to impress, but never doing so.

For Singapore's leaders championing their nation's efforts, read satisfying their electorate.

PM Lee was quick to lavish praise on his heartlander base, on whom he counts for popular support.

For all of the crucial work of the noveau-hip Ser 'brothers', he gave equal time to lavish praise on a 68-year-old taxi driver, whom he said wrote to over 100 IOC members describing why Singapore should host the Games.

The IOC board would have probably went "O, IC" at random spam like that, before finding as many holes in his rhetoric as in their Swiss cheese -- if they had even bothered.

Teo Chee Hean, the Singapore National Olympic Council (SNOC) president, was eager to fall in line with his prime minister, claiming that the support of the people was a crucial factor to Singapore winning the bid.

The support of the people as crucial? One wonders why then Russia's 141 million population didn't convince Rogge and friends.

Jacques Rogge, the IOC president, was less keen to impress: "Moscow was a little bit penalised by the fact that Sochi was awarded the Winter Games. I think the prevailing sentiment among the IOC members is also... to give it to a new city that has not organised a Games."

So that's it -- a strong dose of 'give chance'.

In the typically manufactured celebrations across City Hall that included JC orientation-style mass dances, there would have been little head-room to realise this truth -- just the way they like it.