We are a ball-centric society. Put a ball in the middle of the field and 70,000 people will crowd around it. And thanks to the satellite and communications technology, another 7 million pairs of eyes will be glued to the TV sets following the ball - small ball, big ball, round ball, oval ball being hit, kicked, tossed, or scrambled.

The universal favourite game that uses a ball is football or soccer. Believe me you, 33.4 billion people watched football in 1998. If a person spent just one hour watching football, that would translate to 33.4 billion man-hours. Imagine if we had 33.4 billion man-hours at our disposal. What could have we achieved even with bare hands with that kind of resource? Plant more trees? Toil the land? Build river embankments? Build houses for the poor and homeless? That is the ideal me speaking.

Now it's time for the nostalgic me.

I am not much of a football fan. I do follow the game every four years when nations go to war over a cup which is known as the World Cup.

I caught my first World Cup fever when I was 12. I attended a boy school. There were 50 students in my classroom. Our desks were arranged in four rows. During physical education class each row became a team. My team called ourselves Argentina. The P. E. Teacher would kick two balls into the fields. We would scramble after the ball following the trajectory of the balls and take positions. In seconds two matches went on at the same time: Argentina vs. Brazil and England vs. Belgium.

We played barefooted. Football boots were not allowed to be worn. Those boots were beyond our reach anyway. We could taste those expensive football boots in our dreams. For those who had the money, they wore elastic ankle bandages. For those with less money, they wore on one ankle. For those without money like me, we relied on our skin and bones.

I played football in high school for recreation. When I was in college I played indoors. Now I only play foosball.