WHAT did you do last weekend? What are you planning for this Saturday and Sunday? What about next weekend?
Chances are, quite a number of people were — or will be — tuning in to football matches, even if they may not be top-drawer clashes.
Has the game become a fixture in many people's choice of weekend relaxation?
Have wives and girlfriends become soccer widows as a result?
Are fathers doing things with their children only outside football-on-TV hours?
I ask all this because I detect a growing hard core group of addicted followers.
If not, why would so many folks be super upset when it was announced that there would be a change of EPL broadcast provider, from StarHub to SingTel?
Sure, the issues they raised, from the propect of paying more to subscribe to two content providers to the incompatibility of set-top boxes were legitimate.
But the scale of the furore is such that one might be tempted to think that the fans were in danger of being denied a very basic service or need, like cheap medical care or the right to send their kid to any primary school.
It was not that long ago that Singaporeans had only one game to watch a week on television. And the luck of the programming draw meant that lousy teams were featured as often as the good ones.
Now, there are a lot more live matches to watch — not all interesting, I must say — and many people seem to be making time and space to catch as many as possible.
They ignore the fact that there are other, more worthwhile, things in life to pursue too, be it a hobby or taking the family out more often for a movie or dinner.
Certainly, I have no great desire to watch all the games. What I prefer is the option to pay only for the match I want to watch.
This will be the big game, the critical showdown, and it won’t be Arsenal vs Wigan or Liverpool vs Hull.
But I want to be there for Man U vs Liverpool.
Or Chelsea vs Man City.
If the telco can come up with a pay-for-view option, I will sign up in a jiffy. I don’t need to subscribe for a whole season’s worth of games.
Sure, life can be a ball — but not all of it should be experienced from watching the action on a field.