French Connection (formerly known as London Connection)

Summer Roundup

2007-08-29T14:49:00.000+01:00

I've not been writing here for quite some time (almost two months), mainly due to not having fixed my laptop yet but here is a quick roundup of the past few (or more) weeks:

First of all, sad news, as a Spanish footballer, Antonio Puerta, died yesterday after collapsing in a game played on Saturday eve. Thousands of people pass away every day and yet we normally just feel sorry for the death of those we know, something normal in a way. This one is especially tragical as he was awaiting the birth of his first son and because he was just 22 years old.
I didn’t know Puerta away from a football pitch but he was a good young talent, who had already even been capped with the Spanish national team. People who knew him, say he was a nice bloke as well, that I don’t know. I just will always remember watching him live laying on the pitch and asking my girlfriend what had happened, if he had been elbowed or something… It turned out he had fainted and after several heart attacks his severe condition got worse until he said goodbye to this world yesterday afternoon. And I will remember a good footballer as well. Rest in Peace, Antonio.

Barça's tribute to Puerta

Then, catching up on bad news, well, I am actually starting to doubt if it is bad or good news seeing how things work here, anyway, I am not going to Zürich in the end. Some very crappy and subjective arguments given by the new managers (there was an organizational overhaul just two weeks after my arrival, after which my company’s manager and the country manager quitted the company, and they were the guys WHO BROUGHT ME in the first place…) led to the decision of not continuing with the “Zürich project” and right now I am still in Geneva, exploring my options of moving either to Paris (preferred) or maybe even returning to London… We’ll see.

(Update September 27th, 2007: This is a message that was due to be posted in August... Now I moved to Paris last week and I hope I will be able to keep updating this blog more frequently)

Laptop breakdown

2007-07-05T09:20:00.000+01:00

My laptop has given up so I have not been able to update my blog regularly, since my arrival in Geneva, or better said, Ferney-Voltaire, the French town I live in.

Many stories to laugh and cry about, well, Sports was mainly the crying part with about all of my teams in every possible sport failing to achieve something decent and Barça signing a hopefully-not-yet-washed-up Henry.

I also spend the whole last week in Paris, for my training which was well fun and quite motivating... although, the motivation probably peaked in Paris and fell to below 0 levels when the boss of my company and the Director of Switzerland, who happens to be the guy who hired me, announced that they leave the company, leaving my whole "departure to Zurich" in a bit of a vague position. I totally feel now like the player brought in by a coach who believes in him, just for the coach to resign for personal reasons 2 weeks later because he misses his family or so...

Paris is one awesome city and I´m starting to like the Frenchies more and more. I mean, I´ve known a few already in the past years, nice people, but I´ve always been a bit wary I must admit, mainly because of Napoleon, their success in football and their agrary politic in the EU, but hey, except from cab drivers (most of whom are not even French!! or rally French if you know what I mean) and waiters (aka arrogant b*tches), the rest of the World in la France is quite cool. Thumbs up.

So the other day in Paris we had a lovely dinner in a small, cosy restaurant in Montmaitre and guess who was sitting like 2 meters away from me....... Juliette Binoche and her new partner, who to me gave the impression of a filisofic-funny-wannabe with the look of a deep voice ballad singer who never quite managed to make a name for himself. I don´t know, it´s only the first impression buuuut... A propos, she is far from being a stunner or anything in person and her style is off the charts, in a negative way. She spoke excellent English though :P

Alright then, that much for now, in this superquick update. More to be posted soon....

Goodbye London... Salut Geneve - Quick Roundup

2007-06-17T16:52:00.000+01:00

Sancti Petri, where I went with my girlfriend, late May

Preikestollen, with Nacho, early June

Boston - Taillights Fade...

2007-05-23T08:22:00.001+01:00

Very appropriate song for my mood as a Celtics fan this morning… the band is from Boston, by the way.

23rd of May 2007 - One morning - two losses

2007-05-23T06:11:00.000+01:00

Disaster... Boston who had the second worst record, and thus the highest odds to get pick number 2, slipped to 5th after last night´s NBA Draft Lottery. It is 6am... my flatmate just woke me up to say goodbye, after 9 months of happily living together, *sad* and I can´t fall asleep anymore...

What a MERDE! That is just too harsh getting the bloody 5th pick... Thanks NBA!

22nd of May 2007: Celtics date with fate

2007-05-22T12:15:00.000+01:00

Tonight, 1:30am London time, the Celtics future will be decided by ping pong balls. It's either a top 2 pick or stop watching the team, almost... I still have faith in Al Horford or Brewer as a very good #3 and #4 picks but hey, you gotta get Oden or Durant in this draft if you want to turn your franchise around and there's not much more to read into it.

I played this funny simulation on the espn.com website and my Celtics got the numer 2 pick (good) and Durant (very good) so I will leave it like that and not tinker with luck any more.

It's just one of those fascinating events, where if the result is good I'm gonna be extatic by tomorrow morning and if not... well, it will be good, I am confident!!! (pleaaaaase)

Rouuuundup

2007-05-14T09:43:00.000+01:00

Another quick update on a few things…

I guess out of my 4 regular readers none cars about the NBA or sports in general but there’s things that just need to be addressed :)

Utah just eliminated Golden State. Yep, now officially have no team to root for anymore in the Playoffs. Thing is, after this quite relaxed 4-1 in the series now the Jazz happen to be one of the top 4 teams in the league this year, but hey, no one counted them in as a candidate at the start of the season. Experts… Now they are in a groove and happen to have an awesome inside-out pair of All-Stars to be in Deron Williams and Boozer (who probably is a top 3 PF in this league right now), to go with a small forward, Kirilenko, who can shut down anyone on the opposite team with his athletic defense and long arms and actually decided to start giving a crap in this conference semifinals, a center (Okur) who can shoot the lights out from beyond the arch and a hall of fame coach. Add a streaky shooting guard to the mix, Fisher, who now is playing with an extra motivation, due to his daughter’s illness and another tough inside presence in Millsap and this team is quite scary.
The funny subplot, yet again, is the misjudgment of talent in the 2005 NBA Draft , after witnessing the impressive development of Deron Williams, especially in this Playoffs. Two teams, Atlanta and Milwaukee, passed on him and Chris Paul, and it turns out both Point Guards (one of the most difficult positions to fill with a quality player these days… and all the teams left fighting for the title have QUALITY Point Guards) are franchise players for years to come. Woaaaaaaah. So the Bucks and the Hawks, who scouted these players, and scouted them heavily, before deciding who to pick decided to go with a shaky, dodgy looking Australian bloke wit a moustache, Andrew Bogut (Milwaukee) and an undersized PF who now plays SF in the league, Marvin Williams (Atlanta) when the team had just picked to SF’s in the previous draft. Nice.
This is completely insane. Nuts! It is like a lottery with 4 winners and each one getting to chose one car. Available are: one Series 5 BMW, a Mercedes Series 300, the token new Asian brand and a Golf. So what do you do, you start evaluating the cars, the brands, everything… The first guy shows up and picks the Asian car. Reliable, you know what you have in terms of mechanics but there’s questions as well. You don’t know when the pieces might arrive if you have to repair the car and even though it looks very good on paper, there is not much of a record for this brand in the market yet… The second guy, who happens to own a Golf thinks woahhhhhhhh, I can get another one for free? Let’s do it! ... and chooses the VW. And then, there’s the two guys who get to pick last, who by now are probably throwing already, thinking themselves “Wow, hit's good those two guys picking ahed of us are so stupid? We just got the two better and more expensive cars out of the 4! We do not know if we want a fat car like that actually, but even if we don’t, we can always sell it, buy a Golf or an Asian one and do something else with the rest of the money…”.
So that is exactly what our smart Atlanta and Milwaukee General Managers did 2 summers ago, they said: “Ah f*ck it, why would we go for the sure choice and select two guys who can help turn our struggling franchises around? Two guys who will be borderline All-Stars for years to come... Let’s make the risky pick (Bogut) and stockpile assets instead (M. Williams), you can never have enough SF's on your roster…" Too bad you normally just play one freakin' small forward at the same time!!! And again, these guys get paid millions to do their jobs... lousy jobs!

Did I mention that Atlanta has been looking for a Point Guard for about 10 years now? And that they signed one last summer for more than 30 million dollars, just he wasn’t what they expected (nor needed) so he ended up buried at the end of the bench by the end of the season, when he was not injured? In the meantime Utah, with Deron Williams, who, oh, happens to be a Point Guard, is one of the 4 best teams at this point of the season and Chris Paul, another Point Guard, improved New Orleans' winning record by 20 wins in his first season with the team. Atlanta and Milwaukee? Neither made the Playoff or was even close to do so this season...

This reminds me a lot of when Barça signed Eto’o from Real Madrid a few summers ago. He was a complete stud, an above average athlete, a bit crazy, yes admit it, but he has tremendous potential and just needed a better club in order to thrive (he was playing for Mallorca back then). So Barcelona goes for the guy and former Real Madrid President, Florentino Pérez, thought “ah, f*ck it, why would we need a striker who gives 110% every game he plays, scores once or twice every time he plays against us, is 23 years old and his motivation on a football pitch is off the charts” and sold him to Barcelona, Real Madrid archrival. What happened, Eto’o immediately started scoring goals like crazy (24 and 26 league goals in his first two seasons), as he was playing with a chip on his shoulder to prove everyone at Real Madrid wrong for not wanting to keep him. Now he is probably worth double the price Barça paid for him and is regarded as one of the TOP3 strikers in the world.
This actually led to a bet with my good friend Gérard, who is a die-hard Real Madrid fan. We bet that he’d buy me a very good bottle of rum if Eto’o did score more than 25 goals in all competitions. By Christmas time, halfway through the season, the guy had netted already around 20. Needless to say I won the bet…

On another note, I played scrabble in the pub the other day. In English, as the two other participants were French young ladies, which made it slightly more complicated but hey… but it was very good fun!! I mean, how random was that? Suggestion: always go for a pint (not more than one though) while you play, in is a source of inspiration and you come up with better words, no seriously.

And this picture sadly sums up Barcelona's current status... If the Celtics don’t get a Top2 pick in next Tuesday’s NBA Draft Lottery (which I tried to explain to my girlfriend on the phone yesterday but probably doesn’t make any sense at all, unless you care about hoops, or at least that’s the impression I had myself, while explaining the procedure, which is very weird itself…), I will officially quit on Sports and look for a new hobby. Like fishing, I don’t know… or start drinking. More on that next week as I get mentally prepared for a possible bust!

7th of May, 21 years ago... a short story of a 6 year old kid...

2007-05-07T18:31:00.000+01:00

So I am sitting here the whole weekend in front of my laptop translating this football magazine and there´s two articles I stumble on: One about Madjer and the other one about Borussia´s triumphant but unexpected win of the 1997 Champions League edition... Sometimes, when I translate stuff like that, it gives me goosebumps, especially when the articles talk about old legends, games of 10-15 years ago, Maradona,... those things. It reminds me of when I was a kid, when I really loved football, when I cared, maybe too much, but when it also was more fun and expectations were higher. And definitely, when hope was needed.... Probably because Barça always seemed to fail when it mattered most.

On a 7th of May, like today, but in 1986, in Seville, Barça chocked again. I was 6 years old and my team was playing the European Cup Final (the biggest title to win for a team if you follow European club football) against Steaua Bucarest, the underdog, by far, maybe too far... It would have been the first time that Barcelona would have won the trophy and everyone expected them to do so. Me, too. I mean, a Rumanian team, how were they supposed to beat us in Seville, on home ground almost... My mum wouldn´t let me watch the full game (I had to go to bloody school next morning) and I went to bed with a result of 0-0 but confident that we would win, because, weren´t we supposed to do so? That was what everyone was telling. Barça´s big date with history...

Next morning, when I woke up, my mum didn´t say much. I was excited, like those days when you wake up and something important is going to happen, ran into the kitchen, where my dad used to leave me a note with Barcelona´s results, for the games I couldn´t watch until the end... and saw a few lines I couldn´t believe, or I just didn´t want to believe "Sorry, you´ve lost. barça didn´t manage to score even once in the penalty shootout". That was it, we had lost again and I was in disbelief. How could we not have scored even one penalty, what had happened?!? I wasn´t furiuos, like other times when we had been robbed, I just couldn´t believe it... I felt so helpless, there was nothing that could console me and much less having to go to school and go through all the verbal abuse of my school mates, 90% of them Real Madrid fans. I pretty much held my own with pride during 12 years but there were days, like this one, when I just wanted to go back to bed. I guess it was not meant to be Barcelona´s night, nor mine, but his: Duckadam, the Steaua keeper who saved 4 penalties.

Luckily, time heals wounds, even in sports, and Barcelona finally ended up winning the trophy 6 years later in Wembley, London, in a heartbreaker decided by a late overtime free-kick from Ronald Koeman. And thanks God we didn´t go to penalties back then again, we probably would have lost, not only because of the preasure and because Sampdoria was a solid Italian team (and you don´t normally beat solid Italian squads in shootouts when you have the preasure of history on your neck, like Barça had), but because we had the worst penalty-saving keeper in the world: Zubizarreta.

Then, in Paris, 20 years after the somewhat tragic loss in Seville, I was in the Stadium when we overcame an early 1-0 deficit to beat Arsenal 2-1, thanks to Belletti´s late strike. Still, as I translate these articles and find those references to the past, I get a a bit emotional sometimes. Nowadays, yeah, I like watching my team win but I don´t follow them as closely anymore, finding myself going out, travelling or doing other stuff on Barça´s gamedays, something I never thought could happen when i was a kid.

I guess the game in Paris gave me that interior peace I needed and it made up for that night in Seville. If now only the national team would ever live up to its expectations, but that, I´m afraid, is a completely different story.

Madjer vs Bayern in the 1987 Final, an amazing goal... I still remember watching that one...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7cwsWThYjBE

... ten years later, Borussia making history, with an amazing goal that finnished of Juve. And yes, I actually liked Borussia, they were my team while Stephane Chapuisat (Swiss striker) was there and I still have sympathy for them these days, and it´s probably the only time I´ve supperted a German team in any competition or sport, when the outcome didn´t really affect one of my teams. Normally I always root against them, like in ski-jumping, for example, where I am for Finland... :P Anyway, great performance, great last goal and happy they won almost back 10 years ago

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0sl2zGrD5U

Also this one is an amazing clip about the World Cup, watch the 2-3 last minutes, unless you are German... :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzI4uX0DnXo

Playoff predicitions Conference Semifinals

2007-05-06T11:47:00.000+01:00

OK, here some quick predictions for Round 2... tough ones...

Cleveland-New Jersey: Cleveland in 7 Just because of Lebron probably, the big three in New Jersey seem to have started clicking just when it matters, although their supporting cast is quite poor...

Detroit-Chicago: Chicago in 7 Not really sure why... Don´t see Detroit being as solid as previous years and Chicago looks like a tough team to beat when they are hitting their midrange jumpers. If Deng and Gordon can do some damage and Big Ben helps out a bit inside, maybe we´ll have an upset here.

Phoenix-San Antonio: Phoenix in 6 The problema is San Antion and Duncan are soooooo solid but Phoenix, with a healthy Nash-Amare-Marion-Barbosa-Diaw group is an impressive team. And they just have to step up in Playoffs once, so why not this year?

Utah-Golden State: This one depends so much on Baron Davis´ hammy... I think Utah matches up with Golden State much better than Houston would have. Utah is very dangerous. Boozer is a touch guy down low and I can´t see anyone on the Warriors stopping him,a s Biedrins is too slow and Al Harrington seems to be a lost case in this playoffs and is not strong enough anyway. So speaking with my heart and hoping Davis plays at full strength I pick Golden State in 6 but considering how good the inside-outside duo of Deron and Boozer is, anything can happen really. I don´t see who possibly stops Okur, although they probably will through Stephen Jax at him, same as they did with Dirk. On the other hand... who takes care of the Warriors backcourt? Harpring? Giricek? They couldn´t guard themselves!!! Fisher, who is too small? I don´t know. Lot´s of mismatches here, two great coaches, a bunch of red hot players (Carlos Boozer and Deron Williams but also Okur on the Jazz and so-far-MVP Baron Davis, Jason Richardson and Stepehen Jackson on the Warriors...) and two great fan bases, the mormons of Utah and the "cosmopolite" Bay Area fans...

Anyway, at least I am happy that both my "surprise teams in the West" before the season started (see here) have made it so far and one will even play in the Conference Finals. Good to say not everything goes strictly accordig to plan in the NBA anymore these days.

As for the first round:

Forecast Outcome
Warriors in 6: Warriors in 6
Rockets in 6: Jazz in 7
Spurs in 7: Spurs in 5
Suns in 6: Suns in 5

Heat in 5: Bulls in 4
Pistons in 5: Pistons in 4
Raptors in 6: Nets in 6
Cavs in 5: Cavs in 4

5/8... well, at least I got the Warriors right :)

Warriors knock out Nowitzki, Mavs

2007-05-04T08:11:00.000+01:00

... That much for the German arrogant, Nowitzki, deserving the Most Valuable Player (MVP) award. 8 points on 2-13 shooting and sent on vacation by an 8th seed. Well done.

Thanks Golden State!! Sometimes, you still gotta love the NBA...

... more on this later today...

OK, here I am again, just sent an e-mail to an American mate, who is a die-hard Mavs fan, and reminded him that it probably is not a good thing, when you go to war in the NBA Playoffs with a guy who comes from a country, where they loose wars too often... yeah, bad joke, I know... but hey, if you are supposed to be as good as everyone thinks Nowitzki is, how can he be such a big-time-games choker? He's the basketball equivalent of Thierry Henry... and worst thing is, he pretends to be cool with his agressive looks, grimaces and all that crap he usually comes up with. And yep, I hate Nowitzki, in case anyone is wondering... but I love Baron Davis, from the Warriors, their spiritual leader (I'm in the "buy a Baron Davis shirt on nba.com" mood now) and Richardson and hell, the whole Warriors team. :) ... ok, back to work!

Playoffs time and other reflections

2007-05-02T10:34:00.000+01:00

The name is LUOL DENG… he’s all over the place. Sudanese born, English risen, Duke educated, starring in a Chicago Bulls uniform, his name appears even in English newspapers and websites (he has the English nationality), and no one plays basketball in this country and no one really cares… except for my Greek-Cypriot mates on Saturday mornings probably… Luol all of a sudden has become a star in the NBA and has been hailed as the new leader of a very talented Chicago Bulls team, following his stellar performance in dethroning last year’s champion, the Miami Heat.
Which makes you wonder… all those specialists who cover professional basketball in the USA, do they even WATCH the players? I saw Luol during just two games in college, with Duke, in the college Final Four, 3 years ago. You could see he was going to be a stud! Athletic, tall, with a sweet jumper, smart, rarely making a bad decision. He was picked 7th as a Freshman, in a quality 2004 draft, which included the likes of Dwight Howard, Emeka Okafor, his teammate Ben Gordon, Shaun Livingston, Al Jefferson, Andre Iguodala, Josh Smith… This year, in the Playoffs, he finally has taken his game to the next level, humbly but steadily, proving everyone who thought he was the real deal right. He’s not up there, yet, but he is already a very good player in a very competitive league.
The thing is, and even more now that the draft is approaching, that you have to wonder how GM’s and specialists can misjudge talent so badly in a sport that moves millions and millions of US$. It is crazy. Not that being picked 7th is misjudging talent, especially in a loaded draft crop, but all this sudden "wow, Luol can actually play..." comments leave me gutted. There’s certain players, that after watching them for one or two games, you know they are special… and you could tell with Luol.
So the question is, if a random fan, who gets to watch very few college and NBA games throughout the season (I set my alarm at 4am to watch Dallas vs. GSW the other night and couldn’t get out of bed…) can judge talent like this, pretty easily in certain cases, it is not because this token fan is a genius or anything, but more because there’s things that jump in your eyes! And if everyone is surprised now that Deng is kicking a$$, well, then people have not done their homework. Sometimes, like in real life, it’s in the eyes, in the body control, in the pose… that you know you’ve found the real deal... and too often do decision makers in professional sports just not make the right picks.

Oh, and now that we are here, watch out for this guy, Brandon Rush hi. I saw him in one game this spring with Kansas and he is projected as a second round pick, which is cfrazy given his athletic ability and instincts. Rush will be good, but as usual his talent will have been underrated, if he ends up being picked in the second round… I’m just saying...

Some other quick reflections:

Was in Paris this weekend and had my first ice cream of the season in the Ile St. Louis. Raspberry and… WILD STRAWBERRY, I am telling you, an explosion of flavor in your mouth. Wild Strawberries must be the most underrated fruit in the World. They are just delicious. Apart from that, I had an “interesting” food experience in a typical Lyonnais restaurant, including some Quenelle (Knoedel)… the wine was probably the best thing but hey, I even tried some white cheese with olive oil, which didn’t taste much like cheese, but still it is an improvement, considering my non-eating-cheese record through all these years. It must have been the first time in my life, I tried it voluntarily!!! Also went to Hotel Costes close to Place Vendome, an awesome place for a drink I have to admit... and had a late drink in the square of the Louvre, which I thought would actually look cooler without the Pyramid, on Friday night. Really special and great temperature. Sometimes, when I´m down there, in Paris, it´s like everything stops and the World is perfect, honestly!!!

... back to hoops before I get too emotional. Now this is a fan base!! Warriors crowd going mental in their 4th game win against the Mavericks. Watch the final seconds. Thoroughly enjoyed this one. :) I JUST HOPE THE GSW KNOCK OUT DALLAS TONIGHT, PLEASE, PLEASEEEEEEEEE.

Baron Davis... Playoffs MVP of Superstar wannabe?

Lazy Friday...

2007-04-27T14:57:00.000+01:00

... and here's me, if I was an animal right now... that's how I feel! It's good I am off to the always entertaining experience of taking the Eurostar (Örostar in French...) in 45 mins...

Happy weekend everyone!

Lovely Hoary Marmot... resting... Or meditating, you never know...

Quote of the Day - The News Agent

2007-04-25T11:25:00.000+01:00

Just had a little chat with the guy from the News Agent , as he had no "blue" milk (fat milk) in the shop this morning and he knows that I always buy this one… while everyone here at the office seems to be happy with the “green” version of it, aka semi-skimmed milk. Well, himself, he told me, drinks only fat milk as well and couldn’t understand why people would drink semi-skimmed, which he sells in a ratio of about 6 to 1... so there's definitely a market out there!

That made me wonder how it was with coke (coca cola), and if people drunk more “regular” one or more “light”… “No, no, normal, normal…” he said, to which I answered “… the trend, though, seems to be more and more people drinking light…”… so, laughing, he replied with what is today’s quote of the day “YEAH, THAT’S ALL RUBBISH” – I thought it was fun, grinned and crossed the road, to go back to my office and the "amazing" world of MVAS… Sometimes it's just nice to find a smile, where you would less expect it, I guess...

NBA Playoffs predictions

2007-04-20T13:22:00.000+01:00

rke

Very quickly (May 6th update):

Warriors in 6 update: Warriors send Mavs home 4-2 (finally a good prediction)

Rockets in 6 update: Jazz win in 7

Spurs in 7 update: Spurs eliminate Nuggets 4-1

Suns in 6 update: Suns knock out Lakers 4-1

Heat in 5 update: Bulls eliminated defending champions Heat 4-0 (ouch!!)

Pistons in 5 update: Pistons eliminated Magic 4-0

Raptors in 6 update: Nets knock out Raptors 4-2

Cavs in 5 update: Cavs eliminate Wizards 4-0... but I think Jamison deserves mention and lots of credit for his awesome pluay during the whole series, being the single offensive threat on a decimated Wizards team...

On the brink of tears and other reflctions

2007-04-19T10:12:00.000+01:00

OK, the NBA regular season finished and the Celtics, oh surprise, lost again, yet another close game, to finish with an impressive 24-58 record. Nice! Now everything depends on the freakin’ 22nd of May draft lottery. If we are lucky and get a shot at Oden or Durant, two franchise players, as good as they get, coming out of university this summer, we have a shot at turning things around, if we get pick 3 that night, I will cry or go to Pangea, even if it is on my own and on a bloody Tuesday!

Anyways, the season finished and so did both my fantasy leagues and as already expected, I finished 2nd twice, which felt like a shot through the heart. As if I was some the Poulidor of Fantasy Leagues. On a positive note… well, there’s no positive note. Maybe I am too old for these games, I will give it a last shot next season, win and retire “in peace”.

OK, let’s move on and check some early predictions I made before the season started (not taking into consideration “All-NBA” Teams yet), which weren’t actually that bad:

Champion: Rockets if McGrady stays healthy (to be determined)
MVP: Kobe -> It looks like it’s a race between Nowitzki and Nash but Kobe scored 50+ 10 times this season and made a late push to keep his Lakers in Playoffs contention, so… who knows?
Top Scorer: Kobe, followed by Arenas -> This one was actually right, and Arenas finished 3rd.
6th-Man: Barbosa, maybe Delonte West or Antoine Walker if they don´t start... -> Not announced yet but it WILL be Barbosa!
Rookie of the Year: Rajon Rondo -> Mmh, nope, should be Brandon Roy
Most Improved: Shaun Livingston or Deron Williams (best case scenario as a Celtic: Al Jefferson) -> Jefferson is just up there, he made amazing strides of improvemente this year, Deron Williams improved a lot, too, but he’s a second year player so you might have expected it anyways and Shaun Livingston blew his knee and maybe his carer…
Sleeper Teams: Utah, Golden State... Boston -> And although no one counted on them, Utah and Golden State actually made the Playoffs, with Utah winning over 50 games. No comments on Boston…
Top Eight in the East: Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, Miami, Washington, Boston, Orlando and Indiana in no particular order. -> New Jersey and Toronto made it, Indian and Boston didn’t, the rest were right.
Top Eight in the West: San Antonio, Houston, Dallas, Clippers, Lakers, Phoenix, Utah, Sacramento. -> Golden State and Denver for Sacramento and the Clippers, who smartly enough extended their coach’s contract, having an even better team than last season (when they felt one T. Thomas trey short of the Conference Finals), and oh surprise, missed the Playoffs just the next season. And these NBA GM’s get paid millions! It is crazy!
Defensive Player of the Year: Ron Artest -> He went nuts yet again, hurt my fantasy team, and might slowly be working his way out of the league…
Coach of the Year: Don Nelson -> Put GS in the Playoffs for the first time in 13 seasons… but won’t receive much consideration.

I also went to the movies yesterday and watched “Das Leben der Anderen” (The Live of Others), a great movie about the former GDR and its people. Having gone to the German School in Madrid and having experienced the whole reunification thing first hand as a kid from a quite close perspective (it was huuuuge in our school!!!), I was fascinated by the way, in which the single characters were presented, from Stasi Captain (Wiesler) to the playwright (Dreyman), his girlfriend, the foreign affairs minister…, all set up in the grayish atmosphere of the former GDR and it’s terrorizing regime, a country that presented itself as a model for its people but vastly failed, and it was not only freedom what its citizens lacked, but also hope that things might change for the better.
As the movie evolves, you get to find out how committed comrades show a human side you wouldn’t expect, given their social position and how some, in appearance, rather plain characters and situations, have much more of an emotional background than you would expect. The last line of the movie was just brilliant.
Well, I don’t wanna spoil the movie, I can just recommend it to everyone.

Oh, and I forgot to mention my new plant: Mimosa "Albizia julibrissin", gut I call her Junior. It was a present, a very cool one, and now I am trying to get her in shape after some inconvenient travelling, that didn't do the plant any good. It looks somewhat like this (picture below) and the amazing thing is it moves!!! I mean, you touch it and the leaves close (and no, it's not a carnivorous plant); I assume it is a form of self-protection, but if you touch the leaves here and there and the stalk, which immediately bends, you almost get the impression that the plant is dancing!!!! It's amazing. I am becoming a happy gardener and this Junior is the crown of my small "collection" of plants... :)

P.S. In case anyone wondered, my mate "Olson" stood up to his promise and had his early morning beer in Costa Rica. I didn't expect less!

Fantasy Hoops Curse or the Effects of Tanking

2007-04-12T01:05:00.000+01:00

... OK, so I am in the Finals in both my Fantasy League and it turns out that I am gonna finish second in both of them, most probably. I feel cursed. This Fantasy League takes place throughout a whole NBA season, from November to April. I have been a regular for about 6 years, so go figure, it's a game but not always that much of a game in the end... :) (At one point I was in aleague where we were a bunch of guys (9 yankees and myself) who ran it for three consecutive seasons, keeping rosters from last season and everything. This was kept alive through emailing and chats for the time of the year when players for the squads were selected, normallyin mid October) Alright then, funnily enough, after almost 6 months of competing, the Finals of these sorts of fantasy basketball competitions always coincide with each team's last few games of the season, when something happens that screws up everything, the whole logic of the game, namely teams start tanking (loosing on purpose) in order to increase ones chances to get the best college players coming out that same summer. The more losses a team accumulates, the higher the odds to get to pick first from the new crop of college players to enter the league that same summer, so basically, we have a whole bunch of teams trying not to win games, which means that they screw up their lineups, rest their best players (they don’t even hit the court anymore and this to you as a manager comes out of the blue!!!), come up with fake injuries for their go-to guys and worst case shut their best man down for the reminder of the season. Hence, your once solid and competitive roster looks like a non contender all the way. If additionally you happen to be away just the weekend before the Finals (this actually happened to me) and forget to set up your lineup and exchange those “shut down” guys, as well, you are screwed.

Let's see a productivity comparison for my team:

In tanking mood

Normal game

So if we have a look at the four guys the get DNPs (did not play) we can see that Martin had 24 points, 4 boards and 2 assists before being shut down, Iguodala had 25-4-8, Josh Smith 16-4-3 and Big Al (Jefferson), had a crazy line of 24-7-4 and 5 blocks in his last active game, before being rested because of some knee concerns... Are you kidding me? These guys were producing at All-Star rates and all of a sudden they are not even prepared to see game action anymore becaue of some dubious injuries?!?

So yep, it's not even easy these days to be a fantasy manager. Oh well...

Quote of the day - "El Olson"

2007-04-05T11:53:00.000+01:00

"Viva Costa Rica! Voy proximo lunes a las seis por lamanana (ugghhhhh). Bebiendo my primera cervaza mas omenos a las seis y media!"

Translated:

Long life Costa Rica! I am leaving there next Monday at 6am (funny noise). I'll be drinking my first beer more or less around 6:30am.

Yup, these are my mates! Happy times!

Time has passed...

2007-03-29T10:39:00.001+01:00

...and I have loved many women... and as they've held me close, and asked if I will remember them... I've said "yes, I will remember you." But the only one I've never forgotten is the one who never asked... Malèna.

This is an appropriate quote (from the movie "Malèna") for this song ("She don't know me"), I thought… (You can find uit here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5SAhoK_7Ow it was originally posted but must have gotten deleted)

Just found it on youtube randomly… The old Bon Jovi days, when the band still was cool! The clip itself is a bit bollocks but I like the song…

A few random notes on a busy week...

2007-03-27T23:02:00.000+01:00

... workwise that is. My social life is rather unexciting... Thursday I´ll be back in Madrid for the long awaited, or rather not so, "Aicecks" exam... At least I’ll get to see family and mates, which should be fun… Oh well, here a few things that happened in the last couple of days:

Ben´s cookies: OK, I hadn’t tried them yet and they are really good. Insider tip for everyone coming to London. Try Ben’s Cookies! ... 24% fat "only" :P

When I took my plane to Geneva from the City Airport (best Airport in London, hands down!!, and one of the coolest and most convenient ones I have traveled to or from ever…) I spotted Colin Jackson . Well, he was sitting next to me. I even took a picture and will try to post it at some point. That is the second celebrity in two weeks, after spotting Jeremy Irons. Colin is a World and European Champion in Athletics (110m hurdles) and Olympic Silver medalist. Random anecdote: According to my mate Gal, whom I met at a party on Saturday night, he… likes men. So I guess that’s why he gave me all those funny looks… Naaaaah, just kidding, lol!

Three weeks ago I also had my First UK Hairdresser Experience at a Hair Dresser saloon in Staines, Middlesex, which is where I happen to work. You know, cutting your hair is one of those things, you never know what the result is going to be and why would you trust a random person with some scissors anyway? OK, so on the street where my office is, there’s three hairdressers. One of them got discarded immediately because the “hair-cutter” looked too old, the other one, seemed too full when I went for my appointment, so I chose the last one, which looked alright (from a MK standpoint) and was empty at the moment. Alright then, when I went for my haircut on the next day, surprise, the saloon was not only full, but full with 16-24 year old young ladies (and chavs) and all hair dressers were women… I mean, I felt sooooooo much out of place. I almost expected someone to start the “George Clooney looks so sweet” topic at any moment… Or maybe not George Clooney, that’s more for the 30+ year old singles… Anyways, it was scary! I almost started wondering if they actually “cut” men as well, no, seriously…
OK, so the assistant washes my hair and I get a hairdresser assigned and she greets by shaking hands(!), which was funny… That never would happen in Spain. She looked alright, stylish wise that is, which was a good start, considering two of the other “professionals” had strange hair cuts that resembled the "stylish haitr cut" of one of those drunk English chicks in a pub -> Alarm signals! Well then, once this part was sorted out, discussions about how to cut my hair started and everything was a bit of a mess because neither was I sure about what I wanted, nor how to explain it, nor did the hairdresser seem to know where to start. But hey, gradually we got on the same page and it seemed to be working, and the hair started to get cut, and a bit more here and there, and then my hair got brushed and dried (apparently the English word is “blow-dry” but I will omit this from my story to avoid funny comments…) and it was one amaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaazing experience. I cannot describe it but it still gives me the goosebumps… It was all about the brush, which I cannot describe either, the only thing I know, is that I need to get hold of one of these at some point…
Result of the whole experience: Shock when at the office I realized my hair looked much shorter than I thought, which led to the inevitable jokes amongst my, normally not very humorous, workmates, such as “Ohhhhh, who’s that kid in the corner?” – Whatever! Now I am happy that my hair is short and I don’t have to spend 3 hours every morning trying to sort it out plus some people seem to think it is ok, so… and my dad will be a happy man when he sees me without my gipsy looking mane on Friday! :)
Finally the rating for the hairdresser:
Cut-satisfaction: 8.5… Effort: 9 (considering she didn't have a clue of what to do from my explanations and might not even have understood them!!)... Dedication: 9.5 (it took quite long to cut all that crazy hair)... Name: Wicked! She is called Shiobane, which confused the sh*t out of me, to the point that I must have given her a “what the hell is that name”-look, and she decided to write it down… All in all a solid 9. Happy times!

This is not something that happened in the last few days, it always seems to happen again and again and again: People change formulas in reporting excel sheets, mess everything up and nothing ever happens. I have been close to sending over death-threats per e-mail in my a few times but as we are civilized people here in the UK, I just take a deep breath before thinking: “OK, maybe not kill… but definitely punch that person!” This is a serious issue, there is less worse things at work than having to fill in absolutely f*cking useless templates, correcting formulae and people changing them constantly, which leads to the same errors and confusion again and again and again… It freaks me out. Other than that, I am a pacific and calmed co-worker, believe it or not!

And nba.com launched it’s new edition of the NBA Dance Bracket http://www.nba.com/features/dance_bracket_2007.html which consists in picking your favorite cheerleaders (out of a number of teams) through the bracket in 1 on 1 matchups. And yes, I get excited about these little games… very excited actually!

… Talking about games, I am reaching the final weeks of Fantasy Hoops, too. After 4 years being a 3-time runner-up and finishing in 3rd place once, this year I enter the playoffs as the #2 (out of 12) and #1 (out of 6) seeds in both my leagues. I f I do not make it to the "pantheon" this year, I might as well give up on this but I am a hopeful boy… errr, man!

And the quote of the week goes to our always useless Football Manager: "No osea, a los jugadores se les fue la pinza..." (translated: My players lost it!) after Spain beat Denmark 2-1 in what my dad described as possibly "the worst half ever by a Spanish football national team"... Right so!!!

But lovers always come and lovers always go...

2007-03-21T11:20:00.000Z

... and no one's really sure who's letting go today... walking away... and along these lines I welcome you the third edition of my always bewildering "Tube Thoughts"...

OK, after all the crazy megamix from yesterday, back to some serious reflections. Someone asked me the other day what I believed could lead a couple to split up. I didn’t really know what to answer, but analytical as I am, or think I am, I came up with three criteria that I believe have the most influence on couples splitting up…

Distance - Just forgetting about the other person slowly but steadily and starting to appreciate one’s “other life” without the partner (the official one that is) much more. This one could be genuinely described as “The Classic”… and actually one probably won’t ever admit he/she’s is ready for a long distance relationship until it is too late and it inexplicably happens… again… Be warned!

Pride - Having one argument, another one, a third one (red alert!!!)… and not feeling the will to get back to that other person in order to try to sort things out… but rather just letting the whole thing fall apart slowly and secretly… This one should possibly be named the “Luis Aragonés case”, after the Spanish football manager, because that’s how it feels supporting our national team, like everything is slowly (or rather not so) falling apart and no one gives a crap anymore. No, seriously… I feel cheated and desenchanté!

Miscommunication - These are things one does “not on purpose” (not even realizing it) but happen to hurt the partner or disrupt a rather fluent relationship. Why is this bad? Because it implies one does not know the partner well enough, otherwise, why would one part be hurt for what the other does "not do on purpose". OK, this sounds confusing but picture it this way, lets’ put an example:
You happen to be a person that doesn’t like when your partner [insert your own worries] and you sort of make that point clear. But he/she does it again and again, apparently "not on purpose", but just because it happens. You feel discouraged, worried... hurt. The cycle repeats itself… One day you call it a game… and finito it is! There’s no other way to call this case other than: “London Underground” (lack of communication, it happens again, and again, and again and one day you flip out! I'm actually about two more "signal failures, fires and late drivers" away of pulling a "Michael Douglas in Falling Down"... I'm just letting you know in case you read my name in the papers one day)

Mega-roundup

2007-03-19T23:21:00.000Z

For one reason or the other I have not been able to update my blog as of late, so here we go with a summary of what has happened in the last 2 weeks...

Barça got their butts kicked out of the Champions League by an inferior team, well coached defensively, but poor overall, not that Barcelona was any good but still…, a team that made them pay for Valdés’ errors in the first leg.

Celtics put on a winning streak a few days ago (like four consecutive games) which doesn’t lead ANYWHERE and just makes chances of getting either Oden or Durant in the Draft slimmer… ayayay… Seriously, the win against San Antonio, in Texas, beating the Spurs for the first time in a kazillion years, was “ferry niiiiizzzzzzze”, as for the rest, well, shut Pierce down for the season so he recovers completely for next year, give Gerald Green his minutes and let’s pray for the kid out of Texas in June! Please, please… More on this below… The guy has some serious talent, an awesome stroke from outside and there was one play which sums up everything best: he stood with his back towards the rim, defender on him, span around the guy and made a one hand shot from the lane to score an easy two. The thing is, it was NOT an easy shot, not with one hand but you still could sense the ball would go in, I mean, that’s why the kid is special. Plus he knocks down threes like “churros” and with his long arms disrupts quite a few plays on defense… But the most important thing, as usually, and people tend to give too less importance to it, is the feeling… And the feeling with this guy is that he will be kicking a$$ on the top level. I saw a clip of him when he was in High School still, two years and he has such an amazing control of his body and showed the kind of determination that makes a winner. And yep, I have officially jumped on the Kevin Durant bandwagon myself, even though 2 years ago I already thought the kid looked special, but as there’s no proof of that I am just making it sure now…

Talking about the Celtics, I bought tickets to watch their preseason game against the Wolves on the 10t of October in London… :) It’s amazing. I’ve always wanted to see them live, well, I saw’em already in the Open Mcdonald’s, when they destroyed Real Madrid in 1988 but I was too young. Next step will be visiting my mate Nacho in Boston and see an official game! Until then, a preseason might do… I am excited, no, really!!!!!

Then, a few weeks ago Dennis Johnson passed away. I have not seen enough of him but remember my dad used to like him, so Rest In Peace!

And two Mondays ago Al Jefferson received the NBA Player of the Week award. It’s the first time in a decade (or so) that a guy not called Paul Pierce or Antoine Walker (whom I cited as “person you would like to meet” in a job interview the other day, the guy looked at me in disbelief, oh well…) receive the award. And Big Al is a beast in the post!! He has an unbelievable touch around the rim and is an awesome rebounder (currently 7th in the league), plus he ranks already in the top20 in blocks as well. I am telling you, we’re talking about some very serious All-Star material here. And he’s only 22, yet he has doubled his stats from last season. Happy times!!!

I was in Paris again, a few weekends ago. Great city, no, seriously, I know I have said this already like 400 times in this blog but still. And what about the weather? An awesome early spring day that Sunday, perfect for a long walk along the parisienne walkways… Then I arrived in London and it was stormy, which led to flight delays, very windy, rainy, cold… shocking to sum it up! Not to mention that the last Tube from Heathrow into town runs at 11:15pm… How is that even possible in what must be one of the biggest airports in the World, on a Sunday, when like 3 million people come back from their weekends? No, in all honesty, I think the guys who run The Tube are crazy. I got on the train last minute and just because the guy at the barrier started shouting “hurry, hurry…”. Unbelievable.

Have I talked already about Tube failures? Yes, I have, I know, it’s just that it’s really, really bad. People who have not experienced the District Line on a daily basis cannot possibly know but here am I to tell you, failures include the following, and you might ask yourselves “how does he know”, well, they tell you on the speakers, here’s the list, including train failures as well:

- earlier signal failure at “your favorite tube station” (I think they rotate the stations and pick a specific one according to the day)
- person under the train (more usual than one would like… that is scary!! Every now and then the tube reports about casualities where someone pushed a person under a train… ON PURPOSE!!)
- floodings at “your favorite station”
- congestion at… the station ahead of you, miraculously! Wow! If your train is driving through Earl’s Court the odds are at 1.15 to 1 (and sinking) that you will have to wait for at least a few mins.
- driver late (WTF?)
- broken window
- fire on the train ahead of you
- train diverted because there is some sort of failure at the station you are heading to…
- strikes
- (plain) signal failure, not being earlier but just uses to happen when you are travelling that is a classic
- Faulty track, which usually leads to the tube going back to the previous station, where they tell you about a replacemente bus service that doesn’t actually exist… and how do you know it doesn’t exist? Because the same guy who told you there would be a freakin “Bus Replacement Service” comes back 20 minutes later to tell you, you have to take a bus three streets down the road. Thanks for nothing then, mate!
- Trains delayed by 20-30 mins because of some communication problem at “your favorite station”. Here they always suggest “alternative routes”. Don’t listen to them, seriously. It’s better to stand pat sometimes, rather then listening to those guys, I am warning you… because, you don’t want to get stuck in traffic for not waiting for your delayed train, right? Right!

… and there’s also the live updates, which cause havoc at every station, whenever customers spot the “Severe delays” tag… and already make you feel very, veeeeeeeery wary as soon as you see the “minor delays” tag. Oh, and every weekend there’s a few lines shut down for engineering works, just that they never are completely fixed and one wonders if the German model, where they just work their a$$es off, if necessary, and work on Sundays throught the WHOLE DAY, which is important to underline, as it is clearly not the case here!
And no, I am not angry and frustrated because of the Tube… let’s move on…

I´m also a bit worried about the French influx in this World we´re living in... I mean, for some reason... I´ve been going to Paris quite often as of late, I might start working for a French company (whose three bosses are French!!) soon, in the French speaking part of Switzerland and I eat at least one eclaire a week... No seriously, it´s worrying. We´re talking here about the Americans, Imperialism bladibla while the French are quite possibly secretly taking over the World or something and WE DO NOT KNOW!!! What if Le Pen was to win the elections in May? I am concerned, well, not as concerned as if Segolenchen wins but hey... I can see the second comming of the "Freedom Fries" campaign very soon... oh la la! ... And if I ever have a daughter I´ll call her Genevieve, non negotiable!

... Actually, have I told you about Arnaud already? The best wine salesman in the whole wide World? Picture me entering a wine shop (a French one) in Kensington Church Street and all of a sudden realizing that I had no beeep (expletive) clue about what wine to pick because they all were... well, FRENCH... but hey, no problems, because the guy behind the desk showed up to help out. Well, he was as enthusiastic as I´ve ever seen anyone at his profession and eneded up selling me a Cotes-Du-Rhone wine. Really good price/quality reccomendation as it turned out. Now he ranks number 1 in my list of best shop selleres ever. Devoted, friendly and enthusiastic!! Oh, and he says hi whenever I pass in front of the shop now. Did I mention he is French...? Oh well, from Southern France, as he pointed out "people are much friendlier in the South"...

Apart from Wine shops and patisseries, there´s also a few women boutiques in Ken. Church Street, namely L.K. Bennett, probably the coolest one... Well, they have a really nice pair of shoes for this spring/summer season. Just thought I´d let you know, in case there´s someone out there in need of some cool summer shoes. And yep, I have a knack on women shoes, or better said, I think there´s nothing worse on a woman than an ugly pair of shoes... Things you probably didn´t know but that´s what blogs are for, no?

Talking about the summer... it is strange, but the amount of skirt-and-no-pants combinations I was used to see in London has dranatically decreased this season... oh, for those of you who missed out, you see as much short skirts here in London in the winter as you do in the summer. Thing is, I have barely seen none, which is confusing, it feels like going out in Madrid and not spotting a pair of Nauticos (even though the sea is 500 Kms away), you get the point... but hey, maybe I haven´t been out enough as of late, which actually is true!!! Yes, I have been out very few, not getting much of London´s nightlife lately... And I haven´t had a pint in 12 days and counting... I´m proud of myself! Thanks for the props...

... and now I am into this crazy March Madness thing. Which summed up is something like a whole bunch of US college teams competing to be crowned as National Champions at the end of March. They do it every year and the nation goes bonkers! Well, we (Adam, y American mate and his friends) do even fill in brackets and bet money on it (even though we all know betting is illegal in the States, ehem) so after finishing in a very respectable 14 out of like 85 position last year, for this Tournament, after the first weekend, not only am I ranking something like 48 out of 55 but one of my Final Four teams (one team from each Conference that makes it to the Final Round, 4 in total, hence Final Four) already got its a$$ kicked last night: Texas. And this is double-sad because the most exciting college guy since... well since a long long time, Kevin Durant (see above), plays for them. I have Ohio State and the mighty Greg Oden, who looks like he´s my dad, although officially he´s just 19, winning it all but we´ll see... Kansas looks "good good", too... and in case you are wondering about the "good good", it´s just a funny way of the lovely French people to express their satisfaction in English in their always amusing accent. You gotta love´em!
And then there was this college kid yesterday, some guy called Tajuan Porter, (awesome name, now if I have a son I´ll call him Tajuan), who looks like a cross between Brevin Knight and Speedy Claxton, and plays for Oregon... Well, he caught fire and started knocking down three, after three, after three to seal the game for his team. It was amazing because he did it like 4 posessions in a row. Everyone went mental. That´s the fun part about this tournament, at a certain point one guy starts putting on a show and he brings the house down while the commentator is out of his mind and you can see his teammates on the bench chest bumping and jumping up and down... I just checked Porter´s stats and he nailed 10/12 from downtown in one game this season. We are talking NBA LIVE 1998 accuracy here! Wa wa weeeee...

... and this is the sentence that sums up best the start of the week on a cold Tuesday morning, at the traffic light, by an old lady "It's bloody freezing, isn't it?" You gotta love it! She looked as if she had five times more energy than myself this morning, which, now that I think of it, is quite worrying… And yep, it's BLODDY freezin' here... no, seriously, B-L-O-O-D-Y C-O-L-D W-I-N-D!!
I think I might have to move to some nice town at the sea at some point in my life… Southern California comes to mind, maybe the Cote d’Azur… before the light of my youth becomes obscure… I don’t know…

Talking about this morning, I literally bumped into Jeremy Irons walking into the tube at Notting Hill Gate. He wore a biker leather jacket (looked expensive), cowboy boots with his jeans inside, and a cap… and he didn’t look very happy or too good either. Then again, who would look happy on a random Tuesday morning, at 8:45am, when the wind is literally blowing you away… Is Tuesday actually the most boring day of the week or what? I say yes. I mean, has something ever happened to you on a Tuesday, something mildly exciting? I need feedback on this…
Now good ol’ Jeremy has joined the select list of people I have met more than once since arriving in London, after watching him on stage as well last year. No, seriously, it’s not that easy here sometimes… I mean, if you don’t know the locals or people who have been living here for an extended period of time you might find yourself a bit lost... Or well, it might be that you know’em, but that they just use to throw wild parties the whole time, and nothing against wild parties but it´s just not your style… I mean, I think I have been to “2-3” normal events in over 1 year: Once at my mate Phivos´ friends house, in dodgy Hackney, where for some reason we ended up playing a quite wild drinking game, everyone, or at least it seemed like this (beers may have helped the cause) seemed to speak German and one young lady bumped into me (I think) with the excuse of going to a museum together once… Stupidly enough I gave her my number… she called… I elegantly, or rather not so, declined. The lesson as always, or lessons, better said:

- It’s pretty bad when someone bumps into you with the excuse of going to the museum… or maybe it’s original after all; thoughts anyone? Anyhow, it’s pretty bad when you don’t even want to catch up with that person for a museum trip, that doesn’t even qualify as a date, although there’s always this risk of having to go for a coffee…
- Never give out your mobile number if you are a) pi$$ed or b) don’t wanna see the person again… this especially applies to girls!!

But then again, that’s the good part about London, as already stated, you just don’t get to see people again, in most of cases… picture yourself going out and randomly “meeting” Argentineans, Swedes, Suomis, Australians, Kiwis, even in a short time span and in the same places… no problems, even if you let yourself get “carried away”, chances are big you won’t see these ladies again… but then again, who would go for a one night stand, in London, being single... anyways… Good we could sort this one out, let´s move on...

OK, as for the rest of “normal” nights out, one included a night at Paula’s with her 3 female friends, which may sound like a harmless night but three young ladies talking about gossip and fashion for 4(!) straight hours, well, no comments… and then there’s been a few random evenings where one ended at some random place for some late night drinks… but that’s another story… Let´s just not forget Paul, the Scottish bloke and his "let´s all get naked" phrase. For the history books. I think Buitre knows what I am talking about here...

I’ll leave the following points open for the next post, this one has reached biblical proportions already:

- Ben´s cookies
- City Airport and spotting Colin Jackson
- First UK Hairdresser experience with the lovely Shiobane
- People who change formulas in reporting excel sheets should be punched… seriously!
- My knee

Mancini... oh la la

2007-03-09T11:13:00.001Z

Unbelievable goal!!! 'kin oath!! Even the French commentator is fun :) "Un..., deux..., trois-quatre-cinq"

Good things happen to good girls... or maybe not...

2007-03-01T10:42:00.000Z

… wow, just heard something “cool” on the radio this morning. Funny things that happen in the Royaume Uni:

So there’s this young lady who calls a radio station because she saw a guy she liked, in a bar or wherever, or just maybe spotted him on a bus (I sort of missed that part…), but didn’t have the guts to talk to him straight away… Anyways, so this radio channel manages to get the guy on the phone, and don’t ask me how(?!?), and the moderator asks LIVE, on NATIONAL RADIO the following question:

“Chris, so do you want the £100 or a date with HER…?” (…her, who happens to be live on the phone, actually)

Well, guess what, the guy, very “gentlemanish” of him, answers:

“I’ll take the £100, going out with my mates this weekend so the money is cool!”

Gutted… Now, if you are the girl, after being sort of humiliated/dismissed for a “night out with my mates” (huuuhhh) on national radio, how do you feel about that?

Let’s suppose a) he doesn’t know who she is and b) he knows:

a) – best case scenario: what a wanker. Forget about him!!
- worst case scenario: depressed and eating ice cream for 4 straight days…
b) - best case scenario: see ice cream part… plus self-esteem on historic lows…
- worst case scenario: … well, you tell me…
Oh well, it was entertaining... :)

On a few other random notes:

- Celtics win 2 in a row!!! Wa wa weeeeeeee!!!
- Smoked shisha in a very cool Moroccan place bear Covent Garden the other day with James (a yankee), Lynn and Adeline (the funny Belgian). And the fres mint ice tea was the dogs bollocks, honestly!!
- Off to Paris again this weekend… no comments!
- Managing a music tool for a third party at work (I manage 20 countries for them from Romania to Denmark or Sweden…) I thought the Fins have quality music, there always seems to be one or two groups coming out of there every now and then… It’s like those unis that always seem to produce 1 or 2 very useful NBA players every season, not spectacular but solid. They have a quite rocky, gothic tendency and some nice freestylers. Also more original, normally, than the cheesy Swedes or the German speaking European nucleous formed mainly by Germany but also Switzerland and Austria…

Quick thoughts

2007-02-23T10:58:00.000Z

OK, here a few quick thoughts from this week:

- No blockbuster at the NBA trade deadline… That’s poor. Well, at least Celtics GM didn’t screw it so I guess, like in real life, sometimes it’s just better to stay put…

- Huuuge interview with José María García in Spain – censored by our state television – with hard attacks on good ol’ “Anzar”, Florentino… The usual stuff. Interesting interview, definitely worth listening to.
It’s a joke that RTVE censured this interview, stating it contains “insults to third people”, when every day in Spain, there’s pro-independence politicians, amongst many other c*nts, doing apology of terrorism and claiming terrorists (who actually MURDERED people and didn’t just tell stories in a freakin’ interview) should have their jail sentences revised, etc. … and no one censures this stuff and what is worse, seems to give a crap about these things… What a shitty nation! Let’s move on…

- Fulham lost on the weekend 0-4 at home in an FA Cup game against Tottenham… They played poorly, were poorly managed as well, but the end result was too hard… My thoughts on the game:
The keeper (I think he is Polish) is a bundle of nerves, he makes you jump out of your seat at least 3-4 times a game because of the insecurity he transmits. The centre backs (Christanval + Knight) were a train wreck – a NIGHTMARE!!! Radzinski is washed up, Davies is just poor and slow and never finishes anything, so Fulham basically wasted two wing players in this game. The only guys who stood out a bit were: Volz (he still is sh*t but his effort was OK), Helgusson (the Icelandic guy who is a true fighter and even though he’s not tall seems to win every header) and Queudrue, the Frenchman who looked terrible in my first game at the Cottage, but has slowly turned into my favourite player on the team: consistent, good strike with his left foot and plays with some bollocks!!! You couldn’t ask for much more at Fulham…

- As for the rest, not much action this week… Oh, yeah, went to the pub to watch Barça-Liverpool the other day. Bad loss but whatever… it was fun, as we had some pre-game action at Ben’s place on his X-Box 360: Barça-Liverpool, of course. Like in Düsseldorf, when my mate Jon, and sometimes Pau, used to come over and we would do the pre-game matches on my PS2 and be always late for the actual game, hehehe… Thinking of it... those were some of the more enjoyable moments in Düsseldorf... PS2+Rum+sobrasada+MK2... :)

Gerald Green wins Slam Dunk Contest

2007-02-19T12:40:00.000Z

One "High Flying" Celtic!! Props to Gerald Green for winning the NBA Slam Dunk Contest!!!

... well, at least some win this season...

Reviewing Germany... and its music...

2007-02-16T12:54:00.000Z

OK, a few random carnival thoughts:

-I’m really in the carnival mood, although in London it’s sort of pointless as I will presumably end up having some drinks in a posh club in Mayfair or some random bar in South. Ken tonight which in essence is the anti-carnival atmosphere by default!
-Nevertheless… I created my “Karneval” folder on my mp3 this morning. I am sure I was the only bloke in the tube listening to Brings and co this morning, which invariably led me to think at one point, standing on the platform at Earl’s Court, that I may be a weirdo… but I was enjoying my tunes too much to give a crap, so… And now that we are actually talking about German songs, I think the time has come to establish my All-Time Best “German songs for when you are partying in Germany” chart, I mean, there’s questions in life that definitively need to be answered with indisputable authority and this is one of them, and it was about time to address this issue! So here’s my very personal recommendation of the 10 most enjoyable German party songs. Feel free to add your comments, even though I won’t probably take them into consideration, as I know what I am talking here, lol:

10 Viva Colonia / Viva Bavaria (the Starkbier-Oktoberfest version) & Superjeile Zick (A carnival classic… the lyrics almost sounds Dutch although it’s “koelsch”) – couldn’t leave either out of this list as they are too “must play” carnival songs…
9 Westerland (An all time super classic from the good ol’ Erasmus days)
8 Wahnsinn (Hölle, Hölle, Hölle) (Cheeeeeeesy but megafun, especially the version with the chorus, hehe)
7 Pure Lust am Leben (An optimistic song from some Chavy Bochum group of the early eighties “Geier Sturzflug”, have a look here so get a better picture of them. Utterly hilarious!!)
6 Drink doch ene mit (Best carnival song ever, hands down!! I get the goosebumps here… Talks about an old bloke who wants one last beer and doesn’t have the money to pay for it but eventually gets invited to join the people inside the bar – touching!)
5 Irgendwie, irgendwo, irgendwann and a rather rare English version, wow!!! (Nena at her best... she f*cking kicked a$$... its so “Neue Deutsche Welle”…)
4 Zu Spät (Die Ärzte... Girl breaks up with singer, who in the refrain says something along these lines: “But one day I will take revenge, I will break all girls’ hearts, I will be a star and you’ll be longing for me but then it will be too late, too late…)
3 1000 und eine Nacht (Another mega-classic from the Erasmus days brought to us by Matthias Reim... superdupersong that tells the story of a guy and a girl who have been friends since they were kids and one night, the 1001st, “zoom” they kiss and well…)
2 Bayern (Die Toten Hosen musically bashing Bayern München, aweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeesome!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)
1 Über den Wolken (The Dieter Thomas Kuhn version is the funny one, this video is the original version by Reinhard Mey... I still remember myself singing it from A-Z on Altweiber in 2005 in the düsseldorfer Altstadt, going BONKERSSSSSSS “… schillernd wie ein Regenboooooooooooooooooooooooooooogen”, while everyone was giving me “what the heck?!?” between funny and confused glances… I know it by heart from my school, Switzerland summer camp days… Oh well, I’m getting carried away again…)

Honorable mention: 10 nackte Friseusen (Micky Krause), Aber bitte mit Sahne (Udo Jürgens), Herbert Grönemeyer (he’s big in Germany... Männer is cool, also the live version of Bochum, which always seems to turn in one of those kicking-a$$ performances...), Denkmal (Wir sind Helden, love it…), Jeanny (Falco), Terra Titanic (Peter Schilling… the video looks really weird actually… I remember we even listened to this song on our way to the football Eurocup in Portugal in 2004. … And my mates were Spanish, go figure!)

And not to forget: Gib Köln keine Chance!

- On a random note: I just found this Game Boy “World Cup” review (a game from the early 90’s) in Spanish. If you ever played the game, read it, it’s hilarious, the guy analyses every single detail… CRAZY!

Carnival celebrations to start today... Altweiber!!

2007-02-15T13:02:00.001Z

I'm getting a bit too emotional and carried away here... the good ol' dusseldorfer booze days...

"Ne ahle Mann steht für der Weetschaftsdüüüüür,
der so jään ens einen drinke däht,
Doch hä hätt veell zu wenig Jeld,
su lang hä och zääählt..."

Just the other day, Loyola, whom (amongst others) I celebrated carnival with in 2004 texted me that she was thinking of going to Cologne this year and if I would be around... Unfortunately, I won't make it...

... I have to admit though, an "Alt" along with some of the classics (über den Wolken, das ist Waaaahnsinn..., im Sturz durch Raum und Zeit..., Tausend und eine Nacht und es hat Zoom gemacht..., aber bitte mit Sahne...)... would be too cool right now - on the brink of tears... :.)

Man in the Middle

2007-02-13T22:44:00.000Z

... so the first ever ex-NBA player "came out". The "Man in the Middle" (good title for his book, he was the center and... certainly must have felt a bit like the man in the middle...), an Englishman, John Amaechi, declares himself gay in his biography and heavily criticizes his former Jazz coach, Jerry Sloan, a c*nt anyways, as I´ve always thought... On a random note, he was the NBA player to score the first points in the new Millenium. This excerpt is quite fascinating if you ask me. At least the chap had the boll*cks to stand up for his exuality in his book... Now everyone will start making bets on who´s guy on what team, hahaha... Nowitzki??? I think Dirk could be gay, same goes for Boozer... just a few random names I am throwing out there... :P

Another brief roundup

2007-02-07T10:00:00.000Z

... Fulham won 2-1 on the weekend! Awesome sell-out game, nice sunny day and great second half display! ... the night ended in a karaoke bar where the average age was like 65, you figure it out yourselves...

Spain playing England today. I mean, who cares, it's a friendly, we suck but... as I happen to live in "Engerland" I am off to the pub this afternoon to watch it together with my English mates... I even have an ongoing bet with my workmate Ben, if England wins I pay his meal at Spurs, if Spain beats the English, he pays mine!

My Celtics are doing reaaaaaaally badly. They just set a record for most losses in franchise history with 15... and counting!

I just hope they end up with a player of that caliber in the draft as well (Oden or Durant). May I ask for a bit of the "luck of the leprechaun for once"... please?

I would also recommend "The last king of Scotland" for those you haven't seen it... Trepidant historical movie, fictionally setup to give it the "extra bit". Forest Whitaker as Idi Amin is awesome. Probably one of the better Hollywood actors of the... past decade? Although he's not been given half the credit he deserves... maybe this year at the Oscars...

Windsor Castle...

2007-01-29T19:46:00.000Z

Being somewhat cultural for a change... I went to Windsor (and Windsor Castle) with my flatmate. Really nice town and cool castle!

After visiting the part open for visitors (absolutely ridiculous decoration, pheeeew... mental!!), for which we got ripped (as usual here), we walked around a bit and decided to go to the pub (The Horse & Groom) we had spotted at the beginning of the journey. There we had our "Beef and Ale pie": a classic!! It´s one of those dishes that ALWAYS seem to taste good, amazing, I mean, considering the "quality", or should we say "lack of it", of the "Cuisine Anglaise"...

Now, apparently, the place was Henry VIII´s favourite pub. HA! It´s supposed to even have a secret passage to the castle... Great atmosphere with some tradition inside and we were sitting in the best place, just infront of the cheminée... Really nice!! And it was Lynn´s first pub, since arriving in September (oh la la)... Well, she had been in a beergarden but that barely counts!
Pics below:

The Castle...

The town... and trying to make stupid pics of each other... whatevaaaa...

Night pic... at least I tried...

Fulham, here we come... "Vicenzo oh oh..."

2007-01-26T23:24:00.000Z

My mate Jaime just called. He´s partying with some English blokes he knows who happen to be Fulham fans, so finally tomorrow we´re gonna give it a shot and go to the Cup game against Stoke... On the phone they introduced me already to the newest Fulham chant: "Vincenzo oh-oh, Montella oh-oh-oh-oh, he comes from Italy, he f*cking hates Chelsea"... one to remember for tomorrow´s game. Wouldn´t be surprised if I ended up with a Montella shirt on my back, we´ll see... Vamos Fulhaaaaaaaaam!

(update Jan. 28th, 2007) We won!!! oéoéoé!!! 3-0. Eaaaaaaasy.... and as we won, we celebrated in the Pub, proper English style... pints, and pints and more pints!!! We got our scarfs already :) Plus we are watching Newcastle next Saturday. Nice chaps (my friend´s mates) and it´s cool to go out with English people as well, for a change... Oh, and Montella scored and set up the second and third so we could sing... hehehe. Here some pics:

the rather... "tiny" Stadium...

... Fulham till I die, I´m Fulham till I die...

... old school!!

It snowed!!!

2007-01-26T23:17:00.000Z

Finally, more than one year after my arrival, it snowed in London!!! Here some pics...

South Ken...

Chelsea...

Monthly Roundup

2007-01-19T11:07:00.000Z

Not written in quite a while on my Blog as I've been very, very busy translating my football magazine but finally, after a ton of e-mails complaining about my absence, well not really but a few faithful keep checking the website (thanks Magali and Kike) so here we go with a quick roundup of the event of last month, 10 events that marked my last 30, in chronological order:

10 – So there was this weekend in Germany which I can sum up in the words of my friend Pau, which is the guy who gently offered me a place to stay at:

“Marco locoooooooooooo, Menos mal que ya te has ido y nuestras vidas pueden volver a la normalidad, yo también estoy sin voz y estoy hecho polvo, vaya fin de semana!!!! La –censured- estaba buena, me alegraste la noche y sirvió para vengar la derrota del Mundial...” which means something like, “Thanks God you left and our life gets back to normality…” but in a nice way :P

It was crazy in terms of Weizen consumption, partying and… well, many other things, including an early morning karaoke, where I pretended to be able to perform an Offspring song (Self-esteem) imitating Axl Rose’s voice… Yup, that’s me!

Nacho, Pau and Jorgito, amongst others, were there from the 04-05 Dusseldorf crew... Actually the reason for travelling to Germany was "Nacho's Goodbye Party"... In the words of Borat it was "niiiiiiicccceeee... happy tiiiiime... woawoawoooooowah"

9 – Heathrow Chaos: To sum up one of the worst experiences you possibly can have at an airport before Xmas, let’s say I spent 22h at Heathrow from Dec. 21st to Dec. 22nd, and that I was THIS close to not making it home for Christmas, at all! My planes to Madrid were successively cancelled on Thursday and I was without a ticket on Thursday 1am, after our last hope to get back, a flight that would have flown out around 11pm was cancelled. Conclusion: spent the night at Heathrow, sleeping on the floor, while cueing in front of the rebooking office (as I had no ticket…), which opened at 5:30 in the morning. I wasn’t too sure about staying there the whole night but it turned out to be the saving decision because at 5:30 there were like 500 people behind us in the cue… Now, when I look back I have a grin on my face but hey, I already pictured myself having a nice Christmas time either home alone or with one of my workmates who, friendly as they are, has invited me to theirs.
I made it back to Madrid via Amsterdam in the end, as I told the lady at the rebooking office something along these lines: “I don’t care where I have to go, even if it’s Ankara or Helsinki, but just get me out of Heathrow!” And it worked. Heathrow was definitely not prepared for this and there was such a mess the BAA crue almost made me miss my flight to Amsterdam because they had no f*ckin’ clue what was going on and passengers had to stay in a tent outside the terminal, before they could proceed to the check-in area. Guess what… THEY DIDN’T CALL US UP FOR THE FREAKING AMSTERDAM FLIGHT!! When there were 55 mins. left for my plane to leave, and after asking for the 4th(!!) time, I was told I could now check-in. Obviously I had like 200 people in front of me and 20 mins to check in, which led to another BAA crue member to call up people for some flights (Geneva, Dusseldorf… AMSTERDAM…) and we had to cut the line and hustle to the gate. Thanks BAA, we’d do better in Spain!
At least I met some cool people at the cue: one Spaniard with whom I shared a few pints, another one, whose brother is a professional basketball player in Spain, and a chap who lives in Pasadena… working for the NASA!!! When he started talking about his “mission to Mars projects” I think I hit low point in my professional career, starting to think what I am doing selling mobile games and translating football magazines… in this world! Whatever…

8- From Schiphol to the “Meka de la baguette”: Schiphol is one biiiiiiiiiig airport! Crazy, the landway crosses a motorway so go figure it yourselves… As I was knackered and without having slept more than 2 hours, I walked to the wrong terminal first and then had this exchange with an arrogant KLM crue lady at the boarding gate:
Me: “When does the gate open?”
Her: “Have you actually checked your boarding pass… the information is on it!”
Me (rather confused as I had checked it before asking): “Mmmmh… I don’t think so”
Her (taking the boarding pass away from me): “Yes it does!”
…….. and it didn’t. so she gave the boarding pass back and said something along these lines: “You’ll find out in time…”. She wouldn’t tell me the gate opened at 17:30, unbelievable! I ws too tired to argue…
… arrived in Madrid (with a record 24h delay) I met my family and then went out with my “Aicecks masters” mates… first with Kike and Isra, afterwards we met the whole bunch, including Fatima, Rafolets, Jaime, Susana, Vero and Jorgito… It was nice, wild and three of us ended up having a baguette at the “Meka de la baguette”, an all time classic after wild Madrid nights. Afterwards we gentlemanly escorted one of the girls to the bus station and got home by 7:30am.

7- Christmas at home and back to the Meka: Christmas at home was quite nice, chilling and relaxing. Spent some time with the family and there’s not that many anecdotes to tell… I just got treated at home food-wise, hehe, and didn’t even go out on New Year’s eve, although, I have to admit, I had one crazy night on the 30. of December. From Serrano to Sol and back to the Meka for a calamari baguette, half a morcilla (blood sausage) baguette, some croquettes and 3 porras (typical Madrid pastry) with a coffee… at 6:30 am along with the most inconsistent phrase of the night “nah, no coke for me, coke is unhealthy…”! And you don't know why, but Pau is always around when it comes to crazy nights... hmmmm...
One good restaurant tip: La Panincota d’E. Trendy, cool decorated place with nice paninis and pizzas. It’s something different for Madrid standards.
I also watched to movies: Babel (solid movie about miscommunication and injustice in this world). I can tell it’s a good movie but it’s not like I came out of the cinema like “Woah woah woahhhh…”. My mum was quite impressed and though it was great. For me it’s just that, a good movie that deals with problems of our society in an efficient cinematographic way. Then I also watched The Illusionist with Edward Norton and Sophie Biel (who reminds me of someone but I won’t tell who… she is proper cute in the film) and it was a nice movie. Enjoyable, with some nice visual effects and a surprising ending, unless you have one of those movie-spoiling personalities by which you tend to figure out the end before the plot has even started, therefore missing out on the actual plot. I liked it. Oh, and for the naïf amongst you, who think that you should pursue your dreams and love no matter what (I would have to include myself here, I think…): Big Fish At the start I though “WTF????? What a crappy movie…” but at the end I went “Man, what a beautiful movie…” Let’s move on before I start crying… *lol*

6- Translating and more translating: … I also had the “pleasure” of translating during 5 days in a row, about 8-10 hours a day, before New Year’s and again from about Jan-05 till… yesterday! Fun times!!! It’s absolutely knackering so it looks like after two editions, this might be my last magazine. It’s just a full-time job not very compatible with an 8-10h working schedule, as I end up literally working from 9am-1am from Mo-Fr which leaves me totally worn down for the time being… Glad I’m done for this one…

5- The arrival of one crazy friend’s brother…: Nacho's brother, a really good mate from Germany, just moved to London... We didn't really know each other but we've been out a couple of times already and it tends to end up being "a bit" of a crazy eve every time, which shouldn;t actually be surprising, given that the brother is a crazy party animal, too... More on this as the year goes on... I'm sure...

4- Silver: (update: January 26th, 2007... here are the pics, ehem... no comments...)

the ladies...

... and the guys... discussing the "Valencia amulet" - it works actually!

3- Greg Oden and Fulham…: Got the chance to see one of the next two superstars to enter the NBA last Saturday: Greg Oden. (The other one is Kevin Durant) The guy is HUGE, full stop. Athletic, an amazing shot blocker and will be a superstar in the Pros a la David Robinson, with less of an offensive game I would say. He “abused” the opposite team in the first half but then again, some of the guys covering him looked like kids, so… But it was interesting to get a glance at him. I’m pretty mucho sold on him now.
And then there’s Fulham, the team I want to start supporting from now on. I’ve already studied their lineup and will attend their February game against Newcastle no matter what. Actually, Jaime (see above) and I will “test the water” during few games this season and might end up buying season tickets next one if the experience is satisfying… This obviously includes starting to follow their games, rooting for them on the road from home, buying the shirt (it’s on sale for 20 quid), getting high on new signing Montella and of course rooting for Volz, the small German fullback who is SH*T(!!!!), to leave the team!! Fulham forever… or till the summer! ;)

2- … and I’m starting to like American Football: Really intrigued by the NFL Playoffs now. High octane sport. So much tension involved at the end of games, you get really soaked into it… It helped that the team I somehow support, the Patriots won, but anyways, these guys play for their lives out there! Every play is like the end of the World or something. Hardly ever seen such an intense team sport… Thumbs up! Will try to keep following it during the Playoffs!

1- … Crazy Paris: yep, that's where I'm going this weekend... Hmmmmm... we'll see :) (update: January 22nd, 2007... Paris was really good. Always worth a trip... The weather was so-so and we just did much walking and drunk like 650 cafes au lait but it was fun... The eclaires were awesome as usual and the city remains as charming as always.

update January 23rd, 2007... So I went with my mate Valerdi, whom, from now on, I will refer to as "Jacques". He felt proper French having his "early morning coffee + fag" on the balcony of the flat overlooking "Les Invalides"... Whatever.

(view from my flatmate's appartment bedroom... Les Invalides.

This is literally what you saw when you opened your eyes from the bed!!!)

(Cafe Marly: View from the place where I had a drink with the lovely Aurelie on Saturday night... )

One wild weekend!!!!

2006-12-20T12:08:00.000Z

No comments for now... Just two images:

Me pretending to sing Selfesteem with an Axl Rose type of voice at 9am on Sunday morning...

A tribute to Spain in the club... Nacho and I holding the flag...

Kensington Pubs

2006-12-03T19:32:00.000Z

Here some pics of a few of the nicer pubs in my area. All in 5 min. walking distance...

1) The Elephant & Castle: A classic for an early Friday/Saturday evening drink or a pint on the terrace on a sunny weekend. Just around the corner from my house. Gets very crowded, especially Fridays after work.

2) The Churchill Arms: Always full.This one is well known i n the area and appears even in some London guides. Cool flowery decoration on the outside, megacrowded after work on the outside when the weather is good and pretty charming inside as well.

3) The Uxbridge Arms: Small pub but really cool inside. You can see it´s full of regulars inside and it has the taste of the typical English Pub: carpets, wooden walls and those old fashioned settees.

4) This one is my absolute favorite... WINDSOR CASTLE: Not only is it dark and aithentic on the inside, it also has an awesome beergarden and lots of benches outside during the summer. It´s on top of the hill walking from my house towards Notting Hill and the location and the pub itself are hardly to top. Always very crowded as well, it is not rare to end up chatting to some pub- mates sitting next to you; from a bunch of drunkards pretending to have philosophical conversations to some random Scandinavian young ladies, anything´s possible. Thumbs up for the WINDSOR CASTLE. And they even serve Leffe, which is always a plus...

Pre weekend roundup

2006-11-24T11:04:00.000Z

A short pre-weekend roundup.

Monday started with our flat’s bathroom being fucked and the bathtub not draining properly. It eventually got worse and all the gunk and sh*t started coming out. Nice early morning surprise! Not only that, the sink in the kitchen started leaking as well. I tried sorting out the bathtub problem with a plunger which just led to my flatmate laughing her a** out loudly and my effort obviously not helping whatsoever; actually, in all honesty, it made it worse, more ugly things came out of the pipes. Very, very disgusting I have to tell you and as there’s thing you don’t need to know, I’ll stop here... Let’s just say it was pukish...

I watched Borat (the movie) on Tuesday. Utterly hilarious!! Though, I have to admit, some jokes are over the top and even embarrassing but hey “iz goooood, happy times” like he would say. :P Maybe if you are a Jew you could feel a bit offended, then again, he’s a Jew himself, so…

Sad news on Wednesday. One of my uni mates sent us an email telling us Constante, the 80+ bar owner of KWAI, had died. Rest in peace the good old man. It feels like a part of our youth slipping away… His small bar, an absolute and always crowded classic in Alonso Martínez was and will always be a small part of us. Alcatraz (the bathroom), his pechugas (DYC Whisky with coke) and his “special” sense of humor won’t be forgotten. I remember one Friday night when I entered with 4 mates and he nodded in his characteristic way and asked what we wanted to drink, my friends ordered a “pechuguita” apiece and I just replied “nothing for now” so he looked at me in disbelief and said: “Pero tú eres mariiiiiiiiiiiiica?!?”, which translates to “are you a caaaaamper?!?”. That was Constante, a genius, a myth, an Asturian guy who made a living out of owning the most random bar in the world for more than 30 years. Rest in Peace and down a “pechuga” for us wherever you may be…

Thursday I found this post on http://www.celticsblog.com/! And you thought I had lost it with my Tube Theories post (in Spanish), HA!! This one compares Celtics players to chicks. It’s the dogs bollocks!! Well, I guess not that much if you don’t follow the Celtics on a regular basis but some comparisons are just so good! Fun times with the Celtics then, even if they can’t win a game to save their lives!!
Talking about the Celtics, this is how Paul Pierce compares to the guy labeled as “The Next MJ” (although there won’t be any “Next MJ”), we’re talking about Lebron:

Celtics Pride all the way! Keep it going PP!

… And we also celebrated the bathtub giving been fixed by a plumber on Thursday… with wine!! I’m seriously starting to think my flatmate is the funniest person around… At least TOP3! I feel a bit rough though, this morning…

Friday’s horoscope: “Your rollercoaster week is not over (and it has been one!!!). There are more surprises to come this weekend that may throw a spanner in the works but won’t ruin your plans, just make them more exciting” Wow, happy times!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It sounds basically like anything good or bad could happen, from hooking up with Elle McPherson to, well, to… nah, let’s not think about the possible negative side…

So let the weekend start, bring it to me…

November Rain...

2006-11-22T15:35:00.000Z

... it's one of those grey days and life's a bit dull as of late, so here's some cool youtube vids I found:

Len Bias, even if you don't like hoops watch the play from 4:20 on... It's absolutely freakishly amazing
This one is rather depressing. Does it get any worse? Ladies and Gentlemen, Eddie Murphy and the artist formerly known as Michael Jackson.

Shawn Kemp Dunks. You don't see guys like this anymore in the NBA. He was like an animal out of his cage...

Bo Jackson. The top athlete of all time? This guy, a running back, didn't just run around defenders, he KNOCKED them down on his way towards a touchdown!! And we're talking American Football here!! Not only this, he played Baseball and American Football at the same time!!! Watch this: He walked the wall!!!!!! And on top of it, he was an All-Star in both sports. You figure it out yourselves...

Sapore di sale... was on my mp3 the other day... Here's some footage of the song. He looks a bit like sh*t but it's a classic and the lyrics, simple but cool!

An Ice Age clip... The squirrel is aweeeesome!!
Absoultely ridiculous hockey goal!!!! Not into hockey at all myself but this one is just incredible!!

Funny e-mail...

2006-11-21T10:14:00.000Z

... well, at least I thought it was. From Bill Simmon's ESPN Mailbag:

Q: My buddies and I were talking about appropriate punishments for dictators like Saddam Hussein, and we came up with an idea that works for everyone and could raise money for the International Criminal Court without using tax dollars. Why not charge admission for people to look at convicted dictators in their jail cells, kind of like a zoo for genocidal megalomaniacs? Think about it: you put them in small, basic cells behind plexiglass and charge 25 euros to watch them go about their day. Tourists could get baked at a local coffee shop and head over to the jail to gawk at Slobodan Milosevic sitting on a cot watching "90210" reruns. You could even charge extra to feed them falafel pellets and shawarma biscuits. This would be a far worse fate for a once-proud dictator then being executed. Who wouldn't pay 25 euros to watch Saddam Hussein in his underwear eating Cheetos?--Kris, Washington

The idea is aweeeeeeeesome!!!!!!!!! And no one could raise claims that death sentences shouldn't be allowed and all that sh*t... This, unlike the EU Constitution, WOULD get my approval!! :P

Then, this is what my "Metro" horoscope for the day brought me:

"Today is the very opposite of a bad hair day. Every curl and wave will be perfectly in place. So use the moment. Hairstyles this stylish don't come along every day"... sounds like a stylish version of "It's your pulling day, DO SOMETHING, the stars are on your side today. Go, go, GOOOOOOOO!!" Whatever, horoscopes should probably just be ignored anyway...

Ramblings and "The Magic of the Potato"

2006-11-13T17:27:00.000Z

Do you believe in the magic of things? In signals? In coincidences with a bit more of a meaning than being just that, mere coincidences? Something happened the other day and my workmate Milena and myself have decided to chose it “The Magic of the Potato”. The thing is, on three different occasions, in two consecutive days, we picked a loose potato in the supermarket to cook it at work afterwards and all three times it weighted the same: .0345 Kg. What are the odds?? Considering a single potato might weigh, let’s say, between 0.2 and 0.6 Kg and that the scale being accurate up to .005 Kg, there’d be one chance in 80 to get a certain weight. The chance that two potatoes weigh the same is 1 in 6400, the chance that 3 do is 1 in 512.000 thousand. You tell me if this is not absolutely CRAZY!!!!

On the weekend, nothing amazing happened really. To sum it up:

I think I sprained my finger playin’ hoops on Saturday. I’m using the word “think” cause I have not been to the doctor yet and it could actually be broken but I doubt it… We’ll see how it develops.

Watched The Departed in the cinema and it was very good I thought… I mean, and this confused the sh*t out of me, even DiCaprio was good!! Not only good, I thought he was f*ckin amazing! And I’m not a Leo fan by no meanings. I don’t like Matt Damon too much either but he played his roll well and Nicholson, well, great as always but I’m seriously starting to get the impression he might be deranged in real life as well; you know, those faces he makes when watching Lakers games on the sideline, then you see him in his movies and it’s like watching the same fella, once in real life, the next time on the big screen…
An interesting subplot was the “hot-unhot”, “cute-ugly” psychiatrist played by Vera Farmiga. It went from “hmmm, cuteeee” to “naaahhhh, no way” three scenes later. There’s women who are just hot but then not so hot at all. The funny part? The “hot” side always outweighs the “not so hot” one and you’ll eventually notice they'll have more success with men than the random “plain cute” girl. Whatever…
As I said, good movie about the Mafia in Boston, under covered agents, etc. And even if you dislike Leonardo, go watch it, you won’t be disappointed, although, I must admit the ending left me a bit confused and surprised… Borat is next on my list. Can’t wait already!!!

Then, commuting back home on Friday, trains were late… as usual. The novelty here is that the delays were caused by the train ahead of us having caught fire. Southwest Trains could well start thinking of copying Nike’s advertisings: “Impossible is nothing”. Delays, signal failures, train drivers being late in Waterloo and causing a mess, fires, strikes, smashed windows… Oh and one day one guy was laying completely wasted on the seats and refused to move. I think he must have been high on some bad sh*t because he looked as f*cked as it gets!! F*cked as in “Erika Christensen (Michael Douglas’ daughter in Traffic) f*cked”, that is…

I also watched Traffic. Thought it was pretty coooool. The parts played in Mexico were awesome. Douglas is useless though. Is he overrated or what? Zeta-Jones plays an interesting character and I don’t like her as an actress either but I’m OK with her in this movie. It’s quite entertaining. Not amazing by my movie standards but definitely a good movie.

Also saw the movie trailer for the new movie from Álvaro González Iñárritu: Babel. Could be good or could be real sh*t but what I don’t understand at all is why they show 60% of the plot in the trailer… I always find Cate Blanchett intriguing in her movies though and she’s the main character in this one along with B. Pitt.

At the fish shop, where I bought some new fish type and I was waiting to pay with the money in my hand already (£15) it turned out the whiteley (or whatever the name was) just costed £3.72, which led to the guy at the shop saying: “You thought I’d be expensive, what?” and me going “You never know when it comes to fish in the UK…” and him giving me an odd look. I thought it was “funny” from him to say that, considering they rip you off everytime you buy something but for once, I must admit I got a fair deal.

... as you can see, nothing really amazing, except for the "potato miracle" :)

10 Months in London, time for a Review!

2006-11-07T14:37:00.000Z

... no scoring or rating this time. Just those things:

The Myth: It always rains in London
The Hell: Planning a night out in a London Club last minute. Worked out well once so far!
The Gone: The "quid". Every time you go out partying...
The Campaign: "We’re running out of water", in England, this summer. Yeah, right…
The What: Food stinks in the UK! Sorry.
The What?: Reyes: "Everything in England is shut at 5pm, there is nothing to do!”
The Whatever: AICECKS aka ICEX
The WTF?: London Underground? Anything is possible...
The Lie: ... "... train is delayed due to signaling failure..."
The Answer: A hairdryer. An absolute must here!
The Good: My new workmates
The Bad: ... some of the ones I left behind at HQ
The Ugly: When one of your mates bumps into a chick, disappears and comes back just 4 minutes later, you know it’s bad…
The Fashion: From flip flops to leggings combined with a skirt. Nightmare! But you still see some style here and there.
The Real: Money buys everything…
The Hope: … that it can’t buy everyone!
The Quote: “So do you have your dancing shoes on?”, in a club. Riiiiiight.
The Belief: That Spain will never win a World Cup with primadonnas like Torres, Reyes, etc. on our team. No questions
The Beg: That our next national coach realizes that!!! Could I ask for Caparrós being offered the job? Please, pleaseeeeeee
The Cool: My workmate Milena
The Gift: Belletti’s winning strike in Paris! Thanks!!!
The Summer: Very Hot
The Winter: Not so cold, yet… but very humid!
The Weekend: August, S. Petri, 3 most chilling days of the year
The Weekday: paris, May, Wednesday, Barcelona…
The Beautiful One: Hanna
The Gamble: Coming to London to work, and not going overseas
The Even Bigger Gamble: Extending my contract here, ehem…
The New: Paula and Phivos, two new mates in London…
The Game: Chelsea-Barça (1-2)
The Other Game: PES5 with Buitre
The Boss: Simon. He was a cool one.
The Call(s): Perri from Miami. Fun times all around.
The Park: Kensington Gardens
The Food: Kensington Fish Place
The Airport: London City Airport. Hands down!
The Restaurant: The Oratory, absolutely awesome calamari
The Chain: "Nando’s", surprisingly well spiced chicken
The Pub: "The Windsor Castle" with its beer garden
The Venue: "Roof Gardens"… amazing, huge roof terrace
The Beer: Not an ale, for sure. To pick one discovered here “Kronenbourg Blanche”
The Bit Of History: Roman Baths in... Bath
The Cathedral: Canterbury… just “woooooooow”
The Pitch: Highbury… a pity Arsenal moved. All the magic is lost now.
The Shop: An Italian Boutique close to Piccadilly, I cannot think of the name, but they have amazing shoes.
The Famous: Elle McPherson. Spotted close to Notting Hill Gate
The Art: Seaport with the Embarkation of St Ursula by Claude, at the National Gallery. Secret tip: Wallace Collection
The Artist: Andrea Wilde
The “Coach”: Cases reading “the game”
The Repeat: Starkbierfest with Valerdi and Christian. Always a must!
The Overrated: Vienna, as a city. The trip was cool.
The Widely Overrated: Starbucks, and sadly enough it’s everywhere
The Underrated: LFP = London Flirting Potential
The Sweets: Maison Blanc, just around the corner of my house
The 4: Perdi, Nachete, Canary and myself in Latvia
The 3: Rubén, Canary and myself at the World Cup
The 2: Dani and Cheso, two great hosts in Paris
The One on One: At Pangea with my friend Jaime
The Chat: Valerdi, at any time
The Late Night Chat: Lynn, and I’m starting to miss it…
The Random Chat: With Katarinja flying back from Berlin
The Stylish: … Katarinja
The Tune: November Rain, still…
The Book: Now I Can Die In Peace by Bill Simmons
The Married: Magali. All the Best!!
The Soon to Be…: Gérard. 1.5-2 years and counting...
The Movie: Ice Age 2, yep, just love the Ice Age saga
The Secret Spot: St. Helen’s Embankment in Richmond
The Get-Lost-Place: Bradford-on-Avon
The About Time: Reykjavik…
The Last: Picking up a friend at Luton Airport. Not again, thanks!
The Question: Why the hell are sandwiches so popular here?!?!?!?!?!?
The Marketing: Being an Artist in Disguise
The Anticipation: Mourinho will leave Chelsea either next summer or 2008 the latest
The Secret: A good cigar before going out
The Concept: "Carpe Diem". More sold on it by the day…
The Look: Skye, my ex manager's lil daughter. As sweet as it gets!
The Concert: Reamonn in ’Lautern
The Thought: Too many, but “give it time to read between the lines...”
The Guarantee: You’ll have a good time if you come over to visit me! No exceptions so far.
The Truth: Paul Pierce, still
The No Miss: Chocolate and women, ha!
The Long Kiss Goodnight: London itself, maybe…
The Last Kiss Goodnight: Joey. And gone she was…

A GREAT ONE says goodbye...

2006-11-06T12:23:00.000Z

In memory of Paquito Fernandez Ochoa, our Olympic skiing champion in Sapporo'72.

Rest in Peace.

NBA to start tonight!!

2006-10-31T16:27:00.000Z

Can't wait!! :)

Keep an eye on this guy, Rajon Rondo, Boston Celtics:

Plus the Celtics have a Dance Team for the first time in their history, ha!!

Oh well, let's start with a quote, Avery Johnson during the 2005 Playoffs:

"Maybe I need to go crazy. Maybe I should go crazy. Maybe that will help.''

That's exactly how I feel sometimes, especially at work!!

This is another interesting one, courtesy of Ron Artest:

“I'm going to continue playing hard and out of control, like a wild animal that needs to be caged in. I'll let the referees handle it.

He´s mental anyway, so... But these are just a two of the (many) main characters of the league. The rest??? You figure it out yourselves... Fun times all around!!

Here some early predictions:

Champion: Rockets if McGrady stays healthy
MVP: Kobe
Top Scorer: Kobe, followed by Arenas
6th-Man: Barbosa, maybe Delonte West or Antoine Walker if they don´t start...
1st Team NBA: Kobe, TMac, Yao, Duncan, Lebron
2nd Team NBA: Pierce, Wade, Brand, Dirk, Arenas
3rd Team NBA: Baron Davis (watch out for him coming back at his best), Dwight Howard, Artest, Kirilenko, Iverson. Tough ommissions Mike Bibby, Vince Carter and Steve Nash.
Rookie of the Year: Rajon Rondo
Most Improved: Shaun Livingston or Deron Williams (best case scenario as a Celtic: Al Jefferson)
Sleeper Teams: Utah, Golden State... Boston
Top Eight in the East: Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, Miami, Washington, Boston, Orlando and Indiana in no particular order. Semifinals:Chicago, Miami, Cleveland, Washington. Conference Finals: Washington - Cleveland
Top Eight in the West: San Antonio, Houston, Dallas, Clippers, Lakers, Phoenix, Utah, Sacramento. Semifinals: Houston, San Antonio, Sacramento, Lakers. Conference Finals: Houston - San Antonio
NBA Final: Houston over Cleveland in 6
Defensive Player of the Year: Ron Artest
Coach of the Year: Don Nelson
Best Dancers: As for last year I´m with the Phoenix Suns Cheerleaders. I´ll do some research and will post my 2006-2007 favourite soon. The Clippers look good so far...
That´s it for now, let the fun begin and... GO CELTICS!!!!!

Superhero quizz

2006-10-27T13:26:00.000+01:00

I thought this was curious: Superheroes. It's a questionary about superheroes.

These are my results. Not much of a high percentage match with any of the superheroes (I guess I'm very normal then) but the Green guy is fine with me!! May he bring this year's Celtics the power with his ring!!!

P.S. Good to not be Robin. By a mere 5% but still, since when is he a superheroe? He's like the Bin Laden of superheroes, who would ever play superheroes and pick the Robin character???

Threatened at Stamford Bridge...

2006-10-19T11:37:00.000+01:00

… for showing my Spanish flag during yesterday’s Chelsea-Barça game!!! I was sitting in the Bacerlona supporters’ stands and a few guys behind me got a bit aggressive and started menacing me to not show the flag again so I didn’t “get into trouble” that they were “just warning me”. Now that’s absolutely bollocks!!!

That much said as for Catalan separatists. Bunch of a$$holes as it was well known before, but... it's still sad to see all those flags from different countries (Mexico, Brazil...) being well accepted in the Barça stands and on the other hand being threatend for showing a Spanish one. But that's out country, unfortunately, and that's where our government and our President (well, not mine), a person as evil as it gets, is pushing us! Same for Barcelona's president and all the rest of f*cking bastards with aims of seceding from its parent country, which is no other than SPAIN!!!!!!!

More to follow…

London Ramblings (part 1)

2006-10-05T09:45:00.000+01:00

Ever fancied someone on your way to work? Never had the guts to talk to that person. No big deal here in the UK. You can easily send a comment to Metro (the newspaper) and it will get published on their website and eventually eventually even in the newspaper edition!! Check out the link. People seem a bit desperate in this life, but oh well, some of them are sort of fun so let it be...
I got stuck in the Park for the second time. This time it was Kensington Gardens. Thing is, those f*ckers who are in charge of shutting down the gates put on such a big time hustling effort you wonder if they have fun leaving people stuck inside, moreover as they see you coming towards the gate (and we’re talking 30m distance maybe) and still don’t give a crap about you being stuck inside… And the hedge is quite an obstacle, when trying to get out, I’m telling you!!
Checked out a couple of new places in London last weekend: “Funky Buddha” and “24”. The first one was sort of OK, a bit small, a bit too much hip hop and weird music in general but it was fun. At some point my flatmate tried to talk me into getting to dance but that is as unlikely to work out well, as Spain pushing for a Football World Cup success. I gave it a try, sort of, and I’m sure I didn’t look any better than this. Sad, sad, sad… “24” on the other hand was a bit crappy. “Over posh”, expensive, and the venue wasn’t too cool either… We spotted Ballack at some point and he was having a cocktail, probably just to forget about his Chelsea game earlier that day…. It’s always amazing to spot a famous person in a Club because you could probably rank’em on a celebrity level, according to their entourage: The German football star had like 27 people around him which seemed a bit odd considering he’s not a Rapper or an American Pro Sports Player…
... more to follow. I just felt I needed to post something :)

Helsinki, well worth a trip... and rating Scandinavia!!

2006-09-27T10:01:00.000+01:00

… yep, I finally made it to Helsinki and it was definitely worth the trip. Just for the spontaneity of the decision to fly there and everything, it was great!!!

The city, well, not too spectacular, let's give it a 6/10, just for it being at the sea (always nice) and because the weather was awesome!! Other than that, not that much to see, really… I’ve visited all four Scandinavian capital cities now, and miraculously all of them with perfect blue sky and sun, and if I had to rate them (yep, yankee style, they rate and rank about everything…) here’s how they’d do:

Oslo (April 2005):

With whom?: my Swiss “primo”
The City: Interestingly lots of brick stone architecture. The city is not extremely beautiful by itself, a bit cold but with some neat corners… The fortress, the embassy quartier, Vigeland Park and above all Aker Brygge (the harbour). We also went to see the Holmenkollen (quite impressive and with nice views over Oslofjorden) and down south to Verdens Ende. The landscapes and the fjords in Norway are really something worth seeing and what I saw were just the “average” ones, cause the nicest are on the West Coast of the country, so… 7/10 (ranking just the city)
The Ladies & the Partying: First experience in a Nordic country and I have to say I wasn’t that impressed. But still, when I went there was some quality out there, although the dressing stile in the place was a bit unstylish… Plus I went out on my own and it got a bit boring at one point. 6.5/10
The Food: Nice seafood, salmon and fish but rather expensive. 8/10
Would I go back again soon?: Maybe not soon but for sure at some point, just for the sake of having another latte at Akker Brygge. I’d do Stavanger and Bergen first, definitely, and also the Prekestolen…
Random anecdote: Hmmmmmm… gotta think of something good here…

Upshot: Great experience whatsoever. It was fun, it was the first time in Scandinavia which made it a special trip as I’d always longed for going up there… and I even could find a really cool Troll to add to my collection. :) 8.5/10

Stockholm (May 2005):

With whom?: the whole Icex Troupe
The City: Beautiful. Loved it!! Quite imperial as well. The channels, the bay, the old town, the different ambiences. Sweet! No trips here, except for a boat trip where I fell asleep (shame on me) but the Vasamuseet with its 17th-century ship in full size was spectacular!!! 9/10
The Ladies & the Partying: Couldn’t agree with people to go out to a serious place. What a shame. And 2 weeks ago my flatmate (she’s Swedish actually) told me in Sweden it’s the women who bump into man, ha!! Let’s move on before I start head butting the next closest door or something… Still the ladies were ok but not that impressive either. N/A (7/10 for the ladies)
The Food: Didn’t really try that much stuff as we were on what seemed to be more of an “Erasmus-safe-the-money-and-run trip”. A shame. N/A
Would I go back again soon?: I was considering flying over next month but will postpone a bit, so YES! Thumbs up all the way for Stockholm!!
Random anecdote: Having a latte in a terrace in the city centre I started making funny grimaces to a super sweet baby sitting next to us and who couldn’t get her eyes of me for some reason… The baby’s dad tried to gain back his daughter’s attention which didn’t work at all and the young mum said something along these lines “I think she’s fallen in love with you”, which made me happy for the day, especially considering the father’s “I’m gonna kill the Spaniard” face when he heard his wife. Still giggling when I think of it…

Upshot: One of the cities that makes my short list of “Cities I truly believe should be visited once a year” together with Barcelona and Paris. For me it had some magic but I couldn’t explain exactly why. Just thought it was cool :) Still, could have gotten some more action out of the trip 8/10

Copenhague (October 2005):

With whom?: my Swiss primo yet again. He’s always up for traveling which is good!
The City: Architectonically a very nice city. The city centre was a bit overcrowded, much like some German towns, but it had some flair… Nice squares, churches, the seaside with the fortress and some nice channels, too. Kristiania hippie place was interesting and the Rosenborg Have Park was really nice as well plus they have this famous little Mermaid, hehe… Even the Airport was awesome, hey, it’s about the small details sometimes :) 8/10
The Ladies & the Partying: Reaaaaally cute!! Lotsa sweet faces all over the place. I mentioned this in Helsinki to some Suomi chicks, that the Danish are the hottest of the 4 countries, and the comment didn’t go down that well, as expected by the way. The place we went out to was so-so but somehow I still didn’t manage to get home until 4am. A classic. We had some nice drinks though in a bar before going to the Club and one waitress was, pheeeeeeeew, an angel!!! 8.5/10
The Food: Spectacular dinner in an awesome Fish restaurant for my cousin’s 35th birthday. Nice brunch on Sunday. It was good quality food, definitely. 9/10
Would I go back again soon?: With the right person for a chilling weekend, why not…
Random anecdote: I volunteered to forfeit my ticket for 100€ (that's cheap!!!), as the plane was overbooked, would have flown back through Düsseldorf. Man was happy to get the last seat after all…

Upshot: Nice city where you could sense things going on. I thought for a while it might be a nice place to live but looking back I’m not that sold on it anymore, mainly cause it’s probably the most European of the 4 cities, so not that much change after all from Continental Europe. I liked that they had many darkish small cafés and restaurants in the centre, with a certain touch of authenticity. 7.5/10

Helsinki (September 2006):

With whom?: my 60 year old Swiss uncle who was visiting me in London at the time. Randomly decided to go there on Thursday night whilst having a few pints.
The City: Hm, apart from the Protestant Church, where we actually attended mass, just randomly, the orthodox Church (the biggest one in occidental Europe and few other spots, the city offers a rather eclectic architectural style… Sometimes you could think you’re in Russia, some corners were very reminiscent of Stockholm, everything quite eclectic. We also made a boat trip around the harbour area (freeeeezing wind) which was sort of nice but it’s definitely not a majestic city as for sightseeing 6/10
The Ladies & the Partying: Absolutely awesome. Just randomly met 5 Finnish chicks in a cool venue and one of them, even took me to another venue (LUX) which had some really nice view over Helsinki. It was just a great fun night out partying and it’s even better when you get the chance to party with locals!!! Hardly to top… 10/10
The Food: Ate Reindeer and Moose for the first time in my life and the reindeer filet was awesome I must say!! Apart from that lots of buttery, creamy stuff, which I don’t especially like… 7/10
Would I go back again soon?: I would… but I won’t, unfortunately…
Random anecdote: In some clubs, apparently the funny Suomis seem to have shared bathrooms for both women and men, which basically translates to cueing much longer than expected as the average time for a female is like 27 minutes while a guy needs what, 30 seconds? Just thought there's some thing you need to know in this life... By the way, many Finnish clubs are for +24 age, which seemed a bit odd!
Upshot: I always wanted to go there and just for that it was worth a million times traveling there!! The weather was amazing, the trip was super spontaneous and everything went quit smooth. I wasn’t sold on going at first but looking back to it, hell yes, that’s the things I should be doing more often!!! Just randomly go somewhere, not think so much about everything.That was actually my resolution for the new year (I just turned 27, ufffff) after a looooooong conversation with my flatmate: Seizing the moment!! So yes, awesome trip and great memories and as it’s not always about what you saw or did when you traveled to a new city, but what you feel and will think when you look back, I’ll give it an uncontested 10/10

Helsingfors, here we come... finally!

2006-09-22T10:18:00.000+01:00

... yep, I'll finally be covering the second last destination on a “places I want to go to soon” list I made at some point back in the early 2000’s which included: Stockholm, Copenhague, Rome, Florence, Helsinki and (yet to visit) Reykjavik… Just randomly decided last night to travel there from Saturday morning till late Sunday afternoon with my uncle, who’s actually on a 1-week vacation in London, if that makes sense at all… :) In the words of my mum "Spinned er?!?" which translates to "are you nuts or what?!?". Oh well...
I’ve always wanted to go to Finland since I was 12 and my lifetime mate (since we were about 2 or 3...) Simon and me were in this Summer Camp in Degen (CH) and we got to know these two Suomi chicks called Natasha (him) and Satu (me). First summer love and stuff like that, you know… Probably one of the Top-3 summers of my life still!!! It was awesome now that I think of it. I kept in touch with that young lady until about 1995 and then heard back from her again in 1998. Since then, zilch. It is sort of stupid but now that I think of it, it would have been cool to meet up again, although, after so many years, the first impression could be quite shocking. From “sweet blonde innocent girl” to who the f*ck knows… But it’d still be cool :)

Other than that. Too many loooooong nights in the past couple of weeks, I feel pretty much knackered. Lots of visits, crazy nights, like last Saturday with my mate Jaime in Pangea (phewww), lots of chatting (+ wine) with my flatmate… And in 10 days my mate Israel and his girlfriend are coming, so you figure it out… Next Friday is also already pretty much booked out for a night out in Movida (posh of the poshs). Everything’s a bit wearing out, although fun, I must admit.

Then also, next week I should know something more about my job, hopefully but we’ll see… I’ll keep you posted.

Back to work then

Toine & The Truth... the good ol' days

2006-09-20T11:32:00.000+01:00

This is a video about my two favourite NBA players ever: Antoine Walker and Paul Pierce. They're no MJs, Birds, Kobes or Lebrons... They just were an awesome couple that carried a talent wise very limited Celtics team within 2 games of the 2002 NBA Finals. I'm getting goosebumps here... and I miss Walker in Celtics Green. :(

Thinking of it, if I don't get to see Pierce "live" in a Celtics uniform before he gets traded, retires or whatever... I'll jump off Tower Bridge!!

I've tried to blog it directly from youtube but it won't let me, either it's the wine from last night that is making me struggle or something's wrong with the site. Whatever...

Tube Thoughts and Opportunity Cost Theories - Catching up on the idea

2006-09-14T00:13:00.000+01:00

Here´s a theory that catches up on my previous one. Nice to see there´s people sharing "crazy" thoughts :)

Bueno, pues paso a desglosar mi teoría sobre las relaciones personales en un sentido muuuy amplio, no reducidas a relaciones amorosas, sino amigos, padres, compis de trabajo etc. Se trata por supuesto de una teoría abierta a cambios y contribuciones. Siempre se tiende a pensar que son algo muy arbitrario, muy de los sentimientos, muy difícil de predecir, pero yo creo que de forma adecuada se puede cuantificar tu relación con una persona concreta, y luego en función de esos números predecir si te vas a llevar bien o no con ella. Que los sentimientos que te inspira en una persona son cuantificables es algo que nuestro amigo Markeras ya ha demostrado de forma magistral en el post (ver link).

Ahora bien, imaginemos que definimos un numero N de conceptos que pueden definir una relación: concepto1, concepto2,...,conceptoN. La definición de esos conceptos (atracción física, empatía, conveniencia de la relación...) para cada tipo de relación (pareja, amistad, trabajo, familia...) queda fuera del ámbito de esta parrafada. Ahora de acuerdo a algún método estándar parecido al que desgrana el gran Marcus en el post se puntúa la relación en base a todos esos conceptos: concepto1=p1, concepto2=p2,..., conceptoN=pN. Un detalle importante es que con este método cada puntuación va entre -A y +A, es decir existen puntuaciones negativas y el 0 significa ni frío ni calor. Una vez hecho esto es posible trasladar la relación que estamos puntuando al maravilloso universo del Álgebra. ¡Esperad no dejéis de leer porque esa palabreja os traiga malos recuerdos! Pensad que por una vez os va a servir para algo. Bueno o no.

A ver, el caso es que ya que tenemos puntuada la relación en base a esos N conceptos es posible crear un vector V de puntuacion para esa relación donde V=(p1, p2,...,pN). Enhorabuena, en este punto ya has conseguido reducir la relación que estás estudiando a un punto en un espacio N-dimensional. Para hacer esto pelín más claro vamos a hacer como los buenos profes y a ver un ejemplo.

Ej:

· Relación de pareja

Conceptos a puntuar (recuerdo que su definición queda fuera del ámbito de esta parrafada):

Concepto1: Atracción física

Concepto2: Empatía

Puntuaciones:
P1: 7 sobre –10...+10
P2: -1 sobre –10...+10
Vector puntuación: V=(7,-1)

Representación Gráfica

Interpretación: Relación animal. Hay una atracción brutal, pero en cuanto os ponéis a hablar dos minutos os tirais los trastos a la cabeza. Esto no es más que un ejemplo en el que quedan abiertos qué conceptos hay que tener en cuenta para cada tipo de relación, y cómo puntuarlos.

Ahora viene el siguiente paso. Imagínate que hacemos eso con todas las relaciones de pareja que una persona ha tenido y además, pintamos cada una de esas flechas con arreglo a una escala de grises, que va a indicar cuánto ha calado en el individuo esa relación. Por ejemplo, para la relación de antes, fue una relación muy animal y todo eso pero duro un mes al final del cual ya estaba aburrido como una ostra de la susodicha en cuestión. Eso se pone de color oscuro. Pero imaginaros que esa relación animal que duró un mes, todavía te provoca escalofríos de placer cuando la recuerdas, sientes nostalgia de que acabara y guardas buen recuerdo. Pues entonces la pones de color claro. Cuando termines, tendrás un conjunto de vectores coloreados en un espacio N-dimensional, volviendo a nuestro ejemplo de antes que es 2-dimensional, tendríamos algo así:

Y con ese simple dibujito podemos averiguar un montón sobre nuestras relaciones de pareja, sobre lo que buscamos, sobre lo que queremos, y sobre el coste de oportunidad (y aquí enlazamos con la teoría del gran Marcus) que supondría perder una relación que tenemos. ¿Qué no os lo creéis? Vamos a ver, la persona que ha hecho el dibujito de ahí arriba ha tenido cuatro relaciones. La más clarucha (la que más le da igual) corresponde con puntuación alta de empatía y baja de atracción física, sin embargo las flechas son más oscuras cuanto más alta es la puntuación en atracción física. No te jode estarás pensando, y para ese viaje tanta alforja! Un segundo, porque para este tipo es tan importante la atracción física que las relaciones le marcan incluso aunque tengan puntuación “empatía” negativa (véase la flecha del cuadrante superior izquierdo). Vamos nuestro hombre es un Sawyer de la vida (quien vea Lost sabrá de qué estoy hablando), es un hombre todo hormona. Por ello si algún día nuestro Sawyer va y se encuentra con una Kate de la vida con la que tiene mucha atracción física y además algo de empatía, el coste de oportunidad de perder eso es altísimo porque está justo en la región de la perfección, esa zona del espacio N-dimensional donde se encuentra tu relación ideal. En cambio, si nuestro Sawyer está con una digamos Shanon de la vida que sí, que le pone y tal, pero con la que no se pone de acuerdo ni sobre el color de las estrellas, el coste de oportunidad de ir y liarse con otra es más bien bajo, porque su relación con Shanon está bien lejos de su “región de la perfección”. Porque de eso va toda esta parrafada, de que cada uno de nosotros busque su “región de perfección” para las relaciones de pareja, y dejemos de culparnos cuando una relación no ha ido bien. Si no ha ido bien, seguro que es que esa pareja estaba muy lejos de lo que tú estabas buscando.
Todo esto de aquí no es más que un primer esbozo, para ser algo completo habría que: - Enumerar los distintos tipos de relaciones - Para cada una de ellas, enumerar los conceptos que la definen - Para cada concepto, definir un método de puntuación
Complicado pero...

"Isra"

("Isra" has become a good friend of mine, since we first were sat next to each other in our pre-ICEX Master back in 2004... He´s a proven and worthy "soldier" in those 1 on 1 night adventures through Madrid nightlife, whenever I go back to "Holy Spain". It´s a pleasure to have him sharing his thoughts in my blog as the first columnist to do so.)

2006-09-11T10:30:00.000+01:00

Los Nikis - El imperio contraataca

Utterly hilarious!! Love it!!!

10. September - Canterbury Cathedral

2006-09-10T23:35:00.000+01:00

Canterbury Cathedral... F*cking aweeeeeesome!!!!

9. Septmeber - The new flatmate

2006-09-09T23:32:00.000+01:00

That´s Lynn, my new flatmate. A real cool young lady.

Now that's a fun flatmate for a change... Thumbs up all the way!

8. September - Weird pic

2006-09-08T23:30:00.000+01:00

Bananas FLOAT!!! Never ever would have guessed that...

7. September - Pic

2006-09-07T23:25:00.000+01:00

This one is dedicated to my mum... :)

Most deseperate job application... ever?

2006-09-07T10:56:00.000+01:00

http://www.gumtree.com/london/05/5365605.html

... my mate's mate. Anyone who might help out?!? :P

6. September - Pic du jour

2006-09-07T07:20:00.000+01:00

Upon my new flatmate´s arrival this Yuca is now a new member of 12A, too...

5. September - Picture of the Day

2006-09-05T22:58:00.000+01:00

In the newspaper today!!

I know someone who would bid if he had some spare bucks... :P

Campeones, campeones, oe oe oe

2006-09-05T10:53:00.000+01:00

Some pictures of last night's celebration in Madrid:

Would have loved to be there, oh well, at least we won!!!!

4. September - Picture Nr. 4

2006-09-04T22:47:00.000+01:00

Remembering Lady Diana, in Kensington Gardens...

(Kensington Palace at the start of my daily "park-walk")

"Queen" said it best: WE ARE THE CHAMPIONS... OF THE WORLD!! SPAIN WINS GOLD!!!!!

2006-09-03T20:23:00.000+01:00

España are Basketball World Champions! Finally!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

y es que "... en Las Vegas no hay Black Jack, sólo se juega al Cinquillo y la moda es en ROJO y AMARILLOOOOOO, lolo lololo seremos de nuevo un Imperio lolo lololo..."! Well, at least we kick a$$ and rule the World in Basketball!! :)

... and for 4(!) years no one will be able to take the pi$$ out of us because WEEEEEEEEEEE AAAARE THE CHAAAAAAAAMPIONS my friend... no time for loosers cause WE ARE THE CHAMPIONS... OF THE WOOOOOOOOOOORLD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

P.S. We are even frontpage on ESPN's NBA section these days...

3. September - Picture Nr. 3

2006-09-03T16:40:00.000+01:00

London and its cars... Spotted this Lamborghini having a walk around the neighbourhood.

2. September - Picture Nr. 2

2006-09-02T23:31:00.000+01:00

On a random Cambridge bridge with my rather untrendy rainjacket...

1. September - First picture

2006-09-01T23:24:00.000+01:00

... having some beers Friday night with my mate Cases who came over to London for the weekend. This is the table of a cool pub around the corner. Now, does the thing on the right side of the table resemble a pork or what?!?! :-

SPAIN IN THE FINAL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

2006-09-01T13:58:00.000+01:00

I just had to express my happiness!!! It’s fuck*ng awesome!!!!!!! YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!! Best part is most of these guys are member of the 1999 Junior World Championship squad that defeated the USA in the final: Pau Gasol, Juan Carlos Navarro, Felipe Reyes, Berni Rodríguez y Carlos Cabezas!!! Life is beautiful today!!!

Cheers everyone!!!!!

Gasol: Spanish Miura

Team USA and another predicted disaster

2006-09-01T10:44:00.000+01:00

Well, yet again, Team USA has failed in its mission to win Gold and some of its lost prestige back. Greece, under former player legend Yannakis, proofed too strong for the shaky Americans and will go for the title after just winning the European Championship last year. Solid team, committed players… way to go! Props to Greece!

"Baby Shaq" showing why the Clippers

drafted him back in 2003 at the age of 18.

London Camera Tour

2006-08-31T11:24:00.000+01:00

From tomorrow, and for the whole month of September (and maybe October) I've come up with the idea of posting a picture a day, with a short comment, on this blog. I'll be taking it with my own camera and it should help giving a better insight view of my day to day life in this city. Well, sort of, at least...

Check it out from tomorrow then.

Unbelievable Story of the Day: Kidnap girl escapes after 8 years!

2006-08-25T10:38:00.000+01:00

It happened in Austria, 8 (!!!!) years ago. In 1998 a 10 year old girl got kidnapped in Vienna and despite extensive search, neither the family nor the authorities ever again knew from young Natascha Kampusch. Yesterday, at the age of 18, she managed to escape from the dungeon where she had been kept all these years. Her kidnappercommitted suicide the same day, just hours after he found his “prisoner” had escaped. It turned out the guy, Wolfgang Prikopil, a communications technician, was questioned after Natascha’s disappearance on her way to school as the owner of a white van. A school friend said she had seen Natascha getting into one the day she vanished. Now, you tell me if this guy does not look like a f*cking weirdo (here’s a pic, scroll down: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/5284048.stm) …

Soul Asylum’s “Runaway Train” comes into my mind here… and the usual Shawshank quote du jour "Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies".

Sad story with a “feel good” ending, sort of…Obviously no one will be able to make up for what this girl has gone through and its severe, I would assume, psychological consequences but she’s free now, in good condition according to reports, and hopefully she’ll eventually be able to enjoy the rest of her "new life"...

Here's some footage: http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/europe/08/24/austria.missing/index.html

Where is the love... for football?

2006-08-16T12:17:00.000+01:00

I can't seem to win it back... I just don't enjoy it anymore. Maybe it's temporary, it could be that I've lost it completely but I give a crap about it these days.

And each Spain peformance like yesterday's puts me one step closer to wanting to quit watching football. In the past, every time I saw Raul in the national jersey it made me sick! Now? I don't even care anymore. Further, I did not even realize Spain had played yesterday (and not today) to only find out in the newspaper this morning!!

I was actually considering flying over to Iceland for the November qualifier but maybe I'll just go there for touristic purposes only, any other time... (it's in 2007, hehehe, just found out...)

Quick August thoughts

2006-08-15T13:30:00.000+01:00

Here I go with the “traditional” Weekly Roundup, this time, to the beat of “Use your Illusion”:

First of all, congratulations to my long-time pal MAGALI, who just married over the weekend!!! Best wishes in your new life… and lucky him, I gotta add!!! :)

Then, everything’s been a bit of a hassle as of lately, starting with my flatmate leaving and what seemed to be an easy task laying ahead: Finding a new one.
Man, first of all, my ex-flatmate gave me sort of a very short lead-time to find a replacement. Then, when she moved out, she literally left the place “como un solar” that we’d say in Spain, which means she took everything with her, cut the Internet connection with a 3 day notice (sweet) and sometimes I still think I’ve to be thankful that she left me my freakin’ pillow!!! So there I am, needing to find a replacement ASAP not to have to move to the park or another flat share for just 3 months, both options being very, very little appealing. I took it quite easy, and so it went at the beginning – no response.
I put myself a bit more into it and then I received a few replies, including one from a Swedish girl, who seemed to be nice and genuinely interested. Positive impression from her emails and the 2/3 times we talked on msn. It was sort of a gut feeling that she’d be cool. Well, she eventually came over to see the room and everything went smoothly. Plus she hates cheese, too!! HA!!!! Now she’ll will move in come September.
That’d be sorted out then, after a few intense and rather exasperating negotiating sessions with the landlord… At times it looked more difficult than the chance to lure Ronaldinho or Claudia Schiffer in as my flatmate. You figure it!
Now I only need to find an extended job here in London, but that’ll eventually sort our itself, “a la Andy Dufresne”… ;)

Then, my mate Jiménez came over from Oxford, where he’s improving his English skills. Only Saturday and Sunday though but it was nice to have an old buddy around. We even went out on Saturday with two other mates, my Cypriot mate Phivos aka “El Bandolero” and el “Buitre” (the vulture)… Typical evening, a few pints, a cigar, some clubbing and coming back home late, towards 3am, which YES, is late for London, at least if you are not going to the big venues. Sunday was more of a touristy day then…

Then, here’s a link to my mate Valerdi’s thoughts about getting mature… and life in general. Quite an inspirational new age philosopher, much recommended!

European Championships also came to an end with Spain kicking some serious a$$ and winning 11 medals!! HA! Ahead of GB in the medal table, which was fun, too! Other than that, the Athletics, much as Cycling, seems to be under constant doping suspicion which is bad. On the bright side, Athletes like Carolina Klüft still give these Championships the extra kick :P She won the decathlon easily and then wasn’t able to grab another medal in the long jump (6th) or the Swedish 4x100m relay as she competed with a taped ankle. Great competitor with style!

I also watched REQUIEM FOR A DREAM on Saturday. Quite depressing stuff, but maybe it had to do with the timing as well (a grey Saturday afternoon)… It’s basically about 4 characters living in Brooklyn, the mum (Ellen Burstyn), her son (Jared Leto), his girlfriend (Jennifer Connelly) and his best mate (Marlon Wayans) who f*ck it up badly because of their drug addictions. The movie itself is good, very good actually, some very strong scenes, educational value, very good acting (I personally believe Connelly absolutely nails her performance and Burstyn is awesome, too) and on top of it a powerful soundtrack. Still, it’s utterly brutal the way it evolves and it got a few “f*cking oath” out of my mouth whilst laying on the couch watching it, which was odd, cause I’ve not reached the point yet where I talk to myself. Some scenes towards the end where Jared Leto pushes off are just “yikes”, not for everyone, definitely… All in all a GOOD movie, the more I think of it, the better but I wouldn’t wanna watch it again for some time.

Rating: A solid 8.5.

Today feels completely like “November Rain”, the weather, life, everything… but then again, nothin’ lasts forever, even gold November rain…

Tube Thoughts & 2

2006-08-10T08:41:00.000+01:00

Visto que mi teoría del Coste de Oportunidad aplicado a las relaciones de pareja parece gozar de cierta aceptación popular, especialmente por las bellas tierras de Castilla y León, en esta segunda entrega me propongo a desglosar el método de valoración de tu pareja, con el fin de que el lector pueda salir de dudas, y saber a ciencia cierta, si alcanza ese número mágico que es el 8.
Hay que tener en cuenta, como ya mencioné en mi anterior post, que el valor es ajustable a las necesidades y exigencias de cada uno. Es decir, si eres un perdido de la vida y te conformas con que tu novia sea pasable y de vez en cuando tengas algún “highlight” con ella, igual eres de esos que se conforma con un 6; o por ejemplo, si normalmente cuando sales, porpillar no pillas ni la gripe y el amor te es esquivo, probablemente en cuanto te veas con mínimas chances con alguna, aunque te caiga mal, te maltrate y sea más fea q Pozí (grande él), igual tu número mágico es el 4. En este caso casi mejor que dejes de leer este breve manual, porque como dicen aquí “you are not worthy of thee” o lo que es lo mismo, eres un lamentable de la vida y lo tuyo es tajarte a Dyc el finde y ver si suena la flauta y pillas con la más fea del lugar, probablemente una tajada de mal que vaya peor que tú y encima te haya entrado porque eras el único tipo en aquel antro de mala muerte…
Lo peor de conformarse con un 4, un 5 o un 6 es que volvemos al principio, es decir, el individuo en cuestión no tendría en cuenta el concepto básico al que hacemos referencia, es decir, el Coste de Oportunidad. Porque, por muy desesperado que estés, para que el valor que a ti te proporcione bienestar y felicidad con tu pareja sea un 4, mejor es renunciar a esas unidades de felicidad (si es que las hay) con la pestuza de turno y quedarte soltero, ganando en unidades de dignidad, felicidad y satisfacción personal a largo plazo, todo sea dicho.
Después de este previo, aunque algo espeso, preludio, allá vamos. Cinco son las categorías a tener en cuenta y entre todas suman 10 puntos, el áximo alcanzable, es decir, Michael Jordan, aplicando la analogía de mi teoría inicial, o esa novia, si la hay, que es espectacular y encima te invita a ver a los Celtics de Paul Pierce!! Estamos, no? Allá voy pues:

BIENESTAR en el día a día, empatía, el sentirse bien con la pareja: 4 puntos.

A ver, de esto que pasas 4 semanas seguidas con tu pareja, en plan sin separaros, todo el día juntos y seguís estando muy bien, apenas discutís, tenéis gestos amorosos, etc., en ese caso todo va viento en popa. De todos modos, para poder valorar con un 4 en este apartado, hay que haber vivido con la pareja y poder ver de este modo, cómo es el auténtico día a día. Sino la valoración máxima aceptada es un 3.5. El día a día es importante para comprobar el aguante de uno: por ejemplo, si uno no acaba hasta los cataplines porque la persona XXXX deja todo hecho un asco, porque vaya a su puta bola pese a estar viviendo contigo o porque le huelan los pies, perderíamos unidades de bienestar frente a tensiones, estrés y mal humor. Así que aquí es importante no traicionarse a si mismo y restas décimas por todos aquellos pequeños detalles para los que uno piense “joooderrrrrrr, manda huevos” o “cagüen diez, con lo tranquilo que estaría yo a mi bola". Si estos pensamientos se reproducen muy a menudo: CHUNGO!!! Si están a la orden del día no pasamos del 1.5!!! Si ya hay discusiones y todo lo demás, buah, apaga y vámonos, estás perdido y es difícil que puedas compensar en las demás categorías. Aquí se trata de encontrar la armonía en pareja, para todo lo demás amistades y/o amantes, tampoco es bueno comerse el tarro demasiado. Es decir, habría lo suyo sería aproximarse a un 3 en este apartado. Buen rollo constante, felicidad por poder amanecer junto a la pareja y discusiones (constructivas a poder ser) y muy de vez en cuando.

SATISFACCIÓN VISUAL, es decir, lo buena/o que esté la pareja: 1.5 puntos

Esta valoración es bastante subjetiva y somos muy adeptos a perder la perspectiva con facilidad. La persona en cuestión no ha de ser Top Model, no vamos a eso, simplemente con que una sonrisa, una mirada te seduzca debería ser suficiente para sumar… medio punto!!! A ver, q no somos una ONG, no vale eso de “hoy te veo super guapa, como brilla tu pelo, me tienes encandilado” y al día siguiente pensar “joder, vaya ruina, está hecha el pito…” un poquito de seriedad. Si tienes dudas se siente, no llegas ni al 0.75, ahora, si quieres engañarte a ti mismo, allá tú y tu conciencia. Lo suyo sería puntuar por encima del 1 en este apartado, más que nada porque estamos hablando de alguien al q potencialmente veremos 24/7 y si bien, como dijo un jefe mío un día “the day you stop looking, you´re dead”, también es verdad que en la relación debería darse ese punto de “mira que mona”, más a menudo que el “joeeee, la nueva de mi curro está de buenaaa. Y no veas la de la barra del Pachuli el otro día… y tu prima Encarni, qué pasad…”. Armonía, equilibrio y pensamientos positivos para con la pareja más a menudo que para con las no parejas!!! Lo que enlaza directamente con el siguiente punto…

… el famoso Factor “FLIRTING” combinado con los factores “PÁJARA o PERDER EL RUMBO”: 1 punto

Aquí se combinan varias circunstancias:

- En primer lugar, es conveniente intentar evitar el que se te vaya la mirada cuando vas con la novia (o novio), porque pase un pibón espectacular. Es decir, que te marques una pájara digna del mismísimo Perico Delgado (un genio por otro lado) y pierdas el norte de mala manera delante de tu pareja debido a tu bochornosa actitud de fichar mientras vais cogidos de la mano!! Muy mal!!! Es como ser un Landis de la vida. Primero la pájara (fichar a otro/a) y luego intentar remediarlo perdiendo los papeles con explicaciones del tipo “no, verás, es que tomé birra la noche antes e la etapa de Morzine y por eso mis valores de testosterona son mayores de lo normal” (ya, ya…) o lo que en vuestro caso sería un “no, no, no te creas, si estaba mirando el escaparate aquel…" Este desliz puede provocar serios mosqueos y resta en varias categorías; en vez de sumar un 1 por ser un tío fiel y sensato, no llegas ni al 0.2!!!! Ojo también con llevar demasiadas copas y estar rodeado por lobas, que aquí servidor ya ha tenido malas experiencias al respecto, aunque tampoco es cuestión de entrar en detalle para no perder la credibilidad del todo y acabar aparentando ser un ZP de la vida…

En segundo lugar, encontraremos el Factor Flirting. Si bien es cierto que un poquito de flirteo no hace mal a nadie, cada uno debe saber medir sus propias facultades para no acabar yendo demasiado lejos y caer en la trampa de pillarse por otro/a cuando se tiene pareja. Pensamientos o afirmaciones del tipo: “jope, mi compi de piso sí que mola, me encanta hacer planes con ella” o “es que esta tía es la leche, me encanta su personalidad, es la vidaaaaaa” o incluso “he vuelto a quedar con mi compañera del curro/la universidad para tomar algo después del trabajo/después de clase… sí ya sé que es la tercera vez esta semana pero es que con ella desconecto de pm!!” son nefastas para la relación porque consciente- o inconscientemente estás flirteando y si encima te dan bola, la cosa irá a mayores en un 95% de los casos!!! Estáis avisados!!

Así que, como se puede observar, el punto no se adjudica por flirtear, sino por todo lo contrario, por no tener siquiera ganas de ello!!! En todo caso, flirtear con conocidas demasiado a menudo, tener pensamientos impuros con desconocidas y ver pibones en todas las esquinas no es buena señal. Esto querría decir que en “casa” no encuentras lo que anhelas o que simplemente eres un salido de la vida, que también podría ser…

El LARGO PLAZO, o lo que es lo mismo: Compromiso. Esta es chunga de afrontar porque a pocos nos gusta perder nuestra libertad e inocencia: 2 puntos

Si estando en una relación te planteas en demasiadas ocasiones, si realmente estás a gusto con tu pareja: Ruina!!! No llegas al 50% en este apartado. Si encima piensas “buah, de momento vamos a seguir tirando y Dios dirá”: Directamente olvídate y dedícate a otra cosa!! Las cosas como son, que ya no estamos en edades de instituto para andar con chorradas. Sí, es cierto que a algunos nos cuesta madurar y también es verdad que no hay que tomarse la relación como una atadura eterna y que es recomendable ir paso a paso, pero vamos, una cosa es montar algo de la nada, siendo una persona consecuente, y con cierta perspectiva de que pueda salir bien el tema y otra es ir de loco suicida por las relaciones, desmontando antes de montar siquiera, por miedo a que un mísero ”sí, me apetece un cine” suponga un compromiso.
Lo ideal? Empezar a ver las cosas con un poco de claridad y decir “pues sí, si tuviera que pasar un laaaaargo tiempo en el futuro con una persona, sería con ésta”, entonces nos aproximaremos al 1.5. Siempre habrá dudas, pero si se tiene la conciencia tranquila, y las cosas, aunque poco a poco, se hacen bien y con ganas, no debería de haber problemas… a no ser que te pase la de cualquier equipo de basket cuando va a jugar a Grecia, es decir, que te roben, a la novia en este caso, o que se cruce en tu vida la compañera de piso o trabajo mágica y lalíes… También podría darse el caso que a tu pareja, que también estará evaluando el coste de oportunidad de pasar el tiempo contigo, no le salgan las cuentas… Entonces me temo que “goodbye my friend”. Ya sabéis, como dice el bueno de Baz Luhrman “Your choices are half chance, so are everybody elses”.

THE MAGIC MOMENTS, esos momentos especiales con la pareja, cómo son, de verdad son distintos, te aportan ese plus de felicidad, o apenas notas la diferencia comparando con situaciones del día a día?: 1.5

Muy fácil: Tu novia llega a Barajas (singular aeropuerto donde los haya) después de 4 meses sin haberla visto. Llevas esperando 2 horas porque te ha dicho mal la hora de llegada, a lo que habría que sumar la tediosa espera de ver que no sale, cuando su vuelo ha aterrizado hace 40 minutos (las maletas y Barajas, eh?). Encima habéis discutido la noche anterior y tu vecina te está poniendo on fire… Pues bien, si cuando tu pareja sale por la puerta de salida y sientes esa sensación especial, se te pone la piel de gallina, y piensas “joder, sí que tenía ganas de verla” y le das un superabrazo y…, omito el resto por no ser demasiado empalagoso, entonces puntuarás alto aquí. Algunos de los otros “momentos especiales” ya podéis imaginaros cuáles son, eh pillines” ;) ? Si no hay feeling ahí, malo, malo, malísimo…
Aquí también se podría incluir el hecho de ser feliz por volver a casa con la pareja pero esto más bien entra en el apartado de “Bienestar en el día a día”, a no ser que en el curro te exploten de mala manera y llegar a casa y encontrarte a tu pareja despierta sea un acontecimiento especial!!

TIRO LIBRE ADICIONAL. Estos son esos puntillos extra, esas decimillas que pueden llevarte a llevar a valorar a tu pareja con un 9.5 o incluso un mágico 10, así que cuidadín con regalar puntos como churros, que esto no es Eurovisión: 1 punto extra

Finalmente estas esos detalles de pureza, esos momentos estelares: “el día que empezaban las vacaciones de verano en el colegio”, “el que se suspendiera un examen que no tenías preparado”, “tu primera paga en el curro”, “esa Champions de París” (ver posts del mes de mayo), “ese gol de Alfonso a Yugoslavia”, o “el de Maradona a Inglaterra”, “el primer beso”, “un amanecer en la playa”, “una farra inolvidable con los colegas en el Starkbierfest”, “una tarde/noche de Aprés Ski beim Moserwirt” (eh, Valerdi?) o “esas aventuras mundialistas…”. No me enrollo más, a lo que voy es que si tu pareja te puede aportar ese plus de categoría y convertir algunos momentos de tu vida en magia, bien habrá merecido alguna décima extra en tu valoración. Cada detalle especial se valorará con una décima adicional y habría que contabilizar, para ser consecuentes en nuestra valoración, únicamente las décimas sumadas en el período de un año natural: Que tu novia te regala la play (+0.1); que encima te ha conseguido entradas para el Madrid-Barça (+0.1); que por sorpresa te ha organizado un viaje a Praga (en el que no vale cagarla y que se te vaya la mirada, ojo!!) otra décima para la buchaca… y así hasta un máximo de 1 puntito… por la cara!! Fácil, no?

Y de momento esto es todo, se aceptan críticas y comentarios…

Por cierto, los que penséis que cabría la posibilidad de pasaros del máximo de 10 puntos:

a) o no habéis tenido novia en vuestra vida…
b) u os han lavado el tarro de mala manera y necesitáis ayuda de alguien INMEDIATAMENTE!!!

Eso, o que simplemente no tenéis las agallas de realizar una valoración objetiva de vuestra pareja y enfrentaros de este modo al Coste de Oportunidad y al temido “Y si me estoy perdiendo algo por estr con…”. Peor para vosotros!!!

Saludos y a hacer cuentas…

Tribute to Maradona, the best player in the history of football

2006-08-07T23:12:00.000+01:00

... he´s the reason why I became a Barça fan, so go figure it:

The commentator, Víctor Hugo Morales, is unbelievable and makes the goal, amazing by itself, even more beautiful!!

Paul Pierce tribute

2006-08-06T23:55:00.000+01:00

Here goes a video of the best NBA player theses days; Boston Celtics, and former Kansas University and Inglewood High School superstar: PAUL PIERCE - Enjoy!

TUBE THOUGHTS: OPP COST THEORIES

2006-07-27T15:33:00.000+01:00

El coste de oportunidad y su aplicación a las relaciones de pareja

El coste de oportunidad básicamente se define como la cantidad a la que hay que renunciar de un bien o servicio para obtener una unidad adicional de otro.

A parte de miedos, inseguridades, mujeres que empiezan a pensar en tener hijos etc., lo que pasa con las parejas, es que normalmente, cuando ya llevas un tiempo, no logras apreciar, valorar, incluir en tus cavilaciones, comidas de tarro y demás dudad de pareja que puedas tener el famoso e importante coste de oportunidad!!
En las relaciones de pareja, normalmente, por miedo a hacer daño, por sentimiento de culpabilidad o por lo que sea no dices “joder, esta tía me mola, voy a echarle un par”. No es como ir a comprar un filete a Waitrose y que te sepa medio bien y decir un día: “voy a probar el de Sainsbury’s, me cuesta un 40% menos y aunque mi paladar se resienta un poco, como el de Waitrose sólo me satisface en un 60%, prefiero renunciar a unidades en la “escala Gourmet”, en favor de un aumento de mi economía”. Con las parejas esto es inviable. Normalmente porque uno/a se pregunta si el “filete le puede saber peor” y encima entra en juego la posibilidad de arriesgar y acabar quedándose on two candles, con remordimientos y jodido de la vida…

De todos modos, yo abogo por el Carpe Diem, claramente, y si las tías pensaran en base al coste de oportunidad “Llevo 3 años con mi novio, y en una escala del 1 a 10 de satisfacción en una relación, me satisface en un 5,7. No obstante, este otro tío me mola más, aunque le acabo de conocer, y sé tengo una probabilidad de que una relación salga bien a medio-largo plazo de únicamente pongamos un 15%. No obstante, en una sola noche/semana el nuevo me va a dar placer y me va a hacer ser feliz de una manera tal que va a compensar para bien la bajísima escala de satisfacción con mi actual novio. Así que aunque a los 7 días la “relación” con el “nuevo” se vaya al garete, me la juego…” Pero claro, no es el caso y por eso se ve a tanto hideputa indocumentado, majadero y gentuza con novias de bien… y viceversa!!!

Hay que tener en cuenta que esta teoría de que el coste de oportunidad no entra en juego a la hora de valorar a la pareja sólo se cumple si el nivel de satisfacción es menor de un 8. Es decir, si tú estás contento con tu novia a niveles próximos al 80% o más, obviamente la regla del coste de oportunidad se invierte y dices “para qué cojones me voy a meter en camisas de once varas, si al final la posibilidad de salir perdiendo es muy grande y mi pareja actual es la vida.” Es decir, pongamos que tu novia està megabuena, es megamaja y atenta contigo, sabes que no quiere a otro, estàs a gusto de la leche con ella, llegas del curro a casa y sólo quieres verla a ella, te mola hacer planecillos los findes con ella, ella te deja tu libertad y ya la repera, se abona contigo a los CELTICS. No vas a dejar todo esto de lado para conseguir una unidad adicional de placer que no te va a llevar a ningún lado!! Tampoco es plan de perder del todo los papeles!!! Que somos tíos, pero no gilipollas!! (Hay que tener en cuenta que si se cumple todo lo anterior, eres el tío más afortunado del mundo y tu valoración debería ser de 10/10, sino, eres un cabrón!!!)

Ya han surgido preguntas sobre por qué un 8 es la marca a tener en cuenta. Cada uno debe medir este valor en función de sus propias inquietudes y sus ganas de vivir la vida! Bajar del 8 se acerca peligrosamente a la mediocridad a mi modo de ver, pero cada uno es libre de ver las cosas como quiera…

En conclusión, hay que evitar ser un Stu Inman de la vida (legendario GM de los Trailblazers, por lo malo…) y echarle ganas al tema y jugársela un poquito de vez en cuando. Nunca debería repetirse un: “And with the number two pick in the 1984 NBA Draft, the Portland Trailblazers select Sam Bowie…”. Jordan fue elegido en el número 3 pq el amigo Stu ya tenía en su equipo a Clyde Drexler a otro escolta (en mi teoría: la pareja) y no quiso apostar por otro escolta (la nueva/el nuevo) pensando que lo que tenía era suficientemente bueno!! Teniendo en cuenta que Hakeem fue el número uno de aquel draft, una elección legítima, ya que fue el jugador dominante en la NBA entre 1993 y 1995, no vamos a criticar al GM de los Rockets. Sería entrar en terreno pantanoso y comparar a Elle McPherson con Cindy Crawford y tampoco es plan…

Pues eso, que hay que evitar ser un tipo como el General Manager aquel de los Blazers. Para los curiosos: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stu_Inman

Question of the Day: Why do headphones ALWAYS crack?

2006-07-20T11:04:00.000+01:00

... moreover, why do they always start failing when you are listening to the best song or when you need them most, or when you are just starting your journey at 8 am and you have a looong day ahead of you?!?! It freaks me out!!! Just happened this morning again... And the worst thing is no matter how much you spend on them, they always end up broken!

It´s not FRANCE!!!

2006-07-09T22:38:00.000+01:00

... Italy are World Champions!!!!

... au revoir Zinedine Zidane, au revoir Zinedine Zidane...

(13/07/2006 update): Wanna be like him? Here's your link: http://www.break.com/index/zidane_head_butt_game.html

Berlin, Berlin, wir fahren nach... Veneeeeeeeeziaaaaaaa!

2006-07-05T09:34:00.000+01:00

... Italy makes it to the World Cup Final in absolutely spectacular fashion!!!

Grosso...

VS.

... Ballack...

Well, who do YOU think won, looking at the pictures? :)

Killing Coaches: Masters of Collapsing on the Big Stage

2006-07-02T19:15:00.000+01:00

The World Cup´s turning out to be hell on earth. Does it get any worse than the Semi-Finals featuring Germany, France, Portugal and Italy??? Probably not. Well, many times the better team advances to the next round. Not always the case in this edition, where there´s notably been the greatest amount of managers who have KILLED their team´s and nation´s hopes and therefore deserve to be "honorably" nominated for the World Cup 2006 "BIGGEST CHOKING MANAGER" Award. Here they are, some of the biggest "smoke-sellers" in the World of Football, you´ll love´em... hm, at least if you´re Ukrainian, French, German or Portuguese:

5) Kobi Kuhn (Switzerland): Best generation of Swiss footballers probably EVER in his hands. Has done a decent to good job in the qualifying stage. Knows what he´s doing with his defensive minded, Italian like, playing style. The Swiss even could have beaten France in the Group stage and are the only team not to concede a goal in the World Cup!! Everything looks promising so far, so why does he belong on this list? He probably made some minor mistakes against the Ukraine (like playing Hakan Yakin too long when he had only Frei up front, like not giving Behrami a chance, like taking our best penalty specialist out when the game was clearly headed to overtime...) but what puts Kobi on this list are his post game comments. Things like "We´ve learnt a valuable lesson here for the European Championship in 2008", "We have to be proud of the national team...", stuff like that is just unacceptable if you consider the team had played a good first stage and was facing the UKRAINE, a horrible team, for a spot in the Quarter-Finals against Italy, whom they could actually have beaten. So we have one of the Best Swiss Teams ever, they are playing Well, they finish ahead of France in the Group Stage, and they face an easy rival for a place in history and all the manager tells the press is basically that he´s happy with elimination. That he can live with it? He was coaching the better side of the two in his biggest game ever and yet going home looked to be ok... Call me crazy but I just cannot understand this.

4) Carlos Alberto Parreira (Brazil): It was their World Cup to loose and they went home early! Best individual talent in the World Cup and yet displayed horrible performances in most games. Playing your friendlies against some sh*tty Swiss squads helped, what? Another example of a team with really everything in their favour, who failed. At least if a good squad had beaten them... but France??? They should´ve learnt the lesson from the France-Spain game: Guard Henry and Ribery. But no, after a free kick the Henry scores alone on the far post. Clap, clap... What is worse though is that they were unable to create quality football for the whole game. Ronaldinho has looked crap during the whole tournament, same as Ronaldo to be honest. Cafú is completely wahed up, running on fumes, possibly not even a starter on 70% of the rest of the teams, but just when Parreira saw no escape in the France game he had the guts to take out his captain and play Cicinho. What a shame!! In conclusion, poor in game coaching, no gameplan whatsoever and an early exit. Better don´t return to Brazil yet...
3) Luis Aragonés (Spain): He´s been a coach for about 30 years now and never won anything important with the clubs he coached. Given Spains lack of left backs, wing players, etc. his selection of 23 for the World Cup can´t be much critizised. Nevertheless, having started the Tournament in good fashion he changed his lineup for every game, and even the way Spain had played for the decisive game against the French. All of a sudden, Spain showed up with no defensive midfielder (Senna), Raúl in the lineup, a killing move, and basically 6 offensive minded players. The result: Ribery marched through the Spanish defense like a knife through butter and no one ever dared to foul him in order to prevent the equalizer. Would that have happened with Senna on the pitch? I say no! Would that have happened to a team like Italy, Argentina or even England? Never!! Someone would have stopped the French guy, even if it had cost them a yellow or even a red card. Just ask Materazzi, Deco, etc. You are playing for you nation for f*cks sake!!! And no one can make a decisive tackle in that situation??? What worries me is that probably no one even thought about it, and Casillas is to blame here as well. Spain has a lack of mental toughness and commitment in Big Stage Games that is rather exasperating!! It stinks! The players just don´t care (or at least 50% don´t) and these big tournaments seem to be more of a chance for showcasing themselves, instead of going for a WIN Spain has long awaited for... And THAT is a need for the manager to address!! Aragonés failed miserably, found no answer in his substitutions and finally got punished, in part by the referee, in part for his own mistakes... and with it, he killed a nation´s hope for redemption!!!
2) Sven Goran Eriksson (England): What can we say about Sven... Well, his biggest mistake is being ultraconservative. Not that his game plan is thaaaaat bad, at least in theory, but pretending to win a World Cup with no fire power up front will lead you home earlier than expected. Normally about a week before... First he calls up just four strikers, having 2 of them half injured and out of shape. Then Owen injures, Rooney never finds his rythm and Theo wasn´t about to play no matter what. That leaves as with, ouch, Peter Crouch as England´s most in shape striker. Great. He looks less agile than me with a ball on his feet, and they called me Julio Salinas in Germany, so go figure!!!! Not only did Eriksson deny Jenas or Carrick a deserved protagonism in this World Cup in favour of Hargreaves (good game his against Portugal, everything said), but in the decisive moment of the Quarter-Final against Portugal he failed to address the team´s needs and even took Joe Cole, England´s best offensive weapon, out of the contest, in what might rank as his worst move so far. He went for the defensive option when Rooney, a "Hooligan on the Pitch", was sent off and killed his team by taking out Cole. Nice move coach! Here´s a manager who has failed against Brazil, and Portugal twice in a four year time span in situations where his team could/should have won. If his team is winning he kills them by bringing in defensive minded players and thus leaving his squad with no option to come back in case the opponent equalizes, like when he brought in Hargreaves and Phill Neville in Portugal to secure a 1-0 result and his team lost composure completely. There´s certain coaches that just aren´t made for the big stage and one of them is Eriksson, he has always failed and he never ever makes the correct decision in on the verge situations.
1) José Perkerman (Argentina): Last but not least we have this edition´s WINNER for choking and doing a wonderful job in terms of making a contender, probably the favourite to win the Tournament, collapse, when Argentina was 1-0 up and in full control of the game. What he did last Friday is beyond belief... Argentina was the better side of the two… until it scored its goal. From then on, Pekerman, who had done fairly well throughout the World Cup, completely screwed his team, nation, everyone who believed in him and eventually set up the biggest collapse in this WC’s edition. Let’s say it’s legit to try to keep your 1-0 advantage for 30 minutes and you quit attacking the opposite goal. Then why in this world would you take out Riquelme, about the only guy on your starting eleven who can keep the ball and slow everything down, for Cambiasso when there´s still such a long way to go in the second half and you basically just quit attacking Germany´s goal!?! Try to imagine you have the so called New Maradona, teenage shooting star Messi, on your bench, you’re basically relying all your offensive power on counter attacks and maybe a lost ball… So what does Pekerman do? He wastes his last substitution to bring in Cruz (hey, nothing against him!!) and leaves the most talented guy of his squad on the bench in the most important game for Argentina since 1990? It’s easy to know if a guy should be on the pitch or the bench, being the manager: Just ask yourself the following “If you had to put someone out there to save your life, who would it be, whom would you trust?” Looking at the Argentinian bench, the answer seems too easy: Messi!!!! Further, looking at Argentina’s bench at the end of the game was shocking, as there were probably better players sitting on it than out on the pitch...

Random thoughts...

2006-06-29T23:45:00.000+01:00

... it´s a time to think, maybe too much. Ever since arriving in London I´ve tried to figure out what to do in my live or which path to choose. Now, these past weeks have been quite, how could I say, intense, here´s a summary of some of those thoughts and other stuff that recently occured:

- Antoine Walker won an NBA title. Even if it was with Miami, it´s cool. Here´s the guy that I´ve admired most since entering the NBA in 1996. The guy who the few basketball buddies I have could relate me to. It´s been all about Antoine these past NBA years. From the day he was drafted, to the glorious EC Finals, the day he was traded to Dallas, when we brought him back last year for half a season... until his ring with the Heat. I´m just happy for him. Tremendous basketball player. He even holds a record: In the 2002 playoff first round series against Philadelphia, Walker knocked down six 3 pointers in the second quarter alone, the most ever in one quarter of a playoff game.
Really commited to the Celtics as well. And his "wiggle", just awesome. Sometimes you get attached to a player and you don´t know why, with me it´s been Walker and now that he has his ring, it feels good, just that! Congratulations Antoine!!

Flag down!! I just received the following e-mail from my flatmate today:
"Title: Double Loss
Not only Spanish team had not made it to next round... you now also have to take the Spanish flag off your window. Apparently we received some complaints (from neighbours (?), police (?) or God knows who else...)"
Unbelievable!!!! Gotta find out who the little b*tch in my building is. No love for Spain at all...
... I´ve started to think we might be CURSED or something!! I mean, the way out national team always fails, underachieves, gets robbed, etc. is beyond belief. Really!! You can only sense it if you support Spain and maaaaybe a bit if you are an "Engerland, Engerland, Engerland..." fan. Other than that maybe the Dutch have been a bit unlucky but at least they displayed some quality. I was thinking of actually summing up all the Spanish World Cup and European Championship failures over the past 20 years but as I did that with my buddy Cases on the phones yesterday already for like 2 hours. First thoughts of "Will Spain ever get past Quarter Finals in our lifetime?" came up and that´s something considering he´s 33 and I´m 26!!! So instead of torturing myself a bit more, I´ve decided to quit on football... Haven´t checked the Football section of a newspaper in almost 3 days (record!!)... Let´s see how long it lasts. Bets accepted... :P
Other quick thoughts:
I´ll be in Düsseldorf for the weekend next week! Not for the World Cup but for a Rheinparty some of last years colleagues are organising, most notably Pau, Nacho, Jorgito and Dani Nokia... It´s gonna be cool. Last year it was wicked and we even "sold" the word "Chuleten" to a German bloke as a new trendy expression for meat. He even bought into it... Crazy night by all standards! "Zu Spät" song coming up for sure!!! "... doch eines Tages werd´ ich mich rächen..."
Then, I´m still due an update of the Frankfurt-Lautern Road Trip to follow this weekend (hopefully)...

Quote of the day:

2006-06-29T00:27:00.000+01:00

Bill Simmons making draft predictons for the Golden State Warriors and Rudy Gay from UCONN being their possible selection:

WHAT THEY WILL DO: Probably something much dumber ... you know, like pick another guy who looks good on paper and disappears in big games. On the bright side, maybe it was destiny for the Bay Area to have an NBA star named Gay.

Awesome!!!

Gutted!

2006-06-28T10:51:00.000+01:00

... Spain is out of the tournament! I'm absolutely devastated. Two consecutive losses on the big stage!! I'm in the "everything sux" mood. Too many questions with no real answers:

Why in this f*cking world did we play like $hit in the second half?
What was that sh*tty call, that led to France's second goal??? The refereeing has been such a travesty in this World Cup... It's beyond belief!! Henry dove like the damn f*cking ba$tard he is? Damn him!!!!!!!!!!! He's a b*tch!
Why does always the other team seem to be luckier than Spain??? That second goal was a joke!!! It's science fiction that the ball actually went in!!
Why did have to be France who beat us? Does it get any worse in terms of sports rivalry? I don't think so...
Could anything cheer me up these days? Can't think of anything...
Why did Luis Aragones take out Villa?!?!? WTF?!?!?!?
Why is Vieira suck a prick???

Allright, I just hope England, Argentina or Italy, in this particular order win the tournament. If any of the other teams lifts the trophy on the 9th of July, the end of the World might be near as well...

I also feel sorry for my buddies (Nacho, Dani, Cheso and their boss Sanyu) who attended the game. At least the Spanish supporters showed some pride, which the players, who didn't even walk towards the stands, didn't!

Whatever, a big part of football died for me last night... Nothing makes much sense now, so talk to you another time!!!

Switzerland out...

2006-06-27T10:52:00.000+01:00

... and now better Spain makes it to the next round or I don't know what will happen... It was a devastating loss yesterday, against a sh*tty Ukranian squad. The Swiss stood in front of what was the chance of not only their lives but the chance for Swiss fottball to take it one step further, to the next level, and yep, they might have lost on penalties, they might have learnt a few lessons for the 2008 European Championship but in my eyes, they MISERABLY FAILED! Even if they did not get conceeded what looked to be a clear penalty on Streller in the 115th minute, you just need a winning attitute, and as solid they have been defensively throughout the Tournament, they have lacked ambition and confidence as well, as shown in the France game where a win was up for grabs and they failed to create but one chance to score...

It just sux!!! ... and having to watch the outcome amongst English guys supporting the Ukraine and a bunch of Ukrainians didn't help much either. A drepressing ending to what could have been a dream come true!

Hopp Schwiiz... but next time show some more guts!!!!!!

P.S. I'm really pi$$ed!! :(

Frankfurt: City of Angels... and Supergirls don´t cry, Supergirls just fly..

2006-06-25T23:14:00.000+01:00

Helluva weekend!!! Attended the Spain - S. Arabia game in Lautern on Friday and spent Saturday in Frankfurt just watching some football, partying and stuff like that... I gotta say again GREAT atmosphere in Germany!!! It was just spectacular to see how many people responded the day Deutschland played!! And the party mood in Lautern, for being the smallest host city was just as good!! Not to mention the weather, which has been cool, too... and the German are even playing some half-quality football these days. Dream World Cup so far, a pitty Argentina will tellém goodbye next Friday, well, as long as Pekerman takes the likes of Scaloni, Cambiasso, and probably even Saviola, out of his lineup.

Here some pictures:

Frankfurt Skyline with Canary Wharf, Friday morning
Spanish National Anthem (lolo, lolo, lorolo...)

Good old Manolo: A classic!!!

Fan-Park 2 in Kaiserslautern: Reamonn concert...

Fan Park 1 in ´Lautern, a few hours, and 1 conga later. Picture featers Robert Huth look-a-like, if it wasn´t him after all... Still not sure!!!

"Angel" 1: Pancho flying

... Supergirls. "Green Tongue" and Jenny, who was cool because we went through some of the German classics from "Tausend mal berührt..." to "Irgendwie, irgendwo, irgendwann...", songs you might only appreciate if a) You are German or b) You inexplicably started liking these song on one of your trips to the Oktoberfest, during your Erasmus year, etc. and for a reason you cannot explain, you end up playing'em in 95% of your parties... or c) you are so cheap you pretend liking NENA&co. in order to bump into a random German young lady at some random party somewhere in Deutschland...

"Angel" 2: no comments... His girlfriend begged him not to do it, but...

Ximo the Swan!!

Me being a bit of a traitor wearing a German bracelet. This was on Saturday morning. Got a bit carried away and exchanged my Spanish flag for it on Friday nioght :(

Summary of the Trip to follow tomorrow...

WALKER (MIAMI) ARE NBA CHAMPIONS

2006-06-21T10:18:00.000+01:00

... and I even predicted it from the start!!!!! Awesome!!!

Toine, my favourite NBA player, more like an idol since drafted by the Celtics wins his first NBA ring after falling short of making the NBA Finals just twice with his Celtics in the early 2000's. I hope he gest some deserved recognition now, even if he had to turn into a role player in order of being more efficient for the Heat!!!

Update to follow later today, for now, some pics will have to do...

NBA Mock Draft v1.0

2006-06-20T22:57:00.000+01:00

Here´s version 1 of my 2006 NBA Mock Draft (for Top-10 picks). I have to get myself more into the Draft but for now this should do. I´ve the Celtics picking the High School center but I wouldn´t rule out us trading down for Sergio... Well, here my picks:

1. TOR
LaMarcus Aldridge

2. CHI
Andrea Bargnani

3. CHA
Brandon Roy

4. POR
Adam Morrison

5. ATL
Tyrus Thomas

6. MIN
Rudy Gay

7. BOS
Patrick OBryant

8. HOU
Sergio Rodriguez

9. GSW
Cedric Simmons

10.SEA
Shelden Williams

More to follow soon...

Len Bias: Myth & Martyr

2006-06-19T23:37:00.000+01:00

Beautiful article on Len Bias, said to be one of greatest to play the game of basketball... even if he did not participate in one single NBA game. He died from heart failure, due to cocaine abuse, two days after being selected by the Celtics with the #2 pick in the ´86 draft.

Today, exactly 20 years from his death, many who saw him play those days still claim he has been the greatest ever, or that he would have been, had life given him a second chance... This one´s for you, LEN!! Rest in Peace.

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=jackson/060619_bias

NBA Playoffs: Nowitzki Who?

2006-06-19T11:29:00.000+01:00

Dwayne Wade for 43 in Miami's third straight win over Dallas. One more and Antoine will get his ring!!! I'm quite excited!!!!

Vamos MIAMI!!!!

Dwayne Wade ruining Dirk's Birthday Party

Picture of the Day

2006-06-16T09:35:00.000+01:00

The World Cup, just a bit of everything, for everyone... :D

London Round up

2006-06-12T22:19:00.000+01:00

Not much posting as of lately, been a bit sick last weekend and also off to Germany for my first trip to the World Cup... the last one should be Berlin if everything goes according to plan!! :)

Spain beat the Ukraine 4-0 yesterday. Easy game, in part thanks to the lame Ukranians, good win, some incredible goals, considering we´re talking about the always Worlc Cup haunted Spain, and a cool venue and city. Also sunny weather so it was about perfect. We went out until 3 so when I woke up this morning at 6:30 with the "Alcooohol, alcoooohol, alcohol, alcohol, alcohol, hemos venido a emborracharnos, el resultado nos da igual" chant I was about to jump out of te balcony...

Hard trip back to London Heathrow and straight to the office. Good service by DB today for a change! The Leipzig-Berlin track apparently is one of the fastest train tracks in Europe, or that´s at least what two Swiss guys told us on our way to Leipzig. Funny guys and they made the typical Swiss "yeah coming to the Third World..." joke when they spoke of Germany which, as always, was fun! Germans, perfect target for random jokes..

In the plane I had a conversation with someone after about 8 years since my last one... All of a sudden that really cute Polish young lady started talking to me, so our conversation went on for most of the trip which was cool for many reasons:

1) she was the hottest chick in the plane, by far...

2) it´s always fun to talk to someone from a country that you don´t know much about

3) Kataryna, her name, actually turned out to be a nice chatter

4) she looked like Uma Thurman, just about 10 years younger

As I was telling, I got the flu last weekend which led to two the following exchanges:

First one with my boss on Monday:

Him:"You sure you´re OK?"

me:"Yeah man, everything´s fine, I´m still a bit f*cked but getting better..."

Him:"You sure you will be able to travel tomorrow?"

me:"... pretty sure"

Him:"Man you look horrible"

me (thinking): "yeah man, thanks for ruining my Mpnday morning even more..."

On Tuesday when he saw me his comment was "oh, at least you look human today!"

Second one with my ex CECO class-mate Sue who was in London last week and whom I by chance met getting out of the tube at my station. I mean, I knew she was coming here, but come across here randmoly at 9pm, what are the odds? Which should remind everyone not to do sh*t and think you won´t be spotted... I´m just warning you here. Well, the conversation was more or less like this:

Her: "Hey you coming out finally"

me: "agh, cough, I have the flue"

Her: "Oh, and I wanted to introduce you to my Czech friend and some other people"

me: "oooooooh :( that´s too bad"

Her: "yeah, I´ve told her I was gonna introduce her to a tall and dark haired Spaniard" (me, just in case...)

me: "Uffffffffff, Susana, don´t tell mi this stuff about your hot mate when I´m sick..."

Her: "he´s not coming he is ill"

Czech in the background: "tell him we´ll just make him feel better"

me: "Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo..." :.(

What else happend, oh yeah, Swiss drew 0-0 against a sorry French team. A pitty the Swiss didn´t have the guts to give i a more risky go when they were in absolute control of the game from the 60th minute. The French team is well passed its prime and you could even see Zidane(!) arguing with the likes of Gallas and Thuram on the pitch... Still, Switzerland coould have gotten more out of this game if they had someone to put the ball into the net upfront. Senderos was excellent on te Swiss side, where Barnetta and Magnin caused most of the trouble...

Not much more for now, I´m falling asleep... Laterrrr

World Cup Preview: Part I

2006-06-09T16:54:00.000+01:00

The World Cup, probably the worldwide biggest event of the year, is about to start in a couple of hours, so here are my thoughts for the first teams going into action...

GROUP A PREDICTION
1) Germany
2) Ecuador

Germany
Pros: Good individual players such as Ballack, Schweini, Metzelder, Podolski... Home side. They are probably the luckiest football nation in the World, never rule them out in a big tournament even though every possible sign points to a failure... Plus they don´t have a worse team than in 2002 and they made it to the Final then...
Cons: Horrible defense. If they don´t take Huth of their lineup they are f*cked against any team with a quick or technical forward... (wait I´m watching the game preview just now and Huth is not starting...)
Weak Link: Klinsmann: Their coach is a joke!! No game plan nor nothing. Also they rely too much on Ballack...
Tip: Out in Quarter Finals

Costa Rica
No comments here. It´s their fun to be in the World Cup but they have no real chance of actually doing something worthy in the tournament.

Poland

Not sold on them. Could turn out to be a solid team and if Smolarek keeps his scoring touch from Borussia, who knows...

Ecuador

I´ll say they will at least(!) draw Poland in game one if they don´t win at all... Have improved dramatically in the last couple of years and are very strong physically...

GROUP B PREDICTION

1) England

2) Sweden/Paraguay

England

Pros: Good overall team with some great defenders and world class midfielders as well as good strikers and their keeper, Robinson, is quality as well. They have known each other for a while now. Bust with confidence because for many of them it´s their World Cup.

Cons: Ericsson is too defensive minded in my eyes. Fitness concerns for their strikers and only a 17-year old kid with zero experience to come in if either Crouch or Owen go down in the first games. Not sure how they would react to being behind on the scoreboard in a big game...

Weak Link: Beckham. It´s like playing with 10 players. All this "he´s the captain"-, "he´s tha guy to lead us to the Finals"-sh*t is what this guy´s career has been about!!! Like George Best (rest in peace) said a few years ago: "He (Beckham) cannot kick with his left foot, he cannot head a ball, he cannot tackle and he doesn't score many goals. Apart from that he's all right." He is just good for taking free kicks and crossing the ball a few times per game. He is the MOST OVERRATED FOOTBALLER of these days, really!! And if anyone thinks otherwise you´re crazy!!! Have you ever seen him beat someone off the dribble? Create something on the right side? Change a game? Make a team better? NEVER EVER!! You think anyone in Barelona would want to have this guy on our team instead of Ronaldinho... Deco, Eto´o...?!?! But that´s another thing...

Tip: Quarter Finals or Semi-Final

Sweden

Not much hope here. A bit of Larsson in his last World Cup, some nice flicks from always overrated, Kluivert clone, Ibrahimovic, and probably nothing from Ljungberg... Don´t see it for them in this World Cup, sorry.

Paraguay

Maybe good enough for a Best-of-16 run Always fighting but not muchoffense except for Santa Cruz, which isn´t much anyway...

Trinidad & Tobago

One of the funny teams of the Tournament... Don´t expect much from them in terms of success. Anyway, it´s always cool to see a team like this around!!!

NBA FINALS underway

2006-06-09T10:52:00.000+01:00

I could´t post yesterday but my guess was Miami in 6. The Heat didn´t look too good to me yesterday. No game plan, taking bad shots, I don´t know, there were stretches where they just couldn´t figure out how to score. I guess having Jason Williams and GP runing the show doesn´t help much either...
Well, I just hope they still manage to turn the series around, mostly for Antoine Walker, who, as some of you might know, has been my favorite player since joining the league. Come on Antoine show everyone some of your old Celtics Pride and go for the ring!!

Awesome video

2006-06-05T14:36:00.000+01:00

Watch out for the last performer!!! Crazy!!!

What a Goal!!!

2006-06-04T20:00:00.000+01:00

Just check this link. This happened this week in a friendly game between Poland and Colombia!!!

Unbelievable!!!

Random thoughts from Londinium... at 3am

2006-06-04T02:36:00.000+01:00

- Went to Movida yesterday, aweeeeeesome. Found myself alone at the bar at some point towards the end of the night but still managed the night efficiently thanks to the Scandinavian sector...

- Phoenix beating Dallas by 15 in the second quarter... aweeeeeesome!!! (If you ask me, Shawn Marion looks a bit f*cked these days... As if he´d lost a step on his leaping ability...)

- The World Cup is starting in 6 days!!! Can´t wait!!! I still believe in Spain despite this: mms://wmedia.recoletos.es/marca/aporellos3.wmv!! Today we beat Egypt 2-0, "great" performance guys. Well, at least we´ll have the Swiss, as the surprise team of the torunament...

- Miami beat Detroit and Toine is in an NBA Final... Best of luck for him here!!! My buddy Adam, a Detroit native and die-hard Piston might be pi$$ed though... At least the Tigers and Lions are more realiable teams! Ummmhhh.. actually not!! Too bad.

- In our trip last night we went out with Paula (a cool chick from Pamplona) and a former member of Onda Vaselina, Liliana... After some begging she even acceded to sing the "Vuela más alto" chorus. Spectaaaaacular!!!

- Playing basketball today was a mission after going to bed at 5am yesterday!! Couldn´t even lay in one single layup smoothly. Sad, sad, saaad...

- Awesome weather in London today, by the way! Went to Battersea Park and it was wicked!! Whenever the sun is shining here, this city is like the coolest place in the World!! I´m serious!!

Ok, see ya later...

Busy, busy

2006-06-01T10:26:00.000+01:00

Not much action in my blog as of lately... Been home a few days and now work is killing me!! specially yesterday, when I was about to throw my laptop out of the window... I'll be posting again this weekend, hopefully.

Interesting things that have happened these past few days:

- The Bank Holiday weekend in Madrid was cool. It's always nice going back home. Met some friends, partied a bit (a bit too much on Friday...), the usual stuff... The weather was sunny and hot, "same" as in the UK basically... Oh, and the first night, in the first Club, there was a guy who resembled the new look of a botoxed Axl Rose. Aweeeeeeeeesome!!!!!!! Too bad our ol' Axl actually lookes a bit f*cked these days :(

- Pernia replaces del Horno on the national team, that's awesome!!! Del Horno is overrated and his defensive effort is not even average (just ask Mourinho...). Now lets hope Luis doesn't decide to start Antonio Lopez as our left back. Then again, Pernia is just about to join our World Cup squad like 12 days before we face the Ukraine in our first game, which makes me wonder why we don't have a stand-by list as England, for example... Especially considering players ALWAYS get injured before a big tournament! Whatever...

- NBA Playoffs still underway... What the Suns are doing (2-2 vs Dallas) with a 6-man rotation, no big men and playing high speed every game, is beyond reality!!! These guys must be about to collapse collectively any time soon... I just hope they can keep up with their amazing run a few more games, though. Put my $$$ on them to win the title some time back, in August'05.
By the way, anyone missing Amare? Hmmmmmmm...
And then there's Dwyane Wade, who's shooting 0.666(!!!) on the Pistons in a Conference Finals!!! ... And he's averaging 30 points per game. That is SICK!

- This thing about taking planes at around 7am is sh*t. Second time in the past few weeks, last Tuesday... First I almost missed my flight because BA said they had closed the gate when I arrived at the check-in desk. Yeah sure... Then the early morning delkays du jour. What the f*ck?!?!?! How can be delays on the first planes that basically leave an airport in the early morning? Not to mention that the flights to and from London are always packed!!! At least the BA stuff is cool!!! Like'em!!!

- Switzerland 1 - Italy 1. Very young lineup by Kobi Kuhn... Still, decent performance by the soon-to-beat-France-in-the-opening-game Swiss team. That'd be a shocker! :)

More to follow...

Diary of a Champion: Part II

2006-05-24T21:05:00.000+01:00

... ok, here am I, finally, to finish this running diary of the Champions League Final and my trip to Paris. You can find the first part by just scrolling down a bit.

Wednesday Night

9:34pm The score is definitely 1:0 for Arsenal at halftime. It seems like our worst nightmares are coming true... You can see on our faces, somehow, that we´re carrying some baggage for all the lost finals over the years. In the first part even the players, who all season-long have player and looked so confident, seemed a bit hesitant and just for the record, Ronaldinho´s 2 or 3 free kicks from dangerous situations have been the crappiest I´ve seen him take. Something´s not right with the guy...

9:40pm Phone call with my dad (who´s not a Barça supporter like me. It´s quite a strange story why I became a Barça fan when I was 3, but let´s leave that for another moment...). Thing is, he always sort of calms me down when I´m nervous about some sporting event. He basically takes the preassure of the situation and let´s say I walked into the second half with about half the "baggage" of a normal Barça fan. He even said we were playing well, which probably was just a comment to prevent his son from suffering a heart stroke. Whatever...

9:45pm Start of the second half and guess who´s there??? Iniesta!!!! YEAHHHH. Awesome. And even better, Edmilson is out, now that´s the first good sign in a while!!! The kid will take over now!!!

9:52pm The second half has already started and Arsenal is playing so confident and getting out of their own zone with about 2(!) passes!!! C´moooon. It´s not like they are Brasil or something... I can´t believe what I am seing. And their counterattacks are much more dangerous than the preassure we are puting on them!!! "Todo mierda" like my American buddy Olson would say...

10:00pm I´m satrting to think to myself "if we don´t score before the 60-65th minute we might be dead". I don´t know why I always come up with these ideas but I guess it´s an effect of time running out and not really being able to help it. And there goes Ljungberg on one of Arsenal´s counter-attacks and... damn, that was close!!! By the way, it´s pi$$ing it down right now, "awesome" weather for a Champions League Final, yep... When it´s about Barça and Finals I can only think about the "Where is the love, the love, the love, love, love..." song. :.(

10:05pm ...Henry on the run as Arsenal´s left wing on a counter-attack, once again, Puyol tackles but misses the French guy by about 2 miles, Oleguer to help out (which is not saying much, considering the way he´s been playing) doesn´t do any better than his teammate.. and Arsenal "only" forces a corner!!! Jeeeeeeeeeeesus, what the hell was that??? The guy next to me is looking depressed, I try to cheer him up but the effect is about as positive as being a 26-year old single and being offered the chance of dating an 85 year old grandma: -100! And all Arsenal supporters are f*ckingly excited about that corner, which fears the hell out of me!!! ... Barça clears with a header!! "Venga Barçaaaaaaaaa". Suffer-o-meter is on 8.5 out of 10 now, where 10 is passing away...

10:07pm 27th cross into the box by Oleguer, on Barça´s right side, and yet again the same result, NOTHING!!! Oh God, he´s worse than Bolo Zenden back in the Van Gaal era!! I´m desperate now!!! Can someone TAKE HIM OUT, pleaaaaaaseeeee. Barça´s looking better with Iniesta and Larsson who´s come in for the "typical 1700 Dutch painter look-a-like" Van Bommel, who, just by the way, SUX!!!

10:08pm Mr. Canary looks worn down... yikes.

10:09pm WHERE IN THIS WORLD IS DECO?!? He´s been looking like sh*t for about 2 months already!!! But still you want him out there on the pitch and you don´t know why... I´m confused here...

10:10pm Holly sh*t, Henry one on one on Valdés and he misses, HE MISSES!! Unbelieavble!!! He could easily have sealed the game here!!!! I think my heart stopped punding at some moment here... He never misses an easy shot like that, coming across from the left side. ... maybe a bit of "love" for Barça after all??? All this "2-0 situation that could have been but wsn´t" leads to us fans cheering and getting really behind Barça now!!! It´s now or never!! And I´m telling everyone that this was the key moment of the game!!!!! Oh wait, we´re still 1-0 down and 20 to go... But as we all know by now, "Hope´s a good thing", isn´t it?

10:12pm Ronaldinho is starting to make me wanna jump out of my seat and punch him!! Pass the damn ball, don´t try it all yourself!!!! Damn, he´s playing like crap, hideous performance!!! Come on man, you are supposed to be the best player in the World!!!

10:16pm ... and it happens: Larsson with an awesome pass to Eto´o and the Camerunese striker send it home!!!!

GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOLLL!

YESSSSSSSSSSSSSS. All even!!! YES, YES, YES!!!! We´re there!! I knew it!!!! Come onnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn Barçaaaaaaa!!! Everyone just jumped out with an inmense sense of relief!!!! Eto´o is the man!!! Just awesome!!!

10:20pm ... Belletti on the right, ball into the box, he shoots and SCORES, SCORES, SCORES, SCORES, SCORES, SCORES, SCORES, SCOOOOORESSSSSSSSSSS, EVERYONE GOES BONKERS!!!!!!!!

GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOLLL!

We´re just jumping, shouting, high-fiving, hugging each other!!! You just can´t describe the moment!! My buddy in tears and we´re 10 mins. away from being the Champions!!!!!!

10:33pm And the game is up, we won, we won, WE WON!!! Words missing here, we won, we are the champs and no one will be able to take away this moment from us!!!! I can´t believe it!!! "Campeones, campeones, oe, oe, oe" The atmosphere is indescribable!!!

10:35-11:15pm Ongoing celebrations. Belletti is the man of the night!!! Every 3 mins he comes back towards the stands and we cheer, we cheer, we almost cheer him up into the Barça Pantheon!!!

... from here on the night is all about celebrating!! We meet Inma, Dani, Cheso and their boss in a Spanish bar to comment on the game and have a few drinks. Not that Cheso is pi$$ed or anything, hahaha. He tries to hide his dissapointment but can´t really... Dani meanwhile is all excited about Larsson and pi$$ed because "Puyol raising the cup will be the last image to be seen on the video before every Champions League game next season". Yep, and that´s so cool!!! :)

Then we decide to go to a Club called Queen or something similar in Champs Elysées. The place is packed!!! Ideal venue for celebrating, hehe... It´s awesome!!! For a Wednesday, the party mood is incredible. And whenever I take out my Barça flag people start cheering and French Barça "supporters" come out from everywhere... Then there´s the moment someone notices the presence of a Ronaldinha in a Barça shirt in the club, and everyone, even Cheso&Dani start the "Campeones, campeones..." chant! She even comes by with her friend to join the celebration but that´s about it... :D Probably, the "having a girlfriend effect", cause everyone has one, except for me... Now that I think of it, I´m about the only one left single of my group of friends, hmmmm, even the most unlikely character is hooked up... Whatever, being single is cool!!!

Then we get to know this French young lady, Raphaëlle. She comes by spontanously and joins our celebration, even puts on the Barça flag and performs some dances, hehehe. Aweeeesomeee!!! She turns out to be a very cool chick, besides speaking English with a NON-FRENCH accent, which trumps about every other crazy moment of the day!!! Incroyable!

Apart from that, Sanyu´s putting on a show his own way: Jumping up and down to the vibes of music with anti-Barça chants! Cheso vom Alpli is a pissed Real Madrid fan trying to forget what just happened, Inma (a Barça supporter by the way, which automatically earns her 100 points in her score ranking) turns out to be the surprise contributor of the night, keeping pace with everyone else, Dani is busy talking to "Rafaela" and the Canary... well, he´s on another level since St. Denis, experiencing an ecstatic state of Nirvana or something like that ... As for myself, I´m just there, partying, having fun and just seizing the moment and getting carried away...

Finally, Dani and I leave the club at about 5:15, when about everyone else is gone already, with the exception of their boss and the Parisienne girl... From there we go to the apartment, I take a shower and make my way to Charles de Gaulle. The poeple working at the Lufthansa desks are all about quickness, it takes aaaaaages for just 1 passenger to do the check-in!!! I´m going mental now... Fortunately I´m allowed to cut the line, as my plane is about to depart... I arrive at the office in Staines, via Frankfurt, after what seems to be 100 hours later!!! And surprise, surprise, the Spanish boss has come to visit us and she invites me for lunch to talk about some things... Perfect timing, I just wanna go to bed!!!!!!! But hey, at least WE ARE THE CHAMPIONS!!!

Quote of the day (Thursday) would be when my mum asked about the trip and I told her it had been "...the best day in my life".

She: "... what? I can´t believe you are saying that!!! Better then being with a girl???"

Me: "Mmmmmh, yep, better, it was awesome, plus there were nice chicks in the Club as well during the celebration, soooo..."

Go figure!!!

Conference Finals Picks

2006-05-24T00:11:00.000+01:00

Dallas over Phoenix in... Big question mark here... I´ll say Dallas in 6 but the way the Suns have been playing, who the hell knows??? Could be a 7 game series again!!!
Miami over Detroit, Miami in 6. The Heat better finish this off in 6, they do´t want a game 7 at the Palace. Difficult guess here as well but I gotta hold to my Pre-Playoffs Favourites: The Heat!! Something tells me they´ll be the Champs.

So far:

First Round 6-2
Second Round 3-1

More to follow, hopefully I´ll catch some more games at home in Madrid over the weekend for some deeper analysis... Good luck tonight to the Celtics in the draft lottery!!! (May 24 update -> Firts three picks: Toronco, Chicago and Charlotte)

NBA Preview and brief weekend recap

2006-05-22T21:11:00.000+01:00

The Clippers just have to pull this one off and advance to the next round. Nothing against the Suns but I just feel the Clippers have the better team and Brand is playing just so well, he´s basically been unstoppable in the Conference Semifinals scoring 30 PPG, along with 10.7 boards and 3.5(!) blocks, while shooting close to 60%(!!!) from the field!!! He´s even been dishing out close to 5 assists per game, are you kidding me? I´m on the Elton Brand bandwagon, have always been, actually, since he joined the Clippers... Then there´s Cassell, who´s been f*cking unbelievable at his 36 years of age, Maggette, who´s kicked some a$$ off the bench, Mr. "Great Expectations", 2nd year PG Livingston, who´s been living up to his talent and defensive stopper Ross... Even two "usual suspects" of underperforming or worse, performing when it doesn´t matter, have been ok. Add Kaman, who´s maybe not the best center for a Suns series, and we might have the most complete NBA Playoff roster...

So my vote goes to the Clippers and a 129-127 win tonight.

->May 23 update: Suns 127-Clippers 107... Clippers out! Oh well, at least I got the Suns score right :) (Brand 36/9 for the night...)

As for the other game, if both could loose it´d be ok with me as well but I´m sticking with the Mavs here. The Spurs have looked to "up and down" in this Playoffs and they´ve needed every bit tu pull off most of their wins. A solid game by Dallas tonight and it´s bye bye champions.
-> May 23 update: yep, Dallas kicked the defending Champs out!!! (Nowtizki was awesome 37/15 but so was Duncan with... 41!!!!! points)

As for the weekend, two movies:

The Da Vinci Code which was crap. First of all the book is much better, and secondly the ending of the movie is even worse than the book one, which is quite something to say!!! Maybe it´s just that I watched the movie too shortly after having read the novel... Anyway I made the following statement when we were just walking out "Now that´s the best movie I´ve ever seen!!!" which immediately led to a couple of spectators turning around in disbelief. "Just kidding, everyone chill" ;)

Then, on a boring Sunday afternoon, I had the "pleasure" to watch Stage Beauty with Clare Danes and Billy Crudup. Yep, I´m running out of romantic flicks, as I´ve told you already... It was a so so movie about theatre, defining one´s sexuality, Crudup, (who´s a good actor by the way), and being the first of her kind, Danes, who has the honour of becoming the first actress on a London theatre stage... Rupert Everett is cool as King Charls II.

Nothing really spectacular apart from that fdro the weekend. Lots of sleeping and a bit of Erovision, sad, sad I know...

Diary of a Champion: Part I

2006-05-20T16:23:00.000+01:00

Tuesday

3pm I leave Staines office... long way to go and lots of expectations!!!

3:30pm Cool, although a bit crazy, bus driver on the way to Heathrow airport. Half Somalian, half Suomi, go figure... Held a speach on how to make the world a better place and how much certain politicians s*ck! Ended up fist-fiving me when I left the bus: "yo, brotha". Funny guy.

4pm First Arsenal supporters at Heathrow airport. You could even avoid paying exchange commisions if you were an Arsenal supporter at one office...

5:30pm Plane leaving late as always. Then they gave us shitty sandwich. Wasn´t Lufthansa supposed to be a cool airline???

7:45pm Leaving the plane in Frankfurt, connecting flight boarding in 5 mins. I missed the freaking exit, had to go out to the arrivals terminal, then pass a control again and run like 1(?!) frekin' km to be at my gate on time... Good job by the Frankfurt signaling team!!! Clap, clap, clap!

8:30pm Same damn sandwich on the second flight, what the hell? When about 30% of the people pass on something the crew offers FOR FREE you know something´s going wrong!

9:35pm Arrival in time in Paris. You gotta hand this one to the Germans and their timing, orrrrrrrr... now that I´m thinking of it, it might just be Lufthansa, because German trains are THE mess and Germanwings´ timing is poor, too, and it took T-Online like 7 weeks to give me Internet access, and... let´s move on here.

9:37pm Last words of a "Gunner" before disembarking the plane: "All the preassure´s on Barça, I have that feeling, we win, we win 2-1... I mean, we are the underdogs, they have all the responsibility coming into the game." Yep, good argument my friend. It´s good that sports actually is not as much about responsibility and feelings as it is about talent sometimes... But who could blame him, considering how cursed Barça has looked so many times in their history.

11:00pm Watched Madrid loose their last league game at my buddies´ place. Also got to know their boss, Sanyu, who turned out to be "un genio" :) Right after that we started our PES5 mini tournament where the PS2 was conected to a beamer. Now that was aweeesome!! Messi, the Big Final´s absentee, just destroyed Real Madrid in one of the games, pretty cool...

Wednesday

10:30am Woke up feeling a bit nervous already

12:00pm Went out for a walk in Paris, with my buddy the Canary... Lots of Barça fans all over the place and you could sense a certain feeling o euphoria amongst them, never a good omen before a final.

1:30pm First verbal exchange (well, sort of...) with Barça supporerts wearing a "Catalonia is not Spain" flag. Me: "Arriba España, cooooño"... which inevitabely led to their angry "Who´s that f*cker?!?" gesture. I guess those fools haven´t figured out their nationality yet, maybe if they checked their passport or ID more often, oh well... Lesson as always here: Don´t ever miss the chance to take the mick out of a separatist.

1:44pm First comments on les parisiennes:

Me: Hmmmmm, lots of cute women here in Paris...

Canary: Yep, much more than in London

Me: ... yeah, but they are more "chaud" in the UK (which eventually turned out to be not true after all)

Canary: Agreed

(May I note here, that his taste is a biiiiiiiiit off sometimes...)

2:05pm Me urging us to find a church and light a candle, just in case... Perplexed look on the Canary´s face.

2:30pm We met Dani (aka Rivers) for lunch. Straaaange waitress. She had no voice, was slow and acted strangely. Either she was flirting or about to collapse after a journey of hard work...

4:40pm We leave for the game. You can feel the tension already. Everyone salutes us on the streets and wishes Barça good luck. It was a bit weird. No other football supporter to be seen anywhere close, people starring at us, kids telling mums "look Barcelona"... It felt like being in the wrong place at the wrong time, almost like the Final had taken place already or so...

5:20pm We´re lost!

5:23pm It starts raining a bit...

5:29pm We find a metro and it seems we have to make 17 changes in order to arrive at the station. That s*cks! Plus I bought a beer and it´s too warm to drink!

5:45pm Christian (formerly known as "The Canary") flirts with a chick in the tube. She speaks Spanish. I urge him to talk to her but he refuses. That´s what happens when you have a girlfriend...

6:05pm Arrival at the stadium, we´re finally there. Arsenal supporters "outchant" everyone else with some of their songs.

6:10pm-7:30pm Circling around the stadium feeling the atmosphere and having some drinks. Two conclusions here: 1) No Barça female supporter is even close to being called cute. 2) If we loose, we jump into one of those brooks close to Saint-Denis.

7:40pm Inside the stadium!!!!!! Great atmosphere already!!!! I have that special "we´re in a Final, I hope we don´t screw it" feeling, just like in 92 against Sampdoria and the 267 times Barça´s basketball team made the Final Four, and then actually lost, between 1988-2003...

8:10pm A rumour´s out there that Iniesta will start on the bench. Ok, can we just maybe start 8-11 as well?? Why????? He´s possibly been the best central midfielder of the world for the past two months and Rijkaard leaves him buried on the bench in th Champions League Final?? Someone please explain that to me!! (PS: I told you that Iniesta would be part of Spain´s World Cup roster some time ago, when barely someone counted him in, well, it was confirmed last week. Look out for him to start for the team from game 2, to never be benched again. He´ll stand out in Germany!! The way he´s playing, fresh, quick, precise, he´s almost unstoppable these days!)

8:35pm Both teams´ lineups are being announced and Barça supporters start clapping when Henry´s name comes up!! I´m shocked!!! WTF??? Why would you chant for the most dangerous guy on the rival team, the guy who potentially could destroy your Championship hopes... Reason is, his name has been linked to Barcelona several time, so what??? We´re in a damn freakin´ Champions League Final here!!! Booooooooooo and shout at any, ANY, opposite player, supporter, coach, assistant coach... well except for the chick on the pictures (see below) :P (just kidding)

And yeah, Iniesta starts on the bench... Why would Rijkaard do this to us? Further, why would a coach who's proven himself of being a reasonable person these years, something rather uncommon in sports, do something like this?? Whatever...

8:43pm Barça fans display the usual "big-occasion-mosaic" with cardboards. Cool to be part of it!!!!

8:48pm The game just started 3 mins ago and Henry is left alone in front of Valdés... who denies him!!!!! Lack of concentration? The curse? Jesus Christ, that was so close, I´m speechless!!! Can anyone call a timeout here?

8:57pm Arsenal is controlling the first minutes of the game...

9:03pm Lehmann is sent of for a foul on Eto´o on a ball through from Ronaldinho, but why didn´t the referee allow Giuly´s goal? What the hell? Lots of confusion here...

9:09pm Barça looks more confortable now playing 11 vs 10. Arsenal is giving all the space of the World to Edmilson who obviously S*CKS!!!! Not one decent pass, nor a shot... and he´s wide open!!! Why is he even on the pitch??? I´m getting nervous in the ranks... By the way, what is Eto´o doing playing left wing!?!?

9:22pm Campbell scores!!! Oh, oh... it didn´t look like a foul though??? Worst thing here, I´m starting to think of my conversation with my friend Jimmy on Monday where he said something like "Barça should clearly win but... what if Arsenal scores like in the 37th minute (no kidding here) and your team starts getting nervous and you´re 1 down after the first half... what then?"

9:29pm Almunia denies Eto´o and the ball hits the post! Dammit!!!! That goal would have been so important. Fans starting to get rather nervous, including myself. I start noticing those "what if" gestures on some of us...

(END OF PART I. More to follow, including the halftime phone call with my dad, the second half action, paris nightlife and much more...)

Some other thoughts...

Henry who?

Henry decided to stay at home and play for Arsenal for another four seasons. Fair enough! Barça didn´t really need him to be honest. He´s a great player, yes, but he needs to be in a team playing his style, that is, him being the go to guy and everything evolving around him, and that wouldn´t be the case in Barcelona. He struggled in Turin and was not spectacular either for his national team in their Euro and World Cup successes of 2000 and 1998. Just when he signed for Arsenal and Wenger made him "the man" he responded. I don´t wanna take anything away from him, he´s a great player, no doubts but maybe Arsenal is his place. Expectations would´ve maybe been very high in Barcelona, he wouldn´t have come for cheap either, and we´ve some solif offensive players anyway, so...

Nevertheless, if Arsenal had won the Champions League, he´d have left. I´m 100% positive here! It´s just that he´s a proud guy, too, and wants to prove the world and himself that he can win it all as an Arsenal player. Not gonna happen. No way!!! The gunners have a good team, young players but the competence is fierce in the Champions League and with Adebayor up front, forget it.

Anyway, with Eto´o (who just was the top scorer in Spain this year with 26), a healthy Messi, Giuly and Ronaldinho, our offense is set with the exception of probably to signings this summer, a CF (hopefully we´re not overpaying for Forlán here) and a wing player for the left side who could accept being benched. Probably a veteran would suite this position much better. Maybe the World Cup will give us some names here...

By the way, anyone else has noticed that Ljungberg seems to be running on fumes? That you could actually make a case these days that Fredrik Ljungberg s*cks??? What´s the problem with this guy? He´s just turned 29!! He´s obviously been a bit overrated all this years but he used to be a good player who scored quite some goals from the second line. Not happening anymore:

8, 9, 17, 9, 10, 14 and 2 goals in the last seven seasons.

He also looses concentration easily, is not as physically present as before either, I dunno... Did he cheat with his age like all those Brasilian or African players, so he´s actually 37 instead of 29? Was he a bust all the way and no one noticed just because he´s handsome? Did he just have a bad season? I´m confused here...

Barça takes over in Paris, wins Champions League!!!

2006-05-18T23:19:00.000+01:00

Wicked Champions League Final day in Paris!!! Barça comes back to win 2-1 (Eto´o and Belletti).

Man of the match: Valdés & Eto´o!! Special mention as well to Iniesta, Larsson and Belletti for his match winner.

All in all, deserved win with some moments of luck (Valdés denying Henry in the 70. minute). Watching it in the stadium was just too cool and the party afterwards till 5:00am was just aweeeesooooomeeeeeee!!!

Here some pics:

Celebration with Raphaëlle...

...and Barça wins it all!!!

Pre game images...

Cows and Canary Wharf...

...some quality Arsenal supporter on Champs-Elysées!!!

Special mention to the Econet troupe (here at their office): Rivers, Cheso, Inma and Sanyu, their boss. Awesome hosts and party animals!!! 10 points here!!!

Spain Squad for the World Cup confirmed

2006-05-15T12:13:00.000+01:00

Porteros: Casillas, Cañizares y Reina

Defensas: Salgado, Sergio Ramos, Puyol, Pablo, Marchena, Juanito, Antonio López y Del Horno

Centrocampistas: Albelda, Senna, Xabi Alonso, Joaquín, Cesc, Luis García, Iniesta, Xavi y Reyes

Delanteros: Raúl, Fernando Torres y Villa