Over the past few days, I have been utterly sick of hearing people talking about the US elections. Too bad, Bush won...live with it. I think Bush is an utter twat and buffoon, but Kerry isn't really much different as far as his foreign policies are concerned. As far as the Middle East and the whole Israel/Palestine is concerned, he is even more pro-Israeli than the Republicans. So, it's just a matter of which of the two evils was lesser. As some commentators have already pointed out, at least Bush doesn't try and sugar-coat his foreign policies...better the evil we know than the evil we don't. What I'm sure of is that despite all of the US's strong-arm policies and unilaterism, it will be all the more weaker for it. The decline of US influence will be accompanied by a paroxysm of heavy-handed acts, in the same way the decline of the British Empire was started almost a century ago with sabre-rattling.
On a personal note, not too long ago, my ultimate aim for my post-grad studies would have been to do my PhD in one of the elite universities in the US. The intense focus on the American people and society in the run-up to the elections has been relevatory for me, not to my mention my sojourn there during summer. The US is indeed the land of opportunity, but a point of conscience for me is whether to take that opportunity, if it had been created at the expense of other countries and the global environment. Considering I already disagree vehemently with the direction the US is taking, I think it's a question of principle whether it is right for me to receive from, and contribute to the US system (as a PhD student, I would be receiving money from them, but I will be contributing to American science as well). My American friends would tell me that they are against Bush as well, but as American citizens they are entitled to, whereas as a foreigner it would be hypocritical for me to benefit from the American system while opposing it. I suppose that the Democrat states, i.e. the West Coast and North-East would be considerably less revulsive to me, but even then I will only go there if I really run out of options elsewhere...
Now, if the Democrat states would just break-away and form another country, that would be a different matter...
Thursday, November 04, 2004
Tuesday, November 02, 2004
Sunday was one of the worst days of my life, when everything just went wrong at once. Newcastle Utd lost 2-1 to Bolton, for a start, but that's not the only sporting disaster.
We were supposed to play in a volleyball tournament in Kent, 3 matches in all. Jon, our skipper, told us to wait at Victoria train station at 8.30am in the morning, so I set my alarm clock for 7.30am. After hammering on the snooze button a few times, I finally dragged myself out of bed at 7.45. 45 minutes to get to Victoria station is extremely achievable, when there is plenty of buses at rush hour, but not with the dodgy bus schedules on Sunday morning.
Still, I managed to get to the station just a couple of minutes late. As I hurried over to the departures board where we were to meet, I began to wonder where everyone was. After 5 minutes, I got really worried and called Jon. 'Oi Jon, where the hell is everyone???'.'What do you mean where's everyone. It's a quarter to eight.' Brief silence. 'You muppet! The clocks went back last night!'. Another brief silence, then I went 'Oh...'. 'See you in an hour', then he put down the phone. The change from summertime to wintertime was last night, and I was so busy doing my homework that I didn't realise I had to set my clocks an hour forwards! Brilliant. So I have sacrificed an hour's sleep to arrive an hour early, and have to figure out how to spend the next hour.
As I was standing in the middle of the station mulling my stupidity, a guy who looked vaguely familiar from volleyball came up to me and said him and asked me where everyone was. With a wry smile I pointed to a clock on the station platform without saying anything, and realisation dawned on him. Silvan is a Frenchman from Bordeaux, and he's a new exchange student to UCL. I hadn't gotten around to talking to him yet although we both see each other in practise sessions. Still, I was glad to know I wasn't alone in my foolishness, although to be fair unless we watch TV or radio, it's easy not to realise such things. We decided to walk around the general area around the station to spend the time, and soon enough it was the right meeting time, so we went back.
Jon, Simon, Sven and a few others were there with a worried look on the face, puncuated briefly to laugh at me and Silvan. Apparently, no one had thought to bring the bag of volleyballs, which is a necessity at away games in order to warmup. As Alex would be travelling later on his own, there was a call to him to rush to the Sports Centre to pick up our balls, although I reminded everyone that it was unlikely to be open at this hour. We waited a while for a couple of people to turn up, but when Adam and David failed to turn up, there was no choice but to leave without them.
We arrived in Kent well before our first game against Imperial College. The whole of the University of Kent's sports hall had been taken up by volleyball, with one court for the men's games and another for the women's games. We had to borrow some balls from ULU to warm up, and shortly afterwards we began. The first set was very close, and we only managed to scrape a 27-25 win for that. I played pretty well generally, making some nice passes to Jon, who was setting, and covering well in defence. However, in the second set we allowed IC to get a lead that we never did recover from, losing that set. As we were playing best-of-three games, the final set was a cliffhanger, but we made far too many service errors and mistakes, and lost the game.
The next game was against Essex, which is the whipping boys of our league, but to avoid revisiting the pain that happened so recently, let me just say we somehow managed to lose to that lot. I didn't really play well in that game, with my weakness at passing floating serves being exposed too many times. After the game was over, we were simply shattered.
Immediately after the Essex game, we played against Reading. We beat Reading quite comfortably twice last year, but this year they were much better. Again, we managed to win the first set, but collapsed in the next two sets to lose the game. So at the end of the day, we had 3 losses, when in the whole of last year we only lost two games. And we haven't even played Kent and ULU yet, which are the strongest teams in our league.
In general, I thought I played reasonably well, even though I made my fair share of mistakes. My defensive coverage and reaction speed has never been so good, although I struggled to pass some of more nasty serves. There was too many mistakes in the attacking pipeline, with dodgy sets from Jon and spikes going far out, not to mention a ridiculous number of service errors (FIVE in one single set). In the beginning of our first game, our blockers were shutting out the opposition attacks, but later on somehow it became far too leaky. Most of our problems seemed to be psychological, especially with Nik from Athens. He is easily the best player in our team, but his attitude during matches can be completely infuriating. Playing alongside, one can't shake the impression that he's completely in contempt of having to play with us, and when things aren't going well he's the first one to take a defeatist attitude. I've played alongside him for the past two years, and have put up with this all this while, but never has it been this bad.
To put things bluntly, I think our team in general is not as good as it was last year. We had Seb the Swiss and Hadi from the States in the team, both formidable middle attackers, and in the first year we had Ryan, an exchange student from UPenn, who was actually in the US junior Olympic squad. They're all gone this year, and in their place are players nowhere as good. Last year, I wasn't as experienced as I am this year, and I felt that I definitely let the team down at times, but this time I felt that even though I could have played better, I'm indispensible to the team.
So as I collapsed on to bed that night after 13 hours out of my room, it was the most terrible feeling the world, that my world is collapsing around me (albeit only my volleyball world), and nothing I can do about it. UCL men's volleyball is staring relegation in the face.
We were supposed to play in a volleyball tournament in Kent, 3 matches in all. Jon, our skipper, told us to wait at Victoria train station at 8.30am in the morning, so I set my alarm clock for 7.30am. After hammering on the snooze button a few times, I finally dragged myself out of bed at 7.45. 45 minutes to get to Victoria station is extremely achievable, when there is plenty of buses at rush hour, but not with the dodgy bus schedules on Sunday morning.
Still, I managed to get to the station just a couple of minutes late. As I hurried over to the departures board where we were to meet, I began to wonder where everyone was. After 5 minutes, I got really worried and called Jon. 'Oi Jon, where the hell is everyone???'.'What do you mean where's everyone. It's a quarter to eight.' Brief silence. 'You muppet! The clocks went back last night!'. Another brief silence, then I went 'Oh...'. 'See you in an hour', then he put down the phone. The change from summertime to wintertime was last night, and I was so busy doing my homework that I didn't realise I had to set my clocks an hour forwards! Brilliant. So I have sacrificed an hour's sleep to arrive an hour early, and have to figure out how to spend the next hour.
As I was standing in the middle of the station mulling my stupidity, a guy who looked vaguely familiar from volleyball came up to me and said him and asked me where everyone was. With a wry smile I pointed to a clock on the station platform without saying anything, and realisation dawned on him. Silvan is a Frenchman from Bordeaux, and he's a new exchange student to UCL. I hadn't gotten around to talking to him yet although we both see each other in practise sessions. Still, I was glad to know I wasn't alone in my foolishness, although to be fair unless we watch TV or radio, it's easy not to realise such things. We decided to walk around the general area around the station to spend the time, and soon enough it was the right meeting time, so we went back.
Jon, Simon, Sven and a few others were there with a worried look on the face, puncuated briefly to laugh at me and Silvan. Apparently, no one had thought to bring the bag of volleyballs, which is a necessity at away games in order to warmup. As Alex would be travelling later on his own, there was a call to him to rush to the Sports Centre to pick up our balls, although I reminded everyone that it was unlikely to be open at this hour. We waited a while for a couple of people to turn up, but when Adam and David failed to turn up, there was no choice but to leave without them.
We arrived in Kent well before our first game against Imperial College. The whole of the University of Kent's sports hall had been taken up by volleyball, with one court for the men's games and another for the women's games. We had to borrow some balls from ULU to warm up, and shortly afterwards we began. The first set was very close, and we only managed to scrape a 27-25 win for that. I played pretty well generally, making some nice passes to Jon, who was setting, and covering well in defence. However, in the second set we allowed IC to get a lead that we never did recover from, losing that set. As we were playing best-of-three games, the final set was a cliffhanger, but we made far too many service errors and mistakes, and lost the game.
The next game was against Essex, which is the whipping boys of our league, but to avoid revisiting the pain that happened so recently, let me just say we somehow managed to lose to that lot. I didn't really play well in that game, with my weakness at passing floating serves being exposed too many times. After the game was over, we were simply shattered.
Immediately after the Essex game, we played against Reading. We beat Reading quite comfortably twice last year, but this year they were much better. Again, we managed to win the first set, but collapsed in the next two sets to lose the game. So at the end of the day, we had 3 losses, when in the whole of last year we only lost two games. And we haven't even played Kent and ULU yet, which are the strongest teams in our league.
In general, I thought I played reasonably well, even though I made my fair share of mistakes. My defensive coverage and reaction speed has never been so good, although I struggled to pass some of more nasty serves. There was too many mistakes in the attacking pipeline, with dodgy sets from Jon and spikes going far out, not to mention a ridiculous number of service errors (FIVE in one single set). In the beginning of our first game, our blockers were shutting out the opposition attacks, but later on somehow it became far too leaky. Most of our problems seemed to be psychological, especially with Nik from Athens. He is easily the best player in our team, but his attitude during matches can be completely infuriating. Playing alongside, one can't shake the impression that he's completely in contempt of having to play with us, and when things aren't going well he's the first one to take a defeatist attitude. I've played alongside him for the past two years, and have put up with this all this while, but never has it been this bad.
To put things bluntly, I think our team in general is not as good as it was last year. We had Seb the Swiss and Hadi from the States in the team, both formidable middle attackers, and in the first year we had Ryan, an exchange student from UPenn, who was actually in the US junior Olympic squad. They're all gone this year, and in their place are players nowhere as good. Last year, I wasn't as experienced as I am this year, and I felt that I definitely let the team down at times, but this time I felt that even though I could have played better, I'm indispensible to the team.
So as I collapsed on to bed that night after 13 hours out of my room, it was the most terrible feeling the world, that my world is collapsing around me (albeit only my volleyball world), and nothing I can do about it. UCL men's volleyball is staring relegation in the face.
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