That tennis match just then was, in equal parts, both inspiring and depressing.
Inspiring because Nadal, who I presume would be in a world of pain with his damaged hamstring, decided to soldier on, even though he knew he would lose.
Depressing because this random injury cropped up at the worst possible time to derail what would've been a fantastic record for him to have achieved. I reckon it would've been easier to swallow if he had been fully fit, and was defeated that way (although the chances of that happening are almost non-existent, as he is quite hard to beat when not injured).
Realistically, it'll be hard for him to be gunning for all four Grand Slams at once again. But you never know. It happened once, it could happen again, him being so young and all. But I guess this is why it's hard to do. You never know when something random could just pop up and ruin it all. Better luck next time, Rafa.
UPDATE: Just saw his live press conference. Basically refused to talk about his injuries, because he felt it would be demeaning to his opponent. Also paraphrased the quote at the top of the Wimbledon tunnel, saying that he has to be able to take the high moments along with the low moments. Legendary.
I'm also quite upset that I don't get to watch Wozniacki tomorrow. I'm at a stupid NQT meeting. Sigh. I've taken a liking to her. I liked how she took care of Hewitt's daughter (or son - I still don't know which) when the fool decided to bring her (him?) on court at the Rally for Relief, and s/he started crying. Very down-to-earth. I half feel like not going. I wonder if anybody would notice. I doubt it. Usually, there'd be no roll call or any sort of way for marking attendance if I don't turn up, but if I decide not to go, they'll be making sure they get down the names of everybody attending. Murphy's Law, and all that. Hope the BIg Woz wins tomorrow, so we can see her in action again at some later stage.
Also, Australia 6 - 0 Bahrain. I don't know what's more surprising, Australia keeping a clean sheet, or Australia scoring six. Maybe they're both equally surprising, and they're secretly having a competition to be more surprising than the other. Not really that surprising anymore, now that I've discussed the hell out of it.
Also, also, Kevin Muscat. What a terrible, terrible tackle. And he has the nerve to look angry at the ref for giving him a red. He should be banned for the rest of the season. No kidding, that tackle was life-threatening. Ok, seriously, it was career-threatening. Here it is here:
Just in case you don't know, it's against the rules for both feet to leave the ground in a tackle, even if you completely miss the player and get the ball. As you can see, there are reasons for that rule.
Oh yeah, Arsenal in the Carling Cup final. Come on Gunners!!!
So a mixed bag of sporting news today. At least from my perspective.
On to personal life (the boring part).
Yesterday, I watched the Green Hornet with Paddy. One of the worst films I've seen. Seriously. Disjointed, unintelligible, not very funny, did not utilise 3D at all, and Jay Chou (who was disjointed, unintelligible, not very funny, AND was incoherent 90% of the time. However, he did utilise a little bit of 3D).
A lot of things to do, not very much time. Got to get cracking on all of this soon. Wish I had a girlfriend to help me do this stuff sometimes, but there you go. That's life, as Nadal says.
I jetted off to Russia, for some arbitrary reason. I ended up being in one building for the whole trip, answering music trivia questions. The questions were in English. In fact, so was everything else. The only thing that indicated that it was Russia was that I could see snow outside, which doesn't happen very often in good old Melbourne.
So yeah, I arrived in the morning (having left Melbourne that same morning). After spending the aforementioned few hours there, I left that evening and arrived in the afternoon of the same day (told you it was weird).
At Melbourne Central.
There, I saw Dr Dre. And I was all like, "OMG, it's Dr Dre!!!"
And then James Cheng appeared. And so did Andrew Chen, who was working at the cafe, the wall of which Dre was leaning on.
There is no underlying meaning to this dream. Or, at least, that's what I tell myself. It just seems to be an amalgamation of a few, seemingly fleeting, irrelevant, trivial thoughts that I don't even remember thinking. All in all, a pretty good dream to have. A good way to keep me occupied during my sleep.
It is one of the better films that I have seen in the past few years. Again, it has that Disney ability to transport you into the world that it's set it, and it makes you feel something.
Although it does employ a lot of deus ex machina, and sometimes didn't make plausible sense, I felt as thought it didn't matter. Anyway, that's what all Disney films do.
Speaking of which, there were songs. Actual songs! I know, right?
I read somewhere online that it wasn't a very good movie for the 50th Disney feature film thing. I disagree. I thought, while it could've been better, it was very suitable. It was kind of an homage to all the old Disney films. The structure was similar and the songs kind of all lifted variously from these films. As like the old ones, the animation was superb.
Having said all that, the songs could've been better. They weren't particularly memorable, but they were pretty good nonetheless.
Definitely worth the money, and it actually looked alright in 3D. We didn't have an option, because we decided to visit the new Forest Hill cinema. Turns out not much has changed apart from external appearance - Knox had about fifty millions sessions of 2D, while Forest Hill had zero.
I'm in half a mind to see it once more. We'll see how it pans out.
The past two days (this one not inclusive) have been some of the best that I've had these holidays.
Well, it was more Thursday that was the great day. Went up Mount Dandenong with some homedogs that are close to my heart (awwwww). Once we got settled down for brunch and started, I laughed harder than I had for a long, long time. No, I'm not crazy. I didn't start laughing spontaneously. It was mainly to do with Rui being a clown.
So after eating, and laughing at Rui eating his scone like a sandwich (amongst other things) and roaming around the mountain like Asian tourists, we went to Cold Rock for dessert. I promptly got lost trying to get Kanji home. It eventually all worked out. The day had already seemed massively awesome up until that point.
Good times. It was like a week's worth of goodness, gloriously crammed into one day, spent with some of my favourite people.
And there will be more to come. Because yesterday, I sorted out the venue for my 21st. And I am so relieved just to be able to get that out of the way.
Hopefully I'll be able to organise some more fun times for next week.
Oh, also, Sarah's coming back from her massive holiday in France. All in all, good stuff.
I'll leave you with this song that I deliberately chanced on today. It fills me with a strong feeling of vengeance and bitterness. But it's such a good little song.
Tell everybody that you know That I don't love you no more
Currently listening to: I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For by U2
Word of the Day: roaming
I wish I had the gumption to tell the girl of my dreams that I like her.
Nah, not really. I just wanted to use 'gumption' somewhere. Best word ever.
Well, I do wish I did have the aforementioned gumption. But that's neither here nor there, because, at present, I don't really have a girl of my dreams.
I wish this post had a proper purpose, apart from allowing me to use 'gumption' in a post, but the truth is, it doesn't. All I really want to say right now is that I find it slightly ironic how I've mostly been bumming around, not doing very much, for the past two or so months, and right about now it seems like I'm running out of time to do stuff. Oh dear.
This reminds me of something. Possibly uni. Or many other situations in life.
Currently listening to: Twentysomething by Jamie Cullum Word of the Day: Gumption
Just when I was starting to get used to writing a '10' at the end of dates, it's 2011.
Happy New Year! May it be a good one, filled with joy, and joyness, and good times. Hopefully I get to Huang out with you all more often. Oh dear.
I was going to do a New Year's resolution thing, but I don't really have one. If I make one up now, I'll be compelled to act on it, and probably make a fool of myself again. So I won't be doing it.
I also just finished watching Love Actually. A truly fantastic film. Bits of a it are a bit...unrealistic. Like, how people fall deeply in love after having known each other for 30 seconds. But I guess it's done for efficiency, and I guess we're not supposed to focus on how they fall in love in 30 seconds, but more on other stuff. Like how Alan Rickman still sounds like Snape, even though he's clearly not Snape in the film.
Ok, here's one. It's not really a resolution of sorts, but more of a goal thing. I'm going to be less proud, or try to. I will try and instigate conversation, and not play the foolish game where we all sit around waiting for a person to start talking to you. I'm going to try and ask for help if I need it. Academically, spiritually, emotionally, physically, and all that. Starting now. I see people who will never instigate a conversation with me on MSN, online right now, and I am going to talk to them.
Have a good one!
Currently listening to: Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except me and my Monkey by The Beatles. Word of the Day: Resolution
My, how time flies. It's that time of year again. And I'm at home again, because I don't particularly fancy being crammed up against a million people in humid, oppressive 40-degree heat in the middle of a thunderstorm in the city.
I was going to do a comprehensive run-down of the year, but I can't be bothered. I'm going to do some weak attempt at a best/worst thing instead, with arbitrary categories.
FUNNEST MOMENT(S) OF THE YEAR: A toss-up between chilling and shooting the breeze with friends at uni and other places, and the roadtrip we had midyear. I think the friends thing wins slightly, mostly because I loved, and still do love, the vast majority of the people that I hung with during the year, and, percentage-wise, I love less of the people that were on the roadtrip. Also, the friends thing is more consistent. It's like a controlled drip-feed of happiness. The roadtrip was like a massive shot in the arm of happiness all at once.
MOST CRINGE-WORTHY MOMENT: There are lots. Especially for me personally. But a public one that struck a chord with me was Australia getting schooled by Germany at the World Cup. I have never, ever seen Australia playing that badly. It wasn't so much the lack of technical quality that made it bad, it was the lack of fight.
HAPPIEST MOMENT: Finding out that I'd passed EVERYTHING this semester. Yes, very nerdy, but after what I've sort of been through this year, I've found that being academically strong is more important to me than ever. I think it's mostly to do with the fact that how good I am academically is more or less under my control, while other things, like how people treat me, or the weather, or what soup we're having for dinner, is mostly out of my hands. Mostly. Sometimes I get to name the soup that we're having for dinner, and every so often my request is granted. But yeah, shout out to my family and Eugene for helping me through that horror period of the year.
Also, I fully expected to fail Financial Accounting. Again. So you can imagine how over the moon I was about it.
MOST DEPRESSING MOMENT: Again, there are numerous. I think I would just like to thank my friends for being there during the most trying times this year. Special mention to Banh, Meng, and sometimes Orrin. However, you've all been a massive help just being there. Just seeing a friendly face is a fantastic happiness drug.
MOST ANNOYING MOMENT(S): Being attacked by a Fandroid for getting and iPhone. And that other time I got attacked by a Fandroid via a forwarded SMS from another Fandroid. And that time I got gangbashed by Fandroids. How they can harbour such unrelenting, mindless hatred towards a harmless inanimate object that most neutral observers either like or are neutral towards is beyond me. According to these guys (yes, they're all guys. Kind of tells you a bit about Fandroids), Google invented the wheel, and other stuff that has subsequently changed the course of human history, and will continue to do so. All of it. In every single way possible. And that all other phones, and their owners, should be destroyed because of the sheer stupidity that they embody for giving their money to a company in exchange for a phone that works. Because Google isn't also a massively rich company that doesn't give their phones away.
Anyway. Lesson learnt. Don't mention the word 'phone' or 'Apple' around someone that even remotely looks like a Fandroid. Even if it's in the context of "My dad runs an apple farm, and I had to phone his seed supplier for him yesterday." You know, because when you're speaking, you can't tell whether it's a capital A or a lowercase a. Just don't do it to be safe. Unless you enjoy being ripped into randomly and viciously by people who were formerly minding their own business. Then by all means, go and find these people and mention the words 'phone' and 'apple' near them. And afterwards, check yourself into one of those places that will cure the disease that you have which makes you want to inflict pain on yourself. Whatever they're called.
A close second would have to be some of my friends sticking up for a scum of a person and saying how much of a "great guy" he was, even though he took about 2 months and numerous reminders to pay me my money back. Not to mention he never brought it up, effectively pretending that the matter did not exist. The excuse that the message "wasn't seen" doesn't cut it, because a decent human being would promptly search out their debtor and pay them back.
SONG/ALBUM OF THE YEAR: This is difficult. I get really, really confused between which music is this year, and which is not. However, the album that was truly fantastic was My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy by Kanye. Truly powerful and catchy album. The others from artists that I like were mostly slight disappointments. I have no idea about song of the year. Not really that muchly into songs by themselves as such. Impact-wise, definitely OMG by Usher. Quality-wise, no.
BIGGEST (PLEASANT) SURPRISE OF THE YEAR: Being able to get along with most people during the year comes close, but it would probably have to be getting a car. Completely caught me by surprise, in a very good way. I would've said passing everything in second semester, but that's already been done.
BIGGEST (UNPLEASANT) SURPRISE OF THE YEAR: Not much unpleasantness comes as a surprise, which is a good thing most of the time. Anything that I mention will probably sound petty and whingy, so I'll stay away from it.
LESSON OF THE YEAR: Do not rely on the goodwill of others, especially in the case of people you do not know. Things that you take for granted, as being part and parcel of being a decent human being, are often not taken for granted at all by others. Only treat well people who have treated you nicely. Hopefully I can stick to it.
I would also like to thank my family, for just being there in general. It's tough imagining going to uni without my friends there, but to not have the support of my family would be unimaginable. Thank-you.
As for my friends, I have grown a lot closer to the good ones, and further away from the not-so-good ones, which is probably as it should be. While I have made less friends this year than in previous years, the ones I made this year seem to be of a higher quality. That's probably not all that hard, mostly because I made about two. Too much comfort zone, and not enough proactiveness. Thanks for putting up with me, and being there in the good times and the bad.
In summary, the year wasn't a bad one at all. I've heard lots of people complaining about it. Apart from failing Accounting first semester, and getting into grief with crazy girls, it's not been bad. There's been a lot of good times, more so than the bad, even though I complain a lot.
May your new year be filled with happiness, joy and laughter. While I hope that you have no unhappy moments, I will endeavour to be there for you whenever you do have those moments. I will also try to be there in your happy moments too. Have a safe and prosperous new year. Hope to see more of y'all next year.
I will try to heed the message of this song. Obscure though it may be.
