Loosenin' my grip...

You said you didn’t give a f--- about hockey,
I never saw someone say that before
You held my hand and we walked home the long way,
Loosenin’ my grip on Bobby Orr.

These are lyrics from the song called “Fireworks” by the Tragically Hip. As I sit writing this on this sunny Monday morning in Bangkok, nearly 24 hours removed from slumber, I’m beginning to understand how Gord Downie or whichever one of The Hip who wrote this song was feeling.

Made a big mistake last night. Some of my colleagues and I had talked about watching a bit of football (Americano style, pigskin, gridiron, whatever words you prefer.) As BKK is exactly 12 hours ahead of Central Daylight Time, this means that games which kick off at noon on Sunday kick off at midnight here. Staying up until 3 am is no big deal for us, especially since we had neither classes nor proctoring the next day. So we went down to the teacher’s lounge, which has a variety of satellite channels on which one can watch all sorts of sports ranging from Scottish soccer to Australian Rugby to Indian Cricket.
The early game was the St. Louis Scrams (formerly known as the Disney Lambs) at the New York (Football) Giants. The late game? The hated Atlanta Falcons taking on my beloved but inept Minnesota Vikings. This meant that I was going to be spending all night watching football. A bigger waste of time could not have been had – hence the title of this posting.
I quit watching at 5 am, when Atlanta was up 24-0. The Vikings could get no offense going whatsoever, which appeared to my untrained eye to be a product of an offensive line that is about as effective and coherent as FEMA under the Bush administration and a “revamped” defense that was as inept at stopping the scrambling of Matt Schaub as it was that of Michael Vick. It was just ugly. Perhaps I picked a good year to go abroad. My grip on Daunte Culpepper is loosening, much like Mr. Downie’s grip on Bobby Orr.
In other news, the baseball season is now finished. The Twins finished the year one game above .500 and in third place in the American League Central Division and fourth in the Wild Card race. Many would attribute this mediocre result to injuries of key people in key positions. I disagree with this, again, from my relatively uniformed position. In a 162 game season, a team should expect injuries in key positions – it’s part of the game that needs to be expected. The past three years when they won the division, they had similar injury numbers and in similar spots. I think the rest of the division finally caught up with them, and that the Twins three division titles were more of a reflection of the remainder of the division’s inability than of the Twins greatness. But this is just my opinion. Hopefully, the Twins can catch up and surpass them all next year.
The only really good news overall is that the Badgers are 5-0 after a win over the Big Ten’s Football version of the Arizona Cardinals, The University of Indiana Hoosiers, by a score of 44-21. They were ranked 17 in the nation last week, we’ll see if they climb any higher after this win.

In non-sporting news, I’ll be spending the next few days doing not much other than correcting tests. Once that is finished, will be revisiting the old girl, Miss Thetis, after a bit of an absence. Have done a bit of tinkering with it, but I need to get a draft out before too long, so I must do that before heading for Krabi. Also, this will give the rainy season a bit more time to run its course. I’m really looking forward to getting out of the city a bit, but first things first, right?
Also, I bought a comic book. I’m hoping this will help me bolster my Thai language ability. I just need a dictionary now…

God help the poor Balinese. Two bombings in three years cripple an already hobbled tourism industry. May have to head to Bali this March, as I’d like to do my part to help them recover a bit.

Not too much else to report. Hail progress!